Empire: World History - 92. Killing Rasputin

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

Born in Siberia to a peasant family, Rasputin was an incredibly charismatic, physically striking, and politically savvy figure. He was a holy man, a mystic, who found his way to the centre of Imperial Russian power. Once he met Nicholas and Alexandra, he gained a central place in the court as the only man who could stop the tsarevich, Alexei, from bleeding. As his influence grew, his reputation among the Russian aristocracy declined. In the end, they felt they had to act. And so, on the night of the 29th December, 1916, he was lured to the Yusopov basement... Listen as William and Anita are joined by Simon Sebag Montefiore to discuss Alexandra, Nicholas, and the life and death of their favourite adviser, Rasputin. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport + Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mparpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Duremple. Now, before we introduce our very special guest today, and you know him, you know him. He has been here before. I mean, he's fast becoming a firm favourite of this podcast.

I should really explain what we're doing because you will have had the excellent Anthony Beaver talking about the Russian Revolution in the last couple of podcasts. And we did it, didn't we will even in sort of macro political terms, the really big, chunky issues of the day? Anthony Beaver likes a good battle. He likes the chunky. He likes a chunky. He does. Yes.

He does. And he does it. And he does it exceptionally. well. No one does battle better than beaver, it has been said. Try and say that after a few drinks. That's very good. Okay. Well, look, the thing is, there is, though, a flesh and blood, really tragic, painful, deeply personal story in the middle of all of this. It's the story of a family that gets wiped out. And that's what we really want to talk about. We skimmed through it with Anthony, but we want to talk about it with somebody

who writes with such empathy and power about it that I have to say, and let's a Let's let the C-bag out the bag. It's Simon C-bag once you're playing. Hello, hello, it's great to be here for an unprecedented fifth time. Seriously, we might as well get a bunk bed for you because you're here for play dates quite a lot. I'm in. It is very lovely to have you back. Can I just say, William is such a softy that he cries very easily.

But reading your account of the utter annihilation of this family, it did make me cry. It made me cry. I was in pain and deeply touched by the humanity with which you wrote. It can't have been easy. I cried when I was writing it. It was just such agony. And we'll come to why. I mean, it was agony enough of sort of parents and children being killed and teenagers being killed. But the details are so horrific. But we will come to that in a minute. I have to say that there's been nothing that we've done on this podcast that has led us to such wonderful reading as this Russian series. And to have the pleasure of being able to read

Anthony Beaver's 1917 and then come back for the final chapter of Seabags Romanov's for, I think what is undoubtedly the sort of epic climax of that book. It's absolutely been the highlight of my summer and autumn reading. It's just absolutely wonderful. And so let's start. Let's open with Nicholas II, who we barely sketched when we were doing the revolution. I mean, we sort of rather ridiculously said he had daddy issues, as most stars do seem to have. Just tell us a little bit about this young man born in 1868 at the Alexander Palace, just south of St. Petersburg. What was he like and how was he different to his father? Well, his father was Alexander III, known as the Colossus, a giant of a man,

a hard drinker, a Russiophile, ultra-nationalist, a total anti-semit, and someone who famously said what is often been quoted by Putin, which is Russia only has two trustworthy allies. the army and the Navy. And he was the kind of man who in the middle of a cabinet meeting might get up and grab a cabinet minister by the scruff of the neck and lift him off his feet and shake him. So that was the sort of autocrat he was. His son, his eldest son of three boys, was Nicholas, Nicky. And Nikki was exactly the opposite of his huge father, who was a study uncertainty about all things. He was tiny, he was extremely delicate, looking and very handsome with gorgeous blue eyes and high cheekbones, very pale. He grew up speaking

Russian, French, some German and English with a perfect Victorian English accent. And he was extremely shy and he worshipped his father and his father really didn't do much to train him or prepare him for the succession because he believed he would reign for a long time. But he died incredibly young in his late 40s of liver failure from drinking. That seems to be rather a Romanov theme. We've had a few heavy drinkers. His doctor's band, but in his big peasant boots, he had boots specially made so he could hide a vodka bottle in them and reach in and drink it illegally and then put it back into

the bottle. But he suddenly declined radically in 1893, 94 of liver failure. There was no cure for it then. And suddenly the boy, Nicholas, who was about 25 by that point, was suddenly close to the throne. And ministers often said to Alexander that you've got to train Nicholas, you've got to train the Tsarevich for the throne. And he said things like, the trouble with him, he's like a little girl,

or he's just a little boy, he doesn't know anything. God help him, how will he'll manage? But on the other hand, it's always stated that, you know, Nicholas II was untrained for the train. But how do you train anyone for absolute power and a role that is really a combination between a president, a Prime Minister and a field marshal. See, Bag, you give the impression of someone who's incredibly isolated, above all.

He had friends in the family, and, you know, don't forget, Nicky, like the Kaiser, they were both first cousins of George V, by the way, Georgie, in the Little Royal Club. And looked like him. And looked very like him. And Nicky and Willie and Wilhelm, the Kaiser of Germany, were second and third cousins simultaneously. So they were all very interrelated. But he was shy.

He was isolated and it was hard as a lot of the autocratic friend of Russia to find anyone you could really play with. But he had a lot of, the Romanov family was enormous and he had lots of friends, actually. Did he also Seabag internalised some of that inferiority complex at his father inevitably sort of projected on him? I mean, Anthony Beaver said something last week where he wails to his courtiers. You know, who's going to listen to me? I'm just a midget. I mean, how much was the inferiority complex part of his decision making or the way he thought about? things or the way he treated people? Well, I mean, the traditional image, which we must dispense with of Nicholas and Alexandra, his future wife, was of a sort of shy person who would have been better

sort of retired in the country on a country estate and that they were rather saintly loving figures. And this really isn't true because though he was shy and small, and it did help when you were a result of Russia to be a giant. And bizarrely, the Romanov family were all almost giants. There There was a whole run of them who were enormous and extremely impressive physically. So the fact that he was compared by his own father to being a little girl, you know, it obviously was undermining and he was undermined by his father. But at the same time, he fanatically believed in autocracy that Russia was an autocrat and that the autocrats were divine monarchs, blessed by God with a special relationship with the peasantry. You give an impression of a man that's not actually unintelligent, though, although he's isolated and living in a sort of bubble of his own sort of sacrality. He reads Tolstoy, he likes Tchaikoski, he's well-educated. And he's very good at languages.

So he's highly intelligent. I don't think he was stupid at all. But the question is, did he have political acumen, which is a totally different thing? And the Tsar of Russia had to know what he wanted to do. And also, I mean, you point out in your book, the Romanovs, that this is a man who had ambitions greater than his stature. I mean, you know, Sykes Pico, which is very much in our minds and in the news at the moment, this would have been Sykes Pico Sazanov if he would have had his way. I mean, just tell us a little more about his own idea of what Russia should be in the world.

He was an absolute nationalist. He despised the Jews. And, you know, once he went to stay with Edward the Seventh, when he was Prince of Wales, and rather hilariously, the Prince of Wales had a whole lot of Jewish people staying with him. And Nikki wrote to his mother, I was very embarrassed to meet these Jewish horse dealers who were all staying with the Prince of Wales, which was very strange. And I just found it sensible not to say anything

and to keep away from them. He believed that the Jews were a major problem in Russia who should all be converted and were extremely untrustworthy and had to be kept under active repression. Along with the other peoples of the empire, by the way, you know, the reason why the revolutionaries who began to organize in his reign,

The reason why they were all Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, Finns and Latvians was because these people were 50% of the population of the Russian Empire was non-Russian. So they were all repressed. So he was an extreme conservative and he was a Russian imperialist. His plot in the first part of his reign was to expand and get Manchuria and Korea. And for the first 10 years, if he died after 10 years, he'd be regarded as a rather successful for Tsar, who had almost pulled off Korea and Manchuria, which is northern China, the northern quarter of China. But as we know, in 1904, the Japanese attacked him unexpectedly. He was humiliated and defeated. There was a 1905 revolution. And it took him about five to seven

years to recover from that revolution. And he becomes very repressive after that. He's really quite an autocrat. Well, this is again, this is again interesting, because he had this huge revolution, when he had to give up a constitution to Russia and he gave them a constitution, a prime minister and elections, almost universal suffrage, male suffrage, and a Duma, which was a parliament, and he had to rule with them. Meanwhile, he set about reconquering all of the Russian empire with absolute brutality. And he often said, you know, kill them all, hang them all. I mean, it almost sounds like Lenin when you hear him. So this is very far, from the sort of cliche of the rather sweet, meek little Nicholas' second.

But when you get onto World War I'm just desperate to get to answer your question, Anita. Well, yeah, yeah. Just before we get to World War I, though, I mean, just backing up what you're saying about this sort of this misinterpretation of this, you know, poor, frightened youth is rather soft and like a little girl. I mean, you know, after 1905, Richard, you know, he funds a group called the Black Hundreds. They're not lovely, are they? I mean, tell us about the Black Hundreds.

So proto-fascists. The Black Hundreds are proto-fascist. who organized pogroms against Jews all over Russia. And his father had sort of encouraged pogroms against Russia. They really started in 1881 with the assassination of Alexander II, the Tsar who liberated the Serbs. The assassination is important to Nicholas II because as a little boy of seven,

he was taken in after his grandfather had been blown to smithereens by the assassin's bomb, which blew his legs off. Nicholas I, Nicholas II as a boy, was skating. They were called to the Winter Palace, where his beloved grandfather, Alexander II, was gradually bleeding out and dying of shock and loss of blood. And little Nicholas, still holding his ice skates, stood there in his sailor suit and looked at his grandfather dying.

It's a very important detail to understand Nicholas II. He had real reason to fear revolutionaries. He had reason to fear a revolution and to believe in autocracy. You know, another reason to fear the mob, if he needed any more reasons to fear, you know, was his rather unsuccessful coronation. The Kordinka tragedy, I mean, the farce of that, I still can't get over. It really was a stampede for free souvenirs, wasn't it? And food.

And talk us through, you know, what that should have been and what it ends up being. Zars were always crowned in Moscow, in the Kremlin. So two years after his father had died, at age, over. only 49. Nikki succeeds to the throne. For a second, when his father dies, he weeps and he says, I just don't know how I'm going to rule Russia. But that's always presented again as a sort of sign of terrific weakness. But actually, his father had also wept when he became heir to the throne. And his father had wept because becoming czar of Russia was a pretty bloody terrifying thing to succeed to. And straight after his father's death, straight after the funeral, the day after

the funeral, he marries Alexandra, who he's met, first of all, in 1884 at the marriage of his uncle, Serge, to her sister, Elizabeth. Paint a picture of Alexandra. Who is she? So Alexandra grew up, a very serious girl, highly neurotic, often ill with stomach cramps, rashes, almost, you know, almost someone who was permanently a patient with all sorts of nervous, nervous afflictions, but very beautiful with alban hair, high cheekblowns, wonderful jawline, and a very intense and religious person, a very observant Lutheran. Interesting, Lutheran rather than Greek Orthodox. Yes, she converted to Greek Orthodox to marry Nicky, and that's what led to a huge crisis.

When they met in 1894 at Coburg for a family wedding, Queen Victoria was there, the head of the family, arrived with a sort of ready. regiment of cavalry before and after her. She arrived in her carriage with incredible grandeur. And she loved going to Germany. But the Kaiser, the young Kaiser, Villem II, was the host. And Nikki was already in love with Alexandra. And they had little nicknames for each other. They'd corresponded from 10 years earlier. But now he realized that he was passionately in love with her. She was in love with him. They knew each other since they were 12. Wasn't that right? Yes. But the problem was that she was a Lutheran and he was the Russian,

orthodox. Also, his mum didn't like her, just didn't like a full stop, did she? Well, his mum didn't like her. And also, Queen Victoria was against the whole thing with, as it turned out, very good reason, because she regarded the Russians as essentially barbarous. And also, she regarded it as an extremely unstable and autocratic regime, which of course it was. I mean, his grandfather had been assassinated. Alexander III had escaped assassination by another assassination plot, in which which was partly organised by Lenin's brother, who was hanged for it, which converted his younger brother, Lenin, Vladimir Lenin, to fanatical Marxism. Family bad blood everywhere.

Yeah. So she was very against, everybody was against it, because Alexander was so clearly a person appallingly suited to a political job. And be under no illusion. To Bezar Russia, it may have been a divinely appointed. autocrat in the eyes of some Russians and the Tsars themselves. But actually, it was a politician's job. It was highly political, and you needed political skills to succeed. You paint her as very strong will, but not particularly intelligent or well-educated. Well, the best description of her, which says it all,

is from someone who knew really intimately and kind of loved her, who was Count Benkendorf, the head of the court. And he famously said, Alexandra has a will of iron linked to not much brain and no knowledge at all. That's really bitchy. It's bitchy. It's bitchy. But as you'll see, whenever she had a chance to influence policy, she was catastrophic. Right. Catastrophic, not just slightly unwise, but disastrous. So it was a good, it was a judgment from someone who loved her. But Nicholas goes against everybody's advice.

Nicholas goes with the heart and he insists he's going to marry her and they love each other. And it's a good marriage. Yeah. And it's a good marriage. And the Kaiser was really the kind of godfather of the marriage. He advised her to get married, hoping he would have influence over the new czar. And so they got married two days or just the day after the funeral of his father. So it has to have been the gloomiest marriage ever.

And they were so happy to be together. And they had a wonderful marriage. That's the true part of the image. It was an incredibly happy marriage. It was a passionate marriage. We happened to have thousands of their letters from during World War I. And these letters are quite extraordinary. They're written in perfect Victorian English, by the way.

Do you have some? You quote them beautifully in your book. Can we have a little reading? Well, I should warn you that they're very sexy these letters in an unexpected way. That's never put you off, Bob, to now. I think we'll be all right. I think we'll be okay. Trigger warning.

They have to, turn off now if you don't want to hear this. They had nicknames for each other's private parts. So she called his Boise, and he called hers Lady. So she would often say in the letters like, Ladies Off Games today, how's Boise? And he might write back and say, Boise's absolutely ready. And when he was ready, wherever she was at court, he would whistle and make a bird song.

And she would blush, bright red, whoever she was talking to and say, I've got to go, the emperor's calling me. Now, I'm going to try and read you, which is so unexpected. There's a lot more detail of this in Seabang's book, if anyone wants more of that kind of stuff. This is so much not what you expect when you read about them.

Although I don't know why. Queen Victoria was very passionate with Albert. I mean, why think that these people aren't crazy about ripping each other's clothes off? Yeah. It happened. Darling, it's hard to believe we could be happier than we have been. We're all placed in God's hands.

Life is a riddle, the future hidden behind a curtain, united for life at last. This is him, say, speaking. And when this life has ended, we meet again in the other world. So they combine Victorian prudishness with this kind of extraordinary private passion, Lady and Boise. And so, for example, they would write, this is her, I burn with impatience to see you as soon as possible, she wrote, to feel myself in your arms. I long for you terribly. and when he was away, she'd say, nobody to kiss and caress you, she said. In my thoughts, I'm always doing it, my darling angel.

It's a wonderfully complex and complete portrait you give in the books, Ebag. I absolutely loved it. Combining this sort of, this intimate description of this couple very much in love, the fact that they are completely unaware of the political climate outside, and also this sort of rampant anti-Semitism, these sort of proto-black shirts storming around the countryside, doing pogroms, all this happening simultaneously. When she wrote about sex,

she called her periods the military engineer. I don't know what, that was their code. Well, if you were a woman, you wouldn't have to ask, darling. And then, okay, that's true. And she would send him quite sexy ones actually talking about Boise. And she's a here's one where she says, tell Boise that lady sends him her tenderest love and kisses and thinks of him always during the lonely, sleepless night.

And there's just one more that I have to read you, which is quite fun. She says to my missing Boise, but he writes back and says, my sweet lady, I kiss you, I love you and want you. Oh, he says, so naughty. He sounds like Kenneth Williams. David Everidge. And she replies, this is all written down in perfect English. And she replies, sweetest lovey of mine, I adore your adorable expression, the shyness that creeps over you and makes your sweet eyes all the more. all dangerous, you old sinner.

Oh, it's so lovely. So, dear reader, you won't be surprised that they had five children. So Olga, Tatania, Maria, Anastasia, and the fifth, a boy called Alexi. Yes. And they were known as Otmar. They called themselves Otmar, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia. So just like the firm. Well, look, it's a good point to take a break.

After the break, come back to us because we're going to talk about the mad monk, some say Rasputin. Welcome back. Okay, desperate to do this because he's such a fascinating character. Tell us about Rasputin because, you know, Ra, Ra, Rasputin, lover of a Russian queen, I put it to you. The Seabag Montefiore. The song of Boni, the song of Boni, M is a very good analysis of early 20th century Russian court politics.

But someone has a few flaws, one of which is she was never the love of the Russian queen. Is this the first time disco is, made it into our podcast. It could be. They were both very shy, very controlled, very secretive people who she had no friends whatsoever except really him and one lady-in-waiting Anna Vibrova. Is that partly because she was foreign? She was from S? She felt very isolated. She learnt fluent Russian though. She converted and took to orthodoxy. But she early on, I mean, she always consulted with him about politics. Now, Rasputin is important. The way you should see him is not so much the sort of giddy, lecherous Russian peasant,

but rather as a court favourite, the last of the great court favourites. You know, the most talented have been Potemkin. The least talented was Rasputin. And when he arrived, she and Nikki had already had four girls, and they desperately wanted a son to succeed to the throne. And when she had her second daughter, Tatiana, when she was handed the baby, exhausted, she said, oh my God, what will the nation say? So a lot of pressure. She had a false pregnancy, which turned out to be extremely embarrassing. And they had before us, Putin, had an earlier mystic

sort of guru called Dr. Philippe, who was a butcher's boy from Leon with magical, mystical powers, who had tried to get them a son. And finally, they had got the son, Alexi, in August 1904. And they were absolutely delighted. This is a sort of Russian version of the sort of crazy Edwardian mysticism we had in our young husband expedition. Exactly. It's exactly like that. And it's the same people. Yeah. But Rasputin himself, I mean, you know, the image that is conjured up, apart from, you know, Boni M and the spinning. So, so, I mean, I was told us he was quite an unhygienic character, large, smelly. And you said, you know, don't sort of characterize him as lecturers, but the man put about a bit, didn't he for a monk?

He did. I mean, you know. His wife, who he was wildly unfaithful to say, like, said Grigory, you know, is wildly unfaithful, but he's got a lot to give, she said, ambiguously. And boy, did he give it. I mean, who was he giving it to, Simon Teabagabontefuri? He started off stealing horses, chasing girls in a small village in Siberia. And then he became a stranic, a holy wanderer, and a starrette, a sort of a mystic. He means elder, but he was young and he started to wonder Russia, reading the Bible, visiting the

remains of saints. And he started to believe that he could cure people. And physically tall, centre parting, ragged hair. Ragged wild hair, gorgeous, gorgeous blue, bright eyes, hypnotic eyes, which were fascinating. And he had a sort of, he was charismatic, he had the gift of the gab, however important or grand, the person he met. even the Zara and Zarina. He had a way of treating them in a very informal offhand way.

He often questioned members of the Royal Family about their sex life quite uninhibitedly, which they all found fascinatingly refreshing. And he specialized in talking to what were essentially the wives of sort of stiff Victorian men about their sex lives. But he obviously believed that he had these powers. Now, whether he was really a mystic, a hypnotist, or just a sort of fespian showman,

And we just don't know. But he had a powerful effect. His sex appeal, I'd describe, as feral and pungent. Is that a reference to the smell again? The smell of him, yeah. But the smell of him was, I mean, men grumbled about the smell of him. No women grumbled. I spent a bit of time with Rationalosoth monks on Mount Athos.

And I have to say hygiene is not one of the top priorities. No, but no women, all the sort of grand men he met at court, prime ministers and counts and stuff. They all grumbled that he smelled, but no women ever grumbled. I mean, he could have bottled it and sold it as an aftershave called Rasputin. There is a thing in Orthodox Nazism about smell. And there's a phrase I remember from some early desert father about the smell of his piety could be smelt and sort of half a mile away. Yes.

Okay. Can I just say how he became important? In 1904, when Nicholas and Alexandra were facing two terrifying crises, On one hand, the war against Japan was going catastrophically wrong and protests were beginning all over the Russia. On the other hand, they'd got the sun they desperately wanted. But 11 days after being born, his naval started to bleed uncontrollably. And they realized that he had the terrible disease of the English family, which they called it. They decided to keep this secret for reasons of state so that he could succeed to the crown.

a decision that placed them under incredible strain and stress, of course, because he was going to have hemophiliac attacks, how to explain this. Just as at this moment, the Montenegrin princesses, Militza and Stano, who were married into the family, Alexander hated them. She called them the Black Crows. But they introduced Nikki and Alex to a very fashionable, early 30s monk and Holy Band, Rasputin, who arrived. They were immediately dazzled with him.

He kind of seduced and charmed them with his informality, his power, his confidence. Now, it wasn't just that when little Alexi had an attack, he could somehow calm the attack. I believe that partly it was because he could calm the mother, who became hysterical. But whatever it was, in the worst attacks, he would even send telegrams and said, the little one will survive. But at the same time, he was both consulari, psychiatrist and priest to bowl. both the couple and in a way he was as important to Nikki as he was to Alexandra. In fact, Nikki said, I couldn't have gone on ruling without the advice of Rasputin. There's a letter that

Alexandra writes to him which sort of tells you just how much in his thrall she is. How can I thank you enough for everything? I wish only one thing to fall asleep on your shoulder. You are all, forgive me my teacher. I know I have sinned. I tried to do better, but I don't succeed. I love you, I believe in you. God grant us the joy of meeting soon. I kiss you warmly. Bless and forgive me. I am your child. I mean, it sort of conjures up an image from a Madonna video, you know, like a prayer. It is that kind of thing. Yes. I mean, she needed him and he gave her confidence. And he became a part of the family. And for Nicholas, he became like a psychiatrist and consulari. And the more hated he was, the more scandalous he was, the more people report, you know, prime ministers

came and said, you've got to get rid of this man, the more she said, they hate him because we love him. And they saw him as a Christ-like figure, even though he soon became a drunkhood, drank heavily, exposed himself, exposed his penis to anyone he could find, jumped into the beds of ladies in waiting, may well have raped several of them. So, you know, he was. He was. He was. He was. He was, he was an extremely loose and abusive figure. And yet they begin turning to him more and more, even for political appointments. Well, that's what happened, just to jump ahead. So in 1905, the revolution happens.

They lose control virtue of the country. He gives a constitution and then he has prime ministers. And he gradually claws back power. Having agreed to a constitution and a Duma, which is an elected parliament, he gradually calls back power so that by 1914, just jumping ahead, he is actually really ruling Russia absolutely again. And so when 1914 comes, actually, Rasputin advises strongly against going to war. And Rasputin actually intervenes to say, don't persecute the Jews, don't go to war, it's the peasants that will die in the army.

So his advice isn't bad at that point. But when 1914 comes, Nikki tries to resist going to war. But after the Bosnian crisis of 1908, when Russia had been his, humiliated. There was no way he could avoid going to war. And he was also, you've got to remember, a Romanov. And a Romanov wanted to expand Russia and Russia to be a great power. So he was always going to join World War I. World War I was at first a success, then almost instantly a total catastrophe. A great retreat. The Russian army pulled back, lost Poland, and Nikki realized that he himself would have to take command of the army. What he should have done is a point of someone efficient to run the army and someone efficient to run the home front, because there

was immediately, like everywhere else, a huge munitions shortage as there was in Britain and France and Germany. Like in the current campaign with Putin, everyone using their stocks in a matter of weeks. And also food supplies became short immediately. So his whole job was to run Russia properly, and he didn't. He instead sort of looked for glory by taking command of the army at Stavka headquarters, 600 miles away from the capital, Petrograd, and he really wasn't capable of being a warlord. But they all wanted to be Peter the Great for reasons that we discussed in earlier episodes. And when he went to the front, he was no longer able to run politics in the capital, but fear in control of other people. By character, as a politician, he was extremely cunning,

sly. He boasted to Alex Anni, he said, you've no idea how sly I can be. But his ministers knew. And so he was extremely manipulative, as he himself said, what I like to do is say yes to all of you, and then I'll do my own thing, whatever I choose. So he was an extremely unwise politician, and he was extremely jealous of his talented ministers. He had two really brilliant ministers, particularly Peter Stolipin, but he undermines Stolipin, and actually became very jealous of Stalipin. He said he's my best prime minister, but oftentimes he shouted. He said, you know, why should I read in the papers that the prime minister's done this and

Who am I? Am I a nobody? Don't I count for something? Again, surprisingly, he was cunning. He was sly. He was undermining to his ministers. He's extremely jealous and preferred to have talentless people than gifted people, which is extremely bad qualities for a politician. Particularly in the middle of a war. He also, I mean, you know, because of love or whatever or, you know, sort of mistrust of everyone else, he would write from the front back to his wife, who would promptly show all of this sort of military intelligence to Rasputin. Correct. And the generals hated that. Disastrous, isn't it? I mean, to have somebody who is not involved and has no flesh and

blood to lose at the front, giving them all of that information. These are the two points where the two things you wanted to discuss very quickly happen. First of all, Alexandra now becomes a huge political power, which she hadn't ever been before. She boasted that she was the most powerful woman since Catherine the Great, and she was right. She was the most powerful woman since Catherine the Great. She was also utterly incompetent, lacking in any judgment at all. She knew nobody in Russian society because she hated them all and they hated her. She'd cut off relations with them. She despised politicians. And as a politician herself now, she needed to be involved with politics. So she consulted

the most unsuitable person in the world, Rasputin. And he made a mockery of the Russian government through her. The responsibility is of Nicholas and Alexander. You can't blame Rasputin. But it was disastrous. Ministers changed every day. They tried to kill each other. They bribed each other. Some of them tried to kill Rasputin. Rasputin was going crazy, getting drunk, pulling his penis out. It was a disaster. Meanwhile, 1.7 million soldiers have been killed at the front already. You have a wonderful thing here that one of his cooks goes on to cook for Lenin and Stalin after the revolution, and his name is Spiridon Putin, the grandfather of Vladimir. Yes, he cooked in the Astoria Hotel, which is still a hotel in St. Petersburg, which you may all have stayed in. I have. And he was the chef there. And Rasputin often came there and apparently would often kind of blunder into the kitchens and sort of probably to eat soup out of it all over himself. He always had food in his beard. But just to go back to Spirardin and Putin, the grandfather of Putin later became the cook for Lenin and Stalin. He's probably the most world historical chef in all of world history.

Well, until we've had the Wagner Group. Exactly, yeah. And the Vagner and the catering in that. Listen, just to kind of give people the feel of how much Rasputin is hated, even though, as you quite rightly say, this is, you know, two royals who are screwing up here by giving him this much intelligence. You published this rather wonderful poem that was circulated by newspaper editors. It's very filthy.

It's totally unsuitable for a podcast. Here goes. Could you read it? Oh, no, you can, yes. Brother, no matter what you say, Russia is ruled by the cock today. The cock appoints ministers. The cock makes policy. The cock commands the troops. The cock steers the ships. So the cock is mighty and powerful. I think that's enough, cock.

Completely unsuitable for this podcast. It's wonderful. Just to finish, it says, the cock fucked the ladies in waiting. The cock fucked Zazars' maiden daughters. And most of all, it fucked the Tsarina. So, I mean, you can just see that, and this is circulating in newspapers. This is where Bonnie M get it from. These things that sort of suddenly proliferate and they become truth. But it is something what happens to powerful women.

And it happened to Mariannezzan, exactly the same thing. You know, there were rhymes in the French Revolution that she was a lesbian. You defended so valiantly Catherine the Great. You got very annoyed about those rumours. I did. I was very annoyed. Yeah. So Catherine the Great, Mary Antoinette, this is just a very unfair rumor. But that letter you read out where she says she wants to kiss his feet was an extraordinary, with the most extraordinary letter written to a private citizen by any monarch in the whole of the 19th and 20th centuries. But at the same time, Nicholas and Alexander still had, even though the war was going extremely badly, even though the government was losing all prestige, even though the ministers were a bunch of charlatans, weirdos and criminals and near murderers. And one of them was half mad with syphilis. Even though all of this was going.

going on, they were still extremely ambitious to expand the Russian Empire. And that's why they made the deal with Sykes-Picco. In our Lawrence of Arabia episode that we did with the Fabulous Anthony Satin, we talked about Sykes and Pico. We talked about France and Britain. But what would have been and could have been a large part for Russia, can you just talk us through that? Because it's sort of the lesser-known adventurism of that time. Well, as you know, Sykes-Piko never actually happened for various reasons. And there was a new agreements were made in 1918 and in the early 20s. But anyway, but the Sykes-Piko was also joined by Russia. So it was the Sykes-Pikas-Keeco-Sazanov agreement. And what it was was a sort of division

of the entire Ottoman Empire. You've set the stage for Rasputin and the hatred that is simmering for him and how, you know, his masters aren't really helping very much. At what point do they decide to do something about it? I mean, there've been plots to kill Rasputin all through World War I. And actually someone had tried to, a lunatic had stabbed Rasputin right before, in 1914, right before the World War I had begun. He'd almost died. So by 1916, most of the establishment had realized that, A, Nicholas and Alexander were disastrous, especially Alexandra. And it was now that Benckendorff said that comment about her being stupid with an iron will. She thought she was doing extremely well, by the way, with Rasputin. And being utterly

oblivious. She's still confided in Rasputin, but a group of people, MPs, politicians, and Prince Felix Yusufov, are rather a feat aristocrat, married into the royal family. Ex-bullington club, importantly. Ex-bullington club in Oxford. And a really fascinating character, bisexual, a cross-dresser, an east seat, highly intelligent character, and sort of courageous. He and his friend, Prince Dmitri Pavlovich, who was another, a... was a Grand Duke in the Romanov family, a cousin, and a favourite of Nickling Alexander, they decided that they would have to kill Rasputin.

And therefore, using the leer of Yusufov's famously gorgeous mother and wife, both of whom were incredibly good-looking, they leered Rasputim to the Yusuf Palace, which is still there in St. Petersburg, and you can visit it. Can I just for a moment go, ew! What, they said, come and see my beautiful mother's and my beautiful wife? Yeah. Oh, yeah. And by the way, a lot of people knew about this plot and were encouraging them, including, amazingly, Alexandra's own sister, Elizabeth, and her best friend, Princess Yusufov, the mother of Felix Yusufov. So people very close to the royal family and members of the royal family were part of this plot to kill him. And so they invited him. And of course, Rasputin, who was loved meeting members of the royal family, loved beautiful women, couldn't resist coming. And he, he turned up there at the Yusufov Palace, they took him into the cellars there, the sort of basement,

which was sort of like done up, almost like a sort of party room by Felix Yusuf. And the other people who were involved, almost certainly, were the British who wanted to see Rasputin killed. And the British Secret Service, which was in a very nascent state, it was a very early version of the Secret Intelligence Service, was almost certainly behind or backing the assassination and may even have been involved in killing Rasputin. I think we have to work through it because they don't just kill it. My old Russian teacher used to love, love reenacting. How do you kill one Rasputin?

And he kept telling me stages or telling the class session and going, ha ha, but I still live. So I just take us through how hard it is to kill Rasputin. When they arrive, they have a doctor prepare cyanide cakes. To spoil the story a little bit, cyanide can degrade. and, you know, if it's kept too long. May it be an old cyanide. It may have been old cyanide all along, but they gave him cyanide, they got him to eat it.

He sort of went to sleep at one point. It may have worked a bit. But then suddenly woke up and reared up and attacked Yusufufth, who was terrified. While he's foaming at the mouth. I mean, he's properly scary looking. He's being sick. He's phoning at the mouth. And so they shoot him.

Then he kind of totters around and collapses and they think he's dead. But then he started up and goes, ha-ha, I'm still here. And they're just all celebrating. They all celebrate that Satan is dead. When he appears again and runs out into the courtyard of the Yusufov Palace, which is covered with snow. It's the middle of the night now. It's December 1916, this, by the way.

And so he runs out. And it's then that someone comes out with a massive revolver, like one of those ones that you see in cowboy films, and walks up behind him. And Rasputin is not moving. very fast. He's probably kind of on his knees or if he's standing, he's swaying and staggering kind of days and bleeding internally. Someone who goes up to him and literally executes him with a shot to the head. And you think that might be the British? It might be the British. It might be,

the details are in the book. But it's not a conspiracy theory. It is almost certain that the British was somewhere and there may have been a British diplomat present. But let me tell you something. I think what has to look. I look at this slightly differently. I mean, You could say that they were brave conspirators, but actually they leered this peasant. A whole lot of our, I mean, we could look at this differently. A whole lot of kind of rather sort of lushe Bullingdon aristocrats. Lear this peasant who's made it to their palace and then poison him, shoot him, and then shoot him at point-blank rage, basically in the forehead.

You know, they basically, in all mass, kind of kill the sort of kill the beast. And of course, they then drive him out. out to the river, they weigh him down with chains, they make a hole in the ice and they push him under it. And it's possible at that point that he breathes and is still alive after all this. There's some versions of the story that say that when his body is found, he's been scraping at the ice with his fingers. You don't say that in your version. Yeah, there's no truth in that. There's no truth in that. The truth is supposed to be that it was water in his lungs. But again, that's not completely confirmed, but he was a hard man to kill. Well, you might say. I mean,

when does the news reach the Tsar and Zarina? When they find out about it, they are absolutely horrified, cannot believe it. They take immediate control of the body. They bury him on a royal estate with loving care. And later the body is dug up, by the way, by a revolutionary soldier who cut the penis off it and parade it around. And it has its own history, the detached penis The detached pinions has held on it. It was sold around the world and there was also a sea cucumber that was sold for money and appears in some sex museum in Paris, which is in fact a sea cucumber is not Resputin's. Are you sure? Are you sure? How are you sure? I'm just asking. I have to admit, I haven't inspected it. I need to do a site visit. But can I just finish by saying, this made no difference to the way Nicholas and Alexander ruled, which showed. that it really was their decision to rule as they did rule, always avoiding appointing talented ministers,

always appointing kind of sycophantic ministers who actually were utterly incapable of governing and providing food and munitions, which were the two key things they needed to make Russia work. Well, I mean, things are not looking good then for the Tsar and Zara. You know, they've lost their most trusted, if greatly incompetent advisor, Rasputian. Flawed, but well and down. Okay. Can we leave his penis alone now? I mean, I never thought I'd say that in the podcast, but let's back away. We're providing many opportunities for our beepers to beep us. Anita, I can't believe you that she said that at all. I think that's a very popular line of yours.

Oh, yes. Well, I do. Yes. We seem to have got a little distracted in this episode, which has gone on. Right. Honourable members a bit too much, I think. Now, enough. Enough. So we now have to end this. this episode. We're going to have to start all over again and bring Seabag back another time we've done it again. To tell us about the murder of Nicholas and Alexandra. Yeah. So until then, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. Goodbye from me, William Dalrymple.