Rasputin

Rasputin has achieved fame as an evil 'mad monk'.  A Google search throws up any number of websites describing his life, excesses and death.  Some of them are, quite frankly, more disgusting than Rasputin was!

Many of the stories about Rasputin, however, come from pamphlets and rumours AFTER the February Revolution, when the revolutionaries were trying to create the impression of the old monarchy as a time of evil and corruption, and to destroy the old ideas of the Tsar as a ruler from God.

There is little serious historical writing about the effect Rasputin had on the events, although one army instructor said that Rasputin had broken the soldiers' loyalty to the Tsar, and Kerensky (head of the provisional government) said that 'without Rasputin, there would have been no Lenin'.  Yet for a time, while Nicholas was away fighting with the army, Rasputin and the Tsarina essentially ran the government of Russia.

Mikhail Rodzyanko, President of the Duma, published a book in 1927 called The Reign of Rasputin, in which he laid much of the blame for the Revolution on Rasputin and his followers alienating the Tsar from the public:

“The Rasputinites, led together with the parties of the Extreme Right, laid the foundations of the Russian Revolution, for they estranged the Emperor from his people and allowed a shadow to be cast on the lustre of the Crown”.

The historian Bernard Pares (1927) stressed the damage Rasputin did to the government of Russia, and reckoned there were two times when Rasputin intervened to ruin its chance of survival.  The first was in 1915, after the munitions scandal, when Nicholas had started to with the Duma to set up a War Industries Committee and had begun to reform his adminstration .. until Rasputin and the Tsarina persuaded him instead to dismiss the Duma and reverse the reforms.  The second was in the period after September 1915 when the Tsar was away with the army at the front; Pares states that: "it is the fact that Rasputin, from September 1915 to his death in December 1916, really ruled the Russian empire", and lists dozens of crazy interferences with the running of the Church and the government.  He concludes:

Russia was confronted with a monstrous regime which would have seemed impossible in some small duchy in the Middle Ages. 

In the midst of a world-wide struggle, in a time of the closest collaboration with the best brains of Western statesmanship, the Russian Ministers were selected by an ignorant, blind and hysterical woman on the test of their subservience to an ignorant, fantastic and debauched adventurer ... and the supreme commands of the adventurer permeated every detail of government in every branch of the administration. 

Meanwhile, in his drunken revels he babbled publicly of his influence over the Empress, held a daily reception attended by the worst financial swindlers, and preached views both on the war and on the government of the country, which were shared only by the avowed friends of Germany, who evidently had easier access to him than any one else. 

Writing 70 years later, the historian Orlando Figes echoed much the same sentiments.

Writing in 1996, the Gregory Freeze described how the Tsar and Tsarina's support drove a wedge between them and the Church, many of whose clergy and laity were horrified, not just by Rasputin's lechery, but by his claim to be a staretz ('elder'), and by his interference in religious matters (for instance, he declared a public prayer-giving, appointed bishops, and created a saint). 

So their closeness to Rasputin lost the Tsar and Tsarine the support of the people, the Church, and the Duma - the three key foundations of their power.  In a paper for the Young Historian's Conference in 2017, historian Jessie Radcliffe made the following comments:

Increasingly, members of the Duma began to see their rulers as under the thumb of someone who was nothing more than a libertine and a peasant and feared the crown would never be in full control again...  Rasputin polarized and alienated the Duma and distracted it from acting as a unified force against the stirring revolution. 

Rasputin also caused ripples of anxiety and resentment throughout the church... 

The Romanov’s association with Rasputin also helped fuel public hostility and discontent with the Imperial Family....  No matter where one looked, Rasputin left his mark.  The Russians were hungry and dying while their ruler blundered out on the front lines and an extremely controversial man appeared to be holding the reins of power... 

While Rasputin was not the sole cause for the Revolution of 1917, the division he fomented weakened the already shaky foundations of Russia.  Rasputin impacted every facet of Russian life...  The Imperial Family’s continued support of Rasputin and their acts of retaliation against those that opposed him alienated the Tsar and Tsarina from the people and the leaders of the church and state.  Having lost the respect and trust of most Russians, it became inevitable that the Tsars would fall, dragged down by the weight of Rasputin and the frustrations of the Russian people.   

Going Deeper

You can see an example of typical webpages on Rasputin at:

•  Rah, Rah Rasputin - the song that made him famous in the 1980s

•  The Murder of Rasputin - fun, but of no use to a serious historian.

More thoughtful sites can be found at:

•  Who's Who: Grigory Rasputin

To assess the impact of Rasputin, you will need to read:

•  Rasputin's influence - a passage from Orlando Figes' great book: A People's Tragedy.

Source A

A cartoon of Rasputin with the Tsar and the Tsarina, supposedly drawn in 1916.  The words in Russian mean: 'the Russian Royal Family'.

You can see other satirical cartoons by clicking here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5