0:01

Welcomed, unobscured a production of I Heart

0:03

Radio and Aaron Minky the

0:07

spiritual touring actor Grigory

0:09

Rasputin. That's what the Moscow

0:11

Gazette called him, But that was just

0:13

the headline. Things only got worse

0:15

for Grigory from there. Apparently

0:18

the writer knew all the favorite talking points

0:20

from the elite salons. He was

0:22

a cunning Siberian charlatan, a

0:25

predatory letcher, a hypnotist,

0:27

and a false teacher who used his ideas

0:29

about holy love to get far too

0:32

up close and personal with his followers.

0:34

They called him a pseudo prophet and

0:36

damned him for teaching spiritual delusions

0:39

that were opposite of the traditions of the Orthodox

0:41

Church. But the article didn't

0:44

stop at condemning Resputant's delusions

0:46

and false holiness. It also attacked

0:48

other areas of his life. It accused

0:51

Grigory of being a lazy, deadbeat,

0:53

a man who had abandoned his family in

0:55

Pokrovsko, whose children were

0:57

fatherless and unruly, and

0:59

the thor even said that in investigating

1:02

his piece, he had spoken with a church

1:04

leader who called Gregory a heretic and

1:06

a sexual predator. As

1:08

far as the press goes this was about as damning

1:11

as it gets, and digging behind the

1:13

article we can see why, like so

1:15

many others in Russia, the journalist who

1:17

wrote the Peace believed that the church was in trouble

1:20

and needed to be reformed. Like our

1:22

command right theo fan, the writer

1:24

looked to Russia's wandering holy men as

1:27

a source of hope. In

1:29

some ways, Gregory seemed like exactly

1:31

the kind of person he was looking for, a

1:33

peasant who had formed a bridge between the

1:35

Czar and the peasant class, bringing

1:37

the voice of the so called ordinary

1:40

Russian to the ear of the Czar himself.

1:42

But here's the problem. Rasputant's

1:45

dark side was actually giving all of

1:47

Russia's holy men a bad name, claiming

1:50

to be a holy leader while using his

1:52

position to feed on the vulnerabilities of

1:54

his followers. It's easy to

1:56

see why anyone would think this left their

1:58

approach in tatters. If they were

2:00

going to hold onto the idea that Russian holy

2:02

men could revitalize the faith and life

2:04

of the Empire, they had to figure out

2:06

how things had gone so wrong with Grigory.

2:10

If condemning Rasputant as a heretic

2:12

and a letger sounds familiar.

2:14

That's because it was the message our command right

2:17

theo Fan was spreading far and wide. In

2:19

fact, theo Fan himself might be the churchman

2:21

who worked with the author behind the scenes.

2:24

But regardless of who the hidden sources

2:26

were for the writer, the fact is that

2:28

defenders of the Church and defenders

2:30

of the Czar alike swarmed to

2:32

the takedown like it fed their starving

2:34

souls. Other papers across

2:37

Russia instantly copied the article and

2:39

reprinted it. They knew when there

2:41

was blood in the water, and what sells

2:43

a paper better than a sex scandal at the

2:45

crossroads of the Church and the Crown. Once

2:48

again, the paper had taken the public's

2:50

temperature. Letters flooded into

2:52

the Moscow Gazette. New stories

2:55

of Grigory restputants bad behavior

2:57

were piled onto the first reports,

3:00

and as the accusations mounted, it

3:02

led the editors of the Gazette to trumpet

3:04

one question above the clamoring throng.

3:07

If Grigory Resputin was such a dangerous

3:09

conman, why didn't the Church or

3:12

the Crown rise up and do something

3:14

to root him out? The

3:16

monarchist newspapers thought they might open

3:18

Nicholas's eyes to the dangers of Resputin

3:21

and separate the monarchy from the mystic.

3:24

But the reformers and revolutionaries across

3:26

Russia were only too happy to point out

3:28

that Resputin and the Romanovs

3:30

seemed to be inseparable. They

3:32

followed the monarchist press in denouncing

3:35

Rasputin, not to save the imperial

3:37

family, but to condemn it. Their

3:39

answer to the question of why Nicholas didn't

3:42

do something was that the Romanovs themselves

3:44

were hapless fools and needed to

3:46

be thrown out along with their court soothsayers.

3:49

Issue after issue delved into

3:51

Resputant's background, his heretical

3:53

teaching, and his violence against women.

3:56

To the leftist press, all of

3:58

these were the fault of Nicholas and Alexandra.

4:02

None of these press reports got the story

4:04

right, though monarchists and revolutionaries

4:06

alike layered rumor and insinuation

4:09

over every kernel of truth. But

4:11

all the reporting was eaten up by a public

4:13

hungry for more news about the secret

4:16

inner workings of the Romanov's domestic

4:18

world. And then there's this deep irony

4:20

to contend with. Russia at the time

4:22

was an empire divided. Not only

4:25

were revolutionary groups and monarchist

4:27

brigades battling each other for the future

4:29

of Russia, but they were often fighting

4:31

within their own ranks. Each faction

4:34

rarely managed to maintain their alliances

4:36

for long, and yet in Rasputin

4:39

they were now finding a common cause, or

4:42

better put, a common enemy.

4:46

This is unobscured. I'm

4:48

Aaron Manky.

5:00

Yeah, the

5:14

attacks on Rasputin went international.

5:17

If the Russian papers thought they were cleaning house

5:19

and taking down Rasputin, they couldn't foresee

5:21

just how far the stories about him would travel

5:24

and how long the legends they were creating

5:26

would endure. Within a few

5:28

weeks, the splashy articles were being

5:30

distributed across Russia. The

5:32

Austrian ambassador wrote back to Vienna

5:35

about the unfolding scandal, and, of

5:37

course, for the royals across Europe, the question

5:39

of how Nicholas and Alexandra could take a heretical

5:41

priest into their confidence was a real

5:44

puzzle, and the ambassador offered his

5:46

view. The royal couple were simply unwilling

5:48

to see that their relationship with Grigory

5:50

Rasputin was a problem. It was a

5:53

real flash of insights. He saw

5:55

that in the eyes of Nicholas and Alexandra.

5:57

Rasputin was untouchable. But

6:00

it wasn't just the stories about the Romanov's

6:02

spiritual advisor that slipped the borders

6:04

of Russia. It was the Romanovs themselves.

6:07

In the years after the nineteen oh five Revolution,

6:09

and with all the changes that were shaking Russian

6:12

society, Nicholas and Alexandra

6:15

often found time to get away from it all. Not

6:17

that this was anything new. Hunting

6:20

lodges and holiday homes were always

6:22

the privilege of the European royals. Nicholas

6:24

and Alexandra were no exception, and

6:26

of course family visits double as political

6:29

meetings when the family are all heads of

6:31

states. For example, ever since their marriage

6:33

began, Nicholas and Alexandra had regularly

6:36

traveled back to her old stomping grounds in

6:38

Germany, and Nicholas even had a Russian

6:40

Orthodox chapel built for Alexander there.

6:43

Often they stayed with Alexandra's brother Ernie

6:45

at his summer retreat, or visited

6:47

relatives in the Danish royal family,

6:50

and these visits didn't slow down as their family

6:52

grew. As things heated up at home. I can

6:54

only imagine that they were too happy to slip

6:57

the troubled borders of their empire, leave

6:59

the trouble some issues in the hands of a prime

7:01

minister like stoile Epan, and try to

7:03

find some cleaner air. Of course,

7:05

there was a more personal reason that the Romana

7:08

family would have wanted to retreat from the

7:10

turmoil of their empire into some sort of

7:12

tranquility. You see, Alexandra was

7:14

sick, and the truth was she had been sick

7:16

for years. Here's historian Helen

7:19

Rappaport to tell us more. I

7:21

think Alexandra clearly

7:24

was plagued with sciatica from

7:27

her teens, because when

7:29

it was announced she was going to marry Nikki in

7:31

April eighteen nine four, one of the first

7:33

things Queen Victoria arranged

7:36

was to get her treatment for

7:38

this crippling scietic pain she suffered

7:40

from. So she was sent to Harrogate

7:43

for a water cure, and that was the

7:45

first probably of money later on in her

7:48

life, after she'd tapped the children, they

7:50

she went more than once, I think,

7:52

to bad Noihan in

7:54

Germany for again for wat cures.

7:56

So she had always had the scietica

8:00

and I cannot imagine how painful

8:02

her pregnancies must have been suffering

8:04

from sciatic pain and carrying

8:07

you know, ten eleven pound babies to

8:09

term. She must have been

8:12

dreadfully consumed by pain

8:14

at times, and she was often had

8:16

to be lying down. She genuinely had

8:19

terrible ear infections and me

8:22

grains, and oh gosh, there

8:24

wasn't almost any complaints she

8:26

didn't at sometime suffer from.

8:28

So that kind of colored

8:31

family life, I think more than

8:34

perhaps we realize. Even

8:37

when they weren't traveling for treatment, abandoning

8:40

the pressure of court, life in Russia was

8:42

itself an enormous relief, and

8:44

there's perhaps no trip that the Empress liked

8:47

better than a holiday to the islands around Finland

8:49

in the Tsar's personal Yat when

8:51

life in Russia got tense or threat

8:53

to the Czar made their routines dangerous,

8:56

Nicholas and Alexander would take to the water.

8:59

They're surrounded by a loyal crew,

9:01

with warships from the Imperial Fleet

9:03

bobbing in formation on all sides.

9:05

Nicholas and Alexandra felt their most

9:07

carefree, prying eyes were left

9:10

far behind. The naval officers who

9:12

served them on board were kind and obliging,

9:15

and all the guns pointed outward. But

9:18

even those floating fantasies came back

9:20

to earth, and when they did, the troubles of

9:22

Russia proved they couldn't be left behind.

9:25

Take their visit to England in nineteen

9:27

o nine. Along the way, the Romanovs

9:29

stopped to see Alexandra's sister Irene

9:31

and made an appearance for the President of France.

9:34

And then they were on towards England, where their royal

9:36

cousins were eager to greet them.

9:38

Not so the English people, though,

9:41

you see, word had spread of the fact that Nicholas

9:43

used his Cossacks against the Russian people

9:46

in nineteen o five. The violence

9:48

of his autocratic control over the Russian

9:50

Empire was no secrets. Socialist

9:52

rallies in London were held as the Romanov's

9:55

yacht sailed toward British soil. The Young

9:57

British Labor Party collected resolutions

9:59

from a cross Britain condemning the blood

10:01

on the hands of the Czar, the terrorism

10:04

of his supporters like Iliador, and

10:06

the actions of the Russian secret police.

10:08

And it should be pointed out if we remember

10:11

the way the Czar's Cossacks ran down protesting

10:14

workers in nineteen o five. We have

10:16

to say the British workers who rallied in

10:18

Trafalgar Square had a point. Maybe

10:20

that's why everyone from schools to evangelical

10:23

societies to trade unions all

10:26

signed on to condemn the Romanov's visit.

10:29

Nicholas may have been surprised by how

10:31

well British radicals knew the inner

10:33

workings of Russian politics, but

10:35

the creeping fear he felt when he heard they were

10:37

discussing his assassination would have

10:39

been all too familiar. It was the

10:41

feeling he fled when the family took to

10:43

the sea, so Nicholas and Alexandra

10:46

made their visit a short one. The coastal

10:48

towns were flooded with English and Russian

10:50

police, who choked them to a standstill.

10:53

It could have only confirmed to the Czar's critics

10:56

that Russia was ruled with an iron fist.

10:58

At night, the romanov was retreated

11:00

to their floating fortress. When they visited

11:02

Sweden, Nicholas and Alexandra didn't

11:05

even dare to set foot on land. So

11:08

the imperial family didn't have the best

11:10

reputation beyond the borders of their empire,

11:13

let alone among the people they held under

11:15

their power at the time, and that

11:17

was all before the press sank

11:19

their teeth into the story of

11:22

Grigory Rasputin. Resputant

11:29

had his defenders, of course, and maybe

11:31

no one was more energetic in his defense

11:33

than the mad monk himself, the terrorist

11:36

preacher Eliodor. Not to be

11:38

outdone by the inflamed accusations

11:40

of the newspaper, Eliodor began

11:42

to fabricate some stories of his own. Resputin

11:45

was not a sexual predator, said Eliodor,

11:48

so much the opposite, in fact, that Gregory

11:50

had mastered his sexual urges so

11:53

much that he no longer made love to his own wife.

11:55

He lived with special holiness. He

11:58

was Russia's saving grace. Anyone

12:00

who wrote attacks against Resputant should

12:02

be bound and beaten bloody, that

12:04

was Eliador's message. Not a

12:07

pleasant fellow, really, But

12:09

Eliodora's bloodthirsty defenses of Resputin

12:12

were nearly as effective as Resputant's

12:14

own technique to disappear.

12:17

Throughout most of nineteen ten, there were several

12:19

points where even the Russian secret police,

12:21

the Okrana, had no idea

12:23

where Resputant was. His

12:26

disappearance was all about giving the scandal

12:28

time to blow over and for newspapers

12:30

to find something else to blow up about. And

12:32

there was one man in Russia willing to oblige.

12:35

That's right, Eliodor himself.

12:38

Do you remember how I told you that Resputant

12:40

had orchestrated a one on one meeting

12:42

between Eliador and the Empress. She

12:45

had forced a few promises out of the man.

12:47

Maybe he agreed in the moment, but he swiftly

12:50

changed his mind. Soon enough, he was

12:52

back in his pulpit, letting fly against

12:54

the Czar, the government of the Duma,

12:57

the Prime Minister, and just about everyone else

12:59

he considered a part of Russia's decline,

13:01

and that included leaders in the church. Now,

13:04

obviously they didn't take too kindly to that, and

13:07

they sent an order. The monk Iliodor

13:09

was being reassigned once again. This

13:11

time he was supposed to leave his base in the

13:13

city of Tzaritsin and go where he couldn't

13:16

make so much trouble, the remote monastery

13:18

of Novozil. But leaving his

13:20

influential position on the banks of the Volga

13:23

River was the last thing Eliador wanted

13:25

to do. His first course of action

13:27

was a frantic message to Siberia

13:30

he was calling on help from Rasputin. Of course,

13:32

after all, Grigory had been able to arrange

13:35

a one on one meeting with the Empress the last

13:37

time he got in trouble. Why couldn't he

13:39

use the same get out of jail free card

13:41

again? And while he waited for an answer,

13:43

he took some action. Gathering his closest

13:46

disciples around him, Eliodor retreated

13:48

into his monastery compound and barricaded

13:50

the doors. Douglas Smith writes

13:52

that Iliador even started blasting

13:55

out messages in his typical bombastic

13:57

style that he wouldn't leave unless

13:59

every of the monastery was covered

14:01

in his own blood, that he would

14:03

see his home become his grave before

14:06

he would be sidelined by the church, you

14:08

know, the usual stuff. Now,

14:10

we don't know if Rasputin was involved in what

14:12

happened next, but it's clear that the news

14:14

made its way to Nicholas and the Tsar

14:17

was having none of it. Naturally,

14:19

he sided with the leaders of the Russian Church.

14:21

They should do what they needed to do to tamp down

14:24

this violent dissenter. After all, it's

14:26

not like Eliador had been cultivating goodwill

14:28

with anyone among Russia's elite. All

14:31

this back and forth made its way

14:33

into black and white. Soon enough, the

14:35

papers were saying that Eliador had

14:37

rallied his terrorist followers to his cause.

14:40

And it wasn't a small movement either. By

14:42

one reckoning, thousands of people had

14:44

traveled the Volga to gather around Iliador.

14:47

It looked more and more like a fight was brewing.

14:51

The twists and turns and the story were complex.

14:53

It was a story of espionage, secret

14:56

agents, and back room deals. To

14:58

sum it up simply, though, a plex

15:00

bargaining process began. While Nicholas

15:02

sent negotiators to hash out the situation

15:05

with Iliador, Rasputin rushed

15:07

back into the Romanov's lives once again

15:09

to discuss things with them behind the scenes.

15:12

The situation was explosive. Realizing

15:15

that Grigory was out of hiding, the Prime Minister

15:17

met with Nicholas. He wanted to convince

15:19

the Czar that Grigory was bad for the throne

15:22

and bad for the empire. He put all

15:24

of Russia at risk. Nicholas,

15:27

though, wasn't convinced. He essentially

15:29

met the Prime Minister with a shrug and

15:31

he said, why don't you just meet with Rasputin

15:33

yourself? So finally,

15:36

after months of ducking the secret police, Nicholas

15:39

had to arrange it. Grigory met

15:41

face to face with Prime ministers Stoi

15:43

Leepin and Stoi Lepin,

15:45

came armed for the encounter. When they

15:47

faced off, he showed Grigory a file

15:49

packed with reports from the Russian secret

15:52

police. He said they proved that Rasputant

15:54

was a heretic who had betrayed the Russian

15:56

Church. Stoy Leepin believed that by

15:59

threatening Grigory he could get the man to

16:01

back down and disappear from the

16:03

Imperial Court, but he didn't know

16:05

just how much Resputant believed that he

16:07

was on a mission from God. Grigory

16:10

dared Soy Leapin to show the file not

16:12

to Nicholas, but to Alexandra, and

16:15

then when they went their separate ways, Gregory

16:17

wasted no time. He told the Empress

16:19

about the police reports himself. All

16:22

that the Prime Minister earned from the encounter was

16:24

Alexander's fury raspute,

16:26

and was right. The Romanovs were

16:28

on his side. This

16:30

swirl of activity around the Romanovs did

16:32

nothing to shake Iliador from his fortified

16:35

monastery. The mad monk was still

16:37

sending Rasputin messages asking for

16:39

help and lane plans to grow

16:41

his power. At one point he even

16:44

pretended to cooperate for a while and

16:46

took to the road, but in the end it was only

16:48

just buying time for him to gather more die

16:50

hard believers to his cause. He

16:53

circled back to his headquarters with even more

16:55

supporters in tow In fact, he had

16:57

gathered an army men and

16:59

women had marched to his fortress by the

17:01

tens of thousands, all of them

17:03

hung on Iliador's every word as

17:06

he called for the new representative government of

17:08

Russia to be torn down in a shower

17:10

of blood, and for people like Prime

17:12

Minister Stoilepen to be beaten in the

17:14

streets. And even as it got more and more

17:16

hypocritical, Eliador and his followers

17:19

still held onto the idea that all of this

17:21

was actually helping the Czar. It

17:24

was, as Dr Heather Coleman puts it,

17:26

a naive monarchism.

17:29

Historians have pointed to a

17:31

great phenomenon of naive

17:34

monarchism of of ordinary

17:36

people who who believed

17:39

that the that the government

17:42

um was the problem

17:44

and if only they could get to the Tsar,

17:46

that Ssar was was faithful

17:48

to the to the to the to the

17:51

little guy and um,

17:53

and that you know. The problem was the bureaucrats

17:55

in between. As these ideas

17:58

grew more powerful and il Door added

18:00

to his numbers, Nicholas had a choice

18:02

to make turn the full might of his

18:04

imperial forces on rebellious monarchists

18:07

or give them free reign to undermine

18:09

his government. The choice he made

18:12

was a fateful one, because in the end

18:14

Nicholas backed down. He issued

18:16

a full pardon for Eliador. The

18:18

mad monk had gone up against the Czar and

18:21

one, but that victory sowed

18:23

the seeds of his own downfall. In beating

18:25

the Tsar, these self defeating monarchists

18:28

proved once again that the Czar could

18:30

be beaten. This very public

18:32

battle between the Tsar and the terrorist

18:35

preacher had distracted the press from

18:37

the story of Rasputin, but it hadn't

18:39

distracted the rest of the Romanov family. Knowing

18:41

that meetings with Grigory had happened behind

18:44

the scenes, the other Romanovs believed

18:46

that Resputant was really the one behind Nicholas's

18:48

decision to fold in the face of Eliadora's

18:51

growing forces. So at one point

18:53

Nicholas's mother, the Dowager Empress,

18:56

decided it was time to take her son in hand.

18:58

She met with Nicholas and al Alexandra in the

19:00

palace. She gave her boy a good

19:03

tongue lashing. She demanded that Nicholas

19:05

and the scandal sever the friendship

19:07

and send respute in away. Alexandra

19:10

fought fire with fire. As the Czarina,

19:13

she refused to be pushed around by her mother

19:15

in law no matter what anyone thought, and

19:17

in the end the Dowager Empress

19:20

left defeated. Throughout

19:22

the fight with his mother and wife trading

19:24

ferocious arguments, Nicholas,

19:26

it said, sat in silence.

19:36

He put Russia behind him. After

19:39

all, it was true, the scandal did need time

19:41

to blow over. So Grigory Rasputin

19:43

set out to the one place he always wanted to

19:45

go. He wanted to refresh his soul,

19:47

to commune with God, so he went

19:50

to the Holy Land. But if that conjures

19:53

up stories of Grigory's early religious

19:55

life, of his wanderings and his lonely

19:57

struggles on the road, that might give us

19:59

the idea, because this wasn't quite

20:02

the kind of lonely pilgrimage to Jerusalem

20:04

that a holy man might make on a shoestring

20:06

and a prayer. Quite the contrary,

20:09

Resputant was doing something popular.

20:12

It turns out that the trip sounds a lot like the kind

20:14

of Holy Land tourism that people are still

20:16

doing today. Here's historian Douglas

20:18

Smith to explain. It's

20:21

not as exotic maybe as it first

20:23

seems that, you know, a Russian in nineteen

20:25

eleven would be going to the Holy Land. There

20:27

were actually packaged tours that

20:30

Russians would go on that would

20:32

take them to see the places

20:34

connected to the life of Jesus.

20:36

And this is essentially what he did as he went

20:38

on one one of these package tours,

20:40

if you will. But he was profoundly

20:42

moved by the experience, and he wrote

20:44

about it, and he sent letters back to Nicholas

20:47

and Alexandra about the meaning

20:49

it had for him. One of the things

20:51

that he came back with was a

20:53

renewed um conviction

20:56

that the only true form of Christianity

20:59

was Russian orthod docsy. That

21:01

was just the kind of message that would be welcomed

21:03

with opened arms by friends that Rasputant

21:06

had left behind, and he made a bee

21:08

line for none other than Iliador

21:11

awash in the glow of victory, the mad monk

21:13

welcomed Grigory to his monastery on

21:15

the Volga, and they hit the road as a

21:17

kind of double act. Soon enough,

21:19

they were trailed by supporters as they went from

21:22

town to town together. The documents

21:24

tell us that sometimes it was dozens

21:26

and sometimes it was hundreds of women who followed

21:29

in their wake. Iliodor introduced

21:31

Rasputin as his beloved brother. For

21:33

his part, Grigory recounts his adventures

21:36

in Palestine in a particularly nationalistic

21:38

mode. Here's more from Douglas Smith.

21:41

He had nothing but horrible things to say

21:44

about the other branches of the Christian

21:46

faith. And he came to believe that

21:49

pilgrimage to the Holy Lands

21:52

should be encouraged among

21:54

Russian society as a way

21:56

of instilling greater faith in the Church,

21:59

and by extension, and by instilling greater

22:01

faith and loyalty among Russian

22:05

Orthodox believers and subjects

22:08

of the Crown in the

22:10

sanctity of the throne

22:12

itself. That this was a way you could

22:14

further bind Russians

22:16

to the autocracy, was through

22:19

these trips to the Holy Land. And

22:21

and he would come back and

22:23

speak about his experiences

22:26

there, and this definitely

22:29

sort of gave him a greater sense of

22:31

religious authority in the eyes

22:33

of his believers. When

22:35

they ended their speaking tour back at Eliodor's

22:38

monastery, the monk gave rasput

22:40

And a lavish send off. It seemed

22:42

to Grigory that their friendship was secure

22:44

and that he had made a successful return to

22:46

Russian society. Maybe he

22:48

even believed that the bad press and the bad

22:51

days were behind him. He was

22:53

friends with Eliodor and friends

22:55

with the Czar. What could go wrong. But

22:58

if he only saw smooth sailing ahead,

23:00

then he hadn't been paying attention to the way that

23:02

Eliador treated his friends,

23:04

So it seems Gregory didn't have his guard

23:07

up. A few months later, when he arrived in St.

23:09

Petersburg, he heard that Eliodora

23:11

was also in the capital, purchasing a printing

23:13

press for his monastery. Eliodor

23:16

invited Grigory to travel with him to meet

23:18

with a member of the Holy Synod, their

23:20

supporter, germy Jin. Naturally,

23:22

Rasputin agreed, but he was walking

23:24

into a trap. When the pair arrived,

23:27

they found that germy Jan was not alone. As

23:29

they stepped into the room, Gregory realized

23:31

that he was also faced by two other men, a

23:34

Cossack officer who was one of Eliodora's

23:36

violent monarchist allies, and

23:38

another man, Mitya, who

23:40

Gregory knew well. In fact, Resputin

23:43

and Mitya had spent quite a lot of time together.

23:45

They were fellow mystics, fellow holy

23:48

fools in the eyes of many, and had been

23:50

friends for long enough to know that they hated

23:52

each other. So when he stepped

23:55

into the room with them, Gregory finally

23:57

realized what he was in for. He tried

23:59

to reach tread out the door, but they grabbed him

24:01

and forced him into a chair, and they

24:04

laid into him. If the Prime Minister

24:06

had tried to make Resputant back down by

24:08

threatening him with a few documents, this

24:10

crew took a more direct, more

24:12

violent approach. As Iliodor

24:14

would later tell the story, they took turns screaming

24:17

and Rasputant's face about his sins. He

24:20

had deceived them, he had fooled everyone.

24:22

He was an impostor, a hypocrite,

24:25

and a predator, and now he deserved

24:27

to be condemned. Resputant tried

24:29

to answer back, but this wasn't a conversation.

24:32

Germy Jan, dressed in his priestly robes,

24:35

grabbed Resputant by the head. In

24:37

his other hand he held a gold cross

24:40

and he smashed it down on Resputin.

24:42

He called him a devil. He hit Grigory

24:45

again and commanded that he never again

24:47

entered the Imperial Palace. Another

24:49

blow fell, and he forbade Grigory

24:51

to ever meet with the Empress, and the

24:53

beating went on. It's

24:56

a dramatic story. Eliodor

24:58

said that Resputant left the room that night, shaking,

25:00

pale and covered in blood, promising

25:03

that he would never enter the Romanov's palace

25:05

again. He kissed an icon pressed

25:07

on him by German Jin to seal the promise,

25:10

and dragged himself out into the night. The

25:13

Cossack officer remembered it a bit differently.

25:15

He told other government officials that Resputant

25:17

had fought all three of them before overpowering

25:20

them and escaping into the street, swearing

25:22

revenge. Whether it went

25:24

one way or the other, one thing

25:26

is clear. In an instant, Eliador

25:29

and Resputant had gone from allies to enemies.

25:31

Iliodor was hot off the heels of his very

25:34

public victory. He knew he was on

25:36

the rise, and he felt untouchable

25:38

all along. To this point, Rasputin

25:41

had been the one standing between him and the Romanovs.

25:44

It seems the Iliador thought he could finally do

25:46

away with Grigory and step into his place.

25:49

And powerful men in the church, like German

25:51

Jin, saw Rasputin as a stain

25:53

on their religion. They were only too happy

25:56

to turn Eliodor against his fellow preacher.

25:58

But if they had been able to turn the tables on the Tzar,

26:01

they found that Resputant would be a tougher target.

26:04

In fact, their attack on Gregory backfired.

26:08

Just a month later, German Jin got

26:10

news he was being stripped of his

26:12

position in the church after being

26:14

booted from the Holy Synod. He was exiled

26:17

from the capital, and of course he had

26:19

been Eliodor's strongest ally.

26:21

With him gone, the other members of the Holy

26:23

Synod came for the terrorist preacher. Exile

26:26

orders came down, and so did the command

26:28

that he was no longer a monk. Iliodor

26:31

was defrocked. On the way out the door,

26:34

both men pointed their fingers at Grigory.

26:36

All of this was retaliation for their

26:39

attack on him.

26:41

It's more likely that their battle with the Czar

26:43

and the Church, the battle they thought they

26:45

won, was finally catching up with them.

26:48

But regardless, they had no trouble blaming

26:50

their defeat on Resputin, and

26:52

in his fury at having the tables turned

26:54

on him so severely, Eliador

26:56

decided to make his final play. He

26:59

would unleash the weapon he had kept under

27:01

wraps and finally drive a wedge

27:03

between Resputant and the Czar.

27:11

The letters were stolen. They had

27:13

been prized possessions, after all, they came

27:15

from the Empress, along with the shirt that

27:18

she had sewn for him. It was her letters

27:20

that had the most meaning for Gregory. In

27:23

them, she poured out her prayers, her fears

27:26

and her joys, the struggles of her chronic

27:28

pain, the uncertainty of life

27:30

in the Russian court. It was all

27:32

stitched together in the messages that she would

27:34

send to her personal friend and spiritual

27:36

adviser at his home in Siberia,

27:39

built with the money given to him by his many

27:41

followers. Grigory gave these gifts

27:44

from the Empress a place of pride, and,

27:46

by some accounts, in a moment of weakness or

27:48

arrogance, he would take them out of his desk

27:50

and show them off, like the time

27:52

in nineteen o nine when his friend

27:55

Iliador visited him in Pokrovsko.

27:58

It was just after the first time that Rasputin

28:00

had arranged for Eliador to meet with the Empress.

28:03

With the fires of conflict burning low,

28:05

Grigory had invited Iliador out

28:07

to his home in Siberia to retreat and

28:10

think over what came next. The precise

28:12

details of the visit are unclear, and the only

28:14

person to describe what happened is Iliodor.

28:17

Knowing the way he later turned on Rasputin.

28:19

He's far from a reliable source, but

28:22

he describes the trip to Siberia as

28:24

a revealing one. He says that as they traveled

28:27

into Grigory's hometown, Rasputin told

28:29

him wild stories of his degenerate youth

28:31

and boasted constantly of his close ties

28:34

with the royal family. He bragged

28:36

that his influence went beyond the spiritual.

28:38

They consulted with him about faith and

28:40

love, yes, but also about the Duma,

28:43

the ministers, the government, the future

28:45

of Russia. Eliodor writes that Rasputant

28:48

got so boastful in his claims that he even

28:50

said that Nicholas and Alexandra had bowed

28:52

at his feet, and that the Czar could

28:55

not even breathe without him.

28:57

Now we have to take all of that with the grainess

29:00

alt Iliodor wrote it down after

29:02

he and Rasputin had become enemies. But

29:04

what does seem to be true is that at some point

29:07

on their visit, Rasputin showed Iliador

29:09

the letters. Some were from Alexandra,

29:12

some were from the Romanov children, and

29:14

there were notes from other important people there

29:16

too. And somehow, when

29:18

Iliodor left Pakrosco, some of

29:20

Rasputin's letters went with him,

29:23

and a few years later Eliador's change

29:25

of heart about Grigory made them a powerful

29:27

tool. Here's Douglas Smith to

29:29

describe what happened next. Alexandra

29:32

wrote to Rasputin at a moment

29:35

of extreme grief and sadness

29:37

and emotional distress, and which she talks

29:39

about, You know, I'm only able

29:41

to, you know, feel at peace and at ease when

29:43

i can rest my head on your shoulder, when

29:46

I'm in your presence, when

29:48

I feel your warmth around me. And

29:51

Eliador basically held

29:53

on to this letter as as

29:55

as a weapon to use against Resputin when

29:57

the time came, and he did

29:59

just that. Copies of the letter were

30:02

made, they spread throughout society,

30:05

and it became the basis of this notion

30:08

that there was a sexual relationship between

30:10

Resputin and the Empress. There never

30:12

was any such relationship.

30:15

But again, this information

30:17

was brought before for Nicholas,

30:20

and he was presented with the

30:22

actual letter, and he said, yes, this is Alexandra's

30:25

handwriting, took the letter, put it in his destroyer

30:28

and basically said, we will not speak of these

30:30

matters further. But

30:40

the letter and its implications didn't

30:42

stop with Nicholas. It reached the aristocratic

30:44

salons, where rumors from palace maids

30:47

had prepared the way for the worst interpretations

30:49

of the letter to take hold, and it reached

30:51

members of the Duma, the Russian parliament,

30:54

where politicians who opposed the Czar saw

30:56

the opportunity to revive the outcry

30:58

against Rasputin as a way of weakening

31:01

the already weak Romanovs.

31:03

So once again, the truth behind the letters

31:05

almost didn't matter. What mattered was

31:07

that it seemed to confirm the worst suspicions

31:10

that were already in the air, and when it

31:12

came to Alexander's private life. There

31:14

were plenty of unanswered questions and

31:16

court resentments that fed the flame. After

31:19

all, Alexander had become a mysterious

31:21

figure in Russian society.

31:23

To the people around her, she seemed secretive

31:26

and conniving, and in fact, she seemed

31:28

to line up perfectly with their suspicions

31:30

of people from outside Russia who took up

31:33

positions of power there. Apparently

31:35

none of these malicious prejudices had gone

31:37

away. Of course, looking back,

31:40

we now know that at least part of why Alexandra

31:42

often retreated from company in the Russian court

31:44

was because she was in chronic pain and

31:47

suffered through the illnesses that she dealt

31:49

with year after year. We

31:51

would hope for a little more generosity and

31:53

a little more mercy from people living through

31:55

the things she suffered, but there was none

31:57

of that in Imperial Russia. Here's

32:00

Ellen rappaport to say a bit more time

32:03

and again, I you know, I saw letters

32:05

and comments or diaries from

32:07

the girls or members of court. Oh, you know,

32:09

the family would do to go to the theater

32:11

or to something, and Alexandra

32:14

would either drop out or go home early

32:16

because she wasn't feeling well, and

32:19

she was all the always the party pooper,

32:22

you know, the one who you

32:24

know was indisposed. And

32:26

so time again you see Nicholas

32:29

taking his girls to the ballet or

32:31

to the opera without their mother, and

32:34

Alexandra just wasn't a present

32:36

socially at all. Alexandra,

32:39

time and time again the girls would say

32:41

a little note so in their diaries,

32:44

Oh, mother couldn't come down to lunch because

32:46

she had a headache and she wasn't feeling very

32:48

well. So much of the Empress's

32:50

private life was hidden from the eyes of even

32:52

those nearby. In Iliadora's

32:55

poisonous insinuations added to the rumors

32:58

that filled in the blanks of it was

33:00

a weapon that didn't just strike Resputing,

33:02

even as Nicholas tried to blunt its edge,

33:05

It hit Alexandra too. It

33:07

becomes part of the basis for

33:09

the myth that not only

33:12

is Resputing offering spiritual

33:15

sucker emotional comfort, but

33:17

that in fact he's engaged in a sexual relationship

33:19

with the Empress, which then later grows metastasizes

33:23

to the point that he's also sleeping with

33:25

the daughters of Alexandra. In fact,

33:27

even gets one of them pregnant,

33:30

and that there's talk that Alex Say, the

33:32

heir to the throne, is in fact

33:35

the bastard child of Resputing, and

33:37

all the stuff just gets more outlandish and

33:39

crazier as the years progress. And

33:41

for someone like her who preferred to keep

33:43

her private life private, the lies

33:46

were monstrous, They

33:48

were appalling, and they were absolutely

33:51

crucially damaging, because

33:54

not only within Russia was she hurried,

33:57

prided and demonized and

33:59

feet should in ugly sexual

34:02

cartoons with rasput

34:04

and some of them quite pornographic. In fact,

34:07

these were in circulation in Russia, but

34:09

of course this spread across the Western

34:11

press in Britain and America.

34:14

The gossip was appalling, you know,

34:16

the talk that they were having a sexual relationship

34:19

was utterly absurd, and when

34:21

people ask me about it, I'll say, I'm just not going

34:23

there because it's so ridiculous.

34:26

But the trouble is all that scandal

34:28

and gossip, and it was absolutely fetid

34:32

based on the third fourth

34:34

hand gossip and rumor and

34:36

innuendo. There was not a

34:39

grain of truth in any of it, but of

34:41

course that kind of mudge if

34:43

there's enough of it sticks in the end.

34:46

The letter it was taken as an admission of guilt.

34:49

The fiction was taken as fact. It was

34:51

undoubtedly false, but it unleashed a flood

34:53

of anger and fury against the Romanovs

34:56

and against Rasputin. It became

34:58

the enduring thing that people remember umber about

35:00

Grigory rest Sputin embedded right

35:02

in the lyrics of the bony m song of

35:04

his name, that he was the lover of the Russian

35:07

Queen. The Romanovs did what they could

35:09

to answer the lie. They tried to claw

35:11

back Alexander's reputation, but

35:13

Eliodora's partying shot had struck home.

35:16

The mad monk went on the run. He

35:19

disappeared into the shadows, off the stage

35:21

for a time, and yet the

35:23

damage was done. Shots

35:31

rang out. It was intermission at

35:33

the opera house. Nicholas had taken two

35:35

of his daughter's Olga and Tatiana,

35:37

to see the Tale of the Czar Sultan. But

35:40

he wasn't the only one. A revolutionary

35:43

anarchist had come with murder on his mind.

35:45

He meant to change the shape of the Russian Empire

35:48

with his revolver at close range, and

35:50

he did it too. The bullets struck home

35:53

and killed the prime minister stoy

35:55

Leapin. Nicholas later

35:57

remembered that stoy Leapin had turned and made

36:00

a sign of the cross in the air. As he grew pale,

36:02

blood was smeared on the right arm of his jacket.

36:05

It took four days for the Tsar's right hand

36:07

man to die. This

36:09

was one more active violence that was laid

36:11

at Restputant's feet. The papers wondered

36:13

whether Grigory had somehow been part of the plot

36:16

of the assassination. It was pure

36:18

fabrication, But what tragedies

36:20

weren't being blamed on the holy man from

36:22

Siberia. Nicholas

36:24

was spurred into action. Things were spiraling

36:26

out of control, so he threw caution

36:29

to the wind. As publishers

36:31

spun up the presses to run articles and

36:33

booklets on the mystical sex maniacs

36:35

supporting the Empress, Nicholas did

36:37

everything he could to reverse the concessions

36:39

he had made in nineteen o five. In

36:41

his eyes, the freedom of the press wasn't working.

36:44

The attempts he made to allow for representative

36:46

government were falling short. His Empress

36:49

was being derided, his ministers murdered,

36:51

and even monarchists were fighting against

36:54

him. It was time to reassert his

36:56

god given authority. It was time

36:58

for violence. The Moscow

37:00

branch of the Okrana rated the printing office

37:02

where a book against Resputant was being printed.

37:05

They smashed the presses, seized the books,

37:08

and shut down the operation. The

37:10

author, with his original manuscript tucked

37:12

away, went on the run. A

37:15

message was sent to the governor of the city, silenced

37:18

every mention of Restputan, not

37:20

the barest whisper was allowed to reach the page.

37:23

With the secret police rampaging throughout

37:25

the city, the governor agreed. Over

37:27

the course of the next few months, stories

37:29

about Resputant brought on harsh reprisals,

37:33

but the voices of Russian writers had been

37:35

set free by the edicts of nineteen o five,

37:38

and it was far too late to cage them back up

37:40

again. Publishers, determined to

37:42

hold onto their new found freedoms, continued

37:44

to print stories about Resputin, and

37:47

the more the Tsar's forces attempted to silence

37:49

those stories, the more certain the

37:51

people became grigory. Resputin,

37:54

the devil of lust, had his

37:56

grip on the Russian throne.

38:00

That's it for this week's episode of

38:03

Unobscured. Stick around after

38:05

this short sponsor break for a preview

38:07

of what's in store for next week. The

38:14

throne was in danger, the

38:16

Church was in danger, the very state

38:18

of Russia itself. No revolutionary

38:21

or foreign missionary had done what rest

38:23

Sputin had done. The Imperial

38:25

family was stained. A vestige

38:27

of the dark Ages had risen up and taken

38:30

the Czar of Russia into his hands. That

38:33

was the message that thundered out into the Russian

38:35

parliament, the Duma, on March

38:37

eighth of nineteen twelve. The speaker,

38:40

Alexander Gukov, was a politician

38:42

who had been working to reform the Russian government

38:44

since the Revolution of nineteen o five. Now

38:47

he was taking direct aim at the Czar,

38:50

and Nicholas took it personally. After

38:52

all, this speech was in open defiance

38:54

of his power, and in a time when the press

38:57

and the Church and even the supporters of

38:59

the Empire had gone against the crown, this

39:02

was a new low. Unobscured

39:16

was created by me Aaron Manky and

39:18

produced by Matt Frederick, Alex Williams,

39:21

and Josh Thane in partnership with

39:23

I Heart Radio, with research by

39:25

Sam Alberty, writing by Carl

39:27

Nellis and original music by Chad

39:30

Lawson. Learn more about our contributing

39:32

historians, source materials, and

39:34

links to our other shows over at grimm

39:37

and mild dot com, Slash

39:39

Unobscured, and, as always,

39:41

thanks for listening. The

40:01

Boa