{"product_id":"the-diary-of-olga-romanov-royal-witness-to-the-russian-revolution-1","title":"The Diary of Olga Romanov: Royal Witness to the Russian Revolution","description":"The First English Translation of the Wartime Diaries of the Eldest Daughter of Nicholas II  the Last Tsar of Russia  with Additional Documents of the Period In August 1914  Russia entered World War I  and with it  the imperial family of Tsar Nicholas II was thrust into a conflict they would not survive. His eldest child  Olga Nikolaevna  great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria  had begun a diary in 1905 when she was ten years old and kept writing her thoughts and impressions of day-to-day life as a grand duchess until abruptly ending her entries when her father abdicated his throne in March 1917. Held at the State Archives of the Russian Federation in Moscow  Olgas diaries during the wartime period have never been translated into English until this volume. At the outset of the war  Olga and her sister Tatiana worked as nurses in a military hospital along with their mother  Tsarina Alexandra. Olgas younger sisters  Maria and Anastasia  visited the infirmaries to help raise the morale of the wounded and sick soldiers. The strain was indeed great  as Olga records her impressions of tending to the officers who had been injured and maimed in the fighting on the Russian front. Concerns about her sickly brother  Aleksei  abound  as well those for her father  who is seen attempting to manage the ongoing war. Gregori Rasputin appears in entries  too  in an affectionate manner as one would expect of a family friend. While the diaries reflect the interests of a young woman  her tone grows increasingly serious as the Russian army suffers setbacks  Rasputin is ultimately murdered  and a popular movement against her family begins to grow. At the point Olga ends her writing in 1917  the author continues the story by translating letters and impressions from family intimates  such as Anna Vyrubova  as well as the diary kept by Nicholas II himself. Finally  once the imperial family has been put under house arrest by the revolutionaries  we follow events through observations by Alexander Kerensky  head of the initial Provisional Government  these too in English translation for the first time. Olga would offer no further personal writings  as she and the rest of her family were crowded into the basement of a house in the Urals and shot to death in July 1918.  The Diary of Olga Romanov: Royal Witness to the Russian Revolution  translated and introduced by scientist and librarian Helen Azar  and supplemented with additional primary source material  is a remarkable document of a young woman who did not choose to be part of a royal family and never exploited her own position  but lost her life simply because of what her family represented.","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44909606567989,"sku":"ByrdShop_1594161771","price":37.77,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/ByrdShop_1594161771_d83e299a-dad4-4543-bffc-51d040950785.jpg?v=1768128192","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-diary-of-olga-romanov-royal-witness-to-the-russian-revolution-1","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}