2,213: Rasputin - A Short Life by Frances Welch

Despite (or maybe because of!) the awful '70s ear worm by Boney M, I, like millions of others have a fascination with the story of Rasputin, the hairy and insanitary but, apparently, sexually irresistible monk who came out of Siberia to wield extraordinary influence over the last Tsar and Tsarina of Russia.

There's something almost Grand Guignol-esque about Rasputin's story, retold vividly by Frances Welch in this short and highly enjoyable biography.  It's the story of a peasant from a village in the depths of Siberia who, one day, abandons his wife and children to go and stay in a monastery, from which he emerges as a religious mystic.  Traveling to Kazan and then to Kiev, he attracts the attention of high-ranking Russian Orthodox clerics, including the splendidly monikered Theophanes of Poltava, occasional confessor of the Tsar and Tsarina.  Theophanes then introduces him to the Grand Duchesses Milica and Anastasia who, buying in to his reputation  as having healing powers, recommend him to the Tsarina as being able to help the Tsarevich, Alexei, a haemophiliac.

Although there is no evidence that he really was possessed of healing powers, Rasputin did actually appear to be able to help with Alexei's illness and he rapidly becomes a favourite of both the Tsar and Tsarina.  Taking full advantage of this, Rasputin becomes notorious in St Petersburg for drunkenness and depravity, selling his influence with the royal couple for money and sexual favours from his "little ladies" and is thought to have Svengali-like influence over the Tsar and, especially, the Tsarina, whose lover he is rumoured to be.

Finally, having made enemies everywhere, he survives several assassination attempts until, on the night of 29 December 1916 (modern calendar), Prince Yusupov and Grand Duke Dmitri, two former friends and associates of Rasputin, lure him to Prince Yusupov's palace where, having got him drunk, they poison him and then, when the poison seems not to be having any effect, Yusupov and another conspirator shoot him several times before the body is dumped in the river Neva.

Rasputin's story has all the ingredients of a good, schlocky melodrama - weird mystical villain, sex, violence, aristocrats and royals and it even has its own spooky sting in the tail as, shortly before his death, he wrote Tsar Nicholas a letter, in which he predicted:

“If my death will be staged by your relatives, then none of your family members, none of your children or relatives will remain alive for more than two years. All will be killed by the Russian people. And I will be killed too. I’m not among the living anymore. Please, I beg you, be strong! Think of your blessed family.” 

His death did, indeed, come at the hands of junior members of the Romanov family and, as we all know, on 17 July 1918, less than two years after Rasputin's murder, the Tsar, Tsarina and their five children were murdered by Bolshevik revolutionaries at the Ipatiev house in Yekaterinburg.

Of course, it is also this that turns Rasputin's story from melodrama into tragedy for, although blame for the October Revolution can hardly be laid at his door, his perceived influence over the royal family and, in particular, the lurid rumours of a sexual relationship with the Tsarina (and even one particularly virulent story that he had raped the Tsarina's children in their beds) became a kind of avatar for the alleged rottenness at the heart of the monarchy and helped the likes of Lenin portray revolution as a cleansing act for Russia, clearing out the corrupt aristocracy to give birth to a new order and, ultimately, the mythical ascetic New Soviet Man.  The impact of Rasputin was seen as so great at the time that Kerensky, head of the provisional government formed after the Tsar's abdication, said:

"Without Rasputin, there could have been no Lenin."

Part of the mystique that surrounds Rasputin is that there are so many stories and rumours about his life that it is difficult to know what is truth and what is fiction.  This has allowed Frances Welch the freedom to take a judicious, and at times even humorous, view of his escapades whilst writing a vivid and highly readable biography.  She interweaves the narrative with the wider story of the political struggles faced by the Tsar during the First World War, which puts the story into perspective and allows the reader to understand the corrosive effect Rasputin had upon the monarchy and, by extension, Russia.

She finishes the book with a wonderful excursion through Rasputin's cultural afterlife and finishes with a lovely bit of trivia - far from being the massively-endowed sex machine of legend, a medical examination of Rasputin in 1914 after another failed assassination attempt revealed that his genitals were so small that his doctor believed that it was unlikely he could ever, to put it crudely, "get it up".

So, there you go.  To paraphrase the great Boney M, although he probably wasn't actually Russia's greatest love machine, he was indeed a cat that really was gone and it really was a shame how he carried on.  And I recommend you read France Welch's biography to find out exactly how he did carry on.

2,219: To End All Wars by Adam Hochschild

During this centenary year of the outbreak of World War One, I’ve been reading a number of books about the War and its causes.  One of these, Adam Hochschild’s To End all Wars approaches the subject of this terrible event from a slightly different angle to most.  As is clear from the following quote, Hochschild’s sympathies are clear:

“"If we were allowed to magically roll back history to the start of the 20th century and undo one – and only one – event, is there any doubt that it would be the war that broke out in 1914?

To Hochschild, an historian of a pacifist inclination, World War One was an unnecessary folly, from which no good but an inordinate amount of evil came.  His book tells this story, and the story of the War, by focusing on those who stood up to protest against the War or who refused to participate.  The book’s subtitle is “How the First World War Divided Britain” and the author attempts to demonstrate this be contrasting the stories of dissenters with those of willing participants and supporters of the War.

Fascinatingly, many of the individuals he features were linked together by ties of family or friendship.  One of the book’s villains, Sir John French, commander of the BEF was, to Hochschild’s mind, a snobbish incompetent, calmly throwing away the lives of thousands of ordinary soldiers in misconceived attacks.  Yet his sister, Charlotte Despard, a suffragette and socialist activist, was a bitter opponent of the War, forming the Women’s Peace Crusade.  What is even more amazing is that the two siblings remained close and affectionate throughout the War, only becoming estranged when French, as Commander in Chief, Home Forces, suppressed the Easter Rising, much to the disgust of Despard, a SinnFein member.

Another tortured family relationship explored by Hochschild was that of the Pankhurst sisters, all leaders in the suffragette movement.  Whereas Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst believed that the German aggression was a threat to all humanity and felt that cooperating with the Government might also help their cause after the War, Sylvia and Adela, Emmeline’s other daughters took the polar opposite view.  The family became irretrievably fractured.

But Hochschild also explores other, lesser-known dissenters, such as the bizarre story of Alice Wheeldon, a committed pacifist and second-hand clothes dealer in Derby.  A forceful anti-war campaigner and a harbourer of draft-dodgers, she, together with two other family members, was convicted of plotting to assassinate the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, an accusation that was, almost certainly, trumped up by Government agents.

Hochschild reinforces his message with the grim and, even now, nearly incomprehensible statistics of death and destruction.  To give just some examples, he points out that half of all Frenchmen aged between 20 and 32 at the outbreak of war were dead by Armistice Day in 1918, that 9 million soldiers died and 21 million were wounded (including one of my great-grandfathers) and that nearly a million soldiers from Britain and its Empire perished.  One of the most shocking comments he makes is that:

"If the British dead alone were to rise up and march 24 hours a day past a given spot, four abreast, it would take them more than two and a half days."

To End All Wars is written with a passion and, indeed, compassion, that makes it intensely moving and a pleasure to read.  As a history of the War, it must be said that it doesn’t add a huge amount to the forest of First World War histories on the market but its account of British dissent during the War is a valuable additional to the general literature.

The main issue I have with it though is that it doesn’t really reflect the truth.  Although the dissenters and objectors were impassioned and brave and, although a case can be made (albeit not a conclusive one) that they were, ultimately, correct, they didn’t truly divide Britain.

One of the standard narratives of the War, influenced probably by the ubiquity of the likes of Owen, Sassoon and Graves on British school syllabuses, is that of an initially enthusiastic country becoming more and more disillusioned and hostile to the War as the casualties mounted and the horrors of the trenches became known.  But, nevertheless, the country and the army held together until the end.  There was no serious risk of giving up; Hochschild’s sub-title simply isn’t borne out by the facts.  The dissenters may well have had a case but they had very little substantive impact.

Despite this flaw, To End All Wars is a worthwhile read.  It may give undue prominence to the anti-War movements but it reminds us of the suffering caused by War and the global tragedy of a generation cut down in its prime.