He was a wild youth, but not — police reports unearthed by the author show — the hardened criminal portrayed by his adversaries in St. Petersburg 40 years later. He was self-educated, late in life, but not illiterate. He developed a penchant for pilgrimages: They offered a way out of Siberian obscurity. His religious belief deepened, as did his pastoral touch: He had a knack for connecting with people of all stations in life.
Unfortunately for Russia, the bored and credulous members of the aristocracy were ripe for distraction. Rasputin was not the first mystic to thrill the drawing rooms of St. Petersburg, but he was the one whose attraction proved the most enduring and far-reaching. He clearly had some remarkable gifts — “powers” would be putting it too strongly. His hypnotic stare is well-attested. He had a disconcerting but engaging (and, one suspects, well-practiced) conversational style.
Crucially, he also had a knack for seeming to treat the hemophilia that afflicted the czarevitch Alexei, an illness that drove his already neurotic mother to the brink of madness. Rasputin’s faith-healing abilities may, in truth, have consisted of sparing the poor child the attentions of meddling doctors, but they earned him the fierce loyalty and affection of both Nicholas and Alexandra.
And possibly more. The Russian public became convinced that the mad monk’s intimacy with the royal family included carnal knowledge of the czar’s wife and daughters. Though that claim is unproved, and some of the most lurid stories of his orgies are clearly false, Rasputin undoubtedly enjoyed unabashed, abundant and mostly consensual sexual relations with more than a few high-born women — not to mention prostitutes — in a way that scarcely befitted his trademark asceticism. The common accusation against Rasputin is thus that he corrupted Russian high society. It would be fairer, Mr. Smith argues, to say that it was the fleshpots of St. Petersburg that corrupted Rasputin, originally a humble and holy visitor.
Mr. Smith also refutes the theory that the blame for Russia’s downfall lies with Rasputin. He quotes a czarist deputy minister saying that Rasputin’s advice could be “simplistic and naïve” but that it was not “remotely harmful.” Rasputin was at worst a distracting influence, on some issues a positive one. He strongly opposed Russia’s entry into World War I. He decried prejudice against poor people — for example, a characteristically mean-minded ban on humble enlisted soldiers using public transportation in St. Petersburg. By the standards of the time he was remarkably tolerant towards gays, Jews and Muslims. He preferred plain food, was not notably unhygienic in his personal habits, did many unsung good deeds and genuinely loved his country.
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The machinations against Rasputin would have done little to avert catastrophe, but his murder may have prompted it. The plotters believed that, without Rasputin, Alexandra would be so broken-hearted that she would go mad (or at least withdraw from politics), paving the way for a constitutional monarchy. Those hopes were as exaggerated as the story of the assassination itself. The poison, it turns out, was a plot detail invented later: Rasputin was simply lured to a dinner with a promise of an aristocrat’s wife, shot in the head and dumped in a canal. For many hard-pressed Russians, the murder of the only peasant ever to make it to the Romanovs’ court exemplified all that was rotten and unfair about the system. Within weeks, the Romanovs were toppled. The next year they were dead. When the Bolshevik murderers looted the bodies, they found sewn into the hems the topaz stones given to them by the family’s fascinating, wayward and beloved spiritual guide.
In the movie “Nicholas and Alexandra” Tom Baker played the role of Rasputin. Tom also is known for his role as Dr. Who. Tom probably got the character of Rasputin more or less correct?