Where is Rasputin located? Grigory Rasputin - biography, photo, personal life, predictions and prophecies, murder
Grigory Efimovich Rasputin.
Grigory Efimovich Rasputin.
Grigory Efimovich Rasputin
Politics is a dirty business. And also very interesting and profitable. If a weak-willed person is at the helm of the state, creepy people will certainly appear next to him, who at different times were called “favorites”, “gray cardinals” or “informal leaders”. They are the ones who govern the country: they distribute top positions, control lawmaking and foreign policy. The political career of most behind-the-scenes intriguers is short, and their fate is simple and unenviable. Only one such “favorite” is still assessed ambiguously. His life is shrouded in a magical aura. It has become one of the most popular myths of twentieth century popular culture.
Grigory Efimovich Rasputin
In the mid-19th century, a peasant from the village of Pokrovskoye, Tobolsk province, Efim Yakovlevich Rasputin, at the age of twenty, married a twenty-two-year-old girl, Anna. The wife repeatedly gave birth to daughters, but they died. The first boy, Andrei, also died. From the census of the village population for 1897, it is known that on the tenth of January 1869 (the day of Gregory of Nyssa according to the Julian calendar), her second son was born, named after the calendar saint. However, the registry books of the rural church have not been preserved, and later Rasputin always gave different dates of his birth, hiding his real age, so the exact day and year of Rasputin’s birth is still unknown.
The village of Pokrovskoye on the river. Ture. 1912
Color photographs by S.M. Prokudin-Gorsky
"Debauch" means a dissolute, immoral person. Previously, the names Rasputa and Besputa were in use. Later, through patronymics, they turned into surnames (for example, Savka, Rasputin's son), especially popular in the North.
Rasputin's father drank a lot at first, but then he came to his senses and started a household. In the winter he worked as a coachman, and in the summer he plowed the land, fished and unloaded barges. Young Gregory was frail and dreamy, but this did not last long - as soon as he matured, he began to fight with his peers and parents, and to go for walks (once he managed to drink away a cart with hay and horses at a fair, after which he walked home eighty miles on foot). Fellow villagers recalled that already in his youth he possessed powerful sexual magnetism. Grishka was caught more than once with girls and beaten.
Rasputin in a carriage
Rasputin's house in Pokrovskoye
Soon Rasputin began to steal, for which he was almost deported to Eastern Siberia. Once he was beaten for yet another theft - so much so that Grishka, according to the villagers, became " weird and stupid" Rasputin himself claimed that after being stabbed in the chest with a stake, he was on the verge of death and experienced "the joy of suffering".
The trauma did not pass without a trace - Rasputin stopped drinking and smoking, married Praskovya Dubrovina from a neighboring village (choosing, like his father, an older girl), had children and began visiting holy places.
Rasputin with children (from left to right): Matryona, Varya, Mitya.
His family laughed at him. He did not eat meat or sweets, heard different voices, walked from Siberia to St. Petersburg and back, and ate alms. In the spring, he had exacerbations - he did not sleep for many days in a row, sang songs, shook his fists at Satan and ran in the cold in only a shirt. His prophecies included calls to repentance, " until trouble comes" Sometimes, by pure coincidence, trouble happened the very next day (huts burned, livestock got sick, people died) - and the peasants began to believe that the blessed man had the gift of foresight. He gained followers... and followers.
Grigory Efimovich Rasputin
This went on for about ten years. Rasputin learned about the Khlysty (sectarians who beat themselves with whips and suppressed lust through group sex), as well as the Skoptsy (preachers of castration) who separated from them. It is assumed that he adopted some of their teachings and more than once personally “and amused"Pilgrim from sin in the bathhouse.
Grigory Rasputin with fellow villagers, Pokrovskoye village
Grigory Efimovich Rasputin
At the “divine” age of 33, Gregory begins to storm St. Petersburg. Having secured recommendations from provincial priests, he settles with the rector of the Theological Academy, Bishop Sergius, the future Stalinist patriarch. He, impressed by the exotic character, introduces the “old man” (long years of wandering on foot gave the young Rasputin the appearance of an old man) to the powers that be. Thus began the journey " man of God" to glory.
Patriarch Sergius (in the world Ivan Nikolaevich Stragorodsky
Grigory Efimovich Rasputin
Rasputin's first loud prophecy was the prediction of the death of our ships at Tsushima. Perhaps he got it from newspaper news reports that a squadron of old ships had sailed to meet the modern Japanese fleet without observing secrecy measures.
Ave, Caesar!
The last ruler of the House of Romanov 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 “elders of the people.” Knowing this, her friend, the Montenegrin princess Milica, took outright scoundrels to the palace. The monarchs listened to the ravings of swindlers and schizophrenics with childish delight. The war with Japan, the revolution and the illness of the prince finally unbalanced the pendulum of the weak royal psyche. Everything was ready for Rasputin's appearance.
Milica and Stana Montenegrin
Militsa Chernogorskaya
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 chaos that reigned in the minds of the last Russian monarchs (one of the most educated people of that time) can be judged by the fact that the queen felt safe thanks to a magic icon with a bell that supposedly rang when evil people approached.
Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna
Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia
The first meeting of the Tsar and Tsarina with Rasputin took place on November 1, 1905 at the palace over tea. He dissuaded the weak-willed monarchs from escaping to England (they say they were already packing their things), which most likely would have saved them from death and would have sent Russian history in a different direction. The next time, he gave the Romanovs a miraculous icon (found from them after the execution), then allegedly healed Tsarevich Alexei, who had hemophilia, and eased the pain of Stolypin’s daughter, wounded by terrorists. The shaggy man forever captured the hearts and minds of the august couple.
Please note that in all photographs Rasputin always holds one hand raised.
The Emperor personally arranges for Gregory to change his dissonant surname to “New” (which, however, did not stick). Soon Rasputin-Novykh acquires another lever of influence at court - the young maid of honor Anna Vyrubova (a close friend of the queen) who idolizes the “elder”. He becomes the confessor of the Romanovs and comes to the tsar at any time without making an appointment for an audience.
Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and Anna Vyrubova
At court, Gregory was always “in character,” but outside the political scene he was completely transformed. Having bought himself a new house in Pokrovskoye, he took noble St. Petersburg fans there. There the “elder” put on expensive clothes, became self-satisfied, and 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».
Grigory Efimovich Rasputin
Rasputin at his home on Gorokhovaya Street in Petrograd.
The growing power of Rasputin did not suit the court. Cases were brought against him, but each 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 out against Rasputin. Bishop Hermogenes (who ten years ago expelled a certain Joseph Dzhugashvili from the theological seminary) tried to drive out the devil from Gregory and publicly beat him on the head with a cross. Rasputin was under police surveillance, which did not stop until his death.
Elder Macarius, Bishop Theophan and Grigory Rasputin.
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 " holy damn" Once suppressed, rumors about Grishka’s sexual adventures began to swell with renewed vigor. The police recorded Rasputin visiting bathhouses in the company of prostitutes and wives of influential people. Copies of the Tsarina’s tender letter to Rasputin circulated around St. Petersburg, from which it could be concluded that they were lovers. These stories were picked up by the newspapers - and the word " Rasputin"became known throughout Europe.
G.E. Rasputin with Major General Prince M.S. Putyatin
And Colonel D.N. Loman. Petersburg. 1904-1905.
Public health
People who believed in Rasputin's miracles believe that he himself, as well as his death, are mentioned in the Bible itself: “ And if they drink anything deadly, it will not harm them; They will 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?
Empress Alexandra Feodorovna at the bedside of the sick heir Alexei
Rasputin and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna drink tea
Rasputin, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna with children
Contemporaries noted that Rasputin’s speech was always incoherent; it was very difficult to follow his thoughts. Huge, with long arms, a tavern floorman's hairstyle and a spade beard, he often talked to himself and patted his thighs. Without exception, all of Rasputin's interlocutors recognized his unusual look - deeply sunken 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.
Grigory Efimovich Rasputin
This certainly influenced the king and queen. However, it is difficult to explain the repeated relief of the royal children from pain. Rasputin's main healing weapon was prayer - and he could pray all night long. One day in Belovezhskaya Pushcha the heir began to experience 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 greatly surprised the court doctors.
Kill the dragon
The man who called himself " small fly” and who appointed officials by telephone call 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 hindered him " take off» prostitutes for daily orgies. The wanderer quickly forgot about a healthy lifestyle - he drank, and drunk called ministers with various " petitions", the failure of which was career suicide.
Grigory Efimovich Rasputin
Rasputin did not save money, either starving or throwing it left and right. 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,” i.e., the Slavs, were pigs).
Facsimile of Rasputin's letter with a request for some of his protégés
When World War I finally began, Rasputin expressed a desire to come to the front to bless the soldiers. The commander of the troops, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, promised to hang him on the nearest tree. In response, Rasputin gave birth to another prophecy that Russia would not win the war until an autocrat (who had a military education, but showed himself to be an incompetent strategist) stood at the head of the army. The king, of course, led the army. With consequences known to history.
Politicians actively criticized the queen - “n German spy y", not forgetting about Rasputin. It was then that the image was created eminence grise", deciding all state issues, although in fact Rasputin’s power was far from absolute. German Zeppelins scattered leaflets over the trenches, where the Kaiser leaned on the people, and Nicholas II on Rasputin’s genitals. The priests also did not lag behind. It was announced that the murder of Grishka was a benefit for which “ forty sins will be removed».
Modern writer-historian Yuri Rassulin, discussing the personality of Elder Gregory, says: “It is not possible to explain the paradoxical combination in one person, /Gregory Rasputin/ of holiness and vice - one of the witnesses lied. Who: the Jew Aron Simanovich with Sergei Trufanov, who renounced God and His Holy Church, or the Holy Royal Martyrs and Passion-Bearers; pervert Felix Yusupov with the Satanist Zhukovskaya or nun Maria - she is the faithful maid of honor of the Empress Anna Alexandrovna Taneyeva (Vyrubova)? The whole question again comes down to who to believe? Everyone is free to make their own choice...
Grigory Rasputin is the cause of all troubles from the point of view of many. Too many people believed the dirty rumors. Through the nasty, disgusting thoughts that swarmed in the heads of representatives of the Russian intelligentsia, and from there spread into the souls of ordinary people, the sacred image of the Sovereign was desecrated in the thoughts and feelings of the sons of the Russian People. The shadow of the betrayal of the God-anointed Tsar fell on the relationship of the Russian People with God. Not only the Family of the Holy Crowned Ones was insulted, but also the entire Russian People, one of whose representatives, close to the Tsar, was and is Gregory the New (Rasputin). The Name of God is also blasphemed, because during prayer, Grigory Efimovich, in the Name of God, healed Tsarevich Alexei, helped other people, and there is plenty of evidence of this.
And until the deepest misconception regarding his personality and his role in Russian history is not eliminated, there is still a reason to make claims to the Russian Autocrats and bring bewilderment into the minds of the Russian people in connection with the events of that fatal historical period for Russia. In the accusations that are again heard today against the Russian peasant, it is not difficult to see the long-standing desire to present a bill to Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. Through slander about Grigory Rasputin the New, the dignity of their royal service and the height of their Christian feat are called into question. Thus, the memory of the Holy Crown Bearers is again insulted. Is this the kind of repentance the Lord expects from us? The truth must prevail. Otherwise, the vainly inflicted insult and the innocently shed royal blood will cry out to Heaven for vengeance. And this will continue until sin is subjected to spiritual healing, that is, repentance.
Who Grigory Rasputin really was, Olga Vladimirovna Lokhtina answered briefly and clearly during interrogation at the Extraordinary Investigative Commission. To the investigator’s question: “What kind of person do you think Rasputin is?” – she answered directly:
– I consider him an old man.
- What does it mean?
“An old man who has gone through his entire life through experience and has achieved all Christian virtues.”
For many, both then and today, Lokhtina’s testimony will not seem convincing. So what if the eccentric woman said something? No one wanted and does not want to believe her. Indeed, General Olga Vladimirovna Lokhtina, abandoned by everyone and expelled from home for her loyalty to Grigory Rasputin, was not taken seriously. Most considered her crazy, less often treated her like a holy fool. Yes, of course, you can not believe Lokhtina, and she was wrong. But the whole point is that this is exactly how the Holy Royal Martyrs treated Gregory. We won’t believe the Holy Royal Martyrs either? What about God? After all, Gregory the New (Rasputin) testified about God and directed people to God, performed miracles, prophesied, and healed. Yes, he healed, but was it by demonic power? And were Gregory the New’s repeated healings of Tsarevich Alexy, witnessed by contemporaries, also by demonic power? So, the Heir to the Russian Throne was healed of an incurable, fatal illness by the devil? This is how it turns out in accordance with the testimony of the liar Yusupov, the Jew Simanovich, the sexually preoccupied Zhukovskaya, the defrocked Trufanov, the leader of the revolutionary Duma Rodzianko, the social revolutionary Prugavin and those who, uncontrollably and madly trying to get into their company today, continue to believe them, and not Holy Royal Martyrs.
It is no coincidence that the word “believe” was used in the previous paragraph. Indeed, the question of Rasputin is a question of faith, faith in God, faith in the holiness of the Royal Martyrs and Passion-Bearers, faith in Their Friend and prayer book, and only then in words and testimony. If we believe that the Lord glorified the Russian Crown Bearers, we believe in Their holiness, it means that we love Them, and we trust Them, we trust Their opinion, especially in matters of decisive importance for the destinies of the Orthodox Russian Power and the Russian People, in matters of principled character. But it turns out that the question of the historical role of Grigory Efimovich Rasputin-Novy in the fate of Russia and the attitude towards his personality is precisely not a secondary question, but a fundamental one. Why?
Let's answer frankly. Because if we consider Grigory Rasputin a scoundrel, then the conclusion is inevitable: the Tsar and Queen are criminals, because they showed criminal blindness, unacceptable for Their position, brought closer to themselves a person led by the devil, which turned into a grave tragedy for those entrusted to Him by God people and the death of the Orthodox Russian State. It is precisely this interpretation of historical events that the forces that destroyed both the Russian Tsar and the Russian Autocracy are still trying to impose on us. What could be worse than this accusation? If Rasputin is a scoundrel, one must inevitably admit that everyone who betrayed the Tsar is not traitors at all, but guardians of the good of the Fatherland, rescuers. Their protest against the unsatisfactory, and, moreover, criminal, from their point of view, reign of the last Emperor is legitimate and fair, and the oppression they suffered from the supreme royal power elevates them to the rank of those persecuted in the name of the people's good. Everything is turned upside down, complete nonsense arises in the interpretation of the events of the reign of Nicholas II and the basis for canonizing the Tsar and Queen disappears.
A third option is also possible, which, along with the recognition of the sanctity of the Royal Family, implies the justification of those who were forced to find themselves in opposition to the Russian Crown Bearers, including some members of the imperial family. This point of view is based on a somewhat strange assumption that the Russian Autocrats, of course, are holy, but, having found themselves in the spiritual captivity of a “political adventurer”, “charlatan” and “hypnotist”, they were unable to govern the Russian State and were completely disoriented in political matters. questions. Such a statement carries an inexplicable contradiction. How can holiness and submission be combined with the flattering spirit of sectarianism, alien to Orthodoxy and hostile to God? And what is the reason - in their spiritual blindness, captivity of their will, and by whom? A rogue, a libertine, a whip, an opponent of the Orthodox faith!? But it follows from this that the faith of the Tsar and Queen was vain if it brought such bitter fruits for the entire Russian land. This assumption is terrible for every Orthodox Christian who loves the martyred Royal Family and unshakably believes in their holiness.
But, perhaps, the horror they experienced of the tragic events of the revolution forced Tsar Nicholas and Tsarina Alexandra, in the face of death, to realize their mistake and repent of it, to pay a terrible price for their blindness, and the Lord cleansed them with a painful death after undoubted repentance? But there is no such evidence. There is evidence to the contrary that all members of the holy Royal Family continued to believe in their Friend until the end of their days and sacredly preserved his memory.
Just as two dissimilar media that cannot mix will always have a visible boundary separating, say, water from oil, so information about Grigory Rasputin is clearly divided into two groups according to the nature of the statement. Based on the first group of evidence, a person’s righteous life is an ascetic. The second group of evidence leads to the conclusion that the same person is a rogue, a swindler, a libertine, etc. But this does not happen with God. One does not fit with the other. A bad tree cannot bear good fruit. If a person is a prayer book, and his prayer has miraculous power, and this is nothing more than a gift of God, a manifestation of grace, the action of the Holy Spirit in a person, is it possible for such a person to be a fornicator or an adulterer?
If you believe the opponents of Grigory Efimovich Rasputin-New, the Lord allowed terrible, cynical lawlessness to triumph, seduction and fornication to occur, covered by conversations about faith and the Name of God for many years. And this happened on such an incredible scale that one would be taken aback, apparently, by just the list of seduced victims, if one could be presented to human judgment. Of course, one could give a long philosophical argument on the topic of the ambiguity, confusion and inconsistency of human nature, that “from time immemorial, truth and falsehood have been rolling on the same wheel throughout the world.” But, as Grigory Efimovich once exclaimed: “And God, what about God!?” After all, to claim that Divine grace was contained in a dirty, vicious, foul-smelling vessel, defiled by fornication, is not this blasphemy against the Holy Spirit?
(real name - Novykh)
(1864, according to other sources 1865-1916) Russian political adventurer
Among all the adventurers in the world, Grigory Efimovich Rasputin occupies one of the most famous places. There are many legends about him, and historians are still trying to figure out where is fiction and where is the truth.
He was born in the village of Pokrovskoye, Tyumen district, Tobolsk province. His father Efim Novykh had a fairly strong farm, but he drank heavily and went bankrupt.
From his youth, Grigory Novykh led such a dissolute life that he was nicknamed the Dissolute. This nickname later became his surname - Rasputin.
He left the village for the city of Tobolsk, worked in a hotel as a sex worker and married a maid there, Praskovya, who bore him three children - a son and two daughters. But marriage didn't change him. He continued to drink, began to steal, and was even caught stealing horses. One day he was caught in the act of a crime, beaten and decided to deport him to Eastern Siberia.
Around the age of thirty, Grigory Rasputin changed his lifestyle. By that time, he had visited many holy places in Russia, including Athos, the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, came on a pilgrimage to Moscow, and when he returned home, he prayed and bowed so earnestly that he even smashed his forehead on the floor.
Since then, fame has spread about him as a holy elder who has miraculous powers and heals diseases. Soon these rumors reached St. Petersburg, Rasputin became famous in aristocratic houses, and he was soon called to the palace.
The heir to the royal throne, Tsarevich Alexei, suffered from hemophilia, a disease in which the blood does not clot. As soon as he accidentally injured himself, bleeding began, which the doctors could not stop for a long time. The Tsarevich was generally in poor health, and his mother was very afraid for him. She was ready to believe anything and bring anyone who could help her son closer to her.
This is how Grigory Rasputin ended up in the royal palace. To be fair, it must be said that he did not achieve this in any way, lived far from the capital and did not even imagine that he would go down in history as a close friend of the royal family. Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, on whom he had a strong influence, called him “friend” and “Gregory”. Grigory Rasputin really knew how to influence people. He undoubtedly had the ability of a hypnotist and knew the Bible very well. Rasputin did not invent anything new; he spoke long-known Christian truths, but in his mouth they sounded like prophecies. The Tsarina and other high society ladies listened to his every word and obeyed him in everything.
The queen's trust in Grigory Rasputin became limitless after she became convinced that the “old man” was actually helping her son. Eyewitness accounts have been preserved that only Rasputin could stop the boy’s severe bleeding, saved his life more than once, and relieved pain even by telephone.
In the capital he was treated differently. Some idolized him, others were skeptical, at first they were perplexed, then more and more indignant, watching how the royal family kissed the hands of this rude, arrogant man and fulfilled all his demands. The reason for this admiration was simple.
Grigory Efimovich Rasputin managed to convince the queen, and through her, the king, that as long as he, God’s righteous man, was close to the royal family, everything would be fine with the heir.
Historians believe that Nicholas II, although he treated Rasputin more restrainedly than his wife, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, nevertheless also completely trusted him and was partly under his influence. For him, Grigory Rasputin was a representative of the people, reflecting their essence and mood. The Tsar had long nurtured the idea of rapprochement with his people, and now, in the person of Grigory Rasputin, he seemed to have established this alliance.
Grigory Rasputin would probably have remained a strange “quirk” of the royal family (after all, there were many such “elders” and “prophets” in history) if he had led a more dignified lifestyle and had not interfered in politics. Appearing in the capital and in the palace as a meek, pious peasant, he soon acquired a taste for a free and rich life, and began to behave like any rude, uneducated person to whom everything is permitted. Rasputin organized orgies and drunken brawls in his apartment, in restaurants, could insult people, boasted of his closeness to the queen and said that the king did everything as he told him. Scandals after scandals occurred, the queen became aware of them, but she did not believe anything and believed that evil people, ill-wishers, wanted to discredit the harmless “elder” and “friend” in her eyes.
Taking advantage of his undivided influence on the queen, Grigory Rasputin begins to suggest to her who should be removed and who should be appointed to this or that position in the government. His influence on the royal family especially increased in the last years of the tsarist regime (1914-1916). Rasputin's apartment turned into a haven for all sorts of charlatans, swindlers, shady businessmen - from bankers to speculators. The so-called period of “ministerial leapfrog” began: former ministers were replaced by outright proteges of the “elder”.
The Tsar indulged Rasputin’s “ideas” because it seemed to him that this strengthened his power. He even went so far as to remove his uncle, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich Romanov, from the post of Supreme Commander-in-Chief, at the insistence of the Tsarina, and therefore Rasputin, during World War I. He did this despite the enormous authority of the Grand Duke in the army and society. The reason was also simple and obvious to everyone. The Grand Duke was an ardent enemy of Rasputin and tried to open the Tsar’s eyes to the actions of this adventurer.
When opponents of Grigory Rasputin realized that no reasonable arguments were helping, they decided to kill the “old man.” He guessed about this and conveyed his will to the queen, a prediction in which he wrote that if one of the king’s relatives killed him, then not a single person from the royal family would live more than two years. The queen was in a panic and strengthened the security of the “elder”. But it did not help.
Many people wanted the murder of Grigory Efimovich Rasputin, but several people took part in it: Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich, a brilliant young man, an “Olympian”, as he was called because he took part in the Olympic Games in Stockholm, some time ago his they were destined to be the husband of the Tsar's eldest daughter, Princess Olga; Members of the State Duma Vladimir Mitrofanovich Purishkevich and Prince Felix Yusupov were also participants in the secret conspiracy.
They lured Grigory Rasputin to the St. Petersburg palace of Prince Yusupov on the Moika. The murder was thought out in every detail, but it turned out to be not as simple as they had previously imagined. First, Rasputin was treated to cakes filled with poison, but the poison had no effect on him (there is evidence that instead of poison they were given ordinary powder). Then they shot at Rasputin and drowned the wounded man in an ice hole.
Chairman of the IV State Duma M. Rodzianko wrote interestingly about this, who believed that he should reveal the truth about Grigory Rasputin to his contemporaries and descendants.
Historians consider “Rasputinism” to be an external manifestation of the crisis of the feudal system that took place in a country where bourgeois changes had already begun.
The significance of Grigory Efimovich Rasputin in the history of the Russian state of the 20th century is great. His fate, like a mirror, reflected all the contradictions with which this century was rich. He sought power by any possible means, suffered defeats and again found himself among the favorites. With his unexpected appearance at court, Rasputin seemed to predict the end of one era and the beginning of another, when history would be made by ordinary people like him, and at first unknown to anyone.
Grigory Efimovich Rasputin-Novykh is a legendary man from a remote Siberian village, who managed to get close to the August Family of Nicholas II as a medium and adviser and, thanks to this, went down in history.Historians are contradictory in assessing his personality. Who was he - a cunning charlatan, a black magician, a drunkard and a libertine, or a prophet, a holy ascetic and a miracle worker who had the gift of healing and foresight? There is no consensus to this day. Only one thing is certain - the uniqueness of nature.
Childhood and youth
Gregory was born on January 21, 1869 in the rural settlement of Pokrovskoye. He became the fifth, but the only surviving child in the family of Efim Yakovlevich Novykh and Anna Vasilievna (before Parshukova’s marriage). The family was not in poverty, but due to the alcoholism of its head, all property was sold under the hammer shortly after Gregory’s birth.Since childhood, the boy was not very strong physically, he was often sick, and from the age of 15 he suffered from insomnia. As a teenager, he surprised his fellow villagers with his strange abilities: he allegedly could heal sick cattle, and once, using clairvoyance, he pinpointed exactly where the neighbor’s missing horse was located. But in general, until the age of 27, he was no different from his peers - he worked a lot, drank, smoked, and was illiterate. His dissolute lifestyle gave him the nickname Rasputin, which stuck tightly. Also, some researchers attribute to Gregory the creation of a local branch of the Khlyst sect, preaching “dumping sin.”
In search of work, he settled in Tobolsk, got a wife, a religious peasant woman Praskova Dubrovina, who gave birth to a son and two daughters, but the marriage did not curb his temperament, eager for female affection. It was as if some inexplicable force was attracting the opposite sex to Gregory.
Around 1892, a dramatic change occurred in the man's behavior. Prophetic dreams began to bother him, and he turned to nearby monasteries for help. In particular, I visited Abalaksky, located on the banks of the Irtysh. Later, in 1918, it was visited by the royal family exiled to Tobolsk, who knew about the monastery and the miraculous icon of the Mother of God kept there from Rasputin’s stories.
The decision to start a new life finally matured for Gregory when in Verkhoturye, where he came to venerate the relics of St. Simeon of Verkhoturye, he had a sign - the heavenly patron of the Ural land himself came in a dream and ordered him to repent, go wander and heal people. The appearance of the saint shocked him so much that he stopped sinning, began to pray a lot, gave up eating meat, stopped drinking and smoking, and set out on wanderings to introduce spirituality into his life.
He visited many holy places in Russia (in Valaam, Solovki, Optina Desert, etc.), and visited beyond its borders - on the holy Greek Mount Athos and in Jerusalem. During the same period, he mastered reading and writing and the Holy Scriptures, and in 1900 he made a pilgrimage to Kyiv, then to Kazan. And all this - on foot! Wandering across the Russian expanses, he delivered sermons, made predictions, cast spells on demons, and talked about his gift of working miracles. Rumors about his healing powers spread throughout the country, and suffering people from different places began to come to him for help. And he treated them, having no idea about medicine.
Petersburg period
In 1903, the healer, who had already become famous, found himself in the capital. According to legend, the Mother of God appeared to him with orders to go and save Tsarevich Alexei from illness. Rumors about the healer reached the empress. In 1905, during one of the attacks of hemophilia, which was inherited by the son of Nicholas II through Alexandra Feodorovna, the “people's doctor” was invited to the Winter Palace. Through the laying on of hands, whispered prayers, and a poultice of steamed tree bark, he was able to stop what could have been a fatal nosebleed and calm the boy. 
In 1906, he changed his last name to Rasputin-Novykh.
The subsequent life of the wanderer-seer in the city on the Neva was inextricably linked with the August family. For more than 10 years, he treated the Tsarevich, successfully driving away the empress’s insomnia, sometimes doing this simply over the phone. The distrustful and cautious autocrat did not welcome frequent visits from the “elder,” but noted that after talking with him, even his soul felt “light and calm.”
Soon, the extraordinary visionary acquired the image of an “adviser” and “friend of the king,” gaining enormous influence over the couple of rulers. They did not believe the rumors that circulated about his drunken brawls, orgies, performing black magic rituals and obscene behavior, as well as that he accepted bribes for the promotion of certain projects, including fateful decisions for the country, and for the appointment of officials to high positions. For example, at the behest of Rasputin, Nicholas II removed his uncle Nikolai Nikolaevich from the post of supreme commander-in-chief of the army, since he clearly saw Rasputin as an adventurer and was not afraid to tell his nephew about it.
Rasputin was forgiven for drunken brawls and shameless antics like carousing in the Yar restaurant in the nude. “The legendary debauchery of Emperor Tiberius on the island of Capri becomes moderate and banal after this,” the American ambassador recalled about the parties in Gregory’s house. There is also information about Rasputin's attempt to seduce Princess Olga, the emperor's younger sister.
Communication with a person of such a reputation undermined the authority of the emperor. In addition, few knew about the Tsarevich’s illness, and the healer’s closeness to the Court began to be explained by his more than friendly relations with the Empress. But, on the other hand, he had a striking effect on many representatives of secular society, especially women. He was admired and considered a saint.
Personal life of Grigory Rasputin
Rasputin married at the age of 19, after returning to Pokrovskoye from the Verkhoturye Monastery, to Praskovya Fedorovna, nee Dubrovina. They met at an Orthodox holiday in Abalak. In this marriage three children were born: in 1897 Dmitry, a year later daughter Matryona and in 1900 Varya.In 1910, he took his daughters to his capital and enrolled them in a gymnasium. His wife and Dima stayed at home, in Pokrovskoye, on the farm, where he periodically visited. She supposedly knew very well about his riotous lifestyle in the capital, and was completely calm about it.
After the revolution, daughter Varya died from typhoid and tuberculosis. The brother, mother, wife and daughter were sent into exile to the North, where they all soon passed away.
The eldest daughter managed to live to old age. She got married and gave birth to two daughters: the eldest in Russia, the youngest in exile. In recent years she lived in the USA, where she passed away in 1977.
Death of Rasputin
In 1914, an attempt was made on the life of the seer. Khionia Guseva, the spiritual daughter of the far-right hieromonk Iliodor, shouting “I killed the Antichrist!” wounded him in the stomach. The emperor's favorite survived and continued to participate in state affairs, causing sharp protest among the tsar's opponents. 
Shortly before his death, Rasputin, feeling a threat looming over him, sent a letter to the Empress, in which he indicated that if any of the relatives of the royal family became his killer, then Nicholas II and all his relatives would die within 2 years, - they say, it was to him such a vision. And if a commoner becomes a murderer, then the imperial family will flourish for a long time.
A group of conspirators, including the husband of the sovereign’s niece Irina, Felix Yusupov and the autocrat’s cousin, Dmitry Pavlovich, decided to put an end to the influence of the unwanted “adviser” on the imperial family and the entire Russian government (they were spoken of in society as lovers).
Felix then shot him in the back, but again to no avail. The guest ran out of the mansion, where the killers shot him point-blank. And it did not kill the “man of God.” Then they started finishing him off with batons, castrated him, and threw his body into the river. Later it turned out that even after these bloody atrocities, he remained alive and tried to get out of the icy water, but drowned.
Rasputin's predictions
During his life, the Siberian soothsayer made about a hundred prophecies, including:Your own death;
The collapse of the empire and the death of the emperor;
The Second World War, describing in detail the blockade of Leningrad (“I know, I know, they will surround St. Petersburg, they will starve! How many people will die, and all because of this nonsense! But you can’t see the bread on the palm of your hand! That’s death in the city ". But you won't see St. Petersburg! If we go wrong, we'll die hungry, but we won't let you in! "- he once shouted in his hearts to a German who insulted him. Anna Vyrubova, a close friend of Empress Alexandra, wrote about this in her diary);
Flights into space and landing a man on the Moon (“the Americans will walk on the Moon, leave their shameful flag and fly away”);
The formation of the USSR and its subsequent collapse (“There was Russia - there will be a red hole. There was a red hole - there will be a swamp of the wicked, who dug a red hole. There was a swamp of the wicked - there will be a dry field, but there will be no Russia - there will be no hole");
Nuclear explosion in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (claimed to have seen two islands burned to the ground in fire);
Genetic experiments and cloning (the birth of “monsters without a soul or an umbilical cord”);
Terrorist attacks at the beginning of this century.
Grigory Rasputin. Documentary.
One of his most impressive predictions is considered to be a statement about “the world in reverse” - this is the upcoming disappearance of the sun for three days, when fog will cover the earth, and “people will wait for death as salvation,” and the seasons will change places.
All this information was gleaned from the diaries of his interlocutors, so there is no prerequisite to consider Rasputin a “fortuneteller” or “clairvoyant.”
Grigory Efimovich Rasputin (Novykh). Born January 9 (21), 1869 - killed December 17 (30), 1916. Peasant of the village of Pokrovskoye, Tobolsk province. He gained worldwide fame due to the fact that he was a friend of the family of Russian Emperor Nicholas II.
In the 1900s, among certain circles of St. Petersburg society, he had a reputation as a “royal friend,” “elder,” seer and healer. The negative image of Rasputin was used in revolutionary and later Soviet propaganda; there are still many rumors about Rasputin and his influence on the fate of the Russian Empire.
The ancestor of the Rasputin family was “Izosim Fedorov’s 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 “set up arable land.” Nason's son later received the nickname "Rosputa". From him came all the Rosputins, who became Rasputins at the beginning of the 19th century.
According to the yard census of 1858, there were more than thirty peasants in Pokrovskoye who bore the surname “Rasputins,” including Efim, Gregory’s father. The surname comes from the words “crossroads”, “thaw”, “crossroads”.
Grigory Rasputin was born on January 9 (21), 1869 in the village of Pokrovsky, Tyumen district, Tobolsk province, into the family of coachman Efim Yakovlevich Rasputin (1841-1916) and Anna Vasilievna (1839-1906) (nee Parshukova).
Information about Rasputin's date of birth is extremely contradictory. Sources give various dates of birth between 1864 and 1872. Historian K.F. Shatsillo, in an article about Rasputin in the TSB, reports that he was born in 1864-1865. Rasputin himself in his mature years did not add clarity, reporting conflicting information about his date of birth. According to biographers, he was inclined to exaggerate his true age in order to better fit the image of an “old man.”
At the same time, in the metric book of the Slobodo-Pokrovskaya Mother of God Church of the Tyumen district of the Tobolsk province, in part one “About 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 religion had a son, Gregory.” He was baptized on January 10. The godfathers (godparents) were uncle Matfei Yakovlevich Rasputin and the girl Agafya Ivanovna Alemasova. The baby received his name according to the existing tradition of naming the child after the saint on whose day he was born or baptized.
The day of the baptism of Grigory Rasputin is January 10, the day of celebration of the memory of St. Gregory of Nyssa.
I was sick a lot when I was young. After a pilgrimage to the Verkhoturye Monastery, he turned to religion.
Grigory Rasputin's height: 193 centimeters.
In 1893, he traveled to the holy places of Russia, visited Mount Athos in Greece, and then to Jerusalem. I met and made contacts with many representatives of the clergy, monks, and wanderers.
In 1900 he set off on a new journey to Kyiv. On the way back, he lived in Kazan for quite a long time, where he met Father Mikhail, who was associated with the Kazan Theological Academy.
In 1903, he came to St. Petersburg to visit the rector of the Theological Academy, Bishop Sergius (Stragorodsky). At the same time, the inspector of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, Archimandrite Feofan (Bistrov), met Rasputin, introducing him also to Bishop Hermogenes (Dolganov).
By 1904, Rasputin had gained the fame of an “old man”, a “fool” and a “man of God” among part of high society society, which “secured 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) Nikolai Njegosh - 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 men.”
On November 1 (Tuesday) 1905, Rasputin’s first personal meeting with the emperor took place. This event was honored with an entry in the diary of Nicholas II. The mentions of Rasputin do not end there.
Rasputin gained influence on the imperial family and, above all, on Alexandra Feodorovna by helping her son, heir to the throne Alexei, fight hemophilia, a disease against which medicine was powerless.
In December 1906, Rasputin submitted a petition to the highest name to change his surname to Rasputin-Novykh, citing the fact that many of his fellow villagers have the same last name, which could lead to misunderstandings. The request was granted.
Grigory Rasputin. Healer at the throne
Accusation of "Khlysty" (1903)
In 1903, his first persecution by the church began: the Tobolsk Consistory received a report from the local priest Pyotr Ostroumov that Rasputin was behaving strangely with women who came to him “from St. Petersburg itself,” about their “passions from which he relieves them... in the bathhouse”, that in his youth Rasputin “from his life in the factories of the Perm province brought acquaintance with the teachings of the Khlyst heresy.”
An investigator was sent to Pokrovskoye, but he did not find anything discrediting, and the case was archived.
On September 6, 1907, based on a denunciation from 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.
The initial investigation was carried out by priest Nikodim Glukhovetsky. Based on the collected facts, Archpriest Dmitry Smirnov, a member of the Tobolsk Consistory, prepared a report to Bishop Anthony with the attachment of a review of the case under consideration by sect specialist D. M. Berezkin, inspector of the Tobolsk Theological Seminary.
D. M. Berezkin noted in his review of the conduct of the case that the investigation was carried out “persons who have little knowledge of Khlystyism” that only Rasputin’s two-story residential house was searched, although it is known that the place where the zeal takes place “is never placed in living quarters... but is always located in the backyard - in bathhouses, in sheds, in basements... and even in dungeons... The paintings and icons found in the house are not described, yet they usually contain the solution to the heresy ».
After which Bishop Anthony of Tobolsk decided to conduct a further 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 file from the Synod, said that it soon disappeared, but then “The case of the Tobolsk spiritual consistory about the Khlystyism of Grigory Rasputin” in the end it was found in the Tyumen archive.
In 1909, the police were going to expel Rasputin from St. Petersburg, but Rasputin was ahead of them and he himself went home to the village of Pokrovskoye for some time.
In 1910, his daughters moved to St. Petersburg to join Rasputin, whom he arranged to study at the gymnasium. At the direction of the Prime Minister, Rasputin was placed under surveillance for several days.
At the beginning of 1911, Bishop Theophan suggested that the Holy Synod officially express displeasure to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna in connection with Rasputin’s behavior, and a member of the Holy Synod, Metropolitan Anthony (Vadkovsky), reported to Nicholas II about the negative influence of Rasputin.
On December 16, 1911, Rasputin had a clash with Bishop Hermogenes and Hieromonk Iliodor. Bishop Hermogenes, acting in alliance with Hieromonk Iliodor (Trufanov), invited Rasputin to his courtyard; on Vasilievsky Island, in the presence of Iliodor, he “convicted” him, striking him several times with a cross. An argument ensued between them, and then a fight.
In 1911, Rasputin voluntarily left the capital and made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
By order of the Minister of Internal Affairs Makarov on January 23, 1912, Rasputin was again placed under surveillance, which continued until his death.
The second case of “Khlysty” (1912)
In January 1912, the Duma announced its attitude towards Rasputin, and in February 1912, Nicholas II ordered V.K. Sabler to resume the case of the Holy Synod, the case of Rasputin’s “Khlysty” and transfer it to Rodzianko for the report, “and the palace commandant Dedyulin and transferred to him the Case of the Tobolsk Spiritual Consistory, which contained the beginning of Investigative Proceedings regarding 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 is participating in zeal.
The new (who replaced Eusebius (Grozdov)) Tobolsk Bishop Alexy (Molchanov) personally took up this case, studied the materials, requested information from the clergy of the Church of the Intercession, and repeatedly talked with Rasputin himself. Based on the results of this new investigation, the conclusion of the Tobolsk Church was prepared and approved on November 29, 1912 spiritual 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 a seeker of the truth of Christ." Rasputin no longer faced any official charges. But this did not mean at all that everyone believed in results of a new investigation.
Rasputin's prophecies
During his lifetime, Rasputin published two books: “The Life of an Experienced Wanderer” (1907) and “My Thoughts and Reflections” (1915).
In his prophecies, Rasputin speaks of “God’s punishment,” “bitter water,” “tears of the sun,” “poisonous rains” “until the end of our century.”
Deserts will advance, and the earth 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 equally huge ants will appear, as well as the monster “kobaka”. 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 “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 Rasputin is mentioned in Alexandra Feodorovna’s letters to Nicholas II. In the letters themselves, Rasputin’s surname is not mentioned, but some authors believe that Rasputin in the letters is designated by the words “Friend”, or “He” in capital letters, although this has no documentary evidence. The letters were published in the USSR by 1927, and in the Berlin publishing house Slovo in 1922.
The correspondence was preserved in the State Archive of the Russian Federation - Novoromanovsky Archive.
Grigory Rasputin with the Empress and the Tsar's children
In 1912, Rasputin dissuaded the emperor from intervening in the Balkan War, which delayed the start of the First World War by 2 years.
In 1915, anticipating the February Revolution, Rasputin demanded an improvement in the capital's supply of bread.
In 1916, Rasputin spoke out strongly in favor of Russia's withdrawal from the war, concluding peace with Germany, renouncing rights to Poland and the Baltic states, and also against the Russian-British alliance.
Press campaign against Rasputin
In 1910, the writer Mikhail Novoselov published several critical articles about Rasputin in Moskovskie Vedomosti (No. 49 - “Spiritual guest performer Grigory Rasputin”, No. 72 - “Something else about Grigory Rasputin”).
In 1912, Novoselov published in his publishing house the brochure “Grigory Rasputin and Mystical Debauchery,” which accused Rasputin of being a Khlysty and criticized the highest church hierarchy. The brochure was banned and confiscated from the printing house. The newspaper "Voice of Moscow" was fined for publishing excerpts from it.
After this, the State Duma followed up with a request to the Ministry of Internal Affairs about the legality of punishing the editors of Voice of Moscow and Novoye Vremya.
Also in 1912, Rasputin’s acquaintance, former hieromonk Iliodor, began distributing several scandalous letters from Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and the Grand Duchesses to Rasputin.
Copies printed on a hectograph circulated around St. Petersburg. Most researchers consider these letters to be fakes. Later, Iliodor, on advice, wrote a libelous book “Holy Devil” about Rasputin, which was published in 1917 during the revolution.
In 1913-1914, the Masonic Supreme Council of the All-Russian People's Republic attempted to launch a propaganda campaign regarding the role of Rasputin at court.
Somewhat later, the Council made an attempt to publish a brochure directed against Rasputin, and when this attempt failed (the brochure was delayed by censorship), the Council took steps to distribute this brochure in a typed copy.
Assassination attempt by Khionia Guseva on Rasputin
In 1914, an anti-Rasputin conspiracy matured, headed by Nikolai Nikolaevich and Rodzianko.
On June 29 (July 12), 1914, an attempt was made on Rasputin in the village of Pokrovskoye. He was stabbed in the stomach and seriously wounded by Khionia Guseva, who came 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 released from criminal liability, being placed in a psychiatric hospital in Tomsk. On March 27, 1917, on the personal orders of A.F. Kerensky, Guseva was released.
Murder of Rasputin
Rasputin was killed on the night of December 17, 1916 (December 30, new style) in the Yusupov Palace on the Moika. Conspirators: F. F. Yusupov, V. M. Purishkevich, Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich, British intelligence officer MI6 Oswald Rayner.
Information about the murder is contradictory, it was confused both by the killers themselves and by the pressure on the investigation by the Russian imperial and British authorities.
Yusupov changed his testimony several times: in the St. Petersburg police on December 18, 1916, in exile in Crimea in 1917, in a book in 1927, sworn to in 1934 and in 1965.
Starting from naming the wrong color of the clothes that Rasputin was wearing according to the killers and in which he was found, to how many and where bullets were fired.
For example, forensic experts found three wounds, each of which was fatal: to the head, 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 a shot in the liver, a person can live no more than 20 minutes and is not capable, as the killers said, of running down the street in half an hour or an hour. There was also no shot to the heart, which the killers unanimously claimed.
Rasputin was first lured into the basement, 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 outside. Yusupov, who returned to get the 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. As they approached, 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 a dog barking. Then he was tied with ropes on his hands and feet (according to Purishkevich, first wrapped in blue cloth), taken by car to a pre-selected place near Kamenny Island and thrown from the bridge into the Neva polynya in such a way that his body ended up under the ice. However, according to the investigation, the discovered corpse was dressed in a fur coat, there was no fabric or ropes.
The corpse of Grigory Rasputin
The investigation into the murder of Rasputin, led by the director of the Police Department A.T. Vasilyev, 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 the street not far from the Yusupov Palace, testified that he 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, passers-by noticed blood stains on the parapet of the Petrovsky Bridge. After exploration by divers of the Neva, Rasputin’s body was discovered in this place. The forensic medical examination was entrusted to the famous professor of the Military Medical Academy D. P. Kosorotov. The original autopsy report has not been preserved; the cause of death can only be speculated.
Conclusion of the forensic expert Professor D.N. Kosorotova:
“During the autopsy, very numerous injuries were found, many of which were inflicted posthumously. The entire right side of the head was crushed and flattened due to the bruise of the corpse when it fell from the bridge. Death resulted from heavy bleeding due to a gunshot wound to the stomach. The shot was fired, in my opinion, almost point-blank, from left to right, through the stomach and liver, with the latter being fragmented in the right half. The bleeding was very profuse. The corpse also had a gunshot wound in the back, in the spinal area, with a crushed right kidney, and another point-blank wound in the forehead, probably of someone who was already dying or had died. The chest organs were intact and were examined superficially, but there were no signs of death by drowning. The lungs were not distended, and there was no water or foamy fluid in the airways. Rasputin was thrown into the water already dead.”
No poison was found in Rasputin's stomach. Possible explanations for this are that the cyanide in the cakes was neutralized by sugar or high temperature when cooked in the oven.
His daughter reports that after Guseva's assassination attempt, Rasputin suffered from high acidity and avoided sweet foods. It is reported that he was poisoned with a dose capable of killing 5 people.
Some modern researchers suggest that there was no poison - this is a lie to confuse the investigation.
There are a number of nuances in determining the involvement of O. Reiner. At that time, there were two British MI6 intelligence officers serving in St. Petersburg who could have committed the murder: 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 directly mentioned that the killer was Yusupov's friend from college.
Rayner was awarded an OBE in 1919 and destroyed his papers before his death in 1961.
In Compton's driver's log, there are entries that a week before the murder he brought Oswald to Yusupov (and to another officer, Captain John Scale), and the last time - on the day of the murder. Compton also directly hinted at Rayner, saying that the killer was a lawyer and was born in the same city as him.
There is a letter from Alley written to Scale on January 7, 1917, eight days after the murder: "Although not everything went according to plan, our goal was achieved... Reiner is covering his tracks and will undoubtedly contact you...". According to modern British researchers, the order to three British agents (Rayner, Alley and Scale) to eliminate Rasputin came from Mansfield Smith-Cumming (the first director of MI6).
The investigation lasted two and a half months until the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II on March 2, 1917. On this day, Kerensky became Minister of Justice in the Provisional Government. On March 4, 1917, he ordered a hasty termination of the investigation, while investigator A.T. Vasiliev was arrested and transported to the Peter and Paul Fortress, where he was interrogated by the Extraordinary Commission of Investigation until September, and later emigrated.
In 2004, the BBC aired a documentary "Who killed Rasputin?", brought new attention to the murder investigation. According to the version shown in the film, the “glory” and the plan for this murder belong to Great Britain, the Russian conspirators were only the perpetrators, the control shot to the forehead was fired from the British officers’ Webley 455 revolver.
Who killed Grigory Rasputin
According to the researchers who published the books, 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 trace. The motive for the conspiracy was the following: Great Britain feared Rasputin’s influence on the Russian Empress, which threatened the conclusion of a separate peace with Germany. To eliminate the threat, the conspiracy against Rasputin that was brewing in Russia was used.
Rasputin's funeral service was conducted by Bishop Isidor (Kolokolov), who was well acquainted with him. In his memoirs, A.I. Spiridovich recalls that Bishop Isidore celebrated the funeral mass (which he had no right to do).
At first they wanted to bury the murdered man in his homeland, in the village of Pokrovskoye. But due to the danger of possible unrest in connection with sending the body across half the country, they buried it in the Alexander Park of Tsarskoe Selo on the territory of the Church of Seraphim of Sarov, which was being built by Anna Vyrubova.
M.V. Rodzianko writes that in the Duma during the celebrations there were rumors about Rasputin’s return to St. Petersburg. In January 1917, Mikhail Vladimirovich received a paper with many signatures from Tsaritsyn with a 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 burial place 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. Rasputin's body was burned on the night of March 11 in the furnace of the steam boiler of the Polytechnic Institute. An official act on the burning of Rasputin's corpse was drawn up.
Personal life of Grigory Rasputin:
In 1890 he married Praskovya Fedorovna Dubrovina, a fellow pilgrim-peasant, who bore him three children: Matryona, Varvara and Dimitri.
Grigory Rasputin with his children
In 1914, Rasputin settled in an apartment at 64 Gorokhovaya Street in St. Petersburg.
Various dark rumors quickly began to spread around St. Petersburg about this apartment, saying that Rasputin had turned it into a brothel and was using it to hold his “orgies.” Some said that Rasputin maintains a permanent “harem” there, while others say he collects them from time to time. There was a rumor that the apartment on Gorokhovaya was used for witchcraft, etc.
From the testimony of Tatyana Leonidovna Grigorova-Rudykovskaya:
"...One day, Aunt Ag. Fed. Hartmann (mother's sister) asked me if I wanted to see Rasputin closer. ... Having received an address on Pushkinskaya Street, on the appointed day and hour I showed up at the apartment of Maria Alexandrovna Nikitina, my aunt friends. Entering the small dining room, I found everyone already assembled. At an oval table set for tea, there were 6-7 young interesting ladies sitting. I knew two of them by sight (they met in the halls of the Winter Palace, where it was organized by Alexandra Fedorovna sewing linen for the wounded). They were all in the same circle and were animatedly talking to each other in low voices. Having made a general bow in English, I sat down next to the hostess by the samovar and talked with her.
Suddenly there was a sort of general sigh - Ah! I looked up and saw in the doorway, located on the opposite side from where I was entering, a powerful figure - the first impression was a gypsy. The tall, powerful figure was clad in a white Russian shirt with embroidery on the collar and fastener, a twisted belt with tassels, untucked black trousers and Russian boots. But there was nothing Russian about him. Black thick hair, a large black beard, a dark face with predatory nostrils of the nose and some kind of ironic, mocking smile on the lips - the face is certainly impressive, but somehow unpleasant. The first thing that attracted attention was his eyes: black, red-hot, they burned, piercing right through, and his gaze on you was simply felt physically, it was impossible to remain calm. It seems to me that he really had a hypnotic power that subjugated him when he wanted it...
Everyone here was familiar to him, vying with each other to please and attract attention. He sat down at the table cheekily, addressed everyone by name and “you,” spoke catchily, sometimes vulgarly and rudely, called them to him, sat them on his knees, felt them, stroked them, patted them on soft places, and everyone “happy” was thrilled with pleasure. ! It was disgusting and offensive to watch for women who were humiliated, who lost both their feminine dignity and family honor. I felt the blood rushing to my face, I wanted to scream, punch, do something. I was sitting almost opposite the “distinguished guest”; he perfectly sensed my condition and, laughing mockingly, each time after the next attack he stubbornly stuck his eyes into me. I was a new object unknown to him...
Impudently addressing someone present, he said: “Do you see? Who embroidered the shirt? Sashka! (meaning Empress Alexandra Feodorovna). No decent man would ever reveal 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 with alarm...
“Mashenka,” a voice said, “do you want some jam?” Come to me." Mashenka hurriedly jumps up and hurries to the place of summoning. Rasputin crosses his legs, takes a spoonful of jam and knocks it over the toe of his boot. “Lick it,” the voice sounds commanding, she kneels down and, bowing her head, licks the jam... I couldn’t stand it anymore. Squeezing the hostess’s hand, she jumped up and ran out into the hallway. I don’t remember how I put on my hat or how I ran along Nevsky. I came to my senses at the Admiralty, I had to go home to Petrogradskaya. She roared at midnight and asked never to ask me what I saw, and neither with my mother nor with my aunt did I remember about this hour, nor did I see Maria Alexandrovna Nikitina. Since then, I could not calmly hear the name Rasputin and lost all respect for our “secular” ladies. Once, while visiting De-Lazari, I answered the phone and heard the voice of this scoundrel. But I immediately said that I know who is talking, and therefore I don’t want to talk..."
The Provisional Government conducted a special investigation into the Rasputin case. According to one of the participants in this investigation, V. M. Rudnev, sent by order of Kerensky to the “Extraordinary Investigative Commission to investigate the abuses of former ministers, chief managers and other senior officials” and who was then a comrade prosecutor of the Yekaterinoslav District Court: “the richest material for coverage his personality from this side turned out to be in the data of that very secret surveillance of him, which was carried out by the security department; at the same time, it turned out that Rasputin’s amorous adventures did not go beyond the framework of night orgies with girls of easy virtue and chansonnet singers, and also sometimes with some of his petitioners."
Daughter Matryona in her book “Rasputin. Why?" wrote:
"... that, with all the saturated life, the father never abused his power and ability to influence women in a carnal sense. However, one must understand that this part of the relationship was of particular interest to the father’s ill-wishers. I note that they received some real food for their tales ".
Rasputin's daughter Matryona emigrated to France after the revolution and subsequently moved to the USA.
The remaining members of Rasputin's family were subjected to repression by the Soviet authorities.
In 1922, his widow Praskovya Fedorovna, son Dmitry and daughter Varvara were deprived of voting rights as “malicious elements.” Even earlier, in 1920, Dmitry Grigorievich’s house and entire peasant farm were nationalized.
In the 1930s, all three were arrested by the NKVD, and their trace was lost in the special settlements of the Tyumen North.
