Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm editor Candice Skipson, joined today by surprise, prise, Josh Clark. Surprise, surprise.
Speaker 1: How's it going. It's going. It's actually I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm feeling kind of chilly, Willie because I was reading
Speaker 1: about this really freaky dicky guy from history and yeah,
Speaker 1: Mad Monketon, Yeah, yeah, he's a pretty interesting character, isn't
Speaker 1: he interesting? Doesn't even begin to describe him. I want
Speaker 1: to tell let me tell everybody about him. Well, I
Speaker 1: can to tell them a little bit too, Okay, I'll
Speaker 1: ask you a question and then you answer. How about that?
Speaker 1: Since I know all the answers, that will be fine.
Speaker 1: You are a wise old stage. You're no Rasputin, though,
Speaker 1: so let me tell you a little bit about where
Speaker 1: am I old? He? Uh, okay, you're a wise sage.
Speaker 1: So Rasputin was basically this guy who was born in
Speaker 1: Siberia in the late nineteenth century. I don't know if
Speaker 1: he was actually born with that really long beard or not,
Speaker 1: or if he cultivated it over the years, but it
Speaker 1: was his trademark, right, Actually, that really greasy hair and
Speaker 1: apparently a terrible body odor. Those were the three things
Speaker 1: that most people who met respute and remember about him.
Speaker 1: The body odor, the beard, and the very greasy hair,
Speaker 1: very greasy. Was very greasy hair. The hair beard and
Speaker 1: very greasy hair. I had to take his shoe. I
Speaker 1: say that there's a force, Well, there's plenty of others.
Speaker 1: His hypnotic eyes, Yeah, he did have some pretty serious eyes.
Speaker 1: I looked at a few pictures of him in our
Speaker 1: colleague Christen Congress article, um, and I didn't see it.
Speaker 1: I didn't get it. You know, I was not hypnotized,
Speaker 1: although I do feel like really talking the guy up
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, it's weird. Yeah, they were. They
Speaker 1: were strangely hypnotic people. Sudden. He went on decades later
Speaker 1: to influence Holland Oates private eyes. Did you know that?
Speaker 1: I didn't know you serious? I was gonna say, I
Speaker 1: haven't even seen Holland as in concert, and I didn't
Speaker 1: know that. You got me there, Canada. Well, Well this guy, uh,
Speaker 1: he didn't start out influencing Hall of that. It's all right.
Speaker 1: You know, he kind of worked his way up. He
Speaker 1: was a peasants. He worked his way down, really so
Speaker 1: he started out by influencing the royal family of Russia.
Speaker 1: But again he didn't start out there. He worked his
Speaker 1: way up to that. He's a peasant in Siberia, and
Speaker 1: he made a name for himself out there in the
Speaker 1: rural areas as a basically a healer, kind of a
Speaker 1: mystic healer um. And apparently he was pretty good at
Speaker 1: it because he gained a reputation. He had some sort
Speaker 1: of religious conversion. I think he was an ordinary, average guy, uh,
Speaker 1: and then he went to kind of a pilgrimage to
Speaker 1: a monastery. Didn't become a monk, but I guess after
Speaker 1: he came back from that trip he was. He was
Speaker 1: a changed man. And this is where things got a
Speaker 1: little bit strange because the people here practiced a really
Speaker 1: strange form of religious I don't even know what you
Speaker 1: would call it, but it was flagellation. Essentially, they'd get
Speaker 1: together for group flagellation, which means essentially they would beat
Speaker 1: themselves stilly and then they would commence um to have orgies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the flagellation, self flagellation would with people into an orgiastic frenzy.
Speaker 1: The killests were the Clissi, where it was the sect
Speaker 1: and the killest worthy adherents, right, and the thought being
Speaker 1: that in order to attain salvation you had to sin
Speaker 1: and essentially push it out of you. You expressed it,
Speaker 1: and others helped, Uh, if you will, they helped in
Speaker 1: that expression that. This made a huge impact on Rescipue.
Speaker 1: And one of the other things he was very much
Speaker 1: known for it was that he was just a very
Speaker 1: sexual being, to the point where he's often, you know,
Speaker 1: called debaucherous. Uh. He was really into sex. Apparently he
Speaker 1: was attributed with having sex with over a thousand women,
Speaker 1: if not more in his lifetime, and from the accounts
Speaker 1: that I've read, that sounds like a fairly accurate number. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: So he carries this with him to St. Petersburg. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you know this or not, but he
Speaker 1: was actually visited by the Black Madonna of Kazan, who
Speaker 1: appeared to rest Mutan and said, hey, um, you got
Speaker 1: a lot going for you, buddy. You've got the greasy
Speaker 1: hair at the beard, you're a sexy guy. Uh, take
Speaker 1: take the show on the road to St. Petersburg. And
Speaker 1: he did, and he shows up there and this is
Speaker 1: when it really becomes history, right, this is when he
Speaker 1: got welcomed into the inner circle of the Romanovs. And
Speaker 1: at first he was sort of, you know, an accessory
Speaker 1: to the court, but then he really started to exert
Speaker 1: his influence because the Romanov's only son and only male heir, Alexis,
Speaker 1: was hemophiliac and he was very ill, and so he
Speaker 1: was able to somehow mysteriously heal him or at least
Speaker 1: help the pain subside. And that's when Alexandra was just
Speaker 1: utterly taken with him and her faith and resputants powers
Speaker 1: were completely clenched. When a couple of years later, Alexis
Speaker 1: fell off a horse and he began to start bleeding profusely,
Speaker 1: and Resputin wasn't actually at the Romanov's home, but he
Speaker 1: tell he telegraphed her. Is that a verb? I'm so
Speaker 1: far removed. He sent her a telegraph essentially saying he's
Speaker 1: gonna be okay, and you know what he was, he
Speaker 1: was Apparently he sent a message saying that Alexis would
Speaker 1: survive the night, and he did, so, you know, Zarina,
Speaker 1: Alexandra's devotion to Resputant was just completely cemented. Then, uh,
Speaker 1: And so he's into the inner circle. He's taken his
Speaker 1: um his killist sex show to St. Petersburg. Apparently he
Speaker 1: is whining and dining all the Russian women, including the
Speaker 1: Zarina and her four daughters. I understand. So he's just
Speaker 1: gaining more and more power, and as he is, the
Speaker 1: referral nobility are just you know, getting more and more nervous, right,
Speaker 1: because essentially he is able to completely like puppet master
Speaker 1: the Zerina and to a certain extent, her husband tsars
Speaker 1: are Nicholas because he wants to please his wife obviously,
Speaker 1: and so the Prime Minister decides that he just needs
Speaker 1: to take respute and out. Yeah, well this is this
Speaker 1: is where my question comes from. Um. I understand that
Speaker 1: there was a plot uh of Felix Yosipoff, who was
Speaker 1: married into the royal family, married one of Nicholas's niece,
Speaker 1: nieces Um, and he carried out this plot. He planned it,
Speaker 1: hatched it to kill Resputing. That much we know is fact.
Speaker 1: I mean, the guy wrote about it very much, confessed it,
Speaker 1: and everybody knew. Um. The my question comes from how
Speaker 1: Resputin died. As I understand he he died kind of hard,
Speaker 1: uh and and it took all manner of death to
Speaker 1: finally take him down. Is that fact or fix? That's fact?
Speaker 1: And that was back in December nineteen six, and years
Speaker 1: before there were other attempts on his life. The Prime
Speaker 1: Minister attempted to have him killed and then mysteriously somehow
Speaker 1: someone got worried of this and the Prime Minister himself
Speaker 1: was killed. And some people think that Nicholas arranged that. Why,
Speaker 1: I've heard so he survived at least one assassination at
Speaker 1: him to yep, yep, that's tell me about the second one? Well, um,
Speaker 1: a woman tried to take him out and shot him
Speaker 1: in the stomach and he survived that. I'm actually surprised
Speaker 1: that that didn't happen more often, Like I'm surprised it
Speaker 1: wasn't like an average Tuesday for Respue. Well, the peasants
Speaker 1: hated him because they saw that the royal family, you know,
Speaker 1: they were already pretty wary of in the first place,
Speaker 1: was being completely yanked around by this guy. One woman
Speaker 1: from Petrograd I read this and I just kind of
Speaker 1: fell in love with that. She wrote, how could so
Speaker 1: pitiful a wretch through so vast a shadow? And that
Speaker 1: was a question on everyone's minds, and people were really
Speaker 1: mad at resputants power at dinner parties. Um, a well
Speaker 1: known socialite, was known to have hung up signs around
Speaker 1: her home saying no one will talk about Resputin. And
Speaker 1: when his name was flashed in newspapers, apparently the sensors
Speaker 1: wanted to control people's outrage, so they went through and
Speaker 1: just threw ink all over it and it was actually
Speaker 1: called caviare these big black blots that essentially took out
Speaker 1: all of the information about Resputin. So yeah, but he's
Speaker 1: very insulated by the people in power, oh very much so.
Speaker 1: And when World War One really started gearing up, Nicholas
Speaker 1: had to leave for the front lines to help out
Speaker 1: with the army. So by default, and Alexandra was in power,
Speaker 1: and because Resputin was pretty likely sleeping with her and
Speaker 1: also controlled her mentally, uh, she allowed him to appoint
Speaker 1: people and positions of power and they paid him off essentially.
Speaker 1: So here he is making money, loving life, skipping all
Speaker 1: these attempts of murder because he's able to somehow miraculously
Speaker 1: heal after all these strange efforts. But then one night
Speaker 1: in December, it's just too much. And this is when
Speaker 1: the man you spoke of invites him ever for drinks
Speaker 1: and pastries to gaze upon his beautiful wife. Poisoned drink
Speaker 1: some pastries. That's the hitch. They were completely laced with poison.
Speaker 1: But they didn't kill him. Well, you know, I read, uh,
Speaker 1: I've read elsewhere that apparently resputant had refused the drinks
Speaker 1: and pastries at first, and Yosipuff freaks out and he
Speaker 1: leaves the room to find out what to do with
Speaker 1: his cohorts comes back and resputants eating him anyway and
Speaker 1: drinking him. So, yeah, but what happened with the poison?
Speaker 1: I mean, it didn't work. It didn't work, And so
Speaker 1: finally everyone's just their frustrated. They shoot him, really dead,
Speaker 1: only not dead. Yeah, they leave the room. Wait wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: I know it's gonna get really confusing. Let me let
Speaker 1: me lay this out. You're saying that he ate poison pastry.
Speaker 1: I think it was drank poison wine. There was no effect.
Speaker 1: And now he shot He shout, what, He's not dead,
Speaker 1: He's not dead. They come back to check on him
Speaker 1: and they lean over and like, I can see this
Speaker 1: happening in my mind, and it just gives me goose bumps.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden his eyes fly open and they're
Speaker 1: bright green, and so they're kind of panicked. And at
Speaker 1: this point recipe and makes a run for it, and
Speaker 1: so they catch him in the backyard. They shoot him
Speaker 1: a couple more times, and they started beating him with
Speaker 1: the club. Then they tie him in a sheet and
Speaker 1: throw his body in a river. And it gets worse
Speaker 1: because anyway voice is getting It gets the worse because
Speaker 1: when they find him, his right arm is extended, presumably
Speaker 1: he was making the line of the cross, but he
Speaker 1: was all tied up. So somehow he wiggled himself free
Speaker 1: and there was a hole in his forehead, so they
Speaker 1: thought maybe that's what killed him. But when they did
Speaker 1: the autopsy, they found that it wasn't that shot. They
Speaker 1: killed him was probably hypothermia from the cold water. And
Speaker 1: what's more, the medical saminar didn't find a single trace
Speaker 1: of poison and raspute in his body. Okay, so poisoned,
Speaker 1: shot in the back, shot again, shot in the head, clubbed, clubbed, drowned,
Speaker 1: and he dies of hypothermia. Yeah, it wasn't that wild,
Speaker 1: but again, like that's still kind of fishy, and the
Speaker 1: annals of history and um, it's it's just such a
Speaker 1: salacious story, and there were rumors that these men even
Speaker 1: castrated him before they passed him into the river. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and now you have a smile on your face. Castrating
Speaker 1: he Apparently, the the castrated part made its way around
Speaker 1: the world in underground auctions. That kind of thing finally
Speaker 1: came came to light in the eighties. A British heiress
Speaker 1: bought it, had it tested turned out to be a
Speaker 1: sea cucumber. So that may have not happened. Actually, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: who knows. But and then in late two thousands, I
Speaker 1: keep saying, and then and then there's more, there's more
Speaker 1: going on. Um. Apparently the British may have had something
Speaker 1: to do with Recipute and murder and the plot to
Speaker 1: kill him, because as things were heating up with Germany
Speaker 1: and the Allied forces, they knew that if Russia could
Speaker 1: somehow be distracted with Germany on one side of the country,
Speaker 1: Germany wouldn't be bothering the Allied forces as much. So
Speaker 1: they take out rescipue and to provoke controversy everywhere, and
Speaker 1: no one knows it's the British. But that didn't really
Speaker 1: pan out so much. People don't really believe those theories
Speaker 1: they have pretty much pended on this fateful night in December.
Speaker 1: But he did take it, did take all that to
Speaker 1: kill him? You're saying it did? It absolutely did. It
Speaker 1: was impressive, reciput and impressive. You can learn so much
Speaker 1: more about him. There's there's beardfools more to read about
Speaker 1: this man, and you can find out everything you need
Speaker 1: to know and how to rescipue and really die on
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com