Grigori Rasputin: Difference between revisions

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Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin (Russian: Григо́рий Ефи́мович Распу́тин) (January 22 [O.S. January 10] 1869–December 29 [O.S. December 16] 1916) was a Russian mystic who held an influence in the later days of Russia's Romanov dynasty. Rasputin played an important role in the lives of the Tsar Nicholas II, his wife the Tsaritsa Alexandra, and their only son the Tsarevich Alexei, who suffered from haemophilia.

Rasputin has often been called the Mad Monk or Icha; although the origins of the second name are not known (some assert this is a misapprehension of the diminutive Grisha for Grigori). He was never a monk and made no secret of being married. Some considered him to be a "strannik" (religious pilgrim) or even a starets (ста́рец) ("elder", a title usually reserved for monk-confessors) and believed him to be a psychic and faith healer. He can be considered one of the more controversial characters in 20th century history, although Rasputin is viewed by most historians today as a scapegoat. For this and other reasons, he is perceived as playing a sensational role in the downfall of the Romanov dynasty.

For a great while, Rasputin's birth date 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." (Heinz Liepman, Rasputin and the Fall of Imperial Russia, 21). It was not until recently that new documents surfaced revealing Rasputin's birthdate as January 10, 1869 O.S. ^[1] (Note: O.S. is an abbreviation for Old Style - a dating system using the Julian Calendar.)

Early life

Grigori Efimovich Rasputin was born a peasant in a small Siberian village along the Tura River which is called Pokrovskoye. This village was located in the Tobolsk guberniya (now in Tyumen Oblast, Russia). When he was around the age of eighteen, he spent three months in the Verkhoturye Monastery. Shortly after leaving the Monastery, he visited a holy man named Makariy, whose hut was nearby. Makariy had an enormous influence on Rasputin, who would model himself after the older man. Rasputin married Praskovia Fyodorovna in 1889 and had three children with her (and another child with someone else). In 1901, he left his home in Pokrovskoye as a strannik, or pilgrim. During the time of his journeying, he traveled to Greece and Jerusalem. In 1903, Rasputin arrived in Saint Petersburg, where he gradually gained a reputation of a starets, or holy man, with healing and prophetical powers.

Healer to the Tsarevich

There are many theories as to Rasputin's early life, but the most widely accepted by historians is that of George Still, a British historian. ^{[citation needed]}

Rasputin was wandering as a pilgrim in Siberia when he heard reports of Tsarevich Alexei's haemophilia in 1904. The disease had been inherited from his great-grandmother (Queen Victoria). When the young Tsarevich got a bruise after he fell off of a horse, he suffered from internal bleeding for days while vacationing with his family. The Tsaritsa, looking everywhere for help, asked her best friend Anna Vyrubova to secure the help of the charismatic peasant healer in 1905. He was said to possess the ability to heal through prayer, and he was indeed able to give the boy some relief. Skeptics have claimed that he did so by hypnosis, though during a particularly grave crisis, Rasputin, from his home in Siberia, was believed to have eased the suffering of the tsarevich (in Saint Petersburg) 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 causing internal or external bleeding, the Tsaritsa contacted Rasputin, whereupon the Tsarevich subsequently got better, and this made it seem as if Rasputin was effectively healing him.

It has also been proposed ^[2] that the medical treatment which was halted due to Rasputin's intervention included aspirin, then a newly-available (1899) "wonder drug" for treatment of pain. Since, aspirin is an anticoagulant (as was only discovered in 1971), this would have increased the bleeing into joints which was causing Alexei's joint swelling and pain.

The Tsar referred to Rasputin as "our friend" and a "holy man", perhaps a sign of the trust the family put in him. Rasputin had considerable personal and political influence on Alexandra. His position within the church further enabled him to influence young Alexei; it was verified that before the pair were introduced, the Tsaritsa lamented her son "made Jesus sad" with his blasphemous ways. However, upon meeting Rasputin, she proclaimed exultantly that Alexei had "learned the error of his ways"^{[citation needed]}.

The Tsar and Tsaritsa considered him to be a man of God and a religious prophet, and Alexandra believed God spoke to her through Rasputin. 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 highly fascinated by her new Orthodox religion — which puts a great deal of faith in the healing power of prayer — but seems to have lacked some discernment regarding its practices.

Controversy

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 with the royal family. Rasputin and the Russian Orthodox Church had a very tense relationship. The Holy Synod frequently attacked Rasputin, and because of this, a lot of fakelore about his life was deliberately spread by the competing religion. Much anecdotal evidence about Rasputin's life should be treated skeptically. However, because Rasputin was a court official, he and his apartment were under 24-hour surveillance; accordingly, there exists some credible evidence about his lifestyle in the form of the famous "staircase notes", reports from police spies which were not only given to the Tsar, but published in the newspapers.

According to Rasputin's daughter, Maria, Rasputin did "look into" the Khlysty sect, and rejected it. While the Western world is particularly interested in the sexual practices of this sect. Most notable among Khylyst practices was the practice known as "rejoicing," (радение). This was a ritual that sought to overcome the human’s sexual urges by engaging in group sexual activities so that in consciously sinning together, the sin’s power over the human was nullified.^[3] Rasputin was particularly appalled by the belief that grace is found through self-flagellation.

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 that Rasputin preached to (and practised with) his inner circle of society ladies. The idea that one can attain grace through correction of sin is not unique. It is also 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.

During World War I he became a focus of accusations of unpatriotic influence at court; the unpopular Tsaritsa was of German descent, and her "friend" Rasputin was accused of being 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 showed up. 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 and 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. He also convinced her to fill some government offices with his own handpicked candidates. To further advance his power, Rasputin cohabitated with upper-class women in exchange for granting political favors. Because of World War I, and to a lesser extent because of Rasputin, Russia’s economy was declining at a rapid rate. Many placed the blame with Alexandra, and with Rasputin, because of his influence over her. 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." ^{[citation needed]}

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, make the Tsar 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 over his ability to influence both the Tsar and Tsaritsa, and by his dissolute lifestyle. Nobles in influential positions around the Tsar as well as some parties of the Duma, the Russian parliament, clamoured for his removal from the court. Perhaps inadvertently, Rasputin added to diminishing respect for the Tsar by his subjects.

Assassination beliefs

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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 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 by Khionia Guseva. A former prostitute, she had become a disciple of the monk Iliodor — once a friend of Rasputin's, who had become disgusted with his behavior and his disrespectful talk about the Royal Family. Iliodor appealed to women who had been harmed by Rasputin and formed a survivors' support group, with the intention of discrediting or killing him. Guseva thrust a knife into Rasputin's abdomen. His entrails hung out of what seemed like a mortal wound. After the attack, Guseva supposedly screamed, "I have killed the antichrist!" After intensive surgery Rasputin recovered. It was said about his survival: "the soul of this cursed muzhik was sewn on his body." His daughter Maria points out in her memoirs that he was never the same 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, so that it becomes difficult to discern exactly what happened. However, it is generally agreed that on December 16, 1916, having decided that Rasputin's influence over the Tsarina made him too dangerous 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) apparently lured Rasputin to the Yusupovs' Moika Palace, where they served him cakes and red wine laced with a large amount of cyanide. According to the legend, Rasputin was not affected, although there was enough poison to kill ten men. Maria Rasputin's account says that if her father ate poison, it was not in the cakes or wine, because after the attack by Guseva, he had hyperacidity, and avoided anything with sugar. She expressed doubt that he was poisoned at all.

Determined to finish the job, Yusupov worried that Rasputin would live until morning, so that the conspirators wouldn't have time to conceal his body. He ran upstairs to consult with the others, then came back down and shot Rasputin through the back with a revolver. Rasputin fell. When Yusupov went to check on the body, Rasputin opened his eyes, grabbed Felix by the throat, strangling him, and then threw him across the room and took off. As he made his bid for freedom, the rest of the conspirators arrived and fired at him. After being hit three times in the back, he fell. As they neared his body, they found he was trying to get up so they clubbed him into submission. Then after wrapping his body in a sheet, threw him into the icy Neva River.

Three days later the body of Rasputin — poisoned, shot four times, and badly beaten — was recovered from the river and autopsied. The cause of death was drowning. His arms were apparently 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 was poisoned, and that the poison alone should have killed him.

Subsequently, the Empress Alexandra buried Rasputin's body in the grounds of Tsarskoe Selo. After the February Revolution, a group of workers from Petrograd uncovered Rasputin's body, carried it into a nearby wood and burned it.

Recent evidence

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 he gave to the Petrograd police on December 16, 1916; the account he gave whilst in exile in the Crimea in 1917; his 1927 book; and the accounts given under oath to libel juries in 1934 and 1965. No two accounts were entirely identical. Until recently, however, no other credible, evidence-based theories have been available.

According to the unpublished 1916 autopsy report by Professor Kossorotov, and subsequent reviews by Dr Vladimir Zharov in 1993 and Professor Derrick Pounder in 2004-2005, no active poison was found in Rasputin's stomach. It could not have been said with certainty that he drowned, as the water found on 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 important, there were discrepancies regarding the number and calibre of handguns used.

This discovery may have significantly changed the whole premise and account of Rasputin's death. British intelligence reports between London and Petrograd in 1916 indicate that the British were extremely concerned about Rasputin's replacement of pro-British ministers in the Russian government, but more important, his apparent insistence on withdrawing Russian troops from World War I. This withdrawal would have allowed the Germans to move their Eastern Front troops to the Western Front, massively outnumbering the Allies and spelling almost certain victory. Whether this was actually Rasputin's intention or whether he was simply concerned about the huge number of casualties (as the Tsarina's letters indicated) is in dispute, but it is clear that the British viewed him as a real danger.

According to Professor Pounder, of the three 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, concurred in by the firearms department of the Imperial War Museum in London, the third shot was fired by a gun different from those responsible for the other two wounds. The "size and prominence of the abraded margin" suggested a large lead non-jacketed bullet. At that 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, and was 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 who was attached to the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) station in Petrograd. This account was further backed up 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. Indeed, Rayner had known Yusupov at Oxford University. Another SIS officer in Petrograd at the time, Captain Stephen Alley, had actually been born in the Yusupov Palace in 1876, and both families had strong ties.

Confirmation that Rayner, along with another officer, Captain John Scale, met with Yusupov in the weeks leading up to the assassination can be found in the diary of their chauffeur, William Compton, who recorded all the visits. The last entry was the night before the murder. According to Compton, "it is a little known fact that Rasputin was shot not by a Russian but by an Englishman". He indicated that the culprit was a lawyer from the same part of the country as Compton himself. Rayner was indeed born some ten miles from Compton's hometown, and throughout his life described himself as a "barrister-at-law", despite never practising that profession.

Evidence that the assassination attempt had not gone quite to plan is hinted at in a letter that Alley wrote to Scale eight days after the murder, saying "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".

Upon 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 he had acquired at the murder scene.

None of this is conclusive evidence of what happened that night of 16 December - 17 December, but it provides a more logical evidence-based account of what occurred. Rayner burnt all his papers before he died in 1961, and his only son also died four years later.

"The spirit of Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin"

After his death, his secretary Simonovich realized that Rasputin had moved a lot of money into his daughter Maria's account, and generally set all his affairs in order.

Weeks before he was assassinated in December 1916, according to his secretary Simonovich, Rasputin wrote the following:

"I write and leave behind me this letter at St. Petersburg. I feel that I shall leave life before January 1. I wish to make known to the Russian people, to Papa, to the Russian Mother and to the Children, to the land of Russia, what they must understand. If I am killed by common assassins, and especially by my brothers the Russian peasants, you, Tsar of Russia, will have nothing to fear for your children, they will reign for hundreds of years in Russia. But if I am murdered by boyars, nobles, and if they shed my blood, their hands will remain soiled with my blood, for twenty-five years they will not wash their hands from my blood. They will leave Russia. Brothers will kill brothers, and they will kill each other and hate each other, and for twenty-five years there will be no nobles in the country. Tsar of the land of Russia, if you hear the sound of the bell which will tell you that Grigori has been killed, you must know this: if it was your relations who have wrought my death, then no one in the family, that is to say, none of your children or relations, will remain alive for more than two years. They will be killed by the Russian people. I go, and I feel in me the divine command to tell the Russian Tsar how he must live if I have disappeared. You must reflect and act prudently. Think of your safety and tell your relations that I have paid for them with my blood. I shall be killed. I am no longer among the living. Pray, pray, be strong, think of your blessed family. -Grigori"

Why he wrote this prophetic letter, if it was not made up by Simonovich, is a mystery. Some speculate that Rasputin had a spiritual vision foreshadowing such an event; he did not say so, however. Others believe that Rasputin knew that he was widely reviled by many of the Russian people at the time he wrote the letter and that some wanted him dead (although many of his fellow peasants seem to have supported his success with the royal court). After the great speech which inspired Yusupov to make his move, rumors were flying about the Duma that something was going to happen to Rasputin soon, and he may simply have gotten wind of the rumors without knowing who the conspirators were.

Reputation

The contemporary press, as well as sensationalist articles and books published in the 1920s and 1930s (one of them even by Yusupov), turned the charismatic peasant into something of a twentieth century folk belief. To Westerners, Rasputin became the embodiment of purported Russian backwardness, superstition, irrationality and licentiousness, and an object of sensational interest; to the Russian Communists, he represented all that was evil in the old regime and had been overcome in the revolution. Yet to some Russians, he remained a symbol of the voice of the peasantry, and some (Russians) to this day reject the beliefs, honoring the man. However, the Moscow Patriarchate has condemned the fledgling movement seeking canonization of Rasputin. In reference to Rasputin's promiscuity, Moscow's Patriarch Alexius II said in a statement in 2003: "This is madness! What believer would want to stay in a Church that equally venerates murderers and martyrs, lechers and saints?"

Since the fall of Communism in Russia in the 1990s, some Russian nationalists appeared to have tried to whitewash Rasputin's reputation, and use the powerful twentieth century archetype he has become for their own end. New evidence that has surfaced since the end of the Soviet Union, however, at first appeared to refute their claims of his saintliness.

This documentation is primarily in the form of notes written by individuals paid to keep surveillance on Rasputin's apartment, and to record his comings and goings as well as make note of visitors. This was no secret at the time, and Rasputin occasionally expressed his annoyance. It has been remarked in books written as early as 1919 that those notes are, at best, highly questionable, intending to "prove" the allegations of those who paid to have such "proof" documented.

Name meaning

The name Rasputin in Russian does not mean "licentious," as is often claimed. There is, however, a very similar Russian adjective rasputny (распу́тный) which does mean "licentious" and the corresponding noun rasputnik. There is no definite explanation of the origin of this not uncommon surname which does not have a "disgraceful" meaning, as the contemporary Russian writer Valentin Rasputin would be quick to explain. There are at least two options for the root of the word. One of them is "put' ," which means "way," "road." Close nouns are rasputye, a place where the roads diverge or converge and rasputitsa (распу́тица, "muddy road season"). Some historians argue that the name Rasputin may be a place name, since it roughly signifies "a place where two rivers meet", which describes the area from which the Rasputin family originates. Another possibility is "put', " which gives rise to the verb "putat' ": "entangle" or "mix up," with "rasputat' " being its antonym: "detangle," "untie," "clean up a misunderstanding," etc.

However the most well founded explanation is a standard Russian surname derivation from the old Slavic name "Rasputa" ("Rasputko") (recorded as early as in sixteenth century) with the meaning "ill-behaved child," the one whose ways are against traditions or the will of parents.

It is said that Rasputin tried to have his name changed to the inconspicuous "Novykh" after his first pilgrimage to the Holy Land ("Novykh" - from the Russian Новый, "New" connotes to "Novice"), but that is a subject of dispute.

See also

• Rasputin in the Media
• Rasputin's penis

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Григорий Ефимович Распутин.

• The Alexander Palace Time Machine Bios-Rasputin - bio of Rasputin
• Okhrana Surveillance Report on Rasputin - from the Soviet Krasnyi Arkiv
• The Evil Monk: The Life and Times of Gregory Efimovich Rasputin
• Rasputin, Grigory Yefimovich, Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia
• Russian Revolutions of 1917
• The Murder of Rasputin
• Rasputin the Musical by Michael Rapp
• BBC's Rasputin murder reconstruction
• Russian Museum to Exhibit Rasputin’s Penis
• Boney M. - Rasputin (1978)
• RASPUTIN Grigory Efimovich - article about Rasputin at Encyclopaedia of St. Petersburg