Rasputin: The Saint Who Sinned

by Brian Moynahan

Release Date: January, 2000

Edition: Paperback

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A gripping and sobering read

Rasputin is a figure pretty well everybody has heard of. The popular mind thinks of him as a drunken rake who got into the confidence of the Russian imperial family by a mixture of his guile and their predilection for religious fervour, coupled to their concern for their hemophiliac son and obsession with preserving the autocracy. As this gripping book tells us, that image is not wrong, but it is incomplete. Rasputin was also a devoted family man and did much to help a lot of people. Brian Moynahan makes a good job of showing us this in a steady narrative which only occasionally loses its footing and takes care to put this bizarre figure in context. There are weaknesses. The conclusions are crushed into a couple of pages and I would have liked more on what happened after Rasputin's death and the revolution which followed. But this is an excellent piece of work for anyone interested in Russia at the time. And if the book is sensationalist, well, Rasputin was sensational figure. He was instrumental, albeit possibly unwittingly, in bringing down one of Europe's grand old dynasties. You don't get much more sensational than that.

Rasputin and the fall of the House of Romanov

A beautifully written book, the characters in this vivid drama of tsarist Russia under Nicholas II and Alexandra come alive and are fleshed out. Rasputin, in spite of his lechery, drunkeness,and exhibtionism was charming with children, including the hemophiliac tsarevitch Alexis (usually called Alexei) For the first time ever, I felt a twinge of pity for Rasputin. The tsar and tsarina come to life too. Though decent in private, in his public affairs Nicholas was deceitful, vascillating, and jealous and Alexandra was a virago who wore the pants in the family, meddled in public affairs and lead her husband around by an invisible ring in his nose. Together they progressed from one dreadful mistake to the next. They governed Russia with stupidity, isolated as they were from the Russian people.They were almost surreal, tucked away in their sweltering cocoon.

This book is superb. It is a page-turner. You will become so immersed in the lives of the Russian people at the turn of the last century that you'll forget where you are. And you will discover that Rasputin, dispite his monstrous faults, is very human.