VOC’s Dr. McMeekin in the WSJ

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, VOC Academic Council Member Dr. Sean McMeekin reviews Tsuyoshi Hasegawa’s The Last Tsar, a book highlighting the “dramatic end of Nicholas II’s reign” amidst the rise of communism in Russia:
“More than a century after the Russian Revolution, the downfall of the Romanov dynasty continues to fascinate and enthrall. The story itself, broadly familiar from popular treatments over the years, is well told by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa in “The Last Tsar: The Abdication of Nicholas II and the Fall of the Romanovs.” But Mr. Hasegawa is no ordinary chronicler. He is an esteemed historian—now a professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara—who is known chiefly for “The February Revolution” (1981), his groundbreaking study of the 1917 uprising that caused the czar to abdicate months ahead of the Bolsheviks’ decisive October coup. “The Last Tsar” is filled with revelations and fresh insights.
Nicholas II was, as Mr. Hasegawa puts it, the most “inadequate ruler in all of Europe,” but he still saw it as his duty to uphold “the sanctity of autocracy.” Rejecting constitutionalism, he viewed even his own appointed ministers as “irritating intruders who came between [him] and his people.” His wife, Alexandra, was a “domineering coach on the sidelines.” She was notoriously advised by Grigori Rasputin, the peasant faith healer first invited to court in 1905 to tend to the royal family’s only son, the hemophiliac heir Alexei. Alexandra would chastise her weak-willed husband “to be strong and firm and to act like a true autocrat,” not that such urging seemed to have much effect.”