Vladimir never quite came to terms with the fact that he was not emperor himself (though his wife certainly nurtured that hope for their sons after his death).

To avoid drastic changes (and in many cases, to preserve their lives) many aristocrats, artists, musicians, authors and various other intellectuals sought refuge in Paris which became a culture hub in Europe. Some, like Bunin, Chagall and Stravinsky, encountered great success in the same Paris that welcomed Americans like Fitzgerald and Hemingway. The Russian discovery of the French capital in fact goes back to the time of the modernizing tsar, Peter the Great, who made a visit to Paris in 1717 and fell in love with Versailles.

Aside from Grand Dukes Vladimir and Alexis, Grand Duke Mikhail (Mikhailovich)§ visited regularly with his wife, the Countess Torby; Grand Duke Nikolay Nikolaevich came in 1900 and demanded guards be posted throughout the hotel for his protection. Paul was stripped of his military honors, his assets were confiscated, and in 1902 he was banished from Russia. By the late nineteenth century, so popular were the wealthy Russians in Paris that they were nicknamed “the Boyars. One of the greatest skills a historian can possess is to make readers feel as if they have stepped back in time to witness the characters, places, and events they describe. After the Romanovs covers primarily the 1917-1940 experiences of displaced Russians in Paris with emphasis on former royalty.

Over dinner at their apartment on rue d’Iéna with French diplomat Maurice Paléologue (a future ambassador to St.A few of my prosperous Christian merchant family left Russia +/- 1918, spending a short time in Paris, then on to the US. We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from. By 1903, having spent some time in Italy, Paul and Olga decided to make a base for themselves in Paris. Alexis was no intellectual or aesthete like his brother Vladimir, but rather a plain-speaking, good-natured navy man who could be an interminable bore on the subject of his glorious past days in sailing ships (equally, he would draw a veil over his incompetence as an admiral of the fleet during the naval battles of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05). But the brutality of the Bolshevik takeover forced Russians of all types to flee their homeland, sometimes leaving with only the clothes on their backs.

Many of these highly educated and cultured aristocrats were forced into routine taxi driver, auto worker, seamstress labor while longing for the restoration of the monarchy which never came. Rappaport presents masterful portraits of these refugees… Rappaport not only crafts a lovingly detailed picture of the City of Light, she also fills its parks and cafés and boulevards with an amazing cast of characters. He made no bones about his love of wine, women, and carousing with gypsies, his unrepentant motto being “you must experience everything in life. Olga, herself a most forceful personality, urged Paul to save her from the disaster of social ostracization, and with his brother Vladimir’s help, he managed to persuade Nicholas II to agree to granting Olga a divorce. It was now painfully clear that Paul and Olga must make their home permanently in Paris; but they needed a far more imposing residence and initially looked for somewhere near Versailles.

Tall “like a column of marble,”32 slim and elegant in his uniform of commander of the Horse Guards—for he was a military man like his cousin Grand Duke Nikolay Nikolaevich—Grand Duke Paul was quietly handsome with a neat but large bushy mustache and gentle brown eyes that stared out of an austere, oblong face. Thanks to the Prince Regent of Bavaria, she was invested with the title Countess von Hohenfelsen in 1904.