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!
Source
A
A
cartoon of Rasputin with the Tsar and the Tsarina, supposedly
drawn in 1916.
The
words in Russian mean: 'the Russian Royal Family'.