Robert Kinloch Massie III (January 5, 1929 – December 2, 2019) was an American journalist and historian . He devoted much of his career to studying and writing about the House of Romanov , Russia 's imperial family from 1613 to 1917. Massie was awarded the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for Peter the Great: His Life and World . He also received awards for his book Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (2011).
19-557: The Kagul Obelisk in Tsarskoye Selo is one of several such structures erected on behest of Catherine II of Russia in 1772 to commemorate Pyotr Rumyantsev 's victory in the Battle of Kagul . Designed by Antonio Rinaldi , the dark grey-and-red marble obelisk stands in the landscape park of the Catherine Palace . The inscription on the pedestal reads: "In memory of the victory at
38-720: A Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University . While at Oxford, Massie played on the Oxford University Men's Basketball Team. He served in the early 1950s as a nuclear targeting officer in the United States Navy , in the period during the Korean War . Massie worked as a journalist for Collier's and from 1959 to 1962 for Newsweek before taking a position at the Saturday Evening Post . He also taught at Princeton and Tulane universities. In 1967, after leaving
57-474: A bathtub. At one end of the lake stood a pink Turkish bath; not far off, a dazzling red-and-gold Chinese pagoda crowned an artificial hillock." The two palaces stood five hundred yards apart in the Imperial Park. "Outside the palace gates, Tsarskoe Selo, was an elegant provincial town..." The town included "The mansions of the aristocracy, lining the wide tree-shaded boulevard which led from the railway station to
76-683: A hemophiliac child in Journey , published in 1975. They had moved to France, and in the book they also discussed differences between the health care systems in the US and France. In the 1990s, much new information about the Romanovs and Russian governments became accessible after the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, when Russian and Soviet archives were opened to Westerners. In addition,
95-588: The Catherine Palace is named. When Peter the Great took possession of the mouth of the Neva , a Finnish village, Saari-mois, stood on the site now occupied by the town, and its Russified name Sarskaya was changed into Tsarskoye when Peter presented it to his wife Catherine. It was especially embellished by the tsaritsa Elizabeth. Under Catherine II., a town, Sophia, was built close by, but its inhabitants were transferred to Tsarskoye Selo under Alexander I. The railway connecting
114-711: The Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg , whose traditional name had been restored. Massie continued to write biographical books on the Russian Imperial family. He won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for Peter the Great: His Life and World . This was the basis of an NBC television network miniseries, Peter the Great (1986), which won three Emmy Awards and starred Maximilian Schell , Laurence Olivier and Vanessa Redgrave . In 2011 Massie published Catherine
133-531: The Saturday Evening Post to concentrate on his historical writing, Massie published his breakthrough book, Nicholas and Alexandra , an authoritative biography of Tsar Nicholas II (1868–1918, reigned 1894–1917) and Alexandra of Hesse (1872–1918), the last Emperor and Empress of Russia . His interest in the Russian imperial house had been inspired by the birth of his son, Robert Kinloch Massie IV , who
152-739: The Great: Portrait of a Woman , about the Tsarina Catherine the Great . It won the 2012 inaugural Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and the 2012 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography . He also published two books on the early 20th century: Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War (1991) is a diplomatic history over four decades on the causes of World War I . Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and
171-799: The Kagul River in Moldavia , July 21, 1770, under the command of Count Peter Rumyantsev the Russian army of seventeen thousand caused the Turkish Vizier Galil-Bey and his army of one hundred thousand and a half to flee to the Danube ". 59°42′51.67″N 30°23′31.47″E / 59.7143528°N 30.3920750°E / 59.7143528; 30.3920750 Tsarskoye Selo Tsarskoye Selo ( Russian : Ца́рское Село́ , IPA: [ˈtsarskəje sʲɪˈlo] , lit. ' Tsar's Village ' )
190-462: The Winning of the Great War at Sea (2003) on the role of the ships in the war. In other activities, from 1987 to 1991, Massie was President of The Authors Guild , and he served as an ex officio council member. While president, he called on authors to boycott any store that refused to carry Salman Rushdie 's The Satanic Verses , which had been threatened by Islamic religious leaders. Massie
209-425: The edge of the great St. Petersburg plain, fifteen miles south of the capital, a succession of Russian tsars and empresses had created an isolated, miniature world, as artificial and fantastic as a precisely ordered mechanical toy. Inside the park, monuments, obelisks and triumphal arches studded eight hundred acres of velvet green lawn. An artificial lake, big enough for small sailboats, could be emptied and filled like
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#1732852091111228-812: The gates of the Imperial Park..." In the decades of the Soviet Union , people applied the nickname "the Tsar's village" to the blocks and small neighborhoods in major cities that housed the nomenklatura (Soviet elites). Their stores were better stocked, although they were still affected by Soviet-era shortages. The buildings in the neighborhoods were better designed, constructed and maintained. For instance, one such neighborhood, west of Moscow, contained less industry and more parks than any other neighborhood. 59°43′24″N 30°24′57″E / 59.72333°N 30.41583°E / 59.72333; 30.41583 Robert K. Massie His book Nicholas and Alexandra (1967)
247-472: The remains of the Tsar, his wife, and their children were exhumed from unmarked, hidden forest graves near their execution site. Their identities were confirmed by DNA analysis . Massie conducted additional research based on all this new information and published The Romanovs: The Final Chapter (1995). In 1998 the Romanov family were reinterred after a state funeral in the restored Russian Orthodox cathedral at
266-589: The town where they also came to live when the court was in the country. The Royal Forestry School, perhaps the first such school in Russia, was founded in Tsarskoye Selo in 1803. It was moved to Saint Petersburg in 1811 and developed as the Imperial Forestry Institute . According to historian Robert K. Massie , "Tsarskoe Selo was a magnificent symbol, a supreme gesture, of the Russian autocracy. At
285-520: The town with St Petersburg was the first (1838) to be constructed in Russia. The Alexander Palace (built from 1792 onwards) was first the home of Catherine the Great 's grandson, the Grand Duke Alexander Pavlovich, who later became Emperor Alexander I ( r. 1801–1825 ). After his abdication , Nicholas II and his family were held there by revolutionary forces under house arrest until 13 August 1917. People built homes in
304-561: Was adapted as a British film by the same name that was released in 1971. It starred Laurence Olivier , Michael Jayston , and Janet Suzman . Massie was born in Versailles , Kentucky , to Robert Massie Jr., an educator, and Molly, née Kimball, an activist for progressive causes. He was raised there and in Nashville , Tennessee. He earned degrees in American studies from Yale University and as
323-610: Was born with hemophilia . This hereditary disease also afflicted Nicholas's only son the Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich , heir apparent to the imperial throne. His book was adapted for a film with the same title , released in 1971 and starring Laurence Olivier and Janet Suzman . It won Academy Awards for Best Costume Design and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration and was nominated for four others, as well as several Golden Globes and BAFTA Awards. Massie and his wife Suzanne chronicled their personal experiences as parents of
342-475: Was renamed under Stalin 's government as Pushkin ( Russian : Пушкин ) after the famous Russian poet and writer . It is still known by that name. The area of Tsarskoye Selo, once part of Swedish Ingria , first became a Russian royal/imperial residence in the early 18th century as an estate of the Empress-consort Catherine (later Empress-regnant as Catherine I , r. 1725–1727 ), for whom
361-671: Was the town containing a former residence of the Russian imperial family and visiting nobility, located 24 kilometers (15 mi) south from the center of Saint Petersburg . The residence now forms part of the town of Pushkin . Tsarskoye Selo forms one of the World Heritage Site Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments . The town bore the name Tsarskoye Selo until 1918. The new Bolshevik government of Soviet Russia renamed it as Detskoye Selo ( Russian : Детское Село , lit. 'Children's Village'), which it held from 1918–1937. At that time, it
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