One always approaches the publication of a new book regarding Rasputin with a certain amount of dread; will it have something new to say, or will it simply peddle the old misconceptions and prejudices where the ‘infamous’ Siberian sorcerer is concerned? Having come at the subject myself as an author and tried as best I could to correct some of the misimpressions about this rather fascinating man, I opened my review copy of Antony Beevor’s new book with rather a dramatic, apprehensive flourish. The book begins with Rasputin roughly as a teenager (there’s scant detail about his life before he crossed path with Russia’s last royals) and it ends after his near-mythical assassination, at the point when his benefactors, the Romanovs, find themselves imprisoned in their own palace outside St Petersburg, this as the Russian Revolution erupts around them.
To be honest, this new book covers a lot of ground that has already been – and this is being polite – almost overworked. And whilst some of the pictures are new, to a seasoned historian of the Romanovs there is little here that hasn’t been presented in one form or another almost a hundred times before. That said, the style of the writing is pleasant and concise and for the most part surprisingly non-judgemental; this is a great book for the beginner, a novice reader who is not dripping already with Romanov misconceptions and prejudices.
Beevor mercifully shies away from repeating the old tropes about depicting Tsarina Alexandra as some sort of a ‘termagant’ or even that she was the one ‘wearing the trousers’ and he also avoids any salacious commentary on her possible relationship with Rasputin. In truth, there was no sexual side of things between the two of them, but we have Boney M and their earworm of a song to thank for that one. Beevor is also refreshingly openminded when it comes to considering whether or not Rasputin did in fact wield some sort of ‘magical’ power when it came to alleviating the haemophilia suffered by the heir to the Russian throne, Tsarevich Alexei. Beevor lays out the possible explanations – to be honest it’s all still open to debate – and also keeps it impartial when it comes the accounts given by Rasputin’s daughter Maria, who is the source of a great deal of the reportage regarding his doings in St Petersburg.
In fact, Beevor is wise to comment almost from the outset that Rasputin is now so mythical a personage that he almost defies classification or indeed any normal method of analysis, much like Russia itself. The Siberian sorcerer is the classic Russian, or matryoshka dolls, wherein you remove one layer and are presented with something else – something even more intricate – underneath. This book is much the same, and whilst the new material on offer is relatively scant, it is nevertheless there and waiting to be sifted.
Mickey Mayhew is an historian and the author of The Romanovs Under House Arrest: The Russian Revolution and A Royal Family’s Imprisonment in their Palace.
