Rasputin

⁠A Short History of Ancient Rome⁠ - the debut book from the Noiser Network is out now! Discover the epic rise and fall of Rome like never before. Pick up your copy now at your local bookstore or visit ⁠⁠noiser.com/books⁠⁠ to learn more. At the dawn of the twentieth century, Russia was a nation on the brink. Strikes, protests, and brutal uprisings were shaking the empire. Public faith in the monarchy was hanging by a thread. It was into this fragile world that Grigori Rasputin stepped. Whether he was truly a holy man, blessed with healing powers, or a fraud and a drunkard, his closeness to the Tsarina gave him a hold over the Russian court which seemed both inexplicable and irresistible. But what was it about Rasputin that allowed him to enchant a desperate empress? How did rumours of scandal and corruption turn one man into a symbol of national decay? And why, even after his violent death, does his shadow still hang over the fall of Imperial Russia? This is a Short History Of Rasputin. Take back your personal data with Incogni! Use code shorthistory at the link below and get 60% off annual plans: https://incogni.com/shorthistory A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. With thanks to Francis Welch, a historian and author of Rasputin: A Short Life. Written by Sean Coleman | Produced by Kate Simants | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Katrina Hughes | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Oliver Sanders | Assembly edit by Anisha Deva | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cody Reynolds-Shaw Get every episode of Short History Of… a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to shows across the Noiser podcast network. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:49Speaker 02

  It's October 1907, in the Alexander Palace at Zasgoye Zyalov, Russia.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  In a corridor of the imperial family's summer dacha, a young footman stands guard at the door to the nursery. Inside, the life of the three-year-old heir to the Russian throne, Zarevich Alexei, hangs in the balance.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  He is suffering from an internal hemorrhage brought on by his hemophilia, a rare genetic disorder that stops the blood from clotting properly, meaning even small injuries can be life-threatening.

• 1:28Speaker 02

  Listening at his post, the footman hears anxious, clipped voices from within. None of the doctors have known what to do, and the child is in a desperate state. His mother, Zarena Alexandra, fears the worst.

• 1:47Speaker 02

  But now, a new figure appears in the corridor. A tall, strong-looking man with an unkempt black beard and hair that falls to his shoulders.

• 1:58Speaker 02

  His coarse, peasant tunic is tied with a cord at the waist, but it is his pale, piercing eyes that command the footman's attention.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  He is the Siberian peasant holy man Grigori Rasputin, summoned here by the imperial family as their last desperate hope for the boy.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  The footman swings the nursery door open and follows the visitor inside.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  The room is heavy with fear. The Zarina clutches her child's hand while doctors linger by the walls in helpless silence.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Crossing the chamber, Rasputin kneels by the bedside and begins to pray.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  His voice is low, insistent, and thick with dialect the footman cannot follow. But the chant is steady, rising and falling like a tide.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  Slowly, the atmosphere shifts. Alexandra's sobs soften. The boy's moaning eases. His breath grows calmer, quieter.

• 3:12Speaker 02

  Hours pass. Rasputin's voice never falters, until at last he falls silent and stands.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  The pause vibrates in the still air until Alexandra's voice breaks it.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  "He is sleeping," she says, trembling with relief.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  The footman crosses himself, murmuring prayer of his own. "The boy is alive."

• 3:43Speaker 02

  In the days to come, the court will whisper of a miracle. Some will say Rasputin has the gift of healing. Others will insist he simply calmed the empress and persuaded her to keep the doctors away, along with their aspirin, which was thinning his blood further, for long enough to let the boy's body recover on its own.

• 4:06Speaker 02

  But to Alexandra, there is no doubt. Rasputin has saved her son. From this night on, she will trust him above all others. It becomes a trust so fierce, it will place a Siberian peasant at the heart of the Russian court and hasten the collapse of a 300-year-old dynasty.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  At the dawn of the 20th century, Russia was a nation on the brink. Strikes, protests, and violent uprisings were shaking the empire. Public faith in the monarchy was hanging by a thread. Into this fragile world stepped Grigory Rasputin.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  Whether he was truly a holy man blessed with healing powers, or a fraud and a drunkard who inserted himself at the heart of a doomed dynasty, his closeness to the Tsarina gave him a hold over the Russian court, which seemed both inexplicable and irresistible.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  But what was it about Rasputin that allowed him to enchant a desperate empress? How did rumours of scandal and corruption turn one man into a symbol of national decay? And why, even after his violent death, does his shadow still hang over the fall of imperial Russia?

• 5:34Speaker 02

  I'm John Hopkins from the Noiser Podcast Network. This is A Short History of Rasputin.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin is born in 1869 in the small village of Prokovskoye, deep in the Siberian steppe.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  His father is a kart driver, and like most of their neighbours, his family are peasants of modest means.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  Life here is harsh, shaped by bitter winters, poverty, and the rhythms of the Orthodox Church. But from an early age, the boy stands out as being special, at least according to the stories told much later, after he became famous.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  Frances Welch is a historian and author of Rasputin: A Short Life.

• 6:33Speaker 03

  He was apparently very advanced as a baby, you know, sort of almost walking by six months, talking at eight months. This is what we hear. And his magic powers came through quite early on. It was discovered that when he was near cows, they produced more milk.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  From the start, locals speak of a strange intensity in his gaze, and stories spread of visions and prophetic dreams. As well as upping the milk yield of cattle, he also apparently can spot horse thieves on sight. Whether true or not, his odd behaviour, sometimes deeply devout, other times unruly and wild, marks him as different.

• 7:17Speaker 03

  He was obviously strange. He used to stare at grass for hours and beat himself with nettles.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  But his peculiarity is not entirely unique. This is a land steeped in mysticism, pilgrimage, and wandering holy men. And young Grigori grows up surrounded by folktales of saints and seers.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  His environment nurtures the possibility of religious eccentricity, where pilgrims walk for days to visit remote shrines and the faithful practise odd rituals to prove their piety. And alongside the devout are fanatics, flagellants, hermits, and visionaries, all convinced of divine revelation.

• 8:04Speaker 03

  Where he was, there was quite a lot of spirituality, you can call it. I mean, there were old believers living in the forests who were worrying about changes to the liturgy, but also fanatics who were castrating themselves. I mean, there was a lot of what we would call very eccentric behaviour around.

• 8:25Speaker 02

  In the Siberia of Rasputin's youth, spiritual extremism exists side by side with hardship, hunger, and backbreaking work. Respite comes in the form of prayer or the bottle.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  As a young man, Rasputin earns a reputation for both sanctity and sin. Though some say that he is touched by God, most know him as a drinker, a thief, and a brawler. Those employing his cart-driving services find him to be particularly unreliable.

• 9:01Speaker 03

  You would take cartloads of furs, say, to the local town of Tumen. The furs would be lost, the cart would be lost, the horse would be lost. He would be found in a ditch. Anyway, they began to punish him by beating him. The trouble was that he then got a taste for it. So they sent him to a monastery, where he discovered this sect called the Clistie.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  This secretive sect, who take their name from the Russian word for "whips", are condemned as heretics by the Orthodox Church. They've rejected formal clergy, meet in secret, and claim a direct communication with God.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  They are known for the practice of literally whipping themselves into frenzies, as well as seeking redemption for their sins through ecstatic, often highly sexual rituals, which they call radene, or "love feasts".

• 10:00Speaker 02

  Much of what we think we know about Rasputin's link to the Clistie comes from later police reports, hostile churchmen, and sensational memoirs written after his rise to fame. The evidence is fragmentary at best, being part fact, part gossip, and part propaganda designed to discredit him. But though association with such a sect is enough to stain his name, it also gives him a very unique outlook on his relationships with women.

• 10:28Speaker 03

  Rasputin then got the idea that you could very easily combine sex and religion and have a love feast. And he very early on embraced the idea that you can sin for salvation. And in fact, chastity is the sin of pride, which suited a lot of people. What a way to live! He also felt that the more girls or women that he slept with, he was reducing the general sins of the world. So he was doing a very good thing, he was doing everybody a good turn by enjoying himself.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  In 1887, when Rasputin is about 18 years old, he marries a local girl, Praskovia. Sharing his religiosity, she is also patient and long-suffering, qualities she will need in spades for a life with her new husband. Over the next few years, they have several children, though only a few survive infancy. For a time, Rasputin tries to live a settled life as a farmer, but his restless nature endures. In his early twenties, Rasputin experiences a religious awakening that changes the course of his life. Again, accounts differ on what triggered it. Some say the death of one of their children led him to seek divine answers.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  Others suggest the idea comes as his spiritual visions intensify.

• 11:55Speaker 03

  He had what he called visions of God, where he felt that God was within him. And he saw the Virgin Mary pointing to the horizon, which he thought was telling him that he needed to go on a pilgrimage. And that night, after he'd seen the Virgin Mary, his icon of the Virgin Mary wept. Apparently, it had water coming from it.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  Having been thus inspired by his weeping painting, Rasputin begins leaving his family for long stretches. He wanders barefoot to monasteries and holy sites all over Russia, seeking guidance and enlightenment, and absorbing radical ideas on the fringes of orthodoxy. By the time he returns home from these early pilgrimages, Rasputin has remade himself as a starretz, or a holy man. Part mystic, part preacher, part healer. He has grown his hair and beard long, adopted simple peasant robes, and cultivated an aura of otherworldly wisdom around himself. And he has a following.

• 13:04Speaker 03

  He would come back with women, with his little ladies, as he called them, sometimes dressed in nun's outfits, and Praskovia, his very understanding wife, who used to say, "Well, he has enough for all." That was her line. And she was quite happy for her husband, for Grigory, to put himself about, which he did. And she didn't object to these women coming back to her house.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  To his critics, he's merely using these long pilgrimages to avoid the difficult work of the harvest. To many of his neighbors, however, he radiates not only charisma, but also genuine spiritual power. Villagers seek him out for blessings, advice, and cures. Despite his relative youth, he becomes a revered starretts. And by the turn of the 20th century, the name Rasputin is already spreading beyond his tiny corner of Siberia. Pilgrims and curious travelers pass through Prokovskoye to see the peasant holy man with the piercing eyes and the gift for healing. Some leave convinced he's a prophet, others that he's a fraud.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  But all agree that he's definitely different.

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• 16:15Speaker 02

  In 1903, Rasputin sets out once again on a pilgrimage, heading west towards Saint Petersburg. Though again, no single reason for this journey survives in the historical record, it is widely considered a journey both of faith and of instinct. If he is truly chosen by God, then his path must lead to the place where God's earthly power resides: the imperial capital itself.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  When he arrives, Saint Petersburg is still a world of palaces and processions, of carriages clattering down Nevsky Prospect, and choirs echoing from the golden domes of Orthodox churches.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  But it's also a city of private salons, intrigue and religious debate, where his unpolished Siberian manner once again sets him apart.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  Here in the capital, high society seems obsessed by mysticism and prophecy, and the search for new holy figures has become a pastime. Rasputin's gift for coarse but captivating oratory and claims of divine inspiration quickly earn him a circle of admirers, particularly among the clergy. Within months, he has gained favor with influential churchmen who delight in introducing him to aristocratic households.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Yet, even as his star begins to rise, the empire around him is already shifting.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  For more than three centuries, Russia has been ruled by the Romanov dynasty. A line of absolute monarchs who claim their authority from God. But Tsar Nicholas II, the latest in that line, isn't well-suited to leadership. Shy, indecisive, and deeply conservative, Nicholas struggles to connect with his people, to whom he appears out of touch and distant.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  The vast empire he governs is largely poor and increasingly restless. Industrial workers in the cities have long been demanding reform, and peasants in the countryside face hunger and debt.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  But the Tsar's government continuously answers discontent with force rather than compromise.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  In January 1905, that tension finally comes to a head when thousands of workers march peacefully to the Winter Palace, carrying petitions for better wages and fairer treatment.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  They come as loyal subjects, trusting the man they call "Little Father Tsar" to listen.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  Instead, the imperial soldiers open fire on the crowd, killing hundreds.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  The massacre, which will be remembered as Bloody Sunday, shatters faith in the monarchy. In the months that follow, protests sweep the empire.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  Then tragedy strikes the royal family itself when Grand Duke Sergey Alexandrovich is killed by a revolutionary bomb in Moscow. As both the Tsar's uncle and the Tsarina's brother-in-law, his death strikes both sides of the royal family. For Nicholas and Alexandra, the shock is profound.

• 19:45Speaker 02

  And it is during this period, while the royal family reels from loss and unrest, they encounter a strange, holy man from Siberia.

• 19:55Speaker 03

  He'd healed a dog belonging to Grand Duchess Melitza, who was a cousin of the Tsar. She was impressed by him, Melitza. She was slightly cracked, actually, I think, herself, but she sort of endorsed him.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  Melitza and her sister Anastasia are known in St. Petersburg as "The Black Peril", famous for their séances, charms, and spiritual obsessions, especially with the occult.

• 20:24Speaker 02

  When Melitza encounters Rasputin, she is convinced he's the real thing, and arranges for him to meet the Tsarina.

• 20:31Speaker 03

  It should also be said that they did have a tradition of holy fools, and all sorts of oddness and eccentricities out at the Russian court. They had a series of "men of God" or "holy fools", or whatever you'd like to call them, before Rasputin arrived. I mean, there was one just before who was actually a butcher from France, who believed in invisibility hats. It wasn't so odd for them to invite this rather unkempt man, who sort of smelled of goat, to the palace.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Yet Rasputin proves different. However unpolished his manners, his presence is magnetic. He speaks in parables, prays with conviction, and seems to look straight through people with those intense, unblinking eyes. To the already anxious Tsarina, his humility feels pure and untouched by the vanity and corruption of the court.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  In no time, Rasputin becomes a regular guest at the palace. And he is more than a curiosity. The Tsar and Tsarina refer to him as "Nash Drukh", or "our friend", and both his words and his mere presence seem to steady the Empress in particular.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  Soon, an opportunity arises that will seal his place in court and in history.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  In 1907, the heir to the Russian throne, three-year-old Zarevich Alexei, falls ill. The boy already suffers from hemophilia, a hereditary condition passed down from his maternal great-grandmother, Queen Victoria of England.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  The illness damages the body's blood clotting ability and leaves him dangerously vulnerable to internal bleeding. Alexei is the imperial couple's only son. After four daughters, his birth secured the future of the Romanov dynasty, but his illness now threatens it.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  With faith in the monarchy already floundering and the empire feeling fragile, the truth of his condition is kept a closely guarded secret. Even within the palace, few understand the precarity of the situation.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  Now, a recent fall has led to a severe hemorrhage that's looking increasingly life-threatening.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  For days, the doctors have proved powerless to ease his pain.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  In desperation, Empress Alexandra turns to the man she has come to believe is touched by God, Grigory Rasputin.

• 23:07Speaker 03

  He'd fallen in the palace and damaged his leg and his face so badly that his eyes were closed, but apparently he began to recover as soon as Rasputin saw him. And nobody quite knows how the healings were done or how real they were. Rasputin didn't like aspirin, which doctors were then giving out, which is an anticoagulant, and that may have helped his cause because obviously aspirin would have made bleeding worse, and it wasn't known then that it was an anticoagulant. The other thing was that once he'd got the confidence of the tsarina, the boy's mother, I think as soon as he arrived, her general stress level would drop, and then his would,

• 23:50Speaker 03

  the little boy's, and that probably had something to do with it as well, but nobody knows exactly.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Having removed the doctors and their harmful aspirin from the Tsarevich's room, Rasputin's calming prayers appear to work wonders immediately, and the boy begins to recover.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  For his mother Alexandra, it is nothing short of divine intervention. From that night on, Rasputin is no longer just a holy man. He is the family's protector.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  But outside the palace, most are unaware why he visits so frequently.

• 24:30Speaker 03

  He was a regular visitor, and he would visit the Tsarevich and the Grand Duchess's in their bedrooms, sometimes when they were wearing their bedclothes. News of that spread and was not well received, as you can imagine. And one of the crucial things is that the reasons for his visits were kept secret. It mustn't be known that the heir, this long-awaited little boy, was ill, very, very ill. So nobody knew.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  With the court and public mostly ignorant to his true role, Rasputin's new closeness to the imperial family makes him a man of dangerous importance. Court officials resent his influence, and priests question his piety. To the wider world, the idea that a barefoot peasant from Siberia now has the ear of the Tsarevich begins to feel like a scandal.

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• 26:22Speaker 02

  Rasputin's involvement in courtly affairs grows steadily after his first healing of the Tsarevich. Increasingly seeing him as her spiritual guide, Alexandra invites him to the palace, consults him on personal matters, and comes to believe that his prayers are the only thing keeping Alexei alive. The Tsar, however, is more cautious. Uncomfortable with governing and prone to deferring to those around him, especially his wife, he tolerates Rasputin largely because Alexandra is so convinced of his gifts. Nicholas does, however, at times urge caution. But his reluctance to challenge his wife only fuels the impression that the imperial

• 27:04Speaker 02

  household is being steered not by the Tsar, but by the empress. As such, Rasputin's presence is even more alarming to courtiers and ministers. Here is a peasant mystic sitting in private audiences with the Tsarina whispering advice on matters of the state. Rumors abound that he is not just her confidant, but her lover. A suggestion never substantiated, but widely believed.

• 27:32Speaker 03

  One of the clerics who he'd made an enemy of disseminated letters that the Tsarina had written to Rasputin, which said things like "I kiss you warmly, I want to sleep with my head on your shoulder," you know, very sort of affectionate letters, overly affectionate letters, which seemed to indicate that they were having an affair. In fact, they weren't, because she was very effusive in her letters to her sisters, to everybody.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  But in an age when the monarchy already seems distant from its people, Rasputin's closeness to the Romanovs deepens suspicions of decay at the heart of the empire.

• 28:11Speaker 03

  The rumours of him being with a Tsarina, obviously alienated the aristocrats who felt that the Tsarina was bringing the Romanovs into disrepute by allowing this sort of very dishevelled, unkempt man into the palace. The clerics disapproved of Rasputin's behaviour generally, and then finally, yes, the politicians started to worry about his influence.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  But he's also building a reputation for late-night drinking sessions, cavorting with prostitutes, and seducing society women who seek his counsel. Some of these tales are exaggerated, others well-founded. But together they paint a picture of debauchery that clashes violently with his image as a man of God. Newspapers begin to report lurid details, and his name becomes shorthand for scandal.

• 29:04Speaker 02

  Russia's fledgling parliament, the Duma, created after the 1905 revolution to give people a voice, is soon beginning to call for his removal. The Orthodox hierarchy is also growing suspicious, with bishops and priests accusing him of heresy, and attempts are made to investigate or curb his influence. Yet inside the palace, the Tsarina remains devoted, and the Tsar disinterested in dissuading her.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Now, on orders from the Prime Minister, the secret police, the Okhrana, begin a surveillance operation, hopeful of proving to the Tsar, once and for all, that the mad monk must be dismissed.

• 29:49Speaker 02

  It's a cool spring night in St Petersburg, 1912.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  The rain falls in sheets, slicking the cobblestones and drumming a beat on the windowpane.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  Across the road from a popular city bar, a rented room glows with a single lamp.

• 30:10Speaker 02

  Inside, two agents from the Okrana sit at a table littered with papers, half-empty vodka glasses, and surveillance files.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  One of the men is making notes, his pen scratching an insistent pulse over the hum of the city outside, while the other stares out of the window, watching their target.

• 30:32Speaker 02

  In the bar opposite, Rigori Rasputin sits at a crowded table. Beneath heavy chandeliers, the air thick with cigar smoke and perfume. His black robe is loose at the neck, his hair unkempt, his beard dark and wiry. Around him, women in pearls and lace lean close, their laughter exaggerated and loud.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  A waiter leans over to refill the monk's glass. Rasputin raises it high, his movements theatrical. At the next table, a young man whispers to his companion, eyes fixed on the scene, while the pianist hammers a waltz that can barely compete with the noise. As the night deepens, oblivious to the surveillance from across the road, the tall, imposing peasant from Siberia grows more animated with every toast. His voice becomes thunderous, his behavior more erratic, and his gestures more lewd.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  A woman reaches to steady him, but he merely catches her hand and kisses her roughly, to peals of laughter.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  At last, the doors open.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  Rasputin emerges into the night, coat thrown over his shoulders, followed by two women and a man in military uniform.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  Staggering across the slick street, he splashes through puddles with one of the women clinging drunkenly to his arm, their laughter cutting through the rain.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  A cab pulls up, and he climbs inside, the women and the officer bundling in after him. The driver snaps his reins, and the wheels vanish into the dark.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  Back in the room across the street, the lamplight flickers and the agents share a smile of satisfaction.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  They have proof, once more, that Rasputin's compromising ties to people of influence might do more than just embarrass the regime. In the morning, they'll embellish the report, to hammer home to the Tsar how this kind of behavior brings the monarchy into disrepute by association. It's a decent night's work.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  When Nicholas is presented with these increasingly lurid accounts, he remains indignant, viewing them as a smear on his wife's judgment, and demands these surveillance is halted. But even as the scandals surrounding Rasputin grow, Zareina insists that he alone can save the heir, the dynasty, and perhaps Russia itself.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  In 1912, while on a family holiday at a hunting lodge in Spala, Poland, Zareina Alexandra calls on Rasputin to once again heal her ailing son.

• 33:38Speaker 03

  He fell over in a boat, damaged his leg, and then, as a treat, the Zareina said, "Oh, I'll take you out for a ride", when he was slightly recovering from his leg wound. The ride somehow upset his stomach. He ended up with quite a serious hemorrhage. And in fact, they thought he was going to die. And Rasputin was in Siberia. The Zareina's friend and companion, Anna Druiva, who is quite well-known, she contacted Rasputin, who was walking by a river, and he said, "Oh, I had a headache. I knew that Alexis was ill." He sent two telegrams. One said, "The boy will not die", and the other one said, "Do not let the doctors bother him too much." And as soon as the telegrams arrived at Spala,

• 34:23Speaker 03

  Alexis started recovering. And from that point on, Rasputin could do no wrong.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  With his divine right confirmed in the Tsarina's eyes once more, she doubles down on her defense of him. Every time Rasputin seems cornered by public opinion, Alexandra steps in to support him. To her, these are malicious slanders against God's chosen servant and the man she once described as "Christ in miniature." But outside the palace walls, Rasputin symbolizes the secrecy, corruption, and decadence that threaten the imperial family's legitimacy, especially as Europe is hurtling towards war. For a few, especially the clergy, there is only one way to stop the problem, and that is to remove him altogether.

• 35:17Speaker 02

  In 1914, while at home in Siberia after another long stint in St. Petersburg, Rasputin is set upon by a fanatical female follower of the defrocked monk Iliodor, one of his fiercest clerical enemies. The woman, who happens to be missing a nose, attacks him on his way home from church, stabbing him in the stomach. The wound is so bad his intestines spill out, and yet he survives. Naturally, he attributes his recovery to divine intervention.

• 35:54Speaker 03

  He was very annoyed that it was a noseless stinker, he said, who attacked and stabbed him. He ended up in hospital at the time, and then war was declared and he tore off all his bandages. "Oh, if only I'd been in St. Petersburg, war wouldn't have been declared."

• 36:12Speaker 02

  When the First World War breaks out, Russia is plunged into crisis. The empire is still shaken by its humiliating defeat in the Russo-Japanese War a decade earlier, and confidence in the army's leadership is low. At the start of the conflict, the Tsar's cousin, Grand Duke Nicholas, commands the Russian armed forces. But after much campaigning against the Grand Duke, especially from the Tsarina, Tsar Nicholas II makes the fateful decision to take over the job himself.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  In 1915, Nicholas leaves St Petersburg to assume direct command of the army at the front. This leaves the government in the hands of Alexandra, and by extension, Rasputin, who was quick to step into the role of advisor.

• 36:56Speaker 03

  He then weighed in and was giving all sorts of advice about attacks and whatnot, and defenses, and things that he didn't really know much about.

• 37:09Speaker 02

  Suddenly, the mystic from Siberia is influencing the highest appointments in the empire. Ministers rise and fall based on Rasputin's counsel, and many top positions are given to wholly unsuitable candidates, who are either too old, too infirm, or too mentally unstable to cope.

• 37:28Speaker 03

  Tarina would write to her husband, you know, at the front, saying that some people were ours and some people were not ours. So in other words, she divided, and mainly ours, with the people who were sort of yes-men for the Tsar, Tarina, and Rasputin, I suppose, and not ours, were the enemies out there, the people Rasputin called the "wasps", who were all out after him, and there were a lot of them.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Rasputin's enemies accuse him of manipulating Alexandra to control policy. And as the war drags on and goes disastrously for Russia, rumors even swirl that he is a German agent undermining Russia's war effort.

• 38:09Speaker 02

  With the Tsar away at the front, the secret service doubled down on their efforts to prove his misdeeds and force Rasputin out.

• 38:16Speaker 03

  They were worried he was angling for a separate peace with Germany, that he was chatting up German spies in his house in St Petersburg. I think he did. There were one or two who visited Germans, and so he was suspected of wanting to negotiate a separate peace, which was horrific to the aristocracy at any rate.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  All the while, Rasputin's boorish behaviour continues unashamedly. Given so much fuel, the Okhrana's reports pile up. Secret meetings, nights of drinking, lewd behaviour, relations with women of influence, boasts of divine favour. Every line feeds the growing legend and the growing disgust.

• 39:03Speaker 02

  But even these reports are unreliable. The secret police have a reputation for padding their files with rumour and invention, especially when their superiors expect scandal.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  Some later claim that key details from these surveillance were embellished or simply made up. In trying to expose Rasputin, the Okhrana helped create the very mythology they feared.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  Nicholas continues to dismiss the reports, but the concern among the people remains that Rasputin is acting as some kind of proxy leader. As the army falters and the home front seethes with unrest, the Tsarina's confidant becomes the lightning rod for popular anger.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  With Alexandra considered hysterical and the Tsar weak, most believe that Rasputin is the only one running the show behind the scenes.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  By late 1916, food is running short, prices are soaring, and soldiers are deserting the front.

• 40:02Speaker 02

  In the shadows, radical ideas about the complete overthrow of the current system are gaining ground. Even among the ruling class, faith in the monarchy is at an all-time low, and a growing number of aristocrats and politicians believe that Rasputin must be removed if Russia is to be saved.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  In the duma, members of parliament rail against him in speeches, church leaders denounce him from their pulpits, even other members of the royal family urge Nicholas and Alexandra to break with him. But the Tsarina's devotion is unshakable. And so, eventually, a small group of conspirators resolve to take matters into their own hands.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  Prince Felix Yusupov, husband of the Tsar's only niece and heir to one of Russia's greatest fortunes, is charming, vain, and restless. Once a favorite at court, he is now consumed by a sense of humiliation at what Rasputin has done to the family name. A cousin of the Tsar shares Yusupov's outrage, as does Vladimir Puriskivich, a firebrand nationalist and member of the Duma who provides the political zeal.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  He sees the mystic as a foreign agent and a traitor, whose removal is nothing less than a patriotic duty.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  Together they believe that killing Rasputin is the only way to save Russia. His death will break the Tsarina's obsession, restore faith in the monarchy, and halt the slide towards revolution.

• 41:39Speaker 02

  Secretly, the plan takes shape.

• 41:43Speaker 02

  Yusupov offers his family's palatial townhouse on the Moika River as the setting and begins to plot the method of its execution.

• 41:53Speaker 03

  I think Felix Yusupov fancied the idea of the role of murderer, a savior of Russia and the murderer of Rasputin, the mad monk. And he's took a great deal of trouble creating the murder scene, where Rasputin was going to die. Rasputin would arrive after midnight and a party would have finished, but the remains of the party would be there. A cellar was created as a room where the party would have been, the fictional party, that is. And all Rasputin could see would be the detritus of the end of the meal. And he was going to meet Felix Yusupov's wife, the beautiful Irina. That was the bait for him. And they would have music playing, but they only had a record of Yankee Doodle Dandy, which went on all night.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  In the guise of this party, complete with wine and cakes laced with cyanide, the conspirators hoped to stage the final act in a drama that they believe will rescue the empire itself.

• 42:54Speaker 02

  But, as with so many cunning schemes, it doesn't quite go according to plan.

• 43:08Speaker 00

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• 43:34Speaker 05

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• 44:14Speaker 02

  It's late December 1916, at the Moika Palace in St Petersburg.

• 44:21Speaker 02

  Inside, Prince Yusupov, the host of tonight's devious celebrations, has decked out the cellar with the apparent remains of a party. Music plays on a loop from the study above, and the table is set with a white cloth. Though the festivities appear mostly over, among the debris is a tea set, a decanter of Madeira wine and a plate of sugared cakes. Because despite the mess, everything is in fact perfectly arranged, with Yusupov and his co-conspirators having meticulously rehearsed their parts.

• 44:59Speaker 02

  Now, while Puriskovich, the politician, and the others wait in the study above, the prince prepares for his guest.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  When Rasputin arrives, he does so with his familiar bluster, taking in the table in all its finery.

• 45:16Speaker 02

  At his host's bidding, he sits down, and Yusupov serves him tea. He's offered a cake, and though at first he declines, after trying one, he proceeds to demolish several in quick succession.

• 45:30Speaker 02

  The game is on. Yusupov knows exactly how much cyanide they laced those cakes with, and even a big man like Rasputin should be easily felled by the dose.

• 45:43Speaker 02

  They settle into a discussion, but the minutes tick by, and the Siberian shows no sign of weakening. Soon he demands a glass of wine, and Yusupov gladly gives it, knowing that it too is poison.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  The first glass goes down easy, and the conversation continues to flow. But the prince's nerves are failing. Why isn't it working?

• 46:09Speaker 02

  Another glass is poured, and drunk, and another. And now, seeming to smell a rat, Rasputin tells his host that he's wasting his time. "You can't do anything to me," he rails.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  By now, it's 2:30 a.m., and Rasputin hasn't even stumbled.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  Anxiously, the host excuses himself for a moment and relays the disaster to Puriskovich and his co-conspirators, who can't believe it either. If poison isn't doing the job, they'll have to use a blunter instrument.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  Yusupov returns to the basement with a revolver, and, left with no other option, he raises the gun and shoots Rasputin, who collapses onto the bed in ruck.

• 47:06Speaker 02

  On hearing the shot, the others rush down to see their quarry bleeding from the chest. Yusupov's assistant inspects the body and declares him dead. The job is done.

• 47:20Speaker 02

  They turn off the light and head upstairs to congratulate themselves on saving the empire.

• 47:28Speaker 02

  Even as they celebrate, however, Yusupov has a strange feeling and goes to double-check his victim. There is no pulse, but as he stands to leave, Rasputin's face twitches. Then his eyes flash open.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  Foaming at the mouth, Rasputin pulls himself to his feet, very much alive, despite already being poisoned and shot. Though he lunges at Yusupov, the prince manages to slip out of his grip. He sprints out to warn the others, but before they know what's happening, the door from the cellar flies open and a bleeding Rasputin crawls out onto the courtyard, blood dripping into the snow.

• 48:10Speaker 02

  Roaring like an animal, Rasputin gets to his feet and runs. Pyryskovich fires off two shots.

• 48:18Speaker 02

  Rasputin totters and then falls into a snowbank.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  Yusupov approaches the body and finds him, finally, dead. The assassins bundle him into a car and drive him to the wooden bridge across the river Neva, where they throw him into the icy water below.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  Like every story about Rasputin, the exact details of that fateful night are uncertain. This bizarre account of his supernatural resistance to death comes from Yusupov's own memoir, written years later and almost certainly embroidered for effect. The scene he describes is strikingly similar to one in Dostoevsky's "The Landlady", published long before Rasputin was even born, which casts further doubt on the fanciful tale.

• 49:17Speaker 03

  Stories then emerged that Rasputin was actually killed with a single bullet in the head from a British Secret Service agent, which in a way seems more likely to me.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  Whatever the mechanics of his assassination, the outcome remains. Rasputin dies on December 30, 1916.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  In the days after the murder, Rasputin's body is pulled from beneath the ice of the Neva. One hand raised as if in benediction.

• 49:47Speaker 02

  When news reaches the palace, the reaction is mixed.

• 49:52Speaker 03

  The Tsar was ambivalent, by all accounts. The stories he walked away whistling, having heard that Rasputin's been killed, possibly he wasn't even surprised. But the Tsarina was absolutely mortified. I mean, if the person that you rely on completely to save your child somehow has been so hated that he's been murdered, she was devastated.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  The Tsarina collapses in grief. She orders Rasputin's body to be buried near the royal family's chapel, in a final act of devotion to her favorite holy man and healer. But beyond the palace gates, the capital mostly celebrates his death, hailing the conspirators as heroes. For a brief moment, it seems that crime has worked, and that Russia has been freed from the peasant monk who held its throne in thrall.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  But the relief doesn't last. Rasputin may be gone, but nothing improves.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  The war is still raging. Russia's armies are being slaughtered at the front, and the railways that once fed the cities are collapsing under the strain.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  Inflation soars, fuel and food become scarce, years of mismanagement, defeat, and hardship now come to a head.

• 51:11Speaker 03

  The murder of Rasputin is now seen as the first shot of the revolution, because actually everything fell down like a house of cards afterwards.

• 51:22Speaker 02

  Within weeks, bread queues stretch through the frozen streets, soldiers grow mutinous, and crowds take to the squares demanding change. Not because Rasputin is dead, but because the country is starving, exhausted by war and desperate for a government that can save it.

• 51:42Speaker 02

  Worse still, the murder has unintended consequences. Rasputin's death only drives Empress Alexandra further into isolation. Convinced that dark forces are conspiring against her family, she hardens against the Duma and becomes even more determined to rule without compromise. The very act meant to save the monarchy instead deepens its crisis.

• 52:07Speaker 03

  The people were aggravated to the extent that they felt they had nothing to lose anymore. They were just going to wreak havoc. They were losing the war, people were being killed. The Tsar was basically told, "Your only choice is to abdicate, you've lost control."

• 52:26Speaker 02

  By March 1917, the Tsar abdicates and the royal family is placed under arrest. A provisional government is hastily formed in Petrograd, but it inherits a country broken by war, hunger and hardship. The revolutionary movements that have been building for years begin to seize their chance.

• 52:47Speaker 02

  Bolshevik leaders like Lenin and Trotsky, long exiled or operating in secret, now return to the capital and call for radical change. The streets fill with demonstrations, soldiers desert the front and workers strike. When the fragile provisional government now collapses, the Bolsheviks sweep it aside and seize control, plunging Russia into civil war and setting the stage for a new revolutionary state.

• 53:15Speaker 02

  Nicholas, Alexandra and all five of their children, the youngest of whom Alexei is just 13, are slaughtered in the basement of the house in which they are being kept. And with that, the dynasty that ruled Russia for three centuries is a thing of the past.

• 53:36Speaker 02

  And yet, even as Russia rewrites its story, one figure from the old order refuses to vanish.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  In death, Rasputin becomes larger than he ever was in life, and his legend is quickly magnified. To his detractors, he remains the embodiment of corruption, lust, and superstition, and symbolizes the disease that poisoned the Russian monarchy from within. To others, he is a scapegoat, little more than a convenient vessel for Russia's wider failures.

• 54:09Speaker 02

  But can one man really be blamed for a collapsing economy, a disastrous war, and a ruling family fatally out of touch with its people?

• 54:19Speaker 03

  Was he really responsible for the revolution? I can't see that. I don't think it's fair to blame him. But it's a pity that they couldn't talk about why he was there, why he was healing the Tsar of it, which was obviously a huge thing.

• 54:34Speaker 02

  In the century since his death, Rasputin's story has blurred the line between fact and folklore. Memoirs, propaganda, and myth have twisted him into whatever shape each age required. At times, he is a devil, a saint, a healer, seducer, or spy. He appears in novels, operas, and films. His piercing stare and black robe instantly recognizable.

• 55:00Speaker 03

  I'm afraid he's become a sort of comic creation in a way, hasn't he? Because what with the rah rah Rasputin and all that. He's a creation, like most people are, of the people around him. I feel a lot was projected onto him. He was just a sort of good-time guy. He loves wine, women, and song.

• 55:19Speaker 02

  Whatever the truth, Rasputin will forever be the mad monk, the peasant mystic who rose as the Romanov dynasty was already beginning to fall, and whose story captures the tumultuous twilight moments of imperial Russia.

• 55:41Speaker 02

  Next time on Short History, we'll bring you a short history of the Rwandan genocide.

• 55:47Speaker 06

  So there's people that want to essentially defect from this, just as is in the case with the Holocaust. There are individuals that say, "I don't want to participate in this." During the Holocaust, in these police battalions, if somebody didn't want to participate, for the most part, they were allowed to just walk away, turn their back on what was going on. They were probably ridiculed for it, but they weren't killed. In the Rwanda case, in many of these circumstances, not all, but in many of them, if you didn't participate in the killing, you would be considered complicit and you'd be hacked up too, which increases the odds that people will participate.

• 56:23Speaker 02

  That's next time.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  If you can't wait a week until the next episode, you can listen to it right away by subscribing to Noiser Plus. Head to www.noiser.com/subscriptions for more information.

• 56:44Speaker 00

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