Rasputin

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

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

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

Recently, the Russian archivist Edvard Radzinsky has tried to re-interpret Rasputin, based on secret files, supposedly compiled by the provisional government in 1917, and recently discovered in Paris by a Russian cellist. Whether you believe any of it is up to you!