S4 – 3: Made Manifest

At home, workers strikes in protests were rising up around the empire, and that included right there in the capital. Some among the aristocracy placed that purely at Nicholas's feet. For instance, even his cousins said that the turmoil rolling over the country was all about his lack of will. Maybe he was daydreaming about the days under the rule of the last Czar. Maybe he was daydreaming about the throne himself, but either way it would have been foolish.

He must have forgotten the way Nicholas's grandfather died shredded by a bomb in the streets of the capital in the seventh attempt on his life. But let's be honest, no stronger commitment to authoritarian rule by any single Romanov could have stemmed the rising tide. Revolution was a many headed hydra. It just kept coming back. Under Nicholas. Unrest was not the exception either. Throughout nineteen o four, factory workers across the Imperial capital went on strike, and they

knew they had the emperor by his epaulets. After all, Russia was at war with Japan for the Pacific coast of the continent, and Nicholas's empire needed those factories open to supply the army. Nicholas did give the order to crack down on the strikes, targeting and killing revolutionary dissenters, but nothing silenced the protests. In the first months of nineteen o five, things got out of hand. Nicholas got word more than one hundred thousand workers were marching on

the Winter Palace, led by a socialist priest. It was January eight, and the news put the Romanovs in a panic. The infantry was called In the next day, Sunday, January nine, the column of marching protesters arrived. What did they want? They made it clear, A good minimum wage, an eight hour work day, a constitution, and an elected government. Some of the government ministers even felt that these were reasonable requests.

They asked Nicholas to consider, but he silenced them. To the czar, all of this was not a sign that the empire needed reform. No, to Nicholas and the rest of the Romanovs, it was a sign that Russia needed a return to an even more pure autocracy. He told them that anything less would be an affront to God. When the crowd arrived at the palace, the infantry opened fire and the cavalry charged. It was a massacre. Over one thousand of the marchers were killed, and two thousand

were left screaming in the street. Nicholas wrote in his diary, how sad to the rest of Russia. Though it was more than sad, it was an outrage. They called it their own bloody Sunday, and they rallied to the call. Riots and bombs exploded across the empire. Over one thousand government officials were killed. Grand Duke Sergey, who had married Alexandra's older sister, was hit by a blast that scattered his carriage over the roofs of the surrounding buildings. Was

it enough to challenge the power of the czars. Nicholas's sister continued to see the Romanov way It was, she said, a lack of authority. But by August there was no escaping the truth. St. Petersburg was shut down, schools were closed, everyone was on strike. Nothing was being delivered over the roads, not even food, and Moscow too was at a standstill, except when it was thronged by marchers in the streets and on the rooftops, waving red flags and calling for

the end of the imperial way of life. What choice did Nicholas have. In the end, he decided to insult God and save his throne. But even he couldn't quite admit it. He decided that the reforms were his idea, and he commanded that for the first time, a parliament should be established for Russia. If the Czar said it, then maybe it was God's will. After all. Nicholas may have needed the charade that it was all still under his control. But the winds of change were blowing in Russia.

It was for a time the end of autocracy. This is unobscured, I'm Aaron Manky. It was a time of massive change. Even before the Revolution of nineteen o five. The turmoil that came with the modern age was making themselves known across the Romanov's empire. Yes, it was a new era of industry and transportation, and everything from money to music to the news media was taking on new

and unfamiliar forms. As the people pushed for the government itself to change, Nicholas and Alexandra struggled to imagine that something new was even possible. Here's historian Douglas Smith to tell us more. There's been three hundred years of Romanov monarchy. The later decades of the dynasty under Nicholas the second our period of dynamic change. The economy is taking off, it's growing. You get an increasingly sizeable um urban middle class,

you get the development of of an urban proletariat. So on one hand, what you have is this sort of dynamism and and change going on in the economy and in society at large. And then you have this static political system that goes back to the early seventeenth century of you know, one ruler with all supreme power apparently handed down from God. And so there's this growing tension between a dynamic and developing society and a rigid political

system that doesn't reflect the change. It was a time in Russian life when the people living in the cities and working in the factories were seeing something new in their lives, new possibilities, a different kind of future. But Nicholas and Alexandra still believe they were living in a time when the blood of thousands spilled in the streets was less insulting to God than the emperor letting go of absolute power. In some ways, it almost feels like

a failure of imagination. Nicholas simply could not see things any other way. Whatever it was that kept him from seeing things from the view on the street, The truth was that the only way he could think about the Russian Empire was with himself and his family at the center, as if the only opinion that mattered was his own. The people, what did they know? They weren't the czar.

But that tenant of faith turned out to be a major blind spot for the Czar, as Dr Joshua Sanborn can't explain for him to recognize that politics and Russia

was modern politics. That you do have things like coalescing public opinion, that you do have pressure groups, that you do have constituencies rather than a passive population that you run by divine right, is fundamentally something that if you were to accept that it would mean, he would have to accept that he's not a legitimate Sorry, he's not a legitimate leader, and he's he's unwilling to do that.

In the end, though, Nicholas did sign on two reforms, not because he thought they were right, but because the ministers around the Romanovs convinced them that it was the only real way to preserve the monarchy. The document he signed putting new changes into law sound is like the first principles of the modern states we live in today. A parliament with a house of representatives called the Duma,

with a prime minister to lead them. Civil rights and voting rights granted to the people of the empire, and so much more, not least of all, freedom of the press for the first time in Russian history. The changes were greeted with massive celebration, and the reforms came to be known as the October Manifesto. But not for Nicholas and Alexandra. They hung their heads in shame. Nicholas would never stop seeing his choice to give into these changes

as anything other than a blemish on Russian life. He would spend the rest of his time as are trying to claw back these changes. But as much as signing the October Manifesto brought changes to Russian government. It was really just the culmination of a long process of change.

And as everywhere else in Russian life, the changes that boiled up in the October Manifesto had been bubbling for a long time somewhere you might not expect the Russian Church, you see, by nineteen o five Russian religion had been experiencing its own kind of new age for quite a while, the tight geist, if you will, of of fantasy ecla. Russia,

like other parts in Europe. Actually, to be honest, at the time, there was very much a fascination with dark forces at play, with a sense that they were on the verge of some sort of apocalyptic change, that it was in some ways the end of times. And there was a profound fascination with mysticism, spiritualism, the occult seances and table turning and and all sorts of these sorts of things. Hypnotism was was quite popular at the time.

Most of elite aristocratic society and Russia at the time was fascinated with very spiritualist leaders, with gurus and what have you. And there was this desire to seek alternate ways of connecting with with forms of re pality that traditional religion and the Church and science were unable to explain to people who were who were seeking answers to to sort of these life's questions that seemed to have

this pressing urgency. Right around nineteen hundred, the Aristocrats experimenting with spiritualism, like Romanov's friends Stana on Melitsa, were far from the only people leaving the Orthodox Church to look for answers elsewhere in Siberia. As we know, the old

Believers were practicing their own form of religion. They claimed to be the real Orthodox Church, But there were also Christians who were giving up an Orthodoxy altogether, like the number of Baptists who were growing their churches on the European side of the Russian Empire. So when it came time to rewrite the laws of nineteen o five, the October Manifesto also included new terms of religious freedom for Russians. The Orthodox Church, governed by the Czar was no longer

the only religion allowed in Russia. Of course, the leaders who had climbed their way to power through their belief that the Orthodox Church was the only true way to heaven were none too pleased with this development. It led many to believe that they had taken for granted the deep ties between St. Petersburg's cathedral and the Imperial throne, and they had an ally in the throne's current occupant.

Having just taken the devil's bargain for peace at all costs and sold their birthright for a massive porridge, Nicholas and Alexandra would now be looking for a way to reconnect with the faith they saw slipping away, and there were plenty of people with plenty of answers waiting in the wings. It was another meeting over tea, as usual Melissa hosted at her villa. The days were getting darker and the Romanovs were deeply in need of a close

conversation with even closer friends. No lingering ill will around court from the scandal of Mr Philip had kept Alexandra away from her friends, no matter what names the other members of the Romanov family might call them. So when Melissa's imitations went out, the friends flocked to her door. Stana and Nikolasha came, of course. Nicholas and Alexandra arrived at four o'clock, but it wasn't just their small circle. No When Nicholas and Alexandra arrived, they found someone new

waiting for them. There. Nicholas would make a brief note in his diary, We made the acquaintance of a man of God, he wrote, Grigory from the Tobolsk region. In fact, their visit for Tea stretched into the night. It would be seven o'clock with a darkness falling around them before the royal couple broke away from conversation with their friends and with Grigory Rasputin, and they made their way back to the palace with the satisfaction of a surprising new encounter.

It was a short journey, and I think it's worth noting just how high a climb that was. For Grigory, the simple peasant, had just made the acquaintance of the rulers of the mightiest empire on earth. For Nicholas and Alexandra, it came at us the moment they felt most in need of a friend. That diary entry by Nicholas remarked the patches of ice were beginning to freeze in the canal.

He might as well have written that ice was beginning to freeze his soul only a few weeks before, when he gave into the calls for political reform in the Empire and signed the October Manifesto. He had betrayed his deepest convictions about his place in the world, the beliefs which gave meaning and direction to his life. But it wasn't just Nicholas who would have been devastated by that. In the years that they had been married, Alexandra bought

into Nicholas's view. She never wavered. They believed that they were meant to rule Russia by divine right. Here's historian Helen Rappaport to tell us more. In Russia, autocracy and orthodoxy went absolutely hand in hand, that that they were the cornerstone. I mean, to be czar, you had to

be Orthodox. And they had this absolutely implacable belief that in the divine right of the czar, pretty much like the divine right of kings even in Britain back in the seventeenth century, there was a god given role that Nicholas had this duty to perform, and he had to perform it in the absolute traditional manner in which it

had been handed down to him. And Alexandra very much believed in this idea that they were the little mother and little father of the nation, the martush Bartuska, as they were called by the peasantry, and that the peasantry looked up to them unquestionably with unquestionable loyalty and devotion. And she believed that stubbornly, right to the very end, that the people really loved them. Recent events had not

shaken their belief for Alexandra. But if Nicholas believed that he had insulted God by giving into the revolutionaries and reformers, Alexander at my To thought the same. So when Grigory met the Romanovs in the company of their closest friends, we can see what would make him attractive to them. He was a Siberian priest, but one who seemed to silence any doubt about what the peasants really wanted. After all, he wasn't trying to wrest power away from the throne.

He was celebrating their power. Plus, he came with a sheaf of recommendations in hand from the people Nicholas and Alexandra trusted the most, the authorities in the Russian Orthodox Church. Here's more from Douglas Smith. Well, what helps sort of open the doors of the capital for resputing, chiefly are his contacts with higher ups within the Russian Orthodox Church.

Through his years as a holy pilgrim, he had come to impress a great many priests and then bishops and archbishops within the church as a true man of God, as a true holy man who has risen up from the depths of Russian peasant society. And he literally league gets letters of recommendation from priests and bishops as churches,

at churches and monasteries as he goes along. And it's with these letters of recommendation that he shows up in St. Petersburg, probably some time around nineteen o four and is immediately accepted in at the Alexander Dievsky Monastery, one of the great seats of Russian holiness within the Russian Orthodox Church. And originally, these these church members are amazed at this figure. They have never seen someone quite like him, the energy, the fervor with which he praised the and preaches the

word of God. He's referred to as a as a burning torch, as a taught string. They sensed this sort of electrical charge that comes from him as he speaks the word of God. And then through his connections in the church, he then is introduced into aristocratic society. And what made Grigory all the more trustworthy to Nicholas and Alexandra was that this has Wanderer had been introduced to Stana and Melitza by their personal confessor, a powerful Russian

churchman named Theo Fan. He was a brilliant and intense monk who had recently taken over the training school for priests in St. Petersburg. That made him the our command right, a figure of tremendous authority governing an important monastery in the empire's capital, And like so many others in his day, theo Fan was wondering what the Orthodox Church needed to do to rekindle its faith. They thought maybe they needed

the burning torch of men like Rasputant. While he served as confessor to occultist aristocrats like Meliza, theo Fan was also doing some searching of his own. Neither among the dead bureaucracy of the church authorities, nor in the flickering shadows of European gas lights. No, theo Fan was looking for holy men with Russian dirt under their fingernails, and when he met Rasputin, he knew he had found his man. So it was theo Fan who opened the doors to St.

Petersburg's salons for Grigory Rasputin. The two men would go together to those swirling symphonies of gossip and inquiry. Aristocrats in St. Petersburg were skeptical and cynical about the Church, but the deep interest in superstition and the spiritual hunger behind so many eyes meant that they were ready to sample what Resputant was serving. The same was true, of course,

with the Romanovs themselves. Four days after meeting Grigory, Nicholas got a letter from this wandering preacher, and it drove home that he was just the flavor of religious patriot they had been looking for. He called Nicholas a great emperor and the autocrat of all Russia. And his note is full of praise, we might even call it flattery for the crown. It was also full of reassuring comments that the Romanovs were the masters, and the peasants like

Rasputin merely their subjects. Don't worry too much about the strange turn at the times had taken. He told them they were doing their best, and sooner God would come to their aid. Here's more from Douglas Smith. What's interesting is from the very beginning of their relationship. He offers Nicholas political advice and says, don't give up the throne, don't give up power, maintain the dynasty, maintain the autocracy.

And this is just the sort of message that Nick Nicholas is looking for, and especially to hear it not from some minister or general, but to hear it from a peasant from Siberia, from a man of God. It says, almost as if he becomes a mouthpiece for all of peasant Russia. When Nicholas and Alexander sit down with Rispute and they feel they are hearing the voice of the peasant masses. It was exactly the kind of thing Nicholas

and Alexandra wanted. If they feared that they had disappointed God by giving up their unquestioned rule over the empire, they now had this holy man, this rough and tumble traveler with piercing eyes and prophetic words, to tell them that all was not lost. In fact, they had come through it all, war, with Japan, revolution across the capital, a new representative government, and all the changes of the modern age. They had come through it all, and they

would be okay. God would still help them Resputant didn't stay in the capital. Soon enough he was on his way again, back on the road, but he had certainly made an impression. In fact, Nicholas and Alexander were so pleased that, even with Resputant gone, the people who had brought the peasant into their presence were in royal favor.

Take for example, the ar command right theo Fan. Two weeks after Nicholas and Alexandra met with Resputant, they sent a request of theo Fan come to the Royal Palace to discuss an important matter, and of course he did as he was told. We can only imagine his anticipation as he neared the palace. He had worked his way into Stana and Melitz's trust, he had learned their interests, He had even brought them exciting new teachers like Grigor a Resputin, and it seemed like they had been pleased.

He must have felt like everything was going according to plan. All the more so when he arrived at the palace. When he met with Nicholas, the Czar honored him with a new request. Do for Nicholas and Alexandra what he did for Stanna and melitza serve at the throne as the Romanov's personal confessor for Fia Fan. Knowing Grigory Rasputin was starting to pay off, he was decked out in finery. It was strange for a poor wanderer, but it seems

the contradiction didn't hold Grigory back. He arrived home in Pokrovsko with stories to tell, man to show. In fact, the first impressions he made were the most flamboyant. His wealthy followers and admirers and big cities like Kazan and St. Petersburg had showered him with new clothing. Now that he was back in his hometown, he wore them proudly. If he had been known as something of a troublemaker before, and maybe even a old life, well he should show

them how high he had climbed the Imperial letter. No one would look down on him now. And then there was the money. He came back home with a lot of it, and he started throwing it around. First, it was time for a new house for himself and his family. Right on Main Street was a good spot, right across from the place where carriages would stop and resupply, exchange horses, and give travelers a chance to gossip. Not that you

need outsiders for that. Folks at home were more than capable of whispering down the lane all on their own, and whisper they did. The news went around that Gregory had gotten all his money from some of the most powerful people in Russia, for instance the Black Crows, those sisters who were close to the Czar, or maybe even

the Czar himself. Whatever the case, Gregory made no effort to hide the triumphant parade of his family and belongings into the large two story house, with its expanse of property, bath barn, flower boxes, and elaborately pain did window frames inside, he made it his own. His parents, his wife, and his children moved into rooms on the first floor, though one of the rooms was reserved for devotion and filled with icons. The Kazan Mother of God stood out from

the rest. The second level Resputant set aside for guests and for Grigory's work. His desk, his comfortable chairs, his piano. They all seemed better suited to the cities he had left than to the home he was moving into, and new decor moved in as well, including photos of Resputant posing with the people he had met. Priests, students and aristocrats, and no one would miss the portrait of Rasputin with

the Czar and Czarina of Russia. Even with Resputant at home, more and more of these luxuries came into town, with each new baggage train passing through packages from the capital, gifts of money. All of them came to him from St. Petersburg's wealthy and well known set in, seeing that resputants claims of friends and high places was more than just bluster. And of course there was a train of visitors too. Once they knew who Grigory Resputin was and where he

could be found, they arrived hot on his trail. No wonder Resputin wanted all of this expensive furniture. He wanted to receive them in style. Priests and friends of theo fan were first in line. People around Prokovsko remembered that these guests that most of their time closed up in the new Resputant house. The colorful windows didn't keep the neighbors from hearing the sound of resputants piano jangling along

as the household and their guests sang hymns. And when these visitors did speak to someone local, what did they have to say about Grigory's life in the capital, well, it only added to his prestige. He was known in St. Petersburg as a miracle worker. We can only imagine the sideways glances this may have provoked among the people who knew his humble origins. Not that Resputin made no effort,

though far from it. In fact, one of the things he always said was that his original idea for going to St. Petersburg was to raise money to build a new church in Pekrosco. While no new church was in evidence. As the years went by, some of the money Grigory received did reach the local priests, and it was no small potatoes. In fact, he handed over five thousand roubles to them, and if that wasn't enough, he said, this

was a gift from the Czar himself. We can almost see the glint in his eye saying to the local priests, never say I didn't do you any favors. But of course this wasn't the only glance the locals would see in Grigory's face. Everyone could see that while he may have gone to the capitol and worked some miracles, there was still a bit of the scamp in Grigory's scamper home, and that was nowhere more clear than in the group of followers that Grigory called his little ladies. Olga was

a respectable woman. She was beautiful too, The daughter of a Kazan nobleman, she had married an engineer and made her move to the capital city, where she had her children and made friends among her husband's connections. So it was in St. Petersburg that her trouble started. Because Olga had an illness that refused to go away, something with her digestion that caused her enormous pain, not to mention personal embarrassment, especially when she couldn't keep it from her friends.

Once they knew, though, they started to make suggestions, and one of them, a well connected priest, had a slightly unusual idea. Not a doctor, what use had they been so far, but something else. The priest had recently been in the company of the archimandright theo Fan, and theo Fan had introduced him to someone who might help, a wandering preacher named Resputin. With the priest's recommendation, Olga decided

to give the faith healer try. The thing is, when Resputant prayed over her, she felt the illness vanish, the pain disappeared. She was free. After an encounter like that, maybe we can understand why Olga would become a resputant fonetic. She invited Grigory to stay with her family in St. Petersburg, and in time her devotion to him would reach the level of the bizarre, and she was just the first

of his little ladies. Soon she was joined by a widow who carried a crushing guilt for her husband's death. Her meeting with Resputant helped her lift the blame she had placed on herself. She fell in line behind Olga or Take the nurse who had worked through the violence of the Russia Japanese War. She was intrigued by the stories and asked Olga to introduce her to Resputin. When she met him, she fell head over heels. He has

such a simple way with people, she said. He is so full of goodness and pure love for others, unlike anything I have encountered. After witnessing the violence of war, Grigory's teaching on love and suffering must have offered enormous relief. Of course, others followed, women who had tried and discarded hypnotism, women who had given up on their own parade of doctors and medications, women who had given up on the power of the church or the love in their marriage.

When they finally came face to face with Grigory Resputin, they saw something different in his eyes, his stare. They could see something new looking back at them. But it's not like Resputin was the only one gathering a tight knit following around him, of course. After all, it was his own pilgrimage to the hermit Macquarie that got Grigory

started on the life of a religious wanderer. And in those days when Resputin started to get religious visitors of his own, well, he was far from the most well known. For example, take Father John of Cronstone, a deeply charismatic and widely popular preacher in the late eighteen hundreds. He became such a popular figure in the Russian church that some historians today have even called him the first modern

religious celebrity in Russia. Here's Dr Heather Coleman to say more, Father John of Cronstadt, who was truly the Billy Graham of late Imperial Russia. He was a priest who had a church outside of Petersburg and craunched At, where he emphasized a kind of a charismatic, participatory form of Orthodoxy. It had quite a sort of mystical side. People would travel to his parish, they would write to him, people

would carry posters and cards about him. He was he was a huge religious figure, and he was within the church. But then he had groups of followers who who sort of went beyond and sort of idealized him and turn him into a sort of a mystical figure that they

admire in and of himself. Like all other churches, the Orthodox Church had trouble keeping up with the growth of of working class suburbs in cities, and and so sometimes you know, there's a lack of available ability of a church right there in the neighborhood, and so people make their own fun for crounch dots followers. That fun meant the things you might expect, mystical healings and other miraculous powers that made it clear that he had the ear

of God himself. And like Resputent, he was known for having a close following of religious women. Some writers called them Janites, the most intense and fanatical of them, but they were intense for a reason. They thought Father John was a reincarnation of Jesus Christ himself. If the stories about them can be believed. They were known for throwing their bodies on Father John, even biting him until he bled. It gives a new meaning to the words rabid fan.

And when he died, several of the women who followed him broke into his apartment and rated it for his personal items, relics of his holiness and healing powers to take home. Not that Father John encouraged any of this. It said he refused to give communion to the women who attacked him out of zeal but there's no question that he put some care into cultivating his reputation, and his followers came from all parts of Russian life, including

the highest echelons of Russian society. In fact, in the days when Nicholas's father had fallen ill, Father John had been summoned in the hopes that his prayers would bring the czar's health back. The prayers, of course, were unanswered, and the weight of ruling Russia fell to Nicholas and his new wife. But when the Czar died, it was Father John and not any other official in the Orthodox

Church who administered the last rites. So when the stories of Grigory rasputants growing legion of followers, and his close ties to the Imperial court started to grow, no one really had to look far from some point of comparison. Maybe it was a little odd, sure, but people do odd things all the time. Just look at Father John. In the life of a preacher, being a royal favorite could mean a lot. Soon, though, the stories being whispered in St. Petersburg about Rasputin didn't be so easily dismissed

through glib comparisons to other preachers. Had Father John's followers ever sewn his fingernail clippings into their clothes as if they were holy relics? Because they were doing that for Grigory, Where was the religious wanderer who would criss cross Russia on foot begging for food. Well, these days he was coming up the river on an expensive luxury steamer, clinking glasses with the wealthy. But if Grigory liked it that way, well, he was about to find himself navigating some rough waters.

The bishop was going on the offensive. He was in Tobolsk, the city closest to Rasputin's home, village, and he had received letters from a number of women who had visited this religious wanderer in Pokrovsko, and what they reported had the bishop deeply disturbed. One letter was from a woman who said that she had first met Gregory respued In in nineteen o three. It was her sister's funeral, and while she was grieving the loss, Grigory had approached to her.

He said he was looking for some young women to go with him to the bath house. What they were going to do there, well, he said they were going to learn to temper their passions. He assured her that he meant nothing immoral by this, but that smelled of protesting too much. She declined, but looked into it, and what she found took her from skeptical to dead set

against him. Apparently, Rasputin was traveling from village to village, warning that some traveling holy men were really seducers in disguise. But he offered a solution. He could help the town's young women defend themselves from those hungry wolves by desensitizing themselves to the sin of lust. All they had to do, he said, was come with him to the bath house and subject themselves to him. After they felt his kisses, their passions would be conquered. They would be free of

sin and safe from predators. She took her daughter and followed Resputant to Pokrovsko. There they found him surrounded by his little ladies, the high society women from St. Petersburg, who pampered him and showered him with hugs and kisses, all in front of his wife and family. She wrote it all down and sent it off to the bishop.

Another letter said even more that these women following Resputant had taken to wearing black dresses with white head scarves, that they had taken to calling him father Grigory, and that he himself was now spending his days dressed in a black cassock with a large cross hanging down on his chest. In other words, he was dressed like an Orthodox priest, and he was being treated like one too.

To be a religious pilgrim was no bad thing, but to pose as a priest and take advantage of hurting women, this was a bishop who wouldn't brook that kind of behavior. He gave the word, and soon enough church investigators were swarming Pokrovsko. Of course, their first port of call was the local priest, the real one. I mean, we don't know where they met him, perhaps in his newly renovated church, but whatever the case, he prized them with a good report.

Gregory resputant. Oh, yes, he was a good man. His family came to church just as they were expected. They were good Orthodox people. In fact, if anything, he was more devoted to prayer than anyone else in town. That's when the team arrived at Grigory's house. His welcome wasn't so warm, though, not that he was aggressive. In fact, if anything, he seemed terrified when he opened the door and brought them inside the church, investigators separated and swept

the house. They were looking for signs of occult activity or heresy. In fact, they were most worried that Gregory's group of followers was part of an insidious cult that had broken away from groups of the Siberian Old Believers and had gone even further from the Orthodox Faith. Here's

Dr Coleman again. This was a Russian religious movement that really began life in the late seventeenth century as a branch of the Old Belief, and like certain other branches of the Old Belief, the Pistoian demanded celibacy from its adherents, and they didn't have different doctrines or any sort of

systematic doctrine. These were groups of believers who met together regularly at night for long prayer meetings, where they would sing spiritual verses and church hymns and recite the Jesus Prayer, a central Orthodox prayer that is is recited in a

meditative format. Lord Jesus, Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner, and you recite it over and over, and these meetings would The goal was to have the Holy Spirit descend on certain of the members these leaders, who were known as Christ's or as Mothers of God, and then and then they would dance and they would prophesy. Here's the thing, though, anyone who went looking for Christie

was left chasing shadows. Very early, their enemies started calling them not Christie or christ but Clisti, which means whip or flagolence um. They were accused of sexual immorality, of having orgies. The American historian Eugene Clay has shown that there is in fact no evidence of this, and that you know already in the early eighteenth century the term Clistie really doesn't have any any meaning. It's it's it's applied to a whole range of unrelated sort of charismatic

religious movements. Um. There's no religious group that claims to be clisti. Um. There are certainly some evidence of networks of these charismatic groups, but they saw themselves as being within Orthodoxy. So maybe it's no surprise that when the bishop's men followed the suspicion that Restputan and his followers were Clysti, they came up empty. They sat down with Restputant and grilled him about his practices, but everything he stammered out matched up with the word of the local priest.

Yes he was a sincere Orthodox believer. He had taken many pilgrimages and now accepted pilgrims in his own right. He had given up meats and alcohol. And yes he was sometimes a sinner, but who wasn't. He was always working to change his guilty ways. But when they turned their eyes on the women Gregory's most devoted followers, they got only the slimmest of testimonies. When they pressed for these salacious details, the most they got was that, of course,

Grigory kissed them. There was the natural way of greeting, and it was done in a pure and spiritual way. There was nothing strange about it. The investigators went back to the bishop into Bolsk and put their heads together. What could they do? The country now permitted religious freedom. If this wanderer was starting his own group of spiritual meditation, of sacred kisses or anything else, it was hardly something

they could crack down on. They had their doubts about Grigory's motives, but what could they do if they had concerns to pass along. There's only one place they could have gone up the ladder to St. Petersburg. That's where our command right, theo Fan and the Czar waited to hear any concerns. We don't know if those questions were ever raised, but if they were, they were met only with silence. But in Grigory's life this was something of an omen because this was far from the last time

that concerning letters would put rasputin in hot water. He boarded a train for the capitol. It was the spring of nineteen oh seven, and Grigory knew that he was still welcome in St. Petersburg. The caravan of devotees who had visited him in Pokrovsko kept his flame alive when they returned home to their cities and their social circles

in the East. The stories of his miraculous healings and the relief he brought to the women in his entourage meant that no one had forgotten about Resputin, even if they hadn't caught wind of the concern among the priests and bishops in Siberia. So he was finally heading back for another rendezvous with a pee he was most eager to be friend. He was headed back to the palace

of the Czar, and not too soon. After all. Their deepest concern, and the thing that troubled them more than any of the turmoil agitating the Empire, was the lifelong worry over the health of the little boy in their own house, and the fact that Alexei's hemophilia meant his life was constantly on a knife's edge was only too plain to Alexandra. You see, Alexei was three at the time, and one day that spring, when he was playing outside in the garden at the family's royal home, he took

a fall. Any fall was dangerous to the boy, but this was a bad one. He started to bleed internally, and the pain was excruciating. His aunt, who was staying at the palace, remembered the scene. The poor child lay in such pain, she wrote, with dark patches under his eyes and his little body all distorted. The bleeding, you see, was in his leg, and she recalled that the swelling was horrible. It was terrifying for the entire family. What

about the doctors, she wrote that they were useless. The Royal physician was there, yes, but his team stood around looking helpless. None of them had anything they could do to help. But Alexandra knew that Rasputin had arrived in the capitol, so she sent for him. It was the call he had been waiting for. Grigory arrived at the Royal Palace and was ushered into the room where Alexei lay on the bed. He was in unbelievable pain. So

what did Resputant do? He prayed. We can imagine him at the boy's bedside, with the eager parents and maybe a doctor or two, leaning forward, willing the healing to work. And here's the thing. By the next morning, Alexei was feeling better. In the eyes of the household, it was a miracle. The swelling had gone down and the pain had faded away, and it created one of the most enduring aspects of Rasputant's legend, that the stories about his

miraculous healings were true. It's certainly left even the most skeptical Romanovs, like Nicholas's sister, with something to puzzle over, and we've been puzzling over it ever since. Here's more

from Helen Rappaport. They had this incredible auto suggestive power, an ability to calm and one of the most important things when a child, or a patient, or the mother of the child is stressed and anxious as Alexandra was when Alexey had these terrible attacks of leading, was to calm, calm her, and through calming her, that was transmitted to the child and it calmed alex Say, and I think this is one of the key points in understanding how what he did work. But it did work, and that

miracle did more than just heal the boy. Its strengthened the bond between Grigory and the Romanovs. Before he was a religious teacher that they trusted, Now he was a welcome guest, not us to the afternoons in council with Nicholas and Alexandra, but to the nursery where the children played. Not that all the romanof children knew what to do with this bearded peasant, though Alexey kind of laughed at rasps and a bit behind his back and found him

a bit odd and weird. But then Anastasia did too, and they sometimes giggled because he was a bit strange with that deep sonorous voice and those huge, mesmerizing blue eyes. So but I think towards the end Alexey could recognize that Rasputin was their friend. You see, they referred to him. All of the children predominant and the parents as well referred to him as their friend. Not that this friendship silenced all doubts, though Alexandra was too protective of Alexei

and her girls for that. No, when word of the church inquiry finally did reach the palace, Alexandra knew what to do. She turned to her personal confessor, the archimand right theo Fan he had introduced her to Rasputin. After all, what did he know about the man? When field Fan couldn't answer, Alexander gave him a task of his own. Go to Pakrosco himself and come back to report what he learned. So soon enough, the ar command right of the St. Petersburg Monastery was on his way to Siberia

on a personal mission from the Empress. He spoke with the priests there and followed in the footsteps of the bishop's investigators, and when he returned to St. Petersburg, his reports set Alexandra at ease. Yes, the peasant was perhaps getting a tad big for his bridges. The elegance of his new house was a bit awkward, a bit tasteless. He was maybe trying a bit too hard to live out his idea of a rich lifestyle. But what was the harm in that tastelessness? Was no sin. Plus, they

all knew Gregory's ways. He was a rough peasant. You could hardly expect more. We don't know if Alexander considered the fact that theo Fan's own reputation was at stake. It's certainly true that he was the one responsible for bringing Raspute into the royal couple. There was maybe what we might call a conflict of interest in fia Fan investigating Grigory's background. Too much of theo Fan's position in the capital and his own access to Nicholas and Alexandra

was at stake all the same. It seems Alexandra took his words to heart. She had begun to hear nasty rumors about Rasputant, but her personal confessor assured her that they were no more than hearsay. It was an important moment, Alexandra's first inoculation against the criticisms of her new friend, and in the coming years she would need it. Czar Nicholas was trying to get a handle on things to

deal with the changes in Russia. To make sure that he rigged the new parliament, the Duma, to his liking, Nicholas knew what to do. He put his own people in charge, starting with his finance secretary, who became the first Prime minister. After all, Nicholas had made sure that even though the parliament was going to be elected, he would have the power to pull the strings as he saw fit. That way, he could at least try to ensure that they would keep the government obedient to his wishes.

It didn't go well, though. On the eve of the Douma's first meeting, Nicholas demanded his hand picked man's resignation, and then he flailed for someone else to step in. With all of that on his mind and the peace of the country still tenuous at best, it can be no wonder that he didn't have time for the rumors that kept cropping up that there was something wrong, something scandalous about Grigory Rasputin. Plus he had the word of his personal confessor to go on. Just like Alexandra. He

called fia Fan into give an account of Grigory. What he heard wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement, though he has many sins, fia Fan told the Czar. But on the other hand, he actually repented for the things he had done, and fia Fan vouched for him personally. Each time he repents, the man said, he becomes pure. In fact, just to drive the point home, fia Fan even went to the trouble of going out to the hermit's hut and finding Maccarie.

He picked the man up, grab resputant along the way, and brought them both back to the capital to meet with Nicholas. It was as if to say, see, the holy men of Russia are on your side. You can trust us for now. Fia Fan and others in the Russian Church were just glad that they had rid the nation of men like Monseigneur Philippe. Better to have Russian old believers in the Tsar's ear than European spiritualists. All of that was enough to set Nicholas's mind at ease,

and he turned to other matters. After all, his son was alive, his wife was comforted. What more could he ask for? He took for a fan at his word. In the future, though Fia Fan would come to deeply regret just how much he had defended Grigory Rasputin from the witnesses against him. His later testimony was filled with regret. The empire was at a crossroads, and Rasputin, he said, was on a false path, but Nicholas and Ella Xandra would follow it all the way to the bitter end.

That's it for this week's episode of Unobscured. Stick around after this short sponsor break for a preview of what's in store for next week. Despite how incredibly uncomfortable she had gotten, Anna was eventually lulled to sleep by the rocking of the train. Until that is, something woke her up in the darkness, something scratchy against the skin of her face. It took her a moment to realize what it was a man's beard. Shocked, Anna rolled off the

bunk and spun around. There was Grigory Rasputin on her bed. Anna was ready to defend herself. She screamed a furious question at him. If he was such a holy man, how could he possibly justify what he was doing? He said nothing in silence. He simply crawled back up onto the top bunk, where Yelena lay waiting. Anna stayed alert the rest of the night. In the morning, Elena gave Anna a talking to. She said resputant was only trying to commune with her spirit. It was a divine act,

she said. But Anna knew a covering lie when she heard one. There was nothing holy or divine about what Grigory had tried to do. Unobscured was created by me Aaron Manky and produced by Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Josh Thane in partnership with I Heart Radio, with research by Sam Alberty, writing by Carl Nellis, and original music by Chad Lawson. Learn more about our contributing historians, source materials, and links to our other shows over at grim and

Mild dot com. Slash Unobscured and as always thanks for listening, M