Difference between revisions of "Grigori Rasputin" - New World Encyclopedia
m (→Controversy) |
m |
||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
{{Started}}{{Contracted}} | {{Started}}{{Contracted}} | ||
[[Image:Rasputin-PD.jpg|thumb|right|Grigory Rasputin]] | [[Image:Rasputin-PD.jpg|thumb|right|Grigory Rasputin]] | ||
| − | '''Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin,''' | + | '''Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin,''' ({{OldStyleDate|January 22|1869|January 10}}–{{OldStyleDate|December 29|1916|December 16}}) was a [[Russians|Russian]] [[mysticism|mystic]] who influenced the latter days of the [[Russian Tsar]] [[Nicholas II of Russia|Nicholas II]], his wife the [[Tsaritsa]] [[Alexandra of Hesse|Alexandra]], and their only son the [[Tsarevich]] [[Tsarevich Alexei of Russia|Alexei]]. |
Rasputin's influence at court helped to discredit the tsarist government and may have been a factor leading to the fall of the Romanov dynasty in 1917. Contemporary opinions saw Rasputin variously as a saintly mystic, visionary, healer, and prophet, and, on the other side of the coin, as a debauched religious charlatan. Historians may find both to be true, but there is much uncertainty, for accounts of his life have often been based on dubious memoirs, hearsay, and legend. | Rasputin's influence at court helped to discredit the tsarist government and may have been a factor leading to the fall of the Romanov dynasty in 1917. Contemporary opinions saw Rasputin variously as a saintly mystic, visionary, healer, and prophet, and, on the other side of the coin, as a debauched religious charlatan. Historians may find both to be true, but there is much uncertainty, for accounts of his life have often been based on dubious memoirs, hearsay, and legend. | ||
| Line 19: | Line 19: | ||
He also seems to have been involved with the banned [[Christianity|Christian]] sect known as the ''[[Khlysty]]'' ([[flagellant]]s), whose impassioned services, ending in physical exhaustion, were infamous, including rumors that religious and sexual ecstasy were combined in these rituals. Suspicions that Rasputin was one of the ''[[Khlysts]]'' threatened his reputation until the end of his life. According to Rasputin's daughter, Maria, Rasputin did "look into" the [[Khlysty]] sect—but rejected it.<ref>Radzinsky, page 40.</ref> | He also seems to have been involved with the banned [[Christianity|Christian]] sect known as the ''[[Khlysty]]'' ([[flagellant]]s), whose impassioned services, ending in physical exhaustion, were infamous, including rumors that religious and sexual ecstasy were combined in these rituals. Suspicions that Rasputin was one of the ''[[Khlysts]]'' threatened his reputation until the end of his life. According to Rasputin's daughter, Maria, Rasputin did "look into" the [[Khlysty]] sect—but rejected it.<ref>Radzinsky, page 40.</ref> | ||
| − | Rasputin married Praskovia Fyodorovna Dubrovina in 1889, and they had three children, named Dmitri, Varvara, and [[Maria Rasputin|Maria]]. Rasputin also reportedly had a child with another woman. In 1901, he left his home in Pokrovskoye as a ''strannik'' (or [[pilgrim]]) and, during the time of his journeying, traveled to [[Greece]] and [[Jerusalem]]. In 1903, Rasputin arrived in [[Saint Petersburg]], where he gradually gained a reputation as a ''starets'' (holy man) with healing and [[prophet]]ical powers. | + | Rasputin married Praskovia Fyodorovna Dubrovina in 1889, and they had three children, named Dmitri, Varvara, and [[Maria Rasputin|Maria]]. Rasputin also reportedly had a child with another woman. In 1901, he left his home in Pokrovskoye as a ''strannik'' (or [[pilgrim]]) and, during the time of his journeying, mostly on foot. He even traveled to [[Greece]], where he visited the holy monks at [[Mount Athos]], and [[Jerusalem]]. In 1903, Rasputin arrived in [[Saint Petersburg]], where he gradually gained a reputation as a ''starets'' (holy man) with healing and [[prophet]]ical powers. |
===Healer to the Tsarevich=== | ===Healer to the Tsarevich=== | ||
| − | In 1905 Rasputin was | + | In 1905 Rasputin was approached to help the heir apparent, the Tsarevich Alexei, who suffered from a serous case of [[hemophelia]]. Through is [[prayer]] and healing presence, he was indeed able to give the Tsarevich some relief, in spite of the doctors' prediction that the boy would die. Numerous reports indicate that every time the boy had an injury which caused him internal or external bleeding, the Tsaritsa called on Rasputin, and the Tsarevich subsequently got better. |
The Tsar referred to Rasputin as "our friend" and a "holy man," a sign of the trust that the family placed in him. Rasputin had a considerable personal and political influence on Alexandra<ref>{{cite book | last = King| first = George | title = The Last Empress: The Life and Times of Alexandra Feodorovna, Tsarina of Russia | publisher = Replica Books | date = October 2001 | url = http://www.amazon.com/Last-Empress-Alexandra-Feodorovna-Tsarina/dp/0735101043 | isbn = 978-0735101043 }}</ref>, and both the the Tsar and Tsaritsa considered him a [[prophet]]. Eventually, he became a kind of appointment secretary to the royal couple, a situation which caused considerable resentment among the Russian nobility. Alexandra even came to believe that God spoke to her through Rasputin. | The Tsar referred to Rasputin as "our friend" and a "holy man," a sign of the trust that the family placed in him. Rasputin had a considerable personal and political influence on Alexandra<ref>{{cite book | last = King| first = George | title = The Last Empress: The Life and Times of Alexandra Feodorovna, Tsarina of Russia | publisher = Replica Books | date = October 2001 | url = http://www.amazon.com/Last-Empress-Alexandra-Feodorovna-Tsarina/dp/0735101043 | isbn = 978-0735101043 }}</ref>, and both the the Tsar and Tsaritsa considered him a [[prophet]]. Eventually, he became a kind of appointment secretary to the royal couple, a situation which caused considerable resentment among the Russian nobility. Alexandra even came to believe that God spoke to her through Rasputin. | ||
| Line 43: | Line 43: | ||
===Assassination=== | ===Assassination=== | ||
| − | + | Rasputin was visiting his wife and children in his hometown, Pokrovskoye, along the [[Tura River]], in [[Siberia]]. On June 29, 1914, he had either just received a telegram or was just exiting church, when he was attacked suddenly by [[Khionia Guseva]], a former [[prostitute]] who had become a disciple of the monk [[Iliodor]], once a friend of Rasputin's but now absolutely disgusted with his behavior. Guseva thrust a knife into Rasputin's abdomen, and his [[entrails]] hung out of what seemed like a mortal wound. Convinced of her success, Guseva supposedly screamed, "I have killed the [[Antichrist]]!" | |
| − | |||
| − | + | After intensive surgery, however, Rasputin recovered. His daughter, Maria, claimed in her memoirs that he was never the same man after that: he seemed to tire more easily and frequently took [[opium]] for pain. | |
| − | + | The murder of Rasputin has become legend, some of it apparently invented by the very men who killed him. It is generally agreed that, on December 16, 1916, having decided that Rasputin's influence over the Tsaritsa had made him a dangerous threat to the empire, a group of nobles, led by Prince [[Felix Yusupov]] and the Grand Duke [[Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia|Dmitri Pavlovich]], apparently lured Rasputin to the Yusupovs' Moika Palace, where they served him cakes and red wine laced with a massive amount of [[cyanide]]. According to legend, Rasputin was unaffected, although [[Vasily Maklakov]] had supplied enough poison to kill seven men. However, Maria's account asserts that, if her father did eat or drink poison, it was not in the cakes or wine, because, after the attack by Guseva, he had [[hyperacidity]], and avoided anything with sugar. She expressed doubt that he was poisoned at all. | |
| − | + | Determined to finish the job, Yusupov became anxious about the possibility that Rasputin might live until the morning, which would leave the conspirators with no time to conceal his body. Yusupov ran upstairs to consult the others and then came back down to shoot Rasputin through the back with a [[revolver]]. Rasputin fell, and the company left the palace. | |
| − | + | However, Yusupov, decided to return to get his coat. He also decided to check on the body. When he did so, Rasputin opened his eyes, grabbed Yusupov by the throat and strangled him. "You bad boy," Rasputin whispered ominously in his ear, before throwing him across the room and escaping. As he made his bid for freedom, however, the other conspirators arrived and fired at him. After being hit three times in the back, Rasputin fell once more. As they neared his body, the party found that, remarkably, he was still alive, struggling to get up. They clubbed him into submission and, after wrapping his body in a sheet, threw him into an icy river, where he finally met his end—as had both his siblings before him. | |
| − | Three days later, the body of Rasputin | + | Three days later, the body of Rasputin, shot four times and badly beaten, was recovered from the Neva River and autopsied. The cause of death, however, was declared to be hypothermia. His arms were found in an upright position, as if he had tried to claw his way out from under the ice. In the autopsy, it was found that he had indeed been poisoned, and that the poison alone should have been enough to kill him. |
| − | + | Subsequently, the [[Alexandra Fyodorovna of Hesse|Empress Alexandra]] buried Rasputin's body in the grounds of [[Tsarskoye Selo]]. However, after the [[February Revolution]], a group of workers from [[Saint Petersburg]] uncovered the remains, carried them into a nearby wood and burned them. | |
| − | |||
| − | Subsequently, the [[Alexandra Fyodorovna of Hesse|Empress Alexandra]] buried Rasputin's body in the grounds of [[Tsarskoye Selo]] | ||
====Recent evidence==== | ====Recent evidence==== | ||
[[Image:Rasputin pt.jpg|thumb|right|200px|]] | [[Image:Rasputin pt.jpg|thumb|right|200px|]] | ||
| − | The details of the assassination given by [[Felix Yusupov]] have never stood up to close examination. There were many versions of his account: the statement which he gave to the Saint Petersburg police on December 16, 1916, the account that he gave | + | The details of the assassination given by [[Felix Yusupov]] have never stood up to close examination. There were many versions of his account: the statement which he gave to the Saint Petersburg police on December 16, 1916, the account that he gave while 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, and, until recently, no other credible, evidence-based theories have been available. |
| − | + | The unpublished 1916 [[autopsy]] report by Professor Kossorotov, as well as subsequent reviews of the report by Dr. [[Vladimir Zharov]] in 1993 and Professor [[Derrick Pounder]] in 2004/05, reveal that—contrary to earlier reports—no active [[poison]] was found in Rasputin's stomach. All three sources agree that Rasputin had been systematically beaten and attacked with a bladed weapon. However, there were discrepancies between the autopsy and the statements of the supposed killers regarding the number and caliber of handguns used. | |
| − | This discovery may have significantly changed the whole premise and account of Rasputin's death. British intelligence | + | This discovery may have significantly changed the whole premise and account of Rasputin's death. The involvement of British intelligence agents in the murder has been suggested, both on the basis of witnesses and forensic evidence, and relating to the fact that the British suspected Rasputin as undermining British interested at the Tsar's court. |
| − | + | =="The spirit of Rasputin"== | |
| + | Mere weeks before he was assassinated, according to secretary Simonovich, Rasputin wrote the following remarkable letter: | ||
| − | + | {{cquote|I write and leave behind me this letter at St. Petersburg. I feel that I shall leave life before January 1... 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 25 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... | |
| + | —Grigori|20px|}} | ||
| − | + | ==Legacy== | |
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | == | ||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
Rasputin's daughter, [[Maria Rasputin]] (Matryona Rasputina) (1898–1977), emigrated to [[France]] after the [[October Revolution]], and then to the [[United States|U.S.]]. There she worked as a dancer and then a tiger-trainer in a circus. She left memoirs<ref>[http://www.lib.ru/MEMUARY/ZHZL/rasputin.txt Matrena Rasputina. ''Memoirs of The Daughter'', Moscow 2001]. ISBN 5-8159-0180-6 {{ru icon}}</ref> about her father, wherein she painted an almost saintly picture of him, insisting that most of the negative stories were based on slander and the misinterpretations of facts by his enemies. | Rasputin's daughter, [[Maria Rasputin]] (Matryona Rasputina) (1898–1977), emigrated to [[France]] after the [[October Revolution]], and then to the [[United States|U.S.]]. There she worked as a dancer and then a tiger-trainer in a circus. She left memoirs<ref>[http://www.lib.ru/MEMUARY/ZHZL/rasputin.txt Matrena Rasputina. ''Memoirs of The Daughter'', Moscow 2001]. ISBN 5-8159-0180-6 {{ru icon}}</ref> about her father, wherein she painted an almost saintly picture of him, insisting that most of the negative stories were based on slander and the misinterpretations of facts by his enemies. | ||
| − | + | The contemporary press, as well as sensationalist articles and books published in the 1920s and 1930s, turned the charismatic peasant into something of a [[twentieth century]] legend. To Westerners, Rasputin came to be the embodiment of the stereotypes attributed to the Russian people in those times, backwardness, superstition, irrationality, and licentiousness. To some Russians, especially the [[Communism|Communists]], he represented all that was evil in the old regime, which needed to be overcome by the Revolution. To others, Rasputin remained a symbol of the voice of the peasantry, and many to this day reject the negative stories and honor the man. A movement even exists to seek the canonization of Rasputin, but this has been condemned by the Moscow Patriarchate. | |
| − | The contemporary press, as well as sensationalist articles and books published in the 1920s and 1930s | ||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
| − | |||
==See also== | ==See also== | ||
Revision as of 05:54, 28 November 2007
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, (January 22 [O.S. January 10] 1869–December 29 [O.S. December 16] 1916) was a Russian mystic who influenced the latter days of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II, his wife the Tsaritsa Alexandra, and their only son the Tsarevich Alexei.
Rasputin's influence at court helped to discredit the tsarist government and may have been a factor leading to the fall of the Romanov dynasty in 1917. Contemporary opinions saw Rasputin variously as a saintly mystic, visionary, healer, and prophet, and, on the other side of the coin, as a debauched religious charlatan. Historians may find both to be true, but there is much uncertainty, for accounts of his life have often been based on dubious memoirs, hearsay, and legend.
The date of Rasputin's birth is uncertain, but was certainly between 1863 and 1873. New documents surfaced revealing Rasputin's birth date as January 10, 1869. [1]
Biography
Early life
Rasputin was born a peasant in the small village of Pokrovskoye, along the Tura River in the Tobolsk guberniya (now Tyumen Oblast) in Siberia. He had two known siblings, a sister called Maria and an older brother named Dmitri. Maria, said to have been epileptic, was drowned in a river. Dmitri later died of pneumonia after he and Grigoi, too, fell in a river. The fatalities affected Rasputin, and he subsequently named his two children Maria and Dmitri.
The myths surrounding Rasputin portray him as showing indications of supernatural powers throughout his childhood. For example, he mysteriously identified the man who had stolen one of his father's horses and developed a reputation for having a knack for identifying.
When he was around the age of 18, he spent three months in the Verkhoturye Monastery, possibly a penance for theft. His experience there, combined with a reported vision of the Virgin Mary on his return, turned him toward the life of a religious mystic and wanderer.
Shortly after leaving the monastery, Rasputin visited a holy man named Makariy, whose hut was nearby. Makariy had a major influence on Rasputin, who would model himself after him.
He also seems to have been involved with the banned Christian sect known as the Khlysty (flagellants), whose impassioned services, ending in physical exhaustion, were infamous, including rumors that religious and sexual ecstasy were combined in these rituals. Suspicions that Rasputin was one of the Khlysts threatened his reputation until the end of his life. According to Rasputin's daughter, Maria, Rasputin did "look into" the Khlysty sect—but rejected it.[2]
Rasputin married Praskovia Fyodorovna Dubrovina in 1889, and they had three children, named Dmitri, Varvara, and Maria. Rasputin also reportedly had a child with another woman. In 1901, he left his home in Pokrovskoye as a strannik (or pilgrim) and, during the time of his journeying, mostly on foot. He even traveled to Greece, where he visited the holy monks at Mount Athos, and Jerusalem. In 1903, Rasputin arrived in Saint Petersburg, where he gradually gained a reputation as a starets (holy man) with healing and prophetical powers.
Healer to the Tsarevich
In 1905 Rasputin was approached to help the heir apparent, the Tsarevich Alexei, who suffered from a serous case of hemophelia. Through is prayer and healing presence, he was indeed able to give the Tsarevich some relief, in spite of the doctors' prediction that the boy would die. Numerous reports indicate that every time the boy had an injury which caused him internal or external bleeding, the Tsaritsa called on Rasputin, and the Tsarevich subsequently got better.
The Tsar referred to Rasputin as "our friend" and a "holy man," a sign of the trust that the family placed in him. Rasputin had a considerable personal and political influence on Alexandra[3], and both the the Tsar and Tsaritsa considered him a prophet. Eventually, he became a kind of appointment secretary to the royal couple, a situation which caused considerable resentment among the Russian nobility. Alexandra even came to believe that God spoke to her through Rasputin.
Controversy
Rasputin gathered a circle of followers and admirers in the capital. However, while fascinated by him, the Saint Petersburg elite did not widely accept Rasputin: he did not fit in with the royal family, and had had a very tense relationship and the Russian Orthodox Church. The Holy Synod frequently criticized Rasputin, accusing him of a variety of immoral or evil practices. Because Rasputin was a court official, he and his apartment were under 24-hour surveillance.
Rasputin soon became a controversial figure, and was caught up in a sharp political struggle involving monarchist, anti-monarchist, revolutionary and other political forces and interests. He was considered too friendly with Jews and other religious suspect groups, and was accused by many eminent persons of various misdeeds, ranging from an unrestricted sexual life (including raping a nun)[4] to undue political domination over the royal family.[citation needed]
Like many spiritually-minded Russians, Rasputin spoke of salvation as depending less on the clergy and the church than on seeking the spirit of God within. He also reportedly claimed that, for him, yielding to temptations such as sex and alcohol, helped dispel the sin of vanity, and was a necessary step on the road to repentance and salvation.
Rasputin was deeply opposed to war, both from a moral point of view and as something which was likely to lead to political catastrophe. During the years of World War I, Rasputin's increasing drunkenness, sexual promiscuity, and willingness to accept bribes in return for helping petitioners who flocked to his apartment), as well as his efforts to have his critics dismissed from their posts, made him appear both corrupt and cynical. Rasputin became the focus of accusations of unpatriotic influence at court. The unpopular Tsaritsa, meanwhile, was of German descent, and she came to be accused of acting as a spy in German employ.
When Rasputin expressed an interest in going to the front to bless the troops early in the war, the Commander-in-Chief, Grand Duke Nicholas, promised to hang him if he dared to show up there. Rasputin then claimed that he had a revelation that the Russian armies would not be successful until the Tsar personally took command. With this, the ill-prepared Nicholas proceeded to take personal command of the Russian army, with dire consequences for himself as well as for Russia.
While Tsar Nicholas II was away at the front, Rasputin's influence over Tsaritsa Alexandra increased immensely. He soon became her confidant and personal advisor, and also convinced her to fill some governmental offices with his own handpicked candidates. To further the advance of his power, Rasputin reportedly cohabitated with upper-class women in exchange for granting political favors. Because of World War I and the ossifying effects of feudalism and a meddling government bureacracy, Russia's economy was declining at a very rapid rate. Many at the time laid the blame with Alexandra and with Rasputin, because of his influence over her.
Rasputin's alleged hold over the royal family was used against him and the Romanovs by politicians and journalists who wanted to weaken the integrity of the dynasty, force the Tsar to give up his absolute political power, and separate the Russian Orthodox Church from the state. Rasputin unintentionally contributed to their propaganda by having public disputes with clergy members, bragging about his ability to influence both the Tsar and Tsaritsa, and also by his dissolute public lifestyle. Nobles in influential positions around the Tsar, as well as some parties of the Duma, clamored for Rasputin's removal from the court.
Assassination
Rasputin was visiting his wife and children in his hometown, Pokrovskoye, along the Tura River, in Siberia. On June 29, 1914, he had either just received a telegram or was just exiting church, when he was attacked suddenly by Khionia Guseva, a former prostitute who had become a disciple of the monk Iliodor, once a friend of Rasputin's but now absolutely disgusted with his behavior. Guseva thrust a knife into Rasputin's abdomen, and his entrails hung out of what seemed like a mortal wound. Convinced of her success, Guseva supposedly screamed, "I have killed the Antichrist!"
After intensive surgery, however, Rasputin recovered. His daughter, Maria, claimed in her memoirs that he was never the same man after that: he seemed to tire more easily and frequently took opium for pain.
The murder of Rasputin has become legend, some of it apparently invented by the very men who killed him. It is generally agreed that, on December 16, 1916, having decided that Rasputin's influence over the Tsaritsa had made him a dangerous threat to the empire, a group of nobles, led by Prince Felix Yusupov and the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, apparently lured Rasputin to the Yusupovs' Moika Palace, where they served him cakes and red wine laced with a massive amount of cyanide. According to legend, Rasputin was unaffected, although Vasily Maklakov had supplied enough poison to kill seven men. However, Maria's account asserts that, if her father did eat or drink poison, it was not in the cakes or wine, because, after the attack by Guseva, he had hyperacidity, and avoided anything with sugar. She expressed doubt that he was poisoned at all.
Determined to finish the job, Yusupov became anxious about the possibility that Rasputin might live until the morning, which would leave the conspirators with no time to conceal his body. Yusupov ran upstairs to consult the others and then came back down to shoot Rasputin through the back with a revolver. Rasputin fell, and the company left the palace.
However, Yusupov, decided to return to get his coat. He also decided to check on the body. When he did so, Rasputin opened his eyes, grabbed Yusupov by the throat and strangled him. "You bad boy," Rasputin whispered ominously in his ear, before throwing him across the room and escaping. As he made his bid for freedom, however, the other conspirators arrived and fired at him. After being hit three times in the back, Rasputin fell once more. As they neared his body, the party found that, remarkably, he was still alive, struggling to get up. They clubbed him into submission and, after wrapping his body in a sheet, threw him into an icy river, where he finally met his end—as had both his siblings before him.
Three days later, the body of Rasputin, shot four times and badly beaten, was recovered from the Neva River and autopsied. The cause of death, however, was declared to be hypothermia. His arms were found in an upright position, as if he had tried to claw his way out from under the ice. In the autopsy, it was found that he had indeed been poisoned, and that the poison alone should have been enough to kill him.
Subsequently, the Empress Alexandra buried Rasputin's body in the grounds of Tsarskoye Selo. However, after the February Revolution, a group of workers from Saint Petersburg uncovered the remains, carried them into a nearby wood and burned them.
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 which he gave to the Saint Petersburg police on December 16, 1916, the account that he gave while 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, and, until recently, no other credible, evidence-based theories have been available.
The unpublished 1916 autopsy report by Professor Kossorotov, as well as subsequent reviews of the report by Dr. Vladimir Zharov in 1993 and Professor Derrick Pounder in 2004/05, reveal that—contrary to earlier reports—no active poison was found in Rasputin's stomach. All three sources agree that Rasputin had been systematically beaten and attacked with a bladed weapon. However, there were discrepancies between the autopsy and the statements of the supposed killers regarding the number and caliber of handguns used.
This discovery may have significantly changed the whole premise and account of Rasputin's death. The involvement of British intelligence agents in the murder has been suggested, both on the basis of witnesses and forensic evidence, and relating to the fact that the British suspected Rasputin as undermining British interested at the Tsar's court.
"The spirit of Rasputin"
Mere weeks before he was assassinated, according to secretary Simonovich, Rasputin wrote the following remarkable letter:
| “ | I write and leave behind me this letter at St. Petersburg. I feel that I shall leave life before January 1... 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 25 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...
—Grigori |
” |
Legacy
Rasputin's daughter, Maria Rasputin (Matryona Rasputina) (1898–1977), emigrated to France after the October Revolution, and then to the U.S.. There she worked as a dancer and then a tiger-trainer in a circus. She left memoirs[5] about her father, wherein she painted an almost saintly picture of him, insisting that most of the negative stories were based on slander and the misinterpretations of facts by his enemies.
The contemporary press, as well as sensationalist articles and books published in the 1920s and 1930s, turned the charismatic peasant into something of a twentieth century legend. To Westerners, Rasputin came to be the embodiment of the stereotypes attributed to the Russian people in those times, backwardness, superstition, irrationality, and licentiousness. To some Russians, especially the Communists, he represented all that was evil in the old regime, which needed to be overcome by the Revolution. To others, Rasputin remained a symbol of the voice of the peasantry, and many to this day reject the negative stories and honor the man. A movement even exists to seek the canonization of Rasputin, but this has been condemned by the Moscow Patriarchate.
See also
- Cultural depictions of Rasputin
- Rasputin's penis
- Michael Malloy - a homeless man who was murdered by gassing after surviving multiple poisonings, intentional exposure to extreme cold, and being struck by a car.
Notes
- ↑ Radzinsky, Edvard, ed. Judson Rosengrant: The Rasputin File, Nan A. Talese, 2000, page 25.
- ↑ Radzinsky, page 40.
- ↑ King, George (October 2001). The Last Empress: The Life and Times of Alexandra Feodorovna, Tsarina of Russia. Replica Books. ISBN 978-0735101043.
- ↑ Szasz, Thomas (2003-2-1). A Lexicon of Lunacy: Metaphoric Malady, Moral Responsibility, and Psychiatry. Transaction Publisher. ISBN 978-0765805065.
- ↑ Matrena Rasputina. Memoirs of The Daughter, Moscow 2001. ISBN 5-8159-0180-6 (Russian)
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Furhmann, Joseph T. Rasputin: A Life. New York, 1990.
- Radzinsky, Edvard, Rasputin: The Last Word. London, 2000.
External links
- The Alexander Palace Time Machine Bios-Rasputin - bio of Rasputin
- Okhrana Surveillance Report on Rasputin - from the Soviet Krasnyi Arkiv
- 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
- RASPUTIN Grigory Efimovich - article about Rasputin at Encyclopaedia of St. Petersburg
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rasputin, Grigori Yefimovich |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Mad Monk |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | Russian mystic |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 22 1869 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Pokrovskoye, Tyumen Oblast, Siberia, Russia |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 31 1916 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Saint Petersburg |
Credits
New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:
The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:
Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.
