S4 – Interview 4: Helen Rappaport

brilliant writer. As others have already said, she is a rare combination of talents, deep and sensitive insight expressed in a clear and fresh style. For many years, she has presented and consulted for TV and audio projects and translated Russian works for the theater. Her signature is to express both the fact and the feeling of the past, and we're so glad she joined us to do that once again.

Here Unobscured writer Karl Nellis talked with Dr Rappaport about the Romanov family and it's a privilege to all for their conversation in full. So we end this season of Unobscured where we began with Nicholas, Alexandra, their dynasty and their downfall. This is the Unobscured Interview series for season four.

I'm Aaron Manky for Unobscured Podcast. I'm Carl Nellis, and today we have the privilege of talking with Dr Helen Rappaport, distinguished historian who has written a small library of excellent books, including a few on the Romanovs and and their period, their time, their lives in Russia. Uh. Dr Rappaport is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and she's still writing. She has a new book coming out called After the Romanovs, Russian Exiles and Paris that will be out soon from St.

Martin's Press. I'm excited to read that, as well as the books that I've already read. UH. From her. Dr Rappaport, thank you so much. It's an honor to have you on Unobscured. Thank you for asking me so I'm delighted to talk with you because of how valuable your work has been in our process of researching and understanding the lives of Nicholas and Alexandra, their children, their time. Um.

You've written so many landmark books on Russian history. For for English readers, what what drew you to the last Romanance in particular? Well, it's it's interesting how I got

into the Romanos, because it was actually by accident. When I first started being interested in and wanting to write history, it had never crossed my mind to do the Roman I was, I guess, because I thought it was all a bit saccharine and chocolate boxy, you know, all those romantic pictures of girls in frocks and big hats and

all the playing and ceremony didn't appeal to me. Um. It was an agent was with at the time when we were sitting discussing what book I was going to do next during a horrible hiatus between books, and we were kind of stumped a bit, and he said, well, why don't you do the Romanos And I said, oh, no, no, no, it doesn't appeal to me at all. I mean, it's too chintsey for me. And he said, we'll go away

and think about it. And actually he gave me a very good hook for exploring the Romanos, to which for which I'm eternally grateful, because I said to him, I don't want to do a whole great, big comprehensive biography of the Romanos or a huge study of the rain I said, I'm much more interested in the detail and some particular point in the story. And so I said, well, why don't you look at the end of their lives?

And when I went away and looked and homed in and focused on the very end of their lives, I pretty much from when they were imprisoned at the Alexander Palace, and and I honed it in even closer to the last two weeks of their lives in a Cashemberg in the party of house. I suddenly realized there was a really interesting and exciting scenario there that had never been explored, which was looking at the family really close up. How were they, what was going through their minds? How did

they deal with captivity? What were the tensions being trapped in a house in western Siberia, knowing that probably the writing was on the wall. So my interest in them began with that very brief period at the very very

end of their lives, the last two weeks. And it was while I was writing that book that I first began to develop a sense of those poor not poor, I shouldn't call them, Paul, Those lovely four girls locked away in that house, and and there's their lives cut short so cruelly, and I began to feel that they had never really enjoyed an identity in books about the Romanos. It had always till then been about the mother and

the father and the hemophiliac brothers. So at that point, when I finished a cashion Berg, I felt there was more to look at, and that took me into the next book, which was exploring almost really exploring the domestic life of their own nos, what was it like behind the scenes for them as a family, And then the third book really led on from that because the one niggling thing I still felt I had not explored at the end of two books on the rown Nos was

why couldn't they be saved? Why could no one get them out of Russia? And I felt too that that had been rather sort of skimmed over in existing books, also partly because of lack of documentary evidence being made available by the Ashan's at the time. So that took me to my third book, which is exploring why they couldn't get them out. So by accident, I've kind of written three books about them. M hm, Well and what

you do get into exploring their domestic world. It is so moving beyond the the political presence of the czar, you know, the empress and what they were doing. The way that you explore the daily lives, the routines, the the close relationships within the family, challenges with health, things that I've never read before. I really appreciated the way that you render all of that in your books. Well,

thank you, So let's go. Let's start with with Nicholas and Alexander and then come forward and I really hope we'll spend a lot of time with with the girls and and the household once once the children are all there. But starting with Nicholas and Alexandra, when you started looking at them, were there were there aspects of them as people,

their personalities that that caught your interest or imagination. Well, I think what was most interesting about them initially was the fact that, unlike actually every European royal couple, they actually were allowed to marry for love, which was a very rare thing. When you look at Queen Victorian busily arranging the dynastic unions all her children and her grandchildren and them all into marrying and marrying cousins and second cousins.

The almost unique thing about Nicholas and Alexandra was it was a long protracted love that began when she was only about twelve years old when Nicholas first saw her, and he kind of carried the torch for her until she was until they met again in oberg In. So it wasn't an enduring affection between them. It wasn't something they would pushed into as a dynastic union, nor was it a sort of spur of the moment love affair.

It was something that had been growing for a long time, and of course she initially was deeply resistant to agreeing to marry him, even though she loved Nicholas. It was a very genuine love between them because of her Lutheran faith, and that was a real obstacle at first, so that

that had to be overcome. A family prejudice also had to be overcome, in the sense that Queen Victoria was pretty adamant initially at the thought of her precious granddaughter Alexandra Alicki as they called her, marrying into the Russian throne. Queen Victoria was absolutely against the idea of Alicki areing Nikki young Nicholas at Sarayevitch of Russia because she felt

Russia was very unstable, very unsafe. I mean, even then by the eighteen eighties and nineties there was his history of political assassination and um, you know, Nicholas's own grandfather had been murdered by revolutionaries, so they had to overcome quite a lot of obstacles. And we're an utterly devoted couple, and so that it did interest me and intrigued me because of course Alexandra, um, for those who are new to the topic and these um, these people. Of course,

Alexander was not Russian, and she was Lutheran. Can you say a little bit more about why her being Lutheran made it a difficult choice to marry Nicholas. The problem for Alexandra, as a German Lutheran from Hessa by Ryan, was that to marry the Sallyevich of Russia, the rule of Russia, there was one absolute rule that had to be observed, and it was a requirement for marriage, and that was she would have to convert to Russian Orthodoxy.

There is no way she could have retained her Lutheran German Lutheran faith and be a future Sari Saris of Russia. So this was hugely challenging period for her because she loved Nikki, but she did not want to abandon her Lutheran faith. Alexandra had all been always been pretty religious and pious and very observant. So it was a really, really difficult period because eventually it was her sister Ella who helped persuade her, because Ella, too, like alex Alexandra,

married a Russian. She married Grand Dukes Sergey, but without all the AGONI sing about adopting the Russian authox faith, Ella embraced it pretty much immediately and then persuaded Alexandra to also do likewise, so she couldn't have married the Sadievitch unless she had adopted Russian orthodoxy. Mm hmm, what's And of course, then the the interesting thing that happens

is that she becomes more Orthodox than the Orthodox. You know, sometimes people who adopted or embrace the new religion become even more almost fanatical about their new religion as converts than if they had been born into it. So she she ended her life being profoundly Russian Orthodox. That's beautiful, that's perfect. Um. On Nicholas's side, how did he see? So that's a great kind of point of contrast, because of course he was born not just into Russian Orthodoxy,

but into the Roman dynasty. Yeah. So if alex is at first hesitant and then over the course of her time becomes deeply devoted to Russian Orthodoxy and of course her family, how did Nicholas approach this legacy that he inherits his role as are his place place in the Russian Church, in the Romanov family? What did it look like from Nicholas's perspective, Well, of course Nicholas originally had he had an older brother who should have been so,

but who died young. Uh. And then, to make matters worse, he was thrust into onto the throne unexpectedly when his father fell sick with kidney disease, when Alexander the third fell ill with kidney disease and died in his forties. Now that the problem from for Nicholas right from day one was that he should probably had another twenty years to prepare for becoming zare So he hadn't learned the tools of the trade, He hadn't learned states craft, state craft.

He was timid and frightened and terrified of the enormous responsibility of becoming Zar in his twenties, when of course he would have expected it becomes our maybe in his forties. So but he took it very very seriously and in a very kind of dogmatic and rather narrow way in that he simply a decided or a declared rather from the moment he became z. But he would preserve the autocracy handed to him by his father, Alexander the third,

exactly as passed down to him. And he was always deeply stubborn about not changing anything in the way in which Sardom operated as handed down to him. So he was never an innovative or forward thinkings are He stuck very much to the old way of doing things that his father had done before. And you mentioned that Alexandra coming in was a deeply pious Christian as a Lutheran, and then she joins this family and this new faith.

Can you say a few words about how her faith related to this sense of what it meant to be as are? You know? Was she devoted to autocracy as a matter of faith? Absolutely? I mean in Russia, autocracy and orthodoxy went absolutely hand in hand that that they were the cornerstone I mean to be czar, you had to be Orthodox, and they had this absolutely implacable belief that in the divine right of the czar, pretty much like the divine right of kings even in Britain back

in the seventeenth century. So you know, it was a god given role that Nicholas had this duty to perform, and he had to perform it in the absolute traditional manner in which it had been handed down to him. And Alexandra very much believed in this idea that they were a little mother and little father of the nation, the martush Bartuska, as they were called by the peasantry, and that the peasantry looked up to them unquestionably with

unquestionable loyalty and devotion. And she believed that stubbornly right to the very end, that the people really loved them. And of course, by the time the revolution, many of the people didn't love them at all anymore, and the whole kind of a gloss of the protective fathers nar had completely gone and being tarnished. But they both believed in this god given right to rule and to protect the throne and pass it down to their beloved son m So that says a little bit about how they

saw their relationship to the people. In your writing, there's a really interesting turn when Alexandra first enters Russia and Russian society, where she also has to navigate relationships with the Russian court. And you know, maybe she has this adamant devotion to autocracy and the sense that it's a divine legacy over the people. But it seems she makes a mistake, a misstep, maybe with Grand Duchess Vladimir. Well,

I wouldn't say it was a misstep. I think part of the problem was Grand Duchess Vladimia, along with the Dodger Empress Maria Fjorda Rovna, had been the duyennes of high society in Russia and Saint Petersburg, and Vladimir in particular was stunningly wealthy, had the most magnificent jewels, probably as magnificent as the Zarisa herself, and she was kind

of Queen Bee of Russian society. Now along comes a new young Zarisa um and Vladima expects her to take her place in society and be up there hob nobbing with the aristocracy and making appearances in Petersburg and you know, going to all the right balls and receptions and this, that and the other, And from day one Alexandra stubbornly resisted all that. She really really did not want to

be part of Saint Petersburg society. She was extremely reserved, almost hostile to what she perceived as very headonistic, aristocratic, indulgent society in the big city, in the capital city. She didn't want to have a family and bring up a family in that environment. So Vladimia was very disapproving of Alexander not taking a proper place in society, and they did rub each other up the wrong way, particularly

as Grand Duchess. Vladimia also and her husband, who was the most senior Russian Grand Duke, had always had aspirations to the throne coming down to them and their their children if an air was never produced. So there was a certain animosity and antagonism between them. Um, and it got worse. But it didn't get worse really until later on in the rain. Could you say a few more words about the urgency felt by Nicholas and Alexandra to

produce a male heir. Oh, it was enormous. The pressure on them was particularly on Alexandra, I mean her role really, I mean, okay, but she had this, she had the good fortune to marry for love. But her role essentially once she was di Itza was to produce a male heir, because in Russia the throne was passed down by male

children only. This law had been brought in by Sir Paul the First because he had hated his mother, Catherine the Great so much he wanted to ban women from ever inheriting the Russian throne, so he brought in the law that it had to go through the male line until all male lines in the Romanov family being exhausted before it could pass to a woman. So the pressure on Alexandra from day one, first of all, was to

produce children, but particularly to produce a boy. And I think gets almost impossible to imagine the enormous emotional and psychological pressure on her over a period of ten years to produce a boy and to keep having girls. Uh, and not only that difficult pregnancies, big babies. I mean, she must have suffered physical agonies producing those four girls in in fairly quick succession. And then finally this longed

for boy. And of course all the church bells rang and gun salutes were fired all over Russia, and everyone was celebrating the Birthard Sarayevitch and then this horrendous tragedy befalls them. Now, this longed for beautiful child, and he was a very beautiful baby turns out to be hemophilia.

Mm hmm yeah. Um. To stay with Alexandra for a moment, you movingly describe her many ailments over the course of her life, from lar pregnancy, sciatica, heart trouble, headaches of facial graia, and eventually you note that she kind of embraces invalid life as a burden from God. Um. Can you describe kind of when she began to experience these health challenges where they related to the pressure and stresses of the Russian court? Um? And then how did they

manifest kind of in her day to day life. Well, to begin with, I think Alexandra clearly was plagued with sciatica from her teens. Because one thing that is very interesting when when I looked into the detail of her courtship with Nicholas, was that between her mother dying in eight she's spent a lot of time back and forth doing England, spent a lot of time with Queen Victoria when it was announced she was going to marry Nikki in April eight four after they got engaged in Coburg

at a family wedding. That one of the first things Queen Victoria arranged when Alexander went back to England with her to prepare, you know, for her a future wedding, was to get her to Harrogate in Yorkshire for treatment for this crippling scietic pain she suffered from. So she was sent to Harrogate for a water cure, and and that was the first, probably of many later on in her life, after she'd had the children. They she went more than once, I think, to bad Noihan in Germany

for again for water cures. So she had always had the scietica And I cannot imagine how painful her pregnancies must have been. Suffering from sciatic pain and carrying you know, ten eleven pound babies to term. She must have been dreadfully um consumed by pain at times, and she was often I had to be lying down. But on top of that, I think a lot of her problems may we can't be sure, because there's never any very good medical reports about her, and if they were, they were never,

you know, they were never shared. The documents weren't shared, although I did find one that I managed to access. I think, you know, it's difficult to judge at what point a lot of her problems became psychosomatic as a way of avoiding having to go into society. Because time and again, I, you know, I saw letters and comments or diaries from the girls or members of court. Oh, you know, the family would do to go to the theater or to something, and Alexander would either drop out

or go home early because she wasn't feeling well. And she was all the always the party pooper, you know, the one who you know was indisposed. And so time again you see Nicholas taking his girls to the ballet or to the opera without their mother, and Alexandra just wasn't a presence socially at all. Alexandra, time and time again, the girls would say a little note so in their diaries, O, mother couldn't come down to lunch because she had a

headache and she wasn't feeling very well. They lived with a sick mother to the point where I think their

young lives were almost blighted by it. Those girls were her care, as as simple as that, and I think as time went on, you have to wonder the extent to which Alexandra exploited her indisposition and this thing she kept claiming about having, you know, her heart beating too fast, and then she genuinely had terrible ear infections and me grains and oh gosh, there wasn't almost any complaints she didn't at sometime suffer from. So that kind of colored

family life, I think more than perhaps we realize. MM. So you've mentioned diaries and medical reports, and of course one of the other forms of records that interested readers probably know about are the numerous letters that Nicholas and Alexandra wrote to each other. Because because they wrote in English, right, well,

there is a big gap in the letters. We have to be careful saying that the real correspondence between Nicholas and Alexandra that survives is the warriors correspondence, and only by a fluke, because Nicholas didn't get around to destroying

all the letters Alexandra wrote to him. So the wartime correspondence is predominantly her long haranguing letters to Nicholas telling him to do this, that and the other, and complaining about the girls being hormonal and argumentative and um, you know, it's telling him to sack this minister and higher that minister. The Warrior letters are very revealing of her controlling influence

over him. But there there isn't much prior to that, because once the revolution broke and Alexandra and the children were underplaced under house arrested at Sasol at the Alexander Palace, Nicholas was away at the front of army headquarters. Once they were locked away there, Alexandra started burning all her journals, her letters. The girls burned an awful lot of stuff as well. Tragically, she burned all the letters she had

from Queen Victoria. There was I mean, everything went up in smoke except her diaries for the last year or so of her life. So we've lost a huge amount. But the Warrior Warrior letters between predominantly her letters Nicholas, as I said, are fascinating in what they reveal. Mm hm. So let's go back to early in their marriage because one of these figures that might seem strange, uh and and might not have entered the story for someone who

has briefly read about them, is the figure of Monsieur Philippe. Yes, well, he was the kind of precursor to rescue what happened with Alexandra being so so desperate and as a woman and a mother myself, I can't understand that sense of desperation, the disappointment of a fourth daughter when she knows the precures and expectations that she's got to produce a son

and heir. What did she do? She started going to alternative practitioners, to an assortment of seer's faith heil as, quacks, gurus, all kinds of people were kind of suggested to her and pushed in her direction because she, more than Nicholas, was clutching at stores, desperate, desperate to find help or

away of ensuring she had a male heir. And at one point she was introduced to Monsieur Philly met Philly by fellow relatives within the Romanov family who had also been courting him as an alternative faith healer come practitioner. They had consulted him about their son who had been ill. Now Monsieur Philly was a sort of French of society therapist, come faith healer, come guru, not really a trained doctor at all, but he kind of blagged his way to

a position of social interest in France. He'd practiced in Leon and developed quite a following there, and word filtered through to Russia that you know, he was offering advice on how to conceive a male child to women who were desperate to do that, and of course he was steered in the direction of Nicholas and Alexandra, and for a brief while he offered advice. Most of it I think was a sort of mixture of cod medicine and quackery.

The juries out a bit on Metro Philip in that more recently, some people, certainly in France and in French sources, seemed to have begun to or maybe they have always done so, begun taking him a bit more seriously than others. Generally, sources from Russia and in English tend to dismiss him as being an outright quack. I'm not convinced that he was.

He might he might have had a few useful things to suggest, And of course he he predicted prophetically that you know, she would have a boy child eventually, and that there would be another one like him, another friend who would come along and help her, help Alexandra. So he was only around a couple of years and sort of effectively was sent packing with lots of extravagant gifts, including a huge motor car. Do we know, do we know what Nicholas thought of him? Well, the thing with

Nicholas's interesting. I mean, Nicholas was always kind of a step or two behind in the disk, you know, took a step or two back from all this because he basically pandered to Alexandra because she was pretty neurotic, totally bound up and obsessed with having a male child, as one could imagine, and once she set her mind that the certain practitioner or guru was going to help her, she would throw his sy fits essentially if she didn't get her way and didn't get to see this person.

So he was tended to be more tolerant of these faith healers and people that Alexandra wanted to consult. So I think he perhaps took Metro Philip with a pinch assault, as did most people. Um. He once said over us spouting later that he would rather have ten ra spoutins than one of Alexandra's, who are hysterical fits. He lived with a very neurotic sick wife. I think he had more than one cross to bear in his life. Really.

And then, of course the girls they're living, as you said, with the sick mother m right, that they inhabited an intimate, highly protected, domestic world created by their mama and papa. Yeah, in a few minutes describing their world, maybe it's it's routines. What were its horizons, how narrow? How could find? Was it? Well? I've already said that Alexandra was very disapproved being of St.

Petersburg society. So the four girls only had occasional trips into St. Petersburg to the opera or the ballet, or or some event at the occasional, very occasional ball. Nine times out of turn it was Nicholas who took them, or if Alexandra went, she left early. And they were so starved a company of their own age. And you can see it when you look at all the photographs of the girls in their teens as they're growing up.

There are endless photographs of them surrounded by the officers of the entourage, the older women in the entourage, all the men of the regiments of which they had an honorary command. And you see these loads and loads of photographs of these pretty young girls surrounded by older men in military uniform, and I kept asking myself, where are

the younger people of their own age? They were only really ever allowed to associate with a few select of this as from the entourage, mainly from the stars escort, occasional visits from male and female relatives, not that often. I mean the children of their own level that they saw probably most often would be their cousins by Nicholas's

sister Zena and her husband, Grand Duke Alexander. So but generally they had to learn very quickly to be sufficient unto each other, i to live, to inhabit their own world, the four of them, and be self sustaining and self supporting them. Because of that, they were indeed very close. But there was another big, big reason why they led such sheltered lives, quite apartment Alexandra's disapproval of the world outside, which she thought would corrupt them. And that was of

course Alexey. Because once Alexey was born, in for the fact that his hemophilia had to be kept an absolute state secret, they didn't even tell Nicholas's mother or sisters at first, and and and also as soon as he was born, they pretty much withdrew from ever spending time

at the Winter Palace in Some Petersburg. They lived their quiet, secluded family life at the Alexander Palace fifteen miles out of St. Petersburg, and pretty much drew down the shutters, mainly because they had to protect alex A from scrutiny people. They didn't want people to see that he was often sick or you know, limping because he banged a limb or something, and they had to protect him from accidents,

from running around falling over hurting himself. So they kind of had to cocoon that little boy, and they all rallied around and pretty much closed ranks. That's why, uh. And also I guess there was a third reason why the family lived fairly secluded lives, And this was as time went on and the revolutionary movement was growing. Attacks on the Romanov family, on Imperial Russian officials, on prime

ministers and ministers and governors, you name it. There are assassinations going on left, right and center, including Alexandra's brother in law, Grand Dukes a gay who was blown to bits in five That was her sister Ella's husband. So pretty much after that they again retreated even more because quite simply the threat of attack, assassination, kidnap on the whole family became really quite serious. So there were lots of reasons for them to live a quite secluded life.

Would you say just a little bit more about why they felt so strongly they needed to keep Alexis humophilia a secret, because how could you have the young Tsaryevitch, who would it was going to inherit the throne of enormous Russian empire of god knows how many millions of people.

I can't remember how big it was at that that time, But they couldn't let it be seen that effectively the boy had a life threatening, threatening condition that would have could and should have killed him by probably in the mid teens. That couldn't be known. They didn't want the Russian people to know that Saryevitch was sickly. He had to be perceived as this godlike, beautiful child who was going to save Russia, the hope of Russia, he was

referred to. So that's why they kept the whole thing secret. And it wasn't n til later on when he had a very serious flare up of his seem ophelia, But it finally got out mainly via the British and American pressing impact MHM. And across your books on the Romanovs, you note that the daughters were often lumped together as a group in in the press. Um you know, the the artmath O T m A just kind of crushes them all into a mass, while Alexei was given special attention.

But that was also true within the family as well as in the press. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting Alexandra herself. You know, you've seen endless pictures. First of all, she often the girls often all dressed alike, but right from quite an early age here is she split them into two groups, the big pair Olga and Tatiana and the little pair Maria an Anastasia, and they again, within those two groups, tend to dress alike. And she often referred to the girls collectively or as the big bear and

the little bear, and not by name. It was as though the girls were just the the adjunct to their much more important brother. And in terms of the Russian people, you know, they were the pretty set dressing. They looked lovely, they turned up at all state occasions looking exquisite, but they were just the set dressing. And for this reason

you get the sense that they had no personalities. And that's really what was the primary impetus for me in writing The Romano Sisters was I wanted to show they were actually four very different personalities, very interesting girls in their own right, and not just completely bland and character lists and anonymous. And they've been sort of homogenized till then.

Maybe my way of teasing out a little bit their differences and that kind of thing, could you say more about out how personally pious was the whole family and what did devotion look like for the different daughters relative to mother's practices. But they're their own people, So they were a very quietly religious family. I think what I admire about them if they know perhaps Alexandra would lecture some of her friends and ladies in waiting in her

letters and things about religious faith and belief. But the girls were quietly high us and religious and observant, very very devoted, all of them were. The religion actually was what held that family together. And I have always felt, and I think I said in my books, in one of my books that it reminded me of a saying that was coined during the Second World War. I think about Roman Catholics families which was the family that praised together,

stays together, and religion and their faith. I have no doubt it was their religious faith that held them together through all the crises over alex A. There you know, the times when he had terrible bleeding episodes and nearly died, And undoubtedly without their religious faith, I don't think they would have got through their captivity um as courageously as they did if they hadn't had an absolute power of faith and and and acceptance towards the end to get

a very strong sense of the family in the house, the catching book of their acceptance of what may or may not happen. I think Alexander certainly was reconciled, became much more religious in the last few weeks of our life, and the girls really were deeply observant, just like their parents. How would you describe the way that Alexei figured into the budding relationship between the Romanos and resputed and when he comes on the scene, Ah, it's it's difficult with Alexey.

I found evidence that alex A kind of laughed at Respus in a bit behind his back and found him a bit odd and weird. But then Anastasia did too, and they sometimes giggled because he was a bit strange with that deep, sonorous voice and those huge, mesmerizing blue eyes. So but I think towards the end Alexey could recognize that Rasputin was their friend. You see, they referred to him. All of the children predominant and the parents as well referred to him as their friend. And this is where

people get raspute In wrong. They think it's all about this miraculous faith feeling which has been wildly misunderstood, overrated, and misrepresented. What really mattered about Rasputin to the family was that he was one of the very very few people they trusted because, like I've said, they lived very isolated lives at a time where the revolutionary movement wanted them all dead and removed from power. But Rasputin. Rasputin was kind of like a wise guru to them. But

the primary function he performed initially for Nicholas and Alexandra. Sorry, my dogs just can haffing and puffing in the background. The primary function Rasputin performed initially when Nicholas and Alexandra first met him was as a wise counselor. They sat and talked to him for hours and hours about matters of faith, about the concerns about Russia, the Russian people, and religious matters. He would spend time telling the children's

stories from the Old Testament. They loved him, They really loved him as as a as a wise and fascinating personality. Um. Sorry,

my dog's being noisy. She does come in from a walk, yes. Um. So the thing with Rasputin was, initially he was a wise girl to the family and a wise counselor, and that really was a more important function almost someone she did for Alexa Because people have this idea that Rasputin was in and out the back door and up the stairs and into the Alexander Palace every five minutes, into you know ingratiating himself and muttering prayers over Alexey. And

that's not the case. He only came when he was invited. He didn't make that many visits to the Romanos at the Alexander Palace, and he often went long period not seeing the family or communicated by telephone with them or by letter or telegram. Um. But what he did do and his really crucial function as far as alex A was concerned. When he was suffering episodes of bleeding and swelling of the joints. Was he had this incredible auto

suggestive power, an ability to calm. And one of the most important things when a child or a patient, or the mother of the child is stressed and anxious, as Alexandra was, when Alexey had this terrible attacks of leading, was to calm, calm her, and through calming her, that was transmitted to the child. And it can't alex say, and I think this is one of the key points in understanding how what he did worked. I can't explain it.

He had some kind of also suggestive powers. The best equivalent I can give, and and I came to it a while back. It's like a horse whisperer, only I call him a people whisperer. What rast Booting could do was calm and reassure a stressed person, a sick person. And in fact, it's very interesting because peasants in Russia Light Russia Light rasp Boutin, who had a pleasant background

in Siberia, had a technique with their animals. If the animals hurt themselves and were bleeding, or were anxious or stressed, they would they had a talking cure like a horse whisperer with animals, and it was called zagavarivat kraff to talk to the blood, to calm the blood, to stop the bleeding. So this was a technique not unique to us Spoutin, but it was Some think that he had learned by instincts. His father had been a horse trader, and he'd learned it in Siberia as a young young man.

So I think he had that kind of order, suggestive gift. But he also I think the most important piece of advice he gave the Romanos was that rust when Alex he was in pain, the last thing they should administer it to him was aspirin, which had come into use as a pain killer, because aspirin, of course thins the blood, and the last thing you want to give to him

of feeling hacks blood thinners. So and he also the other advice he always gave them was don't let the doctors fuss around him and interfere with him too much. And I think this sort of standing back and hands off advice seemed to seem to work. It seemed to work. Mhm um at what. At one point in your book on the Romano Sisters, you describe the student as an opportunist. Would you say a little more about what you mean there? Well,

I I don't mean that really about the Romanos. I mean that in that when he first arrived at Petersburg and people discovered this wise guru, he became very fashionable, and all these society ladies, ladies flock around him, and their photographs of him sitting surrounded by admiring women, and they brought him gifts, and they gave him beautiful clothes, and they fared him and flattered him. And I think

in that sense he was an opportunist. You know, if somebody wanted to give him money or take him out for a good dinner, he was more than happy to oblige. Um. In terms of the Romanos, he actually complained at one point that he only got to go to the palace and see them when they ordained that he should go, which confirms really what I said earlier about him not having the freedom to walk in and out by the

back door. So he did. He did exploit the fascination there was for him initially in Saint Petersburg, and and was wined and dined, and you know, very well looked after, and entertained and lived well on it for a while. You mentioned that Alexey and and the stage that maybe they giggled that rescue. What did Olga or Tatiana Maria?

What did the other daughters think of him? And they took him very h Olga in particular, talk took him very seriously and even wrote him a note asking his advice when she fell in love and and wanted to know what to do. So the girls took him more. The older two probably took him more seriously than the younger two. But Anna state it would make fun of everyone and laugh behind people's backs. That was just her

kind of personality. But they certainly believed in him as a friend and couldn't bear all the horrible things that were said about him, And of course they were distraught like their mother when he was murdered. Mhm mhm. How how damaging to Alexandra were the salacious rumors about her relationship with him that eventually would reach the press and

the cord and the public. Well, they were appalling, and they were absolutely crucially damaging, because not only within Russia was she parried, paraded and demonized and featured in ugly sexual cartoons with rasputing some of them quite pornographic. In fact, these were in circulation in Russia, but of course this

spread across the Western press in Britain and America. The gossip was appalling, you know, the talk that they were having a sexual relationship was utterly absurd, and when people ask me about it, I'll say, I'm just not going there because it's so ridiculous. But the trouble is all that scandal and gossip, and it was absolutely fetid, based on the third fourth hand gossip and rumor and innuendo. There was not a grain of truth in any of it, but of course that kind of mud, if there's enough

of it, sticks in the end. And it meant that what happened during the war years when Russia was an ally of Britain and France against Germany, Alexander, because she was German, was accused of being a German spy, and the the ramification of that was that she and Rasputin were both German spies and in the pay of Germany and potting to bring down Russian The most hideous calumny

and really libeless things were said about. They were very cruel, they were hideous, actually, and it tainted it tainted the attitude of many of the royal houses of Europe when it came to trying to get them out. I think that was one of the problems, was that kind of the royals of Europe really liked Alexandra for various reasons, but unfortunately some of them had brought into all that appalling gossip. Mhm, that's powerfully powerfully said, thank you. Um

you describe Alexay's injury in early October nineteen twelve. Uh, Well, alexa over the years would go through long here is a sort of remission where he wouldn't have a bad episode of bleeding, and they would all hold their breath and think, Oh, it's wonderful, he's doing really well. And it's really tragic because he had had about episode in nineteen o seven, But between nineteen o seven and nineteen twelve he'd been doing quite well and hadn't had any

really really bad attacks. But then in nineteen twelve, in the autumn of nineve the Romanos went off to one of on a trip to what was Poland what is Poland now but was then part of the Russian Empire, the big forest near Yellowish and they went to one of their big imperial hunting lodges there, and it was while they were staying there that alex say Alexey was always very reluctant to do as he was told, and he constantly be told by his minders, and he had

a couple of minders who were with him all the time not to jump and leap around, and he risked banging himself, which he did one day getting into a boat. He jumped into a boat and bashed his hip and it started bleeding in the joints and at the top

of his spy. And he stabilized within a week or so and seemed to be better, and the family moved on to their other hunting lodge, as smaller, much more modest one at spa In again in Poland, in the Polish forest, and he seemed again to be on the road to recovery then, but he was really getting very fed up with being told by his mother. Dayned out, no, you can't do this, You can't go off on the bicycle, he can't ride a pony, you can't go off with

the other children. You just had this terrible episode. You've got to get well. And he was constantly complaining and fed up with not being able to do anything, so in the end Alexander took him out for a coach ride. Unfortunately, the road was very bumpy and rocky, and within a short distance he started screaming in pain because it triggered a really bad bleed, a hematoma where he had just been recovering from an injury where he banged himself on

the all lock of the boat. So the next thing they know, he is temperature is a rocketing, the bleeding into the joint is absolutely uncontrollable. This is now October, ve m. The doctors can't do anything. I mean, all they could do when he had these hemophilia leads was apply ice and pray basically, and there wasn't a lot else they could do. And so he's lying there screaming

in agony. But actually day and night Alexander was sitting by his bed and it reached a crisis point on the I think it was about the tenth of about the tenth of October, and they thought he was going to die. They really thought, you know, his temperature was up at to nearly forty degrees. I think actually the priest came and read the last rites, and they even advised the star to prepare an announcement to go into the press that evening tenth October, to forewarn, to set

the scene that the Sario was about to die. And at that point, well, and not immediately actually surprisingly I thought it was Immagy, but actually a couple of days later um in fact, as the temperature was dropping and he was beginning to get over the crisis, Alexandra sent a telegram to ask Bootin, who was in Siberia a long long way away, asking his advice, and he didn't get it till around the twelve or thirteen of October sent a message back, effectively saying, don't worry, all will

be well, the little one will not die. Don't let the doctors fuss around him too much. And when she got that message, of course, she calmed down and became the stress sort of vanished from her face. She came down to dinner the first time in about two weeks, and alex recovered. But as you can see from that,

he rasped booting was nowhere near. All he did was send a telegram, and in fact, the telegram saying that Alexey will recovering it all would be okay, didn't In fact right till he passed the crisis anyway, So that that that whole a miraculous curing of Alexey by us Boutin has been ridiculously overhyped um because he was nowhere near and he just sent a message. M But we can imagine as you just described the effect that the

relief for Alexandra would have on the household. Absolutely, the relief on her, of course, transmitted itself first to the child, but to everyone in the household, and so they all started believing. Well, ras Boutin says he's going to recover, so we'll believe it. And maybe there's a sort of power of positivity that was going on. But alex I

did recover. Let's jump forward in time a little bit. Um. Of course, when the war begins, Nicholas is not immediately in command, but after some major losses front being pushed back, uh, Nicholas does assume command of the army and he leaves the family. It goes to Stafka, the headquarters, the army headquarters, and Alexandra and Olga and Tatiana they undertake work at home as sisters of mercy. Would you describe their efforts what it meant to them to be a sister of mercy,

a nurse. But but but what was the significance of that to them? And well, you know kind of how the war was affecting the family through those experiences. Well that's a bit of a big question, but let me

try and simplify it down. The The interesting thing about the war is was it gave Alexandra an incredible sense of purpose and it also tapped into the huge strong humanitarian and nursing instincts that she had had passed down by her mother, Princess Alice, who had done a lot of humanitarian war work during the Franco Prussian War and you know in Germany, so and it was a family tradition and from her and of course Princess Alice died after nursing her children through dip theory and when she

contracted it herself. So that nursing instinct was very strong in Alexandra, and it gave her a sense of purpose where she stopped thinking about herself or alex A twenty four seven, she immediately threw herself despite a lot of physical problems by then the scietic was awful, she threw herself into war work. She organized hospital trains. She organized ladies at the court to to set up collecting dressings and you know, bringing to bringing together sewing garments so

the wounded. She set up various hospitals in St. Petersburg, well, it was in Petrograd in the war, in the capital city and out at Sasco see a lot. And one of the major things she did which gave her girls something to do as well, all pulling together for the war effort, was that she set up a hospital little at Cis got a lot of the girls was the

responsibility of the two elder girls. Olga Tatiana helped her at that hospital, and then a smaller one was set up nearer to the palace, where Maria and Anastasia did sort of hospital visiting. Even with Alexey he went along

with them. And now Alga and Tatiana, because they were old enough with their mother, did a crash course, a Red Cross nurse course, and and began working properly, you know, looking after the wounded, bandaging wounds, and very quickly Tatiana proved incredibly talented and capable and was helping assisting in operations and and really dealing with some pretty grim war

wounds and stuff. Alga, however, emotionally found it very hard dealing with the trauma of the wounded, and was already a bit suffering from depression and withdrawal, since you know, with the father being absent and various other things. I think she was just very, very sensitive and met a bit of a melancholic and she became rather withdrawn, couldn't cope with the hospital work, and had to take more of a back seat. But Jana was brilliant. She was

a wonderful nurse. I think had things being different, she could have gone on and being a doctor, if not a surgeon, if she had not been a royal grand duchess. Of course, but the younger children too did their bit.

They visited the war wounded, they wrote letters home to their families for them, They played games of cards and board games with them, They talked to them, and when some of them died, they visited their grays and took flowers um and really the whole female side of the family threw themselves into doing something useful during the war, and they were very admirable in their efforts. So, as you say, could have maybe been a doctor a surgeon

if she absolutely she had a natural gift for nursing. Yes, what was that kind of This isn't in my questions. This is just a question that comes to mind. Was that kind of assuming a profession that way? Was it completely barred too? To the grand duchesses, to the as royal grand duchesses, they couldn't have done it, But they weren't the only Grand duchess is to do war work. Nicholas's sister Oiger also did a lot of exemplary war work,

worked on the hospital trains. Other Grand duchesses across the Roman of family and relatives did did their bit. They all really involved themselves. Alexandra did far more during the war than people are aware of, mainly because it's not really being written about. A friend of mine in America has been doing a study of Alexander's war work for some time, and I know he wants to hopefully publish all his research. But she did a huge amount visiting hospitals,

visiting hospital trains. She took the children along with her. They did their bit for the war Throughout the war. The girls all dressed incredibly modestly. From day one. Alexandra said, right, that's it. No new clothes, no fancy outfits. We will be dressing modestly and enduring, you know, as such privations as Romanos in Jue, I mean not many, but you know, nevertheless, then you see the photographs of them in the war, you never see them dressed up in fancy clothes clothes.

You see them in cardigans and wooly hats and plain blouses, just very modestly. And where they had hand been down, they patched their clothes, you know, they did not They did their bit for the war effort, they really did. There were no there were no Faberge nursing jewels. No, well, there were there were one or two. Even the Faberge eggs stopped during the war is because Nicholas and Alexandra considered it inappropriate. But that I think they did have won me with the Red Cross on a Red Cross

wartime faberg egg. But as such all the Blings stopped, all the glamor none of that. They they actually really did to throw their weight behind their nursing efforts. Mhmm. Part of the mythologizing around especially Alexandra and Respuing, is that during the war, Alexandra assumed more administrative control of the state because Nicholas was off at stavka Um. And in your own writing, the way that you put it is that she rapidly began over reaching herself by directly

influencing the sacking and appointment of key ministers. Can you say a little bit more about about that part of what she was doing during the war, Well, Nicholas was a long way away at Army h Q, and she was always very opinionated about who, about what kind of ministers Nicholas should appoint. Basically, throughout Nicholas's reign, the only good ministers either got murdered or gave up hommies. Stolypien

was a case in point, he was assassinated. Generally, a lot of toady's and yesmen were appointed during Nicholas's reign who were often incompetent and weaken ineffectual. But Alexandra was the one who wanted to have a retinue of yes men who did as she felt, you know, things should be done. And she constantly haround Nicholas in her long lecturing letters to him at the at the front, pressing him into sacking this minister. I don't like that minister, and you know you should get rid of so and so.

And it was normally because they wouldn't tear the line, and you know, they tried to bring in a some change or do something inventive or you know, use their use their common sense in ways that she didn't like. I need to act. If anyone tried to act remotely inventively,

she didn't like it. So basically, in about sixteen months of the war that Nicholas was away, four prime ministers came and went, five Ministers of the Interior and three ministers of war, mainly to do with Alexandra saying sack him. I don't like him, appoint someone else. Also, of course, though I'm not convinced the extent to which Rasputin had influence, but he too would put his pennyworth in and say

you should get rid of so and so. And this is where a lot of the rumor and gossip came about, saying that they you know, they were running the show and making bad decisions in Nicholas's absence. But ultimately the marks stopped with him. He shouldn't have allowed her to manipulate him into making bad decisions about government ministers, which unfortunately he did. But then he was doing it from a distance, and people weren't telling them him the truth

about what the situation was like in Petrograd. If they if they had, if they told him how precipitous everything was in February, after the February Revolution in nineteen seventeen, he would have come straight back and taken control, and the second October Revolution might never have happened. M Can you describe, maybe maybe in brief, I don't know, whatever extent you'd like, the events that did eventually lead to

Nicholas's abdication. Nicholas, I feel, was duped into abdicating various hundreds of miles away from home, when two members of the government, the Duma, came out by train and persuaded him that that revolution have broken in Petrograd. There was disarray in the army, people the conscript army, lots of

them were deserting at the front. Morale was low, and it was you know, there was so much disaffection with the czar and the old imperial regime that the best thing he could do save Russia and the country and the war effort was to give up the job. I abdicate, and because Nicolas loved his country, so passionately he allowed

himself to be persuaded. I think that his application would save Russia, and it would also save the war effort, because obviously with the revolution everyone was worried that Russia was now going to pull out of the war effort as well on the Eastern Front. So Nicolas abdicated, thinking that he by his him removing himself as the hated tsar,

the situation could be saved. Maybe there, I mean, the original hope I think was amongst the provisional government in back into in Petrograd word that there could poss to be a regency for alex A two eventually becomes. But of course what Nicholas did when he abdicated was knowing full well his child was a hemophiliac whose life expectancy

was pretty poor. He abdicated on behalf of his son as well, because if he had just abdicated for himself, he and Alexandra would have been obliged to go into exile, leaving Alexey under a regency in Russia. And there is no way on God's Earth they would want to be separated from him, from their boy, that they wouldn't do that. So he abdicated on behalf of alex Say also because he'd had private talks with the doctors and they had effectively told him that Alexey would be lucky to see

the age of sixteen. So Nicholas later realized, I think in captivity in the last months of his life, that he had been tripped into mulcating that it had not achieved anything. The Bolshowiks had taken over Russia pulled out of the war with Germany in March, and things were even worse from Russia for Russia. He hadn't saved Russia by abdicating uh And of course the sellout to the Germans by the Bolsheviks broke his heart. So the whole

thing was really tragic when you think about it. So, you know, at the beginning of our conversation, you you talked a little bit about how you got started writing about the Romanovs, and you wrote a detailed account of their last days. It's rich with detail and an emotion. Um. It includes the horrible events of their death. Um. Would you describe their outlook, Nicholas, Alexandra, maybe the girls during the time that they were held captive. What do we

know about what they were thinking the time. The problem with knowing what their ownolds were thinking at the very end when they're in the Kashenberg in the Party of House is that the Bolsheviks stopped them receiving and sending letters. Um, So we only know up to a certain point, I think in June, and after that, really we don't know what was going on in their heads. We have to kind of piecings together from what we know from eyewitnesses

and other people who left accounts. But it's pretty clear that to me, in those final weeks of their captivity, Firstly, as I've already said, Alexandra just retreated more and more into religiosity. Every day the girls, one or other girl would have when that they had their brief exercise periods morning and afternoon, one of the girls always had to stay with mother indoors. She rarely went outside because she was so sickly or indisposed. Read the Gospels to her,

or read the Bible or some pious work. The last few letters she wrote were very laden with religious references and in a very profound sense I think of reconciliation, acceptance, fatalism. Both she and Nicholas were deeply, deeply fatalistic, and you get the same thing with Nicholas's last few letters and then his sense of utter despair. The last journal entry he wrote was about he was the eleventh of July, about six days before they were murdered, where he just

you could sense him giving up. He said, we've had absolutely known news from outside. The sense of despair because they didn't know what was going on in Russia, how their relatives were, what was happening in the rest of the world. The sense of abandonment I think was pretty profound in Nicholas, and I think he was obvious slee deeply religiously resigned to his fate. As well. The girls, it's difficult to gauge because they were young, and perhaps

the younger too. I don't think we're totally aware. Anastasia and Maria also they were a bit too friendly with the guards and got into trouble for for chatting to the guards. But they were bored. They were teenagers locked up for hours and hours and hours every day, you know, with a sick menopause and mother are very sick brother um, so inevitably they're going to get bored and talked to

the guards. Olga was very very much in retreat by the end, very depressive, very depressed, and very thin sick. I think because she, of all the girls, sensed that this was the end. She had also become very ain't, very almost traumatized by the hatred for her parents, particularly her father. She was deeply upset that the people had turned against her father, a man she adored and loved and who had been a very wonderful hands on parents.

So Tatiana, well, Tatiana carried on putting on a brave face and getting things done and not keeping an eye on their mother. So we can only guess really what was going on in their minds in those last few days. But I think certainly Nicholas would have expected that his his head would be on the block eventually, because it had been said to him that, you know, he was going to be taken back to Moscow and put on trial, and the inevitable result of that would have been an execution.

H And of course there they are killed, and you know horible manner that you described in your in your book. But there were aspects of their death that led to an array of enduring this especially the hopeful legends about the survival of Anastasia. M Hum, When how did you go about sifting truth from rumor and stories when you were doing that research? UM not difficult for me because I think it's such a nonsense, all these claims of

miraculous survival and always has been. And once the Soviet Union collapsed and some of the documentary evidence relating to the murders came out of the archives, it's it's absolutely apparent to me from everything that I was able to glean and read and check out, that there is no way anyone in that family could have escaped the blood bath that was that took place on the night to

the sixteenth, seventeenth July. UM. It's wishful thinking. I think part of it is the idea that it's so horrendous having to come to terms with the fact that five innocent children were murdered in such a brutal and savage way, and because of that, people want to hope somehow that someone got away, that someone survived. And the real problem with these endless Anastasia rumors and all the numerous, numberless claimants there have been several Anastasias, in fact, they've been

claimants to for every member of the family. The reason primarily that these rumors carried on was because the Bolsheviks, initially for many many years, only acknowledge that they killed the czar, and then people pretty much accepted that Alex would have been killed as the heir to the throne.

So the two males were killed. But for many many years the Bolsheviks happily lead allowed people in the West to to to to disseminate and circulate these stories that maybe someone got away, maybe the woman who turned up in Berlin in trying to drown herself in the canal

really was Anastasia. And it's because the Bolsheviks didn't categorically deny that they had murdered the children children that this this rumor was able to carry on for so long, and because there were so many surprising number of aristocrats, not really many rominals, but certainly a few aristocrats in Europe in the twenties and thirties who are actually ready

to believe this woman. Um but I even now, I mean not now, it's kind of drifted off, but right up until the anniversary in two thousand eight, team, even though I still occasionally got emails from people saying, well, of course, you know, Anastasia got away, or even the whole family got away, and they all went to live in different parts of Europe and lived happily ever after into their old age. But that they're having, having studied all the evidence, there's no way anyone could have escaped

that massacre mhm. And also, so the other thing you have to recall, it's not only getting out of the house and escaping being murdered, but somehow getting from Siberia in the middle of a Russian Civil war which was then raging all the way from Siberia out to Western Europe through Bolshevik controlled territory. And it's just it's just it's just not credible, just not credible. Mhm. Thank you. So kind of two sew it all up with two big picture questions, kind of thinking about what do we

hope that listeners will take away. Do you think that the fall of Imperial Russia was inevitable in some way beyond the personal act pardon, beyond the personal actions and limitations of the Romanos, of of Nicholas, of Alexandra and the way that they governed. That's the tricky one. Really,

I'm not totally convinced that it was inevitable. If I think the big crucial turning point could have been five after you know, the fiasco the Russo Japanese wore terrible disaster for Rosia politically after that, and then the bloody Sunday protest march where innocent working workers marched without weapons or anything on asking for reform and for better working conditions when they were attacked and and by Cossack troops.

When that happened, that turning point, that was the point where Nicholas should have introduced major political concessions, if it introduced decent, democratic, constitutional government, if he'd allowed the Duma, the State Duma, to flourish instead of constantly censoring it and shutting it down, then I don't see why Russia could not have evolved into the kind of constitutional monarchy that was made such a success by King Edward the seventh in the years leading up to World War One,

because Russia was beginning to grow economically, beginning to catch up with Western Europe in those terms, and it could have flourished differently under a much more benign and democratic constitution and our monarch, by the fact is, Nicholas was terrified of change, who was terrified of letting go of the tight controls of Sarist autocracy, so it could have

been different. But then even up to nineteen seventeen, when the revolution broke in February, if Nicholas had not been away at Army HQ, if he'd been in Petrograd, he would have clamped down on the revolutionaries much more firmly and might have diffused revolution then, because the Bolsheviks effectively in October just walked in because not because they were strong, but because the provisional government was so weak and so disorganized.

So there are several moments at which revolution wasn't necessarily inevitable. Mhm mhm. Really um, the final question, I mean, you've already kind of addressed in what you said. It's, you know, kind of what extent where Nicholas or Alexandra a resputing directly responsible for the end of the arrest rule. But I feel like you've answered that with your last but your last answer, do you have anything else you would want to say on that point? Or well? That the

real folly? I think, I think actually, I mean, I don't like to pin things onto one thing and make a dramatic statement, but I do feel, of course the thing that so much hinges on is if Alexey had not been born a hemophiliac um, they wouldn't have clutched at all these cracks and Charlatan's. And I'm not saying Raspision was Charlatan. I don't think he was. I think

he had genuine faith healing pals or some kind. But if they had not attached themselves to us, booting to keep Alexey alive in their eyes, because things could have been different because alexa Um, because Rasping ought all that bad pressless scandal on the monarchy through his association with them. So I think the sheer fact of alex Say being born at him opheliac history could have been quite different if he'd been born a normal, healthy child, but alternative.

And you could also say if Alexandra hadn't been a German, because there was so much hostility towards her, if Nicholas had married a Russian wife, things could maybe have been different. I don't know. That's it for this week's episode of Unobscured.

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Slash Presents. Unobscured was created by me Aaron Manky and produced by Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Josh Thane in partnership with I Heart Radio, with research by Sam Alberty, writing by Carl Nellis, and original music by Chad Lawson. Learn more about our contributing historians, source materials and links to our other shows over at grimm and mild dot com, slash Unobscured, and as always, thanks for listening all