Grigori Rasputin

• 1. Introduction

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  Grigori Rasputin was a Siberian peasant who, by the autumn of 1916, stood accused in the Russian parliament of working the strings of the tsar's government. In November of that year, the far-right Duma member Vladimir Purishkevich told his colleagues that the ministers had been turned into "marionettes". The hands holding the threads, he said, belonged to Rasputin and the empress. The man he was describing came from a village in Siberia. He had remained illiterate well into his early adulthood, and he held no official position in the church whose language he spoke so fervently. Yet he had become the most talked-about figure in the empire. So how does a village wanderer end up at the center of Russian power? Why would an emperor and empress trust him with the health of their only son? And who decided that Russia's troubles could only be solved by silencing him? Much of what the world believes about Rasputin comes from rumor, and this documentary will mark the places where the record simply runs out.

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• 2. Village on the Tura

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  The village of Pokrovskoye lay along the Tura River in the Tobolsk Governorate, in what is now Tyumen Oblast. Official records say the boy was christened the day after his birth and named for St. Gregory of Nyssa. His father, Yefim, was a peasant farmer and church elder who also worked as a government courier, ferrying people and goods between Tobolsk and Tyumen. His mother was Anna Parshukova. They had married in 1863, and seven other children died in infancy or early childhood. There may have been a ninth child, a daughter named Feodosiya. Rasputin was close to her and became godfather to her children, but historian Joseph T. Fuhrmann says the surviving records do not permit saying more.

  Historian Douglas Smith calls Rasputin's youth "a black hole about which we know almost nothing". That gap did not stop others from inventing tales about his parents and boyhood once he became famous. Local archives hint at an unruly young man, with possible drinking, small thefts and disrespect for authority. They contain no sign that he was ever charged with horse stealing, blasphemy or false witness, the crimes later pinned on him.

  In 1886 he traveled to Abalak, some 250 kilometers east-northeast of Tyumen, and met a peasant girl named Praskovya Dubrovina. After a courtship of several months, they married in February 1887. Praskovya stayed in Pokrovskoye through all his later journeys and remained devoted to him until his death. Seven children were born, and only three reached adulthood. They were Dmitry, born in 1895, Maria in 1898 and Varvara in 1900.

  In 1897, aged 28, with an infant son and another child on the way, Rasputin left the village on a pilgrimage. His reasons are unclear. One story says he was fleeing punishment over a horse theft. Others speak of a vision of the Virgin Mary or of St. Simeon of Verkhoturye, or of the influence of a young theology student named Melity Zaborovsky. Smith argues that so drastic a step must have followed some kind of emotional or spiritual crisis.

  The journey that changed him ended at the St. Nicholas Monastery at Verkhoturye. There he met an elder, or starets, named Makary, and was by one account "profoundly humbled". He may have stayed for several months, and perhaps it was here that he learned to read and write. He later criticized monastic life as too coercive. Back in Pokrovskoye he looked disheveled and acted like a different person. He gave up meat and alcohol and prayed and sang with new fervor.

  He then lived as a strannik, a holy wanderer, disappearing from the village for months or even years to visit sacred sites. He may have reached Mount Athos, the center of Eastern Orthodox monastic life, in 1900. At home he gathered a small circle of relatives and neighbors, who prayed with him on holy days in a makeshift chapel built in Yefim's root cellar. The village priest and other villagers grew suspicious. Gossip claimed that women ritually washed him before each meeting and that he had joined the Khlysty, a sect rumored to practice self-flagellation and orgies. Fuhrmann reports that repeated investigations failed to show he was ever a member. The label would follow him anyway, all the way to the capital.

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• 3. Road to Court

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  In 1904 or 1905, Rasputin arrived in the city of Kazan, where he earned a name as a wise starets who could settle troubled souls. Rumors of sexual misconduct with female followers did not stop him from impressing local church leaders. Archimandrite Andrei and Bishop Chrysthanos gave him a letter of recommendation to Bishop Sergei, rector of the theological seminary at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in Saint Petersburg, and arranged his trip.

  At the Alexander Nevsky Lavra he met Archimandrite Theofan, the seminary's inspector. Theofan was well connected in the capital and would later become confessor to the imperial family. He was so taken with Rasputin that he invited him to live in his home. Theofan became one of Rasputin's most valuable friends, opening the doors of the salons where aristocrats gathered to discuss religion. Many of the early followers he won there would later turn against him.

  The timing suited him. Spiritualism and theosophy were already fashionable among Saint Petersburg's aristocracy, and many nobles were hungry for the occult. Fuhrmann describes the city's elite as "bored, cynical, and seeking new experiences". Rasputin's odd manners made him a curiosity. He also had an advantage over earlier favorites such as Nizier Anthelme Philippe and Gérard Encausse, who were foreigners. Rasputin was a native Russian.

  Historians disagree about the details of his first stay. Fuhrmann says he spent only a few months in the capital and went home in the fall of 1903. Smith argues that nobody can know whether he stayed or went back and forth before 1905. Either way, he had made friends among the nobility by 1905. They included Militsa and Anastasia of Montenegro, known as the "Black Princesses". They had married cousins of the tsar, and they helped bring Rasputin to the imperial family.

  Rasputin first met Nicholas II on the 1st of November 1905 at Peterhof Palace. The tsar noted in his diary that he and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna had "made the acquaintance of a man of God , Grigory, from Tobolsk province". Rasputin went home soon after and did not return until July 1906. He then sent the tsar a telegram asking to present an icon of St. Simeon of Verkhoturye. He saw Nicholas and Alexandra on the 18th of July and again in October, when he first met their children.

  Historians cannot agree on when the royal couple began to see him as a healer. Orlando Figes places it in November 1905. Fuhrmann speculates that it was October 1906, when Rasputin was first asked to pray for Alexei's health.

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• 4. The Tsarevich's Healer

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  Alexei Nikolaevich, the tsarevich, was the only son of Nicholas and Alexandra, and he suffered from haemophilia. Historian Marc Ferro describes the tsarina's "passionate attachment" to Rasputin, whom she believed could ease her son's illness. Harold Shukman calls him "an indispensable member of the royal entourage". Exactly when Rasputin learned of the condition, or first acted as a healer, is unclear. He may have known by October 1906. In the spring of 1907, Alexandra summoned him to pray for the boy during an internal hemorrhage, and Alexei recovered the next morning. Alexandra's friend Anna Vyrubova became convinced of his miraculous powers soon afterward and turned into one of his strongest advocates.

  The crisis that bound the family to him came in the summer of 1912. After a jolting carriage ride near the imperial hunting grounds at Spała, Alexei developed a hemorrhage in his thigh and groin, which caused a large hematoma. In great pain and delirious with fever, he seemed close to death. Alexandra had Vyrubova telegraph Rasputin, who was in Siberia, asking for his prayers.

  His reply came quickly. "God has seen your tears and heard your prayers. Do not grieve. The Little One will not die. Do not allow the doctors to bother him too much." The next morning Alexei was no better, though Alexandra took hope from the message. The bleeding stopped the following day. One attending physician, Dr. S. P. Fedorov, admitted that the recovery was "wholly inexplicable from a medical point of view." He later said the empress could hardly be blamed for her faith: "Rasputin would come in, walk up to the patient, look at him, and spit. The bleeding would stop in no time.... How could the empress not trust Rasputin after that?"

  Historian Robert K. Massie calls the recovery "one of the most mysterious episodes of the whole Rasputin legend". He offers two possible explanations. Telling the doctors to stay away may have let the boy rest and heal. Or the message may have calmed his mother and eased the tsarevich's own stress. Massie and Ferro also suggest that Rasputin used hypnosis on other occasions, a method some modern physicians consider useful against haemophilia.

  Pierre Gilliard, Alexei's French-language tutor, proposed something simpler. Rasputin may have controlled the bleeding by forbidding aspirin, which was widely used for pain. Doctors did not recognize it as an anti-clotting agent until the 1950s.

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• 5. Our Friend in the Nursery

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  Alexei and his sisters were taught to call Rasputin "our friend" and to confide in him. In the autumn of 1907, Nicholas escorted his sister, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, to the nursery to meet him. The children were in their long white nightgowns. Olga later recalled, "All the children seemed to like him. They were completely at ease with him."

  His telegrams show the same warmth. In 1908 he wrote to nine-year-old Maria, "My Dear Pearl M! Tell me how you talked with the sea, with nature! I miss your simple soul." In February 1909 he sent all the children advice to "Love the whole of God's nature, the whole of His creation in particular this earth."

  Not everyone approved. In 1910 the girls' governess, Sofia Ivanovna Tyutcheva, was horrified to learn that Rasputin had been allowed into the nursery while the four girls were in their nightgowns. She wanted him barred. Nicholas asked Rasputin to stop the visits. On the 8th of March 1910, twelve-year-old Tatiana wrote anxiously to her mother, "I hope our nurse will be nice to our friend now." Alexandra eventually had Tyutcheva dismissed.

  Tyutcheva took her story to other relatives, and they were scandalized. Nicholas's sister, Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna, wrote on the 15th of March 1910 about "that sinister Grigory". She added, "It's all quite unbelievable and beyond understanding." Yet the account says Rasputin's contacts with the children were by all accounts completely innocent.

  Another nursery governess, Maria Ivanovna Vishnyakova, claimed in the spring of 1910 that Rasputin had raped her. She had begun as a devotee and later turned against him. Alexandra refused to believe it and said that everything Rasputin does is holy. Olga Alexandrovna was told that the claim had been investigated at once, and that the young woman had been found in bed with a Cossack of the Imperial Guard. Vishnyakova was dismissed in 1913.

  Society whispered that Rasputin had seduced the tsarina and all four grand duchesses. Ardent letters from the tsarina and the grand duchesses to Rasputin circulated widely, and pornographic cartoons followed. Nicholas ordered him to leave the capital for a time, which displeased Alexandra, and Rasputin went on a pilgrimage to Palestine.

  The bond survived the scandal. On the 6th of December 1916, Alexandra wrote to Nicholas that "Our Friend is so contented with our girlies." When news of his death arrived, A. A. Mordvinov recalled, the four grand duchesses sat huddled together on a sofa, cold and visibly terribly upset. He thought they seemed to sense the upheaval coming.

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• 6. Enemies and Power

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  Favor from the imperial family brought Rasputin a palace post. Nicholas named him lampadnik, or lamplighter, responsible for keeping the lamps lit before the icons. The job gave him regular access to the palace and the family. By December 1906 he already felt close enough to ask a favor. He wanted his surname changed to Rasputin-Noviy, meaning Rasputin-New. Nicholas agreed, and the paperwork moved quickly, a sign of how early the tsar's favor had begun. Rasputin used his position fully, taking bribes and sexual favors from admirers and working hard to widen his influence.

  Opposition grew inside the church. In 1907 the local clergy in Pokrovskoye denounced him as a heretic. The Bishop of Tobolsk opened an inquest, accusing him of "spreading false, Khlyst-like doctrines". In Saint Petersburg, Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin and the Okhrana, the tsar's secret police, also opposed him. Stolypin ordered an investigation and confronted Nicholas, but he could not rein Rasputin in or drive him out of the capital.

  Rasputin's own preaching fueled the fire. He taught that physical contact with him purified others, and he joined drunken revels and affairs with women ranging from prostitutes to high-society ladies. In 1909 Khioniya Berlatskaya, one of his early supporters, accused him of rape. She appealed to Theofan, who concluded that Rasputin was a danger to the monarchy.

  The most violent attack on him came in his home village. A 33-year-old peasant woman named Khioniya Guseva stabbed him in the stomach outside his house in Pokrovskoye. He had recently learned from the tsarina that Russia was preparing for war. He had just left the house to send a telegram urging the tsar to avoid it. Seriously wounded, he survived after surgery and time in a hospital in Tyumen.

  Guseva followed Iliodor, a former priest who had once backed Rasputin. In December 1911 Iliodor denounced Rasputin's sexual escapades and self-importance. A radical conservative and anti-semite, he had joined a group of establishment figures trying to split Rasputin from the imperial family in 1911. When that failed he was banished from Saint Petersburg and eventually defrocked. Guseva said she acted alone, having read about Rasputin in newspapers and believing him a "false prophet and even an Antichrist". Rasputin and the police both suspected Iliodor, who fled abroad before questioning. Guseva was found not responsible by reason of insanity.

  Rasputin's power peaked in 1915, when Nicholas left Saint Petersburg to oversee the army in the First World War. In his absence Rasputin and Alexandra tightened their hold on the empire. Military defeats on the Eastern Front piled up, and both grew more unpopular. Economic decline, the end of feudalism and a meddling bureaucracy all added to the anger, and many blamed Alexandra and Rasputin. Critics never let anyone forget that the tsarina had been born a German princess.

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• 7. Night at Moika Palace

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  In December 1916, a group of nobles led by Purishkevich, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich and Prince Felix Yusupov decided that Rasputin's hold over Alexandra endangered the empire. Their plan was apparently to lure him to the Yusupovs' Moika Palace. Rasputin died there in the early hours of the 17th of December 1916, from three gunshot wounds. One was a close-range shot to the forehead. Beyond that, little is certain. Douglas Smith writes that "what really happened at the Yusupov home on the 17th of December will never be known".

  The version told most often comes from Yusupov's own memoirs. He says Rasputin arrived shortly after midnight and was taken down to a basement. Yusupov offered tea and cakes laced with cyanide. Rasputin first refused them, then ate them, and to Yusupov's surprise showed no effect. He then asked for Madeira, also poisoned, and drank three glasses without distress.

  At about half past two in the morning, Yusupov went upstairs to the waiting conspirators and took a revolver from Pavlovich. Back in the basement, he told Rasputin he had "better look at the crucifix and say a prayer", and shot him once in the chest. The conspirators drove to Rasputin's apartment, with Sukhotin wearing Rasputin's coat and hat to suggest that he had come home that night.

  According to the memoir, Yusupov returned to the basement to check the body. Suddenly Rasputin leaped up and attacked him. Yusupov broke free with difficulty and fled upstairs. Rasputin followed him into the courtyard, where Purishkevich shot him, and he fell into a snowbank. The conspirators wrapped the body in cloth, drove to the Petrovsky Bridge and dropped it into the Little Nevka river.

  Other stories grew around the night. One unsubstantiated claim put Grand Duchess Tatiana at the scene, disguised as a lieutenant, seeking revenge. The French ambassador Maurice Paléologue repeated the rumor but doubted it.

  In an analysis published on the 100th anniversary of the killing, Dr Carolyn Harris of the University of Toronto found the truth less dramatic than Yusupov's account. Rasputin's daughter recorded that her father avoided sweet food and would not have touched the supposedly poisoned cakes. The official surgeon who examined the body would confirm that doubt.

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• 8. After the River

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  News of the murder traveled fast, even before anyone found a body. Purishkevich spoke openly about it to two soldiers and a policeman who came to look into reports of shots, though he begged them to stay quiet. An investigation began the next morning. That afternoon, the Stock Exchange Gazette reported Rasputin's death "after a party in one of the most aristocratic homes in the center of the city".

  Police began searching the river after two workmen found blood on the railing of the Petrovsky Bridge and a boot on the ice below. Rasputin's body turned up under the ice on the 1st of January in the modern calendar, the 19th of December by the old Russian one. It lay about 200 meters downstream from the bridge. Dmitry Kosorotov, the city's senior autopsy surgeon, examined it. His written report was lost, but he later said the body showed severe trauma. He listed three gunshot wounds, one at close range to the forehead, and a slice wound on the left side. Many injuries, he thought, came after death.

  Kosorotov found one bullet, too deformed and of too common a type to trace. He found no sign of poison. Smith and Fuhrmann both report that he found no water in the lungs, so the tale that Rasputin was thrown into the river alive was wrong.

  Rasputin was buried on the 2nd of January at a small church that Vyrubova had been building at Tsarskoye Selo. Only the imperial family and a few intimates attended. His wife, his mistress and his children were not invited, though his daughters saw the imperial family later that day at Vyrubova's home. He was laid to rest with an icon signed on its back by the four grand duchesses and their mother. The family planned to build a church over the grave.

  That plan never came to pass. Shortly after Nicholas abdicated in March 1917, Alexander Kerensky ordered the body exhumed. Soldiers burned it, so that the grave could not become a rallying point for supporters of the old regime.

  Historians often argue that his scandalous and sinister reputation helped discredit the Tsarist government and hastened the fall of the House of Romanov soon after his death. His daughter Maria, born Matryona Rasputina and living from 1898 to 1977, left for France after the October Revolution and then went to the United States. There she worked as a dancer and then as a lion tamer in a circus.

  His story kept returning to the screen and the radio. Lionel Barrymore played him in the 1932 film Rasputin and the Empress, and Christopher Lee took the role in the 1966 Hammer horror film Rasputin the Mad Monk. In 1978 the German-Caribbean group Boney M. released a popular song bearing only his surname.

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