A Conversation with Robert Alexander

The research necessary in preparing this novel must have been immense. Could you walk us through the process from inspiration to finished work?

Whenever a person sits down to write a book, he uses so much more than the bits and pieces of words and research to create a novel. Namely, he reaches inside himself and draws upon all the interesting life experiences, issues, and crises to inform character, plot, and story. All of which is to say that I've been studying Russian language, history, and culture for so long, not to mention my thirty-plus years of traveling to Russia, that without knowing it, I began preparing to write my Russian historical novels even before I began to write! And that begs the question, Why didn't I try to get college credit for all those times I spent drinking vodka and talking of life with my Russian friends in Leningrad?

I'm really happy and fortunate to say that I'm writing about a period of time that truly and deeply fascinates me. I'm also an experienced enough writer to know that when you get one book that is popular, like The Kitchen Boy, readers, bookstores, and editors start asking for another book just like the previous one. In other words: a series. That was how I came upon writing Rasputin's Daughter as a second book in my quasi-series of Russian historicals, because I needed a second book and I do think Rasputin was such an incredibly interesting and controversial figure. And though it may sound crass, that was how I found Grand Duchess Elisavyeta, simply by casting about for an idea for a third book. I was looking about, and there she was, Grand Duchess Elisavyeta, the sister of the Empress. Upon first look Elisavyeta seemed interesting and tragic and heroic enough to be able to carry the weight, per se, of a novel; and then before I knew it I fell in love with her. And what I fell in love with was not so much her striking beauty and glorious life, but her compassion and inner search for the spiritual meaning of life and particularly the way she made these qualities the focus of her life. Of all the people I've researched, Grand Duchess Elisavyeta was the most inspiring, and in this inspiration I found fuel aplenty to keep me writing. For me personally, this book was a true pleasure and honor to work on, and I only hope that shows.

Of course, then there was a lot of research to do, but actually that was fun, reading diaries and letters and so on. I was greatly aided, too, by a number of interesting factors. First and perhaps most of all, most of Elisavyeta's letters, diaries, and other writings have survived the Revolution. Second, although she was born a German princess, she was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and so she actually had two primary languages, German and English, and all of her letters back and forth to her brother-in-law and sister (Nicholas and Alexandra) were written in English. I do speak and read Russian, but having my primary source material in a style of English that was unique to that time and, especially, that class, made it possible to capture the mannerisms of her true voice.

Then after absorbing her life as best I could it was simply a matter of wrapping or laying a story upon the dramatic days her life. Needless to say, her tragic circumstances and events provided, really, the plot points of my book.

You're obviously very knowledgeable about Russian history, but when did you first encounter the story of Grand Duchess Elisavyeta? What prompted you to turn it into a novel?

I first encountered Grand Duchess Elisavyeta years and years ago when I was first reading about the fall of the Romanovs. She both was and was not a key figure in the Russian Revolution, for while she had the ear of “Dear Alicky” (her younger sister, the Tsaritsa) and “Dearest Nicky” (the Tsar), she had no real power. Yet she was most definitely a prominent part of that Ruling House, not, as was said, “the rose thereof,” but her sister nonetheless. But that's the way the Romanovs ruled, as a non-elected governing body—a House, a Dynasty, with all the family members truly believing that God had charged them with the care and welfare of Russia. It went beyond any kind of cavalier “noblesse oblige,” beyond a simple sense that with all the wealth came some kind of social responsibility, to an obligation of duty to Motherland and Tsar.

What fascinates as much as saddens me is that Russia nearly made it. Not only did it nearly emerge from its centuries of horrible inequity into, at the very least, a constitutional monarchy, its slumbering economy was on the very cusp of bursting into an economic powerhouse. The arts were thriving, industries booming, and her agriculture output surging. And then came World War I, which brought so many sacrifices and highlighted, really, the great weaknesses of an autocracy—so much power in one pair of hands!—that it was the last straw that drove Russia right to the brink, and then beyond.

In all of this, no one better than Grand Duchess Elisavyeta illustrates the dedication and sense of obligation that the House of Romanov felt toward its people. Indeed, she was the only Romanov and one of the few royals ever (one other being her ancestress and namesake, St. Elizabeth of Hungary) to follow the Christly command: “Go, sell whatsoever thou hast and give to the poor.” And with the brutal assassination of her husband, Grand Duke Sergei, Elisavyeta did exactly that, disposing of her immense worldly riches and dedicating the remainder of her life to the poor and needy. That, of course, is the stuff of great stories.

The historical period you discuss in The Romanov Bride is fascinating in part because of its stark class divide and the repercussions of that stratified society. What is Russian society like today? Do similar class structures still exist?

Yes, Russian society during the tsarist era was horribly stratified. Of the roughly 150 million Russian subjects in 1900, the nobility, who held the vast, vast amount of wealth, represented only one to two percent of the population, and the merchant class about twenty percent. The rest, nearly eighty percent, were peasants, and the majority of this population had been serfs, meaning that upwards of sixty million people had lived little better than slaves until the Liberation of 1861.

Further dividing and emphasizing the classes was the Table of Ranks, or the Chin, which divided the nobility into fourteen ranks. It was a complicated but very specific system of ranking that reinforced the belief that nobles were of superior birth and therefore superior leaders. What this meant of course was that the higher rank one had, the closer one was to the throne and the source of power; therefore everyone of every class was acutely conscious of rank and placement in society, and there was considerable jockeying for a higher rank. Unfortunately, as author Lindsey Hughes has written, even with the fall of the tsarist system “consciousness of rank and striving for promotion and honors left a deep imprint on Russian society and culture.”

Of course there is no formal class structure today in Russia, yet everyone is still very much aware that the Kremlin is the source of power, and that the higher up one is, well, the better. It's quite common, for example, for business people to spend all their money on new cars and new clothes so that they are perceived as successful even if they're not, and I've heard more than one person say, “If I don't dress in expensive clothes people will not take me seriously.”

In Soviet times you lived better not by working hard, but if you had blat, or good connections, and this blat was how you procured better education for your children, meat, even toilet paper. And the higher up you were in the Communist Party, the better blat you had. In a very real way, that was a carryover from tsarist times, and in so many ways that has carried over to the post-communist era. Fortunately, that is beginning to change, Russians are finally learning that to get ahead you don't need to connive, but achieve.

Having spent thirty years traveling and working in Russia, you must have witnessed many cultural miscommunications between Russians and Americans. What are the most common misconceptions each group has of the other? What are your favorite aspects of Russian culture?

In 1976, when I first went to the USSR to study at Leningrad University, people would often just stare at me, stating that it was as if I'd fallen off the moon because they thought they'd never see, let alone meet and talk to an American. The most popular song in the USSR was ABBA's “Money, Money, Money,” which more or less decried capitalism, and Russians were surprised by everything from the “good quality” of my teeth to my blue jeans and that I could travel freely across Europe without governmental permission. They also had a hard time believing that meat was not in shortage but abundant in stores, that you could readily buy oranges year round, and they were shocked to hear about Social Security, Medicare, and so on. And we were surprised how cold a Russian could be on the street yet so incredibly warm and fun loving inside their own home. In other words, we were overwhelmed by their warmth and the depth of their friendship, not to mention their sweet ability to separate a person from politics. They were not judgmental but curious and hungry, hungry, hungry to learn anything and everything about us, our lives, and the West.

Russia is an incredibly interesting and wonderful place to visit. I'm fascinated and taken aback by the richness of its history, its music, its museums, even its graphic art. And most of all I love the people and the way they so deeply cherish friendship, really above all else. With the losses they have experienced in their revolutions and wars and, of course, during the Stalinist period (when somewhere between twenty and forty million people died), they are anything but a superficial people.

Your work has been very well received in the U.S. What response have you had from Russian readers and critics?

That's an interesting question, and to that I will say: Whereas my mysteries have been translated into Russian, my historical novels about the Russian Revolution have not. And that's just fine with me, because I see my historical novels as a way for Americans to develop interest in Russia, not for me to teach Russians something about their own country. Simply, Russia and her culture are so complex and rich, and I have so much left to learn about that wonderful country, that I would be greatly mistaken to think I could bring profound insights of Russia to Russians. Actually, this is all a touchy area for me because I hate it, for example, when an English person or Australian attempts to write from an American point of view—there's always something just a tad off that keeps me from getting into the heart of the story. I just read a brilliant book by an English author who had obviously spent a lot of time in the States, yet he made several stereotypical observations that nearly ruined the book for me. So essentially, I view my historicals not as something potentially insightful for Russian readers but as a bridge for American readers to cross to more complex books and subjects about Russia.

That said, the House of Romanov, while obviously Russian, was also extremely worldly and in some kind of weird way not entirely Russian. All the members of the Ruling House traveled extensively abroad and were in fact related by marriage to royals all across Europe. Nicholas and Alexandra, for example, conversed and wrote to each other not in Russian but English (the language of her grandmother, Queen Victoria, who was also the grandmother of his first cousin, the future King George), and their son, Tsarevich Aleksei, was by blood only 1/256th Russian. They were very much an international family, and that was how I approached them.

Also, it's quite true that Russians are still coming to terms with their tsarist past, for during the communist era the only information they could get about the Romanovs was pure and simple propaganda. We have to remember that the Russian Revolution didn't really end in 1918 or 1921, but in 1991when the so-called “great” experiment finally and at long last collapsed. To this day the Soviet archives are still opening up, and there are many things that I know about the Russian royal family and their revolution that many Russians still don't know simply because that information was kept from them.

So perhaps I just contradicted myself…perhaps I do have a few things to pass on to Russians. Regardless, I do think it's very tricky for a foreigner to write about Russia from a Russian point of view, which is why I rely so heavily on my research and also have my books proofread in Russia.

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