The Real Rasputin (Imperial Russia Documentary) | Timeline

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the eyes lupine eyes eyes that were able to bore into the center of your soul Rasputin was able to do something which physically altered people we see again and again that he exercised this curious influence over the royal family or rather over the czarina he felt that he was being taken over by a higher force the devil was something he was wrestling with inside his own mind but found that it was overwhelming that it was just too much [Music] grigory rasputin was born here in Siberia 10th of January 1869 it's four and a half million square miles make it one of the largest and most remote pieces of land in the world for generations Russians had been using it as a dumping ground for all kinds of religious exiles and prisoners it was home to holy men healers and secret religious sects the first thing you need to think about with Siberia is this emptiness this vast isolated sort of space where there are very few people Russians always viewed it as this kind of empty space that was there for them to fill up they could never fill it it was just too vast they weren't very useful routes for traveling around the country and I think that this contributed to the isolation that Russian communities felt in this very Hospital landscape [Music] Rasputin would certainly have felt part of that very cold very isolated coin kind of embattled sort of Russian frontier sort of Wild West except of course the wild East the rasputin's origin in the town of across key undoubtedly played a very large part of the shaping of his character not only is it the very fringes of civilization where pagan shadows hang over everybody's lives irrespective of the presence of official Christianity it's also crushingly dull [Music] so the young Rasputin being as he was a letter and drinker would have felt a very strong desire to be more than this to break forth to see something else as a child Rasputin began turning heads his parents became disturbed by his constant visions of divine forces and by his ability to heal horses just by touching them this was a time in a place that accepted magic and healing as a way of life but many villagers were frightened of the child convinced he had the devil in him from fairly early on I think he had a kind of reputation a peculiar person in his village he certainly did have peculiar healing powers and he also just obviously had this ability to foresee the future in which stayed with him all his life he just gets sudden glimpses I think of things he absolutely knew to be true by the age of 30 he'd married a local woman and had four children but he'd also earned a reputation and the village as a drunken thief he was accused of horse stealing and fled to the nearest monastery to lie low his experience there was to change him forever you spent several days at the monastery and suddenly realized you know that he was basically a monk by temporal arms in the monastery his first contact with that ritualized form of religion it must have been the opening of a door into a new world for him interesting that must've represented a dazzling promise something he absolutely had to know more about to get more involved not only would it offer him the chance to entrench his own rather dissolute life and something deeper it also opened the way to discovering new depths to reality Rasputin stayed at the monastery for months and made friends with a man called Macari a famous wandering holy man who had advised tsar nicholas ii and Empress Alexandra for centuries Russian rulers had believed that holy fools had access to God and could give the divine advice to the Czar Rasputin decided immediately to follow in McCurry's footsteps he does up and leave his wife and and go wandering as a studyin sir he sees the opportunity to go and explore religion to explore spirituality as his way of coping with that isolation by traveling moving on so that everything around you is transient they become closer to that which is eternal he would go on long walks long pilgrimages between places suffer the assaults of mosquitos in marshy swamps and motionless for hours on end [Music] for months Rasputin didn't wash change his clothes or touch his body with his hands sometimes wearing iron shackles to increase the hardship he certainly wondered way south to Greece to Mount Athos and he certainly went to Kazan in these wanderings which lusted for two or three years to him with the you know who starved a lot of the time secondly they share physical hardship of walking around a place as big as Russia where you couldn't fell a lift must also have been tremendous but the result of all this was that by the time he went back home everyone in the village felt that they'd be in a basic changing people who met him was certainly deeply impressed because they felt that he's achieved some kind of peculiar religious essence in these years of wandering they met him once and they were deeply fascinated and regarded him as definitely a holy man many in the village began to suspect that there were deeper darker reasons for the change in the young Rasputin there was talk that during his wanderings he had fallen in with the secret sect called the Christy the Christy were outlaws this is I think a very significant point that they were like all the sex the offshoots of the Russian Orthodox Church they were an underground movement they were on the run they were a kind of anti Church and I think that if Rasputin was going to go wandering in Siberia he was definitely going to come up against them almost automatically the Christy had a very particular kind of worship that was nothing like the Orthodox Church the Christy gathered in crimson part of the service was dancing and part of the service was beginning there were no priests there were leaders who were lay persons they would gather they would sing and they would work themselves into a kind of frenzy which they called Loretta Enya or ecstasy and in process of doing that they would begin to dance and whirl about and become almost drunk on spinning they actually called it spiritual beer this dancing its water they were not intoxicated on physical substance but on the very holy spirit itself they would prophesy they would become possessed by this divine force speaking tones that restraint elation she began strange feel like after narcotic and more dancing more feeling dancing non-stop dancing and she felt that they change [Music] at that point where they had actually sort of built themselves into a fever pitch they would then fall on the ground then what began was a kind of congregational orgy where everybody just engaged in copulation with whoever was next and there was sex going on all over the place [Music] many sect of khlyst used this dancing and non-stop relay sex relations after and it was very powerful circuit in very popular these religious orgies were an essential part of the twisted doctrine they believed that by deliberately committing a carnal sin they could repent more fervently and so get closer to God they called it sinning to drive out sin and it was an idea and a practice that Rasputin immediately seized hold of 4 Rasputin the idea of transcendence the idea of all this energy flowing through the Ark was really seductive these people were actually able to achieve peculiar mystical and religious states by going to these extremes I think that's what Rasputin had discovered extreme religious states that he was able to get into occasionally by going through what he felt to be sinful Rasputin returned to pack rafts Kyah and built a chapel in a pit beneath his house he claimed to be a higher being urged people to merge with him and there were rumors that as part of a religious service he would have sex with his congregation he simply couldn't rest content with the levels that had come to he had to be the source of the divine power he'd seen visions all his life but suddenly they became more intense he appears to have seen a vision of the Virgin Mary and she apparently told him to go to some Petersburg where he would help the imperial family while on his travels he had impressed a number of aristocrats and clerics and word had spread 1600 miles to st. Petersburg of a strange wandering holy man with powers of clairvoyance and healing the city was the ultimate seat of power and home to Tsar Nicholas the second and Empress Alexandra two of the most powerful rulers in the world Rasputin believed it was his destiny to be a holy fool like Macari an advisor to the Tsar and Tsarina at the age of 34 he began the long journey West [Music] by 1903 word had reached some petersburg of a powerful mystic from Siberia with luminous wild eyes and a maniac stare this was the home of Tsar Nicholas ii and his wife the Empress Alexandra the stage was set for a students arrival some Petersburg was definitely a very peculiar City for the beginning of the 20th century [Music] the whole place was absolutely feverish with a peculiar mysticism it was a place of great sexual permissiveness even by continental standards the newspapers of the time were full of advertisements for treatments for venereal disease the aristocratic circles of the time were crazy for all things occult [Music] this was a time of seances Ouija boards all sorts of theosophic an occult thought so when news began to circulate that there was a mystical type of healing powers the doors were opened to Grand Dukes and duchesses and her acquaintances avatar himself while traveling through Russia Rasputin had secured a letter of introduction to the Tsar's father confessor he became convinced that Rasputin was a clairvoyant and immediately introduced him to a fanatical monk called Elia door and a powerful Bishop called her Mochan bishop her margin was one of the most widely loved and liked men in st. Petersburg and he had a tremendous influence illya door was shocked by rasputin's filthy appearance and pungent smell but how much and Saudis as evidence of his natural wisdom his direct manner and ability to heal made her Majin embrace him as a true holy man referring to him simply as the saint our ester Craddock salon soon became both electrified and terrified by his presence with everyone talking of the blazing gaze of his magnetic light colored eyes he turns up in the salons in the palaces and sub Petersburg I think his immediate attraction is that he's a curiosity he's this rather bedraggled figure with a long beard that had remnants of food in it people said he smelt like a goat he didn't seem to have any respect for authority so he would pick his nose and he would tell women that they were too ostentatious in their wealth and yet at the same time he had hypnotic eyes people said that he could dilate his eyes at will all sorts of society ladies found a magnetic charm even perhaps a sexual attraction simply in his physical appearance he was an individual of tremendous high dominance now Rasputin was undoubtedly a king rat king rats are the sort of person that women adore simply because they feel you know one one glance from his eyes one order snapped by him and I should turn to Jeffy why Rasputin entertained heuristic rats Tsar Nicholas and the Empress were holding regular seances with two Montenegrin princesses known as the crows they were fascinated by the occult and constantly supplied the royal couple with mystics they had met on their travels Alexander was a very very superstitious woman and she had been through the mill with various kinds of mystics and holy men and so on before Rasputin came on the scene the big search for her was of course she wanted a son she wanted to provide Russia with an err what you have to take into account first of all is that Alexandra herself was a silly bitch I mean it's a great pity that she married somebody was almost as stupid as she was now he just was not suitable to be a czar at all an intensely shy person he just should not have been in charge of a great Empire disastrous when Alexandra finally gave birth to her son Alexei she was convinced it was the result of divine intervention brought about by the help of a mystic charlatan called dr. Philippe before his death Philippe had promised her that someone was coming who would take his place she adored anyone that she felt you know ism was some kind of holy man or healer she just went absolutely overboard and this is what happened in the case of Rasputin on November the 1st 1905 the crows finally introduced Rasputin to the royal couple at a private dinner that night the Tsar noted in his diary we have made the acquaintance of a man of God named Grigory they needed simple peasant types who they thought were more holy than Cosmopolitan's and Petersburg people to buttress their regime so they were automatically on the lookout for Wanderers who had the touch of God who might sanctify their power and of course once that Tsarevich had been shown to be hemophiliac they supposed that a holy man could cure him after years of waiting for a son and heir the Tsarevich Alexei is fatal condition was a personal tragedy for the royal couple and threatened the stability of the entire Russian dynasty the illness was kept a state secret but on a later visit to the palace Rasputin boldly asked to see their son what happened next was to secure Rasputin's position as one of the most important figures in Russian history it was really quite a remarkable occasion he asked if he could pray over their son and at the same time he seemed to know what was wrong with him so you can imagine their reaction when this peasant from Siberia walks in and claims to know exactly what is wrong with their child Alexei was in the middle of one of his crises he'd been bleeding for some time from a knee injury he knew that he could do this quite easily he knew that he could cure he'd done it so often he would go deeper and deeper inside himself until suddenly he'd become totally oblivious of his surroundings and he was in that state that he contacted some hidden strength some in power inside him and knew that he could actually cure [Music] the next morning he wakes up and is completely cured proof in the minds of the royal couple of a miracle haemophilia was completely incurable so anything or any body that could cure that disease would instantly make that person amazingly powerful as far as the royal couple were concerned and particularly as far as Alexandra was concerned Rasputin would later tell them that without him the child would die within months he had free reign of the royal palace visiting the royal couple uninvited and referring to the Tsar and Tsarina as mama and papa we know from his own bragging that he had unlimited access to the daughters and he meant access to be understood ambiguously we know that he met the Empress on an almost weekly basis and could be summoned to her at all times of day and night so he was an intimate a confident he treated Zarina herself Zarina was incredible nervous person and Christine was the only man who was able to take off her head eggs who gave her opportunity to relax it became known just how much influence he had to the royal court that he had the ear of that Sarina herself and that a word from Rasputin in those ears could achieve just about anything that you desired so currying favor with Rasputin was a pretty much direct route straight at Tsar and Tsarina [Music] Rasputin moved into this apartment and Goroka via street people were soon queuing up to be near the strange holy peasant who was intimate with the Tsar and the Empress this is his power base really he didn't just live here and this is where he entertained the numerous visitors this is where the little ladies would come his prostitutes his female devotees from all levels of the social spectrum [Music] he called them his fools those whom needed to be educated to see the spiritual light it was here that Rasputin began developing his own religious doctrine based on ideas and practices he had learned from the cleese day in Siberia he encouraged his fools to sin with him so that their forgiveness afterwards would bring them closer to God and there was no shortage of eager volunteers they would have a strange ritual of eating and drinking when they were assembled for gonna rest between salons they would all sit around with Rasputin in the center by the table with all the offerings upon it it was not part in Rasputin in Rasputin flag it was a religious service they sit in the chair and he was sitting centre in time to time he began to speak something and they immediately tried to write it they try to catch his words they became sect they did not understood they became typical sec there will be seduction so that these women would have passed through his special back room where the first the sexual advances were type lies I went to see Rasputin he sat down across from me placing my legs between his knees someone terrifying and ruthless was gazing at me from the depths of those eyes without scenes there is no life because there is no repentance and if there is no repentance there is no joy you want me to show you what scenes he [Music] pulled me into the bedroom and toe of my dress as we went the next moment he was nice and best savage animal desire the last thing I remember is his tearing of my underwear then I passed out I woke up and found myself lying on the ground torn and defiled one disciple algal octina became convinced that Rasputin was Christ and that she was the Holy Virgin abandoning her children and wealthy husband she descended into madness and was seen holding rasputin's penis while screaming you are Christ and I am you you he said she was a skunk who demanded sin it was not sex it was way to God he took everything which was terrible in their souls they became absolutely clean they became like children they like themselves in that moment because they were on the heaven for them it was absolutely normal it was non-stop connection between sex religion miracles and so on but outside the apartment Rasputin was making enemies senior politicians heard rumors that the new friend of the Empress was not to be trusted secret police were put on his tail and their reports only fueled more rumors that the Empress Alexandra was confiding in a dark force December the 1st from the monastery as pudding went organ churna and took a prostitute a hot December mean he visited the offices of to religious newspapers after which he took a prostitute December after visiting mrs. go Lavigne and her daughter he took a prostitute that evening he went to the Royal Palace the dark one walked around the streets a costing woman with vile suggestion after visiting two prostitutes he went to see the girls the dark one lived there around 2 o'clock and again hired a prostitute and went to the bathhouse with and it was in the privacy of the sin Petersburg bathhouses that Rasputin's new religious doctrine really took shape a team of secret police officers had been appointed to keep watch on Rasputin day and night increasingly he was seen entering bath houses with both aristocrats and prostitutes for Russian peasants bath houses were places of magic and superstition most Siberians were born in one and there were places to conjure spirits both good and evil [Music] the bath houses where places of carnal sin in the most deep and purest sense [Music] these are wet moist wombs and here people come into contact with the spirituality of the flesh the worship the adoration of that which is karma this is one of the bathhouses where he would have come frequently to Rasputin's mind these were places where he would come to conduct a particular kind of holy service you see Rasputin had a peasant's mentality in many ways and he dealt with the devil exactly as you deal with a Siberian wolf he was hunting the devil down on the devil's own turf [Music] Rasputin seems to have taken the devil into himself waged that whole spiritual battle on the turf of his own body he was calling the devil forth taking the devil into his own flesh he performed this ritual where he was trying to exorcise the demon of lechery and in fact beating the woman that he brought into the bathhouse with him roaring at her going on about the two of lechery and how he was going to beat it out of her [Music] then afterwards they calculated they fucked [Music] he was convinced in himself that he was strong enough to carry out these unorthodox forms of worship he was strong enough to take the holy spirit within him into the places where the devil as he would have seen it dwell these escalating battles with the devil soon started to take their toll he was seen leaving the bathhouses talking wildly with himself it was conversation with devil on the street they were for him was real pants and he had non-stop conversation with him [Music] he's on the spiritual journey had he thinks he can drive out sin by sinning but in fact the sin captures him and he can't drive around he's angry with the demons that are inside of him that he can't actually get rid of those who have the power to work miracles a liable to suffer something which is called spiritual temptation which basically means that your power source is suddenly switched so that you are performing miracles by the devil's power rather than God's Vestal miracles they're just evil miracles so when word got out that Rasputin was not only working miracles but also living what was perceived to be a terribly debauched and dissolute lifestyle the authorities of the church took action her mojin and Illiad or key figures in securing Rasputin's access to the throne lured Rasputin to a basement where they accused him of using the power of the devil to work his healing miracles he was quite happy up until the point when they rounded on him and really laid into him quite viciously telling him that he was in a state of spiritual temptation that he had gone too far that what he was doing was of the Antichrist and her modern at one point grabbed him by the penis and said this this is what is leading you they battered him with a crucifix they literally physically believed at him with deeply shocked Rasputin reported the event of the Tsarina saying that the two clerics had tried to kill him [Music] within a month she banished them both from the city but Iliad door was not to be silenced and fled to Finland disguised as a woman plotting a way to kill what he saw as the devil incarnate Rasputin went back to his own village of pokrovskoye on the 27th of June 1914 the following day at about 10 to 15 in the afternoon the postman brought him a telegram Rasputin wandered out to the post office to send a return telegram at this time the most peculiar looking woman came up to him and rescue tin handed her to some arms and there suddenly she lunged at him with a knife and I should get the knife more or less into his stomach Xenia guseva a deformed ex-prostitute with no nose had been sent by Illiad or to kill Rasputin despite pulling his intestines out of his body she failed to kill him but his long stay in hospital was to have a huge impact on the fate of Europe just hours earlier Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated two thousand miles away in Sarajevo sending Europe spiraling into the worst war the world had yet seen Rasputin was probably the only person who could have talked the Tsar out of mobilizing but stranded in Siberia he was helpless there was nothing Rasputin to do about it by the time he got out of hospital and went to see the Tsar he wrote to him from hospital saying please no war no war huzzah didn't want to hear because declaring war had suddenly made him those popular man in Russia they never had any popularity before that not with the ordinary people now seeing these great cheering crowds wherever he went he didn't want to hear what Rasputin had to tell him the Rasputin prude be firmly right the war in fact was the end of Russia Rasputin wrote a letter to the Czar a table stormcloud angora disaster grief rocky darkness and no light a whole ocean of Tears there is no counting them and so much blood I can find no words to describe the horror we will all drown in blood the disaster is great the misery infinite [Music] Rasputin returned to st. Petersburg more powerful than I'd ever been the empress summoned him to the palace and asked his advice on the war effort of course when the war started nazar went off to the front then quite suddenly Rasputin in a sense became Tsar with a husband away from home Alexandra became increasingly dependent on Rasputin becoming convinced that the safety of her family was entirely in his hands he began regularly advising her own affairs of state and the war advice that she duly passed on to Nikolas at the front in the space of two years Rasputin oversaw the appointment of four prime ministers for war ministers and six ministers of the interior Rasputin was through many ways behind a desk he was hiring and firing ministers he not only moved in circles of power he created circles of power according to who was on site and it wasn't nearly all Rasputin's interference in politics was a disaster nearly all of his nominees and so on were total idiots things just went from bad to us with rasputin's as the man who was making suggestions the war was a disaster the worst Russia had ever suffered bringing the entire country to its knees four million Russians were killed and Sint Petersburg became a wash with rumor refugees and mass demonstrations the suicide rate tripled the cost of bread quadrupled bakeries were looted the air was thick with talk of revolution just strike a tiny match said one observer and everything will go up in flames [Music] by 1914 st. Petersburg was the capital of a nation at war the poet give his called it a lunatic asylum with the inmates of the city unable to tell the difference between what's real and what's false but no one felt the madness more than Rasputin whose personal battles with the devil were proving too much his health began to break down and that when his health began to break down he ceased to have this healing ability of the deed heard he tried to heal some woman who'd come along to him with awful arthritis and I sat there praying and praying and praying and somehow nothing happened he couldn't get down to that deep level inside himself where the power came from and it was then that I think he began to feel that he like everybody else was you for extinction do you know that soon I shall die in terrible pain God has sent me to be sacrificed to save our dear sovereign and holy Russia despite my terrible sins I am a christ in miniature he wrote to the Empress prophesying his own murder I wish to make known the deviations bring about my death the none of your family will remain alive for more than two years that will all be killed by the Russian people tell your relatives that I have already paid for them with my blood I shall be killed I am no longer among the living pray and be strong I think he was deeply troubled in spirit as it were that he really was wrestling with forces that he didn't feel that he could control Rasputin visited his friend filippov sobbing after a drunken night with st. Petersburg gypsies he'd squandered two thousand rubles and had to visit the Empress that same day Rasputin wept declaring that he was no longer holy but was a devil a demon outside the city had been rechristened chattri grad devil town and the streets were buzzing with the rumor that Rasputin was a spy who shared the bed of the half German Empress he had split the nation to some he was the voice of old Russia advising the throne to others he represented all that was wrong with the Czar and the court he was ignorant corrupt and far too powerful Rasputin's real political significance is as a negative as an image of the treason which was believed at a national level existed in the court the problem with all people have with rest Putin was it he was basically bringing the autocracy down they thought that they could still salvage the Divine Principle of autocracy of Russian nationalism which went with it so long as they could get rid of this malevolent influence finally a fanatical politician called Parrish kovitch made a sensational speech in the state Parliament naming Rasputin as a dark force [Music] the Rusk hoist a dirty little peasant is playing with our church man or that bees are they taking us into I want to sacrifice myself and kill this vile creature evil comes from those dark forces from the influences headed by a sportin the evil genius of Russia the next day he received a telephone call from a young aristocratic bisexual called Felix Yusupov Phoenix Yusupov was one of the richest men in Russia probably richest and immensely good-looking he was a dandy and a well known homosexual who had it seems had homosexual relations with whispering convinced address Putin had become the satanic power behind the throne Yusupov and parish kovitch approached the Tsar's cousin Pavlovic together the three men hatched a plot to salvage the Royal dynasty yusupov's account of how he killed the mad monk of Siberia has become the ultimate Rasputin legend on the day of rest Putin's death Yusupov had asked him to go around there at an odd time midnight to meet his wife Irina who was known as one of the most beautiful women in st. Petersburg they wait until the secret police had stopped hanging around Rasputin's apartment and then they went to pick Rasputin up in a car and they took him back to the US for Palace [Music] there he was taken down to a basement dining room which had been laid out as if for a meal and what's more they tried to make it look as if a lot of people had been sitting around the table they twisted up the napkins and poured a bit of tea into the tea cups and all that kind of thing as they rest buting I'm sat there quite contentedly he was told that Irina was still upstairs with the remaining guests but that as soon as they're gone they'd have a conversation Rasputin sat there they presented him with a plate containing lots and lots of cream cakes and they also presented him with wine and Rasputin at first didn't touch either then finally Rasputin got a bit bored with all this a proceeded to eat the cakes and to swing down the wine now there was enough cyanide both in the wine and the cakes to kill most people [Music] two hours and a half he continued to be still alive after he eat endless cakes this poison according to Yusupov the massive doses of poison had no effect he started to believe that Rasputin was being protected by demonic forces panicking he ran back upstairs borrowed a revolver and returned to confront him you would expect Rasputin to do something violent then or at least deplete his life he did neither a fancy just stood there while Yusupov let off a shot at him and Rasputin sank to the carpet they were upstairs celebrating the the death of Rasputin but Felix couldn't shake the idea that something might be wrong he opens a door and saw the body which was on the floor but when he began to see he's so how one of crass Putin eyes a little bit began to open he was still alive back from the dead Rasputin tried to throttle Yusupov who broke free started screaming and fled upstairs the doctor who had supplied the cyanide fainted in terror then they went back downstairs and to the horror rescue team wasn't there anymore and then they found it that he caught up a flight of stairs out of the room I was crawling across the courtyard in the snow out in the courtyard Yusupov fired twice at point-blank range but Rasputin kept going shouting back that he was going to tell the Empress then the Czar's cousin Pavlovic fired two more shots hitting him squarely in the back and then the head Yusupov ran over in hysterics and began bludgeoning the body with a metal cosh the shot poisoned bloody but still not quite dead Rasputin is bundled up stuffed into a car and driven many miles out in the ice and snow to a bridge on the outskirts of st. Petersburg by 5:00 in the morning the conspirators were stuffing Rasputin's body through a hole in the ice hoping that the current would drag it out to sea but two days later a grotesque frozen corpse was pulled from the river the superstitious of st. Petersburg flocked to the site scooping up water that the dead man had lain in an autopsy found water in his lungs suggesting he was still alive when thrown into the river near soup off promptly wrote an account of his battle to kill the devil they prefer to create legend about devil they gave him cakes they continued to be still alive they shot him they continued to be still alive and devil returned and tried to kill one of them but they shot him five men shot sir only not machine not peasant but his body was buried then dug up and burnt at a roadside just as he predicted months earlier his own death at the hands of the Czar's relatives led to the complete annihilation of the royal family within 12 months of his murder Nicholas Alexandra and all five children were gunned down in the siberian cellar Rasputin's friends were shot by firing squad civil war broke out and the nation imploded i think he was a holy man in the fullest sense of the word all of these other things the seductions and so on can be explained as a part of his peculiar obsession with getting rid of sin through sin for Russia Rasputin continued to be full of fantastic hypnotic forces who was really in many moments of his life he was Superman he was a simple man who liked liquor who's a good lecture and who liked the influence he had over people of a higher social status than himself so he was an adventurer no one can be sure whether Rasputin was simply a misunderstood peasant or a devil in the flesh whatever the truth His image has become a modern icon of evil and darkness Russia's own holy devil you

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Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 1,209,075

Rating: 4.6468139 out of 5

Keywords: rasputin documentary, grigori rasputin, russian revolution, history documentary, bbc documentary, russia documentary, history channel, timeline documentary, rasputin movie, rasputin history, nicholas ii, mad monk, royal family, tsar nicholas ii, russian history, who was rasputin, rasputin death, russian documentary, grigori rasputin documentary, romanov documentary, rasputin story

Id: dP5C59QTuKI

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Length: 48min 27sec (2907 seconds)

Published: Fri May 05 2017

Reddit Comments

One of the accounts of his death is crazy:

According to Yusupov's account, Yusupov invited Rasputin to his home shortly after midnight, and ushered him into the basement. Yusupov offered Rasputin tea and cakes which had been laced with cyanide. At first, Rasputin refused the cakes, but then began to eat them. To Yusupov's surprise, Rasputin did not appear to be affected by the poison.[3]:590 Rasputin then asked for some Madeira wine (which had also been poisoned) and drank three glasses, but still showed no sign of distress. At around 2:30 am, Yusupov excused himself to go upstairs, where his fellow conspirators were waiting. Taking a revolver from Dmitry Pavlovich, Yusupov returned to the basement and, referring to a crucifix that was in the room, told Rasputin that he'd "better look at the crucific and say a prayer," then shot him once in the chest. Believing him to be dead, they then drove to Rasputin's apartment, with Sukhotin wearing Rasptin's coat and hat, in an attempt to make it look as though Rasputin had returned home that night.[3]:590-1 Upon returning to the Moika Palace, Yusupov went back to the basement to ensure that Rasputin was dead.[3]:591 Suddenly, Rasputin leapt up and attacked Yusupov, who - with some effort - freed himself and fled upstairs. Rasputin followed, and made it into the palace's courtyard before being shot by Purishkevich and collapsing into a snowbank. The conspirators then wrapped Rasputin's body in cloth, drove it to the Petrovsky Bridge and dropped it into the Neva river.[3]:591-2

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