The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia (17 page)

Baby Alexei in 1904, looking bright-eyed and healthy despite his diagnosis of hemophilia.

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IBRARY OF
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ONGRESS

In 1896, peasants from all across Russia converged on Moscow for Nicholas’s coronation to receive small gifts and food from the tsar, as was the custom. This photograph shows what was called the People’s Feast on the day after the tragic events. Note the long tables and the communal bowls.

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Barefoot peasants living in a traditional village, outside their
izba
,
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. 1910.

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IVERSIDE

Peasant women washing laundry in the Volga River,
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. 1900.

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IBRARY OF
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ONGRESS

Plank beds in the workers’ dormitory of a factory in St. Petersburg,
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. 1900. A
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many as seventy-five workers slept in one room on long wooden platforms divided into individual spaces by foot-high partitions. Factories charged workers to live here, docking the cost from their pay.

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ERLIN

Some of Moscow’s poorest citizens pose outside a shared three-story house,
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. 1900. A
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many as a thousand people squeezed between the walls of these ramshackle buildings, paying five kopecks a night (the equivalent of twelve hours’ work) for a space no bigger than a closet.

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USTRIAN
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RCHIVES
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IENNA

Two Moscow workers share a space and a drink,
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. 1904.

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ERLIN

St. Petersburg factory workers—both men and boys—pose for this 1910 photograph.

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IBRARY OF
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ONGRESS

This painting depicts the injuries inflicted on protesting workers by tsarist soldiers shown stationed (at right) before the Winter Palace on Bloody Sunday, 1905.

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IBRARY OF
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ONGRESS

The opening of the Duma in the Winter Palace, 1906. On the left stand the autocratic nobles of Russia, and on the right, the newly elected deputies. Before them, Nicholas reads his speech in front of an ermine-draped throne—a sign of royal supremacy. T
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the far left, a ramrod-straight Alexandra, along with Nicholas’s mother and other members of the royal entourage, watches.

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ORBIS

The Duma in session at the Tauride Palace, 1907. Note the portrait of Nicholas looming over the proceedings, a constant reminder to deputies that they were ever under the watchful eye of the tsar.

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IBRARY OF
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ONGRESS

A photograph of Vladimir Lenin taken around 1918.

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IBRARY OF
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ONGRESS

The tsar’s police round up villagers as part of Nicholas’s crackdown, 1906. The officer on the far right is checking identification papers.

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IBRARY OF
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ONGRESS

A group of Jewish children gather for a photograph in 1905 in Warsaw, Poland (then part of the Russian empire).

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IBRARY OF
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ONGRESS

An apprentice boy,
C
. 1900.

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ENO
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ERLIN

A rare snapshot of a relaxed and smiling Alexandra picnicking on the coast of Finland,
C
. 1908.

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OMANOV
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OLLECTION
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Afternoon tea at the family palace in the Crimea in 1909. Alexei sits front and center, while from left to right are Nicholas, Anastasia, Olga, Marie, Tatiana, and Alexandra.

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Even though he was supposed to be careful, Alexei took all sorts of physical risks, as this photograph taken around 1909 shows. A
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Anastasia looks on worriedly, Alexei swings exuberantly from a pole.

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