Pod Insights Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society History's Worst F*ckboys: Rasputin About this episode Rasputin presented himself as a mystic healer, and preached that the only way to salvation was through sin — which sometimes, if rumour is to be believed, manifested in orgies.
It's definitely giving f*ckboy behaviour.
How did he make his way from poverty to the Russian royalty inner circle? What mystical powers did he claim to have? And did he really have a 13" penis?
Helping Kate get to know this charismatic - and problematic - figure, is Frances Welch, author of Rasputin: A Short Life https://www.waterstones.com/book/rasputin/frances-welch/9781780722320.
*TW: This episode contains references to sexual abuse*
This episode was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.
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Transcript 5,782 words · 12 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Kate Lister? Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.
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1:17 Speaker 02 In Our Time is a world-class seminar every week. Why was Jeremy a lonely snail? What were lines doing in York in the third century? I'm Misha Glennie, and every week I'm joined by expert guests to explore the ideas that shape our world.
1:32 Speaker 03 It's one of the first times, really, that you consistently see someone painting teeth. I know that sounds bonkers.
1:36 Speaker 04 If I was going to define mathematics, I would say it's the study of structure.
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1:50 Kate Lister? Hello, my lovely betwisters. It's me, Kate Lister. Thank [bleep] you're here, quite frankly. If you weren't here, I mean, what is this, really? You are the star of the show. But before I can let you keep on shining, I have to tell you. This is an adult podcast, spoken by adults, other adults, about adulty things, and adulty way of arranging subjects, and you should be an adult too. We do that because your safety is paramount, and not because the lawyers tell us that we have to. Right, on with the show.
2:17 Kate Lister? It's 1914, and I am in St Petersburg. To escape the worries of the First World War, although at the time we're not calling it that, I've decided I'm going to take a trip to the local bath house. As chance would have it, this is where the aristocrats, officers, noblemen, and a couple of sex workers are often seen mingling together. And appearing through the steam tonight is the charismatic, albeit completely bat crap crazy Gregory Rasputin. He cuts a hell of a figure, it's all beard and straggly hair and those eyes, oh the eyes are just menacing. And despite us being in a bath house, he doesn't actually smell all that great.
2:59 Kate Lister? But apparently, he is a holy man who is here to lead a prayer group with these noble women. I mean, why wouldn't you have a prayer in a bath house with a load of nude women? It all sounds above board to me, but I'm not sure I'm going to stick around to find out more. Let's get on with the show!
3:16 Speaker 05 What do you look funny, man?
3:20 Speaker 06 Oh, money.
3:21 Speaker 05 You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you.
3:24 Speaker 06 I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing a button.
3:30 Speaker 07 Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.
3:39 Speaker 08 Goodness, what beautiful time! Goodness has nothing to do with it, dearie.
3:42 Kate Lister? Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheet, the history of sex scandal in society, with me, Caitlester. As we reach the end of our second mini-series on history's worst fuckboys, have we saved best until last? I think we might have. Our boy today is a mysterious quasi-religious figure who insisted that salvation came through forgiveness, which sounds great, but the small print to that is that you have to do a lot of sinning to get forgiven. Ah, that's some interesting fuckboy logic if ever I heard it. And helping me get to know Gregory Rasputin a little bit better is Frances Welch, author of Rasputin: A Short Life. Are you ready to get your sin on?
4:27 Kate Lister? I promise I'll forgive you. All right, let's do it!
4:32 Kate Lister? Well, hello and welcome to Buttwix the Sheets. It's only Frances Welch. How are you doing?
4:38 Speaker 09 I'm very well, thanks. I'm very well today.
4:41 Kate Lister? Well, we're actually here to decide if Rasputin can be counted as one of our historical fuckboys. And just for the purpose of this interview, we are going to define a fuckboy as, well, this is Urban Dictionary defining it, a fuckboy is that guy, the one who doesn't respect women but relies on them heavily. He's distant, doesn't care about other people's time and won't commit. So that's our definition. But before we can even get into that, can I ask you, what do we know about Rasputin's origins? Because he seems to have just appeared in St Petersburg, fully formed, but that can't have been the case. Where did he come from?
5:22 Speaker 09 Well, he came from Siberia. His father drove a cart on a very ancient road between Tumen and Tavolsk. Rasputin was discovered to have these magic powers, or he claimed to have these magic powers, quite early on. Cows would produce more milk if he was around. If there was a horse thief, he would expose them. He was sent to a monastery as a punishment, and then discovered this rather wonderful sect, which combined sex and religion, called the klisti. Klis means whip in Russian. And
5:55 Kate Lister? Oh, hello.
5:56 Speaker 09 Orgies were advocated. In other words, chastity was the sin of pride, and you needed to sin for salvation, which is a brilliant chat-up thing. If you sleep with me, I'm bringing you into the grace of God.
6:13 Kate Lister? Oh.
6:13 Speaker 09 Which is obviously useful later on in life. But he first met Grand Duchess Melitza, who was a cousin of the Tsar and Tsarina in Kazan. She tried to chat him up, didn't quite work. The next time he met her, he healed their dog. They had a pet dog who was ill, and he healed the dog. She then managed to bring him to St Petersburg and introduced him. To the Tsar and Tsarina, whereupon he sort of privately contacted the Tsar. So he rather forgot about Grand Duchess Milica, no more use to him. So he privately contacted the Tsar and Tsarinas and said, can I bring an icon?
6:56 Speaker 09 His real hold over the Tsar and Tsarina was because of their hemophiliac son, you know, their sick son, whom he seemed to be able to heal. He was married though, before he got to the Tsarina, he was married, right? Yes, he was, and his wife, Praskovia, she said, luckily for him, oh, he has enough for all. I mean, she might have been right, you know, because the
7:19 Speaker 09 testimony is saying, you know, that it was a thirteen, he had a thirteen inch penis when it was erect and so on. Anyway. What? She, had you not? A thirteen inch penis? Yes, and that was from his daughter, which sounds terrible, but the daughter actually spoke to one Oh my god. One of his old lovers who was a maid, and that's what she said. And then Felix Yusupov, who, the prince who killed Rasputin, used to say he had these penile warts, which helped his performance and that he could delay climax and that sort of thing. Is any of that true? Well, that's a very good question. I wasn't inclined to write the biography of Rasputin. I was actually commissioned to do it because I felt it was a very big subject.
8:04 Speaker 09 And also that there was so much conflicting evidence and you never know what's true. The daughter who made this claim about the thirteen inches absolutely laughed. When Rasputin was murdered in nineteen sixteen, she was taken in by the police. And they said, did your father sleep with a Tsarina? And she laughed, oh, no, of course he never did. But a few years later, in America, she was going around saying that Rasputin did sleep with the Tsarina. My feeling is that he never did. But unfortunately for the Tsarina, you know, everyone knows so much already. There were these letters that she'd written saying, you know, I kiss you, I want to sleep with my head on your shoulder. These rather passionate letters, which were very incriminating.
8:45 Speaker 09 But what people wouldn't realise is that she went into this very theatrical language with her sisters or with, you know, it was just the way she was. Like sometimes Victorians were, you know, very
8:56 Kate Lister? Okay.
8:56 Speaker 09 flowery and exaggerated in their language.
9:00 Kate Lister? Yeah, yeah. So he may or may not have had this enormous penis. We don't know if that's true, but bizarrely, his daughter says that it's true. He was married and his wife seems to have been aware of his philandering ways. Did he have a reputation for putting it about by the time he got to St Petersburg?
9:19 Speaker 09 Yes, he did. He did a lot of misbehaving in the bathhouse.
9:23 Kate Lister? Okay.
9:23 Speaker 09 You know, the banya is a great Russian tradition where you go into the banya and you beat yourself with birch twigs. And he would persuade women to soap him down and then come into the grace of God. By soaping him down, wash the muzik, he would say, muzik being peasant. In the banya. So there's a lot of that going on, which people disapproved of. But oddly enough, he was attacked in 1914. Someone tried to kill him. And a doctor examined him at that point and said that his penis was actually very small. He thought he would be surprised if
9:55 Kate Lister? Oh.
9:56 Speaker 09 Rasputin was even potent at that point. It had been damaged by alcohol and syphilis, he thought, the doctor thought. But again, is how true is that? For every story, there's another story that countermands it. To get back to your thing of fuckboys. His idea was that he would tell women to love unselfishly. In other words, he thought as a woman, you need to give yourself to him. Otherwise you were being selfish and you were guilty of the
10:23 Kate Lister? Right.
10:24 Speaker 09 sin of pride.
10:25 Kate Lister? That sounds like fuckboy behaviour to me.
10:28 Speaker 09 Yes, and I don't think he was very good at being committed.
10:32 Kate Lister? Doesn't it?
10:33 Speaker 09 It doesn't sound like he was. He was just taking every opportunity. But on the other hand, he was accused of rape a few times, but I think mostly people were
10:43 Kate Lister? Oh.
10:43 Speaker 09 willing, because either they thought they were going to be received into the grace of God. Or they could get favour from him.
10:52 Kate Lister? Who accused him of rape?
10:54 Speaker 09 Well, there was a maid who said she'd been raped, a maid of the Romanos said she'd been raped.
10:59 Kate Lister? I'm going off him now.
11:00 Speaker 09 But then, as ill luck would have it for his enemies, she was then caught sleeping with a Cossack. And so her testimony was then all sort of discarded. But by and large, people weren't complaining about rape. They were just complaining about him saying, if you want me to keep your son out of the army, if you want me to ask the Tsarina to keep your son out of the army, you must come back with an open top and a lower dress. Otherwise, don't bother, that sort of thing, which obviously is not very good behaviour, is it?
11:28 Kate Lister? Wow.
11:29 Speaker 09 For a man, it's not very gentleman.
11:30 Kate Lister? He seems to have inspired almost fanatical devotion.
11:35 Speaker 09 Yeah.
11:35 Kate Lister? Like, you see these pictures of him surrounded by women and they're all wide-eyed and like staring up at him.
11:41 Speaker 09 Yes, that's right. And, and they would sew his fingernails into the, the hems of their dresses.
11:47 Kate Lister? Oh, God.
11:49 Speaker 09 And yes, even though he was apparently rather disgusting and smelt of goat and.
11:54 Kate Lister? No.
11:55 Speaker 09 Had a, well.
11:57 Kate Lister? Oh.
11:58 Speaker 09 Yusupov said he had the face of a very ordinary peasant. This is Yusupov, his murderer, with a very long nose. Another person said his nose looked like it'd been slapped on with a trowel. But on the other hand, his eyes were incredible. And apparently he could contract his pupils at will, which apparently was attractive. Do you think that would be attractive?
12:18 Kate Lister? Ooh.
12:20 Speaker 09 It might be.
12:20 Kate Lister? I don't know if that's attractive. I've never seen anybody do it. I think that would freak me out.
12:27 Speaker 09 No, I, I agree. But there was obviously a, there was a taste for the sort of ordinary man. Like, at one point I compared Rasputin to Mr. Brown, Queen Victoria's Mr. Brown. You know, who is a man of the people.
12:40 Kate Lister? Oh, that's interesting.
12:42 Speaker 09 And, you know, Rasputin was definitely a man of the people.
12:45 Kate Lister? Okay.
12:46 Speaker 09 And if you fancied a bit of rough, well, he might be your man.
12:49 Kate Lister? Bit of rough with a 13-inch penis as well.
12:52 Speaker 09 Yes.
12:52 Kate Lister? So how does he meet the Tsarina then? How does this wandering peasant who's into orgies and bathhouses and flagellating and all the rest of it? How does he meet the Tsarina?
13:03 Speaker 09 He was introduced at a sort of tea in 1905 by the Grand Duchess Milica, who, as, as I said, was a cousin of the Tsar.
13:12 Kate Lister? But why did she want to meet him?
13:14 Speaker 09 Well, he inveigled himself into. Their lives or or got himself to the palace by just saying to the Tsar, can I bring you an icon? And they already had, there was a sort of holy fool, they had holy fools at the Russian court, that wasn't out of the ordinary. So he came along with an icon. And once he'd done his first healing of the boy, then he was in and it was not long before the Tsarina felt that he was the only person who could stop her son bleeding. Tell me about that then, tell me about Alexei and what was happening. Well, he had hemophilia where the blood is not clotting. And the idea was that Rasputin could stop his blood flowing or stop the bleeding.
13:58 Speaker 09 And it's not really known how, but there are two things. One is that he hated aspirin, that's Rasputin. And at that point, doctors were giving aspirin just to pain. And aspirin is a sort of anticoagulant and would make the bleeding worse. So that was something that he inadvertently did, which would have helped. But the main thing probably is to calm down the Tsarina, the mother of the boy. She calms down, then he calms down, everybody's blood pressure goes down and everyone feels a lot better. And once she'd persuaded herself, you know, once she'd convinced herself of this belief in him. There was a very famous episode where the Tsarevich was really at death's door in Poland. In nineteen twelve, that was, he was eight at that point.
14:43 Speaker 09 And Rasputin sent two telegrams saying, he will not die, don't let the doctors worry him too much. And Alexis, the son, immediately got, wanted to improve. And forever she, well, until Rasputin's death in nineteen sixteen, she believed that he was the only person who could save her son. And that gave him quite a lot of power, as you can imagine. Yeah, I can imagine so, yeah. And from nineteen fifteen, after the war started in nineteen fourteen, the Tsar went to the front, leaving his wife sort of in charge. And as far as the Russian people were concerned, they had
15:18 Kate Lister? Oh, no.
15:19 Speaker 09 Oh, no, exactly. They had the German born Tsarina and her sidekick, who was Rasputin in charge of the country. They did not like that at all.
15:28 Kate Lister? So how much power did he actually have then? I mean, he can cure, he can cure Alexei, or at least it appears that he can, and that's great. But what else was he doing? Because he doesn't seem to have just been like a doctor for this child. What else? What other power did he have within the Russian court at the time?
15:44 Speaker 09 Well, he was continually trying to promote people who supported him. I mean, there was one called Proto Popov, who sounds like a very eccentric man. I think he had had syphilis for years. He was completely mad and sort of saw ghosts. And he was a minister of the interior. Anyway, he was quite close to Rasputin and Rasputin was behind
16:03 Kate Lister? Sounds great.
16:04 Speaker 09 his promotion. There was another one who was very much a yes man called Garemikin, who had sort of moustaches down to his shoulders. And I think it was very, he was very, very old and infirm. But Rasputin was behind his promotion. But there was a whole series of ministers that he put pressure on the Tsarina, who then put pressure on her husband. She felt all the time she was getting advice from a man of God. And meanwhile, the Tsar thought he was the Tsar by divine rule, you know, that he was there because he'd been chosen by God. So there was a whole system.
16:45 Kate Lister? I'll be back with Francis and Rasputin after this short break.
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18:26 Speaker 09 What did the Tsar make of all of this? At one point, he wrote, "Let's leave our friend out of this." "Our friend" was what they called Rasputin, rather than calling him by name, "our friend." So he did say that, but I feel he did sort of believe in him after a fashion as well. Because in his diary, I mean, he's very non-committal. He's seen to be rather a sort of colourless character in a way, and his diaries are like that. But nonetheless, you can see, he will say, "Gregory", as he called him, "Gregory", "visited us this evening. Alexis is now calmer and better." So he refers to some of the cures and clearly believes that Rasputin was behind them.
19:09 Speaker 09 And was Rasputin popular at court? Uh, no, no, no. I mean, he was always... I mean, there was a terrible spat at the time, the 300 years of Romanov rule in 1913. You know, Rasputin had just had his amazing cure in 1912, when the Tsarvich nearly died in Poland. And there he was at all the sort of celebrations, you know, in the front seat and a whole of people, people from the Duma, you know, the parliament, all trying to get rid of him, manhandling him. He was very unpopular, except possibly amongst the peasantry right at the bottom. We don't really get to hear enough about them, you know, their testimony in a way doesn't exist.
19:51 Speaker 09 But certainly the testimony of the sort of aristocrats, the people at court and in the Duma, the politicians, he wasn't popular. And they were always talking about how to get rid of him. And they finally, they did get rid of him.
20:02 Kate Lister? And when did these rumours about him and the Tsarina start?
20:05 Speaker 09 I'm not quite sure. I suppose it's when everybody got to know he was there. I mean, the, his visits to the palace were obviously recorded by the police and, and I should imagine the word started to spread then. The letters that I referred to earlier, where she was rather passionate, you know, ill-advisedly, as it turned out, she shouldn't have said the things she did because it, they all came back to bite her, as it were. They were sort of disseminated about nineteen eleven. And I think probably that's when it really started, the rumours started. And the rumours included, people were even saying that he was sleeping with the Grand Duchess's, who were then just children, really. There were four.
20:40 Kate Lister? Oh, no.
20:42 Speaker 09 Yeah, I know. And, well, it was because he was always in their bedrooms and with them in their night dresses, which obviously was.
20:48 Kate Lister? Yep, that'll do it.
20:49 Speaker 09 It was an enemy of Rasputin's who spread the letters, those letters which were so damaging to the Tsarina. He had a lot of enemies.
20:57 Kate Lister? Did he have any girlfriends that we know of? I know that he was obviously in the bathhouses and he was, had loads of devoted followers. But do we know of anyone that he was in a relationship with apart from his wife?
21:08 Speaker 09 Well, that's a good question. I'm not sure he went for that. This is a problem with your theme. I'm not sure he went for the sort of the conventional idea of a relationship, as I can see. Uh, you know, took it all, was it?
21:17 Kate Lister? No.
21:18 Speaker 09 Hundreds of women queuing outside the door for his fingernails or whatever they wanted.
21:23 Kate Lister? It's giving fuck, boy, isn't it? It is.
21:26 Speaker 09 There was a woman called Olga Loptina, who he seems to have had a sort of sadomasochistic relationship with. Again, you know, these stories are so.
21:34 Kate Lister? Of course he did.
21:35 Speaker 09 But apparently, you know, he would beat her and call her a sort of mad bitch, while she would yank his penis and say, you are God. Okay.
21:43 Kate Lister? Right.
21:44 Speaker 09 You're right. Yeah, exactly. And she seems to have been sort of a permanent fixture in that she seemed to live at his house in St Petersburg, or in his flat, rather. Um. So I suppose you could call her a girlfriend, perhaps.
21:56 Kate Lister? Okay.
21:57 Speaker 09 To be. But you can see how he wasn't the sort of person who's taking people.
22:01 Kate Lister? Yeah.
22:02 Speaker 09 Cinema or anything like that. He wasn't going out on dates, as well as I can see.
22:07 Kate Lister? No, he's not.
22:09 Speaker 09 Which obviously he should be.
22:10 Kate Lister? Wasn't he followed by the police for a while as well? They were gathering intel on him.
22:14 Speaker 09 Oh, yes. Well, once they realised he was going into court, into the Russian court, they were following him all the time. And then when the war started, he was believed to be sort of collaborating with the Germans for a sort of separate peace. And he was sort of entertaining Germans five. So that became very.
22:30 Kate Lister? Surprised he had the time.
22:32 Speaker 09 Uh, yes, I know. Well, you know, referring back to what we were saying, you're not sure whether this really is true. He certainly had a couple of German friends who might have been a bit dodgy, but whether it's really conspiring for separate peace, it seems unlikely, actually. But as you said, he was trailed by police all the time. Yeah.
22:51 Kate Lister? So we've got to talk about his murder then.
22:53 Speaker 09 Yes, exactly. Well, everybody knows that he was given all the, you know, poison wine and poison cake, uh, but he didn't die. And then he was shot and he didn't die. And then he finally drowned. That's the story. And that's the story which Prince Felix Yusupov tells and one of the other witnesses. But recently, there have been further stories that he was actually killed by a British Secret Service agent.
23:19 Kate Lister? I heard that one.
23:20 Speaker 09 You have?
23:21 Kate Lister? Yeah, I've heard, well, I've heard all of them, but I was wondering which version of his murder do you personally believe? And why, who bumped him off and why?
23:31 Speaker 09 Well, he was bringing the Romanos into disrepute because of the, you know, his attachment to the farina. They believed that he might be conspiring for a separate peace with Germany. He was believed to be perhaps more powerful than he. Was, they just felt that if he could be got rid of, then all the problems would be solved. And needless to say, that wasn't the case. It was actually the first shot in the revolution. Felix Yusupov was very effete. You've probably seen pictures of him, you know, very effeminate. And it's hard to believe.
24:01 Kate Lister? I have. I've heard that maybe he and Rasputin might have been lovers, but that might just be another nonsense story.
24:08 Speaker 09 Yes, well, Maria, his daughter, Rasputin's daughter is behind a lot of the stories. She says that Yusupov was found naked on Rasputin's sofa. The sofa which had a back, which had been sort of so battered about that it had collapsed. So he had a sort of broken sofa and there was Yusupov. And Yusupov describes him in a very sort of sexual way, describes his meeting with him in a very sexual way, you know, how hypnotic he was. He said he was going to Rasputin to be cured of his homosexuality. I mean, that was his ruse. In fact, he was trying to get close to Rasputin, eventually in order to invite him to his palace, where the palace where he was murdered.
24:53 Speaker 09 And the story was that he was going to introduce Rasputin to his beautiful wife, Irina. He had a wife, even though he was homosexual or maybe wasn't.
25:00 Kate Lister? Yeah.
25:01 Speaker 09 Probably more likely bisexual. But the thing is that I find it hard to believe he shot Rasputin in the side while Rasputin was praying, which is part of his story. I just find that it would be almost impossible for any normal person to do. Imagine shooting a person when they're praying.
25:19 Kate Lister? That act would take some like ferocity.
25:22 Speaker 09 Yes, some real diablerie. I suppose we'll never know. I did hear about some diaries of Yusupov's coming to light in Paris recently and I wondered, but I suspect everybody's gone through them. You know, everybody's combed all the stories and the background, but one of his conspirators wrote that he heard a sort of groaning sound from the cellar before any of the poison had been administered. So from the cellar where Rasputin was going to be killed.
25:50 Kate Lister? Oh, okay.
25:52 Speaker 09 Which I think sounds like it was sexual. He certainly thought it was. So that's just another thing, you know, when you say, did he have a, did they have a, well. There's certainly evidence to show that they did.
26:05 Kate Lister? It was Yusupov that had come up with the story that he'd been shot and stabbed and poisoned with cyanide and then thrown in the river. And then when he was dragged out, he had water in his lungs, so he was still alive. The autopsy of Rasputin says that that didn't happen, didn't it? He was just shot.
26:21 Speaker 09 I think he was just shot in the head, yeah, by Oswald Reiner, this British Secret Service agent. That's the sort of later story.
26:29 Kate Lister? Right, okay.
26:30 Speaker 09 There's a Scotland Yard detective who's written a book about all this, who says that the details from Yusupov and from Fariskovich, who was his conspirator, sort of don't tally properly. Anyway, he pulls apart the Yusupov story, this Scotland Yard detective, can't remember his name, but that's also a good book. But it just seems people can't get enough of him, generally Rasputin.
26:52 Kate Lister? Yeah. One of the things that's carried on long after his death are rumours about his penis, which is totally bizarre.
26:59 Speaker 09 Yes, well, particularly if the doctor, you know, in Siberia, who said that it had almost, you know, sort of disappeared, this in 1914. But, but yes, the stories involve, I mean, again, this is from Maria, Rasputin's daughter. She says that they cut his penis off after killing him. And then it sort of turned up in various museums. There are sort of claimant penises of various, in Paris.
27:23 Kate Lister? Yes.
27:24 Speaker 09 And in St Petersburg, I think. The one in Paris apparently looks like an old blackened banana. Well, it would do after a hundred and whatever years.
27:33 Kate Lister? What, didn't one of them turn out to be an old sea cucumber?
27:37 Speaker 09 What, is that a story that you've heard? It sounds like it could be possible.
27:42 Kate Lister? Yes, yeah, I, yeah, I read that somewhere.
27:44 Speaker 09 Did you?
27:45 Kate Lister? The, the, the one in St Petersburg's museum is probably that of a horse or a cow. And then the other one was actually just a vegetable that got pickled. But I don't know how true any of this is, quite frankly.
27:57 Speaker 09 Yes, the one in St Petersburg, apparently it outshone Napoleon's, which was like a small pod.
28:04 Speaker 09 Napoleons, but what it was the St Petersburg one, which is actually a cucumber, did you say?
28:08 Kate Lister? It was the one in Paris that turned out to be a sea cucumber.
28:11 Speaker 09 Oh, I see. And that's the one that's kept on a sort of velvet cushion in a box. So I heard.
28:16 Kate Lister? Sure, I might be mixing up my Rasputin penises now. There's so many of them floating around.
28:22 Speaker 09 But Maria, Maria Rasputin's friend and sort of co-author saw it in its box, or what purported to be the penis. And it was her who said it was like a blackened, overripe banana on a sort of velvet.
28:35 Kate Lister? Oh, fabulous.
28:36 Speaker 09 In a large box. Yeah. But then there was another thing which in his house in Siberia, I mean, the house in Siberia was actually knocked down because there were so many people visiting it. But they then rebuilt it. And there was a museum built in 1991. And there's a seat, a wooden seat there, which men can sit on, which apparently enhances their masculine powers if they sit on this wooden seat. I know.
29:02 Kate Lister? Oh, that's incredible. Do you know, I think we're gonna have to, after try and answer our own question, Frances, do we think that Rasputin was a historical fuckboy? Bearing in mind all of the stories, the orgies, the having sex with the Tsarina and her children, the 13-inch penis with warts on the end, the sex magic, people are sinning, but they also, he can forgive them, all of that. Do we think that he was a historical fuckboy?
29:35 Speaker 09 Well, yes. I mean, and given all that, but
29:38 Kate Lister? Without a shadow of a doubt.
29:40 Speaker 09 Uh, but as you keep pointing out, you never know what's true and what isn't. But certainly he's a, is a mythical.
29:47 Kate Lister? No, you don't. Has anyone ever tried to redeem his reputation? Has anybody ever tried to write a book to say, look, all this stuff is nonsense. He was just a very nice man. It's all lies.
30:00 Speaker 09 Well, it would be quite hard to do that, probably to find. But I suppose you could, but on the other hand, the Russian Orthodox
30:05 Kate Lister? Yeah, probably would be.
30:06 Speaker 09 Church thinks about sanctifying him, by the way. They, I mean, they had about 100 clerics
30:12 Kate Lister? Oh.
30:13 Speaker 09 Met quite recently, actually to oppose the Russian Orthodox Church's idea of, you know, because the Romanos themselves have been sanctified. Anyway, I don't know how serious that is, but I thought it must be quite serious for 100 Orthodox leaders to get together to make sure it didn't happen. Made me think it must be.
30:32 Kate Lister? Oh, wow.
30:33 Speaker 09 So there are people, he does.
30:34 Kate Lister? Yes, it does.
30:36 Speaker 09 He has supporters out there, but they're not writing books, as far as I know.
30:39 Kate Lister? No, no, but I think we can quite comfortably say Gregory Rasputin, historical fuckboy. Francis, you have been incredible to talk to, and if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?
30:54 Speaker 09 Well, I've just written a book called The Lives and Deaths of the Princesses of Hesse, about the Tarene and her sisters. That book's available, well, it's coming out in paperback in November, actually. But otherwise, there's about.
31:07 Kate Lister? Oh, fabulous.
31:07 Speaker 09 Well, I now have six books that I've written about the Romanos. And they can all be ordered online or sometimes available in bookshops. And so if anyone's interested in further information about Rasputin or about the Romanos, they can pursue that.
31:21 Kate Lister? Well, thank you so much for coming to tell us about Gregory Rasputin.
31:26 Speaker 09 Well, thank you very much for having me on.
31:31 Kate Lister? Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Francis for joining us. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is you get your podcasts. Coming up, we have got the first in a new mini series that will take you inside some of the most fascinating and important brothels in history. And we've got an episode on the sex lies of French royalty. If you would like us to explore a subject or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected] . This podcast was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Joining me again, Betwixt the Sheets, History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.
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