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Speaker 1: Welcomed, unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky.

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Speaker 1: Someone was shaking the girl awake. Maria Resputin had fallen

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Speaker 1: asleep in one world, she was waking up in another.

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Speaker 1: The maid got her out of bed alongside her sister

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Speaker 1: Varvara and told Grigory's two daughters that their father had

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Speaker 1: not returned from his night out on the town. She

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Speaker 1: was worried. At first. This was nothing to Maria. Her

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Speaker 1: father was often out late, sometimes he didn't come home,

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Speaker 1: and that was nothing unusual. But the hours ticked by,

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Speaker 1: and then the calls started to come in from the police.

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Speaker 1: They were trying to track down Gregory as well. Well.

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Speaker 1: All the maid could tell them was that she had

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Speaker 1: seen his friend come by to pick him up the

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Speaker 1: night before, the family friend, Felix Yusupov, and they had

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Speaker 1: left together, so Resputant must be at the Yusupov palace.

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Speaker 1: People started coming to their apartment. They started to line

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Speaker 1: up at the door as usual, bringing their pain, their needs,

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Speaker 1: their desires, but there was no sign of Gregory to

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Speaker 1: meet them. So Maria put in the call to her

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Speaker 1: friends of the Empress, and they promptly relayed the message

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Speaker 1: to Alexandra Grigory it seemed was missing. After that, Maria

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Speaker 1: called the woman who had introduced Rasputant and Felix use Upov. Together,

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Speaker 1: they tried to get in touch with Felix. After a

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Speaker 1: few tries, they had him on the phone, but as

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Speaker 1: Maria watched them talk, she saw something come over the

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Speaker 1: woman's face. By the time they ended the call, Maria

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Speaker 1: could tell she was deeply upset. Felix had sworn that

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Speaker 1: he had not seen Gregory the night before. He had

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Speaker 1: not picked him up, much less hosted him at the

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Speaker 1: use of haf Palace. That was all he had to say,

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Speaker 1: and then he hung up. The two looked at each other.

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Speaker 1: One thing was clear. Felix was lying, and with Grigory missing,

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Speaker 1: they began to suspect why. It was a moment of

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Speaker 1: dawning horror that would stay with Maria for the rest

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Speaker 1: of her life. So and police agents were at the door.

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Speaker 1: They came to sweep the house. Of course, Maria left

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Speaker 1: them in and they marched into respute and study, where

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Speaker 1: they started to gather up his papers. Maria may not

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Speaker 1: have realized it right away, but they were wasting no time.

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Speaker 1: Anything in Grigory's possession that could embarrass the Czar needed

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Speaker 1: to be swept out of sights immediately. The empire was

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Speaker 1: the priority, but the respute and apartment wasn't the only

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Speaker 1: place getting the police sweep Because those gunshots in the

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Speaker 1: courtyard of the Yusupov Palace, they hadn't gone unheard. The

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Speaker 1: conspirators had planned for everything to be done quietly in

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Speaker 1: the prepared room of the palace basement. That plan had failed,

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Speaker 1: and the thing they were afraid of actually came true.

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Speaker 1: A person who heard those gunshots was a police officer,

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Speaker 1: and shortly after the shooting he had strolled up to

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Speaker 1: the Yusupov Palace and seeing Felix standing outside, so he

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Speaker 1: approached and asked what was going on. Felix tried to

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Speaker 1: play it off. Maybe it was nothing, Maybe it was

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Speaker 1: just some of his friends playing with the pistol. Nothing arius.

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Speaker 1: The officer had walked on, but around four am he

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Speaker 1: came back, something about Felix hadn't sat right with him.

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Speaker 1: If there was some horseplay with the handgun, he thought

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Speaker 1: he should probably report it. This time, though, he talked

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Speaker 1: with a man who had fired the gun. Vladimir Pershkevitch.

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Speaker 1: When the police officers started asking questions, Perishkevitch leaned in.

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Speaker 1: He put his arm around the officer's shoulder, and he

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Speaker 1: took the opposite approach from Felix, I mean, the exact opposite.

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Speaker 1: He asked the officer what he thought of Grigory Rasputin.

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Speaker 1: Was he an enemy of Russia and an enemy of

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Speaker 1: the Czar? And the officer agreed, and so Perishkevitch told

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Speaker 1: him that only hours before they had killed Grigory Resputin

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Speaker 1: in that very courtyard. And if that sounds like an

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Speaker 1: enormous mistake by Pershkevitch, then you're probably following along. The

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Speaker 1: police officer promised not to tell, and Pershkevich slapped him

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Speaker 1: on the shoulder and sent him on his way. Unfortunately

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Speaker 1: for the murderers, his way took him right back to

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Speaker 1: the police station, where he immediately told his supervisors. Word

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Speaker 1: flashed up the chain of command. By eight o'clock the

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Speaker 1: next morning, the report already had reached the Minister of

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Speaker 1: the Interior. Grigory Rasputin had been killed, and in the

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Speaker 1: ranks of the Petrograd police they were celebrating his murder.

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Speaker 1: This is unobscured. I'm Aaron Manky. The photographer's camera captured

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Speaker 1: the scene. A line of blood crossed the snowy courtyard

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Speaker 1: leading away from the side entrance. Investigators were trying to

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Speaker 1: argue their way inside the palace, but Felix was a

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Speaker 1: relative of the czar. Only orders from the Emperor himself

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Speaker 1: could authorize a search, and someone was saying that the

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Speaker 1: blood they could see spilled on the ground came from

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Speaker 1: the family dog, since one of the servants had shot

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Speaker 1: it in the courtyard in the dark hours of the morning. Eventually, though,

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Speaker 1: the police were let into the palace, but they were

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Speaker 1: guided from room to room and not allowed to wander

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Speaker 1: on their own. They never saw the basement room. It

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Speaker 1: was true about the dog, though, Felix had ordered one

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Speaker 1: of his servants to shoot it outside and cover their tracks,

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Speaker 1: but the splashes of its blood over the trail in

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Speaker 1: the snow weren't enough to hide what had happened in

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Speaker 1: his house, not least because Paraskevitch had been telling people

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Speaker 1: their plans for weeks. He had been telling people in

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Speaker 1: the Russian government. He had been telling journalists Russia had

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Speaker 1: to be saved, so Rasputin had to go. It was

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Speaker 1: the message he had been spreading everywhere, and there was

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Speaker 1: no shortage of people eager to lap it up. Parashkevitch

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Speaker 1: was always ready to clarify that he didn't think any

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Speaker 1: of the rumors were true, for example about Grigory and

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Speaker 1: the Empress being lovers, but it was bad enough that

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Speaker 1: people believed it was true, and so Perishkevich said he

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Speaker 1: was going to kill Resputin like a dog. Once. Perashkevich

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Speaker 1: had even met with the head of the British secret

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Speaker 1: intelligence in Petrograd and told him too. Apparently, Pershkevich even

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Speaker 1: laid out the details of the plan. The British agents

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Speaker 1: ignored the report only because he had already heard so

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Speaker 1: many stories from other people saying they would kill Rasputin

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Speaker 1: as well, and nothing had ever happened. Only this time

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Speaker 1: there was blood in the snow, and the very next day,

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Speaker 1: two workers who were crossing the Petrovsky Bridge saw blood

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Speaker 1: on the railing too, not to mention the rubber burned

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Speaker 1: into the road where a vehicle had sped away. When

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Speaker 1: a watchman arrived to check out their reports, he went

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Speaker 1: down onto the ice under the bridge, and there he

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Speaker 1: spotted a boot that had been carelessly thrown from above

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Speaker 1: and missed the hole in the ice. When he reported

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Speaker 1: it to the police, it put them on the trail

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Speaker 1: of grig Cory's body. Things that were moving fast now.

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Speaker 1: By midday on December seventeenth, the word was spread wide.

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Speaker 1: Prince Felix Yusupov, together with Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovitch, Vladimir

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Speaker 1: Perishkevitch and other conspirators, had murdered Grigory Rasputin. The French

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Speaker 1: Foreign Minister was reporting it back across Europe. The Stock

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Speaker 1: Exchange Gazette was running the story. The news was out.

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Speaker 1: All attempts to do things quietly had failed. The murderers

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Speaker 1: gathered to plot their next move. They agreed to keep

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Speaker 1: up the story about the dog for as long as

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Speaker 1: they could. No one would admit to the truth that

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Speaker 1: was now being published across Russia, but they knew that

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Speaker 1: they would only last so long, so they agreed they

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Speaker 1: needed to run. Pershkevitch didn't waste any time. He hopped

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Speaker 1: on a hospital train and raced toward the Romanian front.

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Speaker 1: Felix Yusupov, though, wasn't so quick to turn tail. That night,

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Speaker 1: he says he went to dinner with a British officer

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Speaker 1: and fielded phone calls from friends who are rushing to

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Speaker 1: congratulate him. Not that we can take his word for it,

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Speaker 1: but there's no doubt Felix was proud of himself and

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Speaker 1: he wanted to bask. After all, no authority below the

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Speaker 1: Tsar could touch him. Not far off, though, the news

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Speaker 1: was landing very differently in a different palace. Like she

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Speaker 1: did so many other times, Alexandra put pen to paper

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Speaker 1: and wrote to Nicholas. She told him what she knew.

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Speaker 1: That Grigory was missing, that Perishkevitch was crowing about killing Rasputin,

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Speaker 1: that Felix was denying it, but that he was definitely involved.

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Speaker 1: She wrote, I cannot believe that our friend has been killed.

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Speaker 1: God have mercy. In the following days, people who saw

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Speaker 1: Alexandra said it was clear she was in anguish. She

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Speaker 1: ordered that Felix Usupaf was forbidden to leave the capital.

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Speaker 1: She placed the Tsar's cousin, Grand Duke Dmitri, under house arrest.

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Speaker 1: She worried, she raged, and she refused to be swayed

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Speaker 1: by the excuses and the lies they tried to send her.

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Speaker 1: She was cut to the core, especially when there was

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Speaker 1: no more denying the truth. In the early morning hours

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Speaker 1: of Monday, December nineteen, a small piece of fabric was

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Speaker 1: spotted downstream from the bridge, poking up through a crack

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Speaker 1: in the surface of the frozen river. Divers broke through,

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Speaker 1: and sure enough, right there, stuck to the underside of

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Speaker 1: the ice was Grigory rest Mutant's body. They lowered hooks

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Speaker 1: and dragged him from the water. A photographer's camera captured

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Speaker 1: the scene. It was a stunning image rast mutants body

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Speaker 1: on its back, dragged through the snow on a plank

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Speaker 1: of wood. His legs are still wrapped in the cloth

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Speaker 1: from the yusup off palace, and his ankles are still

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Speaker 1: bound by a length of chain. His frozen beard points

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Speaker 1: up towards the sky, and his arms are spread wide.

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Speaker 1: They brought Maria resputant to the river. At the end

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Speaker 1: of the bridge was a small hut where Maria and

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Speaker 1: her sister were lead Inside. There they were shown a

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Speaker 1: body a It was horrible. Maria remembered that the face

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Speaker 1: was swollen and the hair was thick with clots of blood,

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Speaker 1: but the debris had been cleaned off his features and

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Speaker 1: Maria could see that it was her father. She said

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Speaker 1: his clothes were frozen, stiff, and they peeled and flaked

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Speaker 1: like sheets of micah. The investigators took note of the details.

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Speaker 1: It was clear that whatever weights were tied to the

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Speaker 1: body had slipped away, and Rasputant had not sunk when

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Speaker 1: he hit the water. What's more, the fur coat that

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Speaker 1: was thrown into the water with the body had trapped

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Speaker 1: air and acted as a float. The gold cross still

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Speaker 1: clung to his chest over the blue silk shirt he

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Speaker 1: had gotten as a gift from Alexandra. The thin twine

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Speaker 1: that had tied his wrists had obviously snapped. Perhaps it

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Speaker 1: was when he hit the water, or maybe it was

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Speaker 1: during the fall when the body was flung over the rail.

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Speaker 1: The head seemed to have struck one of the supports

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Speaker 1: on the way down, but there was no doubt this

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Speaker 1: was Rasputant's body, and along with everything else, the bullet

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Speaker 1: holes puncturing his head and chest told the tail this

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Speaker 1: was murder. The next thing they needed, without a minute

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Speaker 1: of delay, was an autopsy. Afraid of what might happen

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Speaker 1: if his followers knew his body was in the city,

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Speaker 1: the authorities bustled the girls away and packed resputants corps

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Speaker 1: for travel. His arms frozen wide in the icy river,

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Speaker 1: and rigor Mortis refused to fit into a coffin, so

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Speaker 1: in an open topped wooden box, Grigory's body was carried

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Speaker 1: seven kilometers outside the city limits to the Chessmenski Palace.

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Speaker 1: The roads were blocked, guards were set, and the body

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Speaker 1: was warmed up to thaw. The man called in for

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Speaker 1: the work was Petrograd's senior autopsy surgeon, Dr. Dmitri Kosorotov,

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Speaker 1: known as one of the leading forensic experts in Russia.

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Speaker 1: He was the man trusted to write manuals on forensic

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Speaker 1: medicine and lecture at the Military Medical Academy. But it

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Speaker 1: didn't take his fine tuned expertise to detect the cloud

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Speaker 1: of alcohol around the body. Resputants corpse, he said, smelled

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Speaker 1: like Kognak. There was a challenge of determining what had

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Speaker 1: been done to the body after death, where it was

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Speaker 1: smashed against the bridge supports and gashed open by the

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Speaker 1: edge of the river ice. And there was the challenge

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Speaker 1: of tracing the three bullet wounds that Dr Kosrotov identified

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Speaker 1: and the shot to Grigory's forehead he determined had been

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Speaker 1: close enough to leave powder residue. As he tallied up

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Speaker 1: the injuries and started to come to a determination of

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Speaker 1: what had killed the Siberian holy Man, Dr Kosotov drew

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Speaker 1: a picture that was sound and reasonable and based on

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Speaker 1: the evidence in front of him. Unfortunately, that picture is

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Speaker 1: not the one that the world would see. In fact,

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Speaker 1: the story of Resputant's death was already being told without

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Speaker 1: the benefit of knowing what the autopsy found. Void of evidence,

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Speaker 1: these stories were free to include whatever speculations seemed best

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Speaker 1: to fit the legends and rumors already swirling about Grigory's

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Speaker 1: life and death. And that was all before Felix Yusupov's

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Speaker 1: own myth making through a shroud over Resputant's corpse, one

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Speaker 1: that would hide the realities from our eyes for generations.

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Speaker 1: Here's historian Douglas Smith to help us unravel the legend.

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Speaker 1: So much of the myth of resputants murder, which is

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Speaker 1: something that everybody seems to know in some sort of detail,

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Speaker 1: comes from your supers memoirs. You supers memoirs are sort

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Speaker 1: of network of lies, the tissue of have truths and

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Speaker 1: an attempt to bade himself in glory, if you will,

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Speaker 1: for a truly horrible deed. He depicts himself, he soup

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Speaker 1: of does as like sort of Sat Michael slaying the dragon.

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Speaker 1: He depicts Resputin as a man that was impossible to kill, um,

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Speaker 1: that he had sort of superhuman power in him, that

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Speaker 1: he was Satan himself, And in fact, in the various

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Speaker 1: versions of the memoirs that you super frights he and

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Speaker 1: each one exaggerates the impossibility of killing Rasputin with each

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Speaker 1: retelling of the tale. Felix didn't want to think of

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Speaker 1: himself as a cold blood murderer. He certainly didn't want

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Speaker 1: others to think of himself that way. He and his

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00:14:04,480 --> 00:14:07,520
Speaker 1: accomplices needed to believe that they were something more, and

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Speaker 1: so the story that they told grew from the cold

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Speaker 1: realities into something far more sinister, spiritual, legendary, but completely false.

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Speaker 1: With each retelling of the tale, that you know, they

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Speaker 1: beat him, they poisoned him, they shoot him, he refuses

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Speaker 1: to die, that they dump him in a hole in

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Speaker 1: an icy branch of the Nieva River, and even then

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00:14:29,520 --> 00:14:32,560
Speaker 1: he still breathes his last and tries to make the

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Speaker 1: sign of the cross, and eventually only dies of drowning.

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Speaker 1: I mean, this is all just a pack of lies

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Speaker 1: that you Soup have told to make himself feel better,

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Speaker 1: to aggrandize himself, and quite frankly, to earn money, because

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Speaker 1: he was now living in in exile after the Revolution

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Speaker 1: in Europe and had no way to make a living

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Speaker 1: other than to keep retelling the story of how he

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Speaker 1: had killed Resputant. When Dr Kosaratop opened the body, he

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Speaker 1: own no water in the lungs. Grigory didn't drown. He

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Speaker 1: was dead before he hit the water. But that's just

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Speaker 1: one aspect of Felix's myth, dissolved by the findings of

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Speaker 1: the autopsy. Chief among the details that Felix would build

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Speaker 1: his story on was the thing that he couldn't shake

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Speaker 1: that Grigory had swallowed an army's worth of cyanide that

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Speaker 1: night and remained unscathed. As Felix told the story, he

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Speaker 1: had added massive doses to the cakes and wine, and

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Speaker 1: Rasputant had taken it all. As far as he was concerned,

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Speaker 1: some malignant spiritual energy had preserved him from its effects.

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Speaker 1: That would become one of the key details of the

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Speaker 1: Resputant myth that would be told and retold down the

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00:15:39,840 --> 00:15:43,800
Speaker 1: generations up to today. But traces of cyanide is something

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Speaker 1: Dr Kassarotov would have been able to spot right away.

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Speaker 1: In fact, he didn't find any food in Grigory's stomach

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Speaker 1: at all, no cakes poisoned or not, And if there

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Speaker 1: had been something put in Rasputant's drink, it couldn't have

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Speaker 1: been a lethal dose of cyanide. The body would have

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Speaker 1: given off a signature scent of almonds, among other tell

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Speaker 1: tale effects, but the autopsy report noted nothing of the kind.

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Speaker 1: Maybe Felix was telling outright lies about the attempt to

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Speaker 1: poison Grigory, But the other possibility is that they dosed

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Speaker 1: him with something other than cyanide without knowing it. Some

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Speaker 1: historians think it was just an inert powder substituted along

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Speaker 1: the way, perhaps by someone with a pang of conscience.

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Speaker 1: Felix and his friends were simply too ignorant to know

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Speaker 1: what they had wasn't the real deal. It wasn't that

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Speaker 1: Grigory had miraculously survived poisoning. It was simply that his

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00:16:35,160 --> 00:16:38,480
Speaker 1: murderers bungled just about every part of their attempt to

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Speaker 1: kill him. Dr Kosaratov found when he examined the body

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Speaker 1: that the killing looked messy, but fairly ordinary, fairly easy,

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00:16:47,160 --> 00:16:51,600
Speaker 1: that is, to explain an ultimate fact. There was probably

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00:16:51,920 --> 00:16:54,920
Speaker 1: never any poison, And in point of fact, we know

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00:16:55,160 --> 00:16:59,160
Speaker 1: from photographs taken at the autopsy of Resputent's body after

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00:16:59,200 --> 00:17:01,600
Speaker 1: it was pulled from the ice, that he was shot

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Speaker 1: three times at close range, twice in the torso, and

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00:17:05,200 --> 00:17:08,720
Speaker 1: a third and final time at point blank rage, right

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Speaker 1: into the middle of his forehead. Rasputin was more than

293
00:17:12,200 --> 00:17:16,040
Speaker 1: dead when they finally dumped his body into the icy river.

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Speaker 1: Gregory had been shot once through the stomach and liver,

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00:17:20,240 --> 00:17:22,320
Speaker 1: He had been shot again in the back, and the

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00:17:22,359 --> 00:17:25,879
Speaker 1: bullet pierced his kidney and lodged against his spine. Either

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00:17:26,000 --> 00:17:28,639
Speaker 1: one of those could have killed him given enough time,

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00:17:29,080 --> 00:17:31,159
Speaker 1: and the shot to his head was certainly enough to

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00:17:31,320 --> 00:17:35,920
Speaker 1: end his life. But generations of historians, investigators, and writers

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00:17:35,960 --> 00:17:39,560
Speaker 1: have had to cut through Felix Yusupov's tall tales to

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00:17:39,680 --> 00:17:43,760
Speaker 1: get at the truth. The man was mortal with a

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00:17:43,880 --> 00:17:52,800
Speaker 1: legend has proved impossible to kill. The rumors spread Grigory

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00:17:52,880 --> 00:17:57,280
Speaker 1: Rasputant was protected from poison by dark spiritual powers. We

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00:17:57,359 --> 00:17:59,720
Speaker 1: know that's false, but it was so much more fun

305
00:17:59,760 --> 00:18:05,400
Speaker 1: to leave it. Resputant was nearly immortal and survived being shot, beaten, stabbed,

306
00:18:05,440 --> 00:18:08,680
Speaker 1: and poisoned, only to be killed by the rivers of Russia.

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00:18:09,240 --> 00:18:12,520
Speaker 1: That's false too, but there's a sick pleasure in recounting

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00:18:12,520 --> 00:18:15,760
Speaker 1: the amount of punishment one body could absorb before nature

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00:18:15,840 --> 00:18:18,440
Speaker 1: steps in to finish the job. And then, of course,

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Speaker 1: there's the story that comes from the most salacious rumors

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00:18:21,160 --> 00:18:24,800
Speaker 1: about Grigory's sexual conquests and the gossip that he was,

312
00:18:25,080 --> 00:18:28,280
Speaker 1: as we've all heard, the lover of the Russian Zarina.

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Speaker 1: It's those earlier stories that gave rise to the idea

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Speaker 1: that Felix or someone among the killers cut off Resputant's

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00:18:34,920 --> 00:18:39,160
Speaker 1: penis and preserved it. After all, it had grown its

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00:18:39,160 --> 00:18:42,400
Speaker 1: own legends, all blown out of proportion with each time

317
00:18:42,440 --> 00:18:45,159
Speaker 1: they were repeated. It was even enough for collectors and

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00:18:45,240 --> 00:18:47,560
Speaker 1: museums to claim over the years that they have its

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00:18:47,600 --> 00:18:51,680
Speaker 1: inhuman mass pickled in brine. While it's unbelievable size makes

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00:18:51,680 --> 00:18:54,879
Speaker 1: it a marvel to visitors today, and what could tickle

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00:18:54,920 --> 00:18:58,240
Speaker 1: fancies more than a story like that. Here's the thing, though,

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00:18:58,720 --> 00:19:04,280
Speaker 1: it's unbelievable, because it's not true. Gregory's body was intact

323
00:19:04,359 --> 00:19:07,320
Speaker 1: at the autopsy, but as with so many other parts

324
00:19:07,320 --> 00:19:09,800
Speaker 1: of Rasputant's life, the truth never got in the way

325
00:19:09,800 --> 00:19:12,960
Speaker 1: of a juicy anecdote. The truth about his exploits was

326
00:19:13,000 --> 00:19:15,840
Speaker 1: far from mystical. As we know by now, he was

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00:19:15,880 --> 00:19:18,800
Speaker 1: simply a man who used his position and his preaching

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00:19:19,119 --> 00:19:22,119
Speaker 1: to take sexual advantage of women who were vulnerable. But

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00:19:22,240 --> 00:19:26,640
Speaker 1: that truth doesn't lend itself to playful retellings. In reality,

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Speaker 1: Gregory's whole corpse was embalmed, dressed in white silk, and

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Speaker 1: sealed in a zinc coffin. Before the lid was closed,

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00:19:33,880 --> 00:19:36,920
Speaker 1: he was joined by some dried flowers and an icon.

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00:19:37,440 --> 00:19:40,439
Speaker 1: It was far quieter than the storytellers would have us believe.

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00:19:41,480 --> 00:19:45,360
Speaker 1: Also far quieter was the Royal household. Nicholas arrived back

335
00:19:45,359 --> 00:19:49,440
Speaker 1: in Petrograd on Monday, December. The year nineteen sixteen was

336
00:19:49,520 --> 00:19:51,720
Speaker 1: coming to a close on a sober note for the

337
00:19:51,760 --> 00:19:55,679
Speaker 1: Imperial household. They were shaken, but one attendant noted that

338
00:19:55,720 --> 00:20:00,119
Speaker 1: the name Grigory Rasputin was never spoken that night. In

339
00:20:00,160 --> 00:20:03,119
Speaker 1: the following days, though they were all asking what should

340
00:20:03,160 --> 00:20:06,280
Speaker 1: be done with the holy man's body. Alexandra started putting

341
00:20:06,280 --> 00:20:09,960
Speaker 1: the question to her advisers directly, the Palace commandant suggested

342
00:20:09,960 --> 00:20:13,240
Speaker 1: that it be shipped back to Siberia. Other officials responded

343
00:20:13,240 --> 00:20:15,640
Speaker 1: with worry. What if the news got out that rest

344
00:20:15,680 --> 00:20:18,680
Speaker 1: Mutant's corpse was traveling by train, there might be a

345
00:20:18,760 --> 00:20:22,720
Speaker 1: violent demonstration on the way. Even with his death, the

346
00:20:22,800 --> 00:20:26,400
Speaker 1: hatred of Gregory Resputant had not dissipated. That was clear

347
00:20:26,440 --> 00:20:29,200
Speaker 1: to see for just about everyone, which is also why

348
00:20:29,240 --> 00:20:32,199
Speaker 1: they started to worry when Alexandra insisted that he be

349
00:20:32,240 --> 00:20:35,919
Speaker 1: buried nearby. In fact, Resputant had participated in laying the

350
00:20:35,920 --> 00:20:39,480
Speaker 1: cornerstone of a new church at Alexander Park, near the

351
00:20:39,520 --> 00:20:44,080
Speaker 1: Imperial residence. Alexandra wanted him there, so in the early

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00:20:44,119 --> 00:20:47,560
Speaker 1: morning of Wednesday, December one, soldiers began to dig a

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00:20:47,600 --> 00:20:50,719
Speaker 1: shallow grave in the foundations of the church. A police

354
00:20:50,760 --> 00:20:53,320
Speaker 1: fan arrived with its heavy burden. By the time the

355
00:20:53,359 --> 00:20:56,719
Speaker 1: Imperial family followed, the Zinc coffin was already in the ground.

356
00:20:57,119 --> 00:21:00,399
Speaker 1: Only a few people were there beyond Nicholas, alex Xandra,

357
00:21:00,680 --> 00:21:03,760
Speaker 1: their daughters, and a few of their household. No one

358
00:21:03,800 --> 00:21:08,320
Speaker 1: in Rasputant's family was consulted. Maria and her sister Varvara

359
00:21:08,520 --> 00:21:11,200
Speaker 1: had left the capital without an invitation to their own

360
00:21:11,240 --> 00:21:15,320
Speaker 1: father's burial. Alexandra and each of her daughters tossed a

361
00:21:15,359 --> 00:21:18,520
Speaker 1: white rose down into the hole in the earth. Nicholas

362
00:21:18,560 --> 00:21:22,240
Speaker 1: wrote a brief account in his diary, A sad spectacle,

363
00:21:22,400 --> 00:21:26,000
Speaker 1: he said. Then the imperial family went back to their

364
00:21:26,080 --> 00:21:30,399
Speaker 1: daily lives, meetings with officials, war briefings, and even with

365
00:21:30,480 --> 00:21:34,840
Speaker 1: Grigory now gone the revolving door of ministers, Alexandra and

366
00:21:34,880 --> 00:21:38,520
Speaker 1: her daughter's returned to nursing duties, attending hospital trains and

367
00:21:38,600 --> 00:21:43,520
Speaker 1: celebrating their care for Russia's wounded sons with ornate faberge eggs.

368
00:21:44,280 --> 00:21:48,080
Speaker 1: At the graveside, a military guard prohibited anyone from approaching.

369
00:21:48,600 --> 00:21:52,320
Speaker 1: For a while, Alexandra made daily visits, holding herself together.

370
00:21:52,840 --> 00:21:55,479
Speaker 1: There were times it seemed that she still believed she

371
00:21:55,560 --> 00:21:58,480
Speaker 1: was under her friend's protection. A few months later, she

372
00:21:58,520 --> 00:22:00,960
Speaker 1: wrote to Nicholas that even though God had sent them

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Speaker 1: a hard burden to bear, they should have courage. You

374
00:22:04,920 --> 00:22:07,760
Speaker 1: should wear the cross, she wrote. It seems she had

375
00:22:07,800 --> 00:22:10,400
Speaker 1: taken the one Resputin was wearing on his chest when

376
00:22:10,400 --> 00:22:12,600
Speaker 1: he died, and she had given it to the Czar.

377
00:22:13,080 --> 00:22:15,560
Speaker 1: The fact that nestling it against his heart failed to

378
00:22:15,600 --> 00:22:18,200
Speaker 1: save Grigory from the bullets that killed him didn't seem

379
00:22:18,240 --> 00:22:21,240
Speaker 1: to occur to Alexandra. She said it would help Nicholas

380
00:22:21,280 --> 00:22:25,280
Speaker 1: when he was making difficult decisions. Besides, she was praying

381
00:22:25,320 --> 00:22:28,119
Speaker 1: fervently for her husband, and she believed she wasn't the

382
00:22:28,119 --> 00:22:31,640
Speaker 1: only one. Another voice was still reaching out to God

383
00:22:31,720 --> 00:22:35,080
Speaker 1: on the Romanov's behalf. She told Nicholas that Resputin was

384
00:22:35,119 --> 00:22:38,080
Speaker 1: nearer to them than ever, even in the world beyond,

385
00:22:38,840 --> 00:22:41,679
Speaker 1: and Alexander was far from alone in that thought. It

386
00:22:41,800 --> 00:22:44,399
Speaker 1: was widely reported that the Minister of the Interior was

387
00:22:44,480 --> 00:22:48,159
Speaker 1: regularly attending seances. They whispered that he was always trying

388
00:22:48,200 --> 00:22:50,600
Speaker 1: to summon rest Sputin and to get advice from the

389
00:22:50,680 --> 00:22:54,040
Speaker 1: murdered peasant from beyond the grave. As the days went by,

390
00:22:54,160 --> 00:22:57,199
Speaker 1: other government officials started to observe that he attended to

391
00:22:57,240 --> 00:23:00,159
Speaker 1: his duties less and less and spent his time at

392
00:23:00,160 --> 00:23:03,880
Speaker 1: the Imperial Palace more and more. His motives, though, were

393
00:23:03,880 --> 00:23:07,160
Speaker 1: more than suspicious, especially when he decided to take things

394
00:23:07,240 --> 00:23:10,399
Speaker 1: up a notch. He started telling Alexander that he wasn't

395
00:23:10,440 --> 00:23:13,679
Speaker 1: just getting messages from Rasputin. No, he said that the

396
00:23:13,720 --> 00:23:16,919
Speaker 1: spirit of Rasputin had come back from the other side

397
00:23:17,440 --> 00:23:26,960
Speaker 1: and taken up residence inside a new body. With Rasputin dead,

398
00:23:27,240 --> 00:23:30,680
Speaker 1: Russia was saved. At least that's what the killers hoped.

399
00:23:31,040 --> 00:23:34,119
Speaker 1: The dark forces that affected the Empire through their Siberian

400
00:23:34,200 --> 00:23:37,520
Speaker 1: puppet had that tool ripped from their hands, the Czar's

401
00:23:37,560 --> 00:23:40,399
Speaker 1: family would move on and God would once again bless

402
00:23:40,480 --> 00:23:43,800
Speaker 1: the empire. With the enemy's plots overthrown, they would have

403
00:23:43,920 --> 00:23:46,760
Speaker 1: victory in battle and a time of peace and plenty

404
00:23:46,760 --> 00:23:50,600
Speaker 1: would follow. The French Foreign Minister wrote in his diary

405
00:23:50,680 --> 00:23:55,000
Speaker 1: on December that the public was rejoicing. They were kissing

406
00:23:55,040 --> 00:23:57,720
Speaker 1: in the streets, he said, and marching to the churches

407
00:23:57,800 --> 00:24:01,080
Speaker 1: burning candles to the saints. That fish agents wrote that

408
00:24:01,080 --> 00:24:03,360
Speaker 1: the people of Petrograd were acting as if they were

409
00:24:03,400 --> 00:24:07,119
Speaker 1: suddenly freed from a great weight. It was, they were saying,

410
00:24:07,600 --> 00:24:11,639
Speaker 1: better than Russia's greatest victories in the war, all thanks

411
00:24:11,640 --> 00:24:15,760
Speaker 1: to Felix Yusupov, Grand Duke Dmitri and their band of heroes.

412
00:24:16,160 --> 00:24:20,199
Speaker 1: Right Once again, a far bleaker reality would shatter the

413
00:24:20,280 --> 00:24:24,359
Speaker 1: myths spun up by the propagandists of Russian aristocracy, and

414
00:24:24,400 --> 00:24:26,879
Speaker 1: it was Nicholas first of all, who felt the pinch

415
00:24:27,359 --> 00:24:29,400
Speaker 1: because it felt to him like the attack on rest

416
00:24:29,400 --> 00:24:33,879
Speaker 1: Sputin had a secondary target his wife, so he felt

417
00:24:33,920 --> 00:24:36,840
Speaker 1: he didn't have a choice. The murderers had to be

418
00:24:36,920 --> 00:24:40,480
Speaker 1: dealt with. The rest of his family urged Nicholas to

419
00:24:40,560 --> 00:24:43,920
Speaker 1: let the issue go. The murder had perhaps been misguided,

420
00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:47,440
Speaker 1: but Grigory was only a peasant. Was Nicholas really going

421
00:24:47,520 --> 00:24:50,080
Speaker 1: to pursue the members of his own bloodline over the

422
00:24:50,119 --> 00:24:53,960
Speaker 1: death of someone like that. Alexandra had begun the prosecution,

423
00:24:54,240 --> 00:24:56,679
Speaker 1: She had even put a Grand Duke under house arrest,

424
00:24:57,280 --> 00:25:00,119
Speaker 1: but surely Nicholas would see that all of this as

425
00:25:00,160 --> 00:25:04,600
Speaker 1: an overreaction. If the murderers and their social set thought

426
00:25:04,640 --> 00:25:06,960
Speaker 1: that the Tsar would see things their way, they once

427
00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:10,560
Speaker 1: again misunderstood just how much Grigory Resputant had meant to

428
00:25:10,600 --> 00:25:14,440
Speaker 1: the Romanovs. On the twenty three December, Grand Duke Dmitri

429
00:25:14,800 --> 00:25:18,720
Speaker 1: received orders he was being sent away from Petrograd to

430
00:25:18,760 --> 00:25:21,919
Speaker 1: the Persian Front. He was leaving the very next morning.

431
00:25:22,359 --> 00:25:25,440
Speaker 1: In strict secrecy. He boarded the train and left the capital.

432
00:25:25,960 --> 00:25:28,600
Speaker 1: No one was confused about why he was being pushed

433
00:25:28,600 --> 00:25:33,080
Speaker 1: out into the war zone. Other aristocrats tried to push back.

434
00:25:33,480 --> 00:25:35,840
Speaker 1: They got together and co signed a letter asking for

435
00:25:35,920 --> 00:25:38,520
Speaker 1: Nicholas to show mercy on the Grand Duke's youth and

436
00:25:38,600 --> 00:25:42,479
Speaker 1: ill health. The Czar's response he scrawled by hand across

437
00:25:42,480 --> 00:25:45,040
Speaker 1: the top of the letter, no one has a right

438
00:25:45,119 --> 00:25:49,640
Speaker 1: to commit murder, and he returned it to sender. Felix

439
00:25:49,800 --> 00:25:53,000
Speaker 1: was also exiled, not that it was hard for him.

440
00:25:53,040 --> 00:25:55,439
Speaker 1: He retreated from the capital only as far as his

441
00:25:55,480 --> 00:25:59,040
Speaker 1: comfortable estate in the south. There he started to receive

442
00:25:59,119 --> 00:26:01,879
Speaker 1: visits from the rush and nobility, people who wanted to

443
00:26:01,960 --> 00:26:05,200
Speaker 1: congratulate him, and people who simply wanted to thumb their

444
00:26:05,240 --> 00:26:08,520
Speaker 1: nose at the Czar. Any bonds of love and trust

445
00:26:08,560 --> 00:26:11,280
Speaker 1: that had existed between Nicholas and the nobility were broken,

446
00:26:11,760 --> 00:26:15,040
Speaker 1: and that had massive implications for what came next. As

447
00:26:15,080 --> 00:26:17,800
Speaker 1: the Russian elites took all their venom, all their spites,

448
00:26:18,119 --> 00:26:20,600
Speaker 1: and all their grievances and poured them out on the

449
00:26:20,680 --> 00:26:25,240
Speaker 1: Czar's doorstep and on his German wife. Here's historian Joshua

450
00:26:25,320 --> 00:26:29,920
Speaker 1: Sanborn to say more. The criticism of Alexandra and then

451
00:26:29,920 --> 00:26:32,280
Speaker 1: by extension, rast putin a lot of it is wrapped

452
00:26:32,359 --> 00:26:37,000
Speaker 1: up in quite um uh i don't know the best

453
00:26:37,000 --> 00:26:38,119
Speaker 1: way way to put it. I mean, a lot of

454
00:26:38,160 --> 00:26:40,159
Speaker 1: it is wrapped up obviously anti Germanism, a lot of

455
00:26:40,160 --> 00:26:44,080
Speaker 1: it is wrapped up in in in sexism obviously. Uh.

456
00:26:44,119 --> 00:26:46,400
Speaker 1: You know that that's a lot of the criticism that's

457
00:26:46,400 --> 00:26:49,680
Speaker 1: happening for them, um, But it also doesn't reflect the

458
00:26:49,680 --> 00:26:51,600
Speaker 1: fact that I talked about before, which is that the

459
00:26:51,600 --> 00:26:54,439
Speaker 1: decisions they're making in nineteen six after Nicholas leaps for

460
00:26:54,480 --> 00:26:57,080
Speaker 1: the front in the nineteen sixteen, let's say they're not

461
00:26:57,160 --> 00:26:59,479
Speaker 1: that consequential. I don't think it actually matters that much

462
00:26:59,520 --> 00:27:02,640
Speaker 1: through the minis sor of Interior, Minister of Communications, It's right.

463
00:27:02,840 --> 00:27:05,119
Speaker 1: I just don't think it matters too much. Most of

464
00:27:05,160 --> 00:27:07,239
Speaker 1: the actual work that's being done is being done by

465
00:27:07,240 --> 00:27:09,840
Speaker 1: people that that they don't have control over, especially in

466
00:27:09,880 --> 00:27:13,000
Speaker 1: the military, and so you know, I don't see them

467
00:27:13,200 --> 00:27:15,199
Speaker 1: as that important now in terms of the loss of

468
00:27:15,240 --> 00:27:18,360
Speaker 1: public faith on the part of the Petersburg elite, which

469
00:27:18,400 --> 00:27:21,080
Speaker 1: is something important that the faith of your political elite

470
00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:23,439
Speaker 1: is something important in a political system. It's obvious that

471
00:27:23,480 --> 00:27:25,679
Speaker 1: they have an effect on that. So for sure they

472
00:27:25,680 --> 00:27:28,520
Speaker 1: have an influence on that, and that's why the you know,

473
00:27:29,359 --> 00:27:31,720
Speaker 1: that's why it's conservatives and ultra right right wing people

474
00:27:31,720 --> 00:27:35,600
Speaker 1: that assassinate rest Putin. And one thing is clear, Nicholas

475
00:27:35,640 --> 00:27:38,400
Speaker 1: was right to worry. By the end of nineteen sixteen,

476
00:27:38,480 --> 00:27:41,840
Speaker 1: Russian aristocrats weren't satisfied with the death of rest Sputin.

477
00:27:42,359 --> 00:27:45,400
Speaker 1: There were at least a few who considered killing Alexandra

478
00:27:45,520 --> 00:27:50,000
Speaker 1: as well. Some even plotted a full blown coup. In

479
00:27:50,040 --> 00:27:52,800
Speaker 1: the end, Russian elites and government officials spent much of

480
00:27:52,800 --> 00:27:55,119
Speaker 1: their time stewing over the ways that the Czar was

481
00:27:55,200 --> 00:27:58,000
Speaker 1: fumbling the reins, that they failed to see their own

482
00:27:58,080 --> 00:28:01,359
Speaker 1: part in tearing the social fabric to shreds. They wanted

483
00:28:01,400 --> 00:28:04,840
Speaker 1: someone to blame for what they were doing themselves. It's

484
00:28:04,960 --> 00:28:09,240
Speaker 1: that blindness that Douglas Smith describes here so well. I

485
00:28:09,359 --> 00:28:12,760
Speaker 1: came away after six years of research and writing and

486
00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:15,399
Speaker 1: thinking about Respute, and you know, seeing him as this

487
00:28:15,480 --> 00:28:19,280
Speaker 1: great scapecoat, sort of one of the great scapegoats of history.

488
00:28:19,359 --> 00:28:22,080
Speaker 1: And it's not to deny his faults, it's not to

489
00:28:22,240 --> 00:28:25,359
Speaker 1: deny him of responsibility for things that he did to

490
00:28:25,480 --> 00:28:29,600
Speaker 1: further the demise of the autocracy. But everyone wants to

491
00:28:29,640 --> 00:28:33,040
Speaker 1: put it all on his shoulders. It was strange to

492
00:28:33,160 --> 00:28:36,440
Speaker 1: just read account after account after account of people who

493
00:28:36,520 --> 00:28:39,520
Speaker 1: were part of Russia at the time, in the government,

494
00:28:39,640 --> 00:28:42,040
Speaker 1: in the army, at court, and they all want to

495
00:28:42,040 --> 00:28:45,160
Speaker 1: place it on resputing shoulders, as if it hadn't been Resputing,

496
00:28:45,880 --> 00:28:47,960
Speaker 1: none of this would have happened. There would have been

497
00:28:47,960 --> 00:28:50,600
Speaker 1: no war, there would have been no revolution, there would

498
00:28:50,600 --> 00:28:53,040
Speaker 1: have been no downfall of the dynasty. And that's so

499
00:28:53,160 --> 00:28:57,040
Speaker 1: utterly simplistic and incorrect that I hope, if nothing else,

500
00:28:57,080 --> 00:29:00,360
Speaker 1: I can move us off of this simplistic way thinking

501
00:29:00,360 --> 00:29:03,880
Speaker 1: about him and his role in his place in history.

502
00:29:04,120 --> 00:29:06,400
Speaker 1: There's a bitter irony to the ways that the Russian

503
00:29:06,400 --> 00:29:10,880
Speaker 1: aristocrats obsessed over the Tsar and his wife because resputant

504
00:29:10,960 --> 00:29:13,560
Speaker 1: or no, the truth is that the empire had long

505
00:29:13,600 --> 00:29:17,240
Speaker 1: since slipped beyond the Tsar's control. If he or anyone

506
00:29:17,320 --> 00:29:19,760
Speaker 1: had wanted to see a different future for Russia at

507
00:29:19,800 --> 00:29:22,520
Speaker 1: the end of nineteen sixteen, they would have to make

508
00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:26,720
Speaker 1: those changes in the past. As historian Helen Rappaport explains,

509
00:29:27,720 --> 00:29:32,480
Speaker 1: I think the big crucial turning point could have been

510
00:29:32,760 --> 00:29:36,720
Speaker 1: five after you know, the fiasco the Russo Japanese wore

511
00:29:36,920 --> 00:29:42,320
Speaker 1: terrible disaster for Russia politically, Um after that, and then

512
00:29:42,360 --> 00:29:47,600
Speaker 1: the bloody Sunday protest march where innocent workers marched without

513
00:29:47,680 --> 00:29:53,600
Speaker 1: weapons or anything, asking for reform and for letter working

514
00:29:53,600 --> 00:29:58,760
Speaker 1: conditions when they were attacked by Cossack troops. When that happened,

515
00:29:58,760 --> 00:30:03,360
Speaker 1: that turning point, That was the point where Nicholas should

516
00:30:03,400 --> 00:30:09,560
Speaker 1: have introduced major political concessions. If it introduced decent, democratic

517
00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:15,360
Speaker 1: constitutional government, if he'd allowed the Duma, the State Duma,

518
00:30:15,440 --> 00:30:19,960
Speaker 1: to flourish instead of constantly censoring it and shutting it down,

519
00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:24,120
Speaker 1: then I don't see why Russia could not have evolved

520
00:30:24,640 --> 00:30:28,600
Speaker 1: into the kind of constitutional monarchy that was made such

521
00:30:28,640 --> 00:30:31,520
Speaker 1: a success by King Edward the seventh in the years

522
00:30:31,640 --> 00:30:34,760
Speaker 1: leading up to World War One, because Russia was beginning

523
00:30:34,800 --> 00:30:40,480
Speaker 1: to grow economically, beginning to catch up with Western Europe

524
00:30:40,600 --> 00:30:44,600
Speaker 1: in those terms, and it could have flourished differently under

525
00:30:44,600 --> 00:30:51,000
Speaker 1: a much more benign and democratic constitutional monarch. But as

526
00:30:51,080 --> 00:30:53,800
Speaker 1: we know, Nicholas was never willing to give up what

527
00:30:53,880 --> 00:30:56,880
Speaker 1: he considered a god given right. He was the czar

528
00:30:57,040 --> 00:31:00,160
Speaker 1: by heaven and he was meant to rule on are

529
00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:03,920
Speaker 1: A Romanov There would never truly be a democratic constitution.

530
00:31:04,440 --> 00:31:09,240
Speaker 1: Nicholas was an autocrat from the beginning to the bitter end,

531
00:31:12,080 --> 00:31:15,920
Speaker 1: the bodies piled up the war continued on. One death

532
00:31:15,960 --> 00:31:18,680
Speaker 1: could easily get lost among the many millions of poor

533
00:31:18,760 --> 00:31:22,719
Speaker 1: soldiers being killed on every side in a clash between empires.

534
00:31:22,800 --> 00:31:25,760
Speaker 1: It is the peasants who suffer. At least some of

535
00:31:25,800 --> 00:31:29,000
Speaker 1: the aristocrats saw that. Like the wealthy woman who followed

536
00:31:29,040 --> 00:31:32,600
Speaker 1: Alexander's lead and tied on a nurse's gown, she believed

537
00:31:32,600 --> 00:31:35,840
Speaker 1: that as a powerful matron, charity was her duty, so

538
00:31:35,880 --> 00:31:39,280
Speaker 1: she took up work in the hospitals. But simple charity

539
00:31:39,400 --> 00:31:41,760
Speaker 1: fell far short of what the Russian elites would have

540
00:31:41,760 --> 00:31:44,920
Speaker 1: needed to do to truly turn Russia toward a different future.

541
00:31:45,840 --> 00:31:47,880
Speaker 1: That began to dawn on her when she overheard a

542
00:31:47,880 --> 00:31:51,560
Speaker 1: few of the wounded soldiers talking together. They were peasants,

543
00:31:51,600 --> 00:31:55,480
Speaker 1: like many Russian fighting men, and they were talking about Rasputin.

544
00:31:56,040 --> 00:31:59,080
Speaker 1: He was like them, a peasant. Whatever else might have

545
00:31:59,120 --> 00:32:02,040
Speaker 1: been true about him, all the rumors and dark whispers

546
00:32:02,080 --> 00:32:06,080
Speaker 1: about his evil proclivities, they saw that he had climbed high.

547
00:32:06,200 --> 00:32:08,680
Speaker 1: He had done what peasants who farmed the land, who

548
00:32:08,760 --> 00:32:11,960
Speaker 1: raised horses, and who worked in the factories could only

549
00:32:12,040 --> 00:32:15,400
Speaker 1: dream of. They said, there he was the one peasant

550
00:32:15,440 --> 00:32:18,120
Speaker 1: who had reached the czar himself, but what did he

551
00:32:18,160 --> 00:32:21,920
Speaker 1: get in return? The real masters of society had him

552
00:32:21,960 --> 00:32:25,920
Speaker 1: murdered by the dawn of nineteen seventeen. The Russian people

553
00:32:25,920 --> 00:32:28,720
Speaker 1: had decided long ago that they suffered more than enough

554
00:32:28,760 --> 00:32:31,800
Speaker 1: at the hands of these masters of society. If the

555
00:32:31,840 --> 00:32:35,840
Speaker 1: aristocrats talked idly about a coup to overthrow the czar,

556
00:32:35,920 --> 00:32:38,719
Speaker 1: the Russian people were about to show their ruling class

557
00:32:38,760 --> 00:32:42,000
Speaker 1: what it really looked like to seize power from abusive masters.

558
00:32:42,520 --> 00:32:47,120
Speaker 1: Here's historian Joshua Sandborn to describe the outbreak of revolution.

559
00:32:48,160 --> 00:32:52,120
Speaker 1: It begins on International Women's Day, which was a relatively

560
00:32:52,200 --> 00:32:56,440
Speaker 1: new socialist holiday instituted in UH as a result of

561
00:32:56,480 --> 00:32:59,560
Speaker 1: the Triangle shirtwaist fire in New York City. UM and

562
00:33:00,080 --> 00:33:02,960
Speaker 1: UH and and UH again driven by socialist parties and

563
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:05,080
Speaker 1: by labor movements as as a way to sort of

564
00:33:05,120 --> 00:33:09,600
Speaker 1: recognize women within within the socialist movement and UM so

565
00:33:09,680 --> 00:33:13,960
Speaker 1: International Women's Day is provides the the opportunity for many

566
00:33:14,000 --> 00:33:18,080
Speaker 1: women across the city of Petrograd to UM to go

567
00:33:18,160 --> 00:33:21,840
Speaker 1: out on marches and and what they want to protest.

568
00:33:21,880 --> 00:33:24,320
Speaker 1: At this point, UM is a series of things. The

569
00:33:24,320 --> 00:33:28,480
Speaker 1: war uh, the Tsarist administration and the fact that their

570
00:33:28,520 --> 00:33:32,040
Speaker 1: lives have now been taken over by increasingly long breadlines,

571
00:33:32,120 --> 00:33:34,520
Speaker 1: and they're putting the blame for this where it actually

572
00:33:34,520 --> 00:33:36,760
Speaker 1: belongs on the sar and on the and on the

573
00:33:36,800 --> 00:33:39,080
Speaker 1: war itself. They're they're not wrong about who has led

574
00:33:39,120 --> 00:33:41,120
Speaker 1: them to this, to this situation. And when the defense

575
00:33:41,160 --> 00:33:43,600
Speaker 1: factories also go out on strike and join them, it

576
00:33:43,640 --> 00:33:46,840
Speaker 1: becomes a crisis for the police in Petrograd. They attempt

577
00:33:46,880 --> 00:33:49,160
Speaker 1: to deal with this by blocking off bridges, by doing

578
00:33:49,160 --> 00:33:50,960
Speaker 1: a series of other things. They shoot into the crowd

579
00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:53,320
Speaker 1: at several moments, but then they feel that they have

580
00:33:53,400 --> 00:33:55,400
Speaker 1: to call in the army. The army has several barracks

581
00:33:55,400 --> 00:33:57,360
Speaker 1: in the city and they have to call those soldiers

582
00:33:57,440 --> 00:33:59,520
Speaker 1: up to help them police the city. And when they

583
00:33:59,560 --> 00:34:01,440
Speaker 1: do that, it turns out that the soldiers are on

584
00:34:01,560 --> 00:34:04,440
Speaker 1: the on the side of the protesters. You have mass

585
00:34:04,520 --> 00:34:07,520
Speaker 1: mutinies among the soldiers in the Petrograd garrison. They drive

586
00:34:07,600 --> 00:34:10,799
Speaker 1: the police away, The police throw away their uniforms, they

587
00:34:10,840 --> 00:34:14,279
Speaker 1: flee on trains, they hide um uh, they break open

588
00:34:14,320 --> 00:34:17,000
Speaker 1: the jails, they start burning court records. All this stuff

589
00:34:17,120 --> 00:34:20,440
Speaker 1: is happening. That's are orders troops to be sent to

590
00:34:20,880 --> 00:34:22,960
Speaker 1: from the front to put down the rebellion in the

591
00:34:23,000 --> 00:34:27,120
Speaker 1: city Um, and the first groups of those when they

592
00:34:27,200 --> 00:34:30,479
Speaker 1: arrive in the outskirts, their commanders quickly realized that Um

593
00:34:30,600 --> 00:34:32,239
Speaker 1: that if they said troops into the city, those troops

594
00:34:32,239 --> 00:34:33,759
Speaker 1: are also going to rebel and then they're gonna have

595
00:34:33,800 --> 00:34:36,240
Speaker 1: a real problem on their hands, so they start to withdraw.

596
00:34:37,400 --> 00:34:40,040
Speaker 1: The one person who could never withdraw from his most

597
00:34:40,080 --> 00:34:44,160
Speaker 1: disastrous decisions, from his most self destructive beliefs, was the

598
00:34:44,239 --> 00:34:48,120
Speaker 1: Czar himself. He had denied the truth for so many years,

599
00:34:48,160 --> 00:34:51,120
Speaker 1: saying that the Russian people could never turn against him,

600
00:34:51,160 --> 00:34:54,520
Speaker 1: and he surrounded himself with advisors who agreed. The only

601
00:34:54,560 --> 00:34:57,799
Speaker 1: friends the Romanovs were willing to entertain were fierce champions

602
00:34:57,840 --> 00:35:02,200
Speaker 1: of the monarchy. It was shortsighted he was blind, But

603
00:35:02,280 --> 00:35:04,719
Speaker 1: over the course of their reign, Nicholas and Alexandra had

604
00:35:04,719 --> 00:35:08,000
Speaker 1: built themselves an echo chamber, and for years the loudest

605
00:35:08,080 --> 00:35:10,640
Speaker 1: voice in that room telling them exactly what they wanted

606
00:35:10,680 --> 00:35:14,279
Speaker 1: to hear had been Grigory Rasputin, but of course it

607
00:35:14,400 --> 00:35:17,200
Speaker 1: was others before him, and after his death it was

608
00:35:17,239 --> 00:35:19,960
Speaker 1: men like the Minister of the Interior who floated in

609
00:35:20,040 --> 00:35:23,680
Speaker 1: on his wake. All of that had insulated the Romanovs

610
00:35:23,719 --> 00:35:27,800
Speaker 1: from really understanding what was happening in Russia until, of course,

611
00:35:27,920 --> 00:35:31,680
Speaker 1: it was too late and the revolution had begun. When

612
00:35:31,760 --> 00:35:35,120
Speaker 1: Nicholas finally faced that reality, it washed over him like

613
00:35:35,160 --> 00:35:39,920
Speaker 1: a tidal wave. Here's more from Helen Rappaport. Nicholas I

614
00:35:40,080 --> 00:35:46,359
Speaker 1: feel was duped into abdicating. There is hundreds of miles

615
00:35:46,440 --> 00:35:49,759
Speaker 1: away from home, when two members of the government, the Duma,

616
00:35:50,239 --> 00:35:54,520
Speaker 1: came out by train and persuaded him that that revolution

617
00:35:54,560 --> 00:35:58,120
Speaker 1: of broken Impactrickrad. That was disarray in the army. People,

618
00:35:58,440 --> 00:36:02,280
Speaker 1: the conscript arm lots of them were deserting at the front.

619
00:36:02,360 --> 00:36:05,560
Speaker 1: Morale was low, and it was you know, there was

620
00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:09,680
Speaker 1: so much disaffection with the czar and the old imperial

621
00:36:09,719 --> 00:36:13,120
Speaker 1: regime that the best thing he could do save Russia

622
00:36:13,440 --> 00:36:16,239
Speaker 1: and the country and the war effort was to give

623
00:36:16,360 --> 00:36:19,440
Speaker 1: up the job. He allowed himself to be persuaded. I

624
00:36:19,480 --> 00:36:23,839
Speaker 1: think that his application would save Russia and it would

625
00:36:23,880 --> 00:36:27,279
Speaker 1: also save the war effort, because obviously, with the revolution,

626
00:36:27,400 --> 00:36:30,200
Speaker 1: everyone was worried that Russia was now going to pull

627
00:36:30,239 --> 00:36:33,000
Speaker 1: out of the war effort as well on the Eastern Front.

628
00:36:33,160 --> 00:36:38,560
Speaker 1: So Nicholas abdicated, thinking that he by his him removing

629
00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:43,680
Speaker 1: himself as the hated cs are, the situation could be saved.

630
00:36:44,280 --> 00:36:47,200
Speaker 1: And of course, in this time, as in so many others,

631
00:36:47,640 --> 00:36:50,319
Speaker 1: Romanovs look for strength not to the powers of the

632
00:36:50,320 --> 00:36:54,480
Speaker 1: earthly realm, but to the heavens. It was divine guidance

633
00:36:54,520 --> 00:36:57,200
Speaker 1: they had always saught, and it was to God's messengers

634
00:36:57,239 --> 00:36:59,840
Speaker 1: on earth that they bent their ear. After all, the

635
00:37:00,120 --> 00:37:02,360
Speaker 1: was no one on earth above them, so it was

636
00:37:02,440 --> 00:37:04,600
Speaker 1: only to the powers of God's Church that they were

637
00:37:04,640 --> 00:37:08,480
Speaker 1: truly willing to bend. In revolutionary Russia, though, even the

638
00:37:08,600 --> 00:37:11,399
Speaker 1: church was changing, and soon enough it was the church

639
00:37:11,440 --> 00:37:13,520
Speaker 1: itself that was beginning to pave the way for the

640
00:37:13,600 --> 00:37:16,840
Speaker 1: Russian people to go in a new direction. As historian

641
00:37:16,960 --> 00:37:21,319
Speaker 1: Heather Coleman describes, the church did not stand up for

642
00:37:21,520 --> 00:37:28,800
Speaker 1: the CSAR. The official church said goodbye when that's ore, abdicated,

643
00:37:29,520 --> 00:37:33,840
Speaker 1: and the next morning got to got to work reforming

644
00:37:33,880 --> 00:37:36,960
Speaker 1: itself and got to work getting on with the things

645
00:37:37,040 --> 00:37:40,040
Speaker 1: that it wanted to do. And the main thing that

646
00:37:40,080 --> 00:37:43,440
Speaker 1: the church wanted to do was to call a great

647
00:37:43,600 --> 00:37:48,400
Speaker 1: Church Council to rethink the relationship between the Church and

648
00:37:48,480 --> 00:37:54,359
Speaker 1: the state. And the relationships within the church between the

649
00:37:53,280 --> 00:37:58,560
Speaker 1: the bishops and the parish clergy and the laity, and

650
00:37:58,719 --> 00:38:05,120
Speaker 1: to re organize the church for the modern world and

651
00:38:05,760 --> 00:38:10,160
Speaker 1: so um. Almost immediately after the collapse of the of

652
00:38:10,239 --> 00:38:14,120
Speaker 1: the Empire, the the the the Church Council was called

653
00:38:15,120 --> 00:38:19,600
Speaker 1: and it met in Moscow, UM starting in August of

654
00:38:19,680 --> 00:38:22,880
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen, and was was going right through during the

655
00:38:22,920 --> 00:38:29,279
Speaker 1: revolution of October and into early nineteen eighteen. During the

656
00:38:29,320 --> 00:38:33,880
Speaker 1: revolutionary days in the spring of nineteen seventeen, local diocese

657
00:38:33,920 --> 00:38:38,800
Speaker 1: are choosing their representatives and there is a great revolution

658
00:38:39,160 --> 00:38:42,959
Speaker 1: that is going on in the church, and people are

659
00:38:43,480 --> 00:38:48,520
Speaker 1: transforming the church from below into a democratic organization. There

660
00:38:48,520 --> 00:38:52,640
Speaker 1: are there are dioceses that that ejected their bishops and

661
00:38:52,800 --> 00:38:58,680
Speaker 1: voted for bishops, which was not canonical, unheard of. But

662
00:38:59,040 --> 00:39:03,560
Speaker 1: we can see how how people are living out the

663
00:39:03,640 --> 00:39:09,040
Speaker 1: implications of that democratic revolution of February nineteen seventeen in

664
00:39:09,120 --> 00:39:12,600
Speaker 1: their church life. And these are people of all social

665
00:39:12,640 --> 00:39:16,359
Speaker 1: groups who are doing this because the church incorporates all

666
00:39:16,440 --> 00:39:20,279
Speaker 1: social groups. And so I really think that but the

667
00:39:20,360 --> 00:39:25,120
Speaker 1: way that the Church um is having its own revolution

668
00:39:25,239 --> 00:39:29,480
Speaker 1: that is part of this broader revolution of nineteen seventeen,

669
00:39:30,760 --> 00:39:34,920
Speaker 1: the last pillar supporting imperial rule had been pulled away.

670
00:39:35,400 --> 00:39:38,320
Speaker 1: Once the leaders of the Church had been introducing Nicholas

671
00:39:38,320 --> 00:39:42,239
Speaker 1: and Alexandra to mystical guides like Gregory Resputant, and as

672
00:39:42,280 --> 00:39:44,759
Speaker 1: they work to take on the modern world, the Church

673
00:39:44,800 --> 00:39:48,200
Speaker 1: in Russia remade itself into an institution that would endure

674
00:39:48,800 --> 00:39:56,680
Speaker 1: long after the doomed Romanovs. We're finally gone. They had

675
00:39:56,719 --> 00:39:59,560
Speaker 1: always done things their own way. For a while, after

676
00:39:59,680 --> 00:40:03,040
Speaker 1: Nicola stepped down, Alexander continued to say that the uprisings

677
00:40:03,040 --> 00:40:06,960
Speaker 1: around them were nothing serious. They were just hooligans screaming

678
00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:10,640
Speaker 1: for bread. Sometime soon the excitement would pass away and

679
00:40:10,719 --> 00:40:14,360
Speaker 1: Russia would quiet down again. But oh how wrong she was.

680
00:40:15,000 --> 00:40:18,920
Speaker 1: Riots grew worse. A new government was created in October

681
00:40:18,960 --> 00:40:23,600
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventeen. That provisional government was overthrown by Vladimir

682
00:40:23,680 --> 00:40:27,399
Speaker 1: Lenin and the Bolsheviks. All of Russia was consumed by

683
00:40:27,440 --> 00:40:31,680
Speaker 1: civil war. Nicholas and Alexandra became what they had never

684
00:40:31,760 --> 00:40:36,360
Speaker 1: been before, citizens under a new civilian authority, and then

685
00:40:36,400 --> 00:40:40,399
Speaker 1: they became its prisoners. Let's turn to Helen Rappaport one

686
00:40:40,480 --> 00:40:43,640
Speaker 1: final time to tell us about the last days of

687
00:40:43,680 --> 00:40:49,360
Speaker 1: the Romanovs. Nicholas later realized, I think in captivity in

688
00:40:49,400 --> 00:40:52,160
Speaker 1: the last months of his life, that he had been

689
00:40:52,160 --> 00:40:56,160
Speaker 1: tricked into abdicating, that it had not achieved anything. The

690
00:40:56,200 --> 00:40:59,080
Speaker 1: Bolsheviks had taken over Russia pulled out of the war,

691
00:40:59,480 --> 00:41:03,480
Speaker 1: which any in March nine, and things were even worse

692
00:41:03,520 --> 00:41:07,440
Speaker 1: from Russia for Russia. He hadn't saved Russia by abdicating.

693
00:41:07,680 --> 00:41:12,960
Speaker 1: Alexandra just retreated more and more into religiosity. Every day

694
00:41:13,040 --> 00:41:15,200
Speaker 1: the girls, one or other girl would hurt when that

695
00:41:15,280 --> 00:41:18,680
Speaker 1: they had their brief exercise periods morning and afternoon. One

696
00:41:18,719 --> 00:41:21,520
Speaker 1: of the girls always had to stay with mother indoors.

697
00:41:21,560 --> 00:41:25,680
Speaker 1: She rarely went outside because she was so sickly or indisposed,

698
00:41:25,880 --> 00:41:28,320
Speaker 1: and read the Gospels to her or read the Bible

699
00:41:28,440 --> 00:41:32,480
Speaker 1: or some pious work. The last few letters she wrote

700
00:41:32,480 --> 00:41:37,000
Speaker 1: were very laden with religious references and in a very

701
00:41:37,040 --> 00:41:44,120
Speaker 1: profound sense I think of reconciliation, acceptance fatalism. Both she

702
00:41:44,200 --> 00:41:48,120
Speaker 1: and Nicholas were deeply, deeply fatalistic. And you get the

703
00:41:48,160 --> 00:41:51,719
Speaker 1: same thing with Nicholas's last few letters and then his

704
00:41:51,920 --> 00:41:56,800
Speaker 1: sense of utter despair. The last journal entry he wrote

705
00:41:56,920 --> 00:42:00,040
Speaker 1: was about I think it was the eleventh of July I,

706
00:42:00,840 --> 00:42:04,080
Speaker 1: about six days before they were murdered, where he just

707
00:42:04,280 --> 00:42:06,760
Speaker 1: you could sense him giving up. He said, we've had

708
00:42:07,000 --> 00:42:11,920
Speaker 1: absolutely known news from outside. The sense of despair because

709
00:42:11,960 --> 00:42:14,680
Speaker 1: they didn't know what was going on in Russia, how

710
00:42:14,719 --> 00:42:18,360
Speaker 1: their relatives were, what was happening in the rest of

711
00:42:18,400 --> 00:42:22,000
Speaker 1: the world. That the sense of abandonment I think was

712
00:42:22,040 --> 00:42:26,279
Speaker 1: pretty profound in Nicholas, and I think he was obviously

713
00:42:26,440 --> 00:42:32,239
Speaker 1: deeply religiously resigned to his fate. As well as for

714
00:42:32,400 --> 00:42:36,200
Speaker 1: resputants family, he left very little for them. Despite the

715
00:42:36,200 --> 00:42:38,440
Speaker 1: stories about how much wealth he must have hoarded by

716
00:42:38,480 --> 00:42:42,439
Speaker 1: playing parasite on the aristocracy, Grigory didn't have a pile

717
00:42:42,480 --> 00:42:44,880
Speaker 1: of gold to give to Maria. All the money and

718
00:42:44,960 --> 00:42:47,080
Speaker 1: gifts that had been showered on him were in turn

719
00:42:47,239 --> 00:42:50,600
Speaker 1: given away. He had a little property and some money

720
00:42:50,600 --> 00:42:52,800
Speaker 1: in the bank, but given the state of the Russian

721
00:42:52,800 --> 00:42:55,520
Speaker 1: economy at the time, it didn't add up too much

722
00:42:55,560 --> 00:42:59,200
Speaker 1: at all. At first, after Gregory had been killed, Maria

723
00:42:59,280 --> 00:43:02,040
Speaker 1: and her sister were held by the Russian police. When

724
00:43:02,040 --> 00:43:04,160
Speaker 1: they were finally released, they were able to go back

725
00:43:04,160 --> 00:43:08,400
Speaker 1: to Siberia in the spring of nineteen seventeen, but leaving

726
00:43:08,440 --> 00:43:10,799
Speaker 1: the capital didn't mean they were returning to the home

727
00:43:10,840 --> 00:43:14,560
Speaker 1: they had left. All of Russia was changing. In April

728
00:43:14,560 --> 00:43:16,560
Speaker 1: of that year, a group of soldiers came through and

729
00:43:16,600 --> 00:43:20,720
Speaker 1: they ransacked the resputant home. Whatever was valuable, they stuffed

730
00:43:20,719 --> 00:43:23,440
Speaker 1: it into sacks and carried it off. Even the clocks

731
00:43:23,480 --> 00:43:27,160
Speaker 1: were taken. Any pictures or images of Grigory were smashed,

732
00:43:27,280 --> 00:43:30,800
Speaker 1: torn and stomped into the dirt in front of Maria's eyes.

733
00:43:31,760 --> 00:43:35,160
Speaker 1: She begged them to stop, but they wouldn't listen. Eventually,

734
00:43:35,200 --> 00:43:37,600
Speaker 1: there was nothing left for Maria in her father's house.

735
00:43:38,120 --> 00:43:41,200
Speaker 1: She went looking for something new, something more stable than

736
00:43:41,239 --> 00:43:44,960
Speaker 1: her father Grigory's legacy, something that would provide her a future.

737
00:43:45,440 --> 00:43:47,560
Speaker 1: So she found her way into a marriage with a

738
00:43:47,600 --> 00:43:52,320
Speaker 1: local man, but it wasn't a happy one. The following spring,

739
00:43:52,520 --> 00:43:55,520
Speaker 1: the weather it was bad. River travel wasn't safe, and

740
00:43:55,600 --> 00:43:57,680
Speaker 1: the only way to travel from place to place was

741
00:43:57,760 --> 00:44:01,080
Speaker 1: over tracks through Siberia that also offered from the storms.

742
00:44:01,800 --> 00:44:04,880
Speaker 1: Despite the dark clouds, though, the Romanov family was on

743
00:44:04,920 --> 00:44:08,480
Speaker 1: the move. They were being taken from Tobolsk to Eketteringburg,

744
00:44:08,680 --> 00:44:12,040
Speaker 1: where their fate awaited them. They're in a locked room.

745
00:44:12,239 --> 00:44:15,120
Speaker 1: A team of gunmen would execute them one and all,

746
00:44:15,560 --> 00:44:17,800
Speaker 1: it was the death that none of them would escape,

747
00:44:18,320 --> 00:44:22,800
Speaker 1: whatever the stories would later say. To reach that doom, though, Nicholas,

748
00:44:22,920 --> 00:44:26,120
Speaker 1: Alexandra and their children had to travel rough roads, a

749
00:44:26,200 --> 00:44:29,319
Speaker 1: journey that brought them to the Siberian town of Pokrovsko.

750
00:44:29,800 --> 00:44:32,760
Speaker 1: As we've said before, it was the crossroads, the place

751
00:44:32,840 --> 00:44:36,040
Speaker 1: along the way for changing horses. As they came to halt,

752
00:44:36,160 --> 00:44:38,799
Speaker 1: the Romanov family looked up and realized that they were

753
00:44:38,800 --> 00:44:41,840
Speaker 1: facing the largest house in town. It was the house

754
00:44:41,880 --> 00:44:45,600
Speaker 1: that had been purchased for his family by Grigory Resputant.

755
00:44:46,440 --> 00:44:48,399
Speaker 1: It took a long time for their captors to make

756
00:44:48,440 --> 00:44:52,680
Speaker 1: the change, so Nicholas, Alexandra and their daughters stood by uneasily,

757
00:44:53,080 --> 00:44:55,840
Speaker 1: looking at the house of their murdered friend. One of

758
00:44:55,880 --> 00:44:58,560
Speaker 1: the Romanov daughters even made a sketch while they waited.

759
00:44:59,360 --> 00:45:02,000
Speaker 1: It took so long, in fact, that the Rasputant family

760
00:45:02,160 --> 00:45:06,560
Speaker 1: saw them outside Grigory's wife, Prescovia and his daughter Maria.

761
00:45:06,680 --> 00:45:09,200
Speaker 1: One was the woman whose husband had left her, the

762
00:45:09,280 --> 00:45:12,600
Speaker 1: other the daughter left destitute by his death. They stood

763
00:45:12,600 --> 00:45:15,240
Speaker 1: together in the house, but did not dare to approach

764
00:45:15,280 --> 00:45:18,200
Speaker 1: the doomed travelers. There was no sense in trying to

765
00:45:18,239 --> 00:45:22,400
Speaker 1: push past the line of armed guards. Maria Rasputin simply

766
00:45:22,440 --> 00:45:25,320
Speaker 1: said that they gathered at the window. The two families

767
00:45:25,320 --> 00:45:29,000
Speaker 1: faced each other across the distance, the Resputants on one side,

768
00:45:29,440 --> 00:45:33,640
Speaker 1: the Romanovs on the other. While Nicholas and Alexandra looked on,

769
00:45:33,800 --> 00:45:36,399
Speaker 1: the daughters of their families raised their hands and blue

770
00:45:36,440 --> 00:45:40,480
Speaker 1: kisses through the air. It was a brief moment of tenderness.

771
00:45:40,719 --> 00:45:43,680
Speaker 1: Although I have to believe kisses blown at gunpoint might

772
00:45:43,760 --> 00:45:47,200
Speaker 1: struggle to find their target. It was the final brief

773
00:45:47,280 --> 00:45:50,839
Speaker 1: moments of connection that Nicholas and Alexandra would have with

774
00:45:50,920 --> 00:45:54,080
Speaker 1: their friend, the only respite to be found on the

775
00:45:54,160 --> 00:46:02,360
Speaker 1: Romanov's final journey to the death of their dynasty. Hey folks,

776
00:46:02,400 --> 00:46:06,160
Speaker 1: Aaron here. Today's episode was the final chapter in our story.

777
00:46:06,480 --> 00:46:08,799
Speaker 1: If you've enjoyed the results of our team's hard work,

778
00:46:08,920 --> 00:46:11,960
Speaker 1: your reviews and ratings would be incredibly welcome over on

779
00:46:12,040 --> 00:46:14,879
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts. Your kind words go a long way toward

780
00:46:14,960 --> 00:46:18,000
Speaker 1: helping newcomers tap that subscribe button, and all of that

781
00:46:18,080 --> 00:46:20,400
Speaker 1: helps our show. It's been an honor to be your

782
00:46:20,400 --> 00:46:22,400
Speaker 1: guide over the past few weeks, and I look forward

783
00:46:22,440 --> 00:46:25,239
Speaker 1: to our next tour through the dark corners of history.

784
00:46:25,280 --> 00:46:27,480
Speaker 1: But we're not quite done with this season just yet.

785
00:46:28,000 --> 00:46:30,840
Speaker 1: Starting on January five, will be releasing all four of

786
00:46:30,880 --> 00:46:34,719
Speaker 1: our incredible history and interviews in full. These are powerful

787
00:46:34,760 --> 00:46:38,200
Speaker 1: conversations with leading scholars in the world of Resputant and

788
00:46:38,239 --> 00:46:40,960
Speaker 1: the Romanovs, and the insight and detail they bring to

789
00:46:40,960 --> 00:46:43,799
Speaker 1: the topic are perfect for those who want more. Just

790
00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:46,239
Speaker 1: stay subscribed to the show in your app and those

791
00:46:46,239 --> 00:46:49,680
Speaker 1: interview episodes will arrive automatically every week. In fact, if

792
00:46:49,719 --> 00:46:52,319
Speaker 1: you stick around through this brief sponsor break, I'll give

793
00:46:52,360 --> 00:46:59,600
Speaker 1: you a taste of what's to come. The theory goes

794
00:46:59,680 --> 00:47:03,960
Speaker 1: was at British agents killed Resputant as a way to

795
00:47:04,040 --> 00:47:07,760
Speaker 1: prevent some sort of peace treaty between Russia and Germany.

796
00:47:07,960 --> 00:47:10,120
Speaker 1: Now there's no truth in any of this, and there's

797
00:47:10,160 --> 00:47:14,000
Speaker 1: no reality that this ever happened, um, But there have

798
00:47:14,080 --> 00:47:17,640
Speaker 1: been been books written about it, there have been documentaries

799
00:47:17,880 --> 00:47:21,000
Speaker 1: made about it, and there's even been this theory put

800
00:47:21,120 --> 00:47:25,359
Speaker 1: forward that if you look at the the bullet hole

801
00:47:25,560 --> 00:47:32,640
Speaker 1: in resputants head, that the markings around the whole proved

802
00:47:32,719 --> 00:47:36,040
Speaker 1: that it was a bullet fired by a British gun,

803
00:47:36,160 --> 00:47:41,320
Speaker 1: by an endfield pistol, and that this means that whoever

804
00:47:41,680 --> 00:47:57,360
Speaker 1: fired the fatal shot was a British agent. Unobscured was

805
00:47:57,440 --> 00:48:00,840
Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Manky and produced by Matt Frederick,

806
00:48:00,920 --> 00:48:04,920
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, and Josh Thane in partnership with I Heart Radio,

807
00:48:05,280 --> 00:48:08,960
Speaker 1: with research by Sam Alberty, writing by Carl Nellis, and

808
00:48:09,080 --> 00:48:13,799
Speaker 1: original music by Chad Lawson. Learn more about our contributing historians,

809
00:48:13,920 --> 00:48:17,239
Speaker 1: source materials and links to our other shows over at

810
00:48:17,280 --> 00:48:21,800
Speaker 1: grimm and mild dot com, slash Unobscured, and as always,

811
00:48:22,440 --> 00:49:05,280
Speaker 1: thanks for listening all