WEBVTT - S4 – 2: Man of Contradictions 0:00:01.120 --> 0:00:04.320 Welcomed, unobscured a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky. 0:00:06.519 --> 0:00:09.760 The boy was gone. Death had come for the baby, 0:00:10.039 --> 0:00:14.760 sudden and remorseless. All the hopes and desires and celebrations 0:00:14.760 --> 0:00:18.480 of fatherhood and the family's future were smashed in one 0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:21.960 searing moment of pain that went on and on and on. 0:00:23.120 --> 0:00:26.200 It was the fear of every parent that something would 0:00:26.200 --> 0:00:29.520 happen to their beloved child, and this was his firstborn 0:00:29.640 --> 0:00:32.400 son that he had lost at just six months old. 0:00:33.640 --> 0:00:36.040 His faith taught him that suffering like this was a 0:00:36.120 --> 0:00:39.239 kind of mystery. It had guided him this far, but 0:00:39.360 --> 0:00:42.559 faced with so much loss, he could only ask, in 0:00:42.600 --> 0:00:46.000 a world governed by justice, how could his baby boy 0:00:46.200 --> 0:00:50.159 be taken from him this way? It was a terrible 0:00:50.240 --> 0:00:53.720 and costly question burning its way into his heart. The 0:00:53.800 --> 0:00:57.200 rhythms and responsibilities of his life, and the teachings and 0:00:57.240 --> 0:01:01.600 traditions of his youth, they offered no answers. Blind with 0:01:01.680 --> 0:01:04.679 pain and grief and loss, he set out from home. 0:01:05.120 --> 0:01:08.240 He left his devastated wife behind, and he took to 0:01:08.240 --> 0:01:13.520 the road. He went looking for answers. He traveled by foot. 0:01:14.040 --> 0:01:16.039 The questions would have plagued him for the weeks that 0:01:16.080 --> 0:01:19.120 it took to reach up into the ural mountains, that 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:23.039 stone spine that split the Russian Empire in two, and 0:01:23.120 --> 0:01:26.360 he followed roads and tracks that stretched higher and higher 0:01:26.400 --> 0:01:30.080 for more than three hundred miles. But he wasn't lost. 0:01:30.440 --> 0:01:32.959 He knew where he was going. He would bring his 0:01:33.040 --> 0:01:36.000 burning questions to one of the holiest places in Russia. 0:01:36.560 --> 0:01:39.759 He would bring them to the Monastery of St. Nicholas. 0:01:41.040 --> 0:01:43.840 It wasn't the only sacred place in its small town. 0:01:44.120 --> 0:01:46.840 In fact, it was surrounded by churches, but it was 0:01:46.880 --> 0:01:50.160 by far the most renowned. It had stood for centuries, 0:01:50.280 --> 0:01:53.640 and it's holy men were legendary. Miracles had been worked 0:01:53.680 --> 0:01:56.640 there in the mountainous upper air. It was a place 0:01:56.680 --> 0:02:01.800 where God reached down and revealed himself. And for two generations, 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:05.320 a great cathedral reached up from the rocks, the Cathedral 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:09.120 of Transfiguration, where the massive bell spire and the bones 0:02:09.160 --> 0:02:12.639 of saints welcomed pilgrims from the four corners of the Empire. 0:02:14.280 --> 0:02:18.280 But it wasn't the cathedral that called to the grieving Father. No, 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:21.560 in the face of a lost son, that grand display 0:02:21.560 --> 0:02:24.080 of power was as hollow as the home he had 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:27.560 left behind. His eyes turned away from the church spire, 0:02:27.680 --> 0:02:30.960 to the outskirts of the monastery grounds, to the border 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:33.440 of the forest. It wasn't to the monks and the 0:02:33.480 --> 0:02:36.560 priests that the question would go. No, it was to 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:40.400 the swineherd. It was in a small hut at the 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:43.720 tree line that the hermit Macarey lived, and that is 0:02:43.760 --> 0:02:48.440 where the questions drove him to the man renowned for holiness, simplicity, 0:02:48.639 --> 0:02:53.560 and spiritual wisdom. Seekers would later remember that Maccari's greatest 0:02:53.600 --> 0:02:56.080 delight seemed to be the chickens who shared his hut, 0:02:56.560 --> 0:02:59.280 and the words the hermit whispered to his small flock 0:02:59.320 --> 0:03:02.240 would have been amicael if they weren't filled with so 0:03:02.360 --> 0:03:06.000 much power. So what was it that he said? Well, 0:03:06.000 --> 0:03:09.200 we know at least one thing Maccari would tell his 0:03:09.320 --> 0:03:13.640 visitors about his own suffering, the sorrows and misfortunes of 0:03:13.680 --> 0:03:17.119 my life, as he called them. If there was one 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:19.880 thing that a grieving father could understand, it was sorrow 0:03:19.919 --> 0:03:23.560 and misfortune. So maybe it's no surprise that an encounter 0:03:23.680 --> 0:03:26.600 like this could change a man's life when he was 0:03:26.680 --> 0:03:30.880 at his lowest point. Witnessing Macaary's devotion to God could 0:03:30.960 --> 0:03:33.880 become the model for a new way of being. His 0:03:33.919 --> 0:03:37.000 old life and its place in Russia could be left 0:03:37.040 --> 0:03:41.040 behind for a new way, the way of the pilgrim. 0:03:41.080 --> 0:03:43.920 And in this encounter with Maccary he felt the power 0:03:43.960 --> 0:03:47.400 of suffering to bring people together. Maybe that's what laid 0:03:47.440 --> 0:03:50.280 the cornerstone of the relationships that would later make this 0:03:50.400 --> 0:03:54.800 grieving father the most infamous religious wanderer in Russia and 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:58.440 the world, because having lost his son, he suffered what 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:01.800 the Czar and Czarina most feared, the death of the 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:06.280 Imperial air. Because yes, the man who climbed mountains to 0:04:06.320 --> 0:04:09.480 find peace in the company of a religious hermit was 0:04:09.600 --> 0:04:12.880 named Gregory. He was a broken man, and over time 0:04:12.920 --> 0:04:16.320 he would be remade in Macaari's image. That encounter in 0:04:16.360 --> 0:04:19.360 the mountain monastery after the death of his son was 0:04:19.480 --> 0:04:23.560 only the first time that Grigory would seek Macaari's wisdom. 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:27.240 Through wandering and revelation. His voice would echo down the 0:04:27.279 --> 0:04:30.720 mountains and into the ear of a royal couple desperate 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:34.640 to keep their own fragile son alive. All of that, though, 0:04:35.000 --> 0:04:37.800 would come in time, but to get there there would 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:42.000 be many more dark days spent on winding roads on 0:04:42.040 --> 0:05:05.839 his way to becoming resputant. This is unobscured. I'm Aaron Manky. 0:05:12.160 --> 0:05:15.160 It was a place for changing horses, at least if 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:17.839 you were in a coach rattling along the Toura River 0:05:18.000 --> 0:05:21.640 between two Mean and Tobolsk. Anyone going that way, whether 0:05:21.680 --> 0:05:25.680 in search of prosperity or to some darker destination, was 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:29.160 likely to make a stop, stretching their weary legs, and 0:05:29.240 --> 0:05:31.880 make sure their beasts of burden could carry them the 0:05:31.920 --> 0:05:35.560 rest of the way. A dead horse goes nowhere, after all. 0:05:36.440 --> 0:05:39.599 So Pakrovska was the place of which journeys through Old 0:05:39.680 --> 0:05:42.159 Russia were made. But from a stop on the road, 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:46.120 procro Scott grew into a town, A small town anyway. 0:05:46.480 --> 0:05:50.960 It was a community of hunters, fishermen and farmers, raising livestock, 0:05:51.120 --> 0:05:55.000 raising families, and scratching out a life from thy Siberian earth. 0:05:55.560 --> 0:05:57.839 All the better if you had something to offer the 0:05:57.839 --> 0:06:02.080 baggage trains traveling to and from Siberia's oldest city, and 0:06:02.200 --> 0:06:05.400 many of Prokoska's families still found their living in the 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:11.000 shipping trades. Men like Yafim and his son Grigory. They 0:06:11.000 --> 0:06:13.680 had done fairly well in their work too. On his 0:06:13.800 --> 0:06:17.080 land were the dozen cows and eighteen horses that he 0:06:17.120 --> 0:06:20.240 had pulled together over the years. He started as a 0:06:20.320 --> 0:06:23.960 laborer among laborers, cutting hay and loading the boats that 0:06:24.040 --> 0:06:26.599 passed by on the river. But when he became a 0:06:26.640 --> 0:06:29.800 coachman himself, hired by the state to make the trips 0:06:29.880 --> 0:06:34.960 between two men and Tobolsk, things turned around. By peasants standards, 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:39.680 at least life was good. Things also turned around at home, 0:06:40.200 --> 0:06:42.960 you see. Similarly, things started off with a kind of 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:46.000 tragedy that was all too common. None of his first 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:48.680 four children lived more than a few months. We can 0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:51.520 only imagine the pain that their mother, Anna felt to 0:06:51.640 --> 0:06:56.280 bury so many babies. But in January of eighteen sixty nine, 0:06:56.640 --> 0:06:59.599 Yefim and Anna had a son who survived. It was 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:02.960 the stay of Saint Gregory of Nissa, so in honor 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:06.080 of that ancient Christian mystic, they named their son Gregory. 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:09.280 In the twists and turns of a difficult life, he 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:13.040 was a divine blessing, the kind of miraculous gift that 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:16.560 can't be explained and can only be received with gratitude. 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:20.559 Why does one child live when four others have died? 0:07:21.920 --> 0:07:24.880 If Yafim and Anna couldn't answer that question, they could 0:07:24.920 --> 0:07:27.640 at least give thanks their son was growing up and 0:07:27.800 --> 0:07:31.280 growing strong. Sure he had the typical struggles of a 0:07:31.320 --> 0:07:34.960 peasant boy. That one time he turned his teenage attitude 0:07:34.960 --> 0:07:38.400 against the local magistrates. It got Grigory thrown in jail. 0:07:38.840 --> 0:07:41.360 That must have put honest heart and advice. But the 0:07:41.400 --> 0:07:44.520 boy was freed after just two days. After all, he 0:07:44.600 --> 0:07:47.360 was just fifteen. But it was also an early sign 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:50.360 that Gregory would not be cowed by people with power. 0:07:51.320 --> 0:07:55.119 Other omens of his later life were likewise appearing around town. 0:07:55.200 --> 0:07:57.600 He got a bit of a reputation as a bit 0:07:57.640 --> 0:08:01.320 of a troublemaker, a heavy drinker, someone for young women 0:08:01.360 --> 0:08:04.640 to steer clear of and for parents to whisper warnings about. 0:08:05.240 --> 0:08:08.480 But every town had one or two, right, It was 0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:11.000 hardly a story to write down in the history books. 0:08:11.960 --> 0:08:14.400 After all, he was just a young laut who worked 0:08:14.400 --> 0:08:17.400 with his father in the carriageman's trade. No doubt, he 0:08:17.400 --> 0:08:21.000 helped his father break horses, handled the tech, and learned 0:08:21.040 --> 0:08:24.000 the power of a bit and bridle. The means of 0:08:24.040 --> 0:08:27.320 managing horses wasn't the only set of rules he learned 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:30.760 in his teenage years, he was already making pilgrimages to 0:08:30.840 --> 0:08:34.600 the monasteries near his hometown, honoring the faith of his family, 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:39.400 despite shrugging off its commands to temper his urges and impulses. 0:08:40.760 --> 0:08:43.040 If his mother hoped that a strong faith might help 0:08:43.040 --> 0:08:46.480 Grigory to grow out of his youthful indulgences, all the better. 0:08:46.600 --> 0:08:49.559 In eighteen eighties six, when he came home from celebrating 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:52.760 a Holy Day feast and brought his family joyful news 0:08:53.240 --> 0:08:56.240 he had met a peasant girl named Prescovia, and something 0:08:56.280 --> 0:09:00.000 had drawn the two together. By February of eighteen eighties said, 0:09:00.000 --> 0:09:03.840 even Gregory and Prescovia were married, living in his hometown, 0:09:04.120 --> 0:09:07.560 in his father's house. Actually, Gregory now had a path 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:11.040 laid out before him, a life of faith, family work, 0:09:11.240 --> 0:09:15.040 and maybe something less palatable around the edges, the life 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:19.000 of a Siberian peasant laborer. If he was lucky, his 0:09:19.040 --> 0:09:22.760 life would be as fortunate as his father's. Eighteen horses 0:09:22.840 --> 0:09:26.800 was nothing to sneer at. But Gregory's misfortunes also followed 0:09:26.840 --> 0:09:30.720 his father's. His little son died of scarlet fever. If 0:09:30.800 --> 0:09:33.480 Yaphim and Anna had somehow made their peace with the 0:09:33.520 --> 0:09:36.840 grief of losing children. It seems the pain sent Gregory 0:09:36.880 --> 0:09:40.960 out the door and on his search for answers. That 0:09:41.120 --> 0:09:43.880 journey was the first step on his new path, but 0:09:43.960 --> 0:09:45.760 it was far from the end of his old life. 0:09:46.160 --> 0:09:48.400 He would later say that for a while his life 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:52.360 continued on as before, and by all accounts it's true. 0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:56.080 At the monastery in the mountains he was comforted by Maccarie, 0:09:56.520 --> 0:09:59.720 but he went back to his family, his hometown, and 0:09:59.840 --> 0:10:03.760 his life there. He went back to work too, sometimes 0:10:03.840 --> 0:10:07.959 as a coachman, sometimes fishing the rivers, sometimes farming. It 0:10:08.120 --> 0:10:11.680 was a peasant life, but a pleasant one too. Gregory 0:10:11.840 --> 0:10:15.840 and Praskovia even had more children together. As time passed. 0:10:15.920 --> 0:10:19.239 It seemed like maybe Grigory's renewed faith from his monastery 0:10:19.280 --> 0:10:22.600 pilgrimage had prepared him to endure the life he was 0:10:22.640 --> 0:10:27.040 born into. It seemed like maybe Grigory would follow in 0:10:27.080 --> 0:10:31.120 his father's footsteps. But after more than a decade of 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:35.680 this life, something changed. He had an awakening. The story 0:10:35.800 --> 0:10:40.120 is unclear, and it's wrapped in contradictory legends, as anything 0:10:40.240 --> 0:10:43.480 is about this man. Some say that he took another 0:10:43.520 --> 0:10:47.760 religious pilgrimage accompanying a young priest, and the man convinced 0:10:47.760 --> 0:10:51.000 Gregory to take up the life of a holy pilgrim. 0:10:51.040 --> 0:10:53.640 Some say that Resputant went on the run from the 0:10:53.720 --> 0:10:57.839 law for stealing horses. His daughter Maria would later put 0:10:57.880 --> 0:11:01.080 it this way. One day, when he was plowing a field, 0:11:01.320 --> 0:11:03.719 he came to the end of a row, looking up. 0:11:03.760 --> 0:11:06.880 A stunning light blinded him as the figure of the 0:11:06.960 --> 0:11:09.640 Virgin Mary passed in front of the sun and looked 0:11:09.640 --> 0:11:12.600 down on the man. He blinked to try to clear 0:11:12.679 --> 0:11:15.679 his head, but she only smiled and raised her hand 0:11:16.160 --> 0:11:19.760 gesturing to the horizons. She told Grigory what he needed 0:11:19.800 --> 0:11:23.680 to do, leave his little Siberian town and put his 0:11:23.760 --> 0:11:28.120 feet on a new path. Resputing himself in his only 0:11:28.160 --> 0:11:31.760 published book, would say that he was simply restless, tired 0:11:31.880 --> 0:11:35.959 of peasant life, and feeling a growing thirst for spiritual knowledge. 0:11:36.360 --> 0:11:40.439 Whatever the motivation, the change was sudden and real. He 0:11:40.640 --> 0:11:44.959 stopped drinking, stopped smoking, and stopped eating meat. In every 0:11:45.000 --> 0:11:47.720 aspect of his life, he trying to follow the path 0:11:47.760 --> 0:11:51.320 of men like Macary. Even more important for his family. 0:11:52.120 --> 0:11:55.559 He left home with only the clothes on his back 0:11:55.679 --> 0:11:59.280 and the shoes on his feet. Grigory Resputant set out 0:11:59.320 --> 0:12:02.440 to cross the Russian Empire, from chapel to chapel and 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:05.439 town to town, to plumb the depths of the great 0:12:05.520 --> 0:12:11.520 spiritual mysteries. He started to wander, and then he started 0:12:11.559 --> 0:12:19.480 to teach. He learned it on the road. A lot 0:12:19.520 --> 0:12:24.760 of what he saw reminded him of home. Peasants everywhere, harvesting, building, plowing, 0:12:24.920 --> 0:12:29.360 and planting. He crossed Siberia on foot, and it was grueling. 0:12:29.760 --> 0:12:32.880 He would go days without food, weeks or months without 0:12:32.880 --> 0:12:36.200 a change of clothes. He was sometimes robbed of what 0:12:36.280 --> 0:12:38.640 little he had. He would later say that he had 0:12:38.679 --> 0:12:42.439 even been hunted by wolves. But to Gregory, these were 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:46.200 not the worst enemies he faced. No like other saints 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:49.440 and mystics before him, Gregory says that he was hunted 0:12:49.480 --> 0:12:53.480 by spiritual enemies. The devil attacked him over and over, 0:12:53.880 --> 0:12:57.480 and demons opposed him at every step. They tried, he 0:12:57.480 --> 0:13:00.720 would say, to pull him away from God, to make 0:13:00.800 --> 0:13:03.920 him give up, to make him give in to temptations. 0:13:05.200 --> 0:13:08.120 But Gregory had the weapons to battle them too. He 0:13:08.200 --> 0:13:11.040 beat himself to fight off the temptations of the flesh, 0:13:11.280 --> 0:13:14.240 and wrapped his legs in chains to slow his walk 0:13:14.640 --> 0:13:18.920 a reminder and a punishment for his sins. In Gregory's mind, 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:23.520 the road became a battlefield. But it's not like Gregory 0:13:23.520 --> 0:13:26.680 only met enemies through his wandering. In fact, there were 0:13:26.720 --> 0:13:29.360 plenty of people who would have welcomed him along the way. 0:13:29.760 --> 0:13:32.760 He found friends and allies in his quest for revelation. 0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:35.559 There were people who would open their doors to him 0:13:35.640 --> 0:13:38.880 and asked him to share what he had learned. After all, 0:13:38.920 --> 0:13:41.720 he was just one of many Russian wanderers that God 0:13:41.720 --> 0:13:45.679 had sent out into the world. Here's historian Helen Coleman 0:13:45.840 --> 0:13:48.679 to tell us more. There was a great tradition in 0:13:49.120 --> 0:13:55.760 Russian life of welcoming pilgrims, of welcoming holy people who 0:13:56.000 --> 0:14:00.760 traveled to shrines, who traveled from village to villa, living 0:14:00.840 --> 0:14:04.800 on donations. These were people who were religious searchers, who 0:14:04.840 --> 0:14:07.920 were trying to become a person that God had made 0:14:07.920 --> 0:14:10.320 them to be, and so there was great respect for 0:14:10.360 --> 0:14:15.360 that sort of religious traveler. It was a life of 0:14:15.400 --> 0:14:19.240 work and wandering, and a life of little rest. Later, 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:23.440 he would write, everything was interesting to me, good and bad, 0:14:24.200 --> 0:14:27.400 and he had so much to learn. He wasn't seeking 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:30.720 knowledge from books and from stages. No, that was the 0:14:30.760 --> 0:14:33.200 worst way to answer the questions that he was trying 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:37.560 to answer. The learned, Grigory wrote, do not go to God. 0:14:37.960 --> 0:14:42.800 They study everything by books, and that knowledge confuses them. 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:44.920 It was just one of the many reasons that he 0:14:44.960 --> 0:14:48.000 didn't want to become a priest. After all, he said, 0:14:48.040 --> 0:14:51.280 he met many who failed to live up to their responsibilities. 0:14:51.720 --> 0:14:54.480 He had thought of becoming a monk, but the rigid orders, 0:14:54.760 --> 0:14:58.600 days of studying theology, and cycles of trying and failing 0:14:58.640 --> 0:15:02.120 to hold to monastic discipline were the opposite of what 0:15:02.160 --> 0:15:05.880 he wanted. On the road, Gregory was hunting more than 0:15:05.880 --> 0:15:10.680 the abstractions of theologians and the rationalizations of corrupt clergy. 0:15:10.840 --> 0:15:14.720 Like other religious teachers, seekers, and believers of his day, 0:15:14.880 --> 0:15:19.520 he rejected those things. Now he was hunting for spiritual revelation. 0:15:19.960 --> 0:15:23.200 He was looking for something earthier, the crossroads where the 0:15:23.200 --> 0:15:27.400 work of God met people in their ordinary life. And 0:15:27.560 --> 0:15:30.520 in that quest he had lots of examples to ponder. 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:36.960 Here's Dr Coleman once again. Ordinary people, peasants, s lower 0:15:37.000 --> 0:15:41.840 class people in the cities often did things differently from 0:15:41.960 --> 0:15:46.320 how the priests would have liked them to do. Things 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:51.560 They had local sites of pilgrimage that were not necessarily 0:15:51.640 --> 0:15:57.600 approved by the powers that be. Local communities would often have, 0:15:58.160 --> 0:16:03.000 for example, icons that they regarded as miraculous that had 0:16:03.040 --> 0:16:08.440 not been officially approved. Official approval was never Gregory's goal 0:16:08.760 --> 0:16:10.600 from the time he had gone to the monastery to 0:16:10.640 --> 0:16:13.960 seek wisdom from Macquarie rather than the monks. It's clear 0:16:14.040 --> 0:16:16.480 that he was more interested in the faith of peasants 0:16:16.520 --> 0:16:20.640 than those in power, and Gregory's journey to find answers 0:16:20.680 --> 0:16:23.480 outside the walls of the church started in a place 0:16:23.520 --> 0:16:26.280 that was more promising than most. After all, he was 0:16:26.400 --> 0:16:29.840 in Siberia and in Restputant's day. That meant that there 0:16:29.920 --> 0:16:32.800 was a certain independence to the people whom he met. 0:16:33.960 --> 0:16:38.960 Back in the seventeenth century, the official Orthodox Church began 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:43.160 to to modernize and it began to reform and try 0:16:43.200 --> 0:16:48.800 to standardize religious practice. And this was very upsetting to 0:16:49.200 --> 0:16:53.160 many Orthodox believers because as I as I just mentioned 0:16:53.680 --> 0:16:59.480 right orthodox he means right practice and the physical practice, 0:16:59.600 --> 0:17:04.040 the way that one worships is considered to be critical 0:17:04.280 --> 0:17:08.479 to reaching salvation. And so in the late seventeenth century 0:17:08.520 --> 0:17:12.919 you have large numbers of people who left the church 0:17:13.200 --> 0:17:16.960 and became known dubbed as the old Believers. It was 0:17:17.000 --> 0:17:19.280 illegal to be an old Believer, and so many of 0:17:19.320 --> 0:17:22.840 them fled to Siberia and to the farther reaches of 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:27.119 the Empire. And through all his encounters, the trials with 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:31.840 enemies and the comfort of friends, visiting shrines, debating with monks, 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:36.520 and rubbing shoulders with old believers, Grigory Rasputant started to 0:17:36.560 --> 0:17:40.840 harness his idea of what it meant to be human. Eventually, 0:17:40.960 --> 0:17:44.440 his steps did return home. His daughter remembered one day 0:17:44.440 --> 0:17:47.640 when a bearded man who seemed like a traveling peddler 0:17:48.000 --> 0:17:51.719 slowly made his way to their door. She didn't recognize 0:17:51.720 --> 0:17:54.800 her father until he spoke in his familiar voice. He 0:17:54.840 --> 0:17:57.720 had been gone from his home and family for two years. 0:17:58.960 --> 0:18:02.120 They found him a aged man. His daughter Maria would 0:18:02.200 --> 0:18:05.159 later write that he had greatly aged. He took on 0:18:05.320 --> 0:18:09.200 suffering and fasted, sometimes making his family share in long 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:12.760 hours of prayer, kneeling on the ground, and even beating 0:18:12.880 --> 0:18:16.360 his head against the earth. The stories in his hometown 0:18:16.400 --> 0:18:19.320 began to change the boy who had been a drunken creep. 0:18:19.680 --> 0:18:22.720 He had taken on something new. He had grown. He 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:26.840 was different now, and alongside the deep suspicions against him, 0:18:26.880 --> 0:18:30.960 a sort of curiosity began to rise up. As his 0:18:31.040 --> 0:18:35.159 daughter would say, grigory began to inspire, not just suspicion, 0:18:35.280 --> 0:18:38.920 but wonder. The town's scoundrel had marched away in the dust, 0:18:39.280 --> 0:18:41.240 and they were starting to whisper that he had come 0:18:41.240 --> 0:18:45.439 back a holy man. By the first years after nineteen hundred, 0:18:45.760 --> 0:18:50.200 Rasputin had something new in his Siberian town. He had 0:18:50.960 --> 0:19:00.439 a following. It was a place of contradictions. Siberia was 0:19:00.520 --> 0:19:03.280 a part of the Russian Empire. Yes, in fact, it 0:19:03.320 --> 0:19:06.200 was in many ways the place where the Empire drew 0:19:06.240 --> 0:19:08.800 its power. On the map, it was marked out as 0:19:08.840 --> 0:19:13.159 a treasure trove of precious resources, especially of animal pelts, 0:19:13.320 --> 0:19:17.639 and most of all the Sable Expedition after expedition was 0:19:17.680 --> 0:19:20.680 sent across the mountains into the vast expanse of land 0:19:20.720 --> 0:19:23.760 in search of that wealth, and the scale at which 0:19:23.800 --> 0:19:27.600 that wealth flooded back was enormous. The fox, Sable, and 0:19:27.720 --> 0:19:29.960 Martin firs that came back to the center of the 0:19:30.000 --> 0:19:33.399 Empire amounted to a full scale fur rush for a 0:19:33.480 --> 0:19:36.560 nation with no natural gold or silver to draw up 0:19:36.640 --> 0:19:39.639 from the earth itself. It was the lethal harvest of 0:19:39.680 --> 0:19:43.960 this living wealth that built the imperial power. All the same, 0:19:44.280 --> 0:19:47.080 the vast expanse of land separated from the capital by 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:50.360 the Ural mountains was far from empty. When a Costic 0:19:50.440 --> 0:19:53.359 mercenary marched in with the soldiers under his command at 0:19:53.359 --> 0:19:56.840 the end of the fifteen hundreds, he found a Mongol kingdom, 0:19:56.880 --> 0:20:00.240 and he smashed it with musket fire. The clash came 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:03.639 known as the Conquest of Siberia, despite the fact that 0:20:03.720 --> 0:20:06.880 exploring the rest of the massive territory, let alone crushing 0:20:06.880 --> 0:20:11.480 its people, would be the brutal work of centuries. Year 0:20:11.520 --> 0:20:14.240 by year, more towns and villages to the east had 0:20:14.280 --> 0:20:17.280 been gripped by the Empire and forced to pay tributes 0:20:17.359 --> 0:20:20.520 in furs and pelts to Moscow. At least that was 0:20:20.600 --> 0:20:24.080 the idea, but even as the Russian Empire grew in power, 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:27.199 it still fell short of truly controlling the lands on 0:20:27.200 --> 0:20:31.119 the other side of the mountains. Messages, military marches, and 0:20:31.200 --> 0:20:34.439 the discipline of sharp edged steel all took years to 0:20:34.560 --> 0:20:38.479 transmit from the empire central cities to the farthest reaches 0:20:38.520 --> 0:20:41.600 of Siberia, but that made it attractive to a whole 0:20:41.680 --> 0:20:46.760 different sort of people. Mercenaries traders and ruthless explorers set 0:20:46.800 --> 0:20:50.000 their sights on Siberia. They saw it as an opportunity 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:53.080 to enrich themselves out from under the eye of the czars, 0:20:53.600 --> 0:20:58.640 and over time it gave them a reputation. Crime was rampant, 0:20:59.040 --> 0:21:01.720 but we're not talking about petty theft. We're talking about 0:21:01.840 --> 0:21:06.879 mercenaries and traders who rigged the game, resorting to robbery, murder, 0:21:06.920 --> 0:21:11.359 bribery and extortion. Crime lords dealing in fur, ivory and 0:21:11.520 --> 0:21:16.000 human lives demanded gifts for themselves and extracted harsh levies 0:21:16.040 --> 0:21:18.960 from the people under their power. For example, if you 0:21:19.000 --> 0:21:21.640 were a native man, you were expected to hand over 0:21:21.720 --> 0:21:25.359 somewhere between one and ten prime sable pelts each year, 0:21:25.760 --> 0:21:29.240 and that's before any extra gifts were demanded at gunpoint 0:21:29.359 --> 0:21:31.880 by the violent man who got himself appointed as your 0:21:31.960 --> 0:21:35.240 local official. Not that Moscow didn't see some part of 0:21:35.240 --> 0:21:38.040 the problem. On the record, agents of the Czar and 0:21:38.200 --> 0:21:41.440 territorial governors were banned from scooping up the land's wealth 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:44.480 for their own gain or from torturing the local people 0:21:44.520 --> 0:21:47.080 to force more fur from the land. But as long 0:21:47.119 --> 0:21:49.520 as the steady stream of sable was flowing back over 0:21:49.560 --> 0:21:53.240 the mountains. Who was going to stop them? It was 0:21:53.280 --> 0:21:57.760 a distance and a rocky divide that made Siberia a frontier, 0:21:58.200 --> 0:22:01.840 and one historian notes the difference between imperial rule before 0:22:01.880 --> 0:22:05.639 and after the Tsars. The Mongols, he writes, understood that 0:22:05.800 --> 0:22:09.880 ruined people could not pay tribute. Under the Czar's Russian 0:22:09.920 --> 0:22:15.360 frontiersmen showed no such forbearance. They came to plunder. If 0:22:15.400 --> 0:22:18.680 we're more familiar with America's Wild West, well that's only 0:22:18.720 --> 0:22:23.000 because for Americans it's closer to home. Russia's Wild East 0:22:23.160 --> 0:22:25.120 wasn't all that different when it came to the way 0:22:25.160 --> 0:22:27.760 the powers of the Russian Empire thought about the land 0:22:27.800 --> 0:22:31.040 that stretched away in great plains and rocky mountains from 0:22:31.080 --> 0:22:34.959 the seats of their society. By Restputants day, things had 0:22:35.000 --> 0:22:38.879 begun to change, though. Increasingly farms replaced the hunting grounds 0:22:38.880 --> 0:22:41.399 where the sable had been slaughtered. And if there was 0:22:41.480 --> 0:22:45.080 one thing Siberia would never run out of, it was land. 0:22:45.960 --> 0:22:48.840 So more and more people ran to the frontier, not 0:22:48.960 --> 0:22:52.399 just for wealth, but also for independence, not just the 0:22:52.480 --> 0:22:55.679 freedom to build fortunes far from the Czar's hand, but 0:22:55.760 --> 0:22:59.120 also to practice religious faith out of the Tsar's reach. 0:22:59.800 --> 0:23:02.680 So Iberia, you see, was in some ways a place 0:23:02.720 --> 0:23:08.199 of religious freedom. Here's Heather Coleman again, Russian religion was 0:23:08.320 --> 0:23:13.120 different east of the Earls. In Siberia you have much 0:23:13.200 --> 0:23:18.199 more old belief, much more religious sectarianism. Because the area 0:23:18.320 --> 0:23:22.640 east of the Earls was a place where religious dissenters 0:23:22.960 --> 0:23:26.960 fled in the early modern period to get away from 0:23:27.000 --> 0:23:29.320 the power of the state. There's a kind of a 0:23:29.359 --> 0:23:34.200 frontier atmosphere. The official church infrastructure was much less developed. 0:23:34.359 --> 0:23:39.480 We shouldn't exaggerate this. In western Siberia we have ancient diocese, 0:23:39.640 --> 0:23:43.080 but there's there's very little by way of seminary education 0:23:43.440 --> 0:23:47.120 and and so on. So so certainly the church has 0:23:47.240 --> 0:23:53.280 much more trouble regulating religious practice just because of distances 0:23:53.320 --> 0:23:59.119 and variety east of the Earls. Yes, the government sponsored settlers, 0:23:59.280 --> 0:24:02.520 but these proved homesteaders made a place for themselves and 0:24:02.600 --> 0:24:09.040 founded their towns alongside runaway surfs, craftsmen, religious dissenters, revolutionaries, 0:24:09.240 --> 0:24:15.080 disgraced aristocrats, and criminal exiles. When exiles arrived in Siberia, 0:24:15.119 --> 0:24:18.400 though they sometimes found themselves in a strange position at 0:24:18.400 --> 0:24:22.119 home in Western Russia, they were dangerous criminals in Siberia 0:24:22.520 --> 0:24:25.240 they were told that as educated and literate men they 0:24:25.240 --> 0:24:28.879 were made government officials. Of course, I can't help seeing 0:24:28.960 --> 0:24:32.200 hints of the history of Australia in that particular move. 0:24:33.240 --> 0:24:37.119 Like Australia, and like America's Great Plains, Siberia was a 0:24:37.160 --> 0:24:40.080 place of immense size and beauty. It was also the 0:24:40.119 --> 0:24:43.000 stage on which human greed and violence had played out 0:24:43.040 --> 0:24:46.720 for centuries. The counter forces of fortune hunting and families 0:24:46.760 --> 0:24:50.000 seeking a place to practice their religion in peace pulled 0:24:50.040 --> 0:24:54.200 Siberia in different directions and brought up sons who clothed 0:24:54.240 --> 0:25:02.080 themselves in contradictions, simplicity yet cunning, charm yet viciousness, devotion 0:25:02.880 --> 0:25:10.679 yet greed, Men like Gregory Rasputin. The steam rose up 0:25:10.680 --> 0:25:14.119 between them. From their cups of tea. Gregory sat with 0:25:14.160 --> 0:25:17.199 the Father Superior of the Seven Lakes Monastery and a 0:25:17.200 --> 0:25:20.280 group of his theology students. The two men were talking 0:25:20.280 --> 0:25:23.439 about Rasputant's plans and the places he intended to go 0:25:23.560 --> 0:25:26.920 on his next trip. Resputant mentioned that his next journey 0:25:26.960 --> 0:25:30.600