Review by Choice Review
Wcislo (Vanderbilt Univ.) presents a stellar combination of historiography and a history of the last years of czarist Russia. The historiography is a result of the fact that Count Sergei Witte, the first prime minister of czarist Russia, prepared a number of copies of his memoirs. The police pursued him because Emperor Nicholas II feared the negative judgments that Witte might print in his memoirs. Witte, a product of a talented family, grew up in the Caucasus, specialized in mathematics at the university, and after graduation became a manager of one of the southern railway companies that flourished in the 1870s. His noble origin, bourgeois education, and managerial status in a government-backed railway company brought him in contact in the 1870s with Emperor Alexander III, a man Witte admired to his dying day. Unfortunately, Witte's career blossomed under Alexander III's successor, Nicholas II, and Empress Aleksandra. Czar Nicholas II was reluctant to listen to Witte, as he was later reluctant to listen to Peter Stolypin. So instead of expert advice that might have saved the monarchy, Nicholas preferred to listen to old bureaucrats and favorites who believed that nothing had changed in Russia despite the 1905 revolution. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. D. Balmuth emeritus, Skidmore College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
