Rasputin was a goodie. James learns from 19-year old Alex - of https://substack.com/@rasputintruth - that everything we know about Rasputin is wrong. He wasn’t mad. He wasn’t even a monk. In fact he probably deserves to be a saint…
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I think you'd be mad not to.
Welcome to the Dellingpod Rasputin Archive.
Now, you've asked me to keep your identity secret, which is fine.
But what can you tell me about yourself before we enter into the realm of Rasputin?
Well, thank you for having me, James.
This is the second time I've ever been on a podcast.
First time it was yesterday, actually.
And well, my name's Alex.
I'm 19.
I'm a college student and I've been doing this Rasputin historical rehabilitation project for maybe three years now, but I've only gotten around to, you know, publishing articles and stuff about that pretty recently.
And it's a hobby of mine.
I don't make any money off it.
And it's something that I'm really passionate about.
So thank you for giving me the opportunity once again.
Well, Alex, it's an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast.
Always love a new rabbit hole and this is a new rabbit hole for me, as it will be for most of of my viewers and listeners.
I first came upon the idea, um that Rasputin might not be the the mad monk kind of bad person that he's been portrayed in history.
Um, when I went on a trip to to Moscow recently and there was a guy on the trip called i've had him on the podcast called Charles Bausman and Charles and another of the guys on the trip Conrad, they were very keen on this idea that that that Rasputin, like the Romanovs, had been misrepresentative uh, misreprepresented.
I, I I personally haven't got a dog in the fight in that.
I hear both sides.
On the Romanovside, for example, i've i've heard that um from from the sort of the Conrad side of things or I had comment on on my podcast that Csar Nicholas was was a really, really good guy and he was trying to reform Russia and he was just too good for this world and he was taken out brutally and and I know that there's a sort of movement in in Russia to resolve the restore the czar.
I, on the other hand, I also hear from other conspiracy um in other conspiracy circles that the Romanovs were one of the kind of one of the Satanic bloodlines and that you know, come on, they were.
That that they're bad is there are no white hats, etc.
Um, but you've spent three years looking into Rasputin.
Um what, what?
What made you start in the first place?
Well um, you know, i'm i'm an orthodox Christian.
I've actually, you know, i've spoken to Charles before on twitter and I know Conrad in real life as well.
So um yeah, that's I.
I saw, I listened to your episodes and I heard that they mentioned Rasputin.
I thought that was really good and yeah, you know I I uh, I started doing this.
I started actually investigating the Romanovs Czar, Nicholas Ii.
Um, I have a, a portrait of him actually staring at me right now as I talk.
So i'm a huge fan of his and, you know, I really looked into the whole history behind him and something always seemed off.
Because, even you know, within orthodox Christian circles um, where Csar Nicholas is justified and considered to be a very capable and good man and some stuff like that, Rasputin is still seen as this.
You know, evil influence.
So we're supposed to believe that this you know honest and faithful man, Csar Nicholas Ii, who was very capable and very Christian and very faithful also, you know, somehow allowed himself to be manipulated by a sex pest who you know, Know, practiced magic and the occult, and this always seemed off, and nobody seemed to question it.
So I thought, well, someone should question it.
And then I found out that some people did, but it was really unpopular.
And I decided that, you know, if nobody else would do it, I'd have to do it at least in the English language.
And that's where I decided to do it.
Yeah.
That is such a good reason for going into it.
That nobody else is doing it and it's unpopular.
I know exactly what you mean.
That I find that whenever there are red flags, warning flags, whenever there's sort of the narrative wants you to believe a particular thing, that it's always worth investigating further because the narrative is almost always lying.
You're probably, well, you're certainly way too young to remember.
There was a hit in the 1970s, I think, by a band called Boney M called Rara Rasputin, Lover of the Russian Queen.
It was a shame how he carried on.
I can't remember how it goes after that.
That's probably about the most people.
And he does crop up in movies, doesn't he?
Occasionally.
Rasputin?
Yeah.
Yes, and several of them.
You have Anastasia, you have the new Kingsman movie.
I know he made an appearance on that.
Do you know what?
That's the one I was thinking of particularly.
And I was thinking, well, Mark Miller, who is awake, and I don't think had anything to do with the latest Kingsman movie, which I thought was really off.
I thought it was, I mean, I love the first two Kingsman movies.
This is the third, isn't it?
This was really, really pushing cabal narratives.
So I've heard.
Yeah.
You know, I really liked the first one and the second one.
You know, the church scene, this church shooting scene, I found a bit like problematic.
But in general, the plot was really nice.
But then this last one, it's like, okay, what are we doing here?
You know?
Yeah.
Yeah, it might have been.
It might as well have been made by the Illuminati, that third film.
I felt really uncomfortable watching it.
And there was a scene where they were, well, repeatedly, they're trying to kill Rasputin, aren't they?
Yes.
I mean, he was pretty indestructible.
Until he wasn't.
That's what some people say, but I've really, you know, I've read several books on the matter of his death.
Because, you know, I think people have written more on his death than his actual life.
And you have so many different versions.
I'd say that he wasn't actually indestructible.
You know, I know Yusupov, who was Felix Yusupov, is usually the person people claim was the actual murderer or the main one, the mastermind behind the conspiracy.
And he took his creative liberties when writing his memoirs.
He said that, you know, he had Rasputin get on his knees before a crucifix and pray, and then he shot him in the head, and Rasputin got up and started running at him.
And all of this stuff, you know, historians have looked at the autopsy reports and they don't seem to coincide.
So, you know, the idea that the idea that he was indestructible is more of an extension of the myth of Rasputin in life to his actual death.
It's like the Terminator films, isn't it?
Where the Terminator keeps coming back.
Can I say, Alex, though, I am slightly disappointed to hear that it's not true.
I quite like the idea of this guy who just they could not kill.
They tried to drown him and they shot him and all this stuff.
And still he came back.
But no.
So can we let's go to the beginning.
Who was he?
And I mean, it's a funny name, Rasputin.
The second half is Putin.
Is there any connection?
I saw a YouTube comment the other day saying that the Rasputins escaped Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution and changed their name to Putin, and then they came back and now they control Russia.
It's obviously not true.
There's no connection between them.
But I found it funny either way.
So he was.
Where was he born?
Where did he come from?
So, well, he was a he was Siberian.
He was born in the Siberian village of Prokrovskoya in 1869.
And, you know, the Rasputins, they arrived in that village in the mid 1600s, I believe.
And his family tree can sort of be traced back eight generations, I think.
And, you know, we don't know much about Rasputin's like first 30 years of life.
I think that's where historians say we don't really know much.
But the few things we know were that he was a devout man.
He was a Christian.
He had apparently some gift of clairvoyancy.
He could point out thieves and he could heal people as well, which was something that continued on throughout his life.
And his childhood was actually used later on as propaganda against him.
Several claims were made about that.
So I know you told me you were disappointed that he wasn't an indestructible man.
And you'll find, I think that you'll be disappointed in general because the true Rasputin was actually, I'd say, quite boring in comparison to the mythical Rasputin.
He was, you know, I guess in summary, he was a devout man.
He was a regular Christian.
But the myth is that he was this, you know, political manipulator, sex pest, and indestructible man.
And you'll find out that he really wasn't.
Yeah, I'm beginning to regret this podcast, Alex.
Rasputin repositioned as one of the most boring men in history.
Yeah.
So for the first 30 years of his life, we don't know much about him.
I mean, Siberia in itself is an interesting place, isn't it?
I mean, it was later used for exiles, but you're saying that when his family moved there, this would have been a period where people would have willingly gone to Siberia?
Well, yes, people moved to Siberia and there they built this village and this village had, you know, it was relatively important, but, you know, in a very fringe and minor way in that specific Siberian region.
And yeah, I guess, you know, the people moving there, there's a lot of Myths behind Siberia about how Siberians were these degenerate, strange, spiritually strange people before their Christianization.
I remember reading that they were considered, maybe this is not historically true, it probably isn't, but there were some European travelers who wrote about how, you know, in the 1700s or 1600s, these people who were, you know, mostly uncontacted in some way, how they were, you know, spiritually very strange.
I tend to believe that this is not the case, but at least the perception was that Siberians were, you know, foreign to, you know, regular Russians.
Yeah.
Well, I'm, I, I, presumably, the original, the sort of the native peoples of Siberia were into shamanism and stuff like that, shamanism.
Yeah, I mean, I'm not exactly sure, but that's at least what the perception was back then.
Maybe not so much in Grigori's time and Gorus Putin's time, but previously.
Did he come from a prosperous family?
Well, his dad had, you know, animals and as peasants usually did.
They weren't a very wealthy family, but for the standards of the village, they were, you know, they weren't wealthy, but they were doing okay.
He had, I believe, he had several brothers and sisters, but as it was the case back then, many of them died young.
And I believe he had a sister that lived on for some more time, but I don't remember exactly.
Not much is known about that either.
Right.
So he had these skills.
He could spot thieves and he could heal people.
So did he become a monk early on?
No, actually, he never became a monk.
He was never a monk or a priest, actually.
Which is interesting because one of the most famous books about Rasputin is called Rasputin the Mad Monk and he was never a monk.
Or one of the most famous titles as well.
You know, you'll hear the mad monk of Russia, Rasputin, and he was never a monk.
He was never a priest.
He use alliteration to embed concepts in our brains.
And there you go.
I knew he was a mad monk because, well, mad monk.
Why wouldn't you know this when everyone knows this?
Yeah, well, now you know he was never actually tonsured as a monk in the church or ordained as a priest.
He was the term used to describe him was Stranik, which were religious wanderers or pilgrims, you know, who walked to monasteries and did religious pilgrimages.
You'll find in Tsar Nicholas II's diaries that he always referred to Rasputin as either our friend or a Stranik, which was one of these holy wanderers in Russia.
Right, because one of my favorite books that I read recently was The Way of the Pilgrim, which you must have read.
It was a huge bestseller in late 19th century Russia.
And it's all about that, isn't it?
These pilgrims going long distances, being being given accommodation by sympathetic nobles and villagers or whatever, and go and, and and just saying the Jesus prayer and being holy.
Yeah, did you read the second part as well?
The pilgrim continues his way.
Um, I don't know, I just will.
It's, it's included sometimes in the, you know, in the same version, or sometimes it's included separately.
I i'd say, if you haven't read it, you should check it out, because it's, it's a continuation of the way of a pilgrim and it's amazing as well.
So does does, does new stuff happen?
Uh yeah, i'm intrigued.
Now i'm obviously i'm tempted to go and get my copy of the book to see whether i've, whether i've read it or not.
But yeah, I must say no, go ahead.
I've.
Been enjoying your literature, your orthodox literature.
Yes yes it's, it's amazing stuff.
Um, if you liked the way of a pilgrim, you should read um, my pilgrimage to Jerusalem by Grigory Resputin.
He he, he didn't write it actually, he narrated it to one of his followers because he was semi-literate.
He could, he could, you know, sort of read and write a bit, but it was really, you know uh not, he wasn't educated.
He never went to school.
For example, he helped his father from a young age with the animals and the farm, so he couldn't really write very well.
He had.
He narrated his pilgrimages to one of his followers and the follower wrote it down and now it's published as a book and it's actually one of a few books written about Resputin in English that is actually worth reading and it's Resputin in his own words, and if you really liked the way of a pilgrim, I think you'll find his insights to be, you know, quite profound, especially for a semi-literate pilgrim from Siberia.
Oh interesting, i'll definitely get that.
Yeah yeah, so just does.
Does, does cool stuff happen?
Does he?
Does he sort of experience miracles?
and no not not not exactly but um at least not in in in this book i've seen he does you know give spiritual insight into for example you know the spiritual state of the greek monks in mount athos who he claims were spiritually uh corrupted and that's why god handed over uh you know a lot of to the turks which i think might be true
might not be, i'm not sure.
I I think it might be interesting.
But as for you know the stories, like in the way of a pilgrim with a French professor who was actually uh a devil and he grabbed the New Testament and vanished.
Uh yeah, I don't think you'll find those, but in general, you know, uh in in Douglas Uh Smith's book on Resputin, he talks about how his early pilgrimages were basically Resputin's university.
He he never went to university Or to school, but his pilgrimage is the word, his university, and he met all types of people here, like you know, priests, beggars, crooks, murderers, nuns, soldiers, all types of people.
And this was his university, his spiritual university, and why when he returned from his pilgrimages, he became some sort of spiritual advisor in his village.
Okay, right.
So, when was how old was you when he did the Jerusalem pilgrimage?
Oh, well, the Jerusalem pilgrimage was actually done way later, because in the 1890s is when he began his pilgrimages.
So, he must have been, you know, around 23, I think when they began.
He started going to, you know, the he his first monastery was the St. Nicholas monastery in Verhoturia.
And then he went, you know, through other monasteries in Russia, but the throughout the 1890s.
But the Jerusalem pilgrimage, this one happened in 1911, I believe, after he was, you know, implicitly exiled from St. Petersburg for some time.
He wasn't officially exiled, but he, you know, the Tsar recommended that he leave for a while as things calm down.
Ah, well, in that case, I suppose we're leaping ahead of ourselves.
By the way, I meant to ask you, do you speak Russian?
No, I don't speak Russian, unfortunately.
That must have been a handicap when trying to research this stuff.
Because I imagine a lot of the documentation, the archive is Russian, isn't it?
Yes, it is.
And I have to translate all the documents, all the archival stuff, all the books.
I have to translate all of them to read them and maybe reference them with some Russian-speaking friends.
So yeah, for sure, it'd be way easier to write the articles and stuff.
It would take me like, you know, a third of the time it takes me to write one.
It's been a labor of love for you, clearly.
So, okay, so you say we don't know much about him till he was 30.
When did he appear on the scene?
Yeah, so basically after his pilgrimages in the 1890s, he came back to his village and he became a spiritual advisor there.
He gave, you know, simple Christian advice and stuff.
And the village priest, he became jealous of Rasputin because Rasputin was like a spiritual genius despite his humble upbringing.
And the village priest complained and Rasputin basically became disenchanted with his village and the spiritual life in it and decided to walk to Kiev, 2,000 miles away in 1904.
And there he met Father Gavril, who presented him to Bishop Sergei of Kazan.
And Bishop Sergei in 1904 was basically his connection into St. Petersburg.
And in St. Petersburg, Rasputin, you know, that's when he appears in St. Petersburg, and he had two goals.
His first goal was to meet St. John of Kronstadt, who was basically the, I think the best way to describe it was like the priest, the most well-known priest.
He was sort of a celebrity in the spiritual realm of St. Petersburg.
And his second goal was to acquire funds to build a church in Pokrovsky in his village.
And in 1904, he met St. John of Kronstadt.
He met Archpriest Theofan Bistrov, Iliodor, and many, you know, characters that we'll find out about later who were very important throughout his life.
Now, on the topic of St. John of Kronstadt, if I may quickly mention it, St. John was actually a huge admirer of Rasputin, which is pretty weird because he wasn't well known.
But when Rasputin arrived and met St. John of Kronstadt, St. John actually said that Rasputin, he told Rasputin, and I quote, God granted you many gifts to help people, be my right hand.
He also said, among us is one who is more worthy, more deserving, to be the first to receive the holy mysteries.
Here he is, a humble pilgrim standing among you.
Then he asked Rasputin for his blessing, and then he called him an elect of God.
So at least St. John of Kronstadt was a huge Rasputin fan.
He was a huge Rasputinite.
As soon as he met him, he recognized the man's spiritual maturity.
And this was in 1904.
Because I know that St. John of Kronstadt was a pretty big, big deal at that time.
I mean, he was sort of the preeminent living saint of Russia, wasn't he?
So to have his imprimatur to be recognized by this guy must have meant that Rasputin had something.
Yes, you know, it must have.
And the implications to the contrary would require, you know, not only the Romanovs to have been deluded, but St. John of Kronstadt to have been deluded by Rasputin.
So, you know, where do we draw the line?
Did he just, you know, this semi-literate peasant manage to delude the top theologians and aristocrats and everyone?
Or, you know, maybe he was just a regular good guy.
So, okay, so he comes to St. Petersburg and is acknowledged.
Where do we go from there?
Yes, so this was in 1904.
Then in 1905, he entered the court of the Tsar.
Towards the end of 1905 is when he meets the Tsar through the influence of Theofan Bistrov, who was the confessor, and Grand Duchess Milizia of Montenegro.
And she was, you know, very much into the spiritual realm and spiritual matters, so she liked Rasputin.
But Rasputin gained favor in the Tsar and the Tsarina's eyes.
And Milizia of Montenegro didn't like this.
She was jealous of this because she liked having influence in the court of the Tsarina specifically.
And she asked Rasputin not to go and visit the Tsar and the Tsarina by himself.
She wanted to maintain certain influence.
But in 1906, Rasputin starts visiting the Tsar and the Tsarina alone.
And this angered Militia of Montenegro.
And I would say who is Militia of Montenegro?
She was a Montenegrin princess.
She and her sister Stana Anastasia, they were sort of important aristocrats back then, friends of the Romanovs and influential people who actually served as the link between Rasputin and the Romanovs.
So this is sort of how they met.
Right.
Okay, so he starts seeing the Tsar and the Tsarina secretly.
Or alone anyway.
Yeah, alone.
Not exactly secretly.
It wasn't publicized either.
But I'd say that this moment when he starts visiting the Tsar and the Tsarina alone is when he becomes well known.
And this, I'd say, the year 1906 is when the cataclysm happens and Rasputin becomes both a celebrity and a public villain.
It's gradual.
It's not like it happened in a specific moment.
But this is where I, you know, I'd draw the line and say this is where it all started.
Yes.
Yes.
That would make sense.
I mean, because we know, I mean, I know.
I think most of my viewers and listeners know now, because I don't stop banging on about it, that this was the period where Britain and America were gearing up for creating the First World War, which was designed to destroy Germany and Russia simultaneously.
And at the time, they were pretending to be friends of the Tsar, but secretly they were luring him into an entente, which would later, they would turn against the Tsar and betray him.
So I can see why any influences on the Tsar that weren't controlled by the powers that be, by the sort of the deep state, by the Milner group in Britain and America, they would want to destroy him in a propaganda campaign.
Yes, and you'll find that the, I'd agree actually, but I think that the origins, at least, of the propaganda against Rasputin were domestic.
So this is one of the qualms I have, for example, with those who say that Rasputin was slandered by the Bolsheviks, because he really wasn't.
The Bolsheviks utilized, and I always go back to this phrase used by Kerensky, excuse me, by Lenin, saying that Kerensky laid the foundations for the Bolshevik revolution due to his incompetence.
And, you know, I think that this was the same with the origin of Rasputin slander.
The Bolsheviks slandered Rasputin in some way to, you know, say that Tsar Nicholas was incapable and mock him.
But the origin of the propaganda and the salacious claims against Rasputin, this was an aristocratic phenomenon that happened during the Tsarist era, not during the Bolshevik Russian era.
Okay, interesting.
So yes, because there was a lot of court intrigue, wasn't there?
A lot of the Russian aristocracy didn't like the Tsar's reformist measures.
Is that right?
Yeah, they didn't like many things about the Tsar.
They didn't like that he was very autocratic and at the same time very, you know, I don't want to say progressive so that the term won't be misconstrued, but he was, you know.
undoubtedly a very progressive in the good sense of the word leader.
He industrialized Russia.
He improved living conditions for the serfs.
He was a good leader, I'd say.
So I'm sure that doing this while still maintaining an autocratic and monarchical system of government was not the ideal, especially for these Western-influenced aristocratic liberals.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So they started badmouthing Rasputin and that's presumably when they started.
We heard these rumors that he was having a love affair with with the queen is that right?
And stuff like that with the Zarina.
These started right a bit later.
So I said that 1906 was the point where it all started, but actually you know.
So basically what happened was you know.
I told you about Militsa of Montenegro.
She basically, you know, became angry at Rasputin and decided that she was gonna destroy him.
And in 1907 is when the first episode of Rasputin healing Alexei Tsarevich Alexei occurs.
When doctor Saint Eugene Botkin was martyred with the Romanovs in 1918, he couldn't help Alexei after an accident and Rasputin arrived late at night and prayed and in the morning Alexei's temperature had decreased, the swelling in his leg had been reduced and he was, you know, very healthy once again, or as healthy as he could be in his condition.
So this was the first example in 1907.
And in 1907, at the same time, Militsa decides to accuse Rasputin of belonging to a heretical sect called the sect the what the chlists?
The chlists yes, was he?
Was he a member of this sect?
What did they believe?
Yeah, so their their uh, beliefs.
You know a lot has been written about their beliefs as well.
Some people claim that these uh were uh individuals who believed that you had to sin to grow closer to god and therefore participated in orgies and self-flagellation.
I've read the the history behind them and these seem to be, you know, not not real practices.
They were basically devout pentecostals and you know, their beliefs could be characterized as pentecostal rather than.
You know this orgiastic uh ritual cult, but Resputin never.
They were considered heretical by the orthodox church and Resputin never belonged to this uh sect.
You'll find that there were four investigations, uh to you know, done throughout Resputin's life and even one after his death, to see if he belonged to this sect, and they could never prove that he did.
They proved that he was an orthodox Christian.
The third investigation said that the people who made the accusations were enemies of the czar and the origin of this were the enemies of the church and the czar and the Resputin was an orthodox Christian, so the conclusions were always positive.
But they, you know uh, they ruined Resputin's reputation even because, even due to the accusations you know the accusations that he was a degenerate and a chlist and a schismatic and uh, you know a man who participated in these rituals.
These never went away, even if the actual results in the investigation Exonerated him.
Right.
Okay.
And what do you think he was saying to the Tsar and Tsarina?
Well, he was a spiritual advisor to the Tsar in the Zarina.
I think this is the best.
You know, what do you mean what he was saying?
What he said from the other day?
Do we have any record of the sort of advice he gave them?
Or it was just a sort of general spiritual counsel or what?
Well, we don't have any records on his part.
We have records on, you know, the Tsar and the Tsarina's part in their diaries.
And we have testimony by people who frequented the palace, the ladies in waiting, usually.
And the Tsar in the Tsarina basically, you know, the conclusion that I've derived is that he was a spiritual advisor.
And he wasn't a priest or anything, as I already mentioned, but he basically talked to them about spiritual matters and sometimes about politics.
But his political influence was way more marginal than his spiritual influence.
And you'll see that in the diaries.
Like, you know, Nicholas writes that, you know, today I spoke with our friend.
Our friend came by this afternoon.
After the conversation with our friend, my soul was calm.
So, you know, these really short entries into Nicholas's diary talking about Rasputin.
These really don't really reveal much about the specific advice given.
We have some letters from Rasputin as well.
One that was written, for example, right before World War I, where Rasputin didn't want Nicholas to join, but he couldn't stop him because he was almost murdered.
But anyway, we'll get into that afterwards.
But yeah, no, I'd say that he was a spiritual advisor.
He was very aware about politics and his political advice was very sound.
He probably, Nicholas probably should have followed it, but he didn't.
As can be seen in Oldenburg's book, The Last Tsar.
You'll find that Tsar Nicholas didn't follow Rasputin's political advice at all, pretty much.
But he did follow his spiritual advice.
So yeah, that's what I'd say about what Rasputin was talking about.
Right.
Right.
Okay, so people are increasingly briefing against him.
Where is he living at the moment in this period?
Was he given a sort of grace and favor apartment in the royal palace?
Or was he no, he didn't live in the palace.
He had an apartment in St. Petersburg and he had his house in Pokrovskoye and he moved between the two.
You'll find that Rasputin actually didn't spend much of his life in his Prokrovskoy home.
His daughter writes how when she was very young, she sometimes didn't even remember Rasputin as he came after like a couple of years and how their mother said, oh, this is your father.
And they were like, oh, look, and they hugged him and they really loved him, but they didn't really remember him, at least in their younger years.
Later on, they did connect more with him.
But yeah, in general, Rasputin moved between his St. Petersburg apartment and his house in Pokrovskoye.
But how can he afford this?
Oh, the royal family paid for the trips.
OK.
And was he was he was he weird looking?
I mean, he had a sort of mad beard, and was he, do you think he would have washed very often?
Yeah, you know, the idea that he was this, I'll just be candid, that he was like disgusting, he was repugnant.
This idea comes from the book The Mad Monk of Russia, written by the apostate Iliador, also known in the world as Sergei Prufanov.
He was a friend of Rasputin, but later they became enemies.
He was actually, I'd say, Rasputin's greatest enemy in life.
And I've written a whole article about it called A Russian Judas, The Apostasy of Her Monk Iliador.
And, you know, this is where the idea of Rasputin being repugnant originates, where he describes Rasputin as, you know, smelling awfully and global warming is a massive con.
There was no evidence whatsoever that man-made climate change is a problem, that it's going to kill us, that we need to amend our lifestyle in order to deal with it.
It's a non-existent problem.
But how do you explain this stuff to your normie friends?
Well, I've just brought out the revised edition to my 2012 classic book, Watermelons, which captures the story of how some really nasty people decided to invent the global warming scare in order to fleece you, to take away your freedoms, to take away your land.
It's a shocking story.
I wrote it, as I say, in 2011 actually, the first edition came out.
And it's a snapshot of a particular era.
The era when the people behind the climate change scam got caught red-handed, tinkering with the data, torturing till it screamed, in a scandal that I helped christen ClimateGate.
So I give you the background to the skullduggery that went on in these seats of learning where these supposed experts were informing us.
We've got to act now.
I rumbled their scam.
I then asked the question, okay, if it is a scam, who's doing this and why?
It's a good story.
I've kept the original book pretty much as is, but I've written two new chapters, one at the beginning and one at the end, explaining how it's even worse than we thought.
I think it still stands up.
I think it's a good read.
Obviously, I'm biased, but I'd recommend it.
You can buy it from jamesdellingpole.co.uk forward slash shop.
You'll probably find that.
Just go to my website and look for it, jamesdellingpole.co.uk.
And I hope it helps keep you informed and gives you the material you need to bring around all those people who are still persuaded that, oh, it's a disaster.
We must amend our ways and appease the gods, appease Movika.
No, we don't.
It's a scam.
His pockets being inflated like those of a beggar and him being repulsively ugly and smelling awful.
And, you know, if you look at other testimonies, if I recall correctly, I think the Tsarevich's tutor wrote about Rasputin as well.
And Anna Verubova, who was the Tsarina's best friend and lady in waiting, they wrote about Rasputin.
And I'd say the, if I could characterize him, he was a tall man.
He was pretty tall, although sometimes this is exaggerated.
Had piercing blue eyes, a very profound look, a very sad look as well in his eyes, which I'm sure you've seen in basically all the pictures of him.
He looks very sad, very melancholic.
Maybe a bit surprised as well.
He had a penetrating gaze.
He was very tall.
And he wasn't dirty, but he was.
I think I lagged there.
Sorry.
He wasn't dirty, but he was a peasant.
So his manners were those of a peasant.
Right.
Right.
Okay.
So tell me what happens next.
Yeah.
Oh, I'm sorry if I'm ranting a bit, by the way, but there's just so much about.
No, no, no.
I think we just got.
I'm relying on you, Alex, to take me through this story, because I didn't know anything about Rasputin.
And even had I read about him, I'd probably just be repeating, regurgitating myths that were created by unreliable witnesses.
Yeah.
So, um, well, anyway, in this, so in 1907, the first investigation against Rasputin occurs to see if he was a Khlist.
And it basically doesn't prove that he was a Chlist.
It proves that the conclusions were that there was no proof of his belonging to the Khlist sect and that he was actually an Orthodox Christian as he was baptized in January 10th, 1869, and named after Gregory of Nyssa.
So he was a canonical, a canonically standing Orthodox Christian.
This was a conclusion.
But anyway, this was not enough, and these conclusions didn't prevent his reputation from being tarnished.
Then more investigations occur, then we find ourselves in the year 1910.
And here is where the media propaganda occurs.
So after the 1905 revolution, the Tsar had to concede freedom of the press after, you know, George Gapon's revolution.
And this freedom of the press harmed the credibility of the Tsar, but it was a concession that he apparently had to make.
So in 1910, Mihail Novoselov, who was a theologian and also a journalist, and now he is a saint in the Orthodox Church, actually.
But Mihail Novoselov wrote an article defaming Rasputin.
Now, Mihail Novoselov used the accusations from the previous investigation as if they were truthful while ignoring the conclusions and also a fake testimony document handed to Archbishop Theofan Bistrov.
This was a fake confession document that was written detailing Rasputin's abuses against women and Theofan actually broke the seal of confession to tell the Tsarina that Rasputin was a degenerate.
Now this document proved to be false and Theofan Bistrov would eventually repent for this during exile in France way after the Bolshevik Revolution.
But as for now, this Mihail Novoselov person who was a journalist and a theologian, he thought that Rasputin was a degenerate.
He was convinced of this and he wrote an article defaming Rasputin.
He wrote several of them actually.
Now, these articles were sent to the Duma president, Alexander Guchkov.
This was the third Duma, I believe.
And Guchkov's brother owned the Voice of Moscow newspaper.
So the politicians and the journalists, they, you know, went together to defame Rasputin.
So Guchkov, on his part, began to mention Rasputin in the Duma meetings in order to incite attacks against him.
And at the same time, the media wrote articles about how Rasputin was a degenerate.
And this put a lot of pressure on Nicholas, you know, destabilizing the empire.
Now, this Guchkov guy, he was the same person that later on became minister of war during the provisional government.
And he boasted that he had planned to stop Tsar Nicholas's train halfway to Tsarkoi Sela during the abdication and said that he was going to force Nicholas to abdicate.
And if he refused, he was going to strangle Tsar Nicholas II, basically.
So you'll find that this Guchkov guy was not a huge fan of Tsar Nicholas II and had no problem using Rasputin to harm his reputation.
Right.
Why did these people so hate Tsar Nicholas?
Was it a bit like sort of mafia gangs, not like it when there's a new kind of upstanding police commissioner or sort of a new city mayor who wants to drive out crime?
Was it because he wasn't handing out favors that they wanted or why were people trying to destroy him?
Well, you know, there's a theory that the fall of the Romanovs actually began with Peter the Great and that Peter the Great and his westernization of Russia led to the downfall of Romanovs.
And basically this would be what you were saying, that these people, you know, well, on one hand, you could say, let's see how I can explain it.
Okay, so there are different reasons why they didn't like him.
One of them is, as you say, the aristocracy essentially operated as a mafia back then in some way.
They did like power.
It was all about power and who could exert the most power and influence in order to make a name for themselves and secure good standing within the monarchy.
Other reasons could be the liberalization of Russia.
You have the Decembrists after the Napoleonic Wars, which George Neupfer suggests was an early example of the liberalization of Russia and how it only, you know, it only declined from there.
So, yeah, you could see that you had different aristocrats.
You had aristocrats who were monarchists, but they were monarchists for themselves, meaning they didn't like the impartial and peasant-friendly, serf-friendly Tsar Nicholas.
Tsar Nicholas was actually loved by the peasants and the other aristocrats, not so much.
So they didn't like that he was an advocate for the peasants and, you know, the son of Russia, so to speak.
And you had others who were liberals and they didn't like that Nicholas was an autocrat and they didn't like that he was authoritarian and that he wouldn't allow them to, you know, cross-dress.
For example, Rasputin's murderer, Felix Yusupov, was actually a transvestite and a homosexual.
And Rasputin was actually treating him for homosexuality.
So was he?
Yes, he was.
He didn't have much luck there, did he?
He'll have homophilia, but not homosexuality.
I guess not.
I guess he didn't want to be healed.
Who knows?
Ah, yes, yes, well, possibly.
Yes.
There was a musical, I think, about Yusupov.
The nickname was in theatrical circles was Huza Puff.
I don't really have the word puff in America.
Puff means gay, basically, in English.
So Yusupov, yeah.
So Alex, sorry, Tsar Nicholas was getting it from both ends, but the reactionary conservatives hated him, and the liberals hated him as well.
Yeah, you'll see that they did.
And, you know, just to finish the media attacks on him, you'll find that, as I mentioned before, the Russian media operated with a degree of liberality, I guess, you know, that could be, you know, considered even more liberal than Western countries.
And interestingly enough, Mihail Novoselov's articles about Rasputin were considered so graphic, so pornographic, that they were actually confiscated by the Tsarist government.
So in an increasingly liberal media space, for those articles to have been confiscated, and if you see what was written on, it's like it makes sense.
And it's really surprising that they would be confiscated.
So yeah, when people, you know, reference these articles, they're like, yeah, you know, all this stuff.
And it was written by a man who later on became a saint.
But I don't think this can be considered to be the perspective of the church as these were actually confiscated by the Tsar under the pornographic laws of the state.
So these stories full of salacious detail about the presumably about the sex life of Rasputin were circulating in the newspapers and giving far too much prurient detail.
Is that right?
Yes, in the beginning they were only stories.
Then there were caricatures as well.
Well, what sort of stories were they saying about him?
Well, the stories, they made up stories, for example, of Rasputin going to a restaurant, getting drunk, and then taking his pants off, taking his coat off, showing his shirt, saying that the Tsarina embroidered this shirt especially for him.
And then, I don't remember, doing some crazy stuff.
Like, you know, it usually always ended up in some orgy of some sort.
You know, the media really enjoyed writing about orgies and sex and stuff like that.
You have other stories about how Rasputin, for example, of the usual, he had a love affair with Azarina.
There were some that were more darker.
They said that he sexually abused the Romanov sisters and that he had hypnotized the whole palace.
So, you know, people wrote all types of things and they were allowed to because of the freedom of the press laws back then.
And unfortunately, this destroyed not only Rasputin, who said, you know, the things that they write are horrible.
Please seal.
He prayed.
He said, please seal the lips of your enemies or grant me eternal bliss.
I can't bear this anymore.
So it destroyed Rasputin and it destroyed the Romanovs as well who were subject to these accusations.
isn't he supposed to have been very well endowed i mean according to the stories uh uh you know that's what the stories that's what the story said and And, you know, you can even...
There's a museum in Iceland called, I think, the Penis Museum, where Rasputin's alleged penis is supposed to be.
Now, that is not Rasputin's penis, it's a cow penis.
But, you know, the degree to which the rumors got to, I'd say, well, this is very telling.
It's like the epitome of rumors.
So, no, yeah, that saves me having to go make a trip to the penis museum because I have read about it.
And I would only have gone to have seen Rasputin's penis.
Now you tell me that it's a cow's penis.
Well, it is a cow's penis.
You're right.
I'm sorry.
It's my third language.
English is my third language.
You're doing very well.
I wasn't criticizing you.
I mean, look, most English speakers wouldn't have noticed that nuance.
I'm kidding.
I'm kidding.
That's funny.
But yeah.
And anyway, when you see them all in a field, they'll look the same.
They're all cows.
We don't differ.
So is that when he went into sort of voluntary exile from his pilgrimage?
Exactly, exactly.
It was this specific year in 1911.
And how long was he away for?
I believe a few months.
He came back quickly.
And, you know, 1911 was a very consequential year for Rasputin because this is when Hermogenes, who was a bishop, and Iliodor, who I mentioned previously, Iliodor was a friend of Hermogenes and Rasputin, and he was a monk.
In 1911, these two guys basically tried to kill Rasputin.
They were both friends of Rasputin before, and then they became convinced by the rumors and slander about him, and they actually tried to kill him in 1911.
They failed, and Rasputin told the Tsar, and the Tsar exiled them both to different monasteries.
Now, Hermogenes lived his exile in peace in the monastery, but Iliador became angry and bitter and wrote in a letter to the church, I renounce your God, I renounce your church, and signed it in his blood.
So Iliador became an apostate, and Hermogenes became a martyr after he was killed by the Bolsheviks in front of Rasputin's village.
So it's very spiritually symbolic.
Right.
Well, maybe if Rasputin was a holy man, the demons would be working overtime to try and turn his friends against him.
Yeah.
I would say so.
So, what next?
What next?
Anyway, so this was 1911.
And in 1911 is when A dossier of the facts, quote unquote, uh, about Rasputin was presented to the Tsar by the new president of the third Duma.
Like, you know, Alexander Guchkov was a guy before, now Mihail Rodzyanko, he was the new one.
And he gave the Tsar a document with the facts and the final truth about who Rasputin really was.
And these were basically Iliodor's fabricated letters.
So, Iliador, a few years before, he had gone to Rasputin's house in Prokrovskoye and he stole letters that the Tsarina sent to Rasputin.
And he edited the letters to make them appear degenerate and sexual and whatever in nature.
And then he sent them to this anti-Tsarist politician, Rodzyanko.
And Rodzyanko showed the letters to the Tsar, and the Tsar said, This is this BS.
But these letters were also presented in the Duma.
So they weren't kept secret.
They were presented publicly in order to harm the reputation of the Tsar.
And the Tsarina actually became ill because of the slander.
And while Rodzyanko, you know, he failed to convince the emperor, he did convince the mother of the Tsar Nicholas II, Empress Dowager Maria Fyodorovna, and she actually became anti-Rasputin as well.
And this is when basically the attacks against Rasputin became personal and political in the sense that they were not only aimed at Rasputin's person and character, but against Rasputin's role in politics and the political system in general.
You know, I always think of this quote that Donald Trump used to say, They're not after me, they're after you, but I'm in the way.
And I tend to think that this was sort of what Rasputin's role was in the slander and the media campaign against him.
It was actually more aimed towards Nicholas, and it was aimed against Rasputin as well.
That is not deniable because Rasputin was a representation of the spirit of the Russian peasants, and he represented the union between the emperor and the people.
And this was why he was slandered.
But he was also slandered because he was important to the Tsar.
And by slandering him, they decided to destroy the Tsar.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah, I can see that.
It's not going to end well, is it?
This story.
It isn't.
It isn't.
You'll find, by the way, that, you know, in 1913, Dr. Eugene Bodkin was later martyred with the Romanovs, as I mentioned.
He said that, you know, if Rasputin did not exist, then the adversaries of the imperial family and the preparationists of the revolution would have created him with their own babble from Verubova.
Verubova was the Tsarina's best friend.
If not Verubova, from me, from whoever you want.
So the goal wasn't, you know, the goal wasn't historical truth or finding out about this man.
It was about creating a character that would portray the Tsar as feeble, as weak, as a man manipulated by a degenerate pest.
And they made these myths about Rasputin.
And if it wasn't Rasputin, they would have made them about someone else.
But they had to destroy the Tsar to win.
So, Eugene Bodkin, before he died he must have written some journals or something which which gave a different view of Resputin.
He um related these things to his daughter uh who, I believe either his daughter or his granddaughter uh published his uh memoirs.
So well, that's where the the story was get it comes from now.
I thought most of the people when the Bolsheviks murdered the royal family I thought most of their sort of their household, including their doctors and stuff were were well, the foreign ones.
Anyway, I thought they were allowed to escape.
So how come Bodkin got killed?
Well uh, he voluntarily decided to follow them to um to Tomburg yeah, and and so did uh the valet, Alexei Krup and um a couple other people.
They they decided to follow them to to their martyrdom, and they're glorified as as saints now for that right.
Okay um so uh, where are we in the story?
What's happening now?
We are in 1911.
Then in 19, um 13 I believe, there was an episode where Czarevich Alexey almost died.
Everyone was sure he was gonna die.
By the way, like people don't realize when I tell this story how, how close he was to dying.
He had an accident and his temperature continued increasing each day.
The doctors had no idea what to do, as usual, and Resputin wasn't there.
He was in Siberia at the time and everyone thought that Alexei was gonna die.
Alexei was.
Alexei asked uh, the tsarina if when he would die.
He asked the his mother.
He asked uh, when I die, will it stop hurting?
And he asked her to build a stone monument in their garden in remembrance of him.
So he was sure he was going to die.
The family was sure he was going to die.
The doctors had no idea what to do and the zarina Alexandra, as a last-ditch attempt a Hail Mary literally, I guess wrote to Resputin and Resputin a telegram and Resputin replied and he said, God has seen your tears and heard your prayers.
The child will not die.
And the next day, Alexei Alexey's temperature starts dropping and he survives.
So you know, this only helped strengthen the zarina's faith in Resputin.
Yes, because he was a nice boy, wasn't he Alexei?
He was, he was a very, a very sweet boy.
Yeah yeah, I can see why a mother might, might be moved by having her son healed by this man even remotely.
Yes yes, it's uh, he was.
He was a, he was a very nice boy.
He was very spiritually mature.
You'll find even at his, at his young age um, and he was the youngest um, the youngest one, and and you know what happened to to him his whole life was was really one of suffering, and he found peace in some way in in animals.
He had his dog, and he found peace in Resputin's healing as well.
So much um, so that when Rasputin was killed, he actually said there was a saint, Rigori Fimovich, but he was killed, and when he found out about the murder, he asked Tsarnichlas to hang the people who killed Rasputin.
Um Okay, so we're in 1913, are we?
Yes, I skipped over a bit, but yeah, we're in 1913 now, and we can we now get to 1914, which is, I'd say, you know, if you could divide Rasputin's life as a public figure into three chapters, I'd say the first one is between 1904 when he appears in St. Petersburg, and 1907,
when you know his popularity stops and notoriety begins.
And then second chapter would be from 1907 to 1914 or 1913 when the whole propaganda campaign, investigations, and political persecution began.
And then the final chapter of Rasputin's life would be 1914 to 1916.
So in 1914, a woman named Hyonia Gusieva, she was put up to murder Rasputin by Sergei Trufanov, who was Iliodor, the guy who rejected God, was friends with Rasputin and Hermogenes, and then left.
Well, he basically put up this woman to assassinate Rasputin in 1914.
And this woman, who was syphilis and her brain was mentally deficient, she stabbed Rasputin in front of his house and Rasputin fell to the floor.
She kept stabbing him and then some bystanders stopped her.
But Rasputin was in a critical condition.
Everyone thought he was going to die.
He spent a couple of months in the hospital.
He eventually recovered.
But the problem was that when he was recovering, Russia declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary.
And Rasputin was, you know, actively against the war.
Even while recovering, he sent a telegram to Tsar Nicholas saying, please don't join the war.
But he was so far away and he had just almost been killed.
He was weak.
He couldn't travel.
He couldn't talk to Nicholas.
So the war began and Rasputin could not do anything about it.
Yeah, so he's obviously uses sort of clairvoyant skills or his insight to work out that it was all a trap.
Yes.
Yes, yes.
He actually said that the war would lead to the destruction of Russia and the Russian people and that Nicholas shouldn't join.
But unfortunately, Nicholas didn't heed his advice.
He was right.
Yeah.
Okay.
He was.
Then, you know, a lot of people during Rasputin's life wanted to kill him.
Iliador wanted to kill him.
He considered him his nemesis.
These are the words that Iliador used, actually.
The minister of the interior, Alexei Hvostov, then the head of the police department, Belatsky.
All these people wanted to kill Rasputin.
The minister, the deputy minister of internal affairs, Junkovsky, he fabricated the stories about Rasputin and the prostitutes.
This was a very common topic, which I even hear British historians claim.
I remember listening to a podcast the other day that said Rasputin really liked prostitutes.
And I was like, okay, where are you getting this from?
They read Douglas Smith's book on Rasputin.
And, you know, I've read the reports and you'll find that All of the police reports on who Rasputin met in his apartment had names because the police kept the names logged to see who he met.
And for the prostitutes, the alleged prostitutes, there were no names at all.
And then you'll find out, and this has been exposed by historian Oleg Platinov.
He's a Russian historian.
And he basically figured out that the original report said nothing about prostitutes, but a second fabricated report was written in the police offices by these people, such as Djunkovsky.
And they invented the idea that he was meeting prostitutes to defame him.
But yeah, anyway, this was in 1914, and this was probably the closest Rasputin, you know, because there were many attempts on Rasputin's life, you know, like against Fidel.
Yeah, he people tried to kill Rasputin as well several times, but this was the closest they came to succeed in.
Well, later on, they did kill him, but this was at the time the closest he had ever, you know, been to death.
And like people would show up to his house with guns, and Rasputin would say, I know what you have in your hands, give the gun to me.
So, you know, he this is in his daughter's memoirs.
So, yeah, you know, he was, I'd say, clairvoyant to some extent.
But, um, you say he had a daughter?
He did.
He had three children.
Did he?
Yeah.
Yeah, tell me about them.
Yeah, their names were Maria, Varvara, and Dmitry.
Varvara and Dmitry died in Russia together with their mother, Praskovia.
They then, you know, oppressed under the Soviet yoke as Rasputin family members, they were obviously discriminated against.
Now, Maria, she actually escaped Russia.
She became a cabaret dancer, a circus performer.
She sued Yusupov for killing her father unsuccessfully.
She wrote the memoirs, My Father, which is a pretty good historical source, I think, for the life of Rasputin.
And yeah, so she was the one that actually managed to escape.
So they weren't the other two, the other two siblings and the mother, they weren't murdered.
They just died of sort of starvation or something.
Something like that, yeah.
Yeah.
Yes, I see.
Do they live mainly in Siberia?
Yeah, you mentioned they already saw him.
Yeah, they died in Siberia as well.
Yeah.
Okay.
Has he got any descendants?
Yeah.
Actually, the other day I was looking into this.
And she had, you know, Rasputin actually has living descendants through his daughter, Maria.
And they're all French now.
They are French and they don't even have the Rasputin name anymore.
But yeah, I was looking through the family tree and it was really hard to find it.
But I found one on like one of Rasputin's descendants on Facebook, actually.
I messaged her to see if I could get an interview, but and they didn't say yes.
Are they not proud of their ancestor?
Oh, I don't think they I don't think they would be proud.
They might be, if you know the the, the truth about their family was shared down, but if it wasn't, then they would probably try to disassociate themselves with whatever Rasputin related.
Gosh, what a shame, what a shame.
Um, I wonder if any of them have got any healing powers or any good at spotting, spotting thieves perhaps?
Yeah, who knows?
Um, so we're 1914 and yes, First World War breaks out, despite and and and Csar Nicholas brings Russia in, just against Rasputin's advice.
This is also where uh, i'd say you know, foreign influence began to present itself more in in Russia, specifically against Rasputin, and the British um intelligence starts playing a more active role in um Russian society.
Yeah, so well in.
We have then 1915 where basically, you know Alexandra, Olga and Tatiana.
They became RED Cross nurses during the war effort and Resputin also visited the infirmaries to help uh and comfort the, the wounded soldiers.
Then Anna Vorbova, the tsarina's best friend and Resputin admirer.
She was almost killed in a train accident, but Rasputin prayed and saved her life.
And yeah, this was pretty.
This is it for 1915.
It was pretty uneventful, other than the the First World War, but you know that's uh yeah, it is quite another story.
Then we have 1916, and this is the last year of Resputin's life in.
You know, throughout 1916 Resputin sort of felt a premonition that this might be his end.
I know people like to claim that Resputin predicted his own death.
I often advise against this view because the source of this alleged prophecy is Iron Simanovich's book Resputin And The Jews, and this was written by his quote-unquote secretary.
This was.
It wasn't really his secretary, it was a man who often frequented his apartment or whatever.
But Iron Semanovich was a an evil person.
He was a secret police agent.
He was a two-faced liar.
He made up many stories about Rasputin and confirmed many salacious uh, you know stories.
He made up many things in his book which is why historians consider it to be highly unreliable, and one of these stories is the idea that Resputin predicted his own death.
So I often advise against that view, but I would argue that Resputin did feel a premonition or you know some, Some sort of feeling that he was something bad was going to happen to him.
In, for example, in December, on December 2nd, 1916, Rasputin met Tsar Nicholas II for the last time.
He didn't know, obviously, at the time, but this was the last time they met.
And Nicholas and Alexandra asked Rasputin to bless them, as they usually did after their meetings.
And Rasputin responded, No, today you bless me.
So this was sort of a feeling back then.
Oh, what do you think he meant by that?
I think that he might not have known himself.
I take, you know, I mentioned that he was clairvoyant.
I don't believe he was complete clairvoyant.
He clearly, or probably didn't know that he was going to get killed by Felix Yusupov.
Maybe he did.
Who knows, really.
But he, you know, I think this was an expression of his view of his feeling that something bad might happen to him and that he needed the blessing of Tsar Nicholas and Tsarina Alexandra this last time.
Right, okay.
I'd say this is a more credible prediction of his death rather than the other one where, you know, in Semanovich's book, Rasputin says, if I am killed by the Russian people, then nothing will happen to you.
You know, talking to the Tsar.
But if I am killed by boyers and nobles, then the Russian throne will bleed and you will all die.
So it's like, you know, this isn't Rasputin's style of speaking at all.
And the letter has been, you know, analyzed and it's not, you know, credible.
There were voluntary misspellings in order to make it appear, you know, as if a peasant had written it.
So yeah, I don't believe that theory, but I believe this might be a more credible prediction of his own death.
Right.
And so, are we going to get to the bit where he dies now?
Exactly.
That's where we are now.
Okay.
And yeah, so, oh, yeah, right before he dies, though, in 1916, Madame Lily Den, she was a friend of the Tsarina as well.
She wrote a book called The Real Tsaritsa.
And she wrote in a conversation with Rasputin in the village, because Lily Den and Rasputin passed through the village, I think, when they were going back to St. Petersburg.
And they had a conversation in Rasputin's village in Prokrovskoye.
And Rasputin said that he hoped one day their majesties would visit him.
And Lily Den said, but it's too far.
And Rasputin got angry and he said, they must visit my village.
And a few minutes afterwards, he said, willing or unwilling, they will come to Tobolsk and they will see my village before they die.
Now, probably this may be perhaps the last entry in Nicholas's, well, it's not the last one.
It's one of the last ones.
It's when Nicholas and Alexandra and the Romanov children were being transported from Tobolsk, which is where the provisional government held them, to Ekaterinburg, where the Bolsheviks held them and executed them.
And on their way to Ekaterinburg, they had to stop for a horse change.
This was, you know, on the way from Tobolsk to their martyrdom in Ekaterinburg.
Stopped for a horse change, for a horse change in Prokrovskoya.
And Nicholas writes in his diary, in Prokrovskoy village, there was a changeover.
We stood a long time across Grigory's house and saw all his family staring through the window.
And Alexandra wrote, Around 12, we arrived in Prokrovskoya, changed horses.
We stood for a long time in front of the house of our friend, saw his family and friends watching from the windows.
And Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna, she drew a picture of Rasputin's house and yard as they were being transported to their death and martyred them.
So, you know, these words were prophetic.
And now, if you want, I can get into the murder of Grigor Rasputin.
I think we need to get to the climax, yeah.
We need to, yes.
So, um, the murder of Grigorus Putin, this happened in December 17, 1916, so yesterday.
Uh, you know, oh, that's weird, isn't it?
Well, a bit, not exactly, because yesterday I had a podcast scheduled for the exact date of, you know, Rasputin's, uh, what is it now, 109 years of Rasputin's death.
You know, you'll find that actually that was the old calendar, so the true date would be December 30th.
But, you know, I like the symbolic date, so I'll go with December 17th, old calendar.
So, yeah, Grigory Rasputin, you know, regarding his murder, so much has been written.
Dozens of books say more things have been written about his death than his life.
And there are different theories.
I believe in the episode you had with Charles Bausman, he said that British intelligence murdered him.
I disagree with that.
I don't think the British intelligence murdered him from what I've read.
So the different theories, you know, I'll quickly mention the different theories, the most prominent ones.
Andrew Cook wrote to kill Rasputin, and here he posited the theory that a British intelligence agent called Oswald Reiner, who was friends with Yusupov from his time at Oxford, shot the bullet that killed Rasputin.
So he was actually murdered by a British spy.
On the other hand, you have Pavlovich, Yusupov, and Purishkovich, who each wrote memoirs and each claim to have killed Rasputin, to have fired that fatal shot that killed this monster.
And all their memoirs, especially Yusupov's, are insanely, you know, sensationalized and creative.
They, you know, as I was saying, this Rasputin getting on his knees in front of a crucifix and being shot in the head and getting up and running towards Yusupov.
And, you know, each one of them wanted to claim responsibility.
Then there's a theory.
This is a theory by historian Tatiana Marinova, who actually says that neither of these people killed Rasputin.
And there was a secret murderer who we really don't know and probably will never know, who was the one that actually fired the fatal shot.
And she bases this theory on historical ideas and such, but mainly the fact that Yusupov was interviewed decades later and asked if he felt remorse for killing a person, Rasputin.
And Yusupov replied, never.
I killed a dog.
And it is known that a dog was killed that night.
A dog was shot.
And the idea is that Yusupov was actually too much of a coward to actually murder Rasputin himself.
And he actually shot a dog.
And Rasputin was killed by a secret murder.
So I don't really know.
I think I lean towards the idea that one of them probably shot Rasputin.
Probably Yusupov.
But I believe it was a ritual murder.
But if you want, I can go ahead and give you a timeline of the events and how the murder of Grigory Rasputin occurred.
Yeah.
All right.
So Rasputin was invited over to Yusupov's palace to meet Yusupov's wife, Irina.
Now, Irina was ill, I believe, or alleged to be ill.
She was actually not even in St. Petersburg at the time.
I think she was in Crimea or something.
But Yusupov said that his wife was ill and that she needed Rasputin's help and healing.
So Rasputin accepted and he went together with Yusupov to his palace.
Here, Vladimir Perishkevich, who was a politician in the Duma, and Dmitry Pavlovich, who was a relative of the Tsar.
Now, Dmitry Pavlovich was a degenerate.
He was a total spoiled brat and a degenerate.
And these people conspired to kill Rasputin.
And they had some cakes and some Madeira wine.
And they had poison as well.
Now, the poison, there are different theories on why it didn't work, but it didn't work.
Basically, that's the spoiler.
They gave him cakes and wine.
He didn't eat the cakes because he didn't like sweets, but he drank the wine.
That's probably the only thing he actually struggled throughout his life.
I wouldn't say he was struggled with throughout his life.
I wouldn't say he was a drunkard, but he apparently did continue drinking alcohol throughout his life, which I guess isn't that bad, but still, you know, he tried to quit completely and probably never achieved it.
I'd say this is the main vice, the only vice that I could find in him.
But, you know, it is what it is.
But anyway, he drank the wine and the poison wasn't working, so they decided that they had to kill him.
So the idea is that then they went down, they hit his head with, I think, a metal rod or something.
And then they shot him twice.
I think one through the side, one through the back or something.
These shots pierced his organs, but they didn't kill him.
So he sort of started like, you know, he didn't get up and start running like the sensationalized memoirs claim, but he did sort of start struggling through the floor.
And this is when, you know, the most brutal part of the murder happened.
Because this is when Perishkevich, Pavlovich, and Yusupov, together with some other people they called, I believe, grabbed Rasputin and started torturing him, ritually torturing him.
They hit his head.
They bludgeoned his head in.
An insane amount of trauma was found in the autopsy.
They mutilated him.
They cut off body parts.
Smashed his, his genitals in, which is a, you know.
This in itself should stop you from visiting the, the penis museum we we don't have.
Uh, you know.
The genitals were completely uh, bludgeoned as well.
So only to you know.
This should show you the, the brutal degree of, or the degree of brutality that Resputin was subjected to while still being alive, by the way.
And then, after all this torture, you know happened through throughout hours I think it took hours for them to completely torture him and mutual mutilate him.
Then they took him out and shot him in the head, and this is when he actually died.
Then he was um, rolled up into a mat, I think, then taken to the Nevka river and he was thrown dead already into an ice hole with his hands and legs tied.
Now, the interesting thing is that when they found his body frozen a few days later, the his hands had become undone and his hands were making the sign of the cross.
Now, the autopsy proves beyond doubt that he was thrown dead into the river.
So for his hands to have not only been freed from the ropes holding them, but to make the sign of a cross, I tend to believe that this is is a miraculous occurrence?
Wow, that is interesting.
And was there a kind of an outcry over his death?
Depends on on on who you ask.
As a general view in the Russian population, you know, most Russians were peasants.
So yes, the the peasants were insanely afraid of, of what had happened and what this meant for uh, peasants in the empire, because they thought well, one of our people dared to get close to the aristocracy and the czar and look at what happened to him.
So they became afraid.
They weren't angry at Nicholas per se, they were angry at the aristocrats that had actually um, you know, carried out the murder.
With regards to Nicholas and Alexander, they were distraught.
Alexandra had a, a book printed out called Grigory Resputin, a new martyr, and she venerated Resputin uh, the Roman Of Daughters.
They had an amulet with a picture of Resputin and a prayer, and this amulet, this photo they, each of them, took it to their martyrdom.
When they were shot and killed in Ipatyev house in Negaternburg, the these things, these amulets, were found on their, on their corpses.
Alexei, he was the closest to Resputin, as he was, you know the, the person who was being healed by him, and he, you know, as I told You, when he found out, he actually got incredibly mad.
He started crying.
He put his hand in his face and said, You know, he said, he asked his dad, he asked Nicholas, you will do something about this, right?
You know, while crying, and he said, Stolypin's murderer was hanged.
So, you know, he was incredibly distraught by this.
And this is why, usually, the icons that depict Rasputin, because he's not a canonized saint.
I believe he should be.
He isn't, but there are some several people that venerate him in Russia.
And the icons depicting Rasputin often depict him with Tsarevich Alexei, because they were incredibly close.
They were probably the closest there were.
You know, people usually like to talk about how Rasputin manipulated the Zarina and how the Rasputin and the Zarina were close.
But, you know, truly, Rasputin and Alexei were the closest friends.
And it's really sad.
But, yeah.
Yeah.
And were the murderers ever punished?
Not as they should have been.
They were exiled.
They were sent to the front, but they were never really punished.
They escaped punishment.
They escaped the country as well.
Yusupov escaped and he made a lot of money off of his memoirs and off of his he actually sued, you know, the disclaimer that comes before the movie saying all of the characters shown are works of fiction, any resemblance to reality.
Yeah, Yusupov was the cause, the reason for why that disclaimer appears.
He sued a movie director or movie studio that played out a movie about Rasputin claiming that Rasputin had raped his wife, and he said that was not true and sued them and made millions of dollars off of that and lived comfortably.
And, you know, that was it.
But yeah, you know, there was an investigation, a trial, even, if you could call it that.
But the interesting part of the investigation is where this sort of ritual murder narrative comes.
And this starts with a forensic expert they called.
You know, I know you spoke about this with Conrad and Conrad and Dmitry have great articles on the ritual regicide and the ritual murder of the Romanovs.
I don't know if I if I agree completely on everything, you know, especially with regards to the idea that the Romanov remains were destroyed.
I don't know if I agree with that completely, but you know, it's a viable theory.
So anyway, they called a forensic expert for the trial called Professor Dmitry Kosorotov.
This guy was a, he had a lot of experience with ritual murder and had been involved in previous ritual murder cases as well.
He considered that Rasputin's murder was actually, you know, an example of a ritual assassination, a ritual murder, ritual sacrifice.
And several prominent historians within Rasputin literature actually agree with the idea that Rasputin was ritually murdered.
Most Russian historians that talk about Rasputin agree with it.
And, you know, you'll find that the spiritual significance of his martyrdom was undeniable.
For example, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna, she was the Tsarina's sister, and she was against Rasputin, even though she never met him.
She believed the propaganda.
And she told Yusupov that on the night of Rasputin's murder, she was visited by abbesses from many monasteries that were telling insane stories from the monasteries.
They were saying that the priests experienced fits of madness.
They started blaspheming and emitting inhuman cries.
The nuns ran into corners.
They screamed like madmen.
They lifted their skirts with obscene movements.
And all this happened on the night of Rasputin's murder.
So there was certainly a very dark spiritual aspect of it.
What's the suggestion that Yusupov and Ko were all Satanists?
Yes, I guess that would be the implication, because, and this is supported actually by what was said by Maurice Pelliologue, he was the French ambassador,
and he said that the perpetrators of this murder had, you know, had ancestors or predecessors in the Italian Middle Ages.
So maybe, you know, this sort of obscure secret society conspiracy sort of organization.
And historian Sergei Fomin, who is probably the best Rasputin-related historian, he has written, I think, eight volumes about Rasputin's life in Russian.
And he wrote that they also had successors in the murderers in Yekaterinburg.
So this murder of Rasputin served as an example, as a proto-sacrifice or example of what would later on become the ritual regicide of the Romanovs.
Right.
So according to Conrad, the Bolshevik murderers in Yekaterinburg were all Jewish.
Is there a suggestion Yusupov wasn't Jewish, was he?
No, none of them were Jewish, but Sergei Fomin argues that they followed Kabbalistic rules or attempted to follow Kabbalistic and this sort of,
you know, I'm not very familiar with the precise, you know, MO of the occultists, but yeah, historian Sergei Fomin argues that this was, you know, a Kabbalistic ritual murder, even if it wasn't committed by, you know, Jews, as in the case of Yekaterinburg and the Romanovs.
Now, what's interesting is that I'm sure you know that in the Epetiev house, an inscription was found with a poem, a Heinrich Heine poem about Balthasar being killed on the same night by his slaves.
I believe Conrad mentioned this.
He said it was in Yiddish.
It was in German, actually.
But in the Ipetiev house, Balthasar was written as Balta Tsar with a T before the Z in order to show that the Tsar was killed by his slaves.
Yeah.
And, you know, what's interesting is that after, you know, first of all, Rasputin died.
He received an Orthodox Christian funeral and he was considered an Orthodox Christian when he died.
But then in 1917, when the Tsar was ousted and the provisional government came in, Rasputin's body was exhumed during Lent and burnt, incinerated.
And this was ordered by the Freemason and head of the provisional government, Alexander Kerensky.
And this burning had a blasphemous character because it represented, you know, this sort of second devilish funeral where the Christian burial ceremony is denied, cancelled, and even subverted through incineration.
And at Rasputin's incineration site, an inscription in German was found as well.
And it said, basically, the dog is buried here, meaning this is who is behind it all.
And this is when the French ambassador Maurice Pellolog said that those who wrote the sinister epilogue have precursors in the Italian Middle Ages, to which Sergei Fomin, a historian, replied that they also had successors in Yekaterinburg in 1918.
So basically, Rasputin had been a human sacrifice for the creation of a new degenerate and anti-Christian Russia.
And if you read what was written in the Russian newspapers at the time, you'll read that they spoke about the sacrilegious burning of Rasputin's body with, you know, a very famous phrase that was written was, the ashes were scattered in the field and covered with snow.
When spring comes, the water will wash away the ashes and dirt, and maybe new green sprouts will erase Rasputin's name from our memory.
Now, interestingly, you can read, for example, the ashes were scattered.
So they weren't just blown away.
They were personally scattered by someone, and then they were covered with snow.
And then they wanted the water to wash away the ashes, to wash away Rasputin and wash away the Tsarist government and Christian Russia.
And the new green sprouts, meaning the Soviet anti-Christian government, will erase Rasputin's name from our memory.
And with that, all of Christian Russia.
Well.
Ayes, what a great story.
And thank you for your research.
Just very briefly, tell me about yourself.
How did you come to be, were you brought up Orthodox?
Yes, yes.
I'm Greek, so I'm a cradle Orthodox Christian.
Right, so you're not one of those.
I guess it's very fashionable, isn't it, at the moment?
Well, like Conrad, for example, Conrad France, lots of young men, particularly, I think, are converting to Orthodoxy.
Well, I considered myself, I considered myself a revert, because during my earlier teenage years, I was an agnostic for some time, and I never really cared much for religion or history, politics, or anything in general.
But now I think I reverted to Orthodoxy.
So, you know, I wouldn't consider myself much different from them rather than, you know, other than having had the privilege to be baptized as a child.
And what's it like?
You're in America, I'm presuming.
Are you in this?
Yeah.
So, I mean, are you, how do you get on in the culture?
I mean, it must be quite frustrating knowing all the stuff you know and seeing the unreal world around you.
Yeah, you know, it's uh I often think because uh I like reflecting on on Rasputin as a person uh rather than just the history of it and I think you know uh I think that even if all the accusations against him were true,
which I believe they aren't, but even if they were true, he would still be a better Christian than and a better man than many many people, I'd say including me actually, um, you know, in society.
So I gotta say that it's insane how this man probably considered the most degenerate sex-best monster manipulator would now be considered a regular uh a regular guy in society.
So it's it's really telling about how you know society has degenerated, I think.
Yes, yes, that's true.
Well, I think let's um let's campaign for Rasputin to be to become a saint.
He also deserves it, but he does.
Thank you very much, Alex, for your research.
Thank you, thank you so much.
Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to share it.
With you, you know, you have such good credentials and such a big platform.
I'm an improvised college student writing this, you know, a couple of days a week.
Yeah, you've done a good job.
You've done a good job.
I mean, it's always a gamble when I offer people podcast slots sort of without knowing much about them.
I mean, you could have been terrible, but you're great.
So thank you very much.
I won't ask for your contact details because obviously, just tell us where we can find the Rasputin archive.
Yeah, of course.
You can find me on X at Rasputin Archive and on Substack.
You can search Rasputinarchive.com.
I own the domain now.
And that links to my substack, also called Rasputin Archive.
So yeah, you can find me on Substack and on X.
And I respond to all messages.
I'm always active.
And if anyone has any questions about anything regarding Rasputin, I'm there.
Great.
Thank you very much, Alex.
And it only remains to thank all you viewers and listeners for your continued support.
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