Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
15
Rasputin: Mystic, Sinner, Healer, or Spy?
In 1907, Czar Nicholas II and his empress Alexandra, desperate to help their
hemophiliac son and only male heir, Alexy, turned to a wandering healer
named Grigory Rasputin. The decision was to have consequences for the whole
country. The facts around Rasputin's life remain clouded in contradiction and
controversy, but his influence on the royal household in the years leading up
to the Russian empire's demise are indisputable. Nicholas and Alexandra
remained loyal to him for his apparent success in easing Alexy's suffering,
which they were trying to keep from the Russian public. But Rasputin's per-
sonal life—including energetic sexual exploits and drunken binges—sullied
his reputation as an Orthodox mystic, especially among the czar's advisers and
aristocracy. Some claim Rasputin was a member of the
khlisty
sect, who
believed in salvation through sin (the name comes from the Russian word for
“whip”).
The royal couple's increasing alienation from Russian reality was blamed on
Rasputin's twisted advice, and he was accused of acting as a German spy dur-
ing World War I. Nicholas's inner circle grew so worried about Rasputin's influ-
ence on national policies that they murdered him in 1916. Even his death is
steeped in legend: His killers reported that they poisoned him, shot him, and
beat him before tossing him into an icy canal—and that he was still kicking
underwater. Alexandra, devastated, ordered his remains dragged out a few
days later. Within 2 years, Nicholas's rule had collapsed and his whole family
had been executed.
2
1861, but society remained starkly unequal
and most of the population was still poor
and uneducated. The thriving merchant
class helped fuel Russia's industrial advances
in the late 1800s. Alexander II grew
Decembrist uprising of 1825, led by
reformist generals in the royal army, was
quashed by Czar Nicholas I, who then
bolstered the censors and the secret police.
Czar Alexander II freed the serfs at last in
■
1979
Soviet forces invade
Afghanistan; war against
U.S.-funded Islamic guerrillas
lasts 10 years.
■
1985
Mikhail Gorbachev
appointed General Secretary
of the Communist Party;
launches
glasnost
and
pere-
stroika.
■
1986
Chernobyl nuclear
reactor explodes in world's
worst nuclear accident.
■
1989
Berlin Wall falls.
■
1990
Baltic states declare
independence; Boris Yeltsin
■
1993
Opposition lawmakers
revolt against Yeltsin, who
attacks them with tanks.
■
1994
Yeltsin sends troops
into Chechnya to quash
rebellion; 20 months later,
Russian troops withdraw in
humiliation and Chechnya
enjoys semiautonomy.
■
1998
Russia's reviving econ-
omy hit by global financial
crisis; government defaults
on debt and ruble crashes.
elected president of the Rus-
sian Federation, the biggest
Soviet republic.
■
1991
Hard-liners attempt a
coup against Gorbachev but
fail; Leningrad residents vote
to change the city's name
back to St. Petersburg; Yelt-
sin and the leaders of
Ukraine and Belarus declare
the USSR defunct; Gor-
bachev resigns.
continues
