S4 – 6: Laying On of Hands

the Duma, on March eighth of nineteen twelve. The speaker, Alexander Gukov, was a politician who had been working to reform the Russian government since the Revolution of nineteen o five. Now he was taking direct aim at the Tsar, and Nicholas took it personally. After all, this speech was in open defiance of his power, and in a time when the press and the church and even the supporters of the Empire had gone against the crown, this was a new low. The government that Nicholas had tried to control

was now openly questioning his guy given authority. They were undermining him in the very halls of government itself. It stung all the more because it was the final exclamation point on a process that Nicholas had begun himself when he met with the President of the Duma, Mikhail Rosienko. A few months before. Nicholas had met with Rosienko in the wake of the secret police attacking the press. They

had discussed Resputant's place at court. They talked over the deeply disturbing things that people had observed about Rasputant's behavior. Rosienko had even read Nicholas letters from the mothers of women who had fallen into Grigory's clutches. Rosienko told the Czar that the attempts to shut down the press were backfiring. The more Nicholas tried to silence the outrage, the more Russian readers thought that Resputant's evil influence was controlling the throne.

While Rosienko talked, Nicolas smoked. He nervously lit one cigarette after another, feverishly puffing and then throwing them on the ground. When the President of the Duma was done, Nicholas think the man. He was grateful for Rosienko's honesty, he said. In the following days, Nicholas was quiet. People around him saw that he was mulling something over. A few days later,

a sheaf of documents arrived on Rosienko's desk. Nicholas had ordered that all the investigations on Rasputant be sent to him. Nicholas wanted Rosienko to continue gathering evidence as long as he did it quietly. But that's where the President of the Duma violated the trust of the Czar, because he brought in his political allies like Alexander Gukov. He showed them the reports and told them that together they would

save the Emperor and Russia. They compiled a complete report, a profile of Rasputin, more comprehensive than anything yet put to the page, and then they sent it to Nicholas and waited. They were greeted with only silence, a silence that was broken by Gukhov's speech to the Duma. But if Gukov and Rosienko thought that shouting against the Czar in parliament would finally make Nicholas turned back, they were badly mistaken, and fact Gukhov's speech was a turning point

in the relationship between the Duma and the Romanovs. To Nicholas, it was a breach of trust. He had asked for secrecy and instead was openly attacked Alexandra sent men to seize back the documents that Nicholas had sent to Rosienko. This wasn't just political now, it was personal, and from that there was no going back. The delicate stitching that held the young constitutional government together was beginning to unravel. This is unobscured, I'm Aaron Manky. They retreated again, after all,

it was their habit to do so. Nicholas and Alexandra didn't stay in the capital. Instead, they went looking for places to rest their heads and to leave behind the troubles of ruling Russia. In nineteen o nine, when they were threatened all the way across the North Sea in England, it didn't seem like things could get worse. But that was before Prime Minister stoy Leapin was assassinated. Iliador battled the Tzar and betrayed Rasputant. The press turned into high gear,

and members of the Douma threw it all in their face. So, as always, it was time to get away. Following Rasputant's advice, they went looking for places of natural beauty and peaceful wilderness. They even found places where they wouldn't be recognized, places where they could step in and out of local shops without the owners falling to their knees. But as always, it seemed that no matter where the Romanovs went, trouble

would follow. That shadow over the family only darkened on their holiday in nine twelve and the trouble they ran into that year. They would be a decisive moment for one small struggle that had recently grown into a major headache, their choy to befriend Grigory Rasputin. In fact, the trouble and what followed came to be known as a miraculous event. It became a story that has grown in its retelling

down the years. The thing is, there was something of a miracle about it from the very beginning, at least for Grigory's bond with Nicholas and Alexandra, one of the crucial moments when the relationship between the Romanovs and Rasputin was sealed and their path into the future was written. It started ordinarily enough, but as we know, even ordinary pastimes were riddled with danger for the Emperor's son, little Alexei Romanov, and this jaunt through the Polish countryside was

no different. But he had let his guard down, because since nineteen oh seven Alexei had been remarkably healthy. In fact, the family had stopped holding their breath. They still took precautions, for sure, but it seemed like maybe they had learned to manage their little boys chronic illness. Here's Helen Rappaport

to tell us what happened next. In the Ltum Romanovs went off to one of on a trip to what was Poland what is Poland now but was then part of the Russian Empire, the big forest near Yellowish And they went to one of their big imperial hunting lodges there.

And it was while they were staying there that alex say Alexey was always very reluctant to do as he was told, and he constantly be told by his minders, and he had a couple of minders who were with him all the time not to jump and leap around him. He risked banging himself, which he did one day getting into a boat. He jumped into a boat and bashed his hip and it started bleeding in the joints and at the top of his thigh. The family leapt into

emergency mode. It had been a few years since he had been injured this badly, but no one had forgotten what to do. Alexei rested and, to their relief, recovered. The family moved on to a smaller hunting lodge in Poland, more modest, more out of the way. But as he got at her Alexei got more restless. He was really getting very fed out with being told by his mother. Daaned out, Now, you can't do this. You can't go off in the bicycle. He can't ride a pony, you

can't go off with the other children. You just had this terrible episode. You've got to get well. And he was constantly complaining and fed up would not being able to do anything. So in the end Alexandra took him out for a coach ride. Maybe Alexandra thought this was safe enough. She was with her son and he was inside the coach, but the road was far from smooth, and Alexei was not as recovered as they all thought, which meant that every bump and the road could send

his healing crashing to a halt. And that's just what happened. Let's hear from Douglas Smith. He's jostled about and this produces a bleeding episode in his leg and it becomes quite critical. The doctors are fussing over him. They don't know what to do. It's getting worse and worse. The boy is in excruciating pain, which is driving his parents, you know, utterly mad to see their their beloved son

hurting so terribly. Um it gets to the point where they're about to, you know, have a priest brought in for the last rites. They don't think that that alex A is going to survive. So as sort of a last ditch effort, Alexandra sends a cable telegram to Rasputin,

who's home in Siberia, for some sort of intercession. And this is the moment when we need to step back just a bit, because this story becomes a pillar in the legend of Rasputin, as if the only thing keeping Grigory together with the Romanovs was a mystical healing power. If on the one side, his story is buried under the rumors about Rasputin being the lover of the Russian queen, on the other side, we can also allow stories of his healing power to carry the burden of what we

now know. So this is a good point to remember just how important Gregory had been to the royal family down through the years, because the truth is that Gregory Rasputin had been a close counselor spiritual adviser and a comforting friend to Alexandra for years and to Nicholas too.

Now that much said. When Alexei was injured on the carriage ride, there was so much rumor in the air that we can only think the relationship between the Romanovs and their Siberian friend was delicate and becoming more fragile. After all, when Alexandra reached out to him by telegram, well, it was a last resort. In fact, they were so certain that their little boy would die that they drafted the official notifications of Alexei's death, and Grigory was far

far away from Poland. But when they thought back to that last time that Alexei had been at death store, they must have remembered that it was under Resputant's hands and his prayers that the boy had recovered. What else could they credit with Alexei's five years of good health. So if the Russian public thought that Resputant was out of favor with Alexandra, it seems they got it wrong. All the attacks on Gregory may have soured him in the newspapers, but it never truly split Resputant and the

Romanovs apart. In fact, earlier in the year, at the height of the press attacks, the Romanov family was traveling in Crimea and Grigory had traveled with them. They had been together through the winter and into the early spring. No matter what the paper said, no matter what the Duma said, Nicholas and Alexandra were adamant they would not be told who they could let through their doors, and

any damage to their friendship would have been healed. When Grigory answered their telegram from Poland that fall, he was far away, but his words of comfort touched to Alexandra's heart. Leaning over the mattress that might be her son's deathbed, Alexandra was frantic with fear, that is until she read Resputant's reply, sent a message but effectively saying, don't worry. All will be well, the little one will not die.

Don't let the doctors fuss around him too much. And when she got that message, of course, she calmed down and became The stress sort of vanished from her face. She came down to dinner first time in about two weeks, and alex I recovered this point this pivotal moment is easy to understand. Grigory wasn't there. All he did was pray and send a telegram. Did he heal Alexei? Most historians think that the boy was already on the men.

But the important thing is less Alexei's healing itself. It's more about how all this seemed to Alexandra, because in her eyes, when it came to the life of her beloved son, this was a second miraculous healing. God had spoken, Rasputant had shared the message. All was well. Alexander now stood on a rock of confidence. As an ocean of uncertainty washed around her. Terrible things might arise. Waves of anger, violence, death, accusations and slander might crash against her place in the world,

But the Empress of Russia could now stand unafraid. The man of God would guide her. Rasputin was a household name, not just in Russia either. By the spring of nineteen twelve, the scandal caused by the Duma taking up the issue of Rasputant nesting in the palace had made him the subject of even more rumors and wild stories than the papers could print. The ambassadors of several countries wrote back

to their home offices about the mysterious Siberian peasant. Word of the religious fanatic with mysterious hypnotic powers was being inflated and floated into government offices all across Europe. Of course, like most of the trial balloons going up about Grigory, most of these reports were collections of the rumors popular among the Russian aristocracy. But when the Romanovs had gone to Crimea that spring to celebrate Easter, Rasputin also disappeared

from St. Petersburg society. But his absence didn't silence the conversation. In fact, the furious speculation about him only got hotter, so much so that the newspapers started commenting on the newspaper coverage as its own story. That March, for example, one article titled Rasputini Anna complained that there was no getting rid of the story. It was like Eczema, it said. Once a paper caught the bug for publishing about Resputin,

there was no going back. It became an endless flow of Grigory's comings and goings, unless there was no news, in which case it became a perpetual series of guesses about where he might be. After all, resputants sold papers, and speculation was a lucrative business. It was like a disease, they wrote, even though the pages were only paper. It seemed that Resputant had gone viral, and not everyone was happy about that, especially because it all seemed to backfire.

If the original idea had been to shock the conscience of the nation and of the Romanas, the opposite had happened. All these headlines about the wandering holy Man only seemed to desensitize everyone to the whole affair. The newfound freedom of the press was teaching the newspapers a hard new lesson. If you yell loud and long enough, you get tuned out to be a spectacle. The news has to stay new. Of course, there was a grain of truth to all

the reporting. Grigory was going here and there. He traveled constantly from Siberia to St. Petersburg, to Crimea, where he spent time with Nicholas and Alexandra, back to his home then in Siberia. But if the papers were chasing rumors, the secret police were tracking the man himself. Police surveillance reports included Resputant spottings whenever he would arrive in the capital.

After all, he wasn't just newsworthy. Over the past few years he had become the most infamous man in all of Russia, and as a close confident of the Tsar, that made him a target. If you were against his friendship with the Czar, well, it also made him a threat, and it probably didn't help. The resputants seemed less and less like the simple, wide eyed pilgrim who had first shown up in the capital almost a decade earlier. For

years now he had been living the high life. It left Grigory looking different to the papers started to comment on his appearance. By August, one paper was calling his face tormented. The skin was clinging to his owns, and the bones were poking through the skin. Dark circles never faded from around his eyes. Resputant, it seems, was getting tired. Even his daughter Maria noticed the changes when he would come home to Siberia. She remembered how much he started

to resent the visitors in those years. After so much traveling, he just wanted some peace and quiet, but he had raised his profile too high for that. If it wasn't reporters and investigators coming by to get a read on his most recent events, it was religious seekers. Maria would later say her father got annoyed with them, but it didn't stop a parade of women marching up to their front door looking for the little Father and throwing themselves on him, grabbing his hands and kissing the hem of

his clothes. She remembers at one point he ripped his hands away from a woman and shouted, I am not your father, I'm not even a monk. But nothing stopped the downright worship. If he wasn't the devil to the people who came prowling at the door, he was a saint, and that's not something you can just shake off. If the newspapers hadn't changed their mind, what could so. When he was home in Siberia, Grigory trying to duck out of sight. He avoided the restaurants and ate at home.

He kept to his devotional rituals, which was no meat and no liquor. At least that's how Maria remembers it. The thing is, that's about as far as you can get from the life he lived. When he traveled to St. Petersburg. If his daughters saw one face at home, the Okrana in the capital observed something completely opposite. There he spent his days and nights out on the town in company too. He went out with friends, or he made his way

to the streets and neighborhoods notorious for prostitution. They followed him as he picked up women and took them down his old paths to a nearby hotel or to a bathhouse. Sometimes they trailed him as he went from bath house to brothel to bathhouse, and he had a new woman on his arm each time. It didn't look at all like the kind of life he tried to live in front of his followers. So if he was starting to look haggard and worn out, well, it wasn't just the

scandal and screw rutiny that was doing it. Gregory may have been trying to keep the two sides of his life separate, but it's not like he was discreet about it. For whatever reason, he seemed to throw caution to the wind when he was in St. Petersburg and when the Czar was out of town. In later years, even Maria would admit who her father became in those years, though, of course, whether the drunken stumble between brothels was something

new for him is hard to pin down. It's just that he was finally being watched so much that his habits were no longer hidden. His supporters like to say that it was the city that had corrupted the Siberian peasant. Over time, they called his new lifestyle a spiritual catastrophe. Churchmen like Theo Fan, who had started by embracing Rasputin,

told the story this way. Try as they might to displace some kind of blame from Grigory for his choices, or to say he didn't used to be so constantly on the prowl, it all seemed a bit too convenient. There may be some truth to it, no doubt, Grigory did adapt a bit to his new surroundings. But we can't forget just how much Fan looked past in those early years when he thought Grigory could be useful to him. Whispers had followed him from Pokrosco to Kazan and onward.

And in the end, there's no debate about at least one thing. If there were neighborhoods in any city where the virtues of the Orthodox Church were left outside, it was Grigory himself who willingly opened that door and crept inside. The crisis was real. The spiritual crisis. That is, whatever Grigory may have decided about the way he would live his life, he never stopped tormenting himself about the unraveling.

The sex and the drunken knights in St. Petersburg were less the cause of a collapse and more the result of one. The real crisis had been working inside him all along, no matter how he was living respute and held on to his own claim to faith. To himself, at least, he was not a fraud or a heretic. He was simply a man of God who sometimes, maybe often made miss achs. At least that's what he told himself.

But if the Romanov's dismissed concerns about Gregory as malicious rumors, others did not, not the members of the Duma, not the public, and not the Russian Church. In fact, there were some who began to suspect that their earlier investigations into his teachings were flawed. In past years, church officials had decided that Resputant was no heretic, but after all the accusations against him, they decided to look again. In fact, one bishop in the city of Tubulsk, near Resputant's hometown,

took up the subject with some genuine energy. He ordered church investigators to send him monthly reports on Gregory, where he went, what he taught, who he met with. Despite Rasputin being earlier cleared of connections to secret groups of heretics, it was exactly the same question they were trying to answer. Now. It seems obvious that any church leaders would want to

separate themselves from Rasputin as much as possible. But there's a more clear and more personal link to these investigations too, because the Bishop of Tobolsk was personal friends with someone who had become an enemy of Rasputin, the mad monk Iliador. Not that the investigations immediately produced damning evidence, though. In the spring of nineteen twelve, while Gregory was home in

Pokrosco with his family, the priest there followed orders. He sent reports to the nearby bishop, but there wasn't much to say. Gregory went to church, he seemed to be working and supporting his family. All the whispers the priest could gather only said that Gregory was keeping to his prayers. He made short pilgrimages here and there. At home, it seemed like he was the devouts and pious peasant his daughter thought he might be. But there was one thing

that raised concerns his followers. In fact, it was one of the women who had been devoted to him the longest. Olga look Tina Gears had passed since she had hosted him in the St. Petersburg salons, and in those years she had taken to living with the religious teachers she liked the best. Sometimes she was living in the band of followers at Risputant's house. Sometimes she had been living

with another fiery preacher, Eliador. And after the split between Gregory and Eliador, it seems Olga knew where she wanted to be, and so she settled down to live with resputants family. But she ran into some conflict with his wife. Now let's remember that for all these years, when Resputant was wandering and climbing the ladder of the Russian courts, he had a family at home in Siberia. His wife, Prascovia was often left affair without her husband, and their

children were often without their father. But they may do. And of course, when Gregory bought the new house, brought home the new clothes and rode in with new patrons and new money. That wasn't nothing, But Prascovia and the Resputant family knew better than most that his ambitions and visions came with a cost. In some ways. It was a burden that they all had to carry. So when their guest, Olga started loudly proclaiming that Resputent ought to be treated as God himself, well that didn't sit well

with his wife. She was the wife of Gregory's younger years. She knew that he was all too human, but Olga didn't appreciate that perspective, and when she didn't let the issue drop, the two women got into a ferocious argument. I can only imagine the resigned strength of Prascovia as she had to repeat that no, her wandering husband was a charismatic man, but certainly not the God of the universe. Eventually, Prascovia put her foot down. The fight sent Olga running

barefoot from the house, and she disappeared. Over time, news but trickle back that she had begun wandering from monastery to monastery. She was looking for Iliador, and once in a while she even ran across reporters who took down her accounts and published the story of the wealthy st Petersburg socialite who had fallen from grace, dragged down by

the talents of Grigory Rasputin. That was enough to concern the church, not least because even more concerning stories began to come out about how badly Resputant had treated Olga. Some witnesses said that he had taken to screaming her, telling her that she was demon possessed, and even beating her with a shoe. Through it all, she would desperately grab at his clothes and sob that rest Sputin was

christ himself. So when a new bishop arrived into Bolsk that year, one of the things he put on his list was a visit to Pokrovsko and to the home of Grigory Resputin. It was now his job to care for the people across his region of Siberia, and after reading stacks and stacks of reports on Resputin, he decided to see this threat to the Russian people for himself. The bishop met directly with Grigory. It was a meeting

meant to test resputants religious beliefs. He took a measure of Grigory's hopes and ambitions and considered whether his preaching was strengthening the church. The local priest and other church officials made another search of Resputant's house, and they questioned the people who knew him, trying to ferret out anything he said that might sound like the heresy they feared for whatever reason, though their conclusions left Resputant off the hook.

What kind of a man and was Rasputin? The bishop wrote that he was honestly spiritual and that he was searching for the truth. He was intelligent, He was capable of giving good advice to those in need. That fall, he submitted a report to other leaders in Russia's church the investigations into Grigory Resputent ought to be condemned. He said there was no heresy, and in his eyes, Grigory

Resputin was an orthodox Christian. But if that closed the book on Rasputin for the Russian Church, well, we can take a slightly more critical view looking back from today, because there are a few things that never made it into the bishop's report. First of all, he had known Rasputin for years, ever since Grigory had made a pilgrimage to Kazan in nineteen o four, and he left that out. Second of the bishop had his own scandals in his wake.

As he splashed down at the new post in Siberia, whispers that he had been keeping a mistress and fostering fanatical followers of other mystical preachers. And from the outside, the fact that the church ended its scrutiny of Rasputin caused some concern. Reopening the investigation into Grigory's shady life had only made him stronger. What if the two men

had cut some kind of a deal. And suspicions only got stronger when a few months later that bishop was transferred again to the warmer, more hospitable self, and was promoted to the fourth highest position in the Orthodox Church, very different from how Rasputant's enemies were usually treated removed from authority in the church, men like Iliodor, Germy Jen and Phio fan To a public who are now seeing schemes of Resputant behind every injustice, it seemed that opposing

him came with a heavy price, and this was simply one more sign that there was something rotten in the shadow of the czar. Three years that's how long the Romanovs had ruled Russia, so naturally the planned festivities were enormous, A twenty one cannon salute rang out from the fortress and St. Petersburg. Nicholas himself led a procession from the imperial residence at the Winter Palace to the cathedral. The streets were packed, crowds cheered wildly as the imperial family approached. Inside,

even the cathedral was standing room only. Honored guests, government officials, and various foreign ambassadors and dignitaries took special reserve seats to honor the history of the Romanov family and their power. But if the joy and excitement of the occasion was infectious, it didn't catch on with at least one man, Mikhail Rogianko, the President of the Duma. In fact, the day so far had put him in a foul mood. It started

with those seats in the cathedral, you see. When he first saw the guest list and how the seating would be arranged, he was irate. The seats assigned to members of the Duma were in the back of the cathedral, behind a host of other functionaries and officials who were closer to the Czar. So Rosienko set out to make it right. He hunted down the Master of Ceremonies and badgered the man until he bent the seating chart to his own will, the Duma members would be moved forward.

With that promise secured, he even assigned a number of his sergeants at arms to block off the section and turn away anyone who tried to plant themselves in those seats. Feeling satisfied, Rosienko took up a place on the porch to wait for the rest of the Duma members to arrive. But it wasn't long before a breathless man rushed up to him. Some scoundrel had fought past his guards and taken a space reserved for the Duma. The sergeants were arguing with him, but the man refused to budge. When

he heard the description of the intruder. Ragged man in peasants dress wearing a pectoral cross, Rodsienko knew who he was dealing with. Rasputant had moved himself to the head of the class. Rodsienko marched inside, but the grigory resputant he found wasn't so ragged at all. On the contrary, he was decked out in all the finery he had

received or purchased over the years. A crimson silk tunic supple leather boots, a coat line was sable for, and ebony trousers, all under an enormous cross hanging from an ornate gold chain. Rodsienko let loose. He demanded to know what Grigory thought he was doing there. The peasant would get out, or Rosienko would drag him out by the beard. The two men locked eyes, and I can only imagine the flashes of fire that burned the air between them. Eventually,

Rosienko told Resputant to clear the cathedral. There was no place for a vile heretic like him in that sacred house. But Rasputin defended himself by saying that he had been invited there, and he dared Rosienko to make good on his threats. The President of the Duma obliged. He jumped on Resputant, battered him with blows, and called the Cossack guard to bounce him out the door. At least that's how Rosienko remembered it. He wrote it down too, then

he published it in his memoirs. Ever since, It's a moment that has been told and retold to show just how much bad blood there was between Rasputin and the Russian officials. Around him. After all, it had the ring of truth, the fine clothes, the men of various parts of Russian life scraping with each other to take pride of place near the Tsar, the bickering that Ms Two blows and is only settled by Cossack muscle. It's all pitch perfect, if we can believe Rosienko. That is the

thing is. It seems that in the end, Resputant did attend the celebrations, and not just at the cathedral. In fact, there were plenty of ways to partake, and it became clear the Resputant was a guest of the imperial family as the days went by, because they took their party on the road, and they took Gregory with them. Nicholas's sister commented that after everything, it was stunning and even upsetting that Resputant was now back in plain view, strutting

along with the other elites. But after all, this was a celebration of the Czar's power, and if anyone needed a sign that the Tsar's wishes overruled the will of the people or anyone else's, this did the trick. Despite all the rumors, despite all the investigations, If the Czar wanted Grigory Resputant by his side. Then Resputant was untouchable. After all, Nicholas and Alexander had a point to make. Their advisors had been telling them that Resputant was threat

to the throne. They warned that revolutionaries like the men who had killed the Prime Minister were still on the hunt. Resputant shouldn't be seen with them. But then the celebrations themselves were an enormous risk. Advertising their procession from city to city only made it more likely that people discontented with Czarist rule would turn the pageant into a blood bath. No such thing occurred, though, and as cheering crowds greeted

them along their itinerary, Alexandra mocked the warnings. You can see for yourself, she said. The ministers are cowards. They had tried to scare the emperor with threats of assassinations and revolutionaries, but to her eyes, it was all just as much a veil of lies as the press reports about her and Resputant. But from where we sit today we see how misguided Alexandra it really was. The future she faced was a dark one. The ministers had been

telling her the truth. They were imperiled on every side. If the Romanovs thought that they were loved across their empire, then maybe the biggest lies were the ones they told themselves, and they were far from understanding the people they ground under their feet. Here's Dr Joshua Sanborn to tell us more. It's hard to know what the relationship between That's Are and the people were. There're no surveys, there are no poles, there are no there's no way to really get at

this question. And so much of what we have is the representation of the autocracy itself for how it wanted that relationship to be, how it wanted it to look, and they had a lot of resources in order to sort of have that happen. Indeed, in the years building up to World War One, there are a series of celebration that sort of they were intended to heighten this

bond between the monarch and the people. And these build up to the church centenary anniversary of the Romanov dynasty itself in and so they have big celebrations that always always are trying to stress this bond between That's Are and the people. And when we say big celebrations, we mean big. They filled the streets in St. Petersburg, and in Moscow and more, cathedrals, monasteries and the Kremlin hosted

events in their honor. Nicholas and Alexandra strode across the Red Square, trailed by a Cossack officer carrying their heir Alexei in his arms. From city to city they stamped three hundred years of Romanov rule on Russia. But with all of that pomp and pageantry, the question remains was any of it real? Did it work? Did these celebrations

rebuild the bond between the czar and the people? Maybe in Moscow, but the Russian Empire was vast, and no matter how far the Czar traveled with his family and his entourage, he wasn't reaching the hearts of the empire's borders. Far from the parades and the speeches and the tussles between Rasputin and the ministers about who will sit at the Tsar's right hand, other things were brewing. Let's follow Dr Sandborn to places further from the throne, but no

less consequential. The relationship between that's are in ethnic Russians and and and those on the periphery um that is certainly different, and that's going to vary widely depending on

where in the Russian Empire you are. So nationalism and anti Russian nationalism is developing more strongly in certain places than in others, most notably in Poland, but also beginning to develop but by the time we get to the twentieth century in places like Ukraine and in the Baltic States, and even to a certain extent more broadly into sort of the Asian territories of the Russian Empire too. The thing we have to remember is that this relationship is distant.

That's are always wanted to see this as an intimate relationship, but but it was a distant one. You know, most people, of course never saw that's are and you know, they live their lives in their local regions, in these local contexts. And in the years leading up to that three anniversary, the growing anti Russian nationalism was driven forward by a self defeating force, the efforts of the Romanov government that

make them more Russian. In places where other churches and other languages were outlawed, a growing resentment turned the people against the distant ours. Schools were forced to teach only Russian history, and crackdowns on other languages spread. But it had the opposite of its desired effect. Ethnic nationalists on the periphery. They had long tried to say, Hey, you guys are all Ukrainians, and the Ukrainians will be like, I don't know where. I'm kind of a peasant, I'm

kind of a Christian. And now they're coming along, and now they finally have the proof. They're like, see, your Ukrainians, the state is punishing for being a Ukrainian. Now they say, oh, yeah, now that's what you mean, Like I can't go to the church I want to go to. My kids are speaking some weird language when they come home from school

with a weird accent. All of that becomes much more concrete for them, and so as a result, rusification, which is intended to to limit the spread of ethnic nationalism, actually helps to develop it, especially in the western borderlands Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Lavia, Estonia. But all of that was happening far from where Nicholas was traveling. His parade of stage managed visits to various sights at the heart of the Empire weren't showing him

how people really felt about his rule. After all, it was his own government who was putting on the show. There was a problem. Though. It wasn't just the Russian people who were hearing the message. It was Nicholas himself. Here's Dr Sanborn to tell us more. You have these big celebrations and the nobility welcome you, and it's crowds of cheering peasants. This is exactly what Nicholas wanted to see, and it's he's able to convince himself that this is

a political reality. And so it's dangerous in a certain way, right when you when you start using your own product. But he had always sort of used his own product, right He he was always imbuing himself with this notion that he was a popular Russian star, and that stars don't get their authority by being voted or surveyed. But but it's just a mystical thing. You're born with it. Because whatever the shape of the past they were celebrating, the future that the Romanovs and their empire were facing

was about to hit them like a runaway train. Wrapped in the banners of his noble lineage, Nicholas couldn't see that the patchwork empire heat inherited was about to come apart at the seams. It seemed like he had won so why did Grigory feel like he was under such a great weight. The so called miracle that healed Alexei assured him his place alongside the czar in the greatest festivities of the age. He had wealth, he had connections, He had a place at the capitol. He could indulge

his every urge without consequences. But it wasn't enough. Yes, he was making regular visits to the Romanov household. Nicholas and Alexandra still welcomed him, but he was tired. Tired of the constant attention It had stolen his peace, Tired of the press attacks and rumors, not to mention when the stories bit a little too close to the bone in the first waves of negative attention. He had ducked

out of sight and come back stronger. But he didn't want to spend the rest of his life working the back rooms of church officials and dodging the secret police investigators. He was fed up. Reporters were mobbing his St. Petersburg apartment. They made him nervous. They called him a heretic, They called him a sex maniac. They called him a servant of the Antichrist. There was a time when he would have said that these were nothing more than clouds that

wind and sun would scatter. Not to mention the Czar, but he had been rubbing shoulders with Nicholas and Alexander for long enough now that he wondered if maybe there was another way, maybe he could deal with it all himself. So he sent some messages on his own behalf. One went to the Minister of the Interior. One went to the Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod, protect him from his enemies and what he called the abuse in the press. It was the early months of nineteen fourteen, and Grigory

Resputant was finally throwing his weight around. But if he felt like the accusations in public outrage were getting tiresome, the attacks on Resputant were about to get a lot more real and to hit a lot closer to home. Toward the end of spring, Grigory decided to leave the capital behind for some time at home in Siberia. His friends and followers sent him off with good cheer, a little piece simplicity and family time, and he would be back as good as new. And it started the way

he planned. His first morning in Pokrovsko, he spent at church followed by a large meal with his family. A group of visiting friends even joined him while they were still gathered around the table. Though, a knock came at the war. It was a telegram from a photographer asking if he could stop by to take pictures of Grigory's home and family. He quickly scratched out a reply and then ran out the door to catch the messenger, waving the slip and calling out to him. He wanted to

be sure the reply went out right away. As he went though, Rasputant passed someone who was standing at his gate. It was a woman dressed in black. She was like many people he had met before. In fact, as he stood in front of her, she bowed. Assuming she was there to beg He fumbled with his wallet to see if there was something he could give her, But in that moment while he paused, her hand disappeared into her clothes, and then she dove forward. Suddenly, pain burned across Grigory's stomach.

He slapped his hand down over his gut and stumbled backward into a run, yelling that he had been attacked. When he looked back, he could see that she was running after him. She was carrying a large knife red with his own blood, and she had a deadly look in her eyes. When she reached him again, he was ready, despite the blood running down his legs. He fought back, and by the time the others came to grab her arms,

Grigory had already knocked her down. By now, people were running out of his house, and shouts rang out up and down the crowd that formed along the street. Gregory's wife ran to his side. As she pulled him toward their door, she noticed that he was losing consciousness and no wonder by the second more of his blood caked into the dust. Their friends surrounded him and lay him on a bench. Someone else ran for a doctor. Resputant had been gutted in the street, right in front of

his own house. In an instant, he had been sent to death's door. If only a powerful healer could drop in to pray over him, speak to his blood, and call him back from the brink. It would take time for the motives of the attack to become clear, but there were even darker tidings clutched in the hands of the next messengers headed to Pokrovsko. War was on the wind again. Nicholas and Alexandra were calling for their adviser, but he lay elsewhere, stretched out and pale. It seemed

that Grigory Rasputin wasn't so untouchable after all. 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. He swam back to consciousness. The line of fire burned across his belly where the knife had slashed him open. But Grigory Rasputant's mind was already charging ahead to what came next after the attack and who

was behind it. In fact, when he came to Rasputin told the people around him that he knew who was to blame, the mad monk Iliodora. After the two men finally severed their friendship, Grigory must have known it was only a matter of time before one of Iliodora's followers would follow his signature command for violence. As time would reveal, Rasputin was right. The woman who had attacked him in the street outside his house was a follower of Eliodora's

violent teachings. She had even met Rasputin before, when the two teachers were still traveling together. Now, like so many others in Russia. She had come to believe that rasputants prophecies were false and his spirit was polluted with vile habits and selfish ambitions. She believed that it was Rasputin who had turned on Iliador, so she set out to avenge her chosen leader with a fifteen inch dagger on

a white bone handle. 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 mild dot com, slash Unobscured, and as always, thanks for listening