So it’s been a while since I did one of these. I’d love to
have a valid excuse like the fact that the whirlwind success of the
accompanying TV series and its associated riches have distracted me from
writing (yes, George R. R. Martin, this is a dig at you) but a combination of
laziness and my wife’s compulsive purchasing of Grey’s Anatomy box sets are the
real reasons for the inactivity. I’m sure you found that fascinating.
Tits...dragons...someone getting murdered...sod it, I'll just count my money again.
It’s fair to say that if Boney M.
feel you deserve to be immortalised in music that you’ve made an impact in
history. According to everyone’s favourite German/Caribbean disco combo Grigori
Rasputin was not only lover of the Russian queen (Tsarina to be more accurate
but that doesn’t fit as well) but also Russia’s greatest love machine. I’m sure
several Russians would be keen to question the latter but that’s not what I’ll
be looking at in this post. Instead I’ll be examining Rasputin’s “Mad Monk”
sobriquet and whether or not he deserves it.
Little is known about Rasputin’s
early years besides that he was born into a peasant family in Siberia in 1869.
Unlike the rest of Europe, Russia had not experienced any real industrial
revolution and rural life was almost medieval in nature. Rasputin wouldn’t have
received any formal education and was illiterate well into his adulthood.
Besides a few minor misdemeanours in his adolescence, which were greatly
exaggerated following his rise to prominence, he lived a relatively
unremarkable life marrying a fellow peasant, Praskovya Dubrovina, and having
seven children with her.
In 1897 at the age of 28 Rasputin
set out on a pilgrimage to the Saint Nicholas Monastery in Verkhoturye which
proved to be transformative. Although not overly convinced with the monastic
life Rasputin became deeply engaged in religion under the tutelage of one of
the monastery’s elders, Makary, and returned home several months later a
vegetarian teetotaller with a radically altered appearance. From here he took
on the life of a ‘Strannik’, a wandering pilgrim, travelling the Russian Empire
visiting numerous holy sites. When he was in his home village of Pokrovskoye he
held prayer meetings in his father’s home where he accumulated his first
followers. These meetings aroused suspicion in the locale and rumours abounded
that Rasputin was ceremonially washed by his female acolytes as well as
engaging in orgies and self-flagellation. As fun as this sounds it is more than
likely these practices were, like his criminal record, exaggerated by his
detractors but what is certain is that Rasputin’s behaviour and demeanour were
getting him noticed beyond his hometown.
Rasputin showing off his snazzy new look.
Following a trip to Kazan between
1902 and 1904 Rasputin was dispatched with a letter of recommendation to Bishop
Sergei in St Petersburg where he quickly began rubbing shoulders with
influential figures within the Russian Orthodox Church and the aristocracy.
Such was the bond between the church and state under Nicholas II that Rasputin
met the Tsar within a few months of his arrival in St Petersburg in November
1905. Although they only met once during Rasputin’s first visit to the capital
they stayed in contact via letter and when the Tsarevitch, Alexei, fell ill and
failed to respond to medical treatment the Tsarina, Alexandra, sought the
guidance of Rasputin.
The advantage of having nine
children meant that Queen Victoria had managed to marry her offspring into most
of the major European royal families. The disadvantage, depending on your
viewpoint, was that haemophilia was rife amongst European royalty due to the
years of inbreeding and Alexei inherited the disease from his English
great-grandmother. Rasputin’s reputation had grown so much by this stage that
it was believed he possessed the power to heal by prayer. Strangely enough
whatever Rasputin did to Alexei appeared to work and the Tsarina came to depend
on him whenever the Tsarevitch’s health took a turn for the worse. This reliance
gave Rasputin increasing power over the Romanov family with both Nicholas and
Alexandra believing him to be a prophet acting as God’s mouthpiece to the
Russian royals.
The Russian Orthodox Church, however, did not
hold this view of Rasputin with the Holy Synod frequently accusing him of a
colourful range of sins. This was in part down to Rasputin’s view that the
clergy were not necessary to lead people to salvation but also down to his
dalliance with the teachings of the Khylsty sect where sin, in particular
giving in to temptation, was seen as essential to earn repentance. Rasputin’s
two main vices were alcohol and sex and his cohabitation with numerous
aristocratic women in exchange for the political advancement of their family
members made him more enemies than it did friends.
The first page of the rare "Where's Rasputin?" kids book - they did get progressively harder apparently.
The outbreak of the First World War further
advanced Rasputin’s position with the Russian royalty but ultimately led to his
downfall. After he was denied the opportunity to go to the front and bless the
troops (Grand Duke Nicholas, the Commander-in-Chief, threatened to hang him if
he turned up) he claimed to have had a divine revelation stating that the
Russian Army would not succeed unless they were led by Tsar Nicholas II in
person. Nicholas, a man described by his critics as unfit to run a village post
office, did a disastrous job leading his troops and damaged his already ailing
reputation beyond repair in the process. Meanwhile Rasputin became even closer
with the Tsarina heavily influencing her political decisions and further
damaging her reputation among the Russian people who were quick to highlight
her German descent in a storm of wartime patriotism.
An attempt had been made on Rasputin’s life in
1914 but, as his eventual assassins were to find out, he was not an easy man to
kill. With the Russian war effort disintegrating by the end of 1916 a group of
nobles led by Prince Felix Yusopov conspired to murder Rasputin in order to
restore some semblance of order to the Tsarina’s running of the country. What
is certain is that on 30th December 1916 Rasputin died of three
gunshot wounds but the circumstances surrounding his death have opened the door
for several elaborate theories relating to his mystical powers. Yusopov’s own
memoirs state that he attempted to poison Rasputin with cyanide in cakes and
wine but this had appeared to make no difference leading to Yusopov shooting
him in the chest. Several hours later when the prince went to check that
Rasputin was dead he was attacked and chased before his co-conspirator, Vladimir
Purishkevich, shot the resurrected Rasputin in the head. To make sure he was
definitely dead they drove his body to a bridge and dropped it into the Malaya
Nevka River. Thankfully for his murderers he didn’t proceed to swim to the
safety of the riverbank.
It is difficult to say if Rasputin is truly
deserving of his sobriquet “The Mad Monk” firstly because, despite his
religious credentials, he never held any position within the Russian Orthodox
Church and had shunned the monastic lifestyle very early in his career. As for
his insanity I think it is more the brains of the Romanov family that should be
brought into question. Their increasingly tenuous hold on the Russian Empire as
demonstrated in the Russo-Japanese War and 1905 Revolution meant that Nicholas
II and Alexandra would have been desperate to ensure the health and safety of
their heir but their reliance on first Rasputin’s healing powers and then his
divine wisdom was instrumental in their eventual downfall in February 1917.
Grigori Rasputin was clearly not a normal man, if there is such a thing, but I
feel he would be better remembered as “The Machiavellian Monk” rather than “The
Mad Monk”. Considering his background and the archaic feudalism of Russia at
the turn of the twentieth century the fact that he was able to play on the
ingrained mysticism of the Russian aristocracy to hold such power and influence
over the Romanov family hints at a far more scheming and manipulative brain
than that of a madman. Dismissing him simply as “mad” borders on lazy name-calling.
Whether or not he was Russia’s greatest love machine, however, will dominate
historiographic debate on the period for years to come.
We'll leave that debate in this man's capable hands.
