Not such a die-hard mystic

Rasputin: Rumours of the nature of his demise have been greatly exaggerated

By Pat Kelly.

Soviet documents from the last century have shown that despite the legendary accounts surrounding his death, Rasputin was not that hard to kill after all.

Accounts of Grigory Rasputin’s assassination have long defied medical opinion. However the truth reveals that rather than being almost cockroach-like in his ability to survive beatings, gunshot wounds and poison, the reality is much more mundane.

While it has been accepted — perhaps with some skepticism — as a fact that Rasputin survived huge doses of potassium cyanide, gunshot wounds to the head, neck and chest and savage beatings, a 500-page file on the ‘Mad Monk’ compiled by the Bolsheviks soon after his death showed that the only thing resurrected was the truth.

All was revealed in the book Rasputin: The Last Word, which itself has mystical origins. The Bolsheviks compiled a secret file shortly after Rasputin’s death in 1916. It subsequently went missing, only to resurface at a Sotheby’s auction, where it was bought by Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. It was then passed on to historian and playwright Edvard Radzinsky, who compiled the book, presumably much to the chagrin of historical romanticists everywhere. And Boney M.

However the myths about the Mad Monk still abound and make for great folklore. In spite of a somewhat laissez faire approach to personal hygiene, Rasputin is reputed to have plowed a furrow through a small army of Russian women, including members of the aristocracy.

But there is no evidence to support the various tales of Rasputin being endowed with a 13-inch penis — this would seem to be a myth propagated by anti-royalists determined to portray him as a type of demon who had taken the form of man. Rather, the superhuman status and hypnotic powers attributed to him appear to be the work of the Bolsheviks in an effort to discredit Nicholas and Alexandra (great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria), the last Tsar and Tsarina of Russia.

In reality, it is more likely that cult of personality took hold, and Rasputin’s growing reputation gave him almost unlimited access to female companionship. But one suspects he didn’t object to the myth.

Most interesting from a medical perspective are the claims of ‘faith healing’ and how the Mad Monk supposedly ‘cured’ haemophilia in the Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich. However medical evidence contained in the Bolshevik files suggests the young heir may in fact have been suffering from aplastic anaemia, which is often subject to spontaneous remission but mimics the symptoms of haemophilia. It appears that Rasputin’s timing in his arrival at Alexei’s bedside was expeditious, to say the least.

Slip-slidin' away: Rasputin's frozen, poison-free corpse is dragged from beneath a sheet of ice prior to his post-mortem

And so to his assassination. Most of the accounts of his death were long regarded as fact, but these came exclusively from the conspirators and it seems that they may have made him appear almost superhuman in order to cover their own ineptitude. Also in the mix is the suggestion that Prince Yussupov — one of the conspirators and a transvestite who is said to have been in love with Rasputin — deliberately tried to make a hames of the murder for personal reasons.

He obviously failed but contrary to the reports of poisoning, beatings, gunshot wounds and drowning, a post mortem revealed that Rasputin had not in fact ingested any poison and simply died of a gunshot wound that would likewise kill any ordinary man.

One of the enduring myths that ‘believers’ point to is the fact that Rasputin, who always claimed to have visionary premonitions, moved all of his money to his daughter’s account shortly before his death. However, given the level of hostility towards the Mad Monk and the amount of powerful enemies he had accumulated, this would be akin to Micheál Martin falling into a trance and miraculously predicting a poor showing for FF in the General Election.

Rasputin: The Last Word is available via Amazon at http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rasputin-Last-Word-Edvard-Radzinsky/dp/0753810808.

pat.kelly@imt.ie