Rasputín

One of the most fascinating and controversial figures of the 20th century, Rasputin has remained shrouded in myth of his own invention ever since his extraordinary rise to power at the court of Nicholas and Alexandra, Russia's last tsars. Until now. Edvard Radzinsky, the author of the international bestseller The Last Tsar, had long been frustrated by the meager explanations of the unfair authority of Grigory Efimovich Rasputin, a Russian peasant, semi-literate monk, and mystic, at the last Romanov court. In 1995, a file from the State Archives that had been missing for years was put up for auction at Sotheby's and found its way into the hands of Radzinsky. It contained interrogations from Rasputin's inner circle of admirers and those who kept him under police surveillance -documents no other historian had ever seen-. With this dossier, Radzinsky is able to turn Rasputin's biography from mysterious legend into reality. Using the accounts of Rasputin's friends, teachers, devotees, and his fanatical female fans -the people who saw Rasputin almost every day- Radzinsky presents a fascinating account of how Rasputin wielded and expanded his power. Radzinsky reveals the full extent of Rasputin's committed relationship with the Tsarina and describes his famous sexual odyssey through the worldly women of St. Petersburg, using the shockingly vicious testimony of the women themselves to uncover a trove of unbelievable secrets. Here is documented, for the first time, the way in which Rasputin reached the tsarist court and the true identity of the man who shot and killed him in 1916. And finally, the author offers us the real reasons for Rasputin's influence on virtually all imperial decisions at the end of the Russian royal Romanov dynasty. Through his exclusive access to the "Rasputin File," his unparalleled research into other sources, and his proven talent for storytelling, Radzinsky is finally able to tell the complete, sensational, extensively documented, and definitive Rasputin story.