A biography of the bizarre figure - monk, healer, advisor to the
empress, and tireless lecher - who did so much to weaken the
monarchy before the Russian Revolution Moynahan, former European
editor of the Sunday Times of London (The Russian Century, 1994,
etc.) uses mostly secondary sources to arrive at a more persuasive
judgment, though the details are scarcely less bizarre. Rasputin
was born in Siberia probably around 1870, and from an early age
showed unusual powers. These came to the attention of the empress,
whose son, the heir apparent, was a hemophiliac. The evidence seems
inescapable that on a number of occasions Rasputin was able to
relieve Alexis of his pain and help him to recover when his other
doctors despaired. The deep bond this created with the empress was
based on her perception of his goodness, but in the wake of
Russia's terrible defeats during the WW I, it gave rise to the
widespread belief that the empress and Rasputin were part of a
German conspiracy, and that their relationship was scandalous. It
was, but not in any sexual sense. The empress used her influence
over her husband ("Your poor, weak-willed little hubby," as he
called himself) to promote policies and ministers that appealed to
Rasputin and herself. Traffic near the front was reduced to chaos
after Rasputin had a vision that only food wagons were to be
allowed to pass. Ministers remained in office so short a time that
they hardly bothered to move in. In all this, Rasputin's motives
were more self-protective than venal, but his carousing and
licentiousness aroused increasing scandal, and led to his
assassination by Prince Yusupov, the heir to the greatest fortune
in Russia, early in 1917. Moynahan calls Rasputin a "curiously
modern" figure, and even if the emphasis falls on the curiousness
rather than the modernity, he enables the reader to understand a
society that by the end gave the impression, as the French
ambassador reported, of being run by lunatics. (Kirkus Reviews)
Grigory Efimovich Rasputin--drinker, thief, womanizer--arrived in
St. Petersburg in 1903 as if from the medieval past . . . tattered,
black-clad, muttering. By the time of his sensational murder
thirteen years later, the peasant was the "beloved Friend" of Czar
Nicholas and Empress Alexandra, with a seemingly supernatural power
to stop the bleeding attacks of their hemophiliac son, Alexis. How
could it have happened? As on society lady of the time asked, "How
could so pitiful a wretch throw so vast a shadow?"Drawing on
confidential police reports, cabinet meeting memos, and many
documents only now available, Moynahan sheds new light on
Rasputin's life and disputes some of the widely held details of his
death. The "Washington Post Book World" called the book "balanced
and well-researched" hailed its "shrewd analysis of the ways in
which Rasputin's manipulative abilities meshed with the emotional
needs of isolated, superstitious members of czarist aristocracy. It
is an unforgettable portrait of an age as well as of a man.
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