Grigori Rasputin - The Mad Monk - A Historian Reacts #1

welcome back everybody well the people have spoken and you have overwhelmingly voted over on patreon for us to take a look at extra histories series on gregory rasputin so i'm excited to dive into this one i know a little bit about rasputin's story and we've covered it here and there in videos about the russian revolution and things like that this is a story of manipulation it's a story of how people respond to fear especially fear over their children it's a story about like sex scandals and intrigue and the way that the media gets involved and how public perception can impact things and how one person being connected at the highest levels can help drive an entire empire toward anarchy and war it's all of that stuff so i'm excited to dive into this one we're going to take a look at part one today as always i'll put the link in the description to the original content over at extra history please make sure that you give them a like and a subscribe if you haven't already by far the channel that i do the most reactions to because i like how they do things i like the way they tell a story i think it's easy to follow i think it's presented well and i'm excited to dive into this one so let's go ahead and do it winter palace st petersburg may 6 1917. the hammers of the typewriter crashed down on the page extraordinary commission of inquiry for the investigation of illegal acts by ministers and other responsible persons of the tsarist regime anna once a maid of honor to the empress of russia nervously rings her hands she sits in the throne room but there's no longer a throne in it the wallpaper has been torn down just like the tsar anna you see has been brought here from prison across from her the interrogator smokes and when the typist is ready he begins to ask questions he wants to know about the tsar and zarina their contacts with occultists and mesmerists but especially about one man how he wants to know did the imperial family meet rasputin [Music] and that's the thing about this whole story is that had this guy not gotten the connection that he got to the tsarina especially and if you're not familiar the zarina is the wife of the czar she's the empress uh in this case she happens to be i believe a granddaughter of queen victoria so that's going to be an important part of this story because it's through descendants of queen victoria that we're going to see the hemophiliac uh the the gene that causes hemophilia get passed down and that's gonna become an important part of this story thanks so much to world anvil for helping us forge today's historical tale if there's one character from russian history everybody knows it's gregory rasputin arguably more famous than the tsar and zarina he served his reputation for occult powers and debauchery has transcended the historical reality of his life transforming him into everything from a horror movie villain to a comic book character to a beer mascot to the subject matter of that amazing bony m song we riffed with as our april fools episode so and uh if you've seen the the movie the king's man that just came out it's a prequel to the kingsman series rashford's a big part of it and boy they've got him down i mean the guy that plays him looks like him and he's got the actions and the personality and actually a decent part of the story even though they're inserting a fictionalized version of it uh it actually gets a lot of his demise pretty accurate interestingly because the british may have been involved here i mean let's not kid ourselves that song slaps after all who can resist the story of a mad monk who brought down a dynasty but did he see rasputin became involved with the tsar at a pivotal moment in russian history just as nicholas ii lost his aristocratic powers and the monarchy entered a tailspin into war and revolution and rasputin became seen in political circles and the press as either the cause of the royals detachment and decline or a symptom and you know that that poses a great question and interesting what if what if this whole thing had happened 20 years earlier what if rasputin came along 20 years earlier we might not have ever even heard of him because first of all there's no zarovich alexi the heir to the throne which is kind of rasputin's in with the tsarina and therefore with the tsar himself uh it's there's no world war one going on and so you don't have this complication of other things happening uh i think rasputin is just somebody we never even hear about if he comes along 20 20 years sooner but it comes along at this conflux of events uh at this time when all of these things are going downhill at the same time and he just becomes one more thing that pushes the monarchy into non-existence in in russia death too only enhanced his legend because once the tsar abdicated and the country barreled towards revolution the dead rasputin served as a convenient way for monarchists and royal advisors to shift blame for the tsar's poor decisions away from themselves even our understanding of rasputin's assassination comes from the let's just say dubious accounts of his killers in other words rasputin is surrounded by a cloud of myth but like many tales from history the true story is far more incredible and this makes another good point that we talk about all the time on this channel and that is that uh when we're studying history it's always important to understand the sources first of all know what the sources are and what they're saying and they very rarely are always going to agree eyewitnesses very rarely agree even though they might see the same event but also you have to ask a lot of questions what is this person's motivation in telling this version of the story what are they hoping to accomplish who are they talking to um and all of those things factor into and how close were they to these events were they an eyewitness are they hearing it from someone else do they have a reason to lie do they have a reason to embellish this what purpose would it serve for them in doing so there's all kinds of things we have to ask you just can't say well they wrote it down it must be true and we have to ask those questions when it comes to rasputin too the man who would walk in imperial palaces and serve an emperor was born in january 1869 in the siberian village of pakrovska and we know about as much of rasputin's childhood as we do about most siberian peasants from the time nothing which is to say girl almost nothing his family was illiterate and grigory would remain so until his twenties and though political enemies would later and that's not unusual that's not unusual in any part of the world at this time in fact i want to take a look at some statistics about this what was the literacy rate like in the late 1800s in some of these major countries around the world okay so uh i'll try to zoom in on this when i'm editing uh but just taking a look here here's uh ourworldindata.org according to this if we go to let's say 1900 the world literacy rate was 21 so 21 of those 14 years of age and older could read and write if you look at data like for example the us census always recorded uh starting i think uh in like the 18 the late 1800s they recorded in the um every 10 years in the census whether or not people could read or write and listen if you didn't have a a job that required it by and large you probably didn't i mean if you were a farmer if you were even a steel worker there was no reason you had to be able to read or write and you know even my own great grandparents a few of them could only sign their names and that was about it so we do have some data on russia so let's take a look at them for a second so in russia that's costa rica that doesn't help me here we go so in russia in 1870 so that's right about the time rash putin's born literacy rates 15 and you could probably assume that the majority of that was not in siberia so probably a very very tiny but look at the united kingdom at 76 so you can see the difference from one very industrialized western power like the uk 76 to russia where it's only 15 where you have largely an agrarian very rural economy and you don't have a lot of people in cities and working in factories and and those kinds of things so russia's right near the world average uh which is 19 at that time claimed that he was a horse thief local records from the time indicate his wild youth never rose above public drunkenness petty theft and insubordination toward local officials at 18 he married a peasant woman and a decade later things hadn't really changed much he was 28 illiterate living with his father only now he had three children but all in all a completely ordinary background then one day he just kind of left now later he would claim to have seen a religious vision an icon of the virgin mary weeping but it also may have been a more mundane cause like a crisis of faith or simply an urge to travel this is a really interesting question because you know i can only speak for myself and experience i've had with others i think typically in our mid-20s is about the time we start developing into the person that we're going to become now that doesn't mean that things don't change but you would think by the time a guy's 28 married with three children he's pretty well settled in his path uh you're not typically gonna see a drastic change in someone especially someone like grigori rasputin where we see him just kind of go off the deep end there doesn't appear to be a lot of signs of that early in his life so something happened something dramatic happened that changed the course of this guy's life whatever the reason in 1897 he set off to walk to a monastery of saint nicholas where he claimed to have studied under the local students a term for a spiritual elder who detained holiness through spare living and deep meditation presumably this was where rasputin learned to read though he declined to stay in the monastery monastic life would have meant giving others authority over him and rasmutin was always wary of that so instead he took to the road as a wandering pilgrim which was a surprisingly popular life choice for men in 19th century russia those seeking spiritual enlightenment or even just travel and excitement would simply walk across country to whatever place a pilgrimage they set as a goal which is kind of fascinating especially in a country like russia that's huge and sparsely populated especially in places like siberia uh that probably involved a lot of walking people of all classes did it traveling in groups and occasionally practicing self-mortification by wearing shackles or engaging in other forms of discomfort so why would people do that well i can't necessarily speak to the russian culture or to the even the russian orthodox church but this is actually a pretty common thing in religious circles um you know speaking as a christian there are some who take very seriously the idea of identifying with christ in his suffering in this case being his suffering on the cross and so a way to identify more with jesus was to suffer yourself in the middle ages people would do things like wear a hair shirt which was the shirt that would go on underneath their regular very fancy very comfortable clothing it was super uncomfortable like imagine wearing a really itchy wool directly against your skin all the time it was meant to keep you uncomfortable you know fasting is another example of that that happens among religious people these days these are ways of giving something up or allowing yourself to feel uncomfortable so that you can better identify with with jesus in this case now personally rasputin found shackles distracting instead he tried wearing the same shirt for a year at a time without removing it walking to shrines and monasteries through heat and cold now the problem here is that you're not making yourself uncomfortable you're making everybody else uncomfortable too because if you're wearing the same shirt for a year and a half people are going to smell you people are going to be turned off by you and this is something that often was attributed to rasputin there's this kind of lack of personal hygiene which which is fascinating when you consider the charisma and the power he seemed to have over people dodging brigands and meeting fellow pilgrims stinky but far more comfy he did this on and off for years even claiming to have walked to mount athos in greece which if he started at home would be roughly like walking from new york to los angeles my dogs are barking just thinking about that and it was on one of these journeys that he began to feel a bit of his own power back on the home front however his family felt that the gregory who had left for the monastery of saint nicholas was not the one who came back now he prayed with an ecstatic fervor it was entrancing to watch and moved with a new confidence even among the upper class he stared directly at people with an intensity that they never forgot and seemed to have an ability to read someone at first meeting understanding what they wanted how best to talk to them and you know what's what's unfortunate about this is that the guy the guy genuinely had charisma and he genuinely had some gifts when it came to understanding people and connecting with people unfortunately it seems like he chose to use these gifts for himself to get himself ahead to get what he wanted uh and to take advantage of people imagine if he had used those same abilities from a desire to help people and this is true throughout history you know some people use the gifts and abilities they have only for themselves others use it to better the world around them the better their nation to better their families and uh you know there are different ways of becoming great and becoming well known and remembered and people take different paths to do that within a few years he was leading a prayer group in bogrovska which met in a friend's root cellar there rasputin's followers mostly his family and a few locals sang hymns of his own creation and spoke about god but not everyone was happy with rasputin a local priest tried to warn others away from the pilgrim who after all was not a priest by the way and some said that female followers were washing his body before worship plus there were rumors that he had become linked with the claisty a much older sect known for flagellation and accused of sexual rights that the orthodox church deemed heretic and the flagellation thing's another one that was a common thing throughout history people like thomas moore who's an ancestor from my wife who's well known from the henry the eighth story he was henry viii's chancellor uh an advisor he was a uh somebody who would whip himself that's what flagellation is um but you know a lot of times people with power like i said use this to their own ends and you'll see this a lot of times in cults where sex becomes a part of that cult and uh david koresh for example with the branch davidians down in waco texas back in the 90s uh you know used his power and influence over people to get what he wanted in those situations but nonetheless his fame grew and people started coming to see him by 1904 he was taking trips to a nearby city where he was welcomed as a students himself known for acting as a spiritual advisor for any who came to him and he was rumored to be able to heal people with prayer part of a long-standing tradition in russia of holy men able to perform miracles while there he began meeting figures in the orthodox church who were so impressed with his saintliness that they sent him to saint petersburg with a letter of introduction and this is key sometimes you need that connection um you know during the american revolutionary war benjamin franklin was giving these things out to people uh because what would happen is people would come from prussia for example people like baron von stroyben or from france where benjamin franklin was in france as an ambassador uh people like marquita lafayette and they would go to franklin they would say hey give me a letter of introduction to your congress and a recommendation so i can get a commission as a general in the american army i want to help out and so these people would show up and there was people constantly showing up in america with letters from people like ben franklin to get those connections a letter of introduction was an important way of these are you know the days before the internet you couldn't google somebody and find out their credentials watch youtube videos to see if they performed any performed well you had to hear from people you trusted people would show up at the court of henry viii with a letter of introduction from say a monk at some monastery or from the rector of some church or from the head of some cathedral introducing them to the archbishop of canterbury and saying hey use this guy you know this was a very common thing and he took advantage of that like i said there's got to be some qualities about this man that impressed people that allowed him to kind of work his way up to these connections now what exactly rasputin was supposed to do in the capital is still up for a debate he claimed to be raising money for a church though he dropped that idea pretty quickly once he arrived and instead he went to parties see when he arrived in saint petersburg he quickly fell in with an archbishop named theophan who had a tendency to collect firebrand right-wing preachers around him he liked to bring these men into aristocratic salons to nudge the political and religious conversation there was the ultra-nationalist bishop herrers for example who'd reportedly castrated himself in his thirties and kicked a young joseph stalin out of seminary interesting and yeah that's important to note joseph stalin who that wasn't his name stalin is russian for steele um or maybe george i don't know because he's george and he's not russian um but uh how differently that path could have gone if he had gone into ministry instead but this is you know this kind of thing happened people again religious fervor they read you know there's a scripture where jesus said if your right arm causes you to sin cut it off some people took that quite literally rather than figuratively and so for example the guy boston corbett who was this soldier who was responsible for shooting and killing john wilkes booth the man who killed abraham lincoln did this to himself later on in life when he kind of went off the deep end also there was the monk eliador who advocated for deporting all foreigners and wrote deranged pamphlets about how international cabals of jews and freemasons were trying to topple the czar it was this incredibly normal and rational circle that rasputin ended up joining and they became some of his earliest supporters though in truth he would quickly outshine them all because the bored aristocrats of saint petersburg saw something in rasputin his sincerity and religious ecstasy was raw vital and exciting his gray green eyes bore into you when you met him and he seemed to just know what you were thinking you know and the thing about the eyes let me show you a picture of rasputin because even in a black and white picture from a hundred years ago you can see that you can really kind of get a sense of that way he stared into people so here's a few pictures that we have of them here's one uh this one here it's colorized it gives you a little bit more of a sense of it uh but this one uh especially uh but i think that's the one that really kind of you like just get a sense of okay this guy's creepy but also very intriguing and interesting and you know you can just tell there's just something something about the guy that really is fascinating and despite his peasant upbringing he never appeared intimidated by titles or wealth in fact his appearance and rough manners added to his mystique at a time when few aristocrats had seen a siberian peasant much less spoken to one rasputin appeared exotic and a little threatening yeah so a lot of people you'll find that a lot and here's what happens people who liked him ignored the stuff that drove other people nuts they they consider oh it's quaint oh he's siberian oh he doesn't know any better isn't it cute the way he does those things people who kind of saw through that and didn't like him saw it for what they felt it was which was manipulation and and dirty and bad manners and out of line and stuff like that and we do that don't we we excuse things in people if we otherwise want to like them or if we have a reason why we want to keep them around and we'll ignore those things and a lot of people did that you'll hear that from a lot of people that were within the palace and those circles was that they kind of brushed that stuff off and we're like all that stuff that we look back now say the guy was nuts those people were like oh it's cute it's quaint he doesn't know any better part of the real russia the europeanized upper class had lost touch with when he spoke about faith it felt grounded and alive and the way he talked to these aristocrats touched and stroked their hands particularly ladies hands well people found it simultaneously provoking repellent and magnetic but just to be clear rasputin was certainly not the only mystic running in high circles at the time in fact the russian aristocracy was awash in occultists mesmerists spirit mediums and supposed prophets so again rasputin could have just been another one of those people that we never heard about if it hadn't been for the time and place and the people he connected with and that was what set him apart from the rest of them these figures increasingly appealed to russia's upper class who had become disengaged from orthodox christianity and began experimenting with new religious ideas this ran the gamut from a young prince usable who we'll return to later in this story believing he'd acquired clairvoyant powers to the composer alexander skriyaban using occult themes in his music believing if they were played correctly it could end the world so yeah rasputin slid nicely into this environment and as his reputation as a prophet and healer increased some of his aristocratic contacts decided to introduce him to a new couple who had a great interest in miracle workers nicholas and alexandra the emperor and empress of russia they had been without a mystical advisor for some years now ever since government ministers had forced them to send their last favorite a french miracle worker into exile and theophone as well as the occult circles of saint petersburg thought they'd found the perfect replacement so rasputin the siberian peasant entered the royal circle and i can see royal bloods where we're going to get into the story of prince alexi uh and we'll talk more about that tomorrow but man you know when it comes to your kids people will do crazy things if they think it'll help protect their kid keep their kids safe keep them alive um i got a lot of sympathy for nicholas and alexandra because of that and but we'll talk about that more tomorrow let me know your thoughts use the comment section below let me know something you learned you didn't know today and if you have something to add to this part of the conversation what we've talked about so far don't get ahead we'll get to the rest of the story but let me know your thoughts if there's something you can add to the conversation let's learn together please hit that like button if you would we'll come back tomorrow with the next episode thanks for watching

Channel: Vlogging Through History

Views: 48,290

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Id: TRTcHnoeZVg

Length: 23min 52sec (1432 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 25 2022