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    Rasputin: Essential Biographies: An Introduction
    Rasputin: Essential Biographies: An Introduction
    Rasputin: Essential Biographies: An Introduction
    Ebook91 pages1 hour

    Rasputin: Essential Biographies: An Introduction

    By Harold Shukman

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    Gregory Rasputin features in Russian history as a malign and destructive force, a man with an unhealthy influence on the Empress Alexandra and undue power in Russian politics. Yet his purposes were ostensibly beneficent. An uneducated peasant, he left Siberia to become a wandering 'holy man' and soon acquired a reputation as a healer. The empress was desperate to find a cure for haemophilia from which her son Alexei suffered, and in 1905 Rasputin was presented at court. His positive effect on the heir's health made him indispensible. But his religious teachings were unorthodox, and his charismatic presence aroused in many ladies of the St Petersburg aristocracy an exalted response, which he exploited sexually. Shady financial dealings added to the atmosphere of debauchery and scandal, and he was also seen as a political threat. He was assassinated in 1916.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe History Press
    Release dateSep 16, 2011
    ISBN9780752470733
    Rasputin: Essential Biographies: An Introduction
    Author

    Harold Shukman

    Harold Shukman was a British historian, academic and author. Born in London to a family of Jewish immigrants escaping from the Russian Empire, Harold spent his academic career pursuing Jewish and Russian history, becoming the director of the Russian centre at St Antony's College, Oxford. He retired in 1998.

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      Book preview

      Rasputin - Harold Shukman

      ONE

      EARLY DAYS

      The fall of an empire demands explanation in terms of historical forces that one expects to match the scale of the events themselves – major war, economic collapse, social revolution. But individuals also have their place. It is, for instance, impossible to think of the Russian revolution without mentioning Nicholas II, Kerensky, Lenin or Trotsky. Yet among these names we also invariably encounter that of Gregory Rasputin, usually described as a drunken, lecherous pseudo-holy man, a debauched peasant whose baneful influence over the Empress Alexandra was to prove fatal to the Romanov dynasty. A small private museum has been opened in his birthplace which aims to show that his reputation as an utterly amoral and mercenary reprobate is based mostly on myth. He has featured in novels and films – even in a pop song that opened with ‘Ra, Ra, Rasputin/Lover of the Russian queen/Russia’s greatest love machine’.

      The purpose of this book is to identify the qualities that enabled Rasputin to enter Russian history, and that lent themselves to this sort of treatment, to ask what made the Romanov dynasty susceptible to his influence, and to explain why the relationship was ultimately disastrous.

      We shall examine a number of related areas: the condition of Russia from the turn of the century to the First World War; the relationship between the tsar and society; religious attitudes among peasants and aristocrats. The activities of Rasputin can only be properly understood in the context of these settings.

      Russia at the Turn of the Century

      The vast multi-national empire was struggling to modernize: to continue the economic upsurge begun in the 1880s; to tackle peasant land-hunger by major reform; to enable popular participation in the political process by the introduction of a parliament, called the State Duma; and to raise public awareness by a huge expansion of the press and a reduction in state censorship.

      In every area of state and public activity, the tension between past practice and new initiative gave rise to conflicting political programmes. The central question was: how should Russia be governed? On becoming tsar Nicholas II swore to uphold the legacy of his father, Alexander III, who had been a committed autocrat, and who had espoused economic reform expressly in order to strengthen the autocracy. The autocracy – that is, the traditional Russian form of monarchy – was widely supported by the aristocracy and large sections of the gentry. Many, however, also believed that a form of constitutional monarchy, or shared power, was the way ahead. The peasants were piously loyal to the person of the tsar, but also longed for land reform that would give them greater autonomy and less control by the state, of which the tsar was the executive head.

      The mentality of the fast-growing working class – mostly ex-peasants and poor town dwellers – was changing rapidly under the impact of harsh industrial working conditions and socialist propaganda, and it was becoming republican, if not outright revolutionary.

      Standing outside this structure were the intelligentsia. They included politicians and journalists, writers and poets, composers and musicians, artists and critics, teachers, doctors and lawyers, scientists and engineers. Their ideas varied widely, but they shared a critical attitude towards the state and its effects on social development. Part of the intelligentsia plotted to overthrow the existing state, and the most extreme of them were organized by Vladimir Lenin into a party of ‘professional revolutionaries’, known as the Bolsheviks.

      Nicholas ascended the throne in 1894, the year of his marriage to Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, German by title but English by upbringing. On becoming a Romanov, Alix adopted Orthodox Christianity and changed her name to Alexandra, adopting the patronymic Fedorovna required of Russian empresses.

      Nicholas’s father, Alexander III, had ruled since 1881, applying economic policies designed to stimulate industry, business and commerce, and with dramatic success. By the end of the century Russia had been transformed into a major player in the world league of oil, steel, coal and wheat producers. But economic success brought with it industrial unrest, the organization of workers in illegal trade unions and their political agitation by Marxist revolutionaries. Equally, the export of grain had been achieved at the cost of depressed peasant consumption and low domestic prices. Workers and peasants reached a climax of discontent, with strikes and peasant revolts sweeping large areas of the country in the first years of the century.

      Russia’s small student population had been the seedbed of revolution since the middle of the nineteenth century, and in 1902 it, too, erupted in demonstrations, calling for intellectual freedom and democratic liberties. The unrest culminated in January 1905. A procession of 100,000 workers and their families, led by a priest and bearing icons and portraits of the tsar, marched towards the Winter Palace in St Petersburg with demands for economic and political improvements. The troops fired warning shots, and then opened fire on the crowd. Several hundred were killed and injured, and Nicholas II was cursed as Nicholas the Bloody.

      Terrorism mounted, claiming senior government figures, including a close relative of the tsar. The turmoil peaked in October with a general strike that affected every aspect of public activity. Russia was challenging the tsar to compromise and allow society a voice in government.

      The task facing Nicholas was enormous. Unprepared and untrained for his role as emperor, he lived with the memory of a father who had despised him. A muscular bully of a man, who lifted weights for exercise and played the trombone for cultural diversion, Alexander had dismissed Nicholas as a weak and indecisive failure, and Nicholas had accepted his father’s judgement of him. He detested his state responsibilities and was happiest in the bosom of his adoring family, a country squire by nature with no stomach for confrontation with ‘historic forces’.

      The events of 1905 were complicated by war with Japan for possession of Manchuria. The Trans-Siberian Railway from European Russia to the Pacific was not complete when hundreds of thousands of troops had to be transported 10,000 kilometres to fight an unknown enemy, who had only to cross 300 kilometres of sea to put his forces on the mainland. While the civilian population was in revolt, the army was fighting – and mostly losing – battles in the Far East. Virtually the entire Russian fleet was sunk by

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