WEBVTT - S4 – 5: Standoff 0:00:01.120 --> 0:00:03.960 Welcomed, unobscured a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron 0:00:04.000 --> 0:00:10.960 Minky the spiritual touring actor Grigory Rasputin. That's what the 0:00:11.000 --> 0:00:14.280 Moscow Gazette called him, But that was just the headline. 0:00:14.480 --> 0:00:18.439 Things only got worse for Grigory from there. Apparently the 0:00:18.440 --> 0:00:22.079 writer knew all the favorite talking points from the elite salons. 0:00:22.520 --> 0:00:27.320 He was a cunning Siberian charlatan, a predatory letcher, a hypnotist, 0:00:27.480 --> 0:00:30.520 and a false teacher who used his ideas about holy 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:33.360 love to get far too up close and personal with 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:37.240 his followers. They called him a pseudo prophet and damned 0:00:37.280 --> 0:00:40.320 him for teaching spiritual delusions that were opposite of the 0:00:40.320 --> 0:00:44.400 traditions of the Orthodox Church. But the article didn't stop 0:00:44.440 --> 0:00:48.640 at condemning Resputant's delusions and false holiness. It also attacked 0:00:48.720 --> 0:00:51.880 other areas of his life. It accused Grigory of being 0:00:51.960 --> 0:00:55.280 a lazy, deadbeat, a man who had abandoned his family 0:00:55.320 --> 0:00:59.760 in Pokrovsko, whose children were fatherless and unruly, and the 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:03.160 thor even said that in investigating his piece, he had 0:01:03.200 --> 0:01:06.240 spoken with a church leader who called Gregory a heretic 0:01:06.600 --> 0:01:09.920 and a sexual predator. As far as the press goes 0:01:10.120 --> 0:01:12.840 this was about as damning as it gets, and digging 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:15.759 behind the article we can see why, like so many 0:01:15.840 --> 0:01:18.720 others in Russia, the journalist who wrote the Peace believed 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:21.640 that the church was in trouble and needed to be reformed. 0:01:22.120 --> 0:01:25.120 Like our command right theo fan, the writer looked to 0:01:25.200 --> 0:01:29.160 Russia's wandering holy men as a source of hope. In 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:32.000 some ways, Gregory seemed like exactly the kind of person 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:34.679 he was looking for, a peasant who had formed a 0:01:34.680 --> 0:01:37.880 bridge between the Czar and the peasant class, bringing the 0:01:37.959 --> 0:01:41.040 voice of the so called ordinary Russian to the ear 0:01:41.120 --> 0:01:45.320 of the Czar himself. But here's the problem. Rasputant's dark 0:01:45.360 --> 0:01:48.400 side was actually giving all of Russia's holy men a 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:51.880 bad name, claiming to be a holy leader while using 0:01:51.960 --> 0:01:54.880 his position to feed on the vulnerabilities of his followers. 0:01:55.320 --> 0:01:58.120 It's easy to see why anyone would think this left 0:01:58.160 --> 0:02:00.840 their approach in tatters. If they were going to hold 0:02:00.840 --> 0:02:03.800 onto the idea that Russian holy men could revitalize the 0:02:03.840 --> 0:02:06.600 faith and life of the Empire, they had to figure 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:10.400 out how things had gone so wrong with Grigory. If 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:14.520 condemning Rasputant as a heretic and a letger sounds familiar. 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:17.240 That's because it was the message our command right theo 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:20.160 Fan was spreading far and wide. In fact, theo Fan 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:22.919 himself might be the churchman who worked with the author 0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:26.440 behind the scenes. But regardless of who the hidden sources 0:02:26.480 --> 0:02:29.280 were for the writer, the fact is that defenders of 0:02:29.280 --> 0:02:32.760 the Church and defenders of the Czar alike swarmed to 0:02:32.800 --> 0:02:36.840 the takedown like it fed their starving souls. Other papers 0:02:36.880 --> 0:02:40.760 across Russia instantly copied the article and reprinted it. They 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:43.080 knew when there was blood in the water, and what 0:02:43.240 --> 0:02:45.600 sells a paper better than a sex scandal at the 0:02:45.600 --> 0:02:49.120 crossroads of the Church and the Crown. Once again, the 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:52.960 paper had taken the public's temperature. Letters flooded into the 0:02:53.000 --> 0:02:57.919 Moscow Gazette. New stories of Grigory restputants bad behavior were 0:02:58.000 --> 0:03:02.240 piled onto the first reports, and as the accusations mounted, 0:03:02.440 --> 0:03:05.079 it led the editors of the Gazette to trumpet one 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:09.239 question above the clamoring throng. If Grigory Resputin was such 0:03:09.240 --> 0:03:12.600 a dangerous conman, why didn't the Church or the Crown 0:03:12.840 --> 0:03:16.400 rise up and do something to root him out? The 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:19.799 monarchist newspapers thought they might open Nicholas's eyes to the 0:03:19.880 --> 0:03:23.560 dangers of Resputin and separate the monarchy from the mystic. 0:03:24.000 --> 0:03:27.320 But the reformers and revolutionaries across Russia were only too 0:03:27.360 --> 0:03:30.760 happy to point out that Resputin and the Romanovs seemed 0:03:30.800 --> 0:03:35.760 to be inseparable. They followed the monarchist press in denouncing Rasputin, 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:39.200 not to save the imperial family, but to condemn it. 0:03:39.640 --> 0:03:42.120 Their answer to the question of why Nicholas didn't do 0:03:42.240 --> 0:03:45.640 something was that the Romanovs themselves were hapless fools and 0:03:45.760 --> 0:03:49.280 needed to be thrown out along with their court soothsayers. 0:03:49.280 --> 0:03:54.080 Issue after issue delved into Resputant's background, his heretical teaching, 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:58.120 and his violence against women. To the leftist press, all 0:03:58.160 --> 0:04:02.240 of these were the fault of Nicholas and Alexandra. None 0:04:02.240 --> 0:04:05.600 of these press reports got the story right, though monarchists 0:04:05.680 --> 0:04:10.280 and revolutionaries alike layered rumor and insinuation over every kernel 0:04:10.360 --> 0:04:13.080 of truth. But all the reporting was eaten up by 0:04:13.120 --> 0:04:16.279 a public hungry for more news about the secret inner 0:04:16.320 --> 0:04:19.760 workings of the Romanov's domestic world. And then there's this 0:04:19.880 --> 0:04:23.039 deep irony to contend with. Russia at the time was 0:04:23.080 --> 0:04:27.200 an empire divided. Not only were revolutionary groups and monarchist 0:04:27.279 --> 0:04:30.440 brigades battling each other for the future of Russia, but 0:04:30.520 --> 0:04:33.880 they were often fighting within their own ranks. Each faction 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:37.920 rarely managed to maintain their alliances for long, and yet 0:04:37.960 --> 0:04:42.039 in Rasputin they were now finding a common cause, or 0:04:42.040 --> 0:05:00.320 better put, a common enemy. This is unobscured. I'm Aaron Manky. Yeah, 0:05:13.960 --> 0:05:18.200 the attacks on Rasputin went international. If the Russian papers 0:05:18.240 --> 0:05:20.919 thought they were cleaning house and taking down Rasputin, they 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:23.480 couldn't foresee just how far the stories about him would 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:27.000 travel and how long the legends they were creating would endure. 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:31.080 Within a few weeks, the splashy articles were being distributed 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:35.440 across Russia. The Austrian ambassador wrote back to Vienna about 0:05:35.480 --> 0:05:38.880 the unfolding scandal, and, of course, for the royals across Europe, 0:05:38.920 --> 0:05:41.320 the question of how Nicholas and Alexandra could take a 0:05:41.400 --> 0:05:45.039 heretical priest into their confidence was a real puzzle, and 0:05:45.080 --> 0:05:48.200 the ambassador offered his view. The royal couple were simply 0:05:48.279 --> 0:05:51.680 unwilling to see that their relationship with Grigory Rasputin was 0:05:51.720 --> 0:05:54.680 a problem. It was a real flash of insights. He 0:05:54.760 --> 0:05:57.839 saw that in the eyes of Nicholas and Alexandra. Rasputin 0:05:58.120 --> 0:06:01.599 was untouchable. But it wasn't just the stories about the 0:06:01.680 --> 0:06:05.520 Romanov's spiritual advisor that slipped the borders of Russia. It 0:06:05.640 --> 0:06:08.720 was the Romanovs themselves. In the years after the nineteen 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:11.599 oh five Revolution, and with all the changes that were 0:06:11.600 --> 0:06:16.039 shaking Russian society, Nicholas and Alexandra often found time to 0:06:16.040 --> 0:06:19.240 get away from it all. Not that this was anything new. 0:06:19.600 --> 0:06:22.760 Hunting lodges and holiday homes were always the privilege of 0:06:22.760 --> 0:06:26.920 the European royals. Nicholas and Alexandra were no exception, and 0:06:26.960 --> 0:06:30.159 of course family visits double as political meetings when the 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:33.400 family are all heads of states. For example, ever since 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:36.880 their marriage began, Nicholas and Alexandra had regularly traveled back 0:06:36.920 --> 0:06:40.000 to her old stomping grounds in Germany, and Nicholas even 0:06:40.000 --> 0:06:43.799 had a Russian Orthodox chapel built for Alexander there. Often 0:06:43.839 --> 0:06:46.880 they stayed with Alexandra's brother Ernie at his summer retreat, 0:06:47.200 --> 0:06:50.680 or visited relatives in the Danish royal family, and these 0:06:50.760 --> 0:06:53.600 visits didn't slow down as their family grew. As things 0:06:53.600 --> 0:06:55.840 heated up at home. I can only imagine that they 0:06:55.839 --> 0:06:58.760 were too happy to slip the troubled borders of their empire, 0:06:59.120 --> 0:07:01.359 leave the trouble some issues in the hands of a 0:07:01.400 --> 0:07:04.160 prime minister like stoile Epan, and try to find some 0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:07.440 cleaner air. Of course, there was a more personal reason 0:07:07.480 --> 0:07:10.160 that the Romana family would have wanted to retreat from 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:13.040 the turmoil of their empire into some sort of tranquility. 0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:16.120 You see, Alexandra was sick, and the truth was she 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:19.880 had been sick for years. Here's historian Helen Rappaport to 0:07:19.920 --> 0:07:25.600 tell us more. I think Alexandra clearly was plagued with 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:29.920 sciatica from her teens, because when it was announced she 0:07:30.000 --> 0:07:32.800 was going to marry Nikki in April eighteen nine four, 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:36.280 one of the first things Queen Victoria arranged was to 0:07:36.400 --> 0:07:41.400 get her treatment for this crippling scietic pain she suffered from. 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:44.160 So she was sent to Harrogate for a water cure, 0:07:44.520 --> 0:07:47.080 and that was the first probably of money later on 0:07:47.160 --> 0:07:50.320 in her life, after she'd tapped the children, they she 0:07:50.360 --> 0:07:54.720 went more than once, I think, to bad Noihan in 0:07:54.800 --> 0:07:58.320 Germany for again for wat cures. So she had always 0:07:58.360 --> 0:08:02.400 had the scietica and I cannot imagine how painful her 0:08:02.440 --> 0:08:07.080 pregnancies must have been suffering from sciatic pain and carrying 0:08:07.320 --> 0:08:11.280 you know, ten eleven pound babies to term. She must 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:15.120 have been dreadfully consumed by pain at times, and she 0:08:15.320 --> 0:08:18.800 was often had to be lying down. She genuinely had 0:08:19.000 --> 0:08:24.000 terrible ear infections and me grains, and oh gosh, there 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:28.640 wasn't almost any complaints she didn't at sometime suffer from. 0:08:28.760 --> 0:08:33.920 So that kind of colored family life, I think more 0:08:33.920 --> 0:08:39.480 than perhaps we realize. Even when they weren't traveling for treatment, 0:08:39.600 --> 0:08:43.079 abandoning the pressure of court, life in Russia was itself 0:08:43.120 --> 0:08:46.200 an enormous relief, and there's perhaps no trip that the 0:08:46.240 --> 0:08:48.920 Empress liked better than a holiday to the islands around 0:08:49.000 --> 0:08:52.480 Finland in the Tsar's personal Yat when life in Russia 0:08:52.600 --> 0:08:56.040 got tense or threat to the Czar made their routines dangerous, 0:08:56.200 --> 0:09:00.119 Nicholas and Alexander would take to the water. They're surrounded 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:03.280 by a loyal crew, with warships from the Imperial Fleet 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:07.360 bobbing in formation on all sides. Nicholas and Alexandra felt 0:09:07.360 --> 0:09:11.040 their most carefree, prying eyes were left far behind. The 0:09:11.120 --> 0:09:14.560 naval officers who served them on board were kind and obliging, 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:19.040 and all the guns pointed outward. But even those floating 0:09:19.080 --> 0:09:21.800 fantasies came back to earth, and when they did, the 0:09:21.800 --> 0:09:25.280 troubles of Russia proved they couldn't be left behind. Take 0:09:25.360 --> 0:09:28.640 their visit to England in nineteen o nine. Along the way, 0:09:28.640 --> 0:09:32.240 the Romanovs stopped to see Alexandra's sister Irene and made 0:09:32.280 --> 0:09:34.800 an appearance for the President of France. And then they 0:09:34.840 --> 0:09:37.600 were on towards England, where their royal cousins were eager 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:41.720 to greet them. Not so the English people, though, you see, 0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:44.240 word had spread of the fact that Nicholas used his 0:09:44.360 --> 0:09:47.720 Cossacks against the Russian people in nineteen o five. The 0:09:47.800 --> 0:09:50.920 violence of his autocratic control over the Russian Empire was 0:09:51.120 --> 0:09:54.560 no secrets. Socialist rallies in London were held as the 0:09:54.640 --> 0:09:58.240 Romanov's yacht sailed toward British soil. The Young British Labor 0:09:58.280 --> 0:10:01.800 Party collected resolutions from a cross Britain condemning the blood 0:10:01.800 --> 0:10:04.240 on the hands of the Czar, the terrorism of his 0:10:04.320 --> 0:10:08.319 supporters like Iliador, and the actions of the Russian secret police. 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:11.480 And it should be pointed out if we remember the 0:10:11.520 --> 0:10:15.000 way the Czar's Cossacks ran down protesting workers in nineteen 0:10:15.040 --> 0:10:18.040 o five. We have to say the British workers who 0:10:18.120 --> 0:10:21.360 rallied in Trafalgar Square had a point. Maybe that's why 0:10:21.400 --> 0:10:26.000 everyone from schools to evangelical societies to trade unions all 0:10:26.120 --> 0:10:30.120 signed on to condemn the Romanov's visit. Nicholas may have 0:10:30.200 --> 0:10:33.360 been surprised by how well British radicals knew the inner 0:10:33.360 --> 0:10:36.720 workings of Russian politics, but the creeping fear he felt 0:10:36.760 --> 0:10:39.600 when he heard they were discussing his assassination would have 0:10:39.600 --> 0:10:42.480 been all too familiar. It was the feeling he fled 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:45.679 when the family took to the sea, so Nicholas and 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:49.080 Alexandra made their visit a short one. The coastal towns 0:10:49.080 --> 0:10:52.440 were flooded with English and Russian police, who choked them 0:10:52.480 --> 0:10:55.280 to a standstill. It could have only confirmed to the 0:10:55.280 --> 0:10:58.080 Czar's critics that Russia was ruled with an iron fist. 0:10:58.640 --> 0:11:01.840 At night, the romanov was retreated to their floating fortress. 0:11:02.160 --> 0:11:06.000 When they visited Sweden, Nicholas and Alexandra didn't even dare 0:11:06.040 --> 0:11:09.720 to set foot on land. So the imperial family didn't 0:11:09.720 --> 0:11:12.760 have the best reputation beyond the borders of their empire, 0:11:13.200 --> 0:11:16.040 let alone among the people they held under their power 0:11:16.160 --> 0:11:19.480 at the time, and that was all before the press 0:11:19.600 --> 0:11:29.400 sank their teeth into the story of Grigory Rasputin. Resputant 0:11:29.480 --> 0:11:32.160 had his defenders, of course, and maybe no one was 0:11:32.240 --> 0:11:35.120 more energetic in his defense than the mad monk himself, 0:11:35.480 --> 0:11:39.400 the terrorist preacher Eliodor. Not to be outdone by the 0:11:39.440 --> 0:11:43.640 inflamed accusations of the newspaper, Eliodor began to fabricate some 0:11:43.720 --> 0:11:47.320 stories of his own. Resputin was not a sexual predator, 0:11:47.400 --> 0:11:50.720 said Eliodor, so much the opposite, in fact, that Gregory 0:11:50.840 --> 0:11:53.800 had mastered his sexual urges so much that he no 0:11:53.880 --> 0:11:56.480 longer made love to his own wife. He lived with 0:11:56.640 --> 0:12:00.960 special holiness. He was Russia's saving grace. Anyone who wrote 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:04.840 attacks against Resputant should be bound and beaten bloody, that 0:12:04.960 --> 0:12:10.280 was Eliador's message. Not a pleasant fellow, really, But Eliodora's 0:12:10.280 --> 0:12:14.480 bloodthirsty defenses of Resputin were nearly as effective as Resputant's 0:12:14.520 --> 0:12:18.920 own technique to disappear. Throughout most of nineteen ten, there 0:12:18.920 --> 0:12:22.480 were several points where even the Russian secret police, the Okrana, 0:12:22.600 --> 0:12:27.120 had no idea where Resputant was. His disappearance was all 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:29.840 about giving the scandal time to blow over and for 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:32.920 newspapers to find something else to blow up about. And 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:36.319 there was one man in Russia willing to oblige. That's right, 0:12:36.920 --> 0:12:40.160 Eliodor himself. Do you remember how I told you that 0:12:40.240 --> 0:12:43.880 Resputant had orchestrated a one on one meeting between Eliador 0:12:43.960 --> 0:12:47.000 and the Empress. She had forced a few promises out 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:49.440 of the man. Maybe he agreed in the moment, but 0:12:49.559 --> 0:12:52.720 he swiftly changed his mind. Soon enough, he was back 0:12:52.760 --> 0:12:56.240 in his pulpit, letting fly against the Czar, the government 0:12:56.320 --> 0:12:59.040 of the Duma, the Prime Minister, and just about everyone 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:02.000 else he considered a part of Russia's decline, and that 0:13:02.080 --> 0:13:05.679 included leaders in the church. Now, obviously they didn't take 0:13:05.679 --> 0:13:08.440 too kindly to that, and they sent an order. The 0:13:08.480 --> 0:13:12.160 monk Iliodor was being reassigned once again. This time he 0:13:12.200 --> 0:13:14.200 was supposed to leave his base in the city of 0:13:14.240 --> 0:13:17.120 Tzaritsin and go where he couldn't make so much trouble, 0:13:17.360 --> 0:13:22.080 the remote monastery of Novozil. But leaving his influential position 0:13:22.120 --> 0:13:24.280 on the banks of the Volga River was the last 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:27.760 thing Eliador wanted to do. His first course of action 0:13:27.960 --> 0:13:30.960 was a frantic message to Siberia he was calling on 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:34.160 help from Rasputin. Of course, after all, Grigory had been 0:13:34.200 --> 0:13:36.199 able to arrange a one on one meeting with the 0:13:36.240 --> 0:13:39.000 Empress the last time he got in trouble. Why couldn't 0:13:39.040 --> 0:13:41.600 he use the same get out of jail free card again? 0:13:42.120 --> 0:13:44.560 And while he waited for an answer, he took some action. 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:48.720 Gathering his closest disciples around him, Eliodor retreated into his 0:13:48.800 --> 0:13:52.960 monastery compound and barricaded the doors. Douglas Smith writes that 0:13:53.000 --> 0:13:57.319 Iliador even started blasting out messages in his typical bombastic 0:13:57.400 --> 0:14:01.000 style that he wouldn't leave unless every of the monastery 0:14:01.080 --> 0:14:03.959 was covered in his own blood, that he would see 0:14:04.000 --> 0:14:07.119 his home become his grave before he would be sidelined 0:14:07.160 --> 0:14:10.760 by the church, you know, the usual stuff. Now, we 0:14:10.760 --> 0:14:13.480 don't know if Rasputin was involved in what happened next, 0:14:13.520 --> 0:14:15.520 but it's clear that the news made its way to 0:14:15.640 --> 0:14:19.160 Nicholas and the Tsar was having none of it. Naturally, 0:14:19.200 --> 0:14:21.880 he sided with the leaders of the Russian Church. They 0:14:21.880 --> 0:14:24.040 should do what they needed to do to tamp down 0:14:24.040 --> 0:14:27.480 this violent dissenter. After all, it's not like Eliador had 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:31.880 been cultivating goodwill with anyone among Russia's elite. All this 0:14:32.120 --> 0:14:34.840 back and forth made its way into black and white. 0:14:35.200 --> 0:14:38.280 Soon enough, the papers were saying that Eliador had rallied 0:14:38.320 --> 0:14:41.160 his terrorist followers to his cause. And it wasn't a 0:14:41.200 --> 0:14:44.800 small movement either. By one reckoning, thousands of people had 0:14:44.840 --> 0:14:48.080 traveled the Volga to gather around Iliador. It looked more 0:14:48.080 --> 0:14:51.640 and more like a fight was brewing. The twists and 0:14:51.680 --> 0:14:54.520 turns and the story were complex. It was a story 0:14:54.560 --> 0:14:58.520 of espionage, secret agents, and back room deals. To sum 0:14:58.520 --> 0:15:02.280 it up simply, though, a plex bargaining process began. While 0:15:02.360 --> 0:15:06.000 Nicholas sent negotiators to hash out the situation with Iliador, 0:15:06.360 --> 0:15:09.840 Rasputin rushed back into the Romanov's lives once again to 0:15:10.000 --> 0:15:14.320 discuss things with them behind the scenes. The situation was explosive. 0:15:14.600 --> 0:15:17.480 Realizing that Grigory was out of hiding, the Prime Minister 0:15:17.600 --> 0:15:20.200 met with Nicholas. He wanted to convince the Czar that 0:15:20.240 --> 0:15:23.280 Grigory was bad for the throne and bad for the empire. 0:15:23.680 --> 0:15:28.040 He put all of Russia at risk. Nicholas, though, wasn't convinced. 0:15:28.320 --> 0:15:31.280 He essentially met the Prime Minister with a shrug and 0:15:31.320 --> 0:15:34.400 he said, why don't you just meet with Rasputin yourself? 0:15:35.280 --> 0:15:39.160 So finally, after months of ducking the secret police, Nicholas 0:15:39.160 --> 0:15:42.360 had to arrange it. Grigory met face to face with 0:15:42.440 --> 0:15:46.320 Prime ministers Stoi Leepin and Stoi Lepin, came armed for 0:15:46.400 --> 0:15:49.360 the encounter. When they faced off, he showed Grigory a 0:15:49.440 --> 0:15:52.840 file packed with reports from the Russian secret police. He 0:15:52.880 --> 0:15:55.920 said they proved that Rasputant was a heretic who had 0:15:55.960 --> 0:15:59.560 betrayed the Russian Church. Stoy Leepin believed that by threatening 0:15:59.560 --> 0:16:02.280 Grigory he could get the man to back down and 0:16:02.400 --> 0:16:05.600 disappear from the Imperial Court, but he didn't know just 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:08.480 how much Resputant believed that he was on a mission 0:16:08.520 --> 0:16:12.400 from God. Grigory dared Soy Leapin to show the file 0:16:12.680 --> 0:16:15.600 not to Nicholas, but to Alexandra, and then when they 0:16:15.640 --> 0:16:19.160 went their separate ways, Gregory wasted no time. He told 0:16:19.160 --> 0:16:22.280 the Empress about the police reports himself. All that the 0:16:22.320 --> 0:16:26.480 Prime Minister earned from the encounter was Alexander's fury raspute, 0:16:26.480 --> 0:16:30.640 and was right. The Romanovs were on his side. This 0:16:30.720 --> 0:16:33.560 swirl of activity around the Romanovs did nothing to shake 0:16:33.600 --> 0:16:37.480 Iliador from his fortified monastery. The mad monk was still 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:41.480 sending Rasputin messages asking for help and lane plans to 0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:44.600 grow his power. At one point he even pretended to 0:16:44.640 --> 0:16:47.320 cooperate for a while and took to the road, but 0:16:47.360 --> 0:16:49.560 in the end it was only just buying time for 0:16:49.680 --> 0:16:52.240 him to gather more die hard believers to his cause. 0:16:52.760 --> 0:16:55.880 He circled back to his headquarters with even more supporters 0:16:55.920 --> 0:16:59.280 in tow In fact, he had gathered an army men 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:02.000 and women had marched to his fortress by the tens 0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:05.520 of thousands, all of them hung on Iliador's every word 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:08.439 as he called for the new representative government of Russia 0:17:08.520 --> 0:17:11.159 to be torn down in a shower of blood, and 0:17:11.240 --> 0:17:14.119 for people like Prime Minister Stoilepen to be beaten in 0:17:14.160 --> 0:17:17.240 the streets. And even as it got more and more hypocritical, 0:17:17.560 --> 0:17:20.879 Eliador and his followers still held onto the idea that 0:17:20.960 --> 0:17:24.199 all of this was actually helping the Czar. It was, 0:17:24.480 --> 0:17:30.000 as Dr Heather Coleman puts it, a naive monarchism. Historians 0:17:30.040 --> 0:17:35.960 have pointed to a great phenomenon of naive monarchism of 0:17:35.960 --> 0:17:40.960 of ordinary people who who believed that the that the 0:17:41.080 --> 0:17:45.760 government um was the problem and if only they could 0:17:45.800 --> 0:17:49.000 get to the Tsar, that Ssar was was faithful to 0:17:49.080 --> 0:17:53.560 the to the to the to the little guy and um, 0:17:53.560 --> 0:17:56.520 and that you know. The problem was the bureaucrats in between. 0:17:57.560 --> 0:18:00.600 As these ideas grew more powerful and il Door added 0:18:00.600 --> 0:18:03.720 to his numbers, Nicholas had a choice to make turn 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:07.480 the full might of his imperial forces on rebellious monarchists 0:18:07.760 --> 0:18:11.159 or give them free reign to undermine his government. The 0:18:11.280 --> 0:18:13.879 choice he made was a fateful one, because in the 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:18.400 end Nicholas backed down. He issued a full pardon for Eliador. 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:22.080 The mad monk had gone up against the Czar and one, 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:25.000 but that victory sowed the seeds of his own downfall. 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:28.920 In beating the Tsar, these self defeating monarchists proved once 0:18:28.960 --> 0:18:32.840 again that the Czar could be beaten. This very public 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:36.560 battle between the Tsar and the terrorist preacher had distracted 0:18:36.560 --> 0:18:39.320 the press from the story of Rasputin, but it hadn't 0:18:39.320 --> 0:18:42.520 distracted the rest of the Romanov family. Knowing that meetings 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:45.760 with Grigory had happened behind the scenes, the other Romanovs 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:49.160 believed that Resputant was really the one behind Nicholas's decision 0:18:49.200 --> 0:18:52.719 to fold in the face of Eliadora's growing forces. So 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:56.639 at one point Nicholas's mother, the Dowager Empress, decided it 0:18:56.680 --> 0:18:59.040 was time to take her son in hand. She met 0:18:59.080 --> 0:19:02.000 with Nicholas and al Alexandra in the palace. She gave 0:19:02.040 --> 0:19:05.200 her boy a good tongue lashing. She demanded that Nicholas 0:19:05.200 --> 0:19:09.080 and the scandal sever the friendship and send respute in away. 0:19:09.600 --> 0:19:13.920 Alexandra fought fire with fire. As the Czarina, she refused 0:19:13.920 --> 0:19:15.919 to be pushed around by her mother in law no 0:19:15.960 --> 0:19:19.440 matter what anyone thought, and in the end the Dowager 0:19:19.480 --> 0:19:23.520 Empress left defeated. Throughout the fight with his mother and 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:29.160 wife trading ferocious arguments, Nicholas, it said, sat in silence. 0:19:36.920 --> 0:19:39.879 He put Russia behind him. After all, it was true, 0:19:40.080 --> 0:19:42.840 the scandal did need time to blow over. So Grigory 0:19:42.920 --> 0:19:45.480 Rasputin set out to the one place he always wanted 0:19:45.520 --> 0:19:48.560 to go. He wanted to refresh his soul, to commune 0:19:48.600 --> 0:19:52.199 with God, so he went to the Holy Land. But 0:19:52.280 --> 0:19:55.600 if that conjures up stories of Grigory's early religious life, 0:19:55.840 --> 0:19:58.680 of his wanderings and his lonely struggles on the road, 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:02.000 that might give us the idea, because this wasn't quite 0:20:02.000 --> 0:20:04.800 the kind of lonely pilgrimage to Jerusalem that a holy 0:20:04.840 --> 0:20:08.160 man might make on a shoestring and a prayer. Quite 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:12.640 the contrary, Resputant was doing something popular. It turns out 0:20:12.680 --> 0:20:14.320 that the trip sounds a lot like the kind of 0:20:14.359 --> 0:20:17.840 Holy Land tourism that people are still doing today. Here's 0:20:17.880 --> 0:20:22.440 historian Douglas Smith to explain. It's not as exotic maybe 0:20:22.440 --> 0:20:25.040 as it first seems that, you know, a Russian in 0:20:25.119 --> 0:20:27.560 nineteen eleven would be going to the Holy Land. There 0:20:27.600 --> 0:20:31.679 were actually packaged tours that Russians would go on that 0:20:31.720 --> 0:20:34.879 would take them to see the places connected to the 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:37.880 life of Jesus. And this is essentially what he did 0:20:37.880 --> 0:20:40.359 as he went on one one of these package tours, 0:20:40.400 --> 0:20:44.080 if you will. But he was profoundly moved by the experience, 0:20:44.119 --> 0:20:46.480 and he wrote about it, and he sent letters back 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:50.640 to Nicholas and Alexandra about the meaning it had for him. 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:53.359 One of the things that he came back with was 0:20:53.520 --> 0:20:57.800 a renewed um conviction that the only true form of 0:20:57.880 --> 0:21:02.520 Christianity was Russian orthod docsy. That was just the kind 0:21:02.520 --> 0:21:05.040 of message that would be welcomed with opened arms by 0:21:05.160 --> 0:21:08.239 friends that Rasputant had left behind, and he made a 0:21:08.240 --> 0:21:11.720 bee line for none other than Iliador awash in the 0:21:11.760 --> 0:21:14.639 glow of victory, the mad monk welcomed Grigory to his 0:21:14.720 --> 0:21:17.479 monastery on the Volga, and they hit the road as 0:21:17.480 --> 0:21:20.520 a kind of double act. Soon enough, they were trailed 0:21:20.520 --> 0:21:23.119 by supporters as they went from town to town together. 0:21:23.640 --> 0:21:26.720 The documents tell us that sometimes it was dozens and 0:21:26.760 --> 0:21:29.560 sometimes it was hundreds of women who followed in their wake. 0:21:30.040 --> 0:21:34.240 Iliodor introduced Rasputin as his beloved brother. For his part, 0:21:34.320 --> 0:21:39.200 Grigory recounts his adventures in Palestine in a particularly nationalistic mode. 0:21:39.640 --> 0:21:43.200 Here's more from Douglas Smith. He had nothing but horrible 0:21:43.240 --> 0:21:47.080 things to say about the other branches of the Christian faith. 0:21:47.200 --> 0:21:51.000 And he came to believe that pilgrimage to the Holy 0:21:51.080 --> 0:21:56.440 Lands should be encouraged among Russian society as a way 0:21:56.560 --> 0:21:59.879 of instilling greater faith in the Church, and by extension, 0:22:00.000 --> 0:22:06.240 and by instilling greater faith and loyalty among Russian Orthodox 0:22:06.400 --> 0:22:11.720 believers and subjects of the Crown in the sanctity of 0:22:11.800 --> 0:22:14.600 the throne itself. That this was a way you could 0:22:14.640 --> 0:22:19.960 further bind Russians to the autocracy, was through these trips 0:22:20.040 --> 0:22:22.920 to the Holy Land. And and he would come back 0:22:23.720 --> 0:22:29.520 and speak about his experiences there, and this definitely sort 0:22:29.560 --> 0:22:33.000 of gave him a greater sense of religious authority in 0:22:33.040 --> 0:22:36.760 the eyes of his believers. When they ended their speaking 0:22:36.760 --> 0:22:40.320 tour back at Eliodor's monastery, the monk gave rasput And 0:22:40.400 --> 0:22:43.280 a lavish send off. It seemed to Grigory that their 0:22:43.320 --> 0:22:46.119 friendship was secure and that he had made a successful 0:22:46.160 --> 0:22:49.679 return to Russian society. Maybe he even believed that the 0:22:49.720 --> 0:22:52.760 bad press and the bad days were behind him. He 0:22:53.000 --> 0:22:56.639 was friends with Eliodor and friends with the Czar. What 0:22:56.760 --> 0:23:00.399 could go wrong. But if he only saw smooth sailing ahead, 0:23:00.560 --> 0:23:02.639 then he hadn't been paying attention to the way that 0:23:02.680 --> 0:23:06.480 Eliador treated his friends, So it seems Gregory didn't have 0:23:06.680 --> 0:23:08.960 his guard up. A few months later, when he arrived 0:23:08.960 --> 0:23:12.040 in St. Petersburg, he heard that Eliodora was also in 0:23:12.040 --> 0:23:16.080 the capital, purchasing a printing press for his monastery. Eliodor 0:23:16.200 --> 0:23:18.679 invited Grigory to travel with him to meet with a 0:23:18.760 --> 0:23:22.680 member of the Holy Synod, their supporter, germy Jin. Naturally, 0:23:22.840 --> 0:23:26.600 Rasputin agreed, but he was walking into a trap. When 0:23:26.600 --> 0:23:29.240 the pair arrived, they found that germy Jan was not alone. 0:23:29.600 --> 0:23:32.119 As they stepped into the room, Gregory realized that he 0:23:32.160 --> 0:23:35.280 was also faced by two other men, a Cossack officer 0:23:35.320 --> 0:23:40.360 who was one of Eliodora's violent monarchist allies, and another man, Mitya, 0:23:40.640 --> 0:23:43.679 who Gregory knew well. In fact, Resputin and Mitya had 0:23:43.680 --> 0:23:46.880 spent quite a lot of time together. They were fellow mystics, 0:23:47.080 --> 0:23:50.120 fellow holy fools in the eyes of many, and had 0:23:50.160 --> 0:23:52.760 been friends for long enough to know that they hated 0:23:52.800 --> 0:23:56.040 each other. So when he stepped into the room with them, 0:23:56.280 --> 0:23:59.600 Gregory finally realized what he was in for. He tried 0:23:59.640 --> 0:24:01.760 to reach tread out the door, but they grabbed him 0:24:01.760 --> 0:24:05.160 and forced him into a chair, and they laid into him. 0:24:05.200 --> 0:24:07.720