All about Rasputin Gregory. Grigory Rasputin interesting facts

Grigory Rasputin is one of the most mysterious and mystical personalities in Russian. Some consider him a prophet who was able to save from the revolution, while others accuse him of quackery and immorality.

He was born in a remote peasant village, and spent the last years of his life surrounded by the royal family, who idolized him and considered him a holy man.

Brief biography of Rasputin

Grigory Efimovich Rasputin was born on January 21, 1869 in the village of Pokrovskoye, Tobolsk province. He grew up in a simple family and saw with his own eyes all the hardships and sorrows of peasant life.

His mother's name was Anna Vasilievna, and his father's name was Efim Yakovlevich, he worked as a coachman.

Childhood and youth

Rasputin's biography was noted from birth, because little Grisha was the only child of his parents who managed to survive. Before him, three children were born in the Rasputin family, but they all died in infancy.

Gregory led a rather secluded life and had little contact with his peers. The reason for this was poor health, because of which he was teased and avoided communicating with him.

Even as a child, Rasputin began to show a keen interest in religion, which would accompany him throughout his biography.

From early childhood, he liked to be close to his father and help him with the housework.

Since there was no school in the village in which Rasputin grew up, Grisha did not receive any education, however, like other children.

Once, at the age of 14, he became so ill that he was close to death. But suddenly, miraculously, his health improved and he made a full recovery.

It seemed to the boy that he owed his healing to the Mother of God. It was from this moment in his biography that the young man began to study the Holy Scriptures in various ways and memorize prayers.

Pilgrimage

Soon, the teenager discovered a prophetic gift in himself, which in the future will make him famous and radically affect both his own life and, in many respects, the life of the Russian Empire.

At the age of 18, Grigory Rasputin decides to make a pilgrimage to the Verkhoturye Monastery. Then, without stopping, he continues his wanderings, as a result of which he visits Athos in Greece, and.

During this period of his biography, Rasputin met various monks and representatives of the clergy.

The royal family and Rasputin

The life of Grigory Rasputin changed radically when, at the age of 35, he visited.

Initially, he experienced serious financial difficulties. But since during his travels he managed to get acquainted with various spiritual figures, Gregory was given support through the church.

So, Bishop Sergius not only helped him financially, but also introduced him to Archbishop Feofan, who was the confessor of the royal family. At that point in time, many had already heard about the clairvoyant gift of an unusual wanderer named Gregory.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Russia was going through hard times. In the state, in one place after another, strikes of peasants took place, accompanied by attempts to overthrow the current government.

To all this was added the Russo-Japanese war, which ended, which became possible thanks to special diplomatic qualities.

It was during this period that Rasputin met and made a strong impression on him. This event becomes a turning point in the biography of Grigory Rasputin.

Soon the emperor himself is looking for an opportunity to talk with the wanderer on various topics. When Grigory Efimovich met Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, he won her over even more than her royal husband.

It is worth noting that such close relations with the royal family were also explained by the fact that Rasputin participated in the treatment of their son Alexei, who suffered from hemophilia.

The doctors could do nothing to help the unfortunate boy, but the old man somehow miraculously managed to treat him and have a beneficial effect on him. Because of this, the empress idolized and defended her "savior" in every possible way, considering him a man sent down from above.

This is not surprising, because how else can a mother react to a situation when her only son is severely tormented by bouts of illness, and doctors cannot do anything. As soon as the marvelous old man took the sick Alexei in his arms, he immediately calmed down.

The royal family and Rasputin

According to historians and biographers of the tsar, Nicholas 2 repeatedly consulted with Rasputin on various political issues. Many representatives of the authorities knew about this, in connection with which Rasputin was simply hated.

After all, not a single minister or adviser could influence the opinion of the emperor in the way that an illiterate peasant who came from the outback managed to do.

Thus, Grigory Rasputin took part in all state affairs. It is also worth noting that during this period of his biography, he did everything possible so that Russia would not be drawn into the First World War.

As a result, he made himself many powerful enemies from among the officials and the nobility.

Conspiracy and assassination of Rasputin

So, a conspiracy was drawn up against Rasputin. Initially, they wanted to destroy him politically through various accusations.

He was accused of endless drunkenness, dissolute behavior, magic and other sins. However, the imperial couple did not take this information seriously and continued to trust him completely.

When this idea was not crowned with success, they decided to destroy it literally. The conspiracy against Rasputin was attended by Prince Felix Yusupov, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich Jr. and Vladimir Purishkevich, who held the post of State Councilor.

The first unsuccessful assassination attempt was made by Khionia Guseva. The woman pierced Rasputin's stomach with a knife, but he still survived, although the wound was really serious.

At that moment, when he was in the hospital, the emperor decided to participate in a military conflict. However, Nicholas 2 still fully trusted "his friend" and consulted with him on the correctness of certain actions. This even more aroused hatred among the opponents of the king.

Every day the situation escalated, and a group of conspirators decided to kill Grigory Rasputin at all costs. On December 29, 1916, they invited him to the palace of Prince Yusupov, under the pretext of meeting a certain beauty who was looking for a meeting with him.

The elder was taken to the basement, assuring that the lady herself would now join them. Rasputin, not suspecting anything, calmly went downstairs. There he saw a set table with gourmet treats and his favorite wine - Madeira.

While waiting, he was offered to taste cakes, which were previously poisoned with potassium cyanide. However, after he ate them, for some unknown reason, the poison had no effect.

This brought supernatural terror to the conspirators. Time was extremely limited, therefore, as a result of a short discussion, they decided to shoot Rasputin with a pistol.

He was shot several times in the back, but this time he did not die, and even managed to run out into the street. There, he was shot several more times, after which the killers began beating and kicking him.

Then the dead body was wrapped in a carpet and thrown into the river. Below you can see Rasputin's body recovered from the river.

An interesting fact is that the medical examination proved that even being in ice water, after poisoned cakes and many shots at close range, Rasputin was still alive for several hours.

Rasputin's personal life

The personal life of Grigory Rasputin, as, in fact, his entire biography, is shrouded in many secrets. It is only known for certain that his wife was a certain Praskovya Dubrovina, who gave birth to his daughters Matryona and Varvara, as well as his son Dmitry.

Rasputin with his children

In the 30s of the 20th century, the Soviet authorities arrested them and sent them to special settlements in the North. Their further fate is unknown, except for Matryona, who in the future managed to escape into.

Predictions of Grigory Rasputin

At the end of his life, Rasputin made several predictions about the fate of Emperor Nicholas II and the future of Russia. In them, he prophesied that several revolutions awaited Russia and that the emperor and his entire family would be killed.

In addition to this, the elder foresaw the creation of the Soviet Union and its subsequent collapse. Rasputin also predicted Russia's victory over Germany in the great war and its transformation into a powerful state.

He also talked about our days. For example, Rasputin argued that the beginning of the 21st century will be accompanied by terrorism, which will begin to flourish in the West.

He also prophesied that Islamic fundamentalism, known today as Wahhabism, would be formed in the future.

Rasputin's photo

The widow of Grigory Rasputin Paraskeva Feodorovna with her son Dmitry and his wife. Behind is a housekeeper.
Accurate recreation of the scene of the murder of Grigory Rasputin
Rasputin's assassins (left to right): Dmitry Romanov, Felix Yusupov, Vladimir Purishkevich

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Grigory Rasputin is one of the most amazing people born on Russian soil. Not a single tsar, commander, scientist, statesman in Russia had such popularity, fame and influence as this semi-literate peasant from the Urals gained. His talent as a soothsayer and mysterious death are still the subject of controversy for historians. Some considered him vicious, others saw him as a saint. Who was Rasputin really?

Speaking surname

Grigory Efimovich Rasputin really fell to live at the crossroads of historical roads and was destined to become a witness and participant in the tragic choice that was made at that time.

Grigory Rasputin was born on January 9 (according to the new style - 21) January 1869 in the village of Pokrovskoye, Tyumen district, Tobolsk province. The ancestors of Grigory Efimovich came to Siberia among the first pioneers. For a long time they bore the surname Izosimov by the name of the same Izosim who moved from the Vologda land beyond the Urals. The two sons of Nason Izosimov began to be called Rasputins - and, accordingly, their descendants.

Here is how researcher A. Varlamov writes about the family of Grigory Rasputin: “The children of Anna and Efim Rasputin died one after another. First, in 1863, after living for several months, daughter Evdokia died, a year later another girl, also named Evdokia.

The third daughter was named Glykeria, but she lived only a few months. On August 17, 1867, son Andrei was born, who, like his sisters, was not a tenant. Finally, in 1869, the fifth child, Gregory, was born. The name was given according to the calendar in honor of St. Gregory of Nyssa, known for his sermons against fornication.

With a dream of God

Rasputin is often portrayed as almost a giant, a monster with iron health and the ability to eat glass and nails. In fact, Gregory grew up as a weak and sickly child.

Later, he wrote about his childhood in an autobiographical essay, which he called "The Life of an Experienced Wanderer": "My whole life was illness. Medicine did not help me. Every spring I did not sleep for forty nights. Sleep, as if oblivion, spent all the time" .

At the same time, already in childhood, Grigory's thoughts differed from the train of thought of a simple layman. Grigory Efimovich himself writes about this as follows: “At the age of 15 in my village, when the sun warmed warmly, and the birds sang paradise songs, I walked along the path and did not dare to go in the middle of it ... I dreamed of God ... My soul rushed into the distance ... More than once, dreaming like that, I cried and did not know where the tears came from and why they were. I believed in good, kind, and often I sat with the old people, listening to their stories about the lives of the saints, great deeds, great deeds. "

The Power of Prayer

Gregory early realized the power of his prayer, which manifested itself in relation to both animals and people. Here is how his daughter Matryona writes about this: “From my grandfather, I know about my father’s extraordinary ability to handle domestic animals. when he watched how they milked, the cow became completely calm.

Once at dinner, my grandfather said that the horse was lame. Hearing this, the father silently got up from the table and went to the stable. The grandfather followed and saw how the son stood near the horse for a few seconds in concentration, then went to the hind leg and put his hand on the hamstring. He stood with his head slightly thrown back, then, as if deciding that the healing had taken place, he stepped back, stroked the horse and said: "Now you are better."

After that incident, my father became like a miracle worker veterinarian. Then he began to treat people. "God helped."

Guilty without guilt

As for the dissolute and sinful youth of Gregory, accompanied by horse-stealing and orgies, these are nothing more than the later fabrications of newspapermen. Matryona Rasputina in her book claims that her father was so perspicacious from an early age that he “saw the sight” of other people’s theft several times and therefore personally for himself excluded the very possibility of theft: it seemed to him that others “see” it as well as he .

I looked through all the testimony about Rasputin that was given during the investigation at the Tobolsk Consistory. Not a single witness, even the most hostile to Rasputin (and there were many), accused him of theft or horse stealing.

Nevertheless, Gregory still experienced injustice and human cruelty. Once he was unfairly accused of stealing horses and severely beaten, but soon the investigation found the perpetrators, who were deported to Eastern Siberia. All charges against Gregory were dropped.

Family life

No matter how many amorous stories are attributed to Rasputin, nevertheless, as Varlamov rightly notes, he had a beloved wife: “Everyone who knew her spoke well of this woman. Rasputin married eighteen years. His wife was three years older than him, hardworking , patient. She gave birth to seven children, of which the first three died. "

Grigory Efimovich met his betrothed at the dances, which he loved so much. Here is how his daughter Matryona writes about it: “Mom was tall and stately, she loved to dance no less than he did. Her name was Praskovya Fedorovna Dubrovina, Parasha ...

Rasputin with children (from left to right): Matryona, Varya, Mitya.

The beginning of their family life was happy. But then trouble came - the first-born lived only a few months. The boy's death affected his father even more than his mother. He took the loss of his son as a sign he was waiting for, but he could not even imagine that this sign would be so terrible.

He was haunted by one thought: the death of a child is a punishment for the fact that he thought so little about God. The father prayed. And prayers soothed the pain. A year later, the second son, Dmitry, was born, then - with an interval of two years - the daughters of Matryona and Varya. Father started the construction of a new house - a two-story, largest one in Pokrovsky ... "

Rasputin's house in Pokrovsky

The family laughed at him. He did not eat meat and sweets, heard different voices, walked from Siberia to St. Petersburg and back, ate alms. In the spring, he had exacerbations - he did not sleep for many days in a row, he sang songs, shook his fists at Satan and ran through the frost in one shirt.

His prophecies were calls to repentance "before trouble comes." Sometimes, by sheer coincidence, misfortune happened the very next day (huts burned, cattle got sick, people died) - and the peasants began to believe that the blessed peasant had the gift of foresight. He got followers... and followers.

This went on for about ten years. Rasputin learned about the whips (sectarians who beat themselves with whips and suppressed lust through group sex), as well as eunuchs (castration preachers) who separated from them. It is assumed that he took over part of their teachings and more than once personally "delivered" the pilgrims from sin in the bath.

At the "divine" age of 33, Grigory begins to storm Petersburg. Enlisting the recommendations of provincial priests, he settled with the rector of the Theological Academy, Bishop Sergius, the future Stalinist patriarch. He, impressed by the exotic character, represents the “old man” (many years of wandering on foot gave the young Rasputin the appearance of an old man) to the powers that be. Thus began the path of the "man of God" to glory.

Rasputin with his fans (mostly fans).

The first loud prophecy of Rasputin was the prediction of the death of our ships at Tsushima. Perhaps he took this from the newspaper news, which reported that a squadron of old ships went out to meet the modern Japanese fleet without respecting secrecy.

Hey Caesar!

The last ruler of the Romanov dynasty was distinguished by lack of will and superstition: he considered himself Job, doomed to trials, and kept meaningless diaries, where he shed virtual tears, looking at how his country was going downhill.

The queen also lived in isolation from the real world and believed in the supernatural power of the "people's elders." Knowing this, her friend, the Montenegrin princess Milica, took outright scoundrels to the palace. Monarchs listened to the ravings of crooks and schizophrenics with childish delight. The war with Japan, the revolution and the prince's illness finally unbalanced the pendulum of the weak royal psyche. Everything was ready for the appearance of Rasputin.

For a long time only daughters were born in the Romanov family. To conceive a son, the queen resorted to the help of the French magician Philip. It was he, and not Rasputin, who was the first to take advantage of the spiritual naivety of the royal family. The scale of the mess that reigned in the minds of the last Russian monarchs (one of the most educated people of that time) can be judged at least by the fact that the queen felt safe thanks to a magic icon with a bell that allegedly rang when evil people approached.

Nikki and Alix during their engagement (late 1890s)

The first meeting of the tsar and tsarina with Rasputin took place on November 1, 1905 in the palace for tea. He dissuaded weak-willed monarchs from escaping to England (they are said to have already packed their things), which, most likely, would have saved them from death and would have directed the history of Russia in a different direction.

The next time he presented the Romanovs with a miraculous icon (found from them after the execution), then he allegedly healed Tsarevich Alexei, who was ill with hemophilia, and eased the pain of Stolypin's daughter, who was wounded by terrorists. The shaggy man forever took possession of the hearts and minds of the august couple.

The emperor personally arranges for Gregory to change the dissonant surname to "New" (which, however, did not take root). Soon, Rasputin-Novykh acquires another lever of influence at court - the young lady-in-waiting Anna Vyrubova, who idolizes the "old man" (a close friend of the queen - rumored to be even too close, sleeping with her in the same bed). He becomes the confessor of the Romanovs and comes to the tsar at any time without making an appointment for an audience.

Please note that in all photographs Rasputin always holds one hand raised.

At court, Gregory was always "in character", but outside the political scene he was completely transformed. Having bought himself a new house in Pokrovsky, he took noble St. Petersburg admirers there. There, the "old man" put on expensive clothes, became smug, gossiped about the king and nobles. Every day he showed the queen (whom he called "mother") miracles: he predicted the weather or the exact time of the king's return home. It was then that Rasputin made his most famous prediction: "As long as I live, the dynasty will live."

The growing power of Rasputin did not suit the court. Cases were initiated against him, but every time the “elder” very successfully left the capital, going either home to Pokrovskoye, or on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In 1911, the Synod spoke against Rasputin. Bishop Germogen (who expelled a certain Iosif Dzhugashvili from the seminary ten years ago) tried to drive the devil out of Gregory and publicly beat him on the head with a cross. Rasputin was put under police surveillance, which did not stop until his death.

Rasputin, Bishop Hermogenes and Hieromonk Iliodor

Secret agents watched through the windows the most piquant scenes from the life of a man who would soon be called the "holy devil." Once hushed up, rumors about Grishka's sexual adventures began to inflate with renewed vigor. The police recorded Rasputin's visits to the baths in the company of prostitutes and the wives of influential people.

Copies of the tsarina's tender letter to Rasputin circulated around Peter, from which it could be concluded that they were lovers. These stories were picked up by newspapers - and the word "Rasputin" became known throughout Europe.

public health

People who believed in the miracles of Rasputin believe that he himself, as well as his death, is mentioned in the Bible itself: “And if they drink something deadly, it will not harm them; lay hands on the sick, and they will recover” (Mark 16-18).

Today, no one doubts that Rasputin really had a beneficial effect on the physical condition of the prince and the mental stability of his mother. How did he do it?

The queen at the bedside of the sick heir

Contemporaries noted that Rasputin's speech was always distinguished by incoherence, it was very difficult to follow his thoughts. Huge, long-armed, with the hair of a tavern clerk and a spade beard, he often talked to himself and slapped his thighs.

Without exception, all Rasputin's interlocutors recognized his unusual look - deep-set gray eyes, as if glowing from within and fettering your will. Stolypin recalled that when he met Rasputin, he felt that they were trying to hypnotize him.

Rasputin and the queen drink tea

This, of course, influenced the king and queen. However, it is difficult to explain the repeated deliverance of the royal children from pain. Rasputin's main healing weapon was prayer - and he could pray all night long.

Once in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, the heir began to have severe internal bleeding. Doctors told his parents that he would not survive. A telegram was sent to Rasputin asking him to heal Alexei from a distance. He quickly recovered, which surprised the court Aesculapius a lot.

kill the dragon

The man who called himself a "little fly" and appointed officials over the phone was illiterate. He learned to read and write only in St. Petersburg. He left behind only short notes filled with terrible scribbles.

Until the end of his life, Rasputin looked like a tramp, which repeatedly prevented him from “hiring” prostitutes for daily orgies. The wanderer quickly forgot about a healthy lifestyle - he drank, and drunk called the ministers with various "petitions", the failure of which was career suicide.

Rasputin did not save money, now starving, then throwing it to the right and left. He seriously influenced the country's foreign policy, twice persuading Nicholas not to start a war in the Balkans (inspiring the tsar that the Germans were a dangerous force, and the "brothers", that is, the Slavs, were pigs).

A facsimile of Rasputin's letter with a request for some of his protégés

When World War I nevertheless began, Rasputin expressed a desire to come to the front to bless the soldiers. The commander of the troops, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich, promised to hang him on the nearest tree. In response, Rasputin gave birth to another prophecy that Russia would not win the war until the autocrat (who had a military education, but showed himself to be a mediocre strategist) stood at the head of the army. The king, of course, led the army. With historical consequences.

Politicians actively criticized the queen - the "German spy", not forgetting about Rasputin. It was then that the image of the "grey eminence" was created, solving all state issues, although in fact Rasputin's power was far from absolute. German zeppelins scattered leaflets over the trenches, where the Kaiser relied on the people, and Nicholas II on Rasputin's genitals. The priests were not far behind either. It was announced that the murder of Grishka was a boon for which "forty sins would be removed."

On July 29, 1914, the mentally ill Khionia Guseva stabbed Rasputin in the stomach, shouting: "I killed the Antichrist!" Witnesses said that from the blow "Grishka's intestines crawled out." The wound was fatal, but Rasputin pulled himself out. According to his daughter's recollections, he has changed since then - he began to get tired quickly and took opium for pain.

Prince Felix Yusupov, murderer of Rasputin

Rasputin's death is even more mysterious than his life. The scenery of this drama is well known: on the night of December 17, 1916, Prince Felix Yusupov, Grand Duke Dmitry Romanov (according to rumors - Yusupov's lover) and deputy Purishkevich invited Rasputin to the Yusupov Palace. There he was offered cakes and wine generously flavored with cyanide. This allegedly had no effect on Rasputin.

"Plan B" was used: Yusupov shot Rasputin in the back with a revolver. While the conspirators were preparing to dispose of the body, he suddenly came to life, tore off Yusupov's shoulder strap and ran out into the street. Purishkevich did not lose his head - with three shots he finally knocked down the "old man", after which he only clanged his teeth and wheezed.

To be sure, he was beaten again, tied with a curtain and thrown into the hole in the Neva. The water that killed Rasputin's older brother and sister also took the life of the fatal peasant - but not immediately. An examination of the body, recovered three days later, showed the presence of water in the lungs (the autopsy protocol has not been preserved). This indicated that Grishka was alive and simply choked.

Corpse of Rasputin

The queen was furious, but at the insistence of Nicholas II, the murderers escaped punishment. The people praised them as deliverers from the "dark forces". Rasputin was called in every way: a demon, a German spy or a lover of the Empress, but the Romanovs were faithful to him to the end: the most odious figure in Russia was buried in Tsarskoye Selo.

The February Revolution broke out two months later. Rasputin's prediction about the fall of the monarchy came true. On March 4, 1917, Kerensky ordered the body to be dug up and burned. The exhumation took place at night, and according to the testimonies of the exhumers, the burning corpse tried to rise. This was the final touch to the legend of Rasputin's superstrength (it is believed that the person being cremated can move due to the contraction of the tendons in the fire, and therefore the latter should be cut).

The act of burning the body of Rasputin

"Who are you, Mr. Rasputin?" - such a question could have been asked to him by British and German intelligence at the beginning of the 20th century. A clever werewolf or an ingenuous man? Rebellious saint or sexual psychopath? To cast a shadow on a person, it is enough just to correctly illuminate his life.

It is reasonable to assume that the true image of the royal favorite was distorted beyond recognition by "black PR". And minus compromising evidence, we face an ordinary peasant - an illiterate, but very cunning schizophrenic who achieved fame only thanks to a fortunate combination of circumstances and the obsession of the heads of the Romanov dynasty with religious metaphysics.

Canonization attempts

Since the 1990s, radical-monarchist Orthodox circles have repeatedly proposed canonizing Rasputin as a holy martyr.

The ideas were rejected by the Synodal Commission of the Russian Orthodox Church and criticized by Patriarch Alexy II: "There is no reason to raise the question of the canonization of Grigory Rasputin, whose dubious morality and promiscuity cast a shadow on the august name of Tsar Nicholas II and his family."

Despite this, over the past ten years, religious admirers of Grigory Rasputin have issued at least two akathists to him, and about a dozen icons have also been painted.

Curious facts

Rasputin allegedly had an older brother Dmitry (he caught a cold while swimming and died of pneumonia) and a sister Maria (who suffered from epilepsy and drowned in the river). He named his children after them. Grishka named his third daughter Varvara.
Rasputin knew Bonch-Bruevich well.

The Yusupov family originates from the nephew of the prophet Mohammed. Irony of fate: a distant relative of the founder of Islam killed a man who was called an Orthodox saint.

After the overthrow of the Romanovs, Rasputin's activities were investigated by a special commission, of which the poet Blok was a member. The investigation was never completed.
Rasputin's daughter Matryona managed to emigrate to France, and then to the USA. There she worked as a dancer and tiger trainer. She died in 1977.

The rest of the family members were dispossessed and exiled to camps, where their trace was lost.
Today the church does not recognize the sanctity of Rasputin, pointing to his dubious morality.

Yusupov successfully sued MGM over a film about Rasputin. After this incident, the movie began to put a warning about fiction "all coincidences are accidental."

Rasputinian:Petrenko, Depardieu, Mashkov, DiCaprio

Since 1917, more than 30 films have been made about the Tobolsk elder! The most famous Russian tapes are "Agony" (1974, Rasputin - Alexei Petrenko) and "Conspiracy" (2007, Rasputin - Ivan Okhlobystin).

Now the Franco-Russian film "Rasputin" has been released, in which Gerard Depardieu plays the old man. Criticism accepted the picture unimportantly, however, they say that it was this film work that helped the French actor obtain Russian citizenship.

Finally, in 2013, work was completed on the new Russian TV series Rasputin (directed by Andrei Malyukov, script by Eduard Volodarsky and Ilya Tilkin), in which Vladimir Mashkov played the Tobolsk elder...

And the other day in St. Petersburg, the shooting of a Hollywood film about Rasputin begins; for the lead role, Warner Bros. invited Leonardo DiCaprio. Why is the life story of Grigory Rasputin so attractive to directors and screenwriters?

Russian version

“We do not know whether Cagliostro, Count Dracula, existed or not. But Rasputin is a real historical figure, - says the director of the series "Rasputin" Andrey Malyukov. - At the same time, everything seems to be known about him: where he was born, and how he lived, and how he was killed. But at the same time... nothing is known! Do you know how much has been written about Rasputin? Tons! Don't read everything! And everyone writes about some other person. He is a mystery, and therefore there is such interest in him. Ask someone outside of Russia: "Who is Rasputin?" - "Yes, of course! Out the restaurant! Out the store!" A very popular figure.

- With what heart did you take on the shooting of the series?

- I wanted to look at this person from the point of view of truth. After all, during his lifetime, nothing was written about him! If you peel off and leave in a clean remnant what he really did, it turns out that he was a man who sincerely rooted for the Russian Empire, for the tsar, for the tsarina, who categorically opposed the war, believing that everything was enough in Russia, that it was a great and mighty country. Here is his message. And for those who wanted war, for those who hated Russia, he seemed like a fiend. And in the bottom line, he was a man with a big plus sign. And with such a tragic fate...

- So, in your picture you want to debunk all the myths that exist about Rasputin?

There were an insane amount of myths. To debunk everything, our eight episodes are not enough. Our story splits into two parallel lines: Rasputin and investigator Svitten, who Kerensky instructs to investigate the murder of the old man and find evidence of all his "sins". But during the investigation of this criminal offense, Svitten, out of ardent hatred for Grigory Efimovich, comes to the point that he demands from Kerensky to bring the murderers to justice ...

Vladimir Mashkov about his hero

In the Russian-French film "Rasputin", where Depardieu played Rasputin, Vladimir Mashkov starred as Nicholas II. Then he entered the image so thoroughly that he even learned to sign like an emperor.

- In the new Russian film "Rasputin" my reincarnation is even deeper. A settler lives in me, - the actor admits. The role is amazing! After all, Grigory Yefimitch healed with prayer. He loved at that moment a person, took upon himself all his pain. He almost died when he treated people, and this process is incredible, divine ...

To say that Rasputin is a saint or a devil seems to me the most terrible, disgusting mistake. This is a very sincere person who loved Russia, loved the tsar, loved his people.

History of the beard

The creators of the picture say that no one was considered for the main role, except for Mashkov, who specially flew from America for filming. He got into the image so much that sometimes he shocked the film crew: even his gait changed, Rasputin's stoop appeared ...

Vladimir Mashkov and his hero have by no means a portrait-photographic resemblance. The make-up artists even copied the beard to the last hair using historical photographs! Make-up artists tried several beards, hair extensions, but as a result, Mashkov had to grow his hair and implant a natural beard one hair at a time. Every day, his makeup took about two hours.

“We implanted Mashkov’s side cheeks literally by the hair, so that even the camera would never see the pasted beard,” said make-up artist Evgenia Malinkovskaya.

In a mirror trap

Filming of the film "Rasputin" began in April 2013. Part of the episodes were filmed in St. Petersburg, near St. Petersburg, and also in Novgorod. At the same time, the film crew faced many difficulties.

When the priests found out who the film would be about, they closed the doors of churches and forbade filming. (By the way, the team of Gerard Depardieu faced the same problem: Patriarch Kirill did not give them his blessing, and they also could not shoot in churches.)

The only temple that opened the doors for the filming of the Russian series about Rasputin was St. Sampson Cathedral. In Novgorod, they decided to shoot in the Anthony Monastery - and in just two days, the production designers erected a scaffolding around the monastery wall.

Palace chambers had to be built as well. At Lenfilm, the famous mirror trap of the Yusupov Palace was recreated, where Felix Yusupov and the conspirators lured Rasputin. This is an octagonal room of mirrors, once you get into it, you don’t know where to go. Special mirrors were ordered for her, which are usually produced for special forces guarding consulates, so that the operator could shoot through the glass and not be reflected.

Stunts, effects, costumes

Vladimir Mashkov's partner in the film was Ingeborga Dapkunaite (Empress Alexandra Feodorovna). All dresses for her and Ekaterina Klimova, who played the Empress' maid of honor Anna Vyrubova, were designed from scratch and sewn in strict accordance with the fashion of the early 20th century. French lace was made according to historical samples. In England, they ordered hard collars, bought top hats, boaters. For Mashkov, they found an antique jacket and coat, sewed a collection of blouses.

There are many complicated tricks in the picture, most of which Vladimir Mashkov performed himself. For example, in one of the scenes, when fellow villagers thought that Rasputin embezzled money from the sale of someone else's horse, the actor was beaten with clubs and trampled on by horses. The actor worked so honestly and let the horses get so close to him that at one moment he got carried away, and the horse touched his arm.

The second no less difficult scene is the murder of an old man. Mashkov was beaten again, and kicked. Of course, the actor was put on special protection that covered his back, arms, chest, legs, but the bruises remained.

Mashkov was always eager to fight, but in some episodes the stunt director was categorical: "Volodya, don't, it's an extra risk!" And therefore, sometimes the actor was still replaced by an understudy Sergei Trepesov, who worked with Vladimir Mashkov in the film "The Edge".

compilationmaterial - Fox http://www.softmixer.com/2014/10/blog-post_59.html#more

Grigory Efimovich Rasputin (Novykh, 1869-1916) - a public figure of the late XIX - early XX century, who gained fame as a healer, "old man", able to heal people from serious ailments. He was close to the family of the last emperor, especially his wife Alexandra Feodorovna. In 1915-1916, he had a direct influence on the political decisions made in the country. His name is shrouded in a halo of secrets and mysteries, and historians still cannot give an accurate assessment of Rasputin: who is this - a great soothsayer or a charlatan.

Childhood and youth

Grigory Rasputin was born on January 9 (21), 1869 in the village of Pokrovka, Tobolsk province. True, in different sources there are other years, for example, 1865 or 1872. Gregory himself never added clarity to this issue, never giving the exact date of birth. His parents were simple peasants who devoted their entire lives to working on the land. Gregory was their fourth and only surviving child. From early childhood, the boy was sick a lot and was often alone, unable to play with his peers. This made him withdrawn and prone to solitude. It was in childhood that Gregory began to feel his chosenness before God and attachment to religion. There was no school in his native village, so the boy grew up illiterate. But he knew a lot in work, often helping his father.

At the age of 14, Rasputin became seriously ill and, being on the verge of life and death, managed to get out of a difficult condition. According to him, the miracle happened thanks to the Mother of God, who intervened and contributed to his healing. This further strengthened faith in religion and motivated the illiterate young man to learn the texts of prayers.

Transformation into a healer

After Rasputin turned 18, he went on a pilgrimage to the Verkhoturye Monastery, but he never took the veil. A year later, he returned to his small homeland and soon married Praskovya Dubrovina, who would later bear him three children. Marriage was not an obstacle to the pilgrimage. In 1893 he embarked on a new journey, visiting a Greek monastery on Mount Athos and Jerusalem. In 1900, Rasputin visited Kiev and Kazan, where he met Father Mikhail, who was associated with the Kazan Theological Academy.

All these visits again convinced Rasputin of his God's chosenness and gave him a reason to devote others to his healing gift. Returning to Pokrovskoye, he tried to lead the life of a real "old man", but he was far from a real ascetic. In addition, his religious views did not fit in well with canonical Orthodoxy. It's all about the powerful temperament of Gregory, who could not do without women, wine, music and dance. "God is joy and gladness", - Rasputin stated more than once.

People from all over the country flocked to a small Siberian village, eager to find healing and getting rid of diseases. They were not embarrassed by the illiteracy of the "old man" and his complete lack of medical education. But good acting skills allowed Grigory to convincingly portray a folk healer, using advice, prayers and persuasion in his manipulations.

Arrival in St. Petersburg

In 1903, when the country was in a pre-revolutionary situation and was completely restless, Rasputin visited the capital of the Russian Empire for the first time. The formal reason was connected with the search for funds necessary for the construction of the temple in his native village. However, there is another explanation for this. While working on the field, Rasputin had a vision of the Mother of God, who told him about the serious illness of Tsarevich Alexei and insisted on the imminent arrival of the healer in the capital. In St. Petersburg, he meets the rector of the theological academy, Bishop Sergius, to whom he turned for help due to lack of money. He brings him together with the confessor of the imperial family, Archbishop Feofan.

Doctor of the heir to the throne

Acquaintance with Nicholas II took place at a very difficult time for the country and the tsar. Strikes and protests took place everywhere, the revolutionary movement heated up, the opposition went on the offensive, and a wave of terrorist attacks covered Russian cities. The emperor, worried about the fate of the country, was on an emotional upsurge, and on this basis he met the Siberian seer. In general, the entire revolutionary chaos was for Rasputin an excellent basis for manifesting himself. He heals, predicts, preaches, earning himself a colossal authority.

The good actor Rasputin made a strong impression on Nikolai and his family members. Especially believed in the gift of Grigory Alexandra Fedorovna, who hoped for his ability to save his only son from the disease. In 1907, Alexei's health deteriorated noticeably, and the tsar gave permission for Rasputin's approach. As you know, the boy suffered from a severe genetic disease - hemophilia, which is associated with the inability of blood to clot and, as a result, frequent hemorrhages. He was unable to cope with the disease, but he helped bring the crown prince out of the crisis and stabilize his condition. Incredibly, Gregory managed to stop the blood, in which traditional medicine was absolutely powerless. He often repeated: "The heir will live as long as I live."

Cases of whiplash

In 1907, Rasputin received a denunciation, according to which he was accused of Khlystism, one of the varieties of religious false doctrine. The case was investigated by Priest N. Glukhovetsky and Archpriest D. Smirnov. In their conclusions, they referred to the report of D. Berezkin, a specialist in sects, who relied on the insufficiency of materials due to the conduct of the case by people who did not understand Khlysty. As a result, the case was sent for further investigation and soon “fell apart”.

In 1912, the State Duma showed interest in this case, and Nicholas II ordered the investigation to be resumed. At one of the meetings, Rodzianko suggested to the emperor that the Siberian peasant be permanently removed. But a new investigation, headed by Bishop Alexy of Tobolsk, expressed a different opinion and called Gregory a true Christian, seeking the truth of Christ. Of course, not everyone believed in this and continued to consider him a charlatan.

Secular and political life

Having settled in the capital, Rasputin, together with the cure of Alexei, plunges headlong into secular life, getting acquainted with the tops of St. Petersburg society. Especially secular ladies were crazy about the "old man". For example, Baroness Kusova frankly declared her readiness to follow him even to Siberia. Using the trust of the empress, Rasputin puts pressure on the tsar through her, promoting his friends to high government posts. He did not forget about his children either: his daughters, under the highest patronage, studied at one of the St. Petersburg gymnasiums.

The city began to be flooded with rumors about the exploits of Rasputin. They talked about his crazy orgies and carousing, drunken brawls, pogroms and bribes. In 1915, due to the difficult situation at the front, the tsar left St. Petersburg and went to the headquarters of the Russian army in Mogilev. For Rasputin, this was a serious chance to further strengthen his position. The slightly naive empress, who remained on business in the capital, sincerely wanted to help her husband, trying to rely on Rasputin's advice. Through him, a decision was made on military issues, the supply of the army and the appointment to government posts. There is a known case when Rasputin decided on the offensive of the Russian army, which ended in complete collapse and the death of thousands of soldiers in the swamp. The tsar's patience was finally undermined by the rumor about the secret closeness of the Empress and Rasputin, which, in principle, could not be by definition. Nevertheless, this became an occasion for the political environment of the king to think about eliminating such an odious figure.

Just at that time, the book “My Thoughts and Reflections” was published from the healer’s pen, in which he presented the reader with his memories of visiting holy places and reflections on religious, moral and ethical topics. In particular, the author devotes a lot of time to presenting his opinion about love. “Love is a big figure, prophecies will stop, but love will never,” the “old man” claimed.

Conspiracy

The active and controversial activity of Rasputin disgusted many representatives of the then political establishment, who rejected the Siberian upstart as a foreign element. Surrounded by the emperor, a circle of conspirators formed who intended to deal with an objectionable character. At the head of a group of murderers were: F. Yusupov - a representative of one of the richest families and the husband of the tsar's niece, the emperor's cousin, Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich, and deputy of the IV State Duma V. Purishkevich. On December 30, 1916, they invited Rasputin to the Yusupov Palace on the pretext of meeting with the emperor's niece, who was reputed to be one of the most beautiful women in the country.

The dangerous poison cyanide was sprinkled into the offered dishes of Gregory. But he acted too slowly and did not cause the expected effect. Then Yusupov decided to resort to a more effective method and fired at Rasputin, but missed. He ran away from Felix, but ran into his accomplices, who seriously injured the healer with their shots. However, even being in a serious condition, he tried to escape and attempted to escape. But he was caught, and then thrown into the cold Neva, having previously been tightly tied and packed in a bag with stones. At the insistence of Alexandra Feodorovna, the body of Grigory was raised from the bottom of the river, then it was found out that Rasputin woke up in the water and fought for life to the last, but, exhausted, choked. At first, Rasputin was buried near the chapel of the Imperial Palace in Tsarskoye Selo, but after the Provisional Government came to power in 1917, his corpse was exhumed and burned.

Rasputin's predictions

Interestingly, shortly before the assassination, Rasputin wrote a letter to the emperor, in which he predicted his own death no later than January 1, 1917. He claimed that he would die at the hands of a relative of Nicholas II, but his family would also die and "none of the children would be left alive." Rasputin predicted the emergence and collapse of the Soviet Union (“the arrival of a new government and mountains of the slain”), as well as his victory over Nazi Germany. Some of the predictions of the “old man” also apply to our days, in particular, he saw through the veil of times the threat of terrorism for Europe and rampant Islamic extremism in the Middle East.

a peasant in the village of Pokrovskoye, Tobolsk province; gained worldwide fame due to the fact that he was a friend of the family of the Russian Emperor Nicholas II

Grigory Rasputin

short biography

Grigory Efimovich Rasputin (New; January 21, 1869 - December 30, 1916) - a peasant in the village of Pokrovskoye, Tobolsk province. He gained worldwide fame due to the fact that he was a friend of the family of the Russian Emperor Nicholas II. In the 1910s, in certain circles of St. Petersburg society, he had a reputation as a "tsar's friend", "elder", seer and healer. The negative image of Rasputin was used in revolutionary, later in Soviet, propaganda. Until now, numerous disputes have been going on around the personality of Rasputin and his influence on the fate of the Russian Empire.

Ancestors and etymology of the surname

The ancestor of the Rasputin family was "Izosim Fedorov son." The census book of the peasants of the village of Pokrovsky for 1662 says that he and his wife and three sons - Semyon, Nason and Yevsey - came to Pokrovskaya Sloboda twenty years earlier from the Yarensky district and "became arable". Son Nason later received the nickname "Rosputa". From him came all the Rosputins, who became Rasputins at the beginning of the 19th century. According to the household census of 1858, more than thirty peasants were listed in Pokrovsky, who bore the surname "Rasputins", including Yefim, Grigory's father. The surname comes from the words "crossroads", "crossroads", "crossroads".

Birth

Born on January 9 (21), 1869 in the village of Pokrovskoye, Tyumen district, Tobolsk province, in the family of a coachman Efim Yakovlevich Rasputin (1841-1916) and Anna Vasilievna (1839-1906; nee Parshukova). In the metric book of the Slobodo-Pokrovskaya Church of the Mother of God of the Tyumen district of the Tobolsk province, in the first part “On those born”, there is a birth record on January 9, 1869 and an explanation: “Efim Yakovlevich Rasputin and his wife Anna Vasilievna of the Orthodox faith, son Grigory was born.” He was baptized on January 10th. The godparents were Uncle Matthew Yakovlevich Rasputin and the maiden Agafya Ivanovna Alemasova. The baby received the name according to the existing tradition of naming the child by the name of the saint on whose day he was born or baptized. The day of the baptism of Grigory Rasputin is January 10, the day of the celebration of the memory of St. Gregory of Nyssa.

Rasputin himself in his mature years reported conflicting information about the date of birth. According to biographers, he was inclined to exaggerate his true age in order to better match the image of the "old man". Sources report various dates for Rasputin's birth between 1864 and 1872. So, the historian K. F. Shatsillo, in an article about Rasputin in the TSB, reports that he was born in 1864-1865.

Beginning of life

In his youth, Rasputin was ill a lot. After a pilgrimage to the Verkhoturye Monastery, he turned to religion. In 1893, Rasputin traveled to the holy places of Russia, visited Mount Athos in Greece, then in Jerusalem. He met and made contacts with many representatives of the clergy, monks, wanderers.

In 1890 he married Praskovya Fedorovna Dubrovina, the same peasant pilgrim who bore him three children: Matryona, Varvara and Dimitri.

In 1900 he went on a new journey to Kiev. On the way back, he lived in Kazan for a long time, where he met Father Mikhail, who was related to the Kazan Theological Academy.

Petersburg period

In 1903 he came to St. Petersburg to the rector of the Theological Academy, Bishop Sergius (Stragorodsky). At the same time, the inspector of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, Archimandrite Feofan (Bystrov), met Rasputin, introducing him also to Bishop Hermogenes (Dolganov).

By 1904, Rasputin had acquired the glory of an “old man”, “holy fool” and “God’s man” from a part of high society, which “fixed the position of a“ saint ”in the eyes of the St. Petersburg world”, or at least he was considered a “great ascetic”. Father Feofan told about the "wanderer" to the daughters of the Montenegrin prince (later king) Nikolay Negosh - Militsa and Anastasia. The sisters told the empress about the new religious celebrity. Several years passed before he began to clearly stand out among the crowd of "God's people."

On November 1 (Tuesday), 1905, the first personal meeting between Rasputin and the emperor took place. This event was honored with an entry in the diary of Nicholas II:

At 4 o'clock we went to Sergievka. We drank tea with Milica and Stana. We got acquainted with the man of God - Grigory from the Tobolsk province.

From the diary of Nicholas II

Rasputin gained influence on the imperial family, and above all on Alexandra Feodorovna, by helping her son, the heir to the throne, Alexei, fight hemophilia, a disease that medicine was powerless to face.

In December 1906, Rasputin filed a petition to the highest name to change his surname to Rasputin-New, referring to the fact that many of his fellow villagers have the same surname, because of which there may be misunderstandings. The request was granted.

Rasputin and the Orthodox Church

Later biographers of Rasputin (O. A. Platonov, A. N. Bokhanov) tend to see some broader political meaning in the official investigations conducted by the church authorities in connection with Rasputin's activities.

The first accusation of "Khlystism", 1903

In 1903, his first persecution by the church began: the Tobolsk consistory received a report from the local priest Pyotr Ostroumov that Rasputin behaved strangely with women who came to him “from St. Petersburg itself”, about their “passions, from which he saves them ... in the bath”, that in his youth Rasputin “from his life in the factories of the Perm province made acquaintance with the teachings of the Khlyst heresy”. E. S. Radzinsky notes that an investigator was sent to Pokrovskoye, but he did not find anything discrediting, and the case was archived.

The first case of Rasputin's "Khlystism", 1907

On September 6, 1907, following a denunciation of 1903, the Tobolsk consistory opened a case against Rasputin, who was accused of spreading false teachings similar to Khlyst's and forming a society of followers of his false teachings.

Elder Macarius, Bishop Feofan and G. E. Rasputin. Monastery photo studio. 1909

The initial investigation was conducted by priest Nikodim Glukhovetsky. On the basis of the collected facts, Archpriest Dmitry Smirnov, a member of the Tobolsk Consistory, prepared a report to Bishop Anthony with a review of the case under consideration by a specialist in sects D. M. Berezkin, an inspector of the Tobolsk Theological Seminary.

D. M. Berezkin, in his review of the conduct of the case, noted that the investigation was carried out by “persons little versed in Khlystism”, that only Rasputin’s residential two-story house was searched, although it is known that the place where zeal takes place “never fits in residential premises ... but always settles in the backyards - in baths, in sheds, in basements ... and even in dungeons ... The paintings and icons found in the house are not described, meanwhile, they usually contain the key to heresy ... ". After that, Bishop Anthony of Tobolsk decided to carry out an additional investigation into the case, entrusting it to an experienced anti-sectarian missionary.

As a result, the case "fell apart", and was approved as completed by Anthony (Karzhavin) on May 7, 1908.

Subsequently, the chairman of the State Duma, Rodzianko, who took the case from the Synod, said that it soon disappeared, but, according to E. Radzinsky, “The case of the Tobolsk spiritual consistory about the Khlystism of Grigory Rasputin” was eventually found in the Tyumen archive.

The first "Case of Khlystism", despite the fact that it justifies Rasputin, causes an ambiguous assessment among researchers.

According to E. Radzinsky, the unspoken initiator of the case was Princess Milica Chernogorskaya, who, thanks to her power at court, had strong ties in the Synod, and the initiator of the hasty closure of the case due to pressure "from above" was General Olga Lokhtina, one of Rasputin's St. Petersburg admirers. The same fact of Lokhtina's patronage as Radzinsky's scientific discovery is cited by IV Smyslov. Radzinsky connects the relations between the princesses Milica and Anastasia that deteriorated soon with the tsarina precisely with the attempt of Milica to initiate this case (citation “... together they were indignant at the“ black women ”who dared to organize a shameful investigation against the“ God's man ””).

O. A. Platonov, seeking to prove the falseness of the accusations against Rasputin, believes that the case appeared “from scratch”, and the case was “organized” by Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich (husband of Anastasia Chernogorskaya), who before Rasputin occupied the place of the closest friend and adviser to the royal family. Especially O. A. Platonov highlights the prince's belonging to Freemasonry. A. N. Varlamov does not agree with Platonov’s version of the intervention of Nikolai Nikolayevich, who does not see that motive.

According to A. A. Amalrik, Rasputin was saved in this case by his friends, Archimandrite Feofan (Bystrov), Bishop Germogen (Dolganev) and Tsar Nicholas II, who ordered the case to be hushed up.

Historian A. N. Bokhanov claims that the “Rasputin case” is one of the first cases of “black PR” not only in Russia, but also in world history. The Rasputin theme is "the clearest indicator of the hardest spiritual and psychological split in the country, a split that became the detonator of the revolutionary explosion of 1917."

O. A. Platonov in his book details the contents of this case, considering a number of testimonies against Rasputin to be hostile and / or fabricated: surveys of village residents (priests, peasants), surveys of St. Petersburg women who, after 1905, began to visit Pokrovskoye. A. N. Varlamov nevertheless considers these testimonies to be sufficiently reliable, and analyzes them in the corresponding chapter of his book. A. N. Varlamov identifies three charges against Rasputin in the case:

• Rasputin acted as an impostor doctor and was engaged in healing human souls without a diploma; he himself did not want to become a monk (“He said that he did not like monastic life, that the monks did not observe morality and that it was better to be saved in the world,” Matryona testified during the investigation), but he also dared others; as a result, two girls of Dubrovina died, who, according to fellow villagers, died due to “Grigory’s bullying” (according to Rasputin’s testimony, they died of consumption);
• Rasputin's craving for women's kisses, in particular, the episode of the violent kiss of the 28-year-old prosphora Evdokia Korneeva, about which the investigation arranged a confrontation between Rasputin and Korneeva; “the accused denied this testimony partly completely, and partly making excuses in a memorized manner (“6 years ago”)”;
• testimony of the priest of the Intercession Church, Father Fyodor Chemagin: “I went (accidentally) to the accused and saw how the latter returned wet from the bathhouse, and after him all the women who lived with him came from there - also wet and steamy. The accused confessed, in private conversations, to the witness in his weakness to caress and kiss the "ladies", confessed that he was with them in the bathhouse, that he stands absent-mindedly in the church. Rasputin "objected that he went to the bathhouse long before the women, and having become very ill, he lay in the dressing room, and a really steam room came out of there - shortly before (the arrival there) of the women."

The appendix to the report of Metropolitan Yuvenaly (Poyarkov) at the Bishops' Council held in the autumn of 2004 states the following: The case of G. Rasputin's accusation of Khlystism, stored in the Tobolsk branch of the State Archive of the Tyumen Region, has not been thoroughly investigated, although lengthy excerpts from it are given in the book of O. A. Platonov. In an effort to “rehabilitate” G. Rasputin, O. A. Platonov, who, by the way, is not a specialist in the history of Russian sectarianism, characterizes this case as “fabricated”. Meanwhile, even the extracts he cited, including the testimony of the priests of the Pokrovskaya settlement, testify that the question of G. Rasputin's proximity to sectarianism is much more complicated than it seems to the author, and in any case still needs a special and competent analysis.».

Secret Police Surveillance, Jerusalem - 1911

In 1909, the police were going to expel Rasputin from St. Petersburg, but Rasputin got ahead of her and left for his homeland in the village of Pokrovskoye for a while.

In 1910, his daughters moved to St. Petersburg to Rasputin, whom he arranged to study at the gymnasium. At the direction of Prime Minister Stolypin, Rasputin was put under surveillance for several days.

In early 1911, Bishop Feofan invited the Holy Synod to officially express displeasure to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna in connection with Rasputin's behavior, and Metropolitan Anthony (Vadkovsky), a member of the Holy Synod, reported to Nicholas II about Rasputin's negative influence.

On December 16, 1911, Rasputin had a skirmish with Bishop Hermogenes and Hieromonk Iliodor. Bishop Germogen, acting in alliance with hieromonk Iliodor (Trufanov), invited Rasputin to his courtyard, on Vasilyevsky Island, in the presence of Iliodor, "convicted" him, hitting him with a cross several times. An argument ensued between them, and then a fight.

In 1911, Rasputin voluntarily left the capital and made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

On January 23, 1912, by order of the Minister of the Interior, Makarov, Rasputin was again placed under surveillance, which continued until his death.

The second case of Rasputin's "Khlysty" in 1912

In January 1912, the Duma declared its attitude towards Rasputin, and in February 1912, Nicholas II ordered V.K. The case of the Tobolsk Ecclesiastical Consistory, which contained the beginning of the Investigative Proceedings on the accusation of Rasputin of belonging to the Khlyst sect. On February 26, 1912, at an audience, Rodzianko suggested that the tsar expel the peasant forever. Archbishop Anthony (Khrapovitsky) openly wrote that Rasputin is a whip and participates in zeal.

The new (who replaced Eusebius (Grozdov)) Bishop of Tobolsk Alexy (Molchanov) personally took up this matter, studied the materials, requested information from the clergy of the Intercession Church, and repeatedly talked with Rasputin himself. Based on the results of this new investigation, the conclusion of the Tobolsk ecclesiastical consistory, sent to many high-ranking officials and some deputies of the State Duma. In conclusion, Rasputin-Novy was called "a Christian, a spiritually minded person and seeking the truth of Christ." new investigation results.

Rasputin's opponents believe that Bishop Alexy "helped" him in this way for selfish purposes: the disgraced bishop, exiled to Tobolsk from the Pskov see as a result of the discovery of a sectarian St. John's monastery in the Pskov province, stayed at the Tobolsk see only until October 1913, that is, only a year and a half, after which he was appointed Exarch of Georgia and elevated to the rank of Archbishop of Kartal and Kakheti with the title of member of the Holy Synod. This is seen as the influence of Rasputin.

However, researchers believe that the elevation of Bishop Alexy in 1913 took place only due to his devotion to the reigning house, which is especially evident from his sermon delivered on the occasion of the 1905 manifesto. Moreover, the period in which Bishop Alexy was appointed Exarch of Georgia was a period of revolutionary ferment in Georgia.

According to Archbishop Anthony Karzhavin, it should also be noted that Rasputin's opponents often forget about a different elevation: Bishop Anthony of Tobolsk (Karzhavin), who brought the first case against Rasputin about "Khlystism", was moved in 1910 from cold Siberia to the Tver cathedra and to Pascha was elevated to the rank of archbishop. But, according to Karzhavin, they remember that this transfer took place precisely due to the fact that the first file was sent to the archives of the Synod.

Prophecies, writings and correspondence of Rasputin

During his lifetime, Rasputin published two books:

• Rasputin, G. E. The life of an experienced wanderer. - May 1907.
• G. E. Rasputin. My thoughts and reflections. - Petrograd, 1915.

In his prophecies, Rasputin speaks of "God's punishment", "bitter water", "tears of the sun", "poisonous rains" "until the end of our century." The deserts will advance, and the land will be inhabited by monsters that will not be people or animals. Thanks to "human alchemy", flying frogs, kite butterflies, crawling bees, huge mice and no less huge ants, as well as the monster "kobak" will appear. Two princes from the West and the East will challenge the right to world domination. They will have a battle in the land of four demons, but the western prince Grayug will defeat his eastern enemy Blizzard, but he himself will fall. After these misfortunes, people will again turn to God and enter the "earthly paradise."

The most famous was the prediction of the death of the Imperial House: "As long as I live, the dynasty will live."

Some authors believe that there are mentions of Rasputin in the letters of Alexandra Feodorovna to Nicholas II. In the letters themselves, Rasputin's surname is not mentioned, but some authors believe that Rasputin in the letters is indicated by the words "Friend", or "He" with capital letters, although this has no documentary evidence. The letters were published in the USSR by 1927, and by the Berlin publishing house "Slovo" in 1922. The correspondence was preserved in the State Archive of the Russian Federation - the Novoromanovsky archive.

Attitude towards war

In 1912, Rasputin dissuaded the emperor from intervening in the Balkan War, which delayed the start of World War I by 2 years. In 1914, he repeatedly spoke out against Russia's entry into the war, believing that it would only bring suffering to the peasants. In 1915, anticipating the February Revolution, Rasputin demanded an improvement in the supply of bread to the capital. In 1916, Rasputin spoke out strongly in favor of Russia withdrawing from the war, making peace with Germany, giving up rights to Poland and the Baltic states, and also against the Russo-British alliance.

Anti-Rasputin press campaign

In 1910, the writer Mikhail Novoselov published several critical articles about Rasputin in Moskovskie Vedomosti (No. 49 - "The Spiritual Tourist Grigory Rasputin", No. 72 - "Something More About Grigory Rasputin").

In 1912, Novoselov published in his publishing house the pamphlet "Grigory Rasputin and Mystical Debauchery", which accused Rasputin of whiplash and criticized the highest church hierarchy. The brochure was banned and confiscated at the printing house. The newspaper "Voice of Moscow" was fined for publishing excerpts from it. After that, the State Duma followed up with a request to the Ministry of Internal Affairs about the legality of punishing the editors of Golos Moskvy and Novoye Vremya. In the same 1912, Rasputin's acquaintance, the former hieromonk Iliodor, began to distribute several letters of scandalous content from Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and the Grand Duchesses to Rasputin.

Copies printed on a hectograph went around St. Petersburg. Most researchers consider these letters to be forgeries. Later, Iliodor, on the advice of Gorky, wrote the libelous book "Holy Devil" about Rasputin, which was published in 1917 during the revolution.

In 1913-1914, the Masonic Supreme Council of the VVNR attempted an agitation campaign about the role of Rasputin at court. Somewhat later, the Council made an attempt to publish a pamphlet directed against Rasputin, and when this attempt failed (the pamphlet was censored), the Council took steps to distribute this pamphlet in a typewritten form.

Assassination attempt on Khionia Guseva

In 1914, an anti-Rasputin conspiracy matured, headed by Nikolai Nikolayevich and Rodzianko.

On June 29 (July 12), 1914, an assassination attempt was made on Rasputin in the village of Pokrovsky. He was stabbed in the stomach and seriously wounded by Khionia Guseva, who had come from Tsaritsyn. Rasputin testified that he suspected Iliodor of organizing the assassination attempt, but could not provide any evidence of this. On July 3, Rasputin was transported by ship to Tyumen for treatment. Rasputin remained in the Tyumen hospital until August 17, 1914. The investigation into the assassination attempt lasted about a year. Guseva was declared mentally ill in July 1915 and freed from criminal liability by being placed in a psychiatric hospital in Tomsk.

Guseva's assassination attempt hit the international news. Rasputin's condition was reported in the newspapers of Europe and the USA; The New York Times brought this story to the front page. In the Russian press, Rasputin's health received more attention than the death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Murder

Wax figures of participants in the conspiracy against Grigory Rasputin (from left to right) - State Duma deputy V. M. Purishkevich, Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich, lieutenant S. M. Sukhotin. Exposition at the Yusupov Palace on the Moika

Letter to the. to. Dmitry Pavlovich's father v. to. Pavel Aleksandrovich about the attitude to the murder of Rasputin and the revolution. Isfahan (Persia) April 29, 1917. Finally, the last act of my stay in Petr [grad] was a completely conscious and thoughtful participation in the murder of Rasputin - as the last attempt to enable the Sovereign to openly change course, without taking responsibility for the removal of this person. (Alix wouldn't let him do that.)

Rasputin was killed on the night of December 17, 1916 (December 30, according to a new style) in the Yusupov Palace on the Moika. Conspirators: F. F. Yusupov, V. M. Purishkevich, Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich, British intelligence officer MI-6 Oswald Reiner.

Information about the murder is contradictory, it was confused both by the killers themselves and by pressure on the investigation by the Russian imperial and British authorities. Yusupov changed his testimony several times: in the police of St. Petersburg on December 18, 1916, in exile in the Crimea in 1917, in a book in 1927, given under oath in 1934 and in 1965. Initially, Purishkevich's memoirs were published, then Yusupov echoed his version. However, they radically differed from the testimony of the investigation. Starting from naming the wrong color of the clothes that Rasputin was wearing according to the killers and in which he was found, and to how many and where the bullets were fired. So, for example, forensic experts found three wounds, each of which is fatal: in the head, in the liver and kidney. (According to British researchers who studied the photograph, the shot to the forehead was made from a British Webley 455 revolver.) After being shot in the liver, a person can live no more than 20 minutes and is not capable, as the killers said, in half an hour or an hour to run down the street. Also, there was no shot in the heart, which the killers unanimously claimed.

Rasputin was first lured into the cellar, treated to red wine and a pie poisoned with potassium cyanide. Yusupov went upstairs and, returning, shot him in the back, causing him to fall. The conspirators went out into the street. Yusupov, who returned for a cloak, checked the body, suddenly Rasputin woke up and tried to strangle the killer. The conspirators who ran in at that moment began to shoot at Rasputin. Approaching, they were surprised that he was still alive, and began to beat him. According to the killers, the poisoned and shot Rasputin came to his senses, got out of the basement and tried to climb over the high wall of the garden, but was caught by the killers, who heard the rising barking of a dog. Then he was tied with ropes hand and foot (according to Purishkevich, first wrapped in a blue cloth), taken by car to a pre-selected place near Kamenny Island and thrown off the bridge into the Neva hole in such a way that the body was under the ice. However, according to the materials of the investigation, the discovered corpse was dressed in a fur coat, there was neither fabric nor ropes.

The investigation into the murder of Rasputin, which was led by the director of the Police Department A. T. Vasiliev, progressed quite quickly. Already the first interrogations of Rasputin's family members and servants showed that on the night of the murder, Rasputin went to visit Prince Yusupov. Policeman Vlasyuk, who was on duty on the night of December 16-17 on a street not far from the Yusupov Palace, testified that he had heard several shots at night. During a search in the courtyard of the Yusupovs' house, traces of blood were found.

On the afternoon of December 17, a passer-by noticed bloodstains on the parapet of the Petrovsky Bridge. After divers explored the Neva, the body of Rasputin was found in this place. The forensic medical examination was entrusted to the well-known professor of the Military Medical Academy D.P. Kosorotov. The original autopsy report has not been preserved; the cause of death can only be hypothesized.

“During the autopsy, very numerous injuries were found, many of which were already inflicted posthumously. The entire right side of the head was shattered, flattened due to bruising of the corpse during the fall from the bridge. Death followed from profuse bleeding due to a gunshot wound to the abdomen. The shot was fired, in my opinion, almost point-blank, from left to right, through the stomach and liver, with crushing of the latter in the right half. The bleeding was very profuse. The corpse also had a gunshot wound in the back, in the region of the spine, with crushing of the right kidney, and another wound point-blank, in the forehead, probably already dying or deceased. The chest organs were intact and were examined superficially, but there were no signs of death from drowning. The lungs were not swollen and there was no water or foamy fluid in the airways. Rasputin was thrown into the water already dead.

The conclusion of the forensic expert Professor D.N. Kosorotova

No poison was found in Rasputin's stomach. There are explanations that the cyanide in the cakes was neutralized by the sugar or high heat in the oven. On the other hand, Dr. Stanislav Lazovert, who was supposed to poison the cakes, said in a letter addressed to Prince Yusupov that he had put a harmless substance instead of poison.

There are a number of nuances in determining the involvement of O. Reiner. At that time, two British MI6 intelligence officers who could have committed the murder were serving in St. Petersburg: Yusupov's friend from University College (Oxford) Oswald Rayner and Captain Stephen Alley, who was born in the Yusupov Palace. The former was suspected, and Tsar Nicholas II explicitly mentioned that the killer was Yusupov's college friend. In 1919, Rayner was awarded the Order of the British Empire, he destroyed his papers before his death in 1961. Compton's chauffeur's journal records that he brought Oswald to Yusupov (and to another officer, Captain John Scale) a week before the murder, and the last time - on the day of the murder. Compton also directly hinted at Rayner, saying that the killer is a lawyer and was born in the same city with him. There is a letter from Alley written to Scale on January 7, 1917, eight days after the assassination: "Although not everything went according to plan, our goal was achieved ... Rayner covers his tracks and will undoubtedly contact you ... ".

The investigation lasted two and a half months until the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II on March 2, 1917. On that day, Kerensky became Minister of Justice in the Provisional Government. On March 4, 1917, he ordered the investigation to be hastily terminated, while the investigator A.T. Vasiliev was arrested and transferred to the Peter and Paul Fortress, where he was interrogated by the Extraordinary Investigative Commission until September, and later emigrated.

English conspiracy version

In 2004, the BBC aired the documentary Who Killed Rasputin?, which brought new attention to the murder investigation. According to the version shown in the film, the "glory" and the plan of this murder belongs to Great Britain, the Russian conspirators were only executors, a control shot in the forehead was fired from a revolver of British officers Webley 455.

According to British researchers, Rasputin was killed with the active participation of the British intelligence service Mi-6, the killers confused the investigation in order to hide the British trail. The motive for the conspiracy was Britain's fears about Rasputin's influence on the Russian Empress and the conclusion of a separate peace with Germany.

The Assassination of Rasputin, Felix Yusupov's version

Events immediately preceding the murder

At the end of August 1915, it was officially announced that Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich was removed from the post of supreme commander in chief, whose duties were assumed by Emperor Nicholas II. A. A. Brusilov wrote in his memoirs that the impression in the troops from this replacement was the most negative and “it never occurred to anyone that the tsar would take over the duties of the supreme commander in this difficult situation at the front. It was common knowledge that Nicholas II knew absolutely nothing about military affairs and that the rank he had taken upon himself would be only nominal.

Felix Yusupov, in his memoirs, claimed that the emperor took command of the army under the pressure of Rasputin. Russian society greeted the news with hostility, as the understanding of Rasputin's permissiveness grew. With the departure of the sovereign to Headquarters, taking advantage of the unlimited location of the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, Rasputin began to visit Tsarskoye Selo regularly. His advice and opinions acquired the force of law. Not a single military decision was made without the knowledge of Rasputin. "The queen trusted him blindly, and he tackled pressing, and sometimes even secret state issues."

Felix Yusupov was struck by the events associated with his father, Felix Feliksovich Yusupov. In his memoirs, Felix wrote that on the eve of the war, the administrations of Russian cities, large enterprises, including Moscow, were controlled by the Germans: “German impudence knew no bounds. German surnames were worn both in the army and at court. Most of the ministers who received ministerial portfolios from Rasputin were Germanophiles. In 1915, Felix's father was appointed by the tsar to the post of Moscow governor-general. However, Felix Feliksovich Yusupov was unable to fight the German encirclement: "traitors and spies ruled the ball." Orders and orders of the Moscow governor-general were not carried out. Outraged by the state of affairs, Felix Feliksovich went to Headquarters. He outlined the situation in Moscow - no one has yet dared to openly tell the truth to the sovereign. However, the pro-German party that surrounded the sovereign was too strong: returning to Moscow, his father found out that he had been removed from the post of governor-general for the untimely stop of the anti-German pogroms.

Members of the imperial family tried to explain to the sovereign how dangerous Rasputin's influence was for the dynasty, as well as for Russia as a whole. There was only one answer: “Everything is slander. Saints are always slandered." Empress Dowager Maria Feodorovna wrote to her son, begging him to remove Rasputin and forbid the tsarina to interfere in state affairs. Nicholas told the queen about this. Alexandra Fedorovna stopped relations with people who "pressed" on the sovereign. Elizaveta Fyodorovna, also almost never visiting Tsarskoye, came to talk with her sister. However, all arguments were rejected. According to Felix Yusupov, the German General Staff continuously sent spies into Rasputin's entourage.

Felix Yusupov claimed that "the tsar was weakening from the narcotic potions with which he was drunk every day at the instigation of Rasputin." Rasputin received virtually unlimited power: "appointed and dismissed ministers and generals, pushed around bishops and archbishops ...".

There was no hope of “opening the eyes” of Alexandra Feodorovna and the sovereign. “Without agreeing, everyone alone (Felix Yusupov and Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich) came to a single conclusion: Rasputin must be removed, even at the cost of murder.”

Murder

Felix hoped to find "resolute people ready to act" to carry out his plan. There was a narrow circle of people ready for decisive action: Lieutenant Sukhotin, Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich, Purishkevich and Dr. Lazovert. After discussing the situation, the conspirators decided that "poison is the surest way to hide the fact of the murder." Yusupov's house on the Moika was chosen as the site of the murder:

I was going to receive Rasputin in a semi-basement apartment, which I was furnishing for that purpose. The arcades divided the basement hall into two parts. The larger one was a dining room. In a smaller one, a spiral staircase, about which I have already written, led to my apartment on the mezzanine. Halfway there was an exit to the yard. The dining room, with its low vaulted ceiling, was lit by two small windows at pavement level that overlooked the embankment. The walls and floor of the room were made of gray stone. In order not to arouse suspicion in Rasputin by the view of a bare cellar, it was necessary to decorate the room and give it a residential look.

Felix ordered the butler Grigory Buzhinsky and the valet Ivan to prepare tea for six people by eleven, buy cakes, biscuits, and bring wine from the cellar. Felix led all the accomplices into the dining room and for some time the newcomers silently examined the place of the future murder. Felix took out a box of cyanide and placed it on the table next to the cakes.

Dr. Lazovert put on rubber gloves, took a few crystals of poison from it, and ground it to powder. Then he removed the tops of the cakes, sprinkled the filling with powder in an amount capable, according to him, of killing an elephant. Silence reigned in the room. We followed his actions with excitement. It remains to put the poison in the glasses. We decided to put it at the last moment so that the poison would not evaporate

In order to maintain a pleasant mood in Rasputin and not let him suspect anything, the killers decided to give everything the appearance of a finished dinner: they moved the chairs, poured tea into the cups. We agreed that Dmitry, Sukhotin and Purishkevich would go up to the mezzanine and start the gramophone, choosing more cheerful music.

Lazovert, disguised as a driver, started the engine. Felix put on a fur coat and pulled a fur hat over his eyes, as it was necessary to secretly deliver Rasputin to the house on the Moika. Felix agreed on these actions, explaining to Rasputin that he did not want to "advertise" relations with him. Rasputin arrived after midnight. He was expecting Felix: “I put on a silk shirt embroidered with cornflowers. He girded himself with crimson lace. The black velvet trousers and boots were brand new. Hair slicked down, beard combed with extraordinary care.

Arriving at the house on the Moika, Rasputin heard American music and voices. Felix explained that they were his wife's guests, who would soon be leaving. Felix invited the guest into the dining room.

“Go down. Not having time to enter, Rasputin threw off his fur coat and began to look around with curiosity. Particularly attracted by his delivery with drawers. He played like a child, opened and closed the doors, looked inside and out.

Felix tried for the last time to persuade Rasputin to leave Petersburg, but was refused. Finally, after talking over "his favorite conversations," Rasputin asked for tea. Felix poured him a cup and offered him eclairs with cyanide.

I watched in horror. The poison should have acted immediately, but, to my amazement, Rasputin continued talking as if nothing had happened.

Then Felix offered Rasputin poisoned wine.

I stood beside him and watched his every move, expecting him to collapse any moment... But he drank, smacked, savored the wine like a true connoisseur. Nothing has changed in his face.

Under the pretext of seeing him off, Yusupov went up to the "guests of his wife." Felix took the revolver from Dmitry and went down to the basement - he aimed at the heart and pulled the trigger. Sukhotin dressed as an "old man", putting on his fur coat and hat. Following the developed plan, taking into account the presence of surveillance, Dmitry, Sukhotin and Lazovert were to take the “old man” in Purishkevich’s open car back to his home. Then, in Dmitry's closed car, return to the Moika, pick up the corpse and deliver it to the Petrovsky Bridge. However, the unexpected happened: with a sharp movement, the “killed” Rasputin jumped to his feet.

He looked terrible. His mouth was foamy. He screamed in an evil voice, waved his arms and rushed at me. His fingers dug into my shoulders, strove to reach my throat. Eyes popped out of their sockets, blood flowed from the mouth. Rasputin quietly and hoarsely repeated my name.

Purishkevich ran to Yusupov's call. Rasputin "wheezing and growling" quickly moved to the secret exit to the courtyard. Purishkevich rushed after him. Rasputin ran to the middle gate of the courtyard, which was not locked. “A shot rang out… Rasputin swayed and fell into the snow.”

Purishkevich ran up, stood for a few moments by the body, convinced himself that this time it was all over, and quickly went to the house.

Dmitry, Sukhotin and Lazovert drove in a closed car to pick up the corpse. They wrapped the corpse in canvas, loaded it into a car and drove to the Petrovsky bridge, where they threw the body into the river.

Consequences of the murder

On the evening of January 1, 1917, it became known that Rasputin's body was discovered in Malaya Nevka in an ice hole under the Petrovsky Bridge. The body was delivered to the Chesme almshouse, five miles from St. Petersburg. Empress Alexandra Feodorovna demanded the immediate execution of Rasputin's killers.

Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, arriving from Pskov, where the headquarters of the Northern Front was located, told how furiously the troops received the news of the murder of Raputin. “No one doubted that now the sovereign would find honest and devoted people for himself.” However, according to Yusupov: “Rasputin's poison for many years poisoned the highest spheres of the state and devastated the most honest, most ardent souls. As a result, someone did not want to make decisions, and someone believed that there was no need to make them.”

At the end of March 1917, Mikhail Rodzianko, Admiral Kolchak and Prince Nikolai Mikhailovich offered Felix to become emperor.

The murder of Rasputin, memoirs of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich

According to the published memoirs of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, on December 17, 1916, in Kiev, the adjutant informed Alexander Mikhailovich with enthusiasm and joy that Rasputin had been killed in the house of Prince Yusupov, personally by Felix, and Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich became his accomplice. Alexander Mikhailovich was the first to inform the Empress Dowager (Maria Feodorovna) about the murder of Rasputin. However, “the thought that her granddaughter’s husband and her nephew had stained their hands with blood caused her great distress. As an Empress, she sympathized, but as a Christian, she could not but be against the shedding of blood, no matter how valiant the motives of the perpetrators.

It was decided to get Nicholas II's consent to come to St. Petersburg. Members of the Imperial family asked Alexander Mikhailovich to intercede for Dmitry and Felix before the emperor. At the meeting, Nikolai hugged the prince, as he knew Alexander Mikhailovich well. Alexander Mikhailovich delivered a defensive speech. He asked the Sovereign not to look at Felix and Dmitry Pavlovich as ordinary murderers, but as patriots. After a pause, the sovereign said: "You speak very well, but you will agree that no one - be he the Grand Duke or a simple peasant - has the right to kill."

The emperor made a promise to be merciful in choosing punishments for the two guilty. Dmitry Pavlovich was exiled to the Persian front at the disposal of General Baratov, and Felix was ordered to leave for his estate Rakitnoye near Kursk.

The funeral

Facsimile of the official act on the burning of the corpse of G. E. Rasputin

Rasputin was buried by Bishop Isidore (Kolokolov), who knew him well. In his memoirs, A. I. Spiridovich recalls that Isidore had no right to do a funeral mass. Later there were rumors that Metropolitan Pitirim, who was approached about the funeral, rejected this request. Also in those days, a legend was launched, mentioned in the reports of the English embassy, ​​that the wife of Nicholas II was allegedly present at the autopsy and funeral. At first they wanted to bury the dead man in his homeland, in the village of Pokrovsky. But because of the danger of possible unrest in connection with the dispatch of the body, it was interred in the Alexander Park of Tsarskoye Selo on the territory of the temple of Seraphim of Sarov built by Anna Vyrubova.

M. V. Rodzianko wrote that during the celebrations, rumors spread in the Duma about the return of Rasputin to St. Petersburg. In January 1917, Mikhail Vladimirovich received a paper with many signatures from Tsaritsyn with the message that Rasputin was visiting V.K. Sabler, that the Tsaritsyn people knew about Rasputin's arrival in the capital.

After the February Revolution, Rasputin's grave was found, and Kerensky ordered Kornilov to organize the destruction of the body. For several days the coffin with the remains stood in a special carriage, and then the corpse of Rasputin was burned on the night of March 11 in the furnace of the steam boiler of the Polytechnic Institute. An official act was drawn up on the burning of the corpse of Rasputin:

Forest. March 10-11, 1917
We, the undersigned, between 7 and 9 o'clock in the morning jointly burned the body of the murdered Grigory Rasputin, transported by car by the authorized representative of the Provisional Committee of the State Duma, Philip Petrovich Kupchinsky, in the presence of the representative of the Petrograd public mayor, captain of the 16th Novoarkhangelsk Lancers Regiment Vladimir Pavlovich Kochadeev. The burning itself took place near the high road from Lesnoy to Peskarevka, in the forest with the absolute absence of unauthorized persons, except for us, who put their hands below:
Representative from the Society. Petrograd Gradon.
Captain of the 16th Ulansky New Arch. P. V. KOCHADEEV.,
Authorized Time Com. State. Duma KUPCHINSKY.
Students of the Petrograd Polytechnic
Institute:
S. BOGACHEV,
R. FISHER,
N. MOKLOVICH,
M. SHABALIN,
S. LIKHVITSKY,
V. VLADIMIROV.
Round seal: Petrograd Polytechnic Institute, head of security.
Postscript below: The act was drawn up in my presence and I certify the signatures of those who signed.
Guardsman.
Ensign PARVOV

Three months after Rasputin's death, his grave was desecrated. Two inscriptions were inscribed at the place of burning, one of which is in German: “ Hier ist der Hund begraben"(" A dog is buried here ") and further "The corpse of Rasputin Grigory was burned here on the night of March 10-11, 1917."

The fate of the Rasputin family

Rasputin's daughter Matryona emigrated to France after the revolution, and later moved to the United States. In 1920, the house and the entire peasant economy of Dmitry Grigorievich was nationalized. In 1922, his widow Praskovya Fedorovna, son Dmitry and daughter Varvara were disenfranchised as "malicious elements." In the 1930s, all three were arrested by the NKVD, and their trace was lost in the special settlements of the Tyumen North.

Allegations of immorality

Rasputin and his admirers (St. Petersburg, 1914).
Top row (left to right): A. A. Pistohlkors (in profile), A. E. Pistohlkors, L. A. Molchanov, N. D. Zhevakhov, E. Kh. Gil, unknown, N. D. Yakhimovich, O. V. Loman, N. D. Loman, A. I. Reshetnikova.
In the second row: S. L. Volynskaya, A. A. Vyrubova, A. G. Gushchina, Yu. A. Den, E. Ya. Rasputin.
On the last row: Z. Timofeeva, M. E. Golovina, M. S. Gil, G. E. Rasputin, O. Kleist, A. N. Laptinskaya (on the floor).

In 1914, Rasputin settled in an apartment at 64 Gorokhovaya Street in St. Petersburg. Various gloomy rumors quickly began to spread around St. Petersburg about this apartment, for example, that Rasputin turned it into a brothel. Some said that Rasputin kept a permanent "harem" there, while others - collected from time to time. There was a rumor that the apartment on Gorokhovaya was used for witchcraft.

From the memories of witnesses

…Once Aunt Agn. Fed. Hartmann (my mother's sister) asked me if I would like to see Rasputin closer. …….. Having received the address on Pushkinskaya St., on the appointed day and hour, I appeared at the apartment of Maria Alexandrovna Nikitina, my aunt's friend. Entering the small dining room, I found everyone already assembled. At the oval table, served for tea, there were 6-7 young interesting ladies. I knew two of them by sight (we met in the halls of the Winter Palace, where Alexandra Fedorovna organized the sewing of linen for the wounded). They were all in the same circle and were talking animatedly among themselves in an undertone. After making a general bow in English, I sat next to the hostess at the samovar and talked to her.

Suddenly, there was a general sigh - Ah! I looked up and saw in the door, located on the opposite side from where I entered, a powerful figure - the first impression - a gypsy. A tall, powerful figure was fitted by a white Russian shirt with embroidery on the collar and clasp, a twisted belt with tassels, black loose-fitting trousers and Russian boots. But there was nothing Russian in it. Thick black hair, a large black beard, a swarthy face with predatory nostrils of the nose and some kind of ironically mocking smile on the lips - the face, of course, is spectacular, but somehow unpleasant. The first thing that attracted attention was his eyes: black, red-hot, they burned, piercing through, and his gaze at you was felt simply physically, it was impossible to remain calm. It seems to me that he really had a hypnotic power that subjugated himself when he wanted it. …

Here everyone was familiar to him, vied with each other trying to please, to attract attention. He cheekily sat down at the table, addressed each by name and “you”, spoke catchily, sometimes vulgarly and rudely, called to him, sat him on his knees, felt, stroked, patted on soft places and all the “happy” ones were thrilled with pleasure. ! It was disgusting and insulting to look at this for women who were humiliated, who had lost both their feminine dignity and family honor. I felt the blood rush to my face, I wanted to scream, bang my fist, do something. I sat almost opposite the “distinguished guest”, he perfectly felt my condition and, mockingly laughing, each time after the next attack he stubbornly stuck his eyes into me. I was a new, unknown object to him. …

Brashly addressing one of those present, he said: “Do you see? Who made the shirt? Sasha! (meaning Empress Alexandra Feodorovna). No decent man would ever betray the secrets of a woman's feelings. My eyes grew dark from tension, and Rasputin's gaze unbearably drilled and drilled. I moved closer to the hostess, trying to hide behind the samovar. Maria Alexandrovna looked at me anxiously. …

“Mashenka,” a voice rang out, “do you want some jam? Come to me." Masha hastily jumps up and hurries to the place of conscription. Rasputin crosses his legs, takes a spoonful of jam and knocks it over on the toe of his boot. “Lick” - an imperative voice sounds, she kneels down and, bowing her head, licks off the jam ... I could not stand it anymore. Squeezing the mistress's hand, she jumped up and ran out into the hallway. I don’t remember how I put on my hat, how I ran along the Nevsky. I came to my senses at the Admiralty, I had to go home to Petrogradskaya. Half the night she roared and asked me never to ask me about what I saw, and I myself neither with my mother nor with my aunt remembered this hour, I did not see Maria Alexandrovna Nikitina either. Since then, I could not calmly hear the name of Rasputin and lost all respect for our "secular" ladies. Somehow, while visiting De Lazari, I came up to a phone call and heard the voice of this scoundrel. But she immediately said that I know who is speaking, and therefore I don’t want to talk ...

Grigorova-Rudykovskaya, Tatyana Leonidovna

The Provisional Government conducted a special investigation into the Rasputin case. According to the materials of the investigation of V. M. Rudnev, who was seconded by order of Kerensky to the “Extraordinary Investigative Commission to Investigate the Abuses of Former Ministers, Chief Executives and Other Senior Officials” and who was then a Deputy Prosecutor of the Yekaterinoslav District Court:

... it turned out that Rasputin's amorous adventures do not go beyond the framework of nightly orgies with girls of easy virtue and chansonnet singers, and also sometimes with some of his petitioners. As for the proximity to the ladies of high society, in this respect, no positive observational materials were obtained by the investigation.
... In general, Rasputin by nature was a man of wide scope; the doors of his house were always open; the most diverse audience always crowded there, feeding at his expense; in order to create an aura of a benefactor around himself according to the word of the Gospel: “the hand of the giver will not be impoverished”, Rasputin, constantly receiving money from petitioners for satisfying their petitions, widely distributed this money to the needy and, in general, people of the poor classes, who also turned to him with any requests even non-material ones.

Matryon's daughter in her book Rasputin. Why?" wrote:

...that, for all his impregnation with life, the father never abused his power and ability to influence women in the carnal sense. However, one must understand that this part of the relationship was of particular interest to the ill-wishers of the father. I note that they received some real food for their stories.

From the testimony of Prince M. M. Andronikov to the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry:

…Then he would go to the phone and call all kinds of ladies. I had to do bonne mine mauvais jeu - because all these ladies were of an extremely dubious quality ...

The French Slavic philologist Pierre Pascal wrote in his memoirs that Alexander Protopopov denied Rasputin's influence on the minister's career. However, Protopopov spoke about an act of pederasty, in which Metropolitan Pitirim, Prince Andronikov and Rasputin participated.

Rasputin in 1914. Author E. N. Klokacheva

Estimates of Rasputin's influence

Mikhail Taube, who was Deputy Minister of Public Education in 1911-1915, cites the following episode in his memoirs. Once a man came to the ministry with a letter from Rasputin and a request to appoint him an inspector of public schools in his native province. The minister (Lev Kasso) ordered this petitioner to be lowered down the stairs. According to Taube, this case proved how exaggerated were all the rumors and gossip about the behind-the-scenes influence of Rasputin.

According to the memoirs of the courtiers, Rasputin was not close to the royal family and generally rarely visited the royal palace. So, according to the memoirs of the palace commandant Vladimir Voeikov, the head of the palace police, Colonel Gherardi, when asked how often Rasputin visits the palace, answered: “once a month, and sometimes once every two months.” In the memoirs of the maid of honor Anna Vyrubova, it is said that Rasputin visited the royal palace no more than 2-3 times a year, and the tsar received him even less often. Another lady-in-waiting, Sophia Buxhowden, recalled:

“I lived in the Alexander Palace from 1913 to 1917, and my room was connected by a corridor with the chambers of the Imperial children. I never saw Rasputin during all this time, although I was constantly in the company of the Grand Duchesses. Monsieur Gilliard, who also lived there for several years, also never saw him.”

Gilliard, for all the time he spent at court, recalls the only meeting with Rasputin: “Once, when I was about to leave, I met him in the hall. I had time to examine him while he took off his fur coat. He was a tall man with an emaciated face, with a very sharp gray-blue eyes from under the disheveled eyebrows. He had long hair and a big peasant beard.” Nicholas II himself in 1911 told V. N. Kokovtsov about Rasputin that:

... personally almost does not know "this peasant" and saw him briefly, it seems, no more than two or three times, and, moreover, at very long distances of time.

From the memoirs of the Director of the Police Department A. T. Vasiliev (he served in the "Okhranka" of St. Petersburg since 1906 and headed the police in 1916-1917, later he led the investigation into the murder of Rasputin):

Many times I had the opportunity to meet with Rasputin and talk with him on various topics.<…>Mind and natural ingenuity gave him the opportunity to soberly and penetratingly judge a person who had only once met him. This was also known to the queen, so she sometimes asked his opinion about this or that candidate for a high position in the government. But from such harmless questions to the appointment of ministers by Rasputin is a very big step, and neither the tsar nor the tsarina, undoubtedly, never took this step.<…>Nevertheless, people believed that everything depended on a piece of paper with a few words written by Rasputin's hand ... I never believed in this, and although I sometimes investigated these rumors, I never found convincing evidence of their veracity. The cases I relate are not, as one might think, my sentimental inventions; they are evidenced by the reports of agents who worked for years as servants in Rasputin's house and, therefore, knew his daily life in the smallest detail.<…>Rasputin did not climb into the front ranks of the political arena, he was pushed there by other people seeking to shake the foundation of the Russian throne and empire ... These harbingers of the revolution sought to make a scarecrow out of Rasputin in order to carry out their plans. Therefore, they spread the most ridiculous rumors, which created the impression that only through the mediation of the Siberian peasant can one achieve a high position and influence.

A. Ya. Avrekh believed that in 1915 the tsarina and Rasputin, having blessed the departure of Nicholas II to Headquarters as the supreme commander, carried out something like a “coup d'état” and appropriated a significant part of the power: as an example, A. Ya. Avrekh cites their intervention in the affairs of the southwestern front during the offensive organized by A. A. Brusilov. A. Ya. Avrekh believed that the queen significantly influenced the king, and Rasputin influenced the queen.

A. N. Bokhanov, on the contrary, believes that the entire “rasputiniad” is the fruit of political manipulations, “black PR”. However, as Bokhanov says, it is well known that information pressure works only when not only there are intentions and opportunities for certain groups to establish a desirable stereotype in the public mind, but society itself is prepared to accept and assimilate it. Therefore, just to say, as is sometimes done, that the replicated stories about Rasputin are a complete lie, even if this is true, does not clarify the essence: why were fabrications about him taken for granted? This basic question remains unanswered to this day.

At the same time, the image of Rasputin was widely used in revolutionary and German propaganda. In the last years of the reign of Nicholas II, many rumors circulated in Petersburg society about Rasputin and his influence on power. It was said that he himself absolutely subjugated the tsar and tsarina and rules the country, either Alexandra Feodorovna seized power with the help of Rasputin, or the country was ruled by a “triumvirate” of Rasputin, Anna Vyrubova and the tsarina.

The publication of reports about Rasputin in the press could be limited only partially. According to the law, articles about the imperial family were subject to preliminary censorship by the head of the office of the Ministry of the Court. Any articles in which Rasputin's name was mentioned in combination with the names of members of the royal family were banned, but articles in which only Rasputin appeared could not be banned.

On November 1, 1916, at a meeting of the State Duma, P. N. Milyukov delivered a speech critical of the government and the "court party", in which the name of Rasputin was also mentioned. Milyukov took the information he gave about Rasputin from articles in the German newspapers Berliner Tageblatt of October 16, 1916 and Neue Freye Press of June 25, regarding which he himself admitted that some of the information reported there was erroneous. On November 19, 1916, V. M. Purishkevich delivered a speech at a meeting of the Duma, in which great importance was attached to Rasputin. The image of Rasputin was also used by German propaganda. In March 1916, German zeppelins scattered over the Russian trenches a caricature depicting Wilhelm leaning on the German people, and Nikolai Romanov leaning on Rasputin's genitals.

According to the memoirs of A. A. Golovin, during the First World War, rumors that the Empress was Rasputin's mistress were spread among the officers of the Russian army by employees of the opposition Zemstvo-City Union. After the overthrow of Nicholas II, the chairman of Zemgor, Prince Lvov, became chairman of the Provisional Government.

After the overthrow of Nicholas II, the Provisional Government organized an emergency investigative commission, which was supposed to search for the crimes of tsarist officials, including investigating the activities of Rasputin. The commission made 88 surveys and interrogated 59 persons, prepared "shorthand reports", the editor-in-chief of which was the poet A. A. Blok, who published his observations and notes in the form of a book called "The Last Days of Imperial Power."

The commission has not finished its work. Some of the protocols of interrogations of senior officials were published in the USSR by 1927. From the testimony of A. D. Protopopov to the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry on March 21, 1917:

CHAIRMAN. Do you know the significance of Rasputin in the affairs of Tsarskoye Selo under the Emperor? - Protopopov. Rasputin was a close person, and, as with a close person, he was consulted.

Opinions of contemporaries about Rasputin

Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Russia in 1911-1914 Vladimir Kokovtsov wrote in his memoirs with surprise:

... oddly enough, the question of Rasputin involuntarily became the central issue of the near future and did not leave the scene for almost the entire time of my chairmanship in the Council of Ministers, bringing me to resignation with a little over two years.

In my opinion, Rasputin is a typical Siberian varnak, a vagabond, smart and trained himself in a certain way of a simpleton and holy fool, and plays his role according to a learned recipe.

In appearance, he lacked only a prisoner's coat and an ace of diamonds on his back.

By manners - this is a man capable of anything. Of course, he does not believe in his antics, but he has developed for himself firmly learned methods by which he deceives both those who sincerely believe in all his eccentricities, and those who deceive themselves with their admiration for him, meaning in fact only to achieve through it of those benefits that are not given in any other way.

Rasputin's secretary Aron Simanovich writes in his book:

How did contemporaries imagine Rasputin? Like a drunken, dirty peasant who penetrated the royal family, appointed and dismissed ministers, bishops and generals, and for a whole decade was the hero of the Petersburg scandalous chronicle. In addition, there are wild orgies in Villa Rode, lustful dances among aristocratic admirers, high-ranking henchmen and drunken gypsies, and at the same time incomprehensible power over the king and his family, hypnotic power and faith in one's special purpose. That was it.

Confessor of the royal family, Archpriest Alexander Vasiliev:

Rasputin is "a completely God-fearing and believing person, harmless and even rather useful for the Royal Family ... He talks with Them about God, about faith."

Doctor, life physician of the family of Nicholas II Evgeny Botkin:

If there had been no Rasputin, then the opponents of the royal family and the organizers of the revolution would have created him with their conversations from Vyrubova, not for Vyrubova, from me, from whoever you want.

Nikolai Alekseevich Sokolov, the investigator in the case of the murder of the royal family, writes in his book-forensic investigation:

The head of the Main Directorate of Posts and Telegraphs, Pokhvisnev, who held this position in 1913-1917, shows: “According to the established procedure, all telegrams addressed to the Sovereign and Empress were presented to me in copies. Therefore, all the telegrams that went to the name of Their Majesties from Rasputin were known to me at one time. There were a lot of them. It is, of course, impossible to recall their contents in sequence. In all conscience, I can say that Rasputin's enormous influence with the Sovereign and the Empress was established with complete clarity by the content of the telegrams.

Hieromartyr Archpriest Philosopher Ornatsky, rector of the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg, describes in 1914 the meeting of John of Kronstadt with Rasputin as follows:

Father John asked the elder: “What is your last name?” And when the latter answered: "Rasputin", he said: "Look, by your last name it will be for you."

Schema-Archimandrite Gabriel (Zyryanov), an elder of the Sedmiezernaya Hermitage, spoke very sharply about Rasputin: "Kill him like a spider: forty sins will be forgiven ...".

Attempts to canonize Rasputin

Religious veneration of Grigory Rasputin began around 1990 and went from the so-called. The Mother of God Center (which changed its name over the next years).

Some extremely radical monarchical Orthodox circles have also, since the 1990s, expressed thoughts about the canonization of Rasputin as a holy martyr.

Well-known supporters of these ideas were: the editor of the Orthodox newspaper Blagovest Anton Zhogolev, the writer of the Orthodox-patriotic, historical genre Oleg Platonov, the singer Zhanna Bichevskaya, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Rus Pravoslavnaya Konstantin Dushenov, the Church of St. John the Divine, and others.

The ideas were rejected by the Synodal Commission of the Russian Orthodox Church for the canonization of saints and criticized by Patriarch Alexy II: “There is no reason to raise the question of the canonization of Grigory Rasputin, whose dubious morality and promiscuity cast a shadow on the August surname of the future royal martyrs of Tsar Nicholas II and his family.”

According to a member of the Synodal Commission for the Canonization of Saints, Archpriest Georgy Mitrofanov:

Of course, Rasputin was used by the opposition, fanning the myth of his omnipotence and omnipotence. He was portrayed as worse than he was. Many hated him with all their hearts. For Tsesarevna Olga Nikolaevna, for example, he was one of the most hated people, because he destroyed her marriage with Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich, which prompted the latter to participate in the murder of Rasputin.

Rasputin in culture and art

According to S. Fomin's research, during March-November 1917 the theaters were filled with "doubtful" performances, and more than ten "libelous" films about Grigory Rasputin were released. The first such film was a two-part "sensational drama""Dark forces - Grigory Rasputin and his associates"(production of the joint-stock company G. Liebken). In the same row is the widely demonstrated play by A. Tolstoy "The Conspiracy of the Empress."

Grigory Rasputin became the central character in the play Grishka Rasputin by playwright Konstantin Skvortsov.

Rasputin and his historical significance had a great influence on both Russian and Western culture. Germans and Americans are to some extent attracted to his figure as a kind of "Russian bear", or "Russian peasant".
In with. Pokrovskoye (now - Yarkovsky district of the Tyumen region) operates a private museum of G.E. Rasputin.

Documentaries about Rasputin

• Historical chronicles. 1915. Grigory Rasputin
• The Last of the Kings: The Shadow of Rasputin (Last of the Czars. The Shadow of Rasputin), dir. Teresa Cherf; Mark Anderson, 1996, Discovery Communications, 51 min. (released on DVD in 2007)
• Who killed Rasputin? (Who Killed Rasputin?), dir. Michael Wadding, 2004, BBC, 50 min. (released on DVD in 2006)

Rasputin in theater and cinema

It is not known for certain whether there were any newsreel footage of Rasputin. Not a single tape has survived to this day, on which Rasputin himself would be captured.

The very first silent feature short films about Grigory Rasputin began to appear in March 1917. All of them, without exception, demonized the personality of Rasputin, exposing him and the Imperial Family in the most unsightly light. O. Drankov, who simply made a film montage of his 1916 film “Washed in Blood”, based on the short story “Konovalov” by M. Gorky. In total, more than a dozen of them were released, and there is no need to talk about any of their artistic value, since even then they caused protests in the press because of their "pornographic and wild eroticism":

• Dark forces - Grigory Rasputin and his associates (2 episodes), dir. S. Veselovsky; in the role of Rasputin - S. Gladkov
• Holy devil (Rasputin in hell)
• People of sin and blood (Tsarskoye Selo sinners)
• The love affairs of Grishka Rasputin
• Funeral of Rasputin
• Mysterious murder in Petrograd on December 16
• Trading House Romanov, Rasputin, Sukhomlinov, Myasoedov, Protopopov & Co.
• Royal guardsmen

etc. (Fomin S. V. Grigory Rasputin: investigation. vol. I. Punishment with the truth; M., Forum publishing house, 2007, pp. 16-19)

Nevertheless, already in 1917, the image of Rasputin continued to appear on the movie screen. According to IMDB, the first person to embody the image of an old man on the screen was actor Edward Connelly (in the film The Fall of the Romanovs). In the same year, the film "Rasputin, the Black Monk" was released, where Montagu Love played Rasputin. In 1926, another film about Rasputin was released - “Brandstifter Europas, Die” (in the role of Rasputin - Max Newfield), and in 1928 - three at once: “Red Dance” (in the role of Rasputin - Dimitrius Alexis), “Rasputin is a saint sinner" and "Rasputin" - the first two films where Rasputin was played by Russian actors - Nikolai Malikov and Grigory Khmara, respectively.

In 1925, A. N. Tolstoy's play The Empress's Conspiracy was written and immediately staged in Moscow (published in Berlin in 1925), which depicts the murder of Rasputin in detail. In the future, the play was staged by some Soviet theaters. In the Moscow theater N. V. Gogol in the role of Rasputin was Boris Chirkov. And on Belarusian television in the mid-60s, based on Tolstoy's play, a television play "The Collapse" was filmed, in which Roman Filippov (Rasputin) and Rostislav Yankovsky (Prince Felix Yusupov) played.

In 1932, the German "Rasputin - a Demon with a Woman" was released (in the role of Rasputin - the famous German actor Conrad Veidt) and the Oscar-nominated "Rasputin and the Empress", in which the title role went to Lionel Barrymore. Rasputin was released in 1938, starring Harry Baur.

Once again cinema returned to Rasputin in the 1950s, which was marked by productions with the same name Rasputin, released in 1954 and 1958 (for television) with Pierre Brasseur and Nartsms Ibanes Menta in the roles of Rasputin, respectively. In 1967, the cult horror film "Rasputin the Mad Monk" was released with the famous actor Christopher Lee as Grigory Rasputin. Despite many errors from a historical point of view, the image he created in the film is considered one of the best film incarnations of Rasputin.

The 1960s also saw the release of Rasputin's Night (1960, with Edmund Pardom as Rasputin), Rasputin (1966 TV show starring Herbert Stass) and I Killed Rasputin (1967), where the role was played by Gert Fröbe, known for his role as Goldfinger, the villain from the James Bond film of the same name.

In the 70s, Rasputin appeared in the following films: Why the Russians Revolutionized (1970, Rasputin - Wes Carter), the television show Rasputin as part of the Play of the Month cycle (1971, Rasputin - Robert Stevens), Nikolai and Alexandra (1971, Rasputin - Tom Baker), TV series "Fall of Eagles" (1974, Rasputin - Michael Aldridge) and TV show "A Cárné összeesküvése" (1977, Rasputin - Nandor Tomanek)

In 1981, the most famous Russian film about Rasputin was released - "Agony" Elema Klimov, where the image was successfully embodied by Alexei Petrenko. In 1984, Rasputin - Orgien am Zarenhof was released with Alexander Conte as Rasputin.

In 1992, stage director Gennady Yegorov staged the play "Grishka Rasputin" based on the play of the same name by Konstantin Skvortsov at the St. Petersburg Patriot Drama Theater ROSTO in the genre of political farce.

In the 90s, the image of Rasputin, like many others, began to deform. In the parody sketch of the Red Dwarf show - Melting, released in 1991, Rasputin was played by Stephen Micalef, and in 1996 two films about Rasputin were released - The Successor (1996) with Igor Solovyov as Rasputin and "Rasputin", where he was played by Alan Rickman (and young Rasputin by Tamas Toth). In 1997, the cartoon "Anastasia" was released, where Rasputin was voiced by the famous actor Christopher Lloyd and Jim Cummings (singing).

The films "Rasputin: The Devil in the Flesh" (2002, for television, Rasputin - Oleg Fedorov and "Killing Rasputin" (2003, Rasputin - Ruben Thomas), as well as "Hellboy: Hero from Hell", where the main villain is the resurrected Rasputin, have already been released, played by Karel Roden.In 2007, the film "Conspiracy", directed by Stanislav Libin, where the role of Rasputin is played by Ivan Okhlobystin.

In 2011, the Franco-Russian film Rasputin was filmed, in which the role of Gregory was played by Gerard Depardieu. According to the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov, it was this work that gave the actor the right to receive Russian citizenship.

In 2014, the Mars Media studio filmed an 8-episode TV movie "Grigory R." (dir. Andrey Malyukov), in which the role of Rasputin was played by Vladimir Mashkov.

In music

• Disco group Boney M. in 1978 released the album "Nightflight to Venus", one of the hits of which was the song "Rasputin". The lyrics of the song were written by Frank Farian and contain Western cliches about Rasputin - "the greatest Russian love machine" (eng. Russia "s greatest love machine), "lover of the Russian queen" (eng. lover of the Russian queen). The motives of the popular Turku were used in the music "Kyatibim", the song mimics Erta Kitt's performance of Turku (Kitt's exclamation "Oh! those Turks" Boney M copied as "Oh! those Russians"). On the road Boney M in the USSR, this song was not performed at the insistence of the host, although later it was nevertheless included in the release of the group's Soviet record. The death of one of the members of the group, Bobby Farrell, occurred exactly on the 94th anniversary on the night of the murder of Grigory Rasputin, in St. Petersburg.
• Alexander Malinin's song "Grigory Rasputin" (1992).
• The song of Zhanna Bichevskaya and Gennady Ponomarev “The Spiritual Wanderer” (“Elder Grigory”) (c. 2000) from the music album “We are Russians” is aimed at exalting “holiness” and canonizing Rasputin, where there are lines “ Russian elder with a staff in his hand, miracle worker with a staff in his hand».
• The thrash band Metal Corrosion in the album "Sadism", released in 1993, has the song "Dead Rasputin".
• The German power metal band Metalium in 2002 recorded their own song "Rasputin" (album "Hero Nation - Chapter Three"), presenting their view of the events around Grigory Rasputin, without the clichés prevailing in pop culture
• Finnish folk/viking metal band Turisas released the single "Rasputin" in 2007 with a cover version of the group's song "Boney M". A music video was also filmed for the song "Rasputin".
• In 2002, Valery Leontiev performed the Russian version of Boney M Rasputin's song "New Year" at the "New Year's Attraction" RTR ("Ras, Let's open the doors wide open, let's all of Russia go to a round dance...")

Rasputin in poetry

Nikolai Klyuev compared himself with him more than once, and in his poems there are frequent references to Grigory Efimovich. “They follow me,” wrote Klyuev, “millions of charming Grishkas.” According to the memoirs of the poet Rurik Ivnev, the poet Sergei Yesenin performed the then fashionable ditties “Grishka Rasputin and the Tsaritsa.”

The poetess Zinaida Gippius wrote in her diary dated November 24, 1915: “Grisha himself rules, drinks and the maid of honor eats. And Fedorovna, out of habit. Z. Gippius was not included in the inner circle of the imperial family, she simply passed on rumors. There was a proverb among the people: “The Tsar-father is with Yegori, and the queen-mother is with Gregory.”

Commercial use of Rasputin's name

Commercial use of the name Grigory Rasputin in some trademarks began in the West in the 1980s. Currently known:

• Vodka Rasputin. Produced in various types by Dethleffen in Flexburg (Germany).
• Beer "Old Rasputin". Produced by North Coast Brewing Co. (California, USA) (from 21-04-2017 )
• Rasputin beer. Produced by Brouwerij de Moler (Netherlands)
• Rasputin black and Rasputin white cigarettes (USA)
• In Brooklyn (New York) there is a restaurant and a nightclub "Rasputin" (from 21-04-2017 )
• In Ensio, California, there is a grocery store "Rasputin International Food"
• In San Francisco (USA) there is a music store "Rasputin"
• In Toronto (Canada) there is a famous vodka bar Rasputin http://rasputinvodkabar.com/ (from 21-04-2017 )
• In Rostock (Germany) there is a Rasputin supermarket
• In Andernach (Germany) there is a Rasputin club
• In Dusseldorf (Germany) there is a large Russian-language disco "Rasputin".
• In Pattaya (Thailand) there is a restaurant of Russian cuisine Rasputin.
• In Moscow there is a men's club "Rasputin"
• Men's erotic magazine "Rasputin" is published in Moscow

In St. Petersburg:

• Since the mid-2000s, the interactive show "The Horrors of Petersburg" has been operating, the main character of which is Grigory Rasputin.
• Beauty salon "Rasputin's House" and the hairdressing school of the same name
• Hostel Rasputin

Categories:

Grigory Efimovich Rasputin was perhaps the only one to dissuade the Tsar from starting a war, and then persuaded him to stop the First World War. He was a direct threat to the Masonic plans. As you know, the devil (Greek diabolos - slanderer) is a fallen angel who, due to pride, rebelled against God and lost his angelic dignity ... So the conspirators resorted to him.

Rasputin was born in the village of Pokrovsky, Tyumen district, Tobolsk province in 1869. He said: “Until the age of 28, he traveled a lot in carts, drove a lot and caught fish, and plowed arable land. Indeed, it is good for a peasant!” Even then, sorrows and slander lay in wait for him, and he began to visit monasteries. He began to gradually change his lifestyle, stopped eating meat and later gave up the habit of smoking and drinking wine.

By the early 1900s, he was already a spiritually mature, experienced wanderer. After 15 years of wandering, he turned into a man wise by experience, oriented in the human soul, able to give useful advice. People began to come to him, he explained the Bible, which he knew almost by heart.

In 1903-1904, Grigory Rasputin decided to build a new church in the village of Pokrovsky. He had only a ruble of money and he left for St. Petersburg to look for benefactors. For the last five kopecks, Gregory ordered a prayer service at the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. After holding a prayer service, perking up, he went to an appointment with the rector of the Theological Academy, Bishop Sergius (who became Patriarch in 1942).

The police did not let him see the bishop, and when he found the porter in the backyards, he beat him. But, apparently, humility helped him. Falling to his knees, Grigory told the porter about the purpose of his visit and begged him to report to Vladyka about it. Then detailed inquiries were made about Rasputin, but there was no information discrediting him. The matter came to the Father of the Tsar, who showed mercy and gave money for the temple.

Over time, Gregory became known in noble circles, many believed in the power of his prayer. He met the royal couple in 1905. Rasputin talked about the life and needs of the Siberian peasants, about the holy places where he happened to be and made an impression. It is known that the son implored by the Spouses, Tsarevich Alexei, suffered from hemophilia. Medicine could not help in any way, and they began to invite Grigory Rasputin for prayers. The palace commandant V.N. Voeikov says: “From the very first time, when Rasputin appeared at the bedside of the sick Heir, relief followed immediately. All close associates of the royal family are well aware of the incident in Spala, when the doctors could not find a way to help Alexei Nikolayevich, who was suffering greatly and moaning from pain. As soon as, on the advice of A.A. Vyrubova, a telegram was sent to Rasputin, and an answer was received, the pains began to subside and the temperature began to fall, and soon the Heir recovered.

Once, the Tsarevich's nose started to bleed badly. It happened on the train. With hemophilia, hemorrhage could be fatal. Vyrubova says: “With huge warnings they carried him out of the train. I saw him when he lay in the nursery: a small, waxy face, with bloody cotton wool in the nostrils. Professor Fedorov and Dr. Derevianko fussed around him, but the blood did not subside. Fedorov told me that he wants to try the last resort - to get some kind of gland from guinea pigs. The Empress knelt beside the bed, puzzling over what to do next. Returning home, I received a note from her with an order to call Grigory Efimovich. He arrived at the palace and with his parents went to Alexei Nikolaevich. According to their stories, he went up to the bed, crossed the Heir, telling his parents that there was nothing serious and they had nothing to worry about, turned around and left. The bleeding stopped... The doctors said they didn't understand at all how it happened. But this is a fact.”

It was not by chance that Rasputin became a close person for the royal family. The tsar and tsarina were deeply believing Orthodox people. But their life passed in an atmosphere of spiritual crisis in the country, rejection of national traditions and ideals. The rapprochement with the Siberian wanderer was of a deeply spiritual nature.

They saw in him an old man who continued the traditions of Holy Russia, wise with spiritual experience, spiritually inclined, able to give good advice. And at the same time, they saw in Rasputin a real Russian peasant - a representative of the most numerous estate in Russia, with a developed sense of common sense, a people's understanding of usefulness, according to his worldly intuition, who firmly knew what was good and what was bad, where his own, and where strangers ...

But the established special relationship between Grigory Rasputin and the royal family was used by the enemies of the autocracy.

Grigory Efimovich Rasputin, with a respectful attitude towards the aristocracy and the priesthood, nevertheless never servile. He could refuse to meet with the count or prince and go on foot to the outskirts of the city to a simple artisan or peasant. Some high-ranking dignitaries took a dislike to "this peasant". Rasputin was in conflict with some priests of the Orthodox Church, who treated their dignity formally, as a position that provides income and subsistence. Gregory dared to denounce them publicly.

A direct fabrication of “cases” against Rasputin begins. One of them was an investigation by the Tobolsk Consistory about his belonging to the Khlysty sect in 1907. The case was based on the fact that Gregory is often visited at home by his admirers, whom he hugs and kisses, that night meetings and chants allegedly according to sectarian collections. The case included even rumors of a "sinking sin." The main driving force behind the slander was Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, who took a dislike to Rasputin because he refused to help him in influencing his Royal Nephew Nicholas II. Rasputin saw in him a two-faced, insincere person.

Although the conclusion of the investigation states that the accusation of Rasputin's Khlystism is untenable, and the case was not given a move and was not even published, the enemies went by spreading hints and rumors.

According to documents from declassified archives, Oleg Platonov established that before the start of the organized persecution of Rasputin in Brussels at the World Assembly, the Masonic organization developed the idea of ​​undermining the royal power in Russia through an organized campaign against Rasputin in order to discredit the royal family. The slander was spread by very high-ranking persons: Guchkov, Lvov, Chkheidze, Nekrasov, Amfiteatrov, Dzhunkovsky, Maklakov, Kerensky, Dm. Rubinshtein, Aron Simanovich and many others. Mass media controlled by Freemasons were used.

They tried to kill Grigory Efimovich twice. The first attempt was made in 1912, when the mayor of Yalta, General Dumbadze, intended to “bring Rasputin to the iron castle that stood behind Yalta over the sea and throw him out.” For some reason, this attempt fell through.

The second assassination attempt took place on June 24, 1914. The performer was a bourgeois Khionia Kuzminichna Guseva, who was ill with syphilis. She was sent by the defrocked monk Iliodor (S.M. Trufanov), who later became an employee of the Bolshevik Cheka. Guseva severely wounded Rasputin with a dagger in the stomach. The peasants, who arrived in time to help, detained the criminal. Grigory Efimovich lay in the hospital for a long time, the wound was severe and did not rule out a fatal outcome. Although the elder suffered greatly, he forgave the criminal.

The Masonic media spread the most ridiculous rumors, even to the point that Grigory Efimovich had already died. But the slanderous campaign against the elder did not affect everyone. Orthodox youth prayed in churches for his recovery. Prayers were served in many places around the country. Letters and telegrams with sympathy and support came to Rasputin from all over Russia.

But nevertheless, the slanderous myths spread by the left-wing liberal and tabloid press are doing their dirty work. By 1916, the majority of society saw Rasputin as a source of evil. The “devil Grishka” created by the myth-makers replaced the true image of the Siberian elder in the minds of the Russian people.

Considering that the ground for the physical elimination of Rasputin has been prepared, high-ranking persons begin to organize the murder directly. Among them: Vasily Alekseevich Maklakov, a left-wing radical, one of the leaders of Russian Freemasonry and the Cadet Party, (he took out poison and developed a plan for the murder); Vladimir Mitrofanovich Purishkevich is a right-wing radical, extremist, poseur and rhetorician, one of those who discredited the patriotic movement in Russia with his inept self-satisfied activities; Prince Felix Feliksovich Yusupov, a representative of the aristocratic mob, the upper ruling strata of society, who, due to Western upbringing and life orientation, are hopelessly cut off from the Russian people, a member of the Mayak Masonic Society; the representative of the degenerate part of the Romanovs, Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich, duplicitous, vile, torn apart by political ambitions; representatives of the Russian intelligentsia, deprived of national consciousness, Dr. Lisavert and Lieutenant Sukhotin. The vile, atrocious crime was committed in the morning of December 17, 1916 in the house of Prince Yusupov.

Rasputin was lured there under the pretext of helping Yusupov's sick wife, Irina. There he was treated with poisoned products.” Time passed, but the poison did not work ... Then Yusupov invites him to pray. There was a crucifix in the room. Rasputin approaches the crucifix, kneels down to kiss him, at which point Yusupov shoots him in the back, aiming for the heart. Rasputin falls."

After that, the prince went to the office, where the accomplices in the crime, who had drunk by this time, were waiting for him - Purishkevich, Dmitry Pavlovich, Lizavert, Sukhotin. After a while, “Yusupov went into the room where Rasputin was lying. And a little later, when Purishkevich went in the same direction, Yusupov's hysterical cry was suddenly heard: “Purishkevich, shoot, shoot, he's alive! He’s running away!” Purishkevich, with a pistol, rushed to catch up with the fleeing Rasputin. The first two shots - a miss. face down in the snow and shook my head. I ran up to him and kicked him in the temple with all my might.” After some time, while carrying Rasputin’s corpse, Prince Yusupov pounced on him and with wild frenzy began to beat him on the head with a heavy rubber weight, and when Yusupov was dragged away, he was all spattered with blood.”

After brutal torment, Rasputin was thrown into an ice-hole near Krestovsky Island. As it turned out later, he was thrown into the water while still alive. After the search for Rasputin began, his galosh was found near the hole. After examining the hole, the divers also found the body of the exhausted old man.” Hands and feet were tangled with a rope; he freed his right hand to cross himself already in the water, his fingers were folded for prayer...”

Thus, one of the most heinous crimes of the twentieth century was committed. Shortly before his death, Rasputin prophesied: “... I will soon die in terrible suffering. But what to do? God has destined for me a lofty feat to perish for the salvation of my dear Sovereigns and Holy Russia...”

Rasputin was buried in Tsarskoye Selo, in complete secrecy. At the funeral, no one except the royal couple with their daughters, Vyrubova and two or three other people were present.

But even after death, he disturbed the minds of villains. A little more than a year later, the February coup took place. With the coming to power, the freemason Kerensky gave the order to dig up the body of Rasputin and “secretly bury it in the vicinity of Petrograd ... in order to cover up the traces of unthinkable atrocity, for an investigation was to come. On the way, the truck that carried the coffin broke down. Then the performers decided to destroy Rasputin's body. They dragged the trees onto a large fire, doused them with gasoline and set them on fire. When the fire burned out, the remains were buried in the ground. It happened on March 11, 1917, between 7 and 9 o’clock in the forest near the high road from Lesnoy to Piskarevka.”

After that, the investigative commission of the Provisional Government began to work. But with all the influence of the Freemasons on the work of the commission, the image of Rasputin created by the myth-makers turned out to be untrue. And Rasputin's belonging to the Khlysts, and the rumors about his wealth, and the debauchery attributed to him, in particular with the Queen's friend, the maid of honor Anna Vyrubova, all turned out to be lies. The Commission of Inquiry came to the conclusion that the previously published pamphlets compromising Rasputin turned out to be a gross fake. Nevertheless, the myths about Rasputin were maintained and spread right up to our time. Of course, the tragedy of Rasputin is not entirely reduced to a Masonic conspiracy. The myth of Rasputin had political and ideological reasons. Anti-Russian forces support him today. In particular, they would like the Russian people not to return to their historical past, blackened by the efforts of the myth-makers. And when there is a conversation about Tsar Nicholas II, they cite Rasputin's slander as evidence of the depravity of the autocrat.

Postscript.

The same idea was actively supported by the anti-Russian writer Valentin Pikul, who wrote a slanderous book about Rasputin and the Royal Family “At the last line”. This gentleman did his best to collect as many false fabrications as possible from the pre-revolutionary corrupt press.

Yes, and we, the then youth of the “silver Brezhnev period” of socialism, have something to repent of. At the turn of the 70-80s of the 20th century, we danced at the institutes to the song of the pop group “Boni M” with the name “Rasputin”. In this song, popular in those years, the West, ideologically processing us before the collapse of the country, recalled the old version. There are words in the song that have firmly entered our subconscious: “Ra-Ra-Rasputin, lover of the Russian Queen” (“Ra-ra-Rasputin, lover of de russian queen” - Rasputin, lover of the Russian Queen), “Ra- Ra-Rasputin, Russian greatest love mashine” On the New Year, 1999, this song was revived again by the clan of Alla Pugacheva - A. Buynov “sang” it to us. Unfortunately, our youth again danced by the thousands to this song, trampling the History of our Fatherland with their feet. Few of the youth now understand that in this way they will be left with nothing. Think about the disappearance of 100 million American Indians in the United States.

Isn't it time to start thinking with your head?

Finally, Russian television actively advertised before the New Year 1999 the cartoon "Anastasia", created by the American film campaign "20th Century Fox". He repeats the slander, allegedly “a black shadow hangs over the Romanovs' house - this is Rasputin. We considered him a saint, but he turned out to be a scoundrel, hungry for power. Rasputin sold his soul to the devil." In the version of the Americans, Rasputin was not killed by villainous Masons, on the contrary, he allegedly drowned while chasing the daughter of Tsar Nicholas Anastasia on the ice. And the Russians in the cartoon are presented as freaks. Are not hundreds of millions of children in the world prepared in this way from a foolish age for the coming events of the destruction of Russia? And if we show our children such cartoons, will it be surprising that today we are losing children, and tomorrow we will lose our Fatherland? The process has already started.

A selection from the brochure “Slandered Elder” (the truth about Grigory Rasputin), Ryazan, 1997, based on the works of O. Platonov, was made by the SS. In the photo, Elder Nikolai Zalitsky.

Finally, the question is: why did twelve "Rasputins" gather in Kharkov for a meeting in 1912?