|
The 20th cCentury may have been the time frame when then current historians, commentators, and observers first could separate fact from fiction with respect to certain personalities. The first two decades of the 20th century produced Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson as heroic figures of the United States. Remarkable people like Churchill and Truman were in their formative years. Japan was readying to become the power on the other side of the world. In its own way Russia was swinging its mighty weight seemingly in a self-destructive way.
From the years of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great to Stalin and Putin, Russia has spanned the large space between the East and the West. Many observers of history being made have followed the interrelationships of royal families of Europe with the White Russians. Geographers of my school years would describe European Russia as being west of the Ural Mountains. And Siberia stretched all of the way from the Urals to the Pacific Ocean.
The significance of Russia on the world stage mainly has been appreciated by the Russians. Apparently the patterns of religious beliefs, which shaped Gregori Efimovich Rasputin’s career, were more pronounced and common in Russia, a hundred or so years ago, than in most other countries. That is not to say various sects and communities of traditional, or of new believers, didn’t spring up in the New World as well as the Old World.
Rasputin followed a pattern of becoming a Russian mystic who made pilgrimages to visit other like souls and learn from them. The introduction of the 1927 book by Rene Fulop-Miller claims to have been based on reliable documents that give an authentic account of Rasputin’s life, especially the fantastic years he spent in St. Petersburg. Among many inconsistencies are statements that Rasputin heard that the Tsar’s son was born with hemophilia and went from Siberia to St. Petersburg to help treat the child Tsarevich. This story apparently should be modified to reflect that Rasputin went to St. Petersburg in 1903. Tsarevich Alexei was born July 30, 1904 and it was well into 1905 before Rasputin was called to help treat the heir apparent.
As the years went by Rasputin’s ability to make Alexei feel better increasingly drew the Tsar and the Tsarina under his spell. Whether he hypnotized the Tsarevich, as seemed probable, he effectively “made him” and his parents feel better over a period of years. This service gave Rasputin great influence over the royal family, especially the Tsarina. It may not have been inadvertence that caused Rasputin to advise the Tsar he should be at the front directing Russia’s armies in World War I’s critical battles. That situation gave Rasputin the “inside track” access to the Tsarina during the most vulnerable time of her life.
Fulop-Miller’s book, entitled Rasputin The Holy Devil, written in Austria, features the lurid detail of Rasputin’s sexual exploits with many ladies of the court. Actually, based on police records and personal accounts by mostly willing victims, the numbers of people affected truly are astonishing.
While eating, drinking, and sexual pursuits are spelled out in detail, the graft collected for favors may well have been more responsible for the fall of the royal governance of Russia, than Rasputin’s lewd behaviors. As protector, if not healer, of the Tsarevish, Rasputin promptly grasped the power that position gave him. He set up an office-like establishment to receive a steady stream of petitioners. There were thousands of hopeful Russians, from many strata of society, who tried to use Rasputin’s self-made reputation by coming to him in St. Petersburg. Although many petitioners paid Rasputin directly, the fact he frequently took that same money from his pocket to give other supplicants is not so well known.
Considering his grubby peasant background, Rasputin’s ability to move into a position of political power, in so brief a period of time, is phenomenal. He had been reputed to work miracles before going to St. Petersburg, soon after he had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Peasants were early impressed and regarded Rasputin to be a starets. Perhaps no non-Russian definition of starets can describe its meaning. Maybe the term starets just means holy man. Rasputin was recognized as a starets when he went to St. Petersburg where some followers some even regarded him to be a saint.
More than one attempt on Rasputin’s life was recorded. The attempt made by Khionia Guseva, on June 29, 1914, sliced open Rasputin’s lower abdomen so some of his large intestine temporarily hung out of his body cavity. On Dec. 16, 1916 a self-appointed group of Russian noblemen determined to kill Rasputin. While trying to escape, Rasputin was shot, clubbed, and dumped through a hole in the ice on the Neva River. Variations in the accounts as to what happened and who fired the final shot continue to emerge. Not long after the autopsy of his drown body, that evidence was said to have been dug from its grave and burned.
Many versions of Rasputin’s career have been written because his influence was so important and his lifestyle was so unbelievable at least to a non-Russian. More than any other person Rasputin appears to have been responsible for the removal of the imperial rulers of Russia. One might argue that removal led to the Communists’ take over of that vast country.
|
