The Black Myth of Grigori Rasputin
100 years ago, 30 December 1916, Grigory Rasputin was killed in Petrograd. The plot consisted of representatives of the degenerated "elite" of the Russian empire: Prince Felix Yusupov (husband of the emperor's niece), Vladimir Purishkevich (deputy of the IV State Duma) and grand duke Dmitry Pavlovich (emperor's cousin).
The organizer of the murder confessor royal family made by British intelligence. He was initiated by a resident of English intelligence, a former fellow student at a university college (Oxford) and the sexual partner of Yusupov, Osvald Reiner. The motive of the conspiracy was the fears of England about the influence of Rasputin on the Russian empress and the possibility of concluding a separate peace with Germany. Rasputin was an opponent of the war between Russia and Germany. That is why British intelligence viewed Rasputin as a real threat to the military efforts of England.
Grigory Efimovich was born into a peasant family 9 (21) in January 1869 (sources report different birth dates between 1864 and 1872) in the village of Pokrovsky, Tyumen district, Tobolsk province. There is no reliable information about childhood and youth of Gregory, but it is likely that he was a clergyman, or simply an excellent actor, who beautifully portrayed his election. At the beginning of 1890, Rasputin made the first pilgrimage to a monastery in Verkhotur, after which he turned to religion. Then he traveled a lot to the holy places of Russia and Orthodox monasteries, visited Mount Athos in Greece, then in Jerusalem. I met and made contacts with many clergymen, monks, wanderers. Thus, Grigory Efimovich had a great life experience.
In 1890, he married Praskovya Fedorovna Dubrovina, the same peasant pilgrim who bore him three children: Matryona, Barbara and Dimitriya. In 1900, I set off on a new journey to Kiev. On the way back he lived in Kazan for quite a long time, where he met his father Michael, who was related to the Kazan Theological Academy.
By 1902, he became known as the “prophet” and the “holy old man”. Rumors about the Siberian sorcerer spread throughout Russia, and soon people were drawn to him from different parts of the country. I must say that Rasputin never studied, was illiterate, did not even have a rough idea about medicine. However, he was a good psychologist, perhaps he possessed the “gift” of a peasant healer. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain its positive impact on the sick heir to the throne. Tsar Nicholas II himself believed that Gregory was “a good, simple, religious Russian. In moments of doubt and anxiety, I love to talk with him, and after such a conversation, I always feel easy and calm in my soul. ” This idea is repeatedly found in the letters of the emperor.
In 1903, Gregory arrived in St. Petersburg to the rector of the Theological Academy, Bishop Sergius (Stragorodsky). He also meets the rector of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy and the unofficial confessor of the royal family, Feofan. It was Feofan who brought Rasputin to the house of Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, and through him the “holy elder” penetrated the houses of the high society and was introduced in 1906 to the imperial family, for which he quickly became a close friend. Gregory acquired the fame of the "old man", "holy fool" and "god of man" among a part of the high society.
1908 year. Tsarskoe Selo. Rasputin with the empress, five children and a governess
The political views of Grigori Efimovich are interesting. They were close to the positions of the head of the government P. Stolypin and the right-wing leader, the Minister of the Interior P. N. Durnovo. Apparently, Rasputin, knowing life in Russia well, understood that the empire is on the verge of a big political cataclysm, therefore “you cannot rock the boat,” that is, you can’t fight in any way. In 1912, Rasputin dissuaded the emperor from interfering in the Balkan war, which put off the start of the First World War. Grigory Rasputin was a decisive opponent of the war with Germany. Interestingly, 29 June (12 July) 1914 was assassinated at Rasputin in the village of Pokrovsky. He was badly wounded with a knife. As a result, Grigory Rasputin could not express his opinion at the most decisive moment, when the king made a decision about the war with Germany. When the war was already underway, he resolutely spoke in favor of Russia's withdrawal from the war, the conclusion of a separate peace with the German Empire. Rasputin was also against the Russian-British alliance. Thus, the “illiterate man” understood the essence of geopolitics of that time: 1) the Romanov Empire would not survive a big war, and it could cause revolutionary upheavals; 2) “partner and ally” of Russia - Britain, in reality, the most terrible and irreconcilable enemy of the Russians; 3) Germany needs to be friends, not to fight. According to legend, before his death, he often said that if he was killed, Russia itself would soon collapse. “As long as I live, the dynasty will live,” said Gregory.
It is not surprising that the liberal, pro-Western part of high society, and the liberal intelligentsia took up arms against Grigory Yefimovich. It was the liberal and Western press that ultimately formed the black myth of the “holy devil”, which negatively influenced the royal family, “corrupted” it. As Prince Yusupov used to say: “After all my meetings with Rasputin, all that I had seen and heard, I finally became convinced that all evil and the main reason for all the misfortunes of Russia are hidden in him: there will not be Rasputin, there will not be that satanic force in whose hands The Sovereign and the Empress have fallen. ”
This myth was so actively spread in the West, that there Grigory Rasputin became on a par with other figures hated by westerners themselves - Ivan the Terrible and Stalin, although their political weight was incomparable. Rasputin was practically demonized (with an erotic bias), exposing him and the royal family in the most unattractive light. In Germany and the United States, Grigory Rasputin became a kind of example of a typical Russian person, like a kind of “Russian bear” or “Russian man” who drinks, depraved, and physically strong. The black myth of the “holy devil and libertine” Rasputin was actively spread in post-Soviet Russia.
At the same time, in the West, the personality of Rasputin, through the efforts of cinema, became almost mythical, like the devil. For example, in the big-budget science fiction film Hellboy: Hell's Hero, the main villain is the resurrected Rasputin, who helps the German Nazis open a portal to hell to change the outcome of the war in their favor. Only in recent years have comparatively objective documentary and artistic paintings that have shown a different image of Grigory Rasputin began to appear. In particular, the Russian eight-part film by director Andrei Malyukov "Gregory R.", where Grigory Rasputin plays Vladimir Mashkov.
As a result, the opposition in the Russian Empire was inflating the myth of its omnipotence and omnipotence. He was portrayed worse than he was. And hated because he was close to the royal family. Envy him, a simple man. As the doctor of the family of Nicholas II, Yevgeny Botkin, noted: “If it were not for Rasputin, then the opponents of the royal family and the preparers of the revolution would have created it with their conversations from Vyrubova if I were not from Vyrubova, from whom you want.”
Rasputin’s secretary, Aron Simanovich, in his book “Rasputin and the Jews” wrote: “How did contemporaries imagine Rasputin? As a drunken, dirty peasant who infiltrated the royal family, he appointed and dismissed ministers, bishops and generals, and for a whole decade was a hero of the Petersburg scandalous chronicle. In addition, there are still wild orgies in “Villa Rode”, lustful dances among aristocratic admirers, high-ranking minions and drunk gypsies, and at the same time incomprehensible power over the king and his family, hypnotic power and faith in their special purpose. That was all. ”
Therefore, it was quite easy to recruit conspirators among the haters and enviers of Rasputin, as well as the “rescuers” of the royal family from the “debaucher”. Especially at the moment when there was a real possibility of a peace agreement between Russia and Germany, which dealt a powerful blow to the plans of Britain and the USA regarding the two great empires, and the preparation of a revolution in the Russian empire. Rasputin needed to be eliminated as a factor that could give the Russian empire a breather and at the same time use its murder (the so-called “sacral victim”) to increase tension in the capital.
On the night of 17 (30) December, a friend of the royal family Grigory Rasputin was killed in Petrograd, who became the object of hatred of almost all political forces (from liberals to rightists). Rasputin was killed in the Yusupov Palace on the Moika Embankment, then his body was taken by car to the Malaya Nevka River, where it was dropped from a bridge into an ice hole. In collusion with the owner of the house, Prince Felix Yusupov, there were such different people as Grand Prince Dmitry Pavlovich, the Black Hundred Vladimir Purishkevich, and British agent Osvald Reiner. According to a number of modern British researchers who studied the activities of the Secret Intelligence Service (Eng. Secret Intelligence Service, SIS), it was Oswald Rainer who made the fatal shot at Rasputin’s head.
The search for Grigory Rasputin, given his proximity to the royal family, began as early as the morning after the murder. The investigation, which was led by the director of the Police Department, A.T. Vasilyev, advanced quickly. Already the first interrogations of family members and servants of Rasputin showed that on the night of the murder the "old man" went to visit Prince Yusupov. The policeman Vlasyuk, who was on duty on the night from 16 to December 17, on the street near the Yusupov Palace, showed that he had heard several shots at night. During a search in the yard of the house Yusupov were found traces of blood. In the afternoon of December 17 (30), blood spots were noticed on passersby on the parapet of the Petrovsky Bridge. After research by Neva divers, Rasputin's body was found in this place.
The circumstances of the murder of Rasputin almost immediately were mythologized, overgrown with the most incredible rumors and legends. The controversial, confused testimony of the murderers themselves, as well as pressure on the investigation by the Russian and British authorities, contributed to this. So, Yusupov changed the testimony several times. Apparently, this explains the stories about the "vitality" of Rasputin, who was allegedly poisoned with potassium cyanide cakes at first, then tried to shoot, beaten, and finally tied up and drowned in the Neva, and he seemed to be alive even under water arms. Forensic medical experts found three wounds on Grigory Rasputin’s body, each of which was fatal: to the head, liver, and kidney. There was also no shot in the heart, which all the killers told about. Experts did not find the poison in Rasputin's stomach, although they admitted the possibility that it could decompose when interacting with sugar or due to high temperature during cooking in the oven. In addition, Dr. Stanislaus Lasovert, who was supposed to poison cakes, said in a letter to Prince Yusupov that instead of poison he put a harmless substance.
The forensic examination was entrusted to the well-known professor of the Military Medical Academy D. P. Kosorotov. His report stated: “At the autopsy, very numerous injuries were found, of which many were already caused posthumously. The entire right side of the head was crushed, flattened due to the bruise of the corpse when it fell from the bridge. Death resulted from heavy bleeding due to a gunshot wound in the abdomen. The shot was made, in my opinion, almost point-blank, from left to right, through the stomach and liver, with the latter being crushed in the right half. The bleeding was very profuse. The corpse also had a gunshot wound in the back, in the spine, with a fracture of the right kidney, and another wound point-blank, in the forehead, probably already dying or deceased. The chest organs were intact and superficially examined, but there were no signs of death from drowning. The lungs were not swollen, and there was no water or foamy liquid in the airways. Rasputin was thrown into the water already dead. ”
Interestingly, the news of the disappearance of Rasputin caused almost universal jubilation in Petrograd, even in the ranks of the police itself. Arkady Koshko, who headed the Detective Department of the Russian Empire’s Police Department in 1917, recalled in his memoirs: “Meanwhile, the news was confirmed, and Rasutin’s disappearance became a fact. I do not undertake to describe the exultation with which Petrograd was captured! Not only people who took at least the most distant part in the political life of the country, trumpeted the victory, but also ordinary people were elated, rejoicing at what had happened. ... Meanwhile, an urgent order was followed by the Minister of Internal Affairs Protopopov, whom I was asked to exert all the forces of the investigative police to search for Rasputin. ... The personality of Rasputin was so disgusting to everyone that even the strictly disciplined police investigation policemen began to complain. This was the first case of non-confessional obedience that I observed during the 20 years of my service in the police. Agents shouted: “We really need to look for all sorts of rubbish! He disappeared - well, thank God! ”And so on.
The French ambassador to Russia, Maurice Paleologue, wrote in his diary: “The people, having learned about the death of Rasputin, triumphed. People embraced on the street, went to put candles in the Kazan Cathedral. When it became known that the Grand Duke Dmitry was among the murderers, the crowd rushed to put candles in front of the icon of St.. Dmitry
Thus, already during the lifetime of Grigory Rasputin, the myth of the “holy devil”, the “demon-debaucher” was created, which was very popular in an educated society. Although people who are not affected by this propaganda and hatred of the “peasant”, gave a more balanced assessment of Rasputin's activities. Thus, the confessor of the royal family, Archpriest Alexander Vasilyev noted: “Rasputin is“ a completely God-fearing and believing person, harmless and even more likely useful for the Royal Family ... He talks with Them about God, about faith ”.
The investigation lasted two and a half months before the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II 2 in March 1917. On this day A. Kerensky became the Minister of Justice in the Provisional Government. 4 March 1917, he ordered to hastily stop the investigation, while investigator A. T. Vasilyev was arrested and transferred to the Peter and Paul Fortress. Tsar Nikolai Aleksandrovich himself treated the high-ranking conspirators very gently. Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich was sent by order of the king to Persia, in the corps of General N. N. Baratov to a staff position. Prince Felix Yusupov Felix was ordered to go to his estate Rakitnoye near Kursk. Purishkevich, who went to the front, was not injured.
At first they wanted to bury the murdered in his homeland, in the village of Pokrovsky, but because of fear of disorder, they abandoned this idea. 4 January Rasputin held a secret funeral in the Alexander Park in Tsarskoye Selo. Rasputin was buried by the well-known Bishop Isidore. A letter from Empress Alexandra Feodorovna was inserted into the coffin with the following content: “My dear martyr, give me your blessing, so that it will be with me all the time on the sorrowful path that I have left here on earth. And remember us in heaven in your holy prayers. Alexandra". Emperor Nikolai Aleksandrovich also grievedly reacted to the death of the old man. On the day of Rasputin's funeral, he left a note in his diary, in which Rasputin was called “the unforgettable old man Gregory,” and his killer “monsters.”
Already after the February Revolution, by order of the Provisional Government, the grave of Grigory Rasputin was opened. Kerensky ordered L. Kornilov to organize the destruction of the body. For several days the coffin with the remains stood in a special car. 11 (24) March, his body was burned in the furnace of the steam boiler of the Polytechnic Institute.
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