Alexander II. Memoirs

Alexander II, the emperor, husband, and father of adult children, was 28 years older than Princess Ekaterina Mikhailovna Dolgorukaya. Their romance lasted many years, and in 1880, the widowed emperor entered into a morganatic marriage, legitimizing their common children and commanding that his beloved Katya be referred to as the Most Serene Princess of Yuriev. However, less than a year later, in the spring of 1881, Alexander II was killed by terrorists. At the funeral of the Liberator, the young French diplomat Maurice Paleologue was present - his essay "Alexander II and Ekaterina Yurievskaya" opens this book. Furthermore, it contains for the first time in Russian the memoirs of the princess herself, published in Europe immediately after her husband's death, under the pseudonym Victor Laferte. The book also includes rare illustrative material from 1881. The memoirs of Alexander II's second wife, the Most Serene Princess E.M.Yurievskaya, published by her in French under the name Victor Laferte, are published in Russian for the first time, based on the text of a rare book: "Alexandre II: Détails inédits sur sa vie intime et sa mort par Victor Laferte 1882" without indication of place and publisher, translated by Olga Vainer. The biographical essay by Maurice Paleologue, published in Paris in 1922, is printed in a new edition of the translation by E.Stavrogina, published in Petrograd in 1924. The illustrations in this book reproduce selected pages from the weekly St. Petersburg magazine "Niva" from March-April 1881 from the publisher's library.