How Rasputin Destroyed the Romanovs with Anthony Beevor

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2:54Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen? Scandalous underground pamphlets circulating through the freezing streets of Petrograd certainly said so. Hand-drawn pornographic cartoons portrayed them intertwined, sneering down the starving public. Whether this was true or just wartime slander did not matter. Enough Russians believed it. It helped to shatter the mystical bond between the people and the little father, Tsar Nicholas II, helped to drain the last dregs of loyalty from the nobility and the army, and accelerated the empire towards catastrophe. In 1917, after three centuries of dynastic rule, the House of Romanov vanished.

3:44Their empire, a landmass that spanned one-sixth of the globe Stretching unbroken from the German border to the Pacific Simply unraveled And at the center of this storm stood a tragic triad Tsar Nicholas II, pious and pathologically incapable of wielding the absolute power he believed God had entrusted him with His German-born Empress, Alexandra Fyodorovna intensely religious, desperate, isolated within the grand walls of the imperial residence. And bound to them by an agonizing imperial secret, the hidden haemophilia of their young son, the Tsarevich Alexei, was Grigory Rasputin, a barely literate peasant holy man from the Siberian wilderness whose uncanny ability to ease the boy's internal hemorrhages gave him unprecedented access to the Romanov inner circle.

4:41To the court he was a vulgar low-born charlatan who embodied corruption and debauchery The living manifestation of the rot that had taken root within the Romanov family To the empress though he was sent by God A man who was inextricably linked to the survival of the imperial crown itself How did a Siberian holy man do so much damage to a dynasty that had weathered countless invasions? Peasant jacqueries, palace coup, assassination and the fires of Napoleon? Today we delve into the volatile world of Russia's early 20th century. An era defined by breakneck modernisation, industrialisation, but also social schism and the butchery of the First World War.

5:33Was Rasputin truly a malign puppet master pulling the levers of state? Or was he just a grotesque symptom of a naive, unworldly, isolated autocracy that was rotting from the inside out? To help us untangle salacious myth from grim reality, we're joined by the one and only Anthony Beaver, a legend of history. He's recently written Rasputin and the Downfall of the Romanovs and he's going to help us unpack the final days of Imperial Russia. Enjoy.

6:16Anthony, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. Dan, great to be back with you. Where do we first catch sight of this man, Rasputin, in the historical record? Where does he emerge? Well, he doesn't really emerge until, curiously, the end of the Japanese war between Russia. This is when he appears in Petrograd, or rather in St. Petersburg, as it still was at that point, and having made contact with various characters, perhaps a rich woman in Kazan who introduces him to a bishop, who then introduces him to a bishop in Petersburg, And we are at a period, I know by now we're talking about 1905, we are at a period when it was sort of a slight fantasie obsession with shamans, with religious nuts of one form or another.

7:13And at this particular stage, the Tsar and the Tsaritsa had lost their great friend before, who was called Monsieur Philippe, who was a predecessor to Rasputin. and he was a French conman who had basically won them over and they missed him. And the Tsar had been humiliated by the Japanese war, which was basically his own fault. He had insulted the Japanese and his attempts to expand Russian power in the Far East had obviously come up against Japanese expansion. and the Russians were beaten. They were beaten badly on land and they were also then utterly humiliated at sea, losing the whole of their Far Eastern fleet and then most of their Baltic fleet, which they'd sailed all around the world to try to exert revenge.

8:14And all of these faults came down to the Tsar. So as you might imagine, by the end of 1905, he was feeling pretty humiliated and was forced to accept a constitution which undermined the whole concept of Romanov autocracy. Okay, so he's a sort of, as you say, a shamanistic figure. So he impressed some wealthy patron in the provinces with his religiosity and then from then to a bishop. And that's how people sort of climbed up this ladder of... There was a progression for these kind of people, was there? It was an astonishing ladder climbing during such a short period of time. Here we have him climbing the ladder and then almost becoming part of the royal family.

9:09I mean, the rest of the royal family were appalled, the other Romanovs, and above all, Nicholas's mother, because she had had this terrifying dream when she was pregnant with Nicholas. that she had been walking up a mountain with her husband, Nicholas's father, Alexander III, and suddenly this baby had appeared in her arms. And it jumped out and she said, what's this baby? And he said, that is your baby, that is the future czar. And the baby scrambled up the mountain. And at the top of the mountain, ahead of them, was this peasant in red clothes and flaming red hair with an axe who chopped off the baby's head.

9:47Well, not surprisingly, that traumatised the mother. and she got a wet nurse to translate, to explain the dream and was horrified, as you might imagine, by what it implied and all the rest of it. So when 38 years later she hears that her son and daughter-in-law have become besotted with a Siberian peasant who they're treating almost as an equal, she leads the opposition within the Romanov family against Rasputin's influence. First of all, I need to ask, just briefly, how did Rasputin do that? Was he a man of extraordinary personal charisma? He was a fascinating mixture of every contradiction you could imagine.

10:36He was both extremely spiritual, there's no doubt about that, but at the same time he was extremely lascivious. He was corrupt, and yet he gave away virtually all his money. he basically claimed that he loved women and actually in many ways he was very good at understanding them but at the same time he was a part-time rapist he was a complete hypocrite in the way that he pretended that he was a voice of the peasantry and bringing their message to the feet of the throne and to the czar And yet at the same time, when it was a question of women, he would respect the grandees who he seduced. But when it came to ordinary women during the war, who were, say, desperate to try to get permission for their husband or son to be exempted from frontline service, he would blackmail them, promise them that he'd do this, and then rape them.

11:45So basically, he was every form of opposite imaginable. And that actually is part of his fascination. So he's a mystic. The royal couple are superstitious. They are religious themselves. They're probably not intellectual giants. So they sort of fell under his spell, could we say? Yes. I mean, in many ways, they were very naive. I mean, what is interesting about the empress, who really did become mentally disturbed, She came from a very poor German small court, was the granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and was actually then brought up mainly by Queen Victoria, so in many ways was more English. But she was a devoted Protestant and didn't want to marry Nicholas II because it would mean changing her religion.

12:31But when finally she was persuaded to do so, she then actually became more Russian and more reactionary Slav, Russian Orthodox than any Russian. So she then saw when Rasputin arrived, the very fact that, you know, he may not have been, shall we say, immaculately turned up. She saw this as part of the bond, the so-called bond between the Tsar, the Tsar Bacushka and the Russian peasantry. And this is why she felt, A, that this would prevent revolution and save them, because one has to remember they were very close to revolution in 1905 as a result of the disasters of the war with Japan. They think they've got this expression of real Russian-ness.

13:28They can't be doing anything wrong because they had brought the peasantry into the heart of the royal family. Absolutely. And, of course, that's why they hated St. Petersburg, which was Peter the Great's window on the West. But for them, it was far too European. They loved Moscow and the old-fashioned, the old boyar mentality of Muscovy and felt that sort of the modern version was corrupt. But we still see this today in some of the echoes of the ideology affecting Putin. I mean, Vladimir Medinsky, the Minister of Culture, who's basically now conducting the negotiations with Zelensky or with the Ukrainians, is another who has the same attitude, the same mentality, believing that Russia should control the whole of the Eurasian landmass from Vladivostok to Dublin because Europe is corrupt and holy Slavofil Russia is the only true religion.

14:37It's medieval in so many ways. Okay, so now we've got this, actually quite a medieval figure, if you like, this sort of mystic, this religious gentleman at the Russian court. he becomes close to the royal family and then you mentioned him playing an actual sort of role in administration what what did what was russ putin doing between 1905 and the first war i mean is he he's like is he a minister is he just hanging out with them what's he up to no that comes much later his any his opportunity for interfering in politics only comes during the first world war and that is when it becomes totally disastrous during this particular period he's very close to the royal firmly.

15:18I mean, it's astonishing, the naivety of the Tsar in the way that he writes in his diary, you know, I come home and I find that my wife is having a very nice chat with Rasputin, I come and join them. Well, it never occurs to him how shocking this is in terms of protocol, in terms of her reputation. She even writes a letter to Rasputin, which he shows to somebody and is stolen, saying that she longs to fall asleep forever on your shoulder. Well, all of these give the impression that she is having an affair with Rasputin. And the closer one gets to the First World War or to revolution, I mean, the rumors even extend to the idea that he's sleeping with all of the teenage daughters, which is totally untrue.

16:06But the whole point that the wife of the Tsar might be cuckolding him with a Siberian peasant completely undermines and destroys the whole national authority of autocracy of the Romanovs. And in a patriarchal society like Russia, as you might imagine, that starts to destroy all confidence in the regime. And this is why this is why I am very last thing on this. But this is why later when you have the revolution and the first genuine revolution of February and then you have the Bolshevik coup d 'etat, it's Kerensky, the head of the provisional government, who says without Rasputin, there would never have been a Lenin.

16:52Okay, so just quickly, you don't think, having looked at all the details here, you don't think that they were actually having a sexual relationship? She was just dependent on him as a friend, a confessor, a religious advisor? It was a deeply emotional relationship, there's no doubt about that. I mean, certainly from her point of view, to what degree Rasputin was exploiting it for his own gain is very hard to tell. I mean, I'm sure there was an element of that. But at the same time, he was devoted to the family, particularly to the children. He was not molesting the daughters at all, even though that was suspected.

17:31His bad behavior was sort of out of their sight when he really did behave abominably. But we'll get to that later. the real problem in a way was that as it moved towards that period it was a question of the way he was able to help the Tsarevich and the Tsarevich was their son who they waited for for so long was finally born and it proved that he had haemophilia the English disease as they referred to it because it came from Queen Victoria. It passed through the female line and it was the boys who were affected. So the four daughters were all absolutely fine and perfectly healthy, but it was the Tsarevich Alexei who was the one who suffered.

18:24And Rasputin seems to have had this ability to sort of calm him down after particular attacks of hemophilia and all this. Absolutely. I mean, this was the first time that this happened. He was in dreadful pain because what happens to the haemophilia is it starts swelling the joints and all the rest of it. Now, he could contribute by his voice, his eyes. Some people say that, in fact, he was a hypnotist. I don't think that's entirely true. But there was no doubt about it. His voice and his calming abilities could actually then reduce the blood pressure. and this was a fact which the doctors were able to recognize because he did have this sort of influence.

19:11He also had an influence on the mother because the mother was probably historical most of the time about the way that the child was suffering. And once Rasputin arrived, she calmed down and that must have helped also the boy to calm down. But then there comes a particular moment which is the key turning point, if you like, which is at Spala in Poland, which is where they were on the hunting, the Ra's hunting trip. The boy has a bad accident. The haemophilia gets to such a degree and so painful that he's on the point of death. And Rasputin is not there. He's far, far away. But he telephones when he is contacted and tells them the boy is going to be all right.

19:58There is no problem. And maybe that calmed down the mother and the boy recovered. And the doctors could not understand it because they had actually prepared the parents for the death of the Tsarevich. So from that point onwards, Rasputin has total power over the empress, over the Zaita. And everybody around acknowledges and realizes this. And they view it with dread as they realize that they're going to lose all control to the Siberian person. Because it's very interesting. I always think for revolutions, you don't just need a popular revolution, which everyone's just thoroughly annoyed with how things are going, food, conditions, whatever it is.

20:47But you also need elite abandonment of the sovereign, don't you? You need the aristocracy, the ruling class, going, actually, this sovereign is utterly useless. And so are you saying that that's the damage that Rasputin did? He made the institution of the monarchy, the imperial institution, so weak that when it faced a big challenge, it would topple. Absolutely. And one has to remember, as I was saying, in a patriarchal society like Russia, the very idea that the empress might be sleeping with a peasant and cuckolding the Tsar completely destroyed the whole myth of Romanov power, autocracy, control.

21:25So when it came to the popular February revolution of February 1917, not a single sword was raised in defence of the regime by the vast or actually by then greatly reduced Imperial Guard and the Imperial Lifeguard regiments. So tell me, apart from in the build-up to the First World War, because I'm very struck by a point in your book that one thing Rasputin advised was, don't get involved in the First World War. So in a way, perhaps they should listen to on that occasion. But was it just his being and being so close to the family that enraged people? Or was he giving policy advice that was clearly deranged and making things worse for the royal family?

22:11In the build-up to the First World War, let's stick with the build-up first. Okay. Well, in the build-up First World War, remember, there was the First and the Second Balkan Wars. And one of them was about Montenegro. And the king of Montenegro's daughter was married to the Grand Duke Nicolásia, who was this immensely tall, six foot seven cousin of the Tsar, and who was the commander-in-chief of the armies. and he of course was furious when Rasputin advised the Tsar not to get involved in that Balkan war because as far as he was concerned they were the ones actually who'd finally introduced Rasputin into the royal family so he regarded this as a stab in the back by their former protégé who they'd helped up to the final rung of the ladder in the Alexander Palace.

23:12And now he was advising against war. Now then, when it comes to 1914, it's again, Rasputin is against the war and any idea of it. But this is a crucial moment when there is the first assassination attempt on Rasputin and he is stabbed in his home village of Pokrovskoy in Siberia by this woman who actually has been sent or been encouraged to kill him by Rasputin's biggest rival, the Harrow monk Iliador, who had first of all admired, adored even, Rasputin, and then realized that Rasputin was lascivious, fierce, was seducing nuns and doing all sorts of appalling things, in his view, he then decided that Rachea Rasputin was the devil in angels' clothes.

24:08And so he was out of things when the decisions were made to go for mobilisation when Austria-Hungary basically declared war on Serbia. It isn't because we'd be remiss if we didn't point out that despite Rasputin's terrible reputation within the Russian ruling elite. He said to the Tsar, he cabled him or wrote to him, I read in your book, he said, for goodness sakes, do not fight this war. This is going to be a complete disaster for Russia and it may end up to the end of your imperial regime. Well, he was absolutely right about that. He was right. He was completely right. He wasn't always wrong.

24:46The trouble was that the Tsar at that stage would not accept any advice from Rasputin, especially when it came to military affairs. And the trouble was that, But, you know, later on, which we'll come to when he was really interfering with the empress and basically sort of running the government. By that stage, the Tsar was prepared to give in and accept these appointments. He would still not accept advice on military affairs. That was where he sort of drew the line. How funny. So the Tsar destroys his own reputation by listening to this mystic. But the only area in which he doesn't listen to this mystic is the one area that actually might have done him some good.

25:32Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. This is Dan Snow's History here. More after this.

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28:59So Russia goes to war. Why does Rasputin gain more power once the Russian war machine is moving and is locked in battle against the central powers? Well, Rasputin realizes once the war starts that he has to support the war in the sense of he and the Empress together, who are seen as the German party because, of course, she's of German origin. And this creates all forms of rumors, of conspiracy theories. I mean, there were even conspiracy theories that the empress had a radio in her boudoir and was passing messages on to Berlin about troop movements and things like that. I mean, you can imagine the rumour mongering, the rumour factory in Petersburg, or by then, sorry, it becomes Petrograd because it's a more Russian sounding name.

29:57The rumour mill in Petrograd is simply terrifying. I mean, talk about fake news, whether it's a question of the sleeping with the daughters, the sleeping with the Empress or anything like that. The point is, though, that the Tsar feels rather useless because all he can do is visit the troops. But the commander in chief is cousin Nicolasha. And the Empress then starts to persuade him that Nicolasha wants the throne for himself. and therefore he, Nicholas II, should actually take over as commander-in-chief at the general headquarters at the Stavka. And this finally takes place in 1915 and he's warned by everyone.

30:44He's warned by the British, the French, his allies. He's warned by all of his ministers, with the exception of the prime minister, that this is going to lead to disaster. and with total obstinacy he said no it is god who has told me you know to take over uh the command of the armies uh and following god's will this will lead to victories and all the rest of it but actually it leads to the greatest retreat in russian history virtually um short of short of 1812 but they retreat all the way uh leaving abandoning the whole of poland most of belarussia and so forth. So his wife encouraged the Tsar to take that disastrous appointment himself.

31:28Absolutely. Are we suggesting that Rasputin was influencing the Tsarina, his wife? Absolutely. It was entirely a joint decision between Rasputin and the Tsarina, the Reza Ritsa, to actually persuade Nicholas to do it. And when it was a question of Nicholas seeing his ministers, she said, you know, you must thump the table, you must bang the table. If you need courage, and this gives you an idea, if you need courage, you have Rasputin's own comb, which he has combed his hair with. You comb your hair with this comb and you will feel stronger and be able to face up to your ministers. I mean, this idea of a sort of talisman of Rasputin's comb may sound preposterous, but it was obviously something that he believed in.

32:17So the ministers then were sacked because the Rasputin and the Tsaritsa wanted to have only those who would actually support them. So anyone who had any qualities or anybody who had any talents was got rid of and they all became the most slavish ones. But ironically, they then appoint the new minister of the interior, who pretends certainly to be slavish in his admiration of Rasputin and the emperors, but then plots to kill Rasputin because Rasputin was blocking him from becoming prime minister. I mean, I refer to it as Russian farce. I mean, the whole thing became so ludicrous. It was astonishing with these different conspiracies.

33:14And I should ask, because the Tsar has taken that formal military role at the front, is he leaving government largely in the hands of his wife, who's now heavily influenced by Rasputin? Yes. You know, there she is back in Petersburg, while he is far away at the front. So when it's a question of the administration of the country, she is saying, right, we've got to get rid of these governors. They don't support us. We've got to get rid of these ministers. I mean, the whole record of how many ministers and how many governors were sacked and were changed. And I mean, it became a bad joke. It was referred to as ministerial leapfrog.

33:56As one was chucked out, then the next one came in. So not a single minister ever had a chance of getting a grip of his ministry or the civil service who were working for them. There was only one really good minister of war. And because he was not a great fan of Rasputin, they had to get rid of him too. But, you know, during this particular period, corruption grew. Rasputin was involved very much in the corruption in, for example, one of the largest contracts was providing underwear for the whole of the army, you can imagine. Well, Rasputin was given some sort of some of the backsheesh or whatever from this particular thing.

34:45And I think that he gave it away or threw it away or whatever. But, I mean, the whole atmosphere of corruption, of what was going on, the rumours of what was happening in the palace, the fact that the Tsar was not there and was totally out of sight, it really meant that the ship was sailing without any captain or any rudder. So the Tsar is presiding over a series of disastrous military campaigns at the front, personally, so his name's personally attached to that. So he's blamed for everything. So I mean, yes, so the ruling class of Russia must be just totally, everyone must be completely demoralised, even on the home front and on the front line.

35:23Utterly demoralised. I mean, they all say they knew that revolution was coming, basically. And their reaction was, you know, there it was. It was a time of the tango. It was a great sort of dance. And I mean, they were sort of dancing a tango on the edge of trenches filled with corpses, as far as one particular writer put it. It was utterly demoralizing, but also utterly corrupt. during this particular period. I mean, the prostitution, the divorces, the suicides that were happening. I mean, it really was the downfall of a whole society happening, and they seem to be absolutely incapable of doing anything to stop it.

36:13Well, they do try and do, one group tries to do one thing to try and stop it, and that is strike it Rasputin himself. Well, rather, should we say, too little too late, if one sense of thing. There had been other plots to kill Rasputin to get rid of him, but none of them came to anything. He was beaten up a few times by guards officers. And then Prince Yusupov, who was married, Prince Yusupov was the richest young feat. he was a total narcissist suddenly got the idea that even though he had a perfectly useless life he would save Russia and so he then got his great friend the Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich who was the Tsar's favourite nephew to join him in a plan to kill Rasputin and one very prominent politician called Perushkovic, who was the leader of the Black Hundreds, the really notorious, the really nasty anti-Semitic organization in Russia.

37:31And therefore, you've got three right-wing extremists thinking that they could save the monarchy themselves. And Yusupov was actually married to the Tsar's favorite niece, Grand Duchess Irene, who was very beautiful and intelligent. And he also encouraged by his mother, Princess Yusupova, who had fallen out with the Empress and also hated Rasputin. And she encouraged her son in this great project. So suddenly there we find ourselves in November 1916 with the planning for killing Rasputin taking place. And they thought the best idea was to lure him to the Yusupov Palace, the Moika Palace in Petrogram.

38:22And the bait was going to be that he would be meeting, finally meeting Yusupov's wife, the beautiful Grand Duchess Irena. And finally, on the night of the 16th, Yusupov, who'd been becoming a false friend of Rasputin during this particular period, invited him to a party. And this is where we get sort of the grotesque finale of Rasputin's life, with, I'm afraid, the terrible paradox, which even Yusupov noted as he led him to the car to take him to the party. But of course, here was Rasputin who had this tremendous reputation for being able to foretell the future, couldn't even foretell his own death.

39:12You listen to Dan Snow's History, there's more coming up.

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40:48And so he was ambushed and then went through, just quickly take us through this extraordinary process, which led to that death? Well, chaotic process. It was one of the most incompetent murders you could possibly imagine. It is another Russian farce in the worst order. The idea was that they were going to ambush him in the palace because they were afraid that was a nearby police station and the pistol shots might be, any pistol shots might be heard. So they prepared all of this food of sweet cakes and Marsala, his favorite drink, which they put cyanide in. What they didn't seem to realize was that the sugary element actually negated the poison in cyanide.

41:40So that didn't work very well. It's either that or perhaps it was too old, the cyanide that they used. We don't know. And there they were starting to panic because Rasputin was eating all of this stuff and he wasn't dying. And then so they finally realized they felt they had to shoot him. And so Yusupov had to go down and eventually confront him. And all this time they were playing the same music upstairs, pretending that a party was going on. And Rasputin was getting suspicious because where was the Grand Duchess Irina, who he was supposed to be meeting? Oh, she's just coming. You know, the guests will be leaving or whatever.

42:18So they're coming up these unconvincing lies. And eventually out comes the pistol and he shoots Rasputin in the chest, thinks that he's killed him and the others come down. And then Rasputin is not dead and he grabs Yusupov by the throat. And eventually they sort of club him and he seems to collapse. And they then leave him thinking, assuming that he's dead, which is a very stupid thing to do. So they go off to get the car because they got to go and dispose of the body. And when they come back, they suddenly find that Rasputin is actually trying to make his way out of the house, into the courtyard.

42:56And this is where Purishkovic, the politician, then guns him down from behind. And they then think, oh, well, listen, we've got to make sure, we've got to sort of fake some sort of cover story. and say they shoot one of Yusupov's Bortsoi hounds, wolf hounds, says to show why there's blood in the snow outside in the courtyard. And then the police arrive or whatever and then they tell the police, well, actually we've shot Rasputin, so, you know, we've saved Russia. And then they then try to tell the Empress the next day that it wasn't them. No, they were just having a party. I mean, you know, the contradictions, the way that they lied was unbelievably stupid.

43:47It was astonishing. But anyway, that was the end of Rasputin at any rate. And it did not provoke the nervous breakdown of the Empress, which they had assumed. They thought, well, even if nothing else, she will just collapse. And then with any luck, either the Tsar will step down and Nicolasa will sort of step up as commander-in-chief again, or we at least get her out of the way and her influence. But that wasn't going to change things at all. It just meant actually that the imperial family closed in on itself and wouldn't listen to any of their relations to any of the other Romanovs at all. And from then it was just a drift towards the revolution.

44:34But the worst thing that they had done was to appoint the last basically minister of the interior, Protopopov, who was on the surface quite a good choice. But in fact, he was mad. He was suffering from terminal paralysis of the insane. He had syphilis, which he'd caught as a young guards officer. He was therefore talking to icons. He was conversing with the dead. And because he was slavishly loyal to the empress and had been to Rasputin and very close to him, he was regarded as wonderful by the royal family. But actually, it was an even worse disaster than what had gone before. And he was put in charge of transportation, which he had demanded, and this is the moment when all of the Russian trains froze solid in this terrible January and February of 1917.

45:34and this is why there was no food in the cities. It wasn't there was a shortage of grain or anything like that. They just couldn't get the trains into the cities because Protopopov had left them all in the wrong places and they had frozen solid and that completely destroyed the locomotives. So Rasputin's last, well, he very heavily influenced the appointment of this incompetent man. The entire food distribution system of the empire broke down and hungry crowds in St. Petersburg toppled the Tsarist monarchy. That simple as that? Well, more or less as simple as that, yes. None of the revolutionaries, none of the Bolsheviks, the socialist revolutionaries or others, were there because they were all abroad.

46:20We had Lenin in Zurich. You've got Trotsky in North America. Stalin was still in prison in Siberia. so the February Revolution the true Russian Revolution the street revolution took place without any revolutionary leadership at all it was a genuine genuine popular movement and to the astonishment of everybody the Cossacks instead of killing the protesters as they had in 1905 with Father Gapon they started to join or encourage or allow the crowds to break through. And the only people who were loyal to the regime were the police, the hated pharaohs, as they were called, and they were all lynched and killed.

47:10I mean, it was pretty savage. It wasn't a bloodless revolution at all. It was pretty savage. And this was the collapse of total collapse, as I say, without any of the Imperial Guards officers drawing their swords in defence of the regime. And this was followed eventually by the very weak provisional government, which took over. So I often wonder about those vital few hours. There were troops in Moscow. What you're saying, the royal family had lost the loyalty by that point because of the fake news, but because of the real news of Rasputin, various things, that actually they didn't want to fight.

47:50They didn't want to coerce the population. They said, look, we've got to have a change here. Even the great aristocratic officer corps of these guards units? Well, most of the aristocratic officers of the guards unit had been at the front, and they had all been massacred in a disastrous battle in 1916. It was sort of the last part of the great Brusilov offensive, which had actually gone rather well to begin with. And this appalling massacre of all the guards regiments which took place in what was basically Poland meant that they weren't the troops in Petrograd. Those were mainly reserve regiments and many of their officers actually were basically ex-students, many of whom were pretty left-wing.

48:43So there were not that many aristocrat officers around to draw their swords there at that particular stage. but the damage that Rasputin did you believe at the end of writing this book and looking at this but you think that he did a real tangible damage to that to that the institution of the czar and his wife and that in their rule the great irony of course was that here was Rasputin you know the loyal great monarchies who had actually brought them down to this particular level. And, you know, the tragedy went on from there. The whole idea of would they ever be allowed to leave the country once the provisional government had taken over.

49:32But one has to remember the provisional government, which then became led by Kerensky, was actually a hybrid between the left and the centrist conservative right. and they of course the centrist conservative right was soon eliminated and gradually it became much more left-wing until you get the attempt by the communists, by the Bolsheviks to take over once after Lenin had returned through the train to the Finland station. So that was the next part in 1917. But I'm very interested, Anthony, that you, I've, Rasputin's always been told as a sort of oddity and a sort of addendum to this period that he died in this extraordinary way.

50:23He was this bizarre character. You're really putting him at the heart of the narrative of the terminal years of the Romanov family. He is directly, largely responsible for the catastrophe that overcame, well, their regime. He was definitely the central figure in, if you like, the demoralization there. I mean, there are lots of other things. As I said, it was the corruption, the atmosphere of total sleaze in all directions. But so much of it was actually coming around him. It wasn't so much Rasputin himself. It was his entourage, because obviously every opportunist was trying to grab onto his coattails.

51:11to get the contracts, to get this or that from the empress, because Rasputin would write out all these little notes, which would be, I mean, this is more illegible, saying, dearie, do do this, you know, do what they ask for. And, I mean, you know, he was dishing these out to everybody who came along, and they were supposed to go along to the minister and say, right, Rasputin says that I can have this, and Rasputin says I can have that. I mean, you know, it was an unbelievable system of government in any sense of the matter. Well, thank you. Remind everyone what your book is called, Anthony. It is called Rasputin and the Downfall of the Romanos.

51:56And it is going to be out very, very soon. Thank you very much, Anthony Biver, for coming on the podcast. Thank you, Dan. Very good to see you. Well, that revolution of early 1917, it didn't just close a chapter on the imperial dynasty. It shattered the old Russia completely. Anything was now possible. There would be a further revolution. There would be civil war and a radical new ideological order would emerge that would reshape the 20th century. We hope you've enjoyed this deep dive into the final years of imperial Russia. huge thank you as ever to Sir Anthony Beaver for his insights into the Romanoff's downfall remember folks make sure you follow the podcast thank you very much for listening until next time

52:56We'll be right back.

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