Grigori Rasputin
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, (or
Grigori Yefimovich Novyh) (Russian: Григо́рий Ефи́мович Распу́тин / Григорий
Ефимович Новых)
(January 22 1869–December 29 1916) was a Russian mystic who is perceived as having influenced the latter
days of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II, his wife the Tsaritsa Alexandra, and their
only son the Tsarevich Alexei. Rasputin had often been called the "Mad Monk",
while others considered him a "strannik" (or religious pilgrim) and even a
starets (ста́рец, "elder", a title usually reserved for monk-confessors),
believing him to be a psychic and faith healer.
It has been argued that Rasputin helped to discredit the tsarist government,
leading to the fall in 1917 of the Romanov dynasty. Contemporary opinions saw
Rasputin variously as a saintly mystic, visionary, healer, and prophet, and, on
the other side of the coin, as a debauched religious charlatan. Historians may
find both to be true, but there is much uncertainty, for accounts of his life
have often been based on dubious memoirs, hearsay, and legend.
For some time, the date of Rasputin's birth remained questionable. "It is still
not known with any certainty when Rasputin was born, and all the books which
deal with him and his career give differing dates; not even his biographers —
and there have been many — have been able to agree. The closest one can come
with certainty is sometime between the years 1863 and 1873." It was not until
recently that new documents surfaced revealing Rasputin's birth date as January
10, 1869
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was born a peasant in the small village of
Pokrovskoye, along the Tura River in the Tobolsk guberniya (now Tyumen Oblast)
in Siberia. Not much is known about his childhood, and what is known was most
likely passed down through his family members. He had two known siblings, a
sister called Maria and an older brother named Dmitri. His sister Maria, said to
have been epileptic, was drowned in a river. One day, when Rasputin was
playing with his brother, Dmitri fell into a pond and Rasputin jumped in to save
him. They were both pulled out of the water by a passerby, but Dmitri eventually
died of pneumonia. The deaths of both siblings effectively at the hands of a
river has understandably been seen as far more than mere coincidence, but there
is no proof of anything untoward having happened. Both fatalities affected
Rasputin, so he subsequently named his two children Maria and Dmitri.
The myths surrounding Rasputin portray him as showing indications of
supernatural powers throughout his childhood. Efimy Rasputin, Grigori's father,
raised horses, and one ostensible example of these powers was when he
mysteriously identified the man who had stolen one of the horses. Rasputin
had a knack for identifying thieves and seems to have assumed that everyone
possessed this supernatural power.
Nicholas II and the Royal Family
When he was around the age of eighteen, he spent three months in the Verkhoturye Monastery, possibly a penance for theft. His experience there, combined with a reported vision of the Mother of God on his return, turned him towards the life of a religious mystic and wanderer. It also looks like he came into contact with the banned Christian sect known as the khlysty (flagellants), whose impassioned services, ending in physical exhaustion, led to rumors that religious and sexual ecstasy were combined in these rituals. Suspicions (which have not generally been accepted by historians) that Rasputin was one of the Khlysts threatened his reputation right to the end of his life. Indeed, Alexander Guchkov charged him with being a member of this illegal and orgiastic sect. The Tsar perceived the very-real threat of a scandal and ordered his own investigations, but he did not, in the end, remove Rasputin from his position of influence; quite the contrary, he sacked his minister of interior for a "lack of control over the press" (censorship being a top priority for Nicholas then). He pronounced the affair to be a private one closed to debate.
Shortly after leaving the monastery, Rasputin visited a holy man named Makariy,
whose hut was nearby. Makariy had an enormous influence on Rasputin, who would
model himself after him. Rasputin married Praskovia Fyodorovna Dubrovina in
1889, and they had three children, named Dmitri, Varvara, and Maria. Rasputin
also had another child with another woman. In 1901, he left his home in
Pokrovskoye as a strannik (or pilgrim) and, during the time of his journeying,
travelled to Greece and Jerusalem. In 1903, Rasputin arrived in Saint
Petersburg, where he gradually gained a reputation as a starets (or holy man)
with healing and prophetical powers.
Rasputin was wandering as a pilgrim in Siberia when he heard reports of
Tsarevich Alexei's illness (it was not publicly known in 1904 that Alexei had
hemophilia). This disease was widespread among European royalty descended from
Queen Victoria of England, who was Alexei's great-grandmother. When the young
Tsarevich, while vacationing with his family, got a bruise after falling off of
a horse, he suffered internal bleeding for days. The Tsaritsa, looking
everywhere for help, asked her best friend, Anna Vyrubova, to secure the help of
the charismatic peasant healer Rasputin in 1905. He was said to
possess the ability to heal through prayer and was indeed able to give the boy
some relief, in spite of the doctors' prediction that he would die. Skeptics have claimed that he did so by hypnosis—although, during a
particularly grave crisis, from his home in Siberia, Rasputin was believed to
have eased the suffering, in Saint Petersburg, of the Tsarevich through prayer.
His practical advice (such as "Don't let the doctors bother him too much; let
him rest") may also have been of great assistance in allowing Alexei and his
worried mother to relax, so that the child's own natural healing process might
take place. Others believe he used leeches to stop the boy's bleeding for the
moment; however, this is unlikely to have been successful, as leech saliva
contains hirudin and other natural anticoagulants. Every time the boy had an
injury which caused him internal or external bleeding, the Tsaritsa called on
Rasputin, and the Tsarevich subsequently got better. This made it appear that
Rasputin was effectively healing him.
Diarmuid Jeffreys has proposed that the medical treatment halted due to
Rasputin's intervention included aspirin, then a newly-available (since 1899)
"wonder drug" for the treatment of pain. Since aspirin is an antiaggregant
(prevents aggregation of platelets thereby interfering with blood
coagulation)—this was discovered only in 1971—the treatment would have increased
the bleeding into the joints, which was causing Alexei's joint swelling and
pain.
The Tsar referred to Rasputin as "our friend" and a "holy man", a sign of the
trust that the family placed in him. Rasputin had a considerable personal and
political influence on Alexandra, and the Tsar and Tsaritsa considered him a
man of God and a religious prophet. Everyone desirous of an audience with the
royal couple had to go through him, a situation which angered certain
individuals. Alexandra came to believe that God spoke to her through Rasputin.
Of course, this relationship can also be viewed in the context of the very
strong, traditional, age-old bond between the Russian Orthodox Church and the
Russian leadership. Another important factor was probably the Tsaritsa's
German-Protestant origin: she was definitely highly fascinated by her new
Orthodox outlook—the Orthodox religion puts a great deal of faith in the healing
powers of prayer—but seems to have lacked some discernment regarding its
practices.
Rasputin soon became a controversial figure, becoming involved in a paradigm of
sharp political struggle involving monarchist, anti-monarchist, revolutionary
and other political forces and interests. He was accused by many eminent persons
of various misdeeds, ranging from an unrestricted sexual life (including raping
a nun) to undue political domination over the royal family.
While fascinated by him, the Saint Petersburg elite did not widely accept
Rasputin: he did not fit in with the royal family, and he and the Russian
Orthodox Church had a very tense relationship. The Holy Synod frequently
attacked Rasputin, accusing him of a variety of immoral or evil practices, but
such anecdotal evidence on Rasputin's life should be treated skeptically,
however abundant. Because Rasputin was a court official, though, he and his
apartment were under 24-hour surveillance, and, accordingly, there exists some
credible evidence about his lifestyle in the form of the famous "staircase
notes"—reports from police spies which were not given only to the Tsar but also
published in newspapers.
the co-conspirators in the assination plot
According to Rasputin's daughter, Maria, Rasputin did "look into" the Khlysty
sect—but rejected it. One Khlyst practice was known as "rejoicing" (радение), a
ritual which sought to overcome human sexual urges by engaging in group sexual
activities so that, in consciously sinning together, the sin's power over the
human was nullified. Rasputin is meant to have been particularly appalled by
the belief that grace is found through self-flagellation.
Like many spiritually-minded Russians, Rasputin spoke of salvation as depending
less on the clergy and the church than on seeking the spirit of God within. He
also maintained that sin and repentance were interdependent and necessary to
salvation. Thus, he claimed that yielding to temptation (and, for him
personally, this meant sex and alcohol), even for the purposes of humiliation
(so as to dispel the sin of vanity), was a necessary step on the road to
repentance and salvation. Rasputin was deeply opposed to war, both from a moral
point of view and as something which was likely to lead to political
catastrophe. During the years of World War One, Rasputin's increasing
drunkenness, sexual promiscuity and willingness to accept bribes (in return for
helping petitioners who flocked to his apartment), as well as his efforts to
have his critics dismissed from their posts, made him appear increasingly
cynical. Another way to look at this, of course, is that, like most Orthodox
Christians, Rasputin was brought up with the belief that the body is a sacred
gift from God. Attaining divine grace through sin seems to have been one of the
central secret doctrines which Rasputin preached to (and practiced with) his
inner circle of society ladies. The idea that one can attain grace through
correction of sin is not unique; it is understood that sin is an inescapable
part of the human condition, and the responsibility of a believer is to be
keenly aware of his sins and be willing to confess them, thereby attaining
humility. (This doctrine—sin as a means to grace—is as old as Christianity. It
was condemned by St. Paul in Romans 6:1.)
During World War I, Rasputin became the focus of accusations of unpatriotic
influence at court; the unpopular tsaritsa, meanwhile, was of German descent,
and she came to be accused of acting as a spy in German employ.
When Rasputin expressed an interest in going to the front to bless the troops
early in the war, the Commander-in-Chief, Grand Duke Nicholas, promised to hang
him if he dared to show up there. Rasputin then claimed that he had a revelation
that the Russian armies would not be successful until the Tsar personally took
command. With this, the ill-prepared Nicholas proceeded to take personal command
of the Russian army, with dire consequences for himself as well as for Russia.
While Tsar Nicholas II was away at the front, Rasputin's influence over Tsaritsa
Alexandra increased immensely. He soon became her confidant and personal
advisor, and also convinced her to fill some governmental offices with his own
handpicked candidates. To further the advance of his power, Rasputin cohabitated
with upper-class women in exchange for granting political favors. Because of
World War I and the ossifying effects of feudalism and a meddling government
bureaucracy, Russia's economy was declining at a very rapid rate. Many at the
time laid the blame with Alexandra and with Rasputin, because of his influence
over her. Here is an example:
Vladimir Purishkevich was an outspoken member of the Duma. On November 19, 1916,
Purishkevich made a rousing speech in the Duma, in which he stated, "The tsar's
ministers who have been turned into marionettes, marionettes whose threads have
been taken firmly in hand by Rasputin and the Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna—the
evil genius of Russia and the tsaritsa ... who has remained a German on the
Russian throne and alien to the country and its people." Felix Yusupov attended
the speech and afterwards contacted Purishkevich, who quickly agreed to
participate in the murder of Rasputin.
Rasputin's influence over the royal family was used against him and the Romanovs
by politicians and journalists who wanted to weaken the integrity of the
dynasty, force the Tsar to give up his absolute political power and separate the
Russian Orthodox Church from the state. Rasputin unintentionally contributed to
their propaganda by having public disputes with clergy members, bragging about
his ability to influence both the Tsar and Tsaritsa, and also by his dissolute
and very-public lifestyle. Nobles in influential positions around the tsar, as
well as some parties of the Duma, clamored for Rasputin's removal from the
court. Perhaps inadvertently, Rasputin had added to the Tsar's subjects
diminishing respect for him.
Felix Yusupov with Rasputin
The legends recounting the death of Rasputin are perhaps even more bizarre than
his strange life. According to Greg King's 1996 book The Man Who Killed
Rasputin, a previous attempt on Rasputin's life had been made and had failed:
Rasputin was visiting his wife and children in his hometown, Pokrovskoye, along
the Tura River, in Siberia. On June 29, 1914, he had either just received a
telegram or was just exiting church, when he was attacked suddenly by Khionia
Guseva, a former prostitute who had become a disciple of the monk Iliodor, once
a friend of Rasputin's but now absolutely disgusted with his behaviour and
disrespectful talk about the royal family. Iliodor had appealed to women who had
been harmed by Rasputin, and together they formed a survivors' support group,
with the intention of discrediting or killing him.
Guseva thrust a knife into Rasputin's abdomen, and his entrails hung out of what
seemed like a mortal wound. Convinced of her success, Guseva supposedly
screamed, "I have killed the antichrist!"
After intensive surgery, however, Rasputin recovered. It was said of his
survival that "the soul of this cursed muzhik was sewn on his body." His
daughter, Maria, pointed out in her memoirs that he was never the same man after
that: he seemed to tire more easily and frequently took opium for pain.
The murder of Rasputin has become legend, some of it invented by the very men
who killed him, which is why it becomes difficult to discern exactly what
happened. It is, however, generally agreed that, on December 16, 1916, having
decided that Rasputin's influence over the Tsaritsa had made him a
far-too-dangerous threat to the empire, a group of nobles, led by Prince Felix
Yusupov and the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich (one of the few Romanov family
members to escape the annihilation of the family during the Red Terror),
apparently lured Rasputin to the Yusupovs' Moika Palace, where they served him
cakes and red wine laced with a massive amount of cyanide. According to legend,
Rasputin was unaffected, although Vasily Maklakov had supplied enough poison to
kill seven men. Conversely, Maria's account asserts that, if her father did eat
or drink poison, it was not in the cakes or wine, because, after the attack by
Guseva, he had hyperacidity, and avoided anything with sugar. In fact, she
expressed doubt that he was poisoned at all.
Photos of Yusupovs' Moika Palace
Determined to finish the job, Yusupov became anxious about the possibility that Rasputin might live until the morning, which would leave the conspirators with no time to conceal his body. Yusupov ran upstairs to consult the others and then came back down to shoot Rasputin through the back with a revolver. Rasputin fell, and the company left the palace for a while. Yusupov, who had left without a coat, decided to return to grab one, and, while at the palace, he went to check up on the body. Suddenly, Rasputin opened his eyes, grabbed Yusupov by the throat and strangled him. "You bad boy," Rasputin whispered ominously in his ear, before throwing him across the room and escaping. As he made his bid for freedom, however, the other conspirators arrived and fired at him. After being hit three times in the back, Rasputin fell once more. As they neared his body, the party found that, remarkably, he was still alive, struggling to get up. They clubbed him into submission and, after wrapping his body in a sheet, threw him into an icy river, and he finally met his end there—as had both his siblings before him.
where the wounded Rasputin struggled up the stairs
Three days later, the body of Rasputin, poisoned, shot four times and badly
beaten, was recovered from the Neva River and autopsied. The cause of death was
hypothermia. His arms were found in an upright position, as if he had tried to
claw his way out from under the ice. In the autopsy, it was found that he had
indeed been poisoned, and that the poison alone should have been enough to kill
him.
Yet another report, also supporting the idea that he was still alive after
submerging through the ice into the Neva River, is that after his body was
pulled from the river, water was found in the lungs.
Subsequently, the Empress Alexandra buried Rasputin's body in the grounds of
Tsarskoye Selo, but, after the February Revolution, a group of workers from
Saint Petersburg uncovered the remains, carried them into a nearby wood and
burnt them.
death photo of Rasputin
The details of the assassination given by Felix Yusupov have never stood up to
close examination. There were many versions of his account: the statement which
he gave to the Saint Petersburg police on December 16, 1916, the account that he
gave whilst in exile in the Crimea in 1917, his 1927 book, and, finally, the
accounts given, under oath, to libel juries in 1934 and 1965. No two accounts
were entirely identical, and, until recently, no other credible, evidence-based
theories have been available.
According to the unpublished 1916 autopsy report by Professor Kossorotov, as
well as subsequent reviews by Dr. Vladimir Zharov in 1993 and Professor Derrick
Pounder in 2004/05, no active poison was found in Rasputin's stomach. It could
not have been said with certainty that he drowned, as the water found in his
lungs is a common non-specific autopsy-finding. All three sources agree that
Rasputin had been systematically beaten and attacked with a bladed weapon, but,
most importantly, there were discrepancies regarding the number and caliber of
handguns used.
This discovery may have significantly changed the whole premise and account of
Rasputin's death. British intelligence reports, between London and Saint
Petersburg in 1916, indicate that the British were extremely concerned about
Rasputin's displacement of pro-British ministers in the Russian government—but,
even more importantly, his apparent insistence on withdrawing Russian troops
from World War I. This withdrawal would have allowed the Germans to move their
Eastern Front troops over to the Western Front, which would mean a massive
outnumbering of the Allies, spelling almost certain defeat. Whether this was
actually Rasputin's intention or whether he was simply concerned about the huge
number of casualties (as the Tsaritsa's letters indicated) is in dispute, but it
is clear that the British viewed him as a real danger.
Professor Pounder tells us that, of the four shots fired into Rasputin's body,
the third (which entered his forehead) was instantly fatal. This third shot also
provides some intriguing evidence. In Pounder's view, with which the Firearms
Department of London's Imperial War Museum agrees, the third shot was fired by a
gun different from those responsible for the other three wounds. The "size and
prominence of the abraded margin" suggested a large lead non-jacketed bullet. At
the time, the majority of weapons used hard metal jacketed bullets, with Britain
virtually alone in using lead unjacketed bullets, for their officers' Webley
revolvers. Pounder came to the conclusion that the bullet which caused the fatal
shot was a Webley .455 inch unjacketed round, the best fit with the available
forensic evidence.
Witnesses to the murder stated that the only man present with a Webley revolver
was Lieutenant Oswald Rayner, a British officer attached to the British Secret
Intelligence Service (SIS) station in St. Petersburg. This account was supported
further during an audience between the British Ambassador, Sir George Buchanan,
and Tsar Nicholas, when Nicholas stated that he suspected a young Englishman who
had been an old school friend of Yusupov. Rayner certainly had known Yusupov at
Oxford. There was, however, another SIS officer in St. Petersburg at the time,
namely Captain Stephen Alley, who had actually been born in the Yusupov Palace
in 1876. Both families had very strong ties, so it is difficult to come to any
conclusion about whom to hold responsible.
Confirmation that Rayner, along with another officer, Captain John Scale, met up
with Yusupov in the weeks leading up to the assassination can be found in the
diary of their chauffeur, William Compton, who recorded all visits. The last
entry was made on the night before the murder. Compton said that "it is a little
known fact that Rasputin was shot not by a Russian but by an Englishman" and
indicated that the culprit was a lawyer from the same part of the country as
Compton himself. There is little doubt that Rayner was born some ten miles from
Compton's hometown and, throughout his life, described himself as a
"barrister-at-law", despite never having practised in that profession.
Evidence that the assassination attempt had not gone quite according to plan is
hinted at in a letter which Alley wrote to Scale eight days after the murder:
"Although matters here have not proceeded entirely to plan, our objective has
clearly been achieved.... a few awkward questions have already been asked about
wider involvement. Rayner is attending to loose ends and will no doubt brief
you."
On his return to England, Oswald Rayner not only confided to his cousin, Rose
Jones, that he had been present at Rasputin's murder but also showed family
members a bullet which he claimed to have acquired at the murder scene.
Conclusive evidence is unattainable, however, as Rayner burnt all his papers
before he died in 1961 and his only son also died four years later.
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