Grigori Rasputin - Royal Blood - A Historian Reacts #2

welcome back everyone to episode two of our look at the life of gregory rasputin one of the most interesting and also consequential lives of the 20th century if you did not see the first episode of this reaction there's a link in the description that will take you back to that as well as the link to the original content from the channel extra history uh who we are using for a launch of our discussion uh before i get into today's episode real quickly um i want to let you know i am going to be doing some more videos talking about the situation in ukraine and with that in mind my friend jd from the history underground who has one of the best historic related channels on youtube and if you haven't already checked him out definitely do so if you're looking for content from historic sites like the stuff i do there's nobody who does it better than jd but right now he is over on the poland ukraine border jd is there with his son who he adopted from ukraine from an orphanage there so obviously they have a great deal of love for the people of ukraine and they wanted to do something to help so they're over there on the border helping with the refugee crisis if you follow he's posted four videos updating and showing the situation definitely check those out and while you're at it if you have anything that you can spare and you want to find some way that you can do something to help the humanitarian crisis that's unfolding there with the millions of people who've been displaced from their homes who've lost everything but what they could carry jd has been making run after run after run to the store buying all the suitcases that he can load up in his car because a lot of these people are coming across a lot of these are elderly people coming across holding things in grocery bags and that's everything they have and it's really difficult and so just little things like having a suitcase uh to put what they have with them or what they're given at the border because there's a lot of people helping out at the border giving them things goes a long way so my wife and i made a donation and we're asking other people to consider doing the same thing i'm gonna put the link in the description to this video to jd's patreon or not patreon to his paypal account where you can make donations i think last i checked he had spent over two thousand dollars on suitcases and was still doing all he could and i i can vouch for him 110 he's a good guy your money is going directly to the people who need it if you send it to him through paypal so i'll put that link in there check out his videos from the situation there you won't regret it okay let's dive into today's video fall 1907 peterhof palace saint petersburg zorovich alexei heir to the throne of russia lies contorted in pain his leg has swollen to alarming levels black patches are under his eyes he'd been playing in the park when he'd fallen opening an internal hemorrhage in his leg and while a nanny follows the young sarovic day and night to try and prevent him from injuring himself the boy is three and doesn't always listen this is the most closely guarded secret in russia the heir to the throne has hemophilia when they cut his umbilical cord it bled for two days a bruise or cut that would be a comparatively minor injury for another child could kill him his mother is distraught doctors can only give him aspirin and he begs his mom to make the pain go away so a couple of things real quick there the gene that causes hemophilia can be a genetic one and it's known to have been carried by queen victoria and passed on to her descendants which alexandra the zarina who is alexi's mother is a granddaughter of queen victoria and so uh you know and most of the european royal houses descend from queen victoria uh queen victoria's eldest grandson is uh kaiser wilhelm ii uh her another one of her grandsons is king george v of england uh and it goes through many of the houses and so this is something we know took place and you'll hear them mentioned there about how you know he fell and got an internal hemorrhage in his leg you know most people think of hemophilia oh man if you get a cut and it'll keep bleeding well no a cut on the outside is a little easier to control because you can sew it up you can deal with that it's those internal injuries that are the problem hemophilia just means that your body doesn't have the ability to clot like normal people do normal person gets a cut you'll bleed a little bit but then your body will heal itself it'll clot that so that you don't keep bleeding this is the real fear is an internal injury you don't see and you don't know about you know where your body might normally heal that on its own in the case of alexia it doesn't and you'll hear that they the only thing the doctors are doing is treating him with aspirin that's going to be a key because a lot of the theories are that that's how rasputin heals him as he takes them off aspirin because what does aspirin do it thins the blood it makes it worse uh you know a lot of people take low-dose aspirin because it helps with heart attacks because it thins your blood makes it a little easier to deal with that so the blockages aren't as severe so alexandra sends a telegram find rasputin [Music] thanks so much to hellofresh for continuing bring history to the table if rasputin had never come in contact with nicholas and alexandra he would have remained a footnote in russian history an obscure figure known mostly to scholars of the late romanov era but in 1905 they had their first meeting with the holy man as nicholas called rasputin in his diary soon rasputin was sending them letters full of encouragement and spiritual advice and they kept meeting irregularly now to understand why the royal couple liked rasputin you first need to understand the unique pressures that they were under pressures that were partially due to historical trends and circumstance and partially of their own making nicholas and alexandra were a rare thing in european royalty a genuine love match that's true but they still had to overcome opposition from both families to get married and for good reason because oh boy check out these red flags alexandra's grandmother queen victoria thought russia was unstable in 1881 revolutionaries had assassinated nicholas grandfather in a bomb attack and she worried her granddaughter would be killed after all while victoria liked nicholas he was an inflexible autocrat meaning more conflict on the horizon and that's a fair concern because there had been violence going on in russia for the better part of a century at this point pretty much going back to the napoleonic era you saw some pretty regular violence um directed toward the royal family directed toward the aristocracy things like that and it wasn't unique to there i mean uh the uh kaiser of the austro-hungarian empire joseph uh franz joseph his wife was assassinated in the late 19th century uh and there were other assassinations that took place at this point and later on so uh this is an ongoing concern especially in eastern europe nicholas's parents by contrast disliked alexandra because she was german as anti-german sentiment was high in russia and only got worse as the country approached world war one plus there were doubts of alexandra's fitness since she had such severe social anxiety that she was known for freezing during piano recitals and not talking at parties relatable sure but probably not the qualities you look for in an empress and when they married all those forces came together alexandra was intensely private and at a time she needed to be making allies she let few people get close to the imperial family and this was a problem for both nicholas and alexandra is that they weren't bad people in fact quite the opposite i think they were probably pretty decent human beings uh they were very out of touch or at least seemed out of touch and part of that as they mentioned here has to do with personality but it also is not a good look at a time when you've got people starving people very poor and they're looking to a absolute monarch for answers for help and the guy comes across anyway as not caring he comes across as kind of a marie antoinette let them eat cake even though that never really happened but that kind of attitude uh which i think is probably unfair to them but you can understand why it was seen that way her stiffness at social events and awkwardness in public was misinterpreted as arrogance or disdain meaning her absence from the social scene and apparent secretiveness opened the door for society gossips to pass off any rumor as genuine such as that alexandra was having a lesbian affair with her favorite maid of honor and as the society rumors reached the couple it fueled their us vs them mentality made alexandra even more private and created a situation where they thought every rumor about their inner circle were also just vicious lies this is one of the reasons i really appreciate extra history's look at history because they analyze this stuff and obviously there's a certain amount of opinion that goes into observing things like this but i think it's a good one i think it's an accurate look at the situation uh understanding the the human psyche understanding the social and mental aspect of all of this is really important to understanding these events and i mention this all the time when i speak in schools to students and we're talking about how people act the way that they do and um you know there are two there are a number of things that will cause a otherwise rational person to act very irrationally but two of the most prominent are fear and your kids uh you know fear will cause people who are otherwise quite rational to do completely irrational things that from the outside you would look at that and think why would you do that why would you act that way well when you understand that fear is motivating it you know here's an example and i digress but i hope this helps understand we live in a i wouldn't say an urban area but we live in the suburbs okay you know we live in a town of 30 000 people uh within 20 minutes of my house i can get to six different high schools um you know so we don't live in farmland we don't live in in the woods or in the mountains or anything like that uh so occasionally you'll see a wild animal here and there a deer or something nearby but it's very rare that you see things like bears uh well a couple of years ago there was a black bear spotted in the parking lot at walmart which is like three miles from our house about a half hour later somebody posted a picture on social media that that bear was in the township park well if you look at a map here is walmart and here is our house and here here's the park and so i'm looking at that and i'm thinking the bear's coming right toward our house now i'm not rationally thinking okay the odds that it's going to show up in my yard are slim to none and it's a black bear so it's not even that harmful if you scream at it it'll probably run away all i'm thinking is my six-year-old son's playing in the backyard and there's a bear headed this way so i went outside i screamed at him and told him to get in the house that was fear fear about something happening to my child and that will cause you to do things you otherwise wouldn't do so put yourself in their situation there's increasing anger toward the royal family they're hanging on by a thread anyway and they've got a kid who at any moment could trip and die because of it and he's the heir to the throne all of this is the perfect storm for someone like rasputin to take advantage of remember that tidbit later things only got worse when alexandra had four girls in a row healthy wonderful kids but none who could inherit the throne in their desperation the couple ended up turning to a french miracle worker who claimed alexandra was pregnant with a boy and they had so much confidence in this man they even made an official announcement cool then months later they found out alexandra wasn't pregnant at all and under pressure from advisors nicholas expelled the healer from russia and issued an announcement of miscarriage then came alexei in 1904 and his hemophilia the next year russia lost a war to japan precipitating a revolution where nicholas had to cede some of his autocratic power this included a federal assembly and greater freedom of speech rights meaning now newspapers could air their own criticisms of the imperial family so why does all this matter why is the air such an important thing you look throughout history and very often if there was not a strong male heir in position it meant a much weaker situation for the monarch a lot of times until you had a son until you had an heir you felt threatened you felt insecure on your throne even better if you had two errors an air and a spare as they called it uh so this is a matter of national security for nicholas to have a son but then wants to fight you find out that that sun's very weak and sickly and could possibly die may never reach adulthood uh you're still just as precarious so by the time rasputin arrives what we have is an isolated deeply religious family set upon by every imaginable kind of pressure from political to social to medical to celebrity plus the very real fear of assassination and their greatest hope for the future is an uncontrollable toddler who can die if he skins his knee all of that matters because all of that is why they're willing to turn to rasputin take all that away they probably don't do it or the first moment that it starts to look bad or damage their reputation he's gone like the guy the french guy but when he comes along and he's able to make the situation better of course they're gonna turn to him of course they're gonna trust him put yourself in that situation if you're a parent if you're a mother or a father if you're a monarch in their situation i think most people would have done what they did in other words when rasputin started meeting with the couple he gave them something they truly needed hope he told nicholas that god supported him holding on to power his magnetic but calming manner and his assurances god would protect the family also soothed alexandra and he spoke to them about the importance of love love of god the family's love for each other and the love of one's fellow christians but it got a level deeper in 1907 when alexei fell and alexandra called for rasputin to come heal her boy rasputin arrived prayed over the child's bed and made the sign of the cross over him then he told little alexei that his pain would go away that god would heal him and that he should get some sleep then he left and alexei got better he fell asleep and the hemorrhaging stopped and by the next morning he was sitting up free from fever and recovering now how did that work you might be asking will historians have debated exactly why you know short of divine intervention that this would be the case one theory is that rasputin often threw out the doctors who were giving alexei blood-thinning aspirin as treatment another is that perhaps purposely rasputin tended to show up just as bleeding episodes were ending while still others say that rasputin's presence simply calmed alexandra whose anxious behavior often scared alexei which led to increased blood pressure and further bleeding all of that could be true at the same time or it could be any number of combinations of those things but you know we'll never know for sure even nicholas himself noticed how rasputin helped alexandra's anxiety once when the prime minister complained about rasputin visiting the family nicholas reportedly said better 10 rasputins than one of the empress's hysterical fits rasputin increasingly visited the romanovs in their private apartments even being allowed to play with the children pray with them at bedtime and speak alone with alexandra in her room now this was extremely unusual for someone not in the family particularly being around the girls in their night dresses but the tsar and zarina were not alarmed and other servants were present and again as we mentioned in the last episode things that you and i rationally would look at and say ah that's not a good look but that looks bad there's a lot of rumors that could surround things like that when you have enemies you overlook that stuff because my son's getting better if that means that i have to put up with some eccentricities put up with things i wouldn't normally permit my son's getting better that's going to override all that stuff the children treated him sort of like a kind and fun uncle meanwhile rasputin was using his new legitimacy to move up in the world he went back to pakroska with money buying a bigger house and showing the villagers a shirt alexandra had sown for him proximity to power is attractive to people it gives you it gets you into places you didn't otherwise get i'm the guy who healed the future emperor of russia you know that goes a long way and that'll get some things that rasputin wants he also started bringing his followers around almost all women of both aristocratic and non-aristocratic status he would give tours of the village promoting the spirituality of the peasant lifestyle have his followers stay at his house and bathe with them at mixed gender bath houses hey at least he's bathing i remember yesterday we talked about how he would wear the same shirt for like a year and a half at least he's bathing which was scandalous in high society but common among peasants at the time and that's when the investigation started the priests of bakrovska accused rasputin of heresy and both the orthodox church and zarist's secret police began looking into rasputin's connections to the cleistis and rumors he was sleeping with followers aristocratic gossip circulated that rasputin was bathing with the children at night and it's not a huge leap then when these rumors start going around and stories start coming out about him doing these things it doesn't take long before you're gonna look at that and say well wait a second if he does that with them he's probably doing the same thing with alexandra and with their girls and with people in the palace and we can't allow that sleeping with alexandra and had impregnated olga the eldest romanov child there you go now to anyone in the inner circle these stories were patently and obviously false but they also primed the royal family to dismiss more credible accusations like that rasputin had raped one of his female followers then the scandals reached another level as russia's newly emboldened press got wind of them there's a really good point to be made there and that's i think an important lesson for us to learn today is that when you constantly hurl accusations about a person ridiculous accusations that have no basis in fact and over and over and over again quickly get dismissed it's the whole crying wolf thing then when something comes along that's actually credible people are tone deaf to it you know they've just okay we've heard this over and over and over and over again and so they just dismiss it even though there might be reality to it a great example of this and i may step on some toes here and i may offend some people but it's an example that i see a lot lately there seems to be a really quick trigger when it comes to accusing people of racism in today's society racism is evil i wish it didn't exist i think it's awful i think any time we prejudge a person based on anything based on their skin color based on their social economic background based on their ethnicity based on what part of the world they come from that's horrible and should never happen but that word and that accusation gets thrown out there so much anymore that when it really happens people are like oh come on you know you actually create the opposite effect you create a kickback against it and now when it really does happen where it really does exist people are like oh they and they brush it aside and they ignore it because that's all they've heard all the time and that's just one example there are a lot of different ways that we do that you know throwing the the term nazi at people on the right wing or throwing the term socialist or communist at people on the left those kinds of things you throw them out there often enough people just stop listening and so all these accusations that were being made against rasputin that had no basis in fact hid the fact that there really were some things going on that needed to be dealt with the stories of rasputin became front-page news even as former promoters turned on him theophan said the holy man had been corrupted by high society and haemorrhagin had a revelation in prayer that rasputin was a demon in fact of his church allies only eliador stuck by him though that wasn't really saying much since by this point eliador was way off the deep end he'd begun claiming major government ministers were secretly jewish freemason socialists started printing images of jesus but with eliador's face and barricaded himself in his monastery in a months-long police standoff yeah you're not going to have a lot of credibility on issues like rasputin when we when you're kind of going down the same trails as him but nicholas and alexandra didn't budge even when the minister of internal affairs came to the tsar and shared the results of his investigation claiming rasputin was in fact accleesed the tsar simply said that their contacts with rasputin were a private matter not one for the state things were getting hot though and this this would have been the perfect moment for the tsar to kick rasputin to the curb and minimize impact on his family and the monarchy instead they just told him to go away for a little while and sent him on a pilgrimage to the holy land not just helping him escape the limelight but also to burnish his reputation as a devout man it didn't work because the rasputin that now existed in the public imagination was neither the kind healer the romanovs knew or even the abusive manipulator some of his burned followers saw him to be the public you see saw nothing but a sorcerer a demon an agent of the devil trying to make the royal family his puppets and that is not unique either that's even in non-religious circles that's something that was very common you would have uh times in history where uh some adviser some person close to the king was viewed as having some some magical sorcery witchcraft powers over the king because why else would he listen to that person except that he's been bewitched and put under a spell somehow people believed that throughout the centuries that has been a common thing and so while it was treason to go directly against the monarch it wasn't necessarily treason to say i'm loyal to the monarch but that person he's got in a position of influence it's gotta go he is the problem and they would target that person thinking that if they got rid of that person it'll solve all the problems and everything will be okay because we all know nicholas is a good guy and he just wants what's best for us but we've got to get rid of rasputin so that he can know what's best for us again so yeah he's going to become the target of anxiety in the in the emperor and the empire but by the time they get rid of rasputin you know the writings on the wall but we'll get into that let me know your thoughts use the comment section below if you want to add something to the conversation please do and we'll see you again tomorrow with the next episode thanks for watching

Channel: Vlogging Through History

Views: 34,058

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Id: Lf2KWUxuWUY

Length: 23min 58sec (1438 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 26 2022