Dan Snow's History Hit - Rasputin

Episode Date: November 26, 2023

The legend of Rasputin's death goes that he survived poisoning, being shot in the head before being thrown through a hole in the ice in the Neva River, where he finally died by drowning. But Rasputin biographer Douglas Smith, Dan's guest today, says that isn't what happened. He's been to Russia to study the crime scene photos and the evidence and says things happened a little differently to the way the history is told...He joins Dan to dig into the life of Grigori Rasputin, the Siberian mystique whose charisma held the Romanov Tsar and Tsarina in a vice-like grip, securing his own influence over Russia's politics and church at the turn of the 20th century.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal PatmoreSign up to History Hit at historyhit.com/subscribe using code BLACKFRIDAYPOD at checkout, for $1/£1 per month for 4 months and you’ll get nearly £30 off our normal monthly price over your first 4 months.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Grigori Rasputin, one of the most fascinating, the most bizarre and extraordinary characters in modern European history. The peasant who became a mystic, the mystic who became an essential, indispensable advisor to the Tsar of all Russia. The man who almost changed the course of world history, the fate of Russia, and the outbreak of the First World War before his grisly assassination in 1916. Who was Rasputin? Did he have magical powers that stopped the bleeding of the young Russian prince?

Was he the lover of the Russian queen? All your questions will be answered here by the very brilliant Douglas Smith. He's an award-winning historian, author of six books on Russia, including the biography Rasputin, Faith, Power and the Twilight of the Romanovs. This is a man who has visited St. Petersburg to pour over the crime scene photographs of the night on which Rasputin met his fate. It is a truly extraordinary tale. And it's Douglas meant to tell it. Enjoy.

T-minus 10. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And liftoff. And the shuttle has cleared the tower. Douglas, thanks so much for coming on the show.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Do we know much about Rasputin, how he grew up, what was his life like as a child? No, sort of the outlines of those first, actually, decades of his life are a bit murky, to say the least. You know, we know he had sort of a general peasant upbringing in Siberia, church, work in the fields, helping his father, no schooling whatsoever. But beyond that, we know really almost nothing. And, you know, as he became famous, all sorts of myths and legends took hold about his wild, untamed, rather corruptible youth. But much of this, I think we just have to dismiss as gossip. rather corruptible youth. But much of this, I think we just have to dismiss as gossip. So how does a peasant from a middle of a forgotten spot in Russia rise to prominence? I mean, what's his first step on that journey? Well, that's, you know, that was something that I

tried to figure out when I started my research for the biography is like how it almost doesn't seem possible when you really step back for a minute and say, how does this person end up in the Imperial Palace in Petersburg? And I think, first of all, you have to admit that he was a truly remarkable individual in terms of his character, personality, his insight in human psychology. And he had incredible drive and ambition. And he had a thirst to, I think, try to understand the world. That's what sort of led him on this journey was he had some sort of a religious crisis, if you will, in his late 20s. And he set off as a holy pilgrim in search of enlightenment, going from church to church and monastery to monastery, trying to better understand God and scripture and sort of man's place in the world.

And this must have come from some sort of deep-seated longing and desire. I don't think you could fake this. This was an actual part of his personality. And was young men going from church to church seeking things, was that normal? Were there other kind of mystics doing that at the time? Was this something that ambitious or certainly highly motivated young men might do? Actually, it's not as unusual as you would think for the time, sort of late 19th, early 20th century Russia. You had literally hundreds of thousands of these, typically men, who were known as stranyiki, which are like sort of holy wanderers, if you will.

Not monks, not priests, never ordained, but these folks that would literally just wander across the vastness of the Russian Empire in search of God, in search of enlightenment. And so he fits into a larger pattern at the time and is in many ways sort of an expression of the seeking that was going on within Russian culture at the time. And I guess if you're going to do that, you have to be pretty charismatic, right? You know, the wanderer comes to your village. You want to hear a story.

You want to feel like you're in the presence of holiness. I mean, you've got to have a pretty good game. Definitely. And he had game, full on. And now whether it came to him immediately or he developed it over the years of wandering, we don't know. I'm thinking it's something he built up as time went on and gained more and more followers. There was an electricity about him. There was an energy about him. Even his enemies admitted he had incredible charisma and a power and a sort of magnetism that no one could deny, both obviously his followers and his detractors. So it was this weird combination, I think, of who he was just sort of as an individual combined with the lived experiences that he had gained from all of these years wandering throughout the Russian countryside, which in a sense was his university, if you will.

He mixed with all levels of society from aristocrats and bishops and higher ups in the government to street criminals and thugs and beggars. And he developed this sort of encyclopedic knowledge of the vast social sweep of Russian society. So actually, if you're out of touch, Russian Tsar is looking for someone who's kind of knows Russia quite well. In an era before online polls and polling companies, actually, this guy, he'd walk the walk. He'd seen a lot of Russia. He sat at a lot of different tables in front of a lot of different halves. actions that Nicholas and Alexandra found in Rasputin. You got to remember, they lived in a golden cage. There was so much fear of assassination that the royal family lived completely cut off from this vast empire that they ruled. And this was, if you will, their connection to the people. Rasputin came to personify in his own single one person, the larger Russian narod, as they call it, the people. And they felt that when he came to them and sat down and talked to them,

that through him, they gained some sort of profound, deep personal connection to the people over which they ruled. I love it. I love it. The never-ending quest of very rich, out-of-touch people to have authentic experiences with, quote, real people. I love it. This is the best example ever of that. Some things never go out of style. Yeah. So he does have a wife and kids. There are rumors at this stage, aren't there, of sort of orgies and sex stuff going on. Did he abuse the trust that people put in him, the charisma, the excitement people had about his religious aura? Was he making money? Was he enjoying sexual favors? Like, is there any truth to that? There is truth to that. First of all, the money question, definitely not. I mean, one thing that is very clear, he was never motivated by avarice and greed and a desire

to enrich himself. And he never possessed palaces and he didn't live a sort of a high life whatever money he tended to get would pass right through his hands to go into someone who would come to him asking for help so it was never about money more about women i would say i mean he would definitely have failed the me too moment he was a lech he was a creep he was possibly a rapist we can never really say that for certain but he he couldn't resist pawing women, stroking them, taking lovers, mistresses, what have you. Apparently, when someone brought this up to his long-suffering wife back in Siberia, she said, well, you know, Grigori has enough love in him for more than just one woman. So I think there was a certain acceptance on his wife's part.

But yeah, there was definitely an element of the creep in him that I think there's enough there that we can't deny that. One thing, though, that's interesting, there was never ending waterfall of rumors washing over Russia then about Rasputin and all his evil deeds. But what's interesting is no one ever came forward claiming to be bearing his child. No one claimed to have been made pregnant by Rasputin, which I find interesting, which suggests to me maybe the actual amount of lovemaking with his mistresses is perhaps not as great as we might have thought. Where does he first meet the Romanovs? Where does he first meet the Tsar? So he comes in contact with them at this really remarkable and powerful moment in Russian history. It's the fall of 1905 during the revolution, one of the first revolutions to try to overthrow the Romanovs.

And Nicholas and Alexandra are terrified about what's happening in the country. And they're getting conflicting advice about what they should do, whether or not they should put in a constitution and introduce all sorts of reforms. And they meet Rasputin at that moment. And they literally look to him again as the sort of voice of the people, like, what should we do? What do the people want? And he's someone that tells them basically, hold back on reform, hold on to power, all will be well.

And this is an element that I think has long been overlooked in the story of Rasputin. You know, we typically hear that, oh, Rasputin's power over the royal couple sprang from his ability to keep the tsarevich Alexei, who had hemophilia, safe. In other words, he prevented him from dying from this horrible disease. But what's interesting that I found in my research is that from the moment they meet him, his role as a political advisor is hugely important and will remain so until his murder in 1960. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. We're talking Rasputin. More coming up. To be continued... who were rarely the best of friends. Murder, rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit.

Wherever you get your podcasts. So he helps the Tsar through that moment of crisis existential crisis the 1905 revolution he's then kind of part of their inner circle he's a close advisor what's the nature look we'll come onto his race shit with the kids in a minute the alexis czarovich but what's the nature of his advice like was, was he small-t conservative? Did he side with liberals? What was he doing with his influence? He was very much a monarchist. He was very much committed to the traditions of the Russian autocracy, to the Romanov family. And generally, throughout the years that he was part of their life, he would counsel them against what we would call Western reforms.

He very much believed in the need for a single autocratic power in Russia and the need to be strong. This definitely comes to the fore during World War I, I would say, when Nicholas goes off to take charge of the Russian army in 1915 and Rasputin and Alexandra are often meeting alone together in the palace, having these sort of political conversations about things. But his advice was very much sort of stay the course, don't introduce radical reforms. You know, Russian people need a strong ruler like you. That was generally the nature of his counsel, I would say. It must have been so nice for them, because of course, we all like hearing advice that attunes to our preconceived ideas.

And here's this genuine Russian peasant, a mystic, a holy man who's walked all over the country telling them, no, don't worry, the peasants all love you. You're doing a great job. I mean, that must have been soothing for them. You know, in a way it was. But, you know, one of the things that I found that was really striking is there's a couple moments in Rasputin's history where he gives advice that Nicholas did not listen to and that had Nicholas listened might have changed the course of history. Just one example is the summer of 1914. Europe is on the edge of massive world war and Rasputin is back at home in his village, Pokrovskaya in Siberia,

and he is attacked by a mad woman, Hyonya Guseva, the strange woman with no nose, who stabs him in the stomach, claiming she's killed the Antichrist. Miraculously, he survives. He ends up in a hospital nearby, and he is counseling Nicholas from there in telegrams and in letters, do not listen to the warmongers. Do not listen to your ministers and your generals. Do not go to war. I see nothing but seas of blood, an eternity of darkness,

and the collapse of all Russia. And again, you think, what if? What if Nicholas had listened? Nailed it. He nailed it. Yeah, and he was right. And he was totally right. Yeah, he was totally right.

He also knew that the people that were going to mostly die were peasants like him, right? They were the backbone of the Russian army. He thought it was easy for aristocrats in Petersburg to say, yes, let's go fight a war when it really was going to be the Russian peasant who was going to bear the brunt of that. What about his time in St. Petersburg when he's not in Siberia? He's with the royal family. He's intimate with the royal family. Let's talk about the Tsarevich, Nicholas's son, the heir to the throne. He's a hemophiliac.

And it does seem like Rasputin was able to bring his bleeding under control. Some sort of calming presence, lowering his blood pressure. What do we think that is? some sort of calming presence, lowering his blood pressure? What do we think that is? Yeah, that's a central mystery in the whole story of Rasputin and his relationship with the royal family is, you know, what influence did he exert over the health of the Tsarevich Alexei? And there's all sorts of different theories about this. I think Robert Massey, the late Robert Massey, brilliant historian who wrote Nicholas and Alexander, the book that sort of initiated everybody's interest in all this kind of stuff. He argued that basically what what Rasputin did was, first of all, tell Alexander to have the doctors leave the boy alone.

Just let the doctors leave him alone, which I think was important because they were constantly poking and prodding and turning him over and doing all sorts of things, which made it that much harder for the boy to heal because the blood, you know, wouldn't coagulate and the bleeding would just continue. So that was one thing that I think was really important that he did. Another thing was he, and this gets into a murky region of sort of the mind-body connection and health and healing, which is stuff where only really, I think, as experts in the medical field are starting to peel back and understand, is the degree to which Rasputin gave Alexandra confidence and belief that her son would survive and how this was a calming influence on her and in some ways maybe calmed the young boy as well. Gave him the hope, gave him the confidence. And again, this is stuff, it's hard to, you know, come to any definitive answer on this.

But I think those are two elements that were important. Another theory is that he told the doctors not to give the boy aspirin. Obviously, you know, that could have helped again, because aspirin obviously makes it harder for the blood to coagulate. So I think these are some of the key elements that we can kind of look to as possible explanations. What about with the rest of the family, the kids? Well, also the Tsarina, he was very intimate with them. And is that where the sort of the rumors, the gossip all sprang up? People must have been jealous of that access he got to the royal family, were they? Well, I think you're completely right when you talk about jealousy. Because what's

interesting is, is Nicholas and Alexandra and their children lived this sort of completely isolated life. They did not allow close contact between themselves and the members of the aristocracy, sort of the leading pillars of society. Yet at the same time, they were allowing this unknown, unwashed, in quotation marks, dirty peasant into the palace, and not only into the palace, but they allowed him into the nursery where the children were. And he would help them prepare for bed and things like that. And so there was a good deal of jealousy among the elite that sort of said, wait a minute, we are the ones that should have access to the palace, not this peasant from Siberia. And that was a source of much of the rumor and the gossip. There was talk that,

you know, Rasputin was taking liberties with the daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra. And obviously then one of the biggest rumors that got going was that Rasputin was sleeping with the empress herself, that Alexandra was in fact Rasputin's lover. And these were rumors that sort of spread throughout the Salon culture of Petersburg and then made their way around the country and were hugely important in tarnishing the image of the throne, which was vital in understanding sort of the forces that then helped lead to the downfall of the Romanovs. Are you able to judge if there's any truth to any of these rumors? Did he abuse the position of trust that he had within the family? No, I think there's nothing to speak to this at all. This was simply gossip that was generated by jealous folks who wish they had that sort of access that Rasputin did. There's this sort of class element that you can't ignore.

The Russian elites look down their nose at the Russian peasantry, at the vast masses, and this really drove them up the wall, the fact that this was the person that their rulers looked to for counsel, for advice, for support. And they simply could not wrap their minds around this. Tell me the extraordinary tale of the night that Rasputin was, well, eventually assassinated. Yeah, if there's one moment in Rasputin's biography that everybody's heard of, it's the story of his murder in December of 1916. It keeps getting told and retold and retold, and it's sort of like the telephone game.

Every time it gets retold and retold, it gets exaggerated and distorted. I think that one of the things that's most important to remember is that what we know chiefly of that murder was the account written by the man who organized the murder, Prince Felix Yusupov, who came from one of the most powerful

and wealthiest aristocratic families in Russia. And in his memoir, he recounts killing Rasputin. And basically, every page is full of lies and self-justification. The only thing that's honest in his memoirs is when he admits that, in fact, what he did carry out was, quote unquote, a cowardly crime. You know, they lured Rasputin to the Yusupov Palace on the Moika in Petrograd, saying that they were going to introduce him to Prince Yusupov's beautiful young wife. All along, though, they had a plan to try to murder him in the cellar, down in the wine cellar, which they did. Now, it's, you know, recounted in Yusupov's memoirs that they tried to poison him

and that didn't work. And they tried to shoot him and that didn't work. And it was only when they finally threw his body into one of the arms of the Neva River through a hole in the ice that he drowned, making the sign of the cross as the cold, dark waters suck him under the ice. All of this is fascinating and fanciful and interesting, but none of it is really true. The best I could recreate is that basically when he arrived there, they probably did try to poison him, but the person who was going to supply the poison at the last minute got cold feet and gave them ground aspirin instead.

So the poison never worked. And then they shot him twice in the midsection. He managed to go up a stairway and out into the courtyard, fall down in the snow. And then they administered what the Russians call the control shot with a bullet right through the middle of the forehead. I went to a museum in Petersburg during my research, and they have all the crime photos from the investigation. And they have all the photographs of Rasputin's body after it was fished out of the branch of the Neva River. And there you can see two bullet holes through the midsection.

And then they have a close-up photo of his head. And there you can see a bullet that went in directly into basically in between his eyes. So I think it was not as exciting as history would like us to believe, although it is an amazing story. But he was clearly dead by the time they threw his body into the river. Why did they kill him? The people that were effectively jealous of his closeness to the Tsar? Well, by the time the murder took place at the end of 1916, it was no longer just jealousy about Rasputin's place in the royal palace, but the belief took hold during World War I that Russia's defeats in the war against Germany and

Austria could only be explained by treason. That the only way to understand why Russia has not been victorious in the war was the notion that someone was selling out the Russians to the enemy. And the fact that the Empress Alexandra was German by birth led many to believe that Alexandra was actually a spy working on behalf of the Kaiser in Berlin together with Rasputin. And this idea took hold that if we kill Rasputin, Alexandra will go to pieces, will be locked up in a convent, and then Nicholas can sort of exercise full power again and thus win the war for Russia. It's an utterly ludicrous idea, but it was this idea that by killing Rasputin, they were saving Russia, which greatly exaggerated

Rasputin's power and influence. And is also something I think that sort of became typical of thinking of Russian political culture, this idea that the way we move society forward is through murder, right? Murdering Rasputin is somehow going to save Russia. Murdering the royal family during the revolution is somehow going to save Russia. Murdering all those people under Stalin is somehow going to save Russia. And now under Putin, killing all my enemies is somehow going to save Russia. There's a through line of political murder, I would say, that you could argue begins with Rasputin in 1916 and is still sadly ongoing in Russia today. Wow. Thank you very much there for drawing that through line. That's fascinating. Douglas Smith, tell us what the name of the book is. The name of the book is Rasputin,

Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs. Thank you so much for coming on the pod and talking about it. Thanks. It was great talking to you.