The Rasputin File - Hardcover

Radzinsky, Edvard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385489099 ISBN 13: 9780385489096

Publisher: Nan A. Talese, 2000

Synopsis

Rasputin, one of the most fascinating and controversial figures of the twentieth century, has remained cloaked in the myth of his own devising since his extraordinary ascent to power in the court of Nicholas and Alexandra, the last tsar and tsarina of Russia. Until now.

Edvard Radzinsky, the author of the international bestseller The Last Tsar, had long been frustrated by the meager explanations of the malign authority of Grigory Efimovich Rasputin, a Russian peasant, semiliterate monk, and mystic, in the last Romanov court. Then, in 1995, a file from the State Archives that had been missing for years came up for auction at Sotheby's, and was put in Radzinsky's hands. It contained the interrogations of Rasputin's inner circle of admirers and those who kept him under police surveillance--documents never seen by any other historian. With this file, Radzinsky is able to transform the biography of Rasputin from mysterious legend into fact.

Using the depositions of Rasputin's friends, teachers, devotees, and fanatical female fans--the people who watched Rasputin nearly every day--Radzinsky presents a fascinating account of how Rasputin exercised and enlarged his power. Radzinsky reveals the full extent of Rasputin's charged relationship with the tsarina, and chronicles Rasputin's famous sexual odyssey through the demimonde of St. Petersburg, using the debauched women's own astonishingly frank testimony to uncover a trove of surprising secrets. Here is documented, for the first time, the way in which Rasputin actually gained access to the tsarist court, and the true identity of the man who shot and killed Rasputin in 1916. And finally, the author is able to provide the real reasons behind Rasputin's sway in virtually every imperial decision at the end of Russia's royal Romanov dynasty.

Through his exclusive access to the Rasputin File, his own unrivaled research into other resources, and his proven talent for dramatic storytelling, Radzinsky is finally able to tell the complete, sensational story of Rasputin, fully documented and definitive.


Edvard Radzinsky's fascination with Rasputin grew as he was writing The Last Tsar, but until he could penetrate the mystery he would not proceed. And then, miraculously, the documents long missing from the KGB files surfaced, finally enabling him to tell the story of the man who held such a hypnotic influence over the last Russian Tsar and Tsarina, and ultimately determined the fate of his country.
Based on Radzinsky's persistent scholarship and enlivened by his superb flair for the dramatic, THE RASPUTIN FILE is a mesmerizing account of the man and brings a new understanding to the nature of Rasputin's power. -->

About this title

About the Author

Edvard Radzinsky is the author of the bestselling The Last Tsar and Stalin, and one of Russia's most celebrated playwrights. He lives in Russia, where he is also an award-winning television personality.

From the Back Cover

Praise for Edvard Radzinsky's The Last Tsar:

"An unforgettable book in which the evocative power of the dramatist is enriched by scholarship."
--Time

"Remarkable...An absorbing tale, the ultimate in last-days-of-the-Romanov books."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Everything Radzinsky says is a definitive take on the epic of Russian history...He has added a new dimension to our understanding of the purpose--and horror--of the Ekaterinburg tragedy."
--Vanity Fair

"[Radzinsky] triumphs in allowing us often to hear the voices of protagonists and bit players in diaries (including Nicholas's and Alexandra's), memoirs, letters and oral reminiscences, all of which vividly evoke the imperial twilight and the red dawn."
--People

"The best study of the firsthand evidence about the execution, it makes compelling reading...As a powerfully written testament to one sensitive, human and creative writer's efforts to rise above the false truths that his society sought to impose, it is a narrative to remember."
--Chicago Tribune

"Vivid, enthralling, fascinating."
--Nikolai Tolstoy, Daily Telegraph

"A superb detective story."
--The New Yorker

From the Inside Flap

e of the most fascinating and controversial figures of the twentieth century, has remained cloaked in the myth of his own devising since his extraordinary ascent to power in the court of Nicholas and Alexandra, the last tsar and tsarina of Russia. Until now.

Edvard Radzinsky, the author of the international bestseller The Last Tsar, had long been frustrated by the meager explanations of the malign authority of Grigory Efimovich Rasputin, a Russian peasant, semiliterate monk, and mystic, in the last Romanov court. Then, in 1995, a file from the State Archives that had been missing for years came up for auction at Sotheby's, and was put in Radzinsky's hands. It contained the interrogations of Rasputin's inner circle of admirers and those who kept him under police surveillance--documents never seen by any other historian. With this file, Radzinsky is able to transform the biography of Rasputin from mysterious legend into fact.

Using the depositions of Rasputin's fri

Reviews

Ever since the brutal murder of Grigory Rasputin on the eve of the Russian Revolution, morbid fascination has assured the semiliterate peasant a legacy in infamy. Now, armed with a newly discovered trove of testimonies from Rasputin's inner circle of devotees, Radzinsky (The Last Tsar) promises to "solve" the mystery of Rasputin's death. A veteran writer of Russian history, Radzinsky writes as if a historian must also be a sleuth and a psychiatrist. It's no wonder, then, that his book, which has the makings of a genuine expos?, goes more than a little off the rails. His latest effort is a muddle of conjecture that reads like a made-for-television docudrama. It is true that the evidentiary file--compiled by a revolutionary commission in 1917 and bought at auction in 1995 by the famous cellist Mistoslav Rostropovich--contains new and often sensational material. However, a transcription of the titillating details of Rasputin's sexual escapades coupled with "who's who" captions for previously printed photographs cannot be equated with, in the author's words, "a unique investigation." More inadequate is Radzinsky's claim to have solved a great mystery when he declares that Rasputin was felled (but not killed) by a bullet from Assassin B (the Grand Duke) and not from Assassin A (a collaborator), as has so long been thought. Even if it is true, one wonders how relevant such a theory is in light of the more miraculous fact that Rasputin died from drowning--after his poisoned, bludgeoned and bullet-ridden body was dumped in the Neva River. Lovers of history and pulp fiction alike should rejoice that this account fails to crack the enigma of Rasputin. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

When a missing file from the inquiry into the murder of Rasputin turned up at auction at Sotheby's, the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich snatched it up and granted best-selling author and playwright Radzinsky exclusive rights to its contents. Radzinsky describes the file in scrupulous detail, and then gives us his take on the mysterious murder of Rasputin, the crazed monk who held a place of unprecedented importance in the court of the last czar and czarina of Russia, Nicholas II and Alexandra. He was eventually killed by relatives of the czar after the Bolshevik revolution, yet the assassination, like much of Rasputin's life, has been shrouded in mystery and rumor. Radzinsky offers a novelesque interpretation of the events as they unfolded, as reported in the secret file--and he clears up many of the mysteries surrounding the life and death of this influential "mad monk." A fascinating look at one of the most enigmatic figures in twentieth-century history. Michael Spinella
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

The Provisional Government in Russia (1917) formed the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry to investigate the excesses of the tsarist regime, including those of the "Mad Monk" Grigory Rasputin (1869-1916) and his influence on the imperial family. The commission's file on him soon vanished, finally reappearing a few years ago at auction, where it was bought for Radzinsky, author of The Last Tsar and Stalin. Based on this newfound evidence, supplemented by published memoirs and by the surveillance file the police kept on Rasputin during the last five years of his life, the author has reconstructed his daily visits and actions during the years 1903-16 in meticulous detail, including the events surrounding his death. He portrays Rasputin as part of a pre-Christian peasant tradition of mysticism and folk wisdom. Statements made to the commission substantiate many of the drunken excesses usually attributed to Rasputin but undermine other charges of sexual exploits. The level of detail in this work makes it appropriate for specialists in the period and for academic libraries.DMarcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

THE FILE: SEARCHING FOR DOCUMENTS

The Prison Ball

I supposed that only when I had found the File would I be able to answer those questions. I had long been aware that the File had to exist.

In the 1970s when I was writing my book about Nicholas, I naturally had occasion to look at the papers of the Extraordinary Commission of the Provisional Government.

In March 1917, after Nicholas's abdication and the triumph of the February Revolution, the solitary confinement cells of the Peter and Paul Fortress became crowded. Delivered to that Russian Bastille, where during the tsar's reign political dissidents had been incarcerated, were the people who had put them there -- those who not long before had controlled Russia's destiny. The tsarist prime ministers Sturmer and Golitsyn; the minister of internal affairs Protopopov; the head of the infamous Department of Police Beletsky and his replacement Alexis Vasiliev; the aged court minister Count Fredericks; the chairman of the Council of State Schlegovitov; the palace castellan Voeikov; the tsarina's closest friend, Anya Vyrubova; and so forth and so on. In a word, the very highest society. So that the fortress's damp cells, constantly subject to flooding, resembled nothing so much as a brilliant Winter Palace ball.

On 4 March 1917, the Provisional Government formed the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry for the Investigation of Illegal Acts by Ministers and Other Responsible Persons of the Tsarist Regime. And from the Peter and Paul Fortress the ministers were shunted back and forth for interrogation at the Winter Palace, so familiar to them, where the Extraordinary Commission worked, and where only recently they had appeared in medals and ribbons. Or else the Commission investigators would themselves drive out to conduct their interrogations at the fortress. The transcripts of those interrogations were then deciphered and put into shape. And it was Russia's leading poet, the famous Alexander Blok, who did the putting. He has described in his notebooks the atmosphere of the interrogations and the appearance of the Winter Palace with its empty throne room, 'where all the fabric had been torn from the walls and the throne removed, since the soldiers wanted to break it up'.

The transcripts of the interrogations were then prepared for publication. All Russia was supposed to learn, according the Commission plan, just what had transpired behind the scenes in mysterious Tsarskoe Selo, from which the tsar and tsarina had ruled Russia. On the basis of that information the future first Russian parliament was then meant to decide the fates of the tsar, the tsarina, and the ministers -- of those people who had just days before governed Russia.

And one of the main questions concerned the semi-literate Russian peasant Grigory Rasputin.

Section Thirteen

The Commission's executive council and its twenty-seven separate boards of inquiry conducted continuous interrogations of its brilliant prisoners from March 1917 until the Bolshevik coup in October.

A special board of inquiry with the expressive name 'Thirteenth Section' was particularly concerned with 'investigating the activity of the dark forces'. In the political jargon of the day, the 'dark forces' were Rasputin, the tsarina, and those close to them. The 'dark forces', their true influence via Rasputin over the former Tsar Nicholas II in the area of state governance: that was the substance of the Thirteenth Section's work.

The head of the Thirteenth Section was a certain F. P. Simpson, a former head of the Kharkov Provincial Appellate Court. The interrogations themselves were conducted by several investigators: two people with the same last name, Vladimir and Tikhon Rudnev, and Grigory Girchich. They, too, had been reassigned to the Commission from provincial courts. As a kind of guarantee that they would have no links to the capital's former governing clique now under investigation.

And then came the October 1917 coup. The Bolsheviks who seized power put an end to the Provisional Government. Those who the day before had been ministers in that government were sent to the very same cells in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Where not without humour they were greeted by the tsarist ministers whom they had only recently imprisoned in the same place. The Bolsheviks also put an end to the work of the Extraordinary Commission.

But in 1927 the Bolsheviks decided to publish part of the interrogations of the most important tsarist ministers, for the tenth anniversary of their revolution. The publication was supposed to be ideological; that is, it was supposed to demonstrate the 'senescence' of a tsarist regime controlled by the ignorant, debauched peasant Grigory Rasputin.

By that time, Alexander Blok, who worked on the stenographs, had died. The publication of the transcripts was supervised by one of the Extraordinary Commission's most celebrated members, P. Schyogolev, who had agreed to collaborate with the Bolsheviks.

Before the revolution Schyogolev had been editor of the magazine Times Past. A publication 'of wholly revolutionary temper', it had been shut down several times by the tsarist authorities. Leo Tolstoy said that 'if I had been young, I would have taken a revolver in each hand after reading Times Past.' For his magazine's sake he endured a cell in the Peter and Paul Fortress, where he himself would eventually interrogate the tsarist ministers who had imprisoned him. But after the Bolsheviks came to power, the once incorruptible Schyogolev changed completely. He became part of the Bolshevik regime. Evil tongues maintained that his apartment contained a collection of documents and furniture from the Winter Palace.

Seven little volumes entitled Proceedings of the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry were all that Schyogolev published from the immense quantity of material produced by the interrogations. And those pitiful volumes were for many years the chief documentary basis for all the books written about Rasputin.

It was only four decades later -- in 1964 -- that another sensational document about Rasputin was added to those volumes drawn from the Extraordinary Commission's legacy. And it was after the appearance of that document that my search for the File began.

The Missing File

In 1964 the journal Issues of History published a sensational number that at the time was eagerly read not only by historians. Printed in it for the first time was the 'Resolution of the Investigator F. Simpson of the Extraordinary Commission Regarding the Activity of Rasputin and his Close Associates and their Influence over Nicholas II in the Area of State Governance', a document that until then had been held in a secret repository of the archive of the October Revolution.

The 'Resolution' was a summary of the Thirteenth Section's efforts to clarify Rasputin's role.

I read the issue later when I was starting work on my book about Nicholas II. And the 'Resolution' made a stunning impression on me. In his conclusion Simpson quoted extensively from the testimony of people belonging to Rasputin's most intimate circle: his publisher Filippov; his friend Sazonov, in whose apartment Rasputin had lived and with whose wife he had enjoyed the most intimate relationship; the famous Maria Golovina, a true worshipper of Rasputin who became an involuntary cause of his death; the Petersburg cocottes with whom Rasputin shared tender bonds; and the admirers who fell under his hypnotic influence.

Naturally, I at once started looking for that testimony in the Proceedings published by Schyogolev. And naturally I failed to find it there. For it was the testimony of people who had liked Rasputin. Their point of view was absolutely unacceptable to Schyogolev. And naturally he did not include what they had to say.

The quotations that Simpson had taken from the testimony for citation in his report actually changed things very little. For Simpson was trying very hard in his 'Resolution' to defend the same point of view advanced by Schyogolev in his publication.

The 'Resolution' sketched the same picture of a crude, debauched peasant rendered senseless by drunkenness and licentiousness who ruled both the royal family and those corrupt ministers who had agreed to serve him as the favourite.

Was it the whole truth of the testimony obtained by the Thirteenth Section? I had good reason to doubt it. For by then I already knew of the deep dissension within the Commission itself. One of the Thirteenth Section's principal investigators, Vladimir Rudnev, had even resigned in protest. After emigration, he wrote of his reasons: 'In August 1917, I submitted a request to be released from my duties in view of the attempts of the President of the Commission, Muravyov, to incite me to patently biased actions.'

And I resolved to attempt something very difficult for the times: to go to the archive myself and read the testimony that Simpson had quoted in such a biased fashion.

I won't recount the efforts that I made to assemble all the official papers required for the right to acquaint myself with the Extraordinary Commission's documents. Or how worthless those papers actually proved to be. Or how the only thing that did help was my status as a fashionable dramatist, as the author of plays whose productions were nearly impossible to get into at the time, and as the screenwriter of a film that was then enjoying immense success. Suffice it to say that I obtained access to the Extraordinary Commission archive.

How astonished I was to find there none of the testimony cited by Simpson! The documents were gone.

It was highly probable that those documents were the most interesting ones. They represented the testimony of people who had seen Rasputin daily. And of people who for some reason had agreed to serve him with devotion. There, perhaps, lay the solution to the riddle; there, perhaps, was hidden the authentic portrait of that mysterious person.

I called the vanished documents the 'File'. And straightaway began my searc...

Edition details

• Publisher: Nan A. Talese
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385489099
• ISBN 13: 9780385489096
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 544