The Romanovs
Page 33
Edward Kasinec, chief of the Slavic and Baltic Division of the New York Public Library, gave me invaluable assistance, and his colleague Sergei Gleboff also helped me. Deborah Baker was the first to mention to me the link between DNA fingerprinting and the Romanov bones. Edmund and Sylvia Morris made me feel at home in Washington, taking time from their own books to give counsel on mine. Hannah Pakula loaned me a rare book from her library. Ian Lilburne permitted me to use his pictures. Howard Ross dropped everything for several days to help with other pictures. Annick Mesko, Jacques Ferrand, Julia Kort, Victoria Lewis, and Petra Henttonen contributed comments, questions, and multilingual translations. Ken Burrows, Jeremy Nussbaum, and Nancy Feltsen stepped forward in times of trouble. I am greatly indebted to Dolores Karl, who listened to several hundred hours’ of taped interviews and turned what she heard into several thousand pages of clean, workable transcript. In addition, she rescued me whenever I was losing a battle with my new (and first) computer word processor.
I had not really known Masha Tolstoya Sarandinaki and Peter Sarandinaki before I began working on this book. Peter and I went to Ekaterinburg together, where we lived with Alexander and Galina Avdonin, walked through magnificent forests of birch and pine, saw the places where the unspeakable had happened, and looked at the unburied bones of the Russian Imperial family. Once we were home, Masha translated Russian tapes into English, answered questions, offered suggestions, and repeatedly telephoned Russia to keep me abreast of events. To them, and to Olga Tolstoya, my heartfelt thanks.
I am grateful to Harry Evans at Random House, who enthusiastically embraced this story, and to Robert Loomis, whose patience, skill, and unerring eye for what works and what does not have guided authors for almost forty years. Deborah Aiges, Susan M. S. Brown, Sharon DeLano, Benjamin Dreyer, Emily Eakin, Barbé Hammer, Ivan Held, J. K. Lambert, Tom Perry, Kathy Rosenbloom, and Walter Weintz helped to turn my manuscript into a book and put it in the hands of readers. Dan Franklin, Caroline Michel, Arnulf Conradi, and Elisabeth Ruge believed in the book from the beginning.
Many friends gave me encouragement while I was writing this book. Among these I would particularly like to thank Kim and Lorna Massie, Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly, Harold Brodkey and Ellen Schwamm, Melanie Jackson and Thomas Pynchon, Fred Karl, Sheldon and Helen Atlas, Elsa Jobity, Janet Byrne and Ivan Solataroff, Jeff Seroy and Doug Stumpf, Peg Determan, Lance Balk, Jan and Carl Ramirez, Christina Haus and Paolo Alimonti, Steve and Ann Halliwell, and Giovanni and Cornelia Bagarotti. I also remember an evening in November 1993 when my friends in Nashville patiently listened to my presentation of the arguments for and against writing this book. With a single exception, they said, Do it. For this advice, I am grateful to Jack and Lynn May, Herb and May Shayne, Gil and Robin Merritt, George and Ophelia Payne, and Henry Walker.
My wife, Deborah Karl, who is also my literary agent, is primarily responsible for seeing that this book was written. In the beginning, she warmly encouraged the idea and negotiated the contract. She read every chapter before I went on to the next The manuscript was late, and as the pressure rose she protected me. I am grateful for everything.
ALSO BY ROBERT K. MASSIE
Nicholas and Alexandra
Peter the Great
Dreadnought
Journey (coauthor)
Castles of Steel
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ROBERT K. MASSIE was born in Lexington, Kentucky, and studied American history at Yale and modern European history at Oxford, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar. He was president of the Authors’ Guild from 1987 to 1991. His previous books include Nicholas and Alexandra, Peter the Great: His Life and World (for which he won a Pulitzer Prize for Biography), The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, and Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War.