Lost Tales: Stories for the Tsar's Children

I rate this book so highly because of its unique standing as both skillful work and historic artifact. Given the fact that even King Babar is forbidden in some circles, people who look on literature as political porridge for babes might pass this one up. Its propaganda is out of date, and for a small elite: many of the tales were smuggled into the captive children of the Tsar in Siberia. If we allow ourselves to be transported to another world, where the monarchy is as benign as that seen through the eyes of the children of the Tsar and Tsarina, and through the eyes of the young son of their heroic Dr. Botkin, then we can enjoy these amusing tales.As in sets of colorful toy soldiers, the characters are male. Whimsy animates these teddy bears, monkeys and rabbits in military dress. The teenaged Botkin, full of Russian artistic soul, drew his clever animals, created their uniforms, and put them in the sort of jeopardy in which their young readers lived. The children were a captive audience, literally, to whom he tried to give hope. His father, Eygeny Botkin, like the gentlemen who stayed behind on the Titanic out of a sense of duty, was shot with the Tsar's family. Unfortunately, the tragedy does not end there, because some die-hard monarchists (not the same thing as monarchs) would separate his bones, if they could, from the royal ones they wish to venerate. Gleb escaped the Reds, and went on to raise a family in New York. When various claimants to Anastasia's identity came on the scene, he was asked to give an opinion, informed as he was by real intimacy with the family circle. Earlier Botkin's had been court physicians; now they had to make it as immigrants. That in itself is another tale. We must be content with this one for now. It is an engaging hint at the profound effect of history on individual lives, not least those of cultivated people in the Tsar's court. Thoughtful children might enjoy this book. There are now many Russian immigrants in our society once again. I wonder how this book would be viewed by them. It is indeed a piece of the puzzle of what was the Soviet Union, and now has become Russia again.

A beautiful book that stirs back a lost time and the tragedies of the last Tzar, Nikolai Alexsandrovitch Romanov II.