Temporary posting:
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Spot the Promontory Contest
On Vibrant Victoria's facebook page, is a contest, Spot the Promontory http://vibrantvictoria.ca/spot-the-promontory-photo-contest/
Right. So I sent in these pictures. Hopefully I can win one of the prizes. Maybe one of you could put in a good word for me.
The Promontory is Victoria BC's tallest building at 21 storeys. Indeed, Victoria BC is an architect's paradise. The architectural treasures in this city are virtually without limit. There are beautiful old buildings in Victoria as well as exciting futuristic looking buildings, like the Promontory.
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"I should be so lucky to get a chance to .... have a Russian girlfriend." I wrote this a few years ago. It came true!
In light of the escalating tensions in Ukraine and Russia, I thought I would re release an article I wrote in 2002. Why not?
RASPUTIN - Chapter I- The starets from Pokrovskoe
Rasputin was a star. In fact, he was a starets. A starets is, I presume a figure of religious significance, in Russia.
He was born on January 10, 1869 in the small village of Pokrovskoya.
When he was young, he was very frail, but this was made up for, with the intensity of his glance. Rasputin was quite an arrestingly hypnotic figure and his youth was peppered with cuffs to the ear by his parents after he was caught with peasant girl after peasant girl.
According to Alex de Jonge, anyone who could subdue the ladies of St. Petersburg would have no trouble with taming wild horses, and Rasputin was a bit of a horse whisperer.
"Grisha" liked to get into fistfights not only with other youths, but as well, with his father!
On one occasion, Rasputin at the age of eight, was able to tell that a peasant in the room, was the one who had stolen a horse, the stolen horse, and this middle class peasant with some status who had been protesting the theft was actually found to be the culprit.
When Rasputin was aged 20, he married a Praskovia Dubrovina, and had 3 children, daughters Matriona, and Varia, and son Mitia.
Rasputin officiated as a priest at ceremonies where the evening rites would typically end with a religious orgy.
He would often conduct ceremonies around a small fire, in a forest, and the peasant would have as much as seven women clinging to him simultaneously, some unclothed, most nearly unclothed and they would be swaying, as the monk exhorted, "Abase yourself! Abase yourselves through sin! Try your flesh!"
and then the peasant would proceed with the most vulgar and horrific activities upon these women.
For Rasputin, sin was essential. He used to soothe, ravishingly, if not rapturously, "Don't think that I am polluting you, in fact, I am purifying you!"
At some time in his life, Rasputin happened upon one of those moments of epiphany; a 'Road to Damascus' kind of thing, of an extreme cosmic serendipity where one feels that they are embraced by the entire Universe. Resembling a Stendahl efect, but presumably much more insane, Rasputin must have felt a cathartic rapture, the kind where one is laughing and crying simultaneously for no reason for about a day and a half.
This happens to everyone, but Rasputin believed that the intensity of his experience was something he felt was accorded uniquely to him, and he was determined to capitalize on this strange sentiment.
Soon, he reinvented himself as a mystic muzhik from a semi-exotic Ukraineian town, certainly exotic to the far flung metropolitan vestiges of towns like Livadia, and Tsarkoye Selo.
Rasputin made his circuits around and eventually his religious whistle stops brought him to a famous monastery. Verkhoutorye.
He met the friendly, older, affable and bearded Father Hermogen and Rasputin was able to hit it off this priest immediately.
However, another priest father Iliodor was another story. Often it is the times with people that are disliked that make a more interesting story.
Father Iliodor was a priest who was serious, intense, and often bigotted. He was tolerated because he was a pro-Tsarist monarchist.
Father Iliodor was reportedly intolerant to women and sure, a man can form philosophies to guard himself from ever being pussy whipped, but long term intolerance to women is definitely not kosher.
Father Hermogen led Rasputin to the room where the supposedly powerful and to be feared Father Iliodor was saying a prayer.
Iliodor was prostrate, in the most supplicative, almost contemptible manner, with the soles of his feet grossly splayed and displayed, and
whatever Rasputin would think of Iliodor in the future, he would not forget this almost omenistic first impression of his own, Rasputin's superiority over the situation. Iliodor made no sign of noticing Hermogen and the novitate Rasputin, and Hermogen privately thought that at any other time, he would be admiring Iliodor's piety, but he was starting to wonder about Iliodor's sanity.
When Iliodor came to, rousing himself from his prayers, he wheeled and faced Rasputin and gave him a haughty stare and fired off a few angry words about being disturbed in prayer.
Rasputin calmly faced him and put a hand on his shoulder and said,
"You pray very well, my brother."
Ever since then, Iliodor was never able to get a hold on Rasputin.
In 1915, however an attempt was made on Rasputin's life. A prostitute, hired by Iliodor tried to stab Rasputin when he was staying in an apartment paid for by the Tsarist monarchy.
Chapter II - The Road to Tsarkoye Selo
Father Grigori Rasputin was installed at the monastery of Verkhoutorye as a starets, an unordained man of religious import. Verkhoutyre was a monastery of St. Simeon, Rasputin's favourite Saint, his alter ego, almost, it seemed.
Rasputin was forty-one years old, his death closing in fast, and he was still going on his St. Simeon styled wanderings from manastery to monastery.
St. Simeon was born in the beginning of the Seventeeth Century and in his life, he became a mendicant wanderer. After dying of an extreme bout with austerities, namely fasting, he was buried along the banks of the River Tura, the River that runs through Rasputin's home town of Pokrovskoe. Pilgrims,the first named, strangely, Grigori, began to dig up the dirt surrounding the coffin of St. Simeon and found themselves healed until the Russian Orthodox Church solemny interred his remains in a church. A statue of St. Simeon in a metallic frame, a gift that Rasputin had given the Tsar and Tsarina on their first meeting was found amongst the relics at the 'House of Special Purpose' in Ipatiev, Ekaterinburg.
In the Russian culture, there is a famous relic, the famous icon, the Black Virgin of Kazan. That was stolen from its setting place in 1904 by a crazed criminal. Ever since then, the fall of the Imperial Houses of Russia, World War I and Russias subsequent devastation is blamed by devout, superstitious Russians as a result of the theft of the Black Virgin. The icon is currently under lock and key in the United States.
According to Alex de Jonge, Russians loved to travel and the Russian wandering traveller is a dominant archetype in the National Psyche of the nineteenth century Russian. They would think nothing of making a pilgrimage to the Holy Lands of Jerusalem, and then visit far flung Far Eastern vestiges.
A Russian villager would think nothing of one day just chucking his belongings and throwing himself to the far flung wastelands where adventure beckons, promises, and never disappoints.
The traveller is apparently, (since I am not Russian, ) part of the Russian ethos. The word for traveller is strannik, one who seeks to escape toska, a word which means a wild inexplicable nostalgia for things Russian that comes out of nowhere.
That is similar to the Japanese sakidori, which is six weeks before a season, the ghost of a season.
Rasputin was unquestionably influenced, a product of his time and culture.
Rasputin and his friend, Father Feofan, of the monastery brought him to the radius of St. Petersburg and soon, imminently to the very gates of the Tsarist Palace itself.
Rasputin conducted his solemn prayers, but he began to resume the lifestyle that was instilled in him so firmly by the influence of the Khlysty tradition of Russian Orthodoxy (the Russian Orthodox church tolerated, but did not endorse the Khylst). The wild, unrestrained concupiscient days of the Pokrovskoe orgies had left Rasputin sexually acclimatized for the sexual environment of polite St. Petersburg high society.
Many have made the comparison between Rasputin and Tartuffe. But Tartuffe was European, and simple, while Rasputin was undoubtedly Asian, and rather more mysterious and dark.
According to Discovery Channel's 'The Last Tsar', famous Russian historian, Dominic Lieven said,
"When Tsarina married Tsar Nicholas II and first made her appearance on the Court scene, whe was a bit of a disappointment.
The ladies of ST. Petersburg high society were rather loose living, and this prim, coy daughter of an English rectory with her sewing circles was almost beneath their contempt."
Ironically while the socialites of St. Petersburg hated (murdered!) the Tsarina Alexandra for her reservedness, Rasputin was hated (murdered!) for the opposite reason. The military colonels were obviously jealous of Rasputin's prodigious talents with women.
Rasputin was making his rounds as a healer to the mystically inclined ladies of St. Petersburg. One woman was so enamoured of Rasputin's healing ability, that she even sewed his clipped fingernails onto her bodice! Yet it must be remembered that a lot of the ladies in St. Petersburg lived sheltered cloistered lives, opulent as they were, and it probably wouldn't take much for a well-travelled guy like Rasputin to influence them.
Rasputin was crashing at Father Feofan's house in St. Petersburg, using that as a flophouse when he had no other place to go. A relative of Father Feofan was a lady named Militsa Lokhtin. Lokhtina's husband was a military general very close to Imperial quarters.
Once, it was suggested to Rasputin by Militsa that the Tsarina was interested in meeting Holy personages and that maybe they should meet, not imagining that it would go any father than it did with apparently a host of other religious figures that was able to attain five minutes of the Tsarist's family's brief but splendidly ill-fated life.
Rasputin to the Emperor Nicholas II - Telegram
LITTLE FATHER TSAR
HAVING ARRIVED IN TOWN FROM SIBERIA, I WOULD LIKE TO BRING YOU AN ICON OF THE BLESSED ST. SIMON VERKHOTURSKY THE MIRACLE-WORKER WHO IS SO REVERED AMONG US; WITH FAITH THAT THE HOLY SAINT WILL PRESERVE YOU FOR ALL THE DAYS OF YOUR LIFE AND HELP YOU IN YOUR SERVICE FOR THE GOOD AND HAPPINESS OF YOUR DEVOTED SONS.
At this point, I must make a disclaimer. I can't speak for other authors but as an amateur anthropologist, I have to say that I am about to speak of a Royal House of another country. I will tread very carefully.
Rasputin entered the lit courtroom of a house near to the Imperial Palace, since at first, the Royal couple would not meet someone directly in the Palace.
Rasputin made no impression on the Tsar at first, and Rasputin knew that he would have to present a riddle to capture the Tsar's interest, but Militsa, present in the room that day, somehow say that Rasputin had made an immediate impression on the Tsarina.
Rasputin recalled, "They told me of their troubles. And that they should "Get their things together first." I told them to spit on their fears and rule. That the Russian peasant is the heart and soul of Russia and are your strongest allies."
Militsa later on, and for may times afterward, ominously, made Rasputin to promise never to visit the 'tsars' himself, unescorted, because it may mean the end.
Father Feofan agreed, "Rasputin is so young and green. In court there are many temptations, much envy and intrigue. And in time, these forces might crush Rasputin's spiritual purpose."
There would be other times that Rasputin was warned to not visit the 'tsars' alone, and after a fight with Militsa Lokhtin, Rasputin moved out of that house. Rasputin thought that Militsa was trying to manipulate him out of jealousy. but really, she cared for him, and in that mysterious intuitive way of women, was trying to warn him of something she profoundly sensed.
Dean Ko
Chapter III - Rasputin In the clutches of the Tsarist Kingdom
Love. It was with Grisha all his life. He loved the horses. He loved his wife and family. And as his wife mentioned, "Grisha has enough for everyone."
Perhaps it was even prophecies of some Russian Orthodox Priests that dated back to the end of the 18th Century that fortold of horrors preceeding the fall of the Dynasty at the start of the then next, the twentieth century.
The very first Romanov Tsar was Michael who wrested the Tsardom from Ivan the Terrible of the Rurik Dynasty. And the very last Tsar was named Michael as well. The first and last Michael, talk of your two headed Eagle again.
The Tsarist two headed eagle is a palindromic icon. 1991 is a palindromic (reads the same right to left, as left to right) number year, and in that year Communism fell in Russia.
Alexander II freed Russia from feudalism and granted landowning rights to peasants only to be killed by revolutionaries secretly hired by disenchanted former feudal lords.
At the start of Nicholas II's coronation, a free for all turned drastically horrible as 1300 people were trampled looking for free food, and a little drink served in porcelain commemorative cups.
It was talked about even in Odessa (one of Vancouver's sister cities) that the Tsar danced in a ballroom the night of the accident. A terribly insensitive, and politically unwise thing to do.
Just as horribly, a few weeks later a coronation ship sank as it left the moorings of the dock, in front of Tsar Nicholas II's eyes and out
of 300 people on that boat, there were few survivors.
Talk about your classic bad omens.
The Tsarina of Russia fared no better. She was sure that around her, in amongst the ladies of the court, there were jealous gossiping spies with unknown networks. And the Court of St. Petersburg thought that she was in line with the German [and British (and American)] Masonic Lodges to tear down the Russian Monarchy which was arguably stronger than the U.S. at the time, even thought the U. S. had just invented the lightbulb and the airplane.
As if this were not all bad enough, the heir to the Kingdom, Tsareivitch Alexei Romanov was born with hemophilia. Hemophilia, the cursed scourge visited upon the wealthy, as if some powerful cosmic force, although not quite God, yet powerful enough, seems to almost want to bring in an equalizing levelling force, out of sheer envy.
Today, hemophilia is treatable with a drug called Factor VIII, but in those days, it was quite unmanageable.
Every few generations, a Royal family will relent to accept a commoner into their ranks, just to breed some beauty into an otherwise [ugly] inbred family. However, this was not the case.
The German Tsarina, from the House of Hesse, was Queen Victoria of England's favourite niece, and of course being a product of this kind of genetic legacy, she gave birth to a son that was quite hemophiliac. This damned affliction which is a disorder of lacking the enzymes in the blood to form platelets, the essential organic precursor to scar tissue which stops blood haemorrhage.
In 1873, when she was less than one years old, she lost a three year old brother, "Frittie", after he fell out of a second storey window and died of hemophiliac haemorraging. Immediately following that event, there scarcely was perceptable a change in the usual somber Hessian household of the future Tsarina.
"Alix, you always play at being sorrowful," her cousin, Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig- Holstein remarked, "one day the Almighty will send you some crushing sorrows and then what will you do?"
Indeed, if the young Alexandra had been less perpetually dour, she might have appreciated the possible omenistic nature of this event.
It was unfortunate that she was not remembered for smiling more, for those who did see her smile, described her smile, that it was a smile which radiated her already beautiful face and did something unforgettable to her beautiful eyes. "Her smile was", in the language of the Russian peasant, "like the gift of a big silver dollar."
The presence of Rasputin visiting with the 'tsars' (Nicholas and Alexandra) in the house of a Ms. Ana Virubova was soon made an open secret amongst the Russian aristocracy, but however, the reason for Rasputin's presence could barely be guessed at. Rumors of orgies of Pokrovskoeian proportions, black masses, attempts at communicating with the German kaiser, and even seances were hinted at, but the real reason was of course, Alexei's hemophilia, which was at this point, a State Secret.
Rasputin was even to accompany the Royal Family at the rarified secluded villa of Tsarskoe Selo, and even on the family's annual holiday on the Baltic Sea aboard the Royal Yacht, the Standartt (one of a few Royal yacht, amongst others, including the Polar Star, and the Tamara).
There were, of course, from the start, some skeptics of Rasputin. Wrote Anastasia in her diary:
"Father Grigory is not a real priest. He is only a Khlyst!"
Chapter IV- The Royal Palace in the clutches of Rasputin
Once, in 1913, during a Te Deum mass which celebrated the Tercenteniary of the Romanov Dynasty, Rasputin appeared in the Kazan Cathedral and the Prime Minister at the time, to his angry astonishment, saw Rasputin walk in, wearing a fine silk crimson shirt, one of many dozens of shirts given to him as a gift from the Tsarina, a gold chain, a heavy wrought gold pectoral cross, patent leather boots, black pants, and a sable lined coat, and sat down on a seat reserved for one of the members of the Duma, the Russian Parliament.
"Get out at once, you vile heretic," the Prime Minister remarked.
"Oh Lord, forgive him such sin." Rasputin was heard to diffidently, yet amusedly answer as he left the building, riding away in a fine motorcar.
This story is going to have three lessons. The first lesson is, that, with confidence, you can do anything.
"You have the power to cloud men's minds if you use it."
-Stephen King
Rasputin reinvented himself, and he, being a nominally educated peasant could be enough of a scam artist to scam his way into an Imperial Household! And if he could do it, why not any of us?!
The next lesson, is never, ever fuck around with Royalty, High Politics, or politicians. That is like messing around with gun powder and nitroglycerin and wondering why one hasn't blown off one of their limbs yet, and feeling lucky for it. Rasputin preferred to live in the slum districts of St. Petersburg for it's uncomplicated simplicity, but he compromised the very reasons he chose to live in these Bohemian quarters every time he made a trip to the Royal Palace on some trivial pretense that did not directly involve healing the Tsareivitch.
And finally, the last lesson, is that Russia, the Russians are beautiful. All human cultures are beautiful if you are an amateur anthropologist like me. I saw this travel video made in 1984 about the Russian culture that contained this bullshit line, "We are making this video to show the Americans who it is exactly that they now, as we speak have 20,000 ICBMs aimed at us."
Well, Russia is over 4 times the size of the States, and Russia would have only needed 5,000 ICBMs to do the same job that 20,000 would have been required to do in Russia.
I cannot say that I would like, or dislike seeing a revival of the Tsarist monarchy in Russian. Perhaps it's time has truly come, and everything happens for a reason, so it is maybe best, that things are, the way they are now.
To speak of a Canadian connexion, since arriving in Canada in 1945 with her husband, Grand Duchess Olga (daughter of Tsar Alexander III, and sister of Tsar Nicholas II) lived on a farm near Toronto, where she died in 1960.
In the Kremlin, there is a carving above a doorway, of a lion with an apple in its mouth. That symbolizes the sentiment, not to repeat anything heard inside the Tsar's Palace. Rasputin it seems, may have overlooked this.
Chapter 6 - Firmly ensconced, in the "Holy of Holies"
Do not think that the life of Tsar Nicholas II and his family were tragic. There were in their lives arguably more good times than bad if you were to honestly stack them upon one another.
Tsar Nicholas II and his family enjoyed in their brief years more luxury than even you, my dear reader who may be quite wealthy in his own right wil see in seven lifetimes.
They had the rulership of a vast land stretching from the Caspian Sea to the Bering Straits.
They dined on solid gold plates.
They conted as amongst their bosom friends, the Monarchs of the Royal Houses around the World.
One of the Tsareivitch Alexei's many gifts from monarchs of distant lands was an elephant, from the King of Siam!
And the love that 'Nicky and Alexandra' had between them must be one of the greatest romances of the 20th Century. While so many families out there are so dysfunctional, a lot of people will never know love this intense.
Intense love in the midst of unimaginable luxury. What could be greater?
Those scruffy guards who tormented the Tsars in their last days could only guess at and wish for the Priveleged Luxuries that the Tsar was expert at.
Even if they had to spend a couple of months of house imprisonment in Ekaterinburg and then to suffer being shot which was more or less a quick death; -what the fuck, it was a good run!
Almost from the very day Rasputin made his presence felt at the Tsarist Palace compound, the Police were made aware of Rasputin. To gain an audience with the Tsar, one would have to go through Palace police, attendants, have their names signed in about twenty different registrars, then one would have to go through a security police force, phone calls and inquiries would be made and until then, one had to wait.
Initially, Rasputin met with the Royal couple at the house of Tsarina Alexandra's lady in waiting, and a mutual friend of Rasputin, Ms. Ana Virubova.
Soon, however, Rasputin was set up with a furnished luxury apartment in grotty, downtown St. Petersburg, paid for by the State.
The idea of an illustrated book is perhaps not that inconsistent with the ideals of Russian Orthodoxy. In the Russian Orthodox Church, there is a strict admonition against the reverence of idols, and graven images, etc. but there is nothing, as they see it, against establishing two dimensional icons, ie pictures and Russian Orthodox Churches although short on statues are large on pictures. And the pictures are intentionally stylized so that the shade of skin painted, a copper ruddy brown should be as far away as the actual skin tones on a person, giving the icons an outerwordly look.
I would like to have an Russian icon picture of St. Simeon! An illustated book, like a Russian icon follows the prederterminates of two-dimensionality.
Of course this realm was no stranger to the world of drugs.
At fashionable balls in St. Petersburg around the turn of the century, cocaine was snorted up a great many noses.
During the times of the Tsareivitch's illness, the Tsarina kept herself sedated through the liberal use of Veronal.
And there was an especially notable narcotic potentate, a Tibetan named Badmaev who until the appearance of Rasputin, was the Tsar's most trusted counsel regarding the precarious health of his son.
Originally from Tibet he was recognized early for his keen intellect and was spirited away to Russia where he became an Imperial retainer. Russia is a land that is influenced not only with the White Russian slavic, and Western European traditions, Russia also has imbued within the Black Russian traditions of the tartan khanate who was once very powerful in Russia.
Badmaev, a businessman in his own right, posessing a partnership in a trading company with the unlikely name of Badmaev & Ko (!). He was a shrewd political adviser, of the Tsar's most trusted.
However, it was his skill with dispensing medicines that he was most historically famous for. Jealous intriguers against Rasputin used to claim that Badmaev was secretly dispensing medicines to Rasputin to use for the Tsar, but actually, the medicines of Badmaev apparently did little to truly ward of the scourge of hemophilia that flowed through the young Tsareivitch Alexei's veins.
If Rasputin was not using Badmaev's "bad" drugs, that was certainly not to say that other members of the Imperial staff did not visit this Palace drug dealer. Indeed when the Tsar, his family and his entourage was taken away, Badmaev was included amongst the prisoners where he was sent to a Bolshevik prison in Siberia. Amazingly, while in prison, Badmaev's reputation proceeded him and soon, warders and prisoners alike began to turn to this small, bright, curious medicine man for advise and narcotic preparations.
For the young Tsareivitch's part, Badmaev routinely dispensed a mixture of hashish and henbane as a sedative.
Rasputin did not escape the notice or the envy of the more powerful Priests.
One day, Rasputin was invited to the Yuroslav Monastery home of Father Hermogen. He was invited by Iliodor, the Priest, who insisted that Hermogen wanted to see him. Incredulous, Rasputin agreed to go.
It was noted how it was strange, that the 'intuitive' saw nothing that day, just as he saw nothing the day he was led to his murder.
In the salon of the house was a civil servant, Ivan Alexandrovich, and a peasant named Mitya.
As Rasputin was hanging his coat, Iliodor exclaimed, "Look at this hat, Ivan Alexandrovich, it must have
have cost three hundred roubles. And his coat, this must have cost five thousand roubles!"
At this point, Hermogen sprang on Rasputin grabbing Rasputin's collar with his left hand and beating Rasputin with a heavy cross with the other. "You have brought dishonour to the Throne of Russia.
Stay away from the Empress, stop your fleshly sins with women!"
Rasputin was then forcibly brought to kneel before a huge stone cross, and as Ivan drew a sword, Rasputin was, in that posture made to promise to stay away from the Palace. This he did.
However, these promises made under an artificial type of pressure in the midst of the most protracted, almost contrived circumstances meant nothing to a shaman whose psychedelic basis of his relationship with God these narcotically uninititated peasants and civil servants knew nothing about.
Yet the record of this shaking event remained. And more ominous, was the date of this event, December 16. The date that Rasputin was to be murdered just a few years later.
The family Youssopov was one of the richest families in Russia. Counted amongst their ancestors were rulers of lands such as Egypt, Damascus, and Antioch. They had traditions dating back to when the tartar khans had dominion over the ancient land of Rus. Khanate factions such as in Crimea, Kazan, and Nogay were headed by warrior chieftains. The Nogay khan Warrior Chieftain, Khan Yusuf gave the family it's name.
Khan Yusuf's daughter Sembeki, had the curious history of marrying a succession of husbands in which the current husband would be killed by the next husband. In order to protect the sons from these horribly disastrous, and positively insane, homicidal marriages, Khan Yusuf sent his grandsons to Russia where they were graciously received by Ivan the Terrible and given favourable treatment, lands, etc.
This was the Seventeenth Century, and the family converted to Chistianity and changed their name to the Russian form, Youssopov.
It was not falling out of poetic justice that Rasputin was killed in the Youssopov Palace. One of the most famous murderers of Rasputin was a homosexual named Felix Youssopov and he was every bit as eccentric as his family name. In the Youssopov Palace in Russia, there are to this day, rooms found that have not appeared on any plans, and some of these rooms have famously, held boxes of jewels!
A famous ancestor lived in a hidden room in that palace, because next to that secret room was an even more secret smaller room where rumour has it that she had a coffin with a male decaying body inside. Far out! What a perfect setting for the bizarre murder of a surreal mystic!
Ironically, one of the people who shot at Rasputin was himself, a draft dodger who avoided military service. However, the person who really shot Rasputin was an athletic officer who was known as Dimitri.
According to some recently acquired archival papers, what actually happened the night of the murder was different from how it was reported.
The wine was poisoned, but the solution was too weak, since they were in a hurry.
Contrasting historical reports, women were present that evening, in fact, women were essential because Rasputin who 'heard the sound of voices' asked whose voices those were upstairs.
The cakes contained enough poison to kill an ox, surely enough, but the fact is, that the cakes were not touched.
Rasputin used to devote himself to austerities. On certain periods of religious empowerment, he would refuse meat, except fish, and he would refuse sweets.
Indeed, Rasputin avoided meat claiming that "meat blackens man, while fish lightens them." Grishka wold eat just like the apostles even breaking bread with his hands refusing to slice it. He claimed that if one were to avoid meat and live instead on fish, then one would acquire an imperceptible halo.
Rasputin famously, on a number of occasions would categorically refuse sweets, which, (as his daughter would write about,) he referred to as "scum". When Rasputin saw a bowl of sweets in the middle of a table, he would say, "I refuse to eat that scum." How aptly put. Scum indeed!
Maria Rasputin, his daughter would later write, in a very pleasant old world kind of language,
"Cyanide cakes, poisoned wine, music to drown out the sounds... a refinement in horror worthy of the Borgias."
Indeed she as well cites Rasputin was killed because of the lowly social position of his peasant background, although Siberian peasants were outside of the range of the serfs as then typically defined.
History would make infamous the events that befell the Imperial Family after the death of Rasputin. The Romanov daughters were given the option of exile, being told in no uncertain terms that after the four day train ride out of Tsarskoe Selo, that if they were to accompany their parents on the boat ride to Tobolsk, that they would not be guaranteed their safety, if indeed their lives. The wife of the Imperial Physician, Dr. Botkin, discreetly chose not to accompany her husband, but incredibly, the Romanov daughters would not hear of not accompanying their parents!!!
The boat ride wound its way up the river Tuva to the Siberian principality of Tobolsk. On its way there, the lazy steam engine chugged its way dreamily past the town of Pokrovskoe, Father Grigory's home town. At the sighting of that town, all of the Royals were called on deck, and from the countless descriptions that Rasputin had given them, they knew the town already. They could see Rasputin's father's house, and Rasputin's house, noting small details. How odd, they thought that providence would bring them this way to the home town of Father Gregory, as some form of divine reassurance...
After a minute, they looked behind them. The town had already disappeared behind a bend in the river.
They were on their way to Destiny.
bibliography:
1. Rasputin - Fulop Miller. 1927 Grethlein & Co. Leipzig. Viking Press USA
2. TSAR The Lost World of Nicholas and Alexandra - Peter Kurth. 1995 The Madison Press Ltd.
3. The Rasputin File - Edvard Radzinsky
2000 Random House, New York
4. The Life and Times of Gregorii Rasputin - Alex de Jonge 1982 Carroll and Graf Publishing Ltd.
5. A LIFELONG PASSION Nicholas and Alexandra. Their Own Story.
- Andrei Maylunas, Sergei Mironenko
1996 Weidenfeld & Nicolson
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