Deceptive Docurama

 “The Last Czars” – Docudrama produced by Jane Root, 2019

This is an attempt at explaining the fall of the last Czar – Nicholas II – by highlighting the Rasputin scandal and the possible survival of the youngest daughter, Anastasia.  The series includes valuable real footage of the revolution, the war and the royal family.  But it’s also pop history.  So how does pop history work?   

First you have to have some professors and writers on hand to give the whole thing a feeling of accuracy and gravitas.  This series uses 5 or 6.    

Then you have actors depict the terrible revolutionists as terrorists – anarchists and bombers like the unnamed People’s Will.  Anarchy is a phrase used a number of times, once as title of the 3rd episode. You mention a bewildering plethora of revolutionary organizations,  naming only one, the Bolsheviks.  As if there were hundreds that were relevant, which means you are supposed to be irritated about all the ‘anarchic’ opinions out there when people finally get to have their say. 

Then your actors and talking heads focus on Rasputin as the key figure in causing discredit on the Romanovs, due to his possibly sexual relationship with the Czarina and his magic with her hidden hemophilic son.  They hint that Alexandra was a neurotic, popping opium pills (?) and her nervousness was transmitted to the little boy, which made his bleeding worse.  Rasputin functioned like a therapist to this woman, who comes across as a religious, empty-headed, small town housefrau. 

Nicholas is portrayed as a nice but weak man, listening to the vicious Grand Duke Sergei, his neurotic wife, Rasputin and his own ‘feelings.’  He loves his family and had a romantic and sexual relationship with his wife, unlike many royalty. But he adopted a hardline stance throughout.  This nice man spent his coronation at a party after thousands of peasants were trampled to death on the celebration field; sent the Baltic Fleet to the Pacific in a failed fight with the Japanese in a war to expand the empire; ordered troops to fire on demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in front of the Winter Palace; executed 15,000 revolutionists after the 1905 insurrection and became the useless commander of the Russian armies in WWI, which sustained millions of casualties.

Nicholas repeatedly tolerated Rasputin throughout, even though most reports said Rasputin was running a sort of unofficial Christian sex cult.  Of note, Rasputin, the peasant, was against WWI initially.  Official and royal St. Petersburg all opposed Rasputin, which is what led to his assassination by a wealthy Prince.

Then you would focus on the character of Yukov Yurovsky, a Bolshevik who fought in WWI and led his unit off the battlefield.  Yurovsky was in charge of the Romanovs in Yekaterinburg, and carried out their execution. The bloody basement where the royals were executed as White armies approached haunts the series. The last episode of the whole series of 6 is called 'The House of Special Purpose' about this place. This is meant to show the brutality of the Bolsheviks – not the brutality of a revived Czarism if they had been rescued and restored.   As it was, the Civil War was a massive and bloody horror show backed by imperialist aid, foreign troops and White Czarist restorationists.

Then you claim that if Nicholas had only listened to his smartest advisor, Stolypin, the dynasty would have been saved.  Saving the dynasty seems to be a theme.  Those ‘poor’ Romanovs was also a theme of some of the 2017 displays at the Winter Palace put on by the Putin government, so the theme goes beyond this docudrama.  In extends across the capitalist countries to this day.

And finally abstractly mention the conditions of the workers, peasants, intellectuals and soldiers in pre-revolutionary Russia, and keep the emotional, up-close narrative concerned with either Rasputin, the loving family, the children, their nice tutor and the false Anastasia.  The former is boring and black and white, while the latter are in color and emotionally touching.

This is basically a poppy, pro-royalist tale, with a side of history.  It is nevertheless a good series for a leftist, as it shows the incompetence of inherited power.  Sometimes these people are just plain laughable.  This love of royalty is still reflected in the ‘modern’ age, as in the recent archaic coronation of the doddering King Charles III attests, along with the continuing presence of royalty and theocracy across the world.  Of note, the Thai royal family holds political power with the help of a military junta.  The Saudi royal family is named the inherited rulers in the Saudi Constitution.   Television and movies peddle this nonsense non-stop in the 'West' too, including the series 'Bridgerton' which has raised dark-skinned people to royalty.  'Not My King' should not have to be a current slogan, but it is.  

Prior reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “The Hermitage and Winter Palace,” “Red Star” (Bogdanov); “October” (Mieville); “Petrograd District,” “What Is To Be Done?” (Chernyshevsky); “People’s History of the Russian Revolution” (Faulkner); “Petersburg” (Biely).

The Kultur Kommissar

May 15, 2023