Book Discussion: The Last Tsar: The Abdication of Nicholas II and the Fall of the Romanovs, by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa

Session Submission Type: Book Discussion Roundtable

Brief Description

The publication of "The Last Tsar" marks the crowning moment of Professor Hasegawa’s long and distinguish career as the world’s leading historian of the February Revolution. His three earlier monographs on the February Revolution have profoundly shaped what generations of historians understood and how they wrote about this defining event. His new book promises to be as influential. The book is the definitive and superbly researched story behind the self-destruction of the Romanov dynasty and the Russian Empire, paving the way to the Bolshevik takeover in October, the Russian Civil War, and the rise of the Soviet regime that would come to dominate the world stage. It is the first detailed, book-length study of the abdication drama in any language. Based on a trove of new archival materials, recently published major document collections and careful reading of the post-Soviet and Western scholarship, Hasegawa successfully challenges the dominant interpretation that, considering Russia’s dilapidated structural and unresolved social problems, the end of monarchy was preordained and inevitable. In contrast, he emphasizes contingency and high politics. According to Hasegawa, the fall of monarchy was far from inevitable: it was a contingent process, where individual actors (including military and political leaders, courtiers, and Nicholas himself) played crucial role and where outcomes could have turned out differently. At this book roundtable, historians working on different aspects of the Revolution (Orlovsky, Menning, Lyandres, Hasegawa) will celebrate Hasegawa’s pioneering research and comment on some of the main strengths and limitations of this new book.

Sub Unit

• History: 1900-1945

Chair

• Michael C. Hickey, Commonwealth-Bloomsburg U

Roundtable Speakers

• Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, UC Santa Barbara

• Semion Lyandres, U of Notre Dame

• Bruce William Menning, U of Kansas

• Daniel T. Orlovsky, Southern Methodist U