Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - History's Worst F*ckboys: Rasputin

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

Rasputin presented himself as a mystic healer, and preached that the only way to salvation was through sin — which sometimes, if rumour is to be believed, manifested in orgies.It's definitely giving f*ckboy behaviour.How did he make his way from poverty to the Russian royalty inner circle? What mystical powers did he claim to have? And did he really have a 13" penis?Helping Kate get to know this charismatic - and problematic - figure, is Frances Welch, author of Rasputin: A Short Life.*TW: This episode contains references to sexual abuse*This episode was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? We'll sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles.

Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixtas. It's me, Kate Lister. Thank you. You're here, quite frankly. If you weren't here, I mean, what is this really? You are the star of the show.

But before I can let you keep on shining, I have to tell you. This is an adult podcast spoken by adults, other adults, about adulty things, an adult who are waking up and angels, subjects, and you should be an adult too. We do that because your safety is paramount, and not because the lawyers tell us that we have to. Right, on with the show. It's 1940.

and I am in St. Petersburg. To escape the worries of the First World War, although at the time we're not calling it that, I've decided I'm going to take a trip to the local bathhouse. As chance would have it, this is where the aristocrats, officers, noblemen, and a couple of sex workers are often seen mingling together. And appearing to the steam tonight

is the charismatic, albeit completely back-crap crazy, Gregory Rasputin. He cuts a hell of a figure. It's all beard and straggly hair and those eyes. Oh, the eyes are just menacing. And despite us being in a bathhouse, he doesn't actually smell all that great. But apparently, he is a holy man who is here to lead a prayer group with these noble women. I mean, why wouldn't you have a prayer in a bathhouse with a load of nude women? It all sounds above board to me, but I'm not sure I'm going to stick around to find out more. Let's get on with the show. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the fire. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.

Goodness, I'm beautiful done. Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal and Society with me, Kate Lister. As we reached the end of our second mini-series on History's Worst Fook Boys, Have we saved best until last? I think we might have. Our boy today is a mysterious quasi-religious figure who insisted that salvation came through forgiveness,

which sounds great, but the small print to that is that you have to do a lot of sinning to get forgiven. Ah, that's some interesting fuckboy logic if ever I heard it. And helping me get to know Gregory Rasputin a little bit better is Francis Welsh, author of Rasputin A Short Life. Are you ready to get your sin on? I promise, I'll forgive you. All right, let's do it.

Hello, and welcome to Betwix the Sheets. It's only Francis Walsh. How are you doing? I'm very well, thanks. I'm very well today. We're actually here to decide if Rasputin can be counted as one of our historical fuckboys.

And just for the purpose of this interview, we are going to define a fuckboy as, well, this is Urban Dictionary defining it, A fuck boy is that guy, the one who doesn't respect women but relies on them heavily. He's distant, doesn't care about other people's time and won't commit. So that's our definition. But before we can even get into that, can I ask you, what do we know about Rasputin's origins? Because he seems to have just appeared in St. Petersburg fully formed.

But that can't have been the case. Where did he come from? Well, he came from Siberia. His father drove a cart on a very sort of ancient road between Tumann and Tbilsk. Rasputin was discovered to have these magic powers, or he claimed to have these magic powers, quite early on. You know, cows would produce more milk if he was around if there was a horse thief. He would expose them. He was sent to a monastery as a sort of punishment and then discovered this rather wonderful sect,

which combined sex and religion called the Clistie. Clis means whip in Russian. and, Audrey's were sort of advocated. In other words, chastity was the sin of pride, and you needed to sin for salvation, which is a sort of brilliant, you know, chat-up thing. If you sleep with me, I'm bringing you into the grace of God.

Which is obviously useful later on in life. But he first met Grand Duchess Militza, who was a cousin of the Tsar and Sirena, in Kazan. She tried to sort of chat him up. Didn't quite work. The next time he met her, he healed their dog. They had a pet dog who was ill, and he healed the dog. She then managed to bring him to St. Petersburg and introduced him to the Tsar and Tsarina, whereupon he sort of privately contacted the Tsar, so he rather forgot about Grand Duchess Militza, no more use to him. So he privately contacted the Tsaransarina and said, can I bring an icon?

His real hold over the Tsaransarina was because of their himaphyliac son, their six son, whom he seemed to be able to heal. He was married, though, before he got to the Tsarina. He was married, right? Yes, he was. And his wife, Praskovia, she said, luckily for him, oh, he has enough for all. I mean, she might have been right, you know, because the testimony is saying, you know,

that it was a 13-inch penis when it was erect and so on. Anyway, she... What? A 13-inch penis? Yes, and that was from his daughter, which sounds terrible, but the daughter actually spoke to one of his old lovers who was a maid, and that's what she said. And then Felix Yusufov, the prince who killed Rasputin,

used to say he had these penile warts, which helped his performance and that he could, delay climax and that sort of thing. Is any of that true? Well, that's a very good question. I wasn't inclined to write the biography of Rasputin. I was actually commissioned to do it because I felt it was a very big subject and also that there was so much conflicting evidence and you never know what's true. The daughter, who made this claim about the 13 inches, absolutely laughed when Rasputin was murdered in 1916. She was taken in by the police and they said, did your father? sleep with the Tarina and she laughed. Oh, no, of course he never did. But a few years later,

in America, she was going around saying that Rasputin did sleep with the Tarina. My feeling is that he never did. But unfortunately for the Tarina, and everyone knows so much already, there were these letters that she'd written saying, you know, I kiss you, I want to sleep with my head on your shoulder. These rather passionate letters, which were very incriminating. But what people wouldn't realize is that she went into this very theatrical language. with her sisters or with, you know, it was just the way she was. Like sometimes Victorians were, you know, very flowery and exaggerated in their language. Yeah, yeah.

So he may or may not have had this enormous penis. We don't know if that's true, but bizarrely his daughter says that it's true. He was married and his wife seems to have been aware of his philandering ways. Did he have a reputation for putting it about by the time he got to St. Petersburg? Yes, he did. He did a lot of misbehaving in the bathhouse. You know, the banyar is a great Russian tradition where you go into the banyan you beat yourself with birch twigs. And he would persuade women to soap him down and then come into the grace of God by soaping him down.

Wash the Muzik, he would say, the Muzik being peasant in the banya. So there's a lot of that going on, which people disapproved of. But oddly enough, he was attacked. In 1914, someone tried to kill him. and a doctor examined him at that point and said that his penis was actually very small. He thought he would be surprised if Rasputin was even potent at that point. It had been damaged by alcohol and syphilis, he thought, the doctor thought. But again, how true is that?

For every story, there's another story that countermonds it. To get back to your thing of fuckboys, his idea was that he would tell women to love unselfishly. In other words, he thought, as a woman, you need to give yourself. to him. Otherwise, you were being selfish and you were guilty of the sin of pride. That sounds like fuck by behaviour to me. Yes, and I don't think he was very good at being committed. Doesn't it? It doesn't sound like he was. He was just taking every opportunity. But on the other hand, he was accused of rape a few times, but I think mostly people were willing because either they thought they were going to be received into the grace of God, or they could get favoured from him.

Who accused him of rape? Well, there was a maid who said she'd been raped. A maid of the Romanoff said she'd been raped. I'm going off him now. But then, as ill luck would have it for his enemies, she was then caught sleeping with a Cossack. And so her testimony was then all sort of discarded. But by and large, people weren't complaining about rape. They were just complaining about him saying if you want me to keep your son out of the army, if you want me to ask the Tsareen to keep your son out of the army, you must come back with an open top and a lower dress, otherwise don't bother, that sort of thing, which obviously is not very good behaviour, is it? Wow.

For a man, it's not very gentleman. He seems to have inspired almost fanatical devotion. Yeah. Like you see these pictures of him surrounded by women and they're all wide-eyed and like staring up at him. Yes, that's right. and they would sew his fingernails into the hems of their dresses. Oh, God.

Yes, even though he was apparently rather disgusting and smelt of goat and had a, well, oh. Yusufov said he had a face of a very ordinary peasant. This is Yusuf, his murderer, with a very long nose. Another person said his nose looked like it had been slapped on with a trowel. But on the other hand, his eyes were incredible. and apparently he could contract his pupils at will, which apparently was attractive. Do you think that would be attractive?

Ooh. It might be. I don't know if that's attractive. I've never seen anybody do it. I think that would freak me out. No, I agree. But there was obviously there was a taste for the sort of ordinary man. Like at one point I compared Rasputing to Mr. Brown, Queen Victoria's Mr. Brown,

you know, who is a man of the people. Oh, that's interested. And, you know, Rasputin was definitely a few people. Okay. And if you found sort of a bit of rough, well, he might be your man. A bit of rough with a 13-inch penis as well. Yes. So how does he meet the Tsarina then?

How does this wandering peasant who's into orgies and bathhouses and flagellating and all the rest of it? How does he meet the Tsarina? He was introduced at a sort of tea in 1905 by the Grand Duchess Militza, who as I said was a cousin of the Tsar. But why did she want to meet him? Well, he invagled himself into their lives or got himself to the palace by just saying to the Tsar, can I bring you an icon? And they already had, there was a sort of holy fool. They had holy fools at the Russian court. That wasn't out of the ordinary. So he came along with an icon. And once he'd done his first healing of the boy, then he was in, and it was not long before the Tsarina felt that he was the only person who could stop her son bleeding.

Tell me about that, then. Tell me about Alexi and what was happening. Well, he had hymophilia where the blood is not clotting, and the idea was that Rasputin could stop his blood flowing or stop the bleeding, and it's not really known how. But there are two things. One is that he hated aspirin, that's Rasputin, and at that point, Dr. were giving aspirin just to pain. And aspirin is a sort of anticoagulant and would make a bleeding worse. So that was something that he inadvertently did, which would have helped. But the main thing probably is to calm down the Tsarina, the mother of the boy. She calms down, and he calms down.

Everybody's blood pressure goes down and everyone feels a lot better. And once she'd persuaded herself, you know, once she'd convinced herself of this belief in him, There was a very famous episode where the Tsarovic was really at death store in Poland. In 1912 that was. He was eight at that point. And Rasputin sent two telegrams saying he will not die. Don't let the doctors worry him too much. And Alexis, the son, immediately got, wanted to improve.

And forever she, well, until Rasputin's death in 1916, she believed that he was the only person who could save her son. and that gave him quite a lot of power, as you can imagine. Yeah, I can imagine so, yeah. And from 1915, after the war started, in 1914, the Tsar went to the front, leaving his wife sort of in charge. And as far as the Russian people were concerned, they had... Oh, no.

Oh, no, exactly. They had the German-born Tsarina, and her sidekick, who was Rasputin, in charge of the country. They did not like that at all. So how much power did he actually have then? I mean, he can cure Alexi, or at least it appears that he can, and that's great. But what else was he doing? Because he doesn't seem to have just been like a doctor for this child. What other power did he have within the Russian court at the time?

Well, he was continually trying to promote people who supported him. I mean, there was one called Protopopopov, who sounds like a very eccentric man. I think he had had syphilis for years. He was completely mad and sort of saw ghosts. and he was a minister of the interior. Anyway, he was quite close to Rasputin, and Rasputin was behind his promotion. There was another one who was very much a yes man called Geremikin,

who had sort of moustaches down to his shoulders. And I think he was very, very old and infirm, but Rasputin was behind his promotion. But there was a whole series of ministers, but he put pressure on the Sarina, who then put pressure on her husband. she felt all the time she was getting advice from a man of God. And meanwhile, the Tsar thought he was the Tsar by divine rule,

that he was there because he'd been chosen by God. So there was a whole system. I'll be back with Francis and Rasputin after this short break. What did the Tsar make of all of this? At one point he wrote, let's leave our friend out of this. Our friend was what they called Rasputin rather than calling him. by name, our friend. So he did say that, but I feel he did sort of believe in him after a fashion as well,

because in his diary, I mean, he's very non-committal. He's seen to be rather a sort of colourless character in a way, and his diaries are like that. But, you know, nonetheless you can see he will say, Grigory, as he called him, Gregory visited us this evening. Alexis is now calmer and better. So he refers to some of the cures. and clearly believed that Rasputin was behind them.

And was Rasputin popular at court? No, no, no. I mean, he was always... I mean, there was a terrible spat at the time that 300 years of Romanoff rule in 1913. You know, Rasputin had just had his amazing cure in 1912 when the Tsarvich nearly died in Poland. And there he was at all the sort of celebrations, you know, in the front seat.

And a whole of people from the Duma, you know, the parliament, all trying to get rid of him, manhandling him. He was very unpopular, except possibly amongst the peasantry right at the bottom. We don't really get to hear enough about them. Their testimony in a way doesn't exist. But certainly the testimony of the sort of aristocrats, the people at court and in the Duma, the politicians, he wasn't popular. And they were always talking about how to get rid of him. And finally they did get rid of him. And when do these rumours about him and the Tsarina start? I'm not quite sure. I suppose it's when everybody got to know he was there.

I mean, his visit to the palace were obviously recorded by the police. And I should imagine the words started to spread then. The letters that I referred to earlier, where she was rather passionate, ill-advisedly, as it turned out, she shouldn't have said the things she did because they all came back to bite her, as it were. They were so disseminated about 1911. And I think probably that's when it really started, the rumours started. And the rumours included, people were even saying that he was,

sleeping with the grand duchesses who were then just children really. There were four young. Yeah, I know. And, well, it was because he was always in their bedrooms and with them in their night dresses, which obviously was... Yep, that'll do it. It was an enemy of Rasputans who spread the letters, those letters which were so damaging to the Tsarina. He had a lot of enemies. Did he have any girlfriends that we know of? I know that he was obviously in the bathhouses and he had loads of devoted followers. But do we know of anyone that he was in a relationship with apart from his wife? Well, that's a good question.

I'm not sure he went for. This is a problem with your theme. I'm not sure he went for the sort of the conventional idea of a relationship, as I can see. You know, took it all as it. No. Hundreds of women queuing outside the door for his fingernails or whatever they wanted. It's giving fuck boy, isn't it? It is.

There was a woman called Olga Lottina, who he seems to have had a sort of sado masochistic relationship with. Again, you know, these stories are so... Of course he did. But apparently, you know, he would beat her and call her a sort of mad bitch while she would yank his penis and say, you are God. Right. Right. Yeah, exactly. And she seems to have been sort of a permanent fixture and that she seemed to live at his house in St. Petersburg, or in his flat, rather. So I suppose you could call her a girlfriend.

Perhaps he wasn't the sort of person who's taking people at cinema or anything like that. He wasn't going out on dates, as well as I can see. No, he's not. Wasn't he followed by the police for a while as well? They were gathering intel on him. Oh, yes. Well, once they realized he was going into court, into the Russian court, they were following him all the time. And then when the war started, he was believed to be sort of collaborating with the Germans for a sort of separate piece.

And he was sort of entertaining Germans five. So that became very... Surprised he had the time. I know. Well, you know, referring back to what we were saying, you're not sure whether this really is true. He certainly had a couple of German friends who might have been a bit dodgy, but whether it's really conspiring for a separate piece, it seems unlikely, actually. But as you said, he was trailed by peace all the time, yeah. So we've got to talk about his murder then. Yes, exactly. Well, everybody knows that he was given all the, you know, poison wine and poison. cake, but he didn't die and then he was shot and he didn't die and then he finally drowned. That's the story

and that's the story which Prince Felix Yusuf tells and one of the other witnesses but recently there have been further stories that he was actually killed by a British Secret Service agent. I heard that one. You have? Yeah, I've heard all of them

but I was wondering which version of his murder do you personally believe and who bumped him off and why? Well, he was bringing the Romanoffs into disrepute because of his attachment to the Farina. They believed that he might be conspiring for a separate piece with Germany. He was believed to be perhaps more powerful than he was. They just felt that if he could be got rid of, then all the problems would be solved. And need to say, that wasn't the case. It was actually the first shot in the

revolution. Felix Yusufov was very effete. You've probably seen pictures of him, you know, very effeminate. And it's hard to believe. I have. I've heard that maybe he and Rasputin might have been lovers, but that might just be another nonsense story. Yes. Well Maria, his daughter, Rasputin's daughter is behind a lot

of the stories. She says that Yusuf was found naked on Rasputin's sofa. The sofa which had a back, which had been sort of so battered about that it had collapsed. So he had a sort of broken sofa. And there was Yusipov. And Yusufth

describes him in a very, so sexual way, describes his meeting with him in a very sexual way, you know, how hypnotic he was. He said he was going to Rasputin to be cured of his homosexuality. I mean, that was his ruse. In fact, he was trying to get close to Rasputin, eventually in order to invite him to his palace, the palace where he was murdered. And the story was that he was going to introduce Rasputin to his beautiful wife, Irina. He had a wife, even though he was homosexual or maybe wasn't sexual, probably more likely bisexual. But the thing is that I find it hard to believe he shot Rasputin in the side while Rasputin was praying, which is part of his story.

I just find that it would be almost impossible for any normal person to do. Imagine shooting a person when they're praying. That act would take some like ferocity. Yes, some real diablery. I suppose we'll never know. I did hear about some diaries of Yusufs coming. to light in Paris recently, and I wondered. But I suspect everybody's gone through them. You know, everybody's combed all the stories and the background, but one of his conspirators

wrote that he heard a sort of groaning sound from the cellar before any of the poison had been administered. So from the cellar where Rasputin was going to be killed, he heard a groan, which I think sounds like it was sexual. He certainly thought it was. So that's just another thing. You know, when you say, did they have a fair? Well, there's certainly evidence to show that they did. It was Yusuf that had come up with a story that he'd been shot and stabbed and poisoned with cyanide and then thrown in the river.

And then when he was dragged out, he had water in his lungs, he was still alive. The autopsy of Rasputin says that that didn't happen, didn't it? He was just shot. I think he was just shot in the head, yeah, by Oswald Nader, this British Secret Service agent. that's the sort of later story. Right, okay. There's a Scotland Yard detective who's written a book about all this,

who says that the details from Yusufov and from Farychov, who is his conspirator, sort of don't tally properly. Anyway, he pulls apart the Yusufov story, this Scotland Yard detective, can't remember his name, but that's also a good book. But it just seems people can't get enough of him, generally, Rasputin. Yeah. One of the things that's carried on long after his death,

a rumours about his penis, which is totally bizarre. Yes, well, particularly if the doctor, you know, in Siberia, who said that it had almost, you know, sort of disappeared this in 1914. But, yes, the story is involved, I mean, again, this is from Maria, Rasputin's daughter. She says that they cut his penis off after killing him. And then it sort of turned up in various museums. There are sort of claimant penises of various in Paris.

Yes. And in St. Petersburg, I think. The one in Paris apparently looks like an old blackened banana. Well, it would do after 100 and whatever years. What didn't one of them turn out to be an old sea cucumber? What, is that a story that you've heard? It sounds like it could be possible. Yes, yeah, I read that somewhere.

That's you. The one in St. Petersburg's museum is probably that of a horse or a cow. And then the other one was actually just a vegetable that got pickled, but I don't know how true any of this is, quite frankly. Yes, the one in St. Petersburg, apparently it's out on Napoleons, which was like a small pod, Napoleon's. But, well, it was the St. Petersburg one, which is actually a cucumber, did you say? It was the one in Paris that turned out to be a sea cucumber. Oh, I see. And that's the one that's kept on a sort of velvet cushion in a box. So I heard.

Do you know, I might be mixing up my rasputing penises now. There's so many of them floating around. But Maria Rasputin's friend and sort of co-author saw it in its box or what purported to be the penis. It was her who said it was like a blackened, overright banana on a sort of velvet. Oh, fabulous. In a large box, yeah. But then there was another thing which in his house in Siberia. I mean, the house in Siberia was actually knocked down because there were so many people visiting it.

But they then rebuilt it. And there was a museum built in 1919. 91 and there's a seat, a wooden seat there, which men can sit on, which apparently enhances their masculine powers if they sit on the seat and seat. I know. Oh, that's incredible. Do you know, I think we're going to have to try and answer our own question, Francis. Do we think that Rasputin was a historical fuckboy, bearing in mind all of the stories, the

orgies, the having sex with the Zarina and her children, the 13. penis with warts on the end, the sex magic, people are sinning, but they also, he can forgive them, all of that. Do we think that he was a historical fuckboy? Well, yes, I mean, and given all that. Without a shadow of a doubt. But as you keep pointing out, you never know what's true and what isn't, but certainly he's a mythical part of that. No, you don't.

Has anyone ever tried to redeem his reputation? Has anybody ever tried to write a book to say, look, all this stuff is nonsense. He was just a very nice man. It's all lies. Well, it would be quite hard to do that probably to find it. But I suppose you could. But on the other hand, the Russian Orthodox Church thinks about sanctifying him, by the way. I mean, they had about 100 clerics met quite recently, actually to oppose the Russian Orthodox Church's idea of, you know, because the Romanos themselves have been sanctified.

Anyway, I don't know how stupid that is, but I thought it must be quite serious for 100 Orthodox leaders to get together to make sure it didn't happen, made me think it must be. Oh, wow. So there are people, he does. Yes, it does. He has supporters out there, but they're not writing books as far as I know. No. No. But I think we can quite comfortably say Gregory, Rasputin, historical fuck-bye.

Francis, you have been incredible to talk to, and if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Well, I've just written a book called The Lives and Deaths of the Princesses of Hess about the Tarine and her sisters. That book's available. It's coming out in paperback in November, actually. But otherwise, there's about... Oh, fabulous. Well, I now have six books that I've written about the Romanovs. And they can all be ordered online or sometimes available in bookshops. and so if anyone's interested in further information

about Rasputin or about the Romanos, they can pursue that. Well, thank you so much for coming to tell us about Gregory Rasputin. Well, thank you very much for having me on. Thank you for listening, and thank you so much to Francis for joining us. And if you like what you heard,

don't forget to like with you and follow along wherever it is, you get your podcasts. Coming up, we have got the first in a new mini-series that will take you inside some of the most fascinating and important brothels in history. And we've got an episode on the Sex Lies of French. royalty. If you would like us to explore a subject or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com. This podcast was edited by Tom Delagie and produced by

Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, History of Sex Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.