The Rasputin File

Rasputin: mystical monk and philandering fool; enigmatic peasant who held extraordinary sway in the court of Tsar Nicholas and his wife, Alexandra. For almost a century, historians have speculated about the role this improbable holy man played in the start of the Russian Revolution and the demise of the Romanov dynasty. But in 1995, a lost file from the State Archives of Russia mysteriously turned up, a file containing the extensive and often explicit testimony of both Rasputin’s inner circle and those who kept him under police surveillance.

The first to draw on this substantial amplification of the record as well as numerous archival sources, Edvard Radzinsky, author of the bestselling STALIN and THE LAST TSAR, masterfully reconstructs the life of this remarkable man who rose to prominence in the twentieth-century Russia. From the complexities of Rasputin’s religious calling to controversial nature of his relationship with the tsarina and his coterie of female followers, from the extent of his influence at court to the spellbinding details of his brutal death, THE RASPUTIN FILE dispels the contradictory myths in an utterly convincing, definitive portrait that is every bit as mesmerizing as the legend.