Tag: Romanovs

Grigori Rasputin V: Sorcerer or Charlatan?

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“Was Gregori Rasputin really an occult mystic who used treacherous sorcery to ingratiate himself to Tsar Nicholas II by performing miracles on and curing the pain of the Tsar’s son? Or was he, no less impressively, a most gifted Counter-Agent who disarmed his country’s most powerful rulers through sheer charisma and manipulative charm?” –asks Adam Lehrer in the Safety Propoganda. 

“No!” say some historians. “Rasputin wasn’t any of those things. He was nothing more than a right time, right place charlatan.” Anytime one accuses another of absolute fraud, deceit or corruption, their first responsibility is to prove that the provocateur knowingly deceived. We can all read the conditions of the Russian empire at the time and see that they were susceptible and vulnerable to a charlatan. We can read through the health conditions of Tsar Nicholas II’s son, Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich, and know that the Romanovs were desperate for a miracle worker to spare him the pain and possible death of hemophilia. We can take one look at Rasputin, the ill-educated peasant from nowhere, Russia and know that if he didn’t do something spectacular, he was doomed to a life of anonymity, but there is ample evidence to suggest that Rasputin believed he had an ability, if not the otherworldly powers, to cure the Tsar’s son. To believe otherwise is to suggest that Rasputin knowingly deceived his family since birth, and the friends and neighbors who surrounded him in the early part of his life. There’s an old line on subterfuge that it’s not really a lie if you believe it. When we say this, we usually do so tongue in cheek, but Rasputin’s bio suggests that he truly believed he had God-like powers? “Christ in miniature,” Rasputin often said when asked to characterize himself. Was he a deceptive person? Did he attempt to deceive the Empress Alexandra, Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich’s mother, to weave a way into the empire, or did he attempt to prove to himself as “The Chosen One!”

At the moment of his birth, Rasputin’s mother believed he was the chosen one, and we can guess that she told him as much on a daily basis throughout his youth. We might cut her some slack for this fantastical notion, seeing as how Rasputin may have been her only child of seven, or eight, to survive childhood. (Evidence suggests she had a daughter who may have also survived for a time.) Anytime a mother has a child, they consider that child special, but in Rasputin’s Serbian village of Polrovskove death among children was so common that the miracle we know as childbirth was increased tenfold in that world of peasants. The idea that Rasputin was special may have grown in her mind as he did, until she was convinced that Grigori was a gift from God, and she eventually made a crossover to the idea that her son was the chosen one. 

What would we think if our mother told us we were God’s messenger throughout our youth? What if she bolstered her claim by telling us that at the moment we were born a rare celestial event occurred to mark the occasion of our birth. “A shooting star of such magnitude that had always been taken by the God-fearing muzhiks as an omen of some momentous event,” she said.

What if everyone we knew and loved growing up believed, as our mother did, that we were gifted with the ability to read minds, and/or “see things that others could not”. Rasputin grew up in a climate where everyone he encountered on a daily basis, and presumably throughout his life, believed he had divine powers. If we marinated in the thoughts of our own divine nature throughout our youth, how many of us would end our believing it? Our parents are powerful influences on our lives, and how we think, but as we age, we begin to see the errors of their ways. If Rasputin went through this natural course of maturation, his friends and neighbors in Polrovskove only bolstered his mother’s claims. Rasputin was also involved in a death-defying accident that took the life of his cousin. He spent years wondering aloud why he was spared and his cousin wasn’t. His conclusion, one which we can assume that his friends and family encouraged, was that divine intervention spare him, so he could go out and spread God’s message. 

When historians say Rasputin fell into a right place, right time era, they’re talking about an era that followed executions for anyone who attempted the heretical notions Rasputin espoused to a time when minds were just beginning to open up to the idea that man could manipulate his surroundings for the purpose of massive technological advancement. Those from the era also learned, mostly secondhand, of some of the advancements made in medicine that suggested man could wield God-like powers over life and death in a manner deemed heretical in previous eras. The early 20th century Russian citizen was likely more amenable than ever before to the belief that man could now manipulate the bridge between life and death, and generally make life better for his fellow man without necessarily being a heretic. Based on that, we could say that Rasputin was a right time, right place charlatan, or we could say he, more than any other, took advantage of this window in time. Those who call him a charlatan, however, must still address the notion that Rasputin knew he wasn’t the chosen one, and that he was lying to the vulnerable, desperate Empress Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix of Hesse) to convince her that he was. 

How did Rasputin discover that Tsar Nicholas II’s son, Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich was sick? The Russian empire, in the era of the Romanovs rule, was a vault. No state secrets, or leaks, found their way out, and the illness of the Tsarevich was one of the most guarded secrets. The Romanovs had nothing to gain by announcing their only male heir’s illness and everything to lose. Through the connections he made, as a man “known to possess the ability to heal through prayer” Rasputin was called upon to heal the Tsarevich by Anna Vyrubova, the empress’s best friend. Did Rasputin struggle with this newfound information, did he consider it his patriotic duty to try to save the young heir to the throne, or did he see this as an opportunity to finally prove himself to himself? If he failed to convince his family, friends and neighbors of his special powers, there was nothing lost. If he was a fraud, and he knew it, he would surely have a list of excuses he could use to explain it. If he failed the Empress, the embarrassment of trusting the health of her only begotten son to a lowly peasant could lead the Empire to try to silence any fallout by imprisoning Rasputin or executing him, and needless to say, this empire had no moral qualms executing peasants. Failing the empire, at the very least, would ultimately reveal to Rasputin and everyone else in the empire that he was a fraud and a charlatan. This presumed struggle goes to the heart of this article, because Rasputin eagerly accepted the invitation to try to heal Alexei. 

The arguments about what Rasputin did to eventually calm the conditions of Alexei Nikolaevich are wide and varied, but most historians agree that Alexei was never cured of his case of hemophilia, because there is no cure. To this date, modern medicine has yet to find a cure. Alexei had hemophilia the day he was born, and he had it when he was murdered, a month before his fourteenth birthday. The very idea that he almost made it to fourteen, and he could’ve lived well beyond that, had he not been murdered, was viewed as one of a series of Rasputin’s miracles. The fact that Alexei was relieved of his pain, and many of the symptoms of hemophilia, was also viewed as one of Rasputins’ miracles.

Some argue that Rasputin may have been so familiar with hemophilia that he knew certain techniques he could use to help calm the Tsarevich down, and thus give the illusion that he was cured. We still consider it something of a miracle that our body often manages to heal itself. Some call it the power of the mind, others call it the power of prayer, and still others call it the mysterious power of the miraculous machines in the human body to heal itself. No matter what we believe, it appears that in some cases, if our mind believes we are being cured, it can go a long way to encouraging us that we are. 

No matter the arguments, details, and conclusions, Rasputin did it. Rasputin did what the most brilliant minds of medicine in Russia, in the early 20th century, could not, and when he advised Alexandra on how to maintain Alexei’s health, and that advice proved successful, Alexandra fell under Rasputin’s spell. She thought he, more than any of the other men of medicine in the empire, could cure her son of a malady to which her side of the family was genetically susceptible. The idea that she believed Rasputin could cure her son, led her to convince her son of it, and that presumably led Alexei calming to the point that his hemophilia was not as debilitating as it would’ve been otherwise. So, Rasputin did help provide what Alexandra considered a miracle, but our modern understanding of the relationship between body and mind suggests that it was not as mystical or unprecedented as Alexandra and those who love the narrative want us to believe.

The interesting nugget here, and the import of this story, is that Alexandra may have followed Rasputin’s advice on how to cure her son so often that she may have also followed his other advice on greater matters of the Russian Empire, and she may have whispered that same advice into Tsar Nicholas II’s ear as if it were her own. 

“What was he?” “Who was he?” “What exactly did he do to spare the life of the Tsarevich?” “Was he the most gifted sorcerer the world has ever known?” How great was his influence over Alexandra? Reports suggest he had no influence over Nicholas II, but Alexandra did. Did Rasputin whisper things in Alexandra’s ear that she whispered into Nicholas II’s, as if they were her own ideas. British intelligence believed this, and some suggest that the Britain commissioned Rasputin’s murder, because they feared his influence in the Romanov Empire might prevent Russian entry into World War I?

We’ll probably never know the truth of any of this, because the Romanovs had a situation in their empire where they were able to control their narrative. They had very little in the way of leaks, and no one from the empire wrote a tell-all after the empire collapsed to detail what really happened within the confines of its walls. It was a situation modern politicians would salivate over, but historians, not so much. As a result of the tight Romanov ship, most of the literature written about this Russian era and the relationship between Rasputin and the Romanovs involves a great deal speculation. That’s the fun part for the rest of us, because we can use the base details of what happened and submit our own subjective beliefs into the story for fantastic and fantastical conclusions. One of us can speculate that Grigori Rasputin was a sorcerer with otherworldly powers, another can say he was an absolute charlatan, and the rest of us can say that the man landed in the perfect time and place for nature of his actions are almost impossible to prove or disprove. The one thing we can state without fear of too much refutation, is if we took all of these ingredients and threw them into a big stew of rhetorical discussion, is that Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was one of the most enigmatic figures in world history.   

 

Rasputin IV: Why is Rasputin Still Famous?

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What is it about a relatively simple man named Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin that still captivates us? Historians who look deep into history are as fascinated with him as novices who read history for entertainment value. Why would a book about a Russian peasant who died over 100 years ago attract our eye in the halls of thousands of books in American bookstores or libraries? Why would my pre-teen nephew know an eye-popping amount of information on a relatively unimportant historical figure born 100 years before he was, and why would he want to know more? 

The idea that we would still be talking about a dirty, ill-mannered, and poorly educated peasant from the Siberian village of Pokrovsho in the Tyunsky Uyezd of Tobolsk Governate (or for the rest of you the Yarkovsky District of Tyumen Oblast) would’ve shocked the millions of people who lived through early 20th century Russia with Rasputin. The Russian citizenry probably assumed we’d be talking about one of their leaders, one of their military heroes, their writers, philosophers, or even their murderers, but this lowly peasant wasn’t any of those. Yet, his story, his legacy, continues to intrigue movie makers, those who write bios, news magazine pieces, web articles, and blogs over 100 years after some Russian nobleman, and the richest man in Russia, murdered Rasputin on Dec. 30, 1916.

Is it all about those eyes? We can talk about intrigue he created in the Russian Empire, the power of influence that he allegedly wielded on the Tsar’s wife, after allegedly healing her son of hemophilia, or the legend of the “man who wouldn’t die”, but we learn the breadth of that information after the initial intrigue. Why have I read so much about him, why do I watch bios on him, why do I write about him, and why did you click on this article about him? Why do we want to learn about him, and why do we continue to want to learn more? 

The initial intrigue, we can only guess, is those eyes. Rasputin had long, famously unwashed hair, a long beard, and a couple of penetrating, spooky, and some might say creepy eyes. Many of us have what others might call “nice” eyes, many of us have eyes some consider striking, but how many of us have eyes that lead songwriters to write songs? Who cares what he looked like, we might say, good looking people with striking features litter history. I wasn’t drawn to learn more about Rasputin, because he was good looking, or he had unusual features. Then why were you? 

Rasputin Brought Down an Empire

A story about a relatively unknown citizen participated in the fall of an empire would be noteworthy regardless the circumstances. The idea that the man who did it was a lowly, ill-mannered, poorly educated peasant in the highly structured class structure of early 1900’s Russia is one of the primary reasons we’re still fascinated with Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin.

For a variety of reasons, there will always be gaps between the classes. There are gaps in every country and every era, but the gaps we have now don’t even compare to the cultures and societies of the early 1900’s and before. Russia’s class structure was so entrenched, in the early 1900’s, that if a peasant received an education, it was considered pointless. The pre-WWI Russian political structures, their religious and social values, and various legal codes and rules made upward mobility in the classes all but impossible. If a Russian teacher were caught teaching peasants that they could be anything they wanted to be, the parents of those students probably would’ve complained that the teacher was engaging in a sick, cruel joke. The idea that a commoner, much less a peasant, might climb so far up the ladder to one-day advise the ruling family of the empire was likely so far-fetched that no Russians considered it even a remote possibility.

While many historians argue about the actual level of influence the peasant we now know as Rasputin exerted on the Romanovs, some of them argue that Rasputin’s murder might have precipitated the fall of the Romanov Empire. Whether it was a direct result of Rasputin’s influence, his murder, or some sort of tangential influence, I believe the correlation derived from what I call The Rasputin Paradox.

The Rasputin Paradox occurs when a team uses a scapegoat to explain their lack of success. When the leaders of an enterprise build, or take it over, they believe they are the ones who can lead it to success. When they fail, they might not view one individual responsible for that failure a scapegoat in the purest sense of the word, but they might be susceptible to the belief that if they were able to remove that person it might their last impediment to success. What often happens, shortly after they remove this person, is that they find themselves exposed to blame for anything that goes awry in the aftermath. The leaders might attempt to convince some team members, and themselves, that the scapegoats’ coattails can still be found in the accounting figures, the blame eventually falls on them when there are no more scapegoats.

In the relationship between the Romanovs, Rasputin, and the citizens of Russia, it’s vital to note that the Romanovs may not have ever considered Rasputin a scapegoat in the purest sense. They probably assumed they were doing just fine. The citizens didn’t, and they reportedly placed an inordinate amount of blame for the ineptitude of the empire on Rasputin. After his murder, however, their perception of glaring failure on the part of the Russian Empire focused squarely on the Romanovs, and it eventually led to their bloody overthrow in a February revolution that started less than two months after Rasputin’s murder.

Rasputin was a Piece of Junk who Influenced an Empire

Even by the hierarchical standards of early 1900’s Russia, in which they viewed peasants as below vermin, Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was a slob. He was an ill-mannered poorly educated drunk who stunk. We’ve all met men who have no regard for standards of politeness, but most of them find a way to conceal their ignorant, belligerent ways around women. The impolite might not revere women the way most of us do, but they’re usually respectful in their company, especially if that woman exhibits impressive levels of refinement. No matter how one chooses to characterize refinement, chivalry, or manners, historians suggest Rasputin was likely the exact opposite. Russians reviled him as a sexual deviant. They suggest that he was a little more than a con man who used women to make political connections and gain influence.

When these women recommended Rasputin to the empire, they informed the court that he had the otherworldly powers necessary to help the Romanovs cure their son of hemophilia. When the Romanovs agreed to see him, his appearance before the court must have shocked them. Did they find some way to overlook his characteristics for the presumed benefit of their son, or did his appearance, and the rumors of his demeanor, lead them to presume he was some sort of conduit to otherworldly powers? When the well-mannered, more attractive men, schooled in refined ways stood before the court, detailing the ways they could help Alexei Romanov, the Romanovs were likely more skeptical. They probably heard it all before. What was Rasputin’s appeal? He had a history of “curing” people long before he stood before the Romanovs, and that word-of-mouth surely made it to Alexandra and Nicholas before the interview, but that likely didn’t prepare them for the appearance of this man. When he appeared before them, they likely fell prey to the very human belief that a person who eschews common pleasantries and niceties is more mysterious and thus, more in tune with spiritual and less conventional means of healing. (Most historians suggest that Nicholas never fell under Rasputin’s spell, but Alexandra did.)  

Another element that aided Rasputin’s rise was that the Romanovs were desperate to end the suffering of their child’s pain, and they exhausted the conventional means of the more conventional men of medicine with far more education. Were they so desperate that they were willing to try anything, or were they more susceptible to what they considered the more spiritual means that Rasputin appeared to fulfill? Whatever the case was, Rasputin managed to use this speculation, based on his appearance, to gain more influence in the Russian Empire, and he used it to achieve a place in history for which Russian peasants didn’t even bother dreaming.

His Appearance

“Those eyes,” is the first and last thing we say when we see a photo of Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin. In the portraits we have of Rasputin, we see the long, famously unwashed and unkempt hair, and in some pictures we see that he didn’t tend to his beard too well either. These are pictures, portraying (we assume) Rasputin looking his best, or at least after he’s had a chance to spruce up a bit. This begs the question, what did he look like when he wasn’t saying “cheese!”? We might also ask if his refusal to adhere to hygienic norms added to an almost bestial lore. If that’s the case how many unkempt historical figures were never mentioned again in history? How many of Rasputin’s fellow peasants didn’t or couldn’t uphold the beauty standard of modern times? How many different outfits did peasants of the era have? How many cleaning products did they own? How many of them lived most of their lives in conditions we might consider unsanitary, filthy, and unlivable conditions? If part of Rasputin’s allure is looks, how did he manage to rise above the peasants he grew up around? Was he a naturally attractive man, or is it all about the eyes? Some have eyes that observers call nice. “He has nice eyes.” Others have “striking eyes”, but there is something noteworthy, striking, and unusual going on in Rasputin’s eyes. We don’t know exactly what we’re seeing when we look into those eyes, but we can’t look away. No matter how we look at those eyes, we cannot walk away without thinking that the man had a powerful gaze.

We can feel the power of those eyes, just looking at them. A cheap, con man, hypnotist might pay good money to attain those eyes. We can only imagine how Russian citizens must have reacted under their spell, but the photos we now have of Rasputin are black and white. If those eyes were as coal black as they appear in black and white photos, we might almost feel soothed by the certain consistent definition they appear to have. The idea that they were blue, which some describe as an “intensely, cold blue”, as depicted in the colorized version below, must have proved so unsettling that a part of Rasputin’s purported charm and charisma probably came from reassuring those who saw “those eyes” that he meant them no harm.

We all act to enhance and counteract our physical characteristics, and Rasputin might have developed a soothing tone to counteract the imaginations of the spiritual and easily spooked villagers he knew. Coupled with the eyes, we have the long hair, the infamous beard, and overall unkempt appearance, and we assume we have an appearance trapped somewhere between our caricatures of Jesus of Nazareth and Satan. If the eyes were as hypnotic as some suggest, we can imagine that he would be the most memorable person those of the era ever met in any crowd or gathering. Couple his unsettling appearance, with his much talked and charm and charisma, and the rumored size of his member, and we have a figure who left such a profound mark on history that we’re still talking about him 100 years after his death.          

He Cured a Child of Hemophilia

As stated in the Rasputin II: A Miracle at Spala article, Rasputin never “cured” the tsar’s son Alexei. Alexei Romanov had hemophilia the day he was born, and he died with it. What is not in dispute is the fact that Rasputin temporarily ended the suffering Alexei experienced as a result of the temporary, painful symptoms of hemophilia. How Rasputin accomplished this is the subject of much speculation. (Some suggest Rasputin used horse-whispering techniques to soothe the boy, some say he understood the healing powers of magnetism, and others suggest he knew more about medicine than most of his peers, including the medical professionals of his era).

No matter what he did, the consensus at the time suggests he did soothe the boy into temporary health. Some historians suggest that Rasputin simply called for Alexei’s doctors to stop giving him aspirin, an agent of blood thinning, as we now know. Did Rasputin know more about aspirin than Alexei’s team of doctors, or did he happen upon someone who just happened to theorize that aspirin thins the blood, and Rasputin happened to witness the results that no other medical professional in his era knew?

As a lowly peasant, Rasputin also had less to lose than the medical professionals who were lining up to be a close medical advisor to the Romanovs. If he failed, he would go back to living the life he always knew, as a peasant. Did he step in and say something as simple as, “Why don’t we try something different?” That might seem so simple, but we can guess that the medical professionals didn’t want to make all of their other colleagues look bad, or they simply followed the “proper diagnosis” of hemophilia by giving Alexei aspirin. Our modern minds suggest this is less a compliment to Rasputin’s ability and/or know how and more a critique of the medical knowledge of the era. If this speculation is true, we might regard Rasputin as nothing more than a right-time, right place charlatan who took advantage of the lack of knowledge in his era to become a close advisor of the tsarina Alexandra Romanov. In light of this theory, we might even consider the “healing” of Alexei a footnote in history.

Historians debate what Rasputin actually did to cure Alexei, but what is not in debate is that everyone from Alexandra on down regarded what Rasputin did was amazing, at the very least, and miraculous at most. This poorly educated peasant essentially saved the empire, in their minds, by saving the heir to the crown, and mother Russia was so grateful that they (Alexandra specifically) awarded him the role of close advisor.

He would use this seat to not only advise Alexandra on how to treat Alexei’s ailments, but some believe he fostered such a quality relationship with her that he began advising her on matters of state. Some believe she would then whisper such advice to Tsar Nicholas II. When the tsar then went to join his fellow countrymen in battle, the tsarina was left in charge, and some believe Rasputin’s influence grew in the tsar’s absence. 

Some, including the British Secret Intelligence Service, believed that Rasputin’s influence on Alexandra, and thus Nicholas, was so profound that it might have precipitated Russia withdrawing forces in WWI. They believed that Rasputin, for all of his folklore, was actually something of a pacifist, and that he was advising the empire to withdraw its forces from World War I. This conspiracy theory suggests that Britain needed Germany concentrating at least some of their forces on Russia, until the United States would enter the war. This theory suggest that the British Secret Intelligence Service was so worried about Rasputin’s influence on the empire that they might have encouraged, devised, participated in, or financially funded the murder of Rasputin. The author of this theory, Joseph T. Fuhrman, further states that “Britain’s Military Intelligence, Section Six, (MI6), [recently] promised to publish its files on Rasputin’s murder, but it decided to delay it, we can assume, to avoid cooled relations between Moscow and London.”

Rasputin’s Assassination

“They tried poisoning him, shooting him and drowning him,” my History teacher said, “but Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was a man who would not die.” The various stories of the assaults on Rasputin suggest that a prostitute without a nose stabbed him, and that he survived, even though his blood loss was considerable, and his internal organs allegedly fell out.

Two years after the prostitute stabbed him, a team of nobles led by Felix Yusupov, the richest man in Russia, attempted to lace his tea and cakes with cyanide to assassinate him. When Rasputin showed no signs of succumbing to the cyanide, they upped the dose they put it in his wine. When that didn’t produce immediate results, they tried stabbing him, and then they tried shooting him. They shot at him five times, and three of those shots hit. He was not dead at this point, allegedly, so they tried clubbing him to death. Convinced that he was finally deceased, the team of assassins rolled him up in a carpet and threw him in the Malaya Nekva river. Some speculate that he was not dead when he hit the water, and that he drowned or died of hypothermia. My History teacher added to this myth stating that “The assassins secured Rasputin in this carpet with chains connected to concrete blocks that they hoped would bound him to the bottom of the river.” The History teacher added that when Russian officials were finally able to crack through the frozen Malaya Nekva river to retrieve the body, they found the carpet, the cinder blocks, and the chains, but they found no body.

“Is he alive today?” one of my fellow students asked.   

“They never found a body,” our teacher answered.

We didn’t even question the details, because who would? Our teacher was a learned man in a seat of authority, and it was a fantastic tale. Who cares if it’s 100% true or not. Historians suggest that it might be quite a stretch to say that that tale is true. They all agree that a prostitute with no nose stabbed him, but they suggest that it’s debatable that his internal organs fell out. They agree that a team of assassins gathered to poison, stab, and shoot him. They agree that the nobles shot at him, five times, and three hit. The historical accounts we’ve read suggest that the final shot, the one delivered execution style to the forehead, killed Rasputin. The autopsy report, these reports say, confirm that. The historians suggest that it’s plausible, due to the dose of cyanide and the locations of most of the bullets on Rasputin’s body, that any mere mortal could’ve survived in the short-term, but that Rasputin would’ve eventually succumbed to them. They suggest that when Rasputin didn’t die immediately, the team of assassins panicked. They may have assumed that Rasputin’s much-speculated supernatural powers kept him alive through all that. Historians speculate that much of what followed Rasputin’s demise, including the clubbing and chaining him to the bottom of the river was based on irrational fears that led the assassins to some literal measures of overkill. Who cares, though, the myth of the man who wouldn’t die, and couldn’t be killed, fascinates us so much that it comprises much of the reason we’re still reading and writing about him over 100 years after his murder.

The myth of the man who wouldn’t die probably influenced the writers of Friday the 13th, Halloween, and Nightmare on Elm Street. For many of us the details of how Rasputin lived pale in comparison to the manner in which he was killed. He was the original Man Who Wouldn’t Die. As discussed throughout this article and Rasputin III: The Murder of Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, there is speculation, interpretation of eyewitness accounts, and myths surrounding Rasputin’s. There are some facts, such as those detailed in the autopsy report, and official reports, but are those facts? We might never know for sure, but the one thing we do know is most great story tellers, like my History teacher, don’t let facts get in the way of a great story.

The Myth

Some might say the folklore surrounding the tale of “the man who wouldn’t die” is the number one reason the fascination surrounding Rasputin might never end, but I believe it is a combination of all of the above. If, for example, Rasputin managed to leap through the strict class structure of his culture to the roles of advisor to the empire and Holy Fool, he saved the life of the tsar’s son, and he escaped death a couple of times, but he looked like Jimmy Carter, it might have affected his historical value. The fact that not only are the facts of Grigori Rasputin’s story a little spooky, but he looked creepy and spooky ups his historical value exponentially.  

The lore of Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin is also rife with speculation, as the Russian Empire, at the time of Romanov rule, was so mired in secrecy that we will never know the truth of what happened during these years. As opposed to most empires of similar size and scope, the Romanov was extremely successful in keeping a tight lid on leaks, and the speculation based on eye-witness accounts is as dubious as eye-witness accounts are. This only invites speculation, folklore, myths and conspiracy theories fill the gaps. Yet, we do have to sympathize with the Romanovs for how damaging would it be for them to release information that when the Romanovs finally produced a male heir that he was constantly on the verge of death, until a “lower than vermin” peasant came along and “cured” him. It would do nothing but damage their cause to publicly admit, or historically record that the crown, or the court, received advice from a peasant on state matters. When we gather all of the secondhand information together, and we couple it with the notion that some of the information we have about Rasputin, the Romanovs, and their relationships was likely spread by the regime that took over after the revolution to further advance their cause, and their agenda further complicates any attempts at separating fact from fiction. Even if one tenth of these tales are true, they’re so wild and fascinating that we’ve been passing it down for over 100 years, and those who hear these stories will probably be passing them on for 100 more.  

This article is a culmination of the first three articles. For a more detailed account of the life of Rasputin, you might enjoy these articles: Part I: Rasputin Rises, Part II: A Miracle at Spala, and Part III: The Murder of Rasputin.

Rasputin III: The Murder of Rasputin

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“They stabbed him, poisoned him, beat him, shot him five times, and they even tried drowning him,” our History teacher said to start class, “yet Grigori Rasputin, also known as the Mad Monk, refused to die.”

That intro silenced an otherwise rowdy class of sixteen-year-old boys. He was a decent teacher for most of the semester, but he never showed such dramatic flair before this presentation. The pause that followed showed us all how effective a pause can be in an oral presentation, and he followed it up with a thorough rundown of the Russian Empire. I don’t remember anything he said after that intro, I don’t think anyone did, but that intro reached us. No one was whispering jokes to one another, sitting with glazed eyes, or even doodling while he spoke. We were on the edge of our seats awaiting the dramatic conclusion to the cinematic, “The Man who Couldn’t be Killed” intro.

We had no idea that World History could be this compelling. Some of us realized, for the first time, that in the hands of a gifted storyteller, the stories of history could be riveting. As soon as our teacher concluded with the bullet points of this chapter in World History, he returned to the tale of “The Man who Couldn’t be Killed”, and his conclusion did not disappoint.

“After Rasputin’s assassins believed they finally murdered Grigori Rasputin, they rolled his body up in a carpet. They tied this carpet up with chains, connected to concrete blocks that they hoped would bound him to the bottom of the Malaya Nekva River when they threw him in. Due to the weather, Russian officials were not able to search the river for the body for some time. When they were finally able to search it, they found the carpet, the cinder blocks, and the chains, but they found no body.” “Is he alive today?” one of my fellow students asked.    “They never found a body,” our teacher answered.
Soon after he dropped that line on us, the silence of the sixteen-year-olds ended. Some of us looked at each other with “Holy Crud!” faces on, but the rest of us immediately began speculating about what happened. Is he dead? How could he not be, it’s been over 100 years? Well, what if he was evil incarnate? “You can’t kill something that was never alive,” someone said to fuel the fire. Was this The Man who Couldn’t be Killed theme the real life influence for Dracula, Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street? As horrifying as those movies were, this thing really happened, and we didn’t hear about it from some crackpot on a late night radio show. We heard this from an esteemed World History teacher. “If you doubt me,” we would later tell our friends, “take it up with my History teacher.” Most teachers will try to lower the volume in their classroom in the aftermath. He didn’t. He knew he just gave birth to some History geeks. He sat back and enjoyed the looks on our faces, the excited tones of our discussion, and all of the other results of his pitch-perfect presentation on Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, “The Man who Couldn’t be Killed”.

The Truth of Raputin’s Murder

“The truth of Rasputin’s murder,” Rasputin: The Untold Story author Joseph T. Fuhrman suggests, “was not as amazing as the mythology that has surrounded it.”

RasputinWhile it may be true that all of the attempts to kill Rasputin occurred in the manner our History teacher detailed, it is not true, as our History teacher’s verbal commas suggest, that they all occurred on separate occasions.

It is true that Rasputin was stabbed on one occasion, by a prostitute without a nose, but that did not prove fatal. He was shot at five times in the course of one night by a team of nobles led by Felix Yusupov, the richest man in Russia, but two of those shots missed, and two of them penetrated locations that would not prove immediately fatal to any other mortal. It is also true that the conspirators, who would take his life on this fatal night, tried to poison Rasputin, by lacing his tea and cake with cyanide, but it’s conceivable that they failed give him a lethal amount of the poison. When Rasputin showed no signs of succumbing to the cyanide, they upped the dose they put it in his wine. As with every other poison, varying factors can cause cyanide to act differently. The effect of cyanide on a person is so relative and unpredictable that it can cause anywhere from hours to days to take effect. We can imagine that once the assassins began trying to put their plan into effect, and it did not produce immediate results, they panicked. They began shooting Rasputin, and he did survive, but it wasn’t the real life Freddy Krueger/Michael Meyers-style resurrection my classmates and I imagined. It was more about the location of the shots in Rasputin’s body, than anything supernatural, or mystical. One of the bullets, Fuhrmann notes –citing autopsies performed on Rasputin’s body– passed through Rasputin’s stomach and liver, and another passed through his kidney. Neither of those bullets proved immediately fatal, as they wouldn’t have on any other mere mortal, but they would’ve … given enough time.

In the intervening minutes that occurred after the first shot –that went through his stomach and liver– Rasputin did manage to regain his feet and make a move on his assailant, but all Rasputin ended up doing, was grabbing his assailant’s shoulder and tearing an epaulet off his uniform. He did not, as some speculate, reach up and begin choking his assailant. He grabbed his assailant’s shoulder, tore the epaulet off, began grumbling the assailant’s name, and fled into the snowy night.

While attempting to flee, Rasputin was shot at four more times, two missed, one struck him in the back and traveled through the kidney, and he dropped. The other, the fifth and fatal shot, went through his forehead. Some have it that that final shot occurred from a distance, but the autopsies suggest it was delivered execution-style, due to the gun residue located at the entry point on Rasputin’s forehead. Some autopsies suggest that there was water in Rasputin’s lungs to suggest that he was alive when he hit the water, as his assailants attempted to drown him after the shooting. Fuhrmann suggests that the greater evidence disputes that notion and suggests that Rasputin was, in fact, dead before he hit the water. 

As for my History teacher suggesting that they tried beating him to death, the evidence derived from the post-mortem examination suggest that the bumps and bruises Rasputin received all occurred as a result of the beating his body received after death. The execution-style gun blast to the forehead ended the story of Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, but the mythology surrounding the man was just beginning. 

The shock we experience when we hear how difficult it was to kill Rasputin speaks to our fears of how easy we think it is to kill a person. Our modern movies and TV shows leave the impression that when the good guy shoots at a bad guy, the bullet always hits, and it almost always finds their most delicate and vulnerable locations. That bad guy is then dead within milliseconds. The good guys then run behind bunkers, amid a flurry of bad guy bullets unharmed. The good guys then reload and take out eight more with eight shots. This happens so often, in the movies and TV, that we’re almost conditioned to believe that good guys are hard to kill and bad guys aren’t. When a story, such as Rasputin’s, show that a bad guy displays that they are just as capable of surviving an errant shot, we immediately assign supernatural qualities to them.  

Our teacher also told us that Rasputin’s presumed dead body was thrown in the water, with a stone tied to him, and that the Russians dragged the lake and found the ropes and the stone, but they never found Rasputin’s body. This is not true, as it turns out, but it added a necessary ingredient to the “he who never lives can never die” narrative our History teacher was building. I still don’t know if my teacher was such a great storyteller that he wanted to avoid the facts of his narrative, or if he believed what he was telling us, but the captivating details he laid out, in the manner he did, have led me to be almost obsessed with this story ever since.

To those of us who love great stories, and the mythology that grows around them, it was disappointing to learn that Rasputin’s body was as vulnerable to foreign agents as anyone else’s. We consider it much more interesting to speculate about the differences between history’s good guys, and bad guys, and how history’s bad guys escape that which the rest of us are more susceptible. On a certain level, we all know that none of this is true, but it’s more interesting, and fun, to speculate and mythologize an otherwise normal, albeit brutal tale regarding one’s demise by leaving out key details.

The Parables of History

“Those who don’t study history, are doomed to repeat it,” George Santayana said to give history teachers a gift that keeps on giving. 

“All right, but I wouldn’t have fallen for that,” a cynical student of history might say, when learning of Santayana’s quote, in conjunction with some of history’s greatest failings. They might use this mindset in response to the Romanovs’ involvement with Rasputin. “We’re not as hyper-religious as those in the Russian Empire were at the turn of the century, so we’re not going to be as vulnerable to a charlatan who states that he knows scripture backwards and forwards, who states he has God’s ear, and thus gains a Svengali-like hold on the minds of the citizens.”

“As opposed to the messages in modern media, history is replete with charlatans, both religious and non,” that History teacher might respond. “It’s also replete with victims who fail to learn from the mistakes made in history and proceed to repeat the same mistakes when the next charlatan comes along with a different set of promises of something bigger and better. If your takeaway from this lesson is that a charlatan follows a uniform code of conduct, or that you can locate a charlatan by spotting a cross in their ensemble, you’re more likely to become one of history’s next victims.”

“How could they have been so stupid?” will still be on the lips, and in the minds, of these cynical students reading through the history of the Romanov Empire, just as it will be when they learn of the lead up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Now that we know the outcome, we can’t help but feel superior to those who ignored, or misread, the tea leaves that led up to one of the great deceptions in history.

Are we superior now, after learning history’s lessons, or will future students of history be shaking their heads, and condemning our generation, for missing all of the undeniable signs of inevitability that led to the terrorist attack on 9/11/01? “How did your generation’s leaders fall for all that?” these future students may ask. “There were so many signs. How could they have been so stupid?”

“All I can tell you,” we may say to that member of another generation studying our history, “is that you have the advantage of hindsight. You weren’t there.”

Other than the rise to influence that Grigori Rasputin attained in the Russian Empire, and the healing of Alexis Romanov at the miracle at Spala, Rasputin’s name is etched into history by the manner in which he was murdered, and the mythology that surrounds it.

The Mythology of the Mad Monk

The lone mythology of the murder of the “Mad Monk” that Fuhrmann willingly entertains is the idea that the British Secret Intelligence Service (the BSIS) either organized the plot to kill Rasputin, or they encouraged it. He states that what lends this speculation plausibility is the idea that Britain may have believed that Rasputin was influencing Russian Tsar Nicholas II to end Russia’s participation in World War I (WWI).

“Rasputin was not doing this,” Fuhrmann writes, “but Britain may not have known this, and Britain needed [WWI adversary] Germany concentrating at least some of their forces on Russia, until the United States would enter the war.” Fuhrmann further states that “Britain’s Military Intelligence, Section Six, [MI6], promised to publish its files on Rasputin’s murder, but it decided to delay it, we can assume, to avoid cooled relations between Moscow and London.”

Those who portray Rasputin as a towering figure that loomed over the Russian Empire may be putting too much weight in the characterizations put forth by Rasputin fans, and those who seek to characterize the man as a monster for the benefit of their monster stories.

In our mind’s eye, we project Rasputin as a looming figure 6’5” in height with broad shoulders, but objective reports state that Rasputin was 5’9” and relatively thin. We might also project some scintillating and overpowering intellect with the Svengali-like powers of manipulation to Rasputin, but while reports suggest he was not an illiterate peasant his whole life, he died having never achieved what observers would call a well-educated background, even for his era. Those same reporters concede that he did make the most of that limited education however.

Romanticized notions suggest that Rasputin had an artist’s disregard for earthly possessions, and that he had no need for status. Secondhand reports suggest that he not only accepted gifts from the Romanovs and their loyalists, but he showed them off with child-like glee. Witnesses characterized this glee as similar to that which a dog may display after receiving treats for performing tricks, and like that dog Rasputin failed to see that the treats were laced with unintended condescension.

These attempts at objective reporting, also suggest that if Rasputin ever towered over the Russian Empire, in the manner some historians suggest, it was dealt a hefty blow when the girl without a nose stabbed him. Favorable renditions claim that Rasputin recovered quickly, and they leave it at that to further the mythology surrounding him. Rasputin did recover physically, but it took a considerable amount of time during which Rasputin could be found wounded, sick, and frail. Mentally, they suggest, he was so wounded by the attack that he was paranoid from that point forward. In that state of mind, these reports suggest, he lost whatever influence he may have had at one time. Even if all of these objective reports are true, it could still be stated that Rasputin achieved a position that was light years above the station his friends and family in Pokrovskoye ever knew.

The Politics of Grigori Rasputin

Reflecting on the life of Grigori Rasputin, some historians suggest that he was nothing more than a “right place, right time” opportunist who wasn’t as proactive in shaping his story as others suggest. Fuhrmann refutes that, to some degree, by writing that Rasputin “exhibited a politician’s ability to make connections,” and that he was unusually adept at choosing those connections that would prove most conducive to advancing him into an influential position.

He also managed to persuade those in power, in a political manner, to change his name from Rasputin to Rasputin-Novyi, or “New Rasputin”. The modus operandi for doing this, according to Fuhrmann, was that the name Rasputin carried some negative connotations within the Russian Empire of the day. Rasputin further managed, as some “more adept” modern politicians have done, to persuade those in the Empire to deem it “unethical” for anyone to use his true name. Rasputin later stated that it was never his idea to change his name, but Fuhrmann states that the name change was made as a result of Rasputin’s petition to Tsar Nicholas II. Rasputin also managed to have the Tsarista Alexandra refer to Rasputin, in the letters she wrote of him, with a capital ‘H’ on the pronoun him, a convention of the English language most reserve only for God. Thus, it could be said, Rasputin did have some hand in manipulating the legacy we know today, in that he knew how to manipulate his perception in ways the modern culture will when they attempt to soften perceptions of criminals and terrorists with more pleasing terms, even if those calculated manipulations tend to appear inconsequential at the time.

“If I die, or you abandon me,” Rasputin is reported to have told Nicholas II, “you will lose your son, and your crown in six months.” 

This has been regarded as an ominous prophecy by Rasputin, based on the fact that the Romanov rule would end seventy-five days after Rasputin’s murder. If one dissects the timeline, however, they realize that once the one that plagued the empire was out of the way, the excuses for the failures of the ruling family would be gone too, and the Romanovs would then become the center of the focus for any of Russia’s failures.

Rasputin’s Legacy and the Clash of History with Subjectivity

As fascinating as our History teacher’s provocative “The Man who Couldn’t be Killed” intro was, those of us who did our own research on Rasputin in the years that followed learned that speculation and uncertainty looms over just about every event that occurred in the life of Grigori Rasputin, including his death. Interested parties can now read numerous books, watch numerous documentaries on the Bio Channel and Discovery, and learn different perspectives on just about every story told about the man on the internet. Some stories contradict all prior stories and others contradict the contradictions. My personal favorite resource, as should be obvious to the reader at this point, is Joseph T. Fuhrmann’s excellent book Rasputin: The Untold Story. Fuhrman approaches each tale with what I view as detailed, and well-sourced, skepticism that is more measured than the typical contradictory biographer who claims, “Everyone else is wrong, and my book should, heretofore, be regarded as the preeminent source.” Fuhrman chose to synthesize archival sources with published documents, memoirs, and other studies of Rasputin into a single, comprehensive work. Should we regard Rasputin: The Untold Story the preeminent source of all things Rasputin, or is it just another in a long line of books about the man? We don’t know. You don’t know, and I don’t know, but Fuhrman did go to great pains to avoid speculation, and many of what I believe are his fact-based theories are as negative as they are positive. We don’t know how many copies of this book he sold, but we can speculate that a Rasputin: The Mad Monk, the Monster title probably would’ve sold better. Fuhrman chose what I view as a more fact-based approach to answer the questions, was Rasputin truly evil, or was he an innocent pawn used by the monarchy as a scapegoat? How much influence did he have on the Russian empire? Was Rasputin an opportunist who seized upon a vulnerable empire with a level of political savvy that allowed him to manipulate some of the most educated, most influential people of his day as well as any manipulator in history has? Fuhrman’s book on Rasputin does contain salacious material, but it is delivered in a rational manner that does not involve the type of subtext one normally associates with an agenda, a marketing gimmick, or an approach other than the search for truth. Having said that, as Colin Wilson states, we’ll never know if Fuhrman, or anyone else at this point, can know with 100% certitude the facts regarding what Rasputin did or did not do in his involvement with the Russian Monarchy, or his eventual murder.   

“No figure in modern history has provoked such a mass of sensational and unreliable literature as Grigori Rasputin,” writer Colin Wilson states. “More than a hundred books have been written about him, and not a single one can be accepted as a sober presentation of his personality. There is an enormous amount of material on him, and most of it is full of invention or willful inaccuracy. Rasputin’s life, then, is not ‘history’; it is the clash of history with subjectivity.”

Some Rasputin historians suggest that while the Romanovs weren’t successful at much, but one thing they were successful at was keeping state’s secrets secret, and they were so successful that we’ll never know the 100% bona fide, no questions asked, truth about Grigori Rasputin, the Romanovs, or the Russian Empire of that era. Thus, we must come to the conclusion that no matter how interested we are in learning the truth, we’ll never know, but that doesn’t stop us from considering “the truth” we do know as of the most interesting and intoxicating stories in history. It’s so interesting and intoxicating that it trained the focus of a perpetually, and perhaps medically, distracted classroom of raging hormones and testosterone for one day of one year, and gave birth to at least one history aficionado.  

This article is part three of a series of articles on Rasputin, the first two are: Part I: Rasputin Rises and Part II: A Miracle at Spala