Last night I watched an interesting video on YouTube about the murder of Rasputin. As is well known, his murder was carried out by a small group of officers. Rasputin was a mystic (also a womaniser and a drunk) in pre-revolutionary Russia, who became the darling of the upper classes of Saint Petersburg, including the royal family,.
The video goes into the murder plot in detail. First they tried to poison him with cakes laced with cyanide. He ate the cakes, complaining that they were too sweet but was unaffected. Then they shot him and dumped him in the Neva River. There were three bullet holes in the body from three different calibre weapons. The video makes a strong case that the fatal head shot was delivered, not by the Russian officers, but by a British agent, Oswald Rayner. The reason for Britain’s involvement was that Rasputin’s influence with the Tsar could well have resulted in Russia’s withdrawal from the First World War with disastrous consequences for the allies.
For me, the take away impression was the utter incompetence of the Russian officers. Clearly they had been sold sugar instead of cyanide and were incapable of killing an unarmed man at close range with a loaded pistol. These men were army officers, for heaven’s sake!
Then the penny dropped. From many years ago I remembered a conversation with an American friend who had spent time at a Chilean Antarctic base. When he was there, the radio antennas were blown down in a storm and the base lost all communication with the outside world. He told me that instead of getting stuck in and urgently restoring communications as Australians or Americans would have done, the Chileans sat around and talked about it for a week.
Like Rasputin’s assassins, these men were army officers. They were also aristocrats.
We can generalise the idea of aristocrat to include anyone who regards a particular knowledge or skill as beneath them, such as Oscar Wilde’s Gwendolyn, “When I see a spade I call it a spade. I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade”.
The skill of killing another human being was beneath those Russian army officers. That was the function of other ranks.
Hi John,
Wow, what a departure topic for you. Very intriguing. Clearly the program you watched had an effect on you. As I read your post, I read officers, and in a conditioned way took that in as soldiers. But of course in those days an officer was generally from the upper class families, and not a soldier as we think of it today. So your fallen pence is right I think. Officers were the privileged playboys of the day,
Allan, It was 1916. Why weren’t they at the front?
True, but the transition may not have been at the same time in all countries? Certainly, within 2 years certain Russian classes who considered themselves privileged were quite capable of effectively murdering the Romanovs.
At Cosgrove High School in Glenorchy I had a science teacher, a German immigrant called Eddie Saur, a best friend in later years, bearded, haggard, rustic, moved to a retreat that afforded a bomb shelter in the back yard at Rhyndaston, whom I describe as Rasputin-like.
The Red Army soldiers who murdered the Russian royal family were certainly not aristocrats.
One David Livingstone Smith has written a book on inhumanity. Although I think it doesn’t quite make the grade, considering the wealth of knowledge available to us which he could have applied to the subject but didn’t, it is worth reading about it. At least he is serious, and seriously concerned with and about the inhumanity of mankind against itself. Whereas…, the subject of Rasputin here appears to be erring on the side of jesting. But then, Rasputin was a drunk and a womaniser as well as a mystic, no disputin that. The murder of a drunk womaniser may well be fair game in jesting or intellectual jousting. However, we ought to remind ourselves, I think, not sermonising, just saying, that the seemingly superfluous and utterly gratuitous slaughter still happening in our world today is sickening to the ultimate degree for the survivors.
I grew up with WW II ringing in my ears. It has never left me, though I am almost done watching WW II videos and reading about it.
Now, do we think that what happens somewhere else can be excused as something already historic, because, well, maybe because we are not directly engaged in the experiencing of it or may think/feel that it cannot really be true?.
A few weeks go I sat next to a couple from Armenia, originally. They have resided in Holland for the last 30 years, no doubt on the basis of their refugee status.
So I became briefly but lastingly acquainted with other people who were only a generation past their people suffering a serious attempt to wipe them out. This has set me thinking about the innate propensity of people (and peoples) who have acquired powers beyond their ability to humanely exercise it, to go beyond and do unspeakable things to the other and the way humanity as a whole deals with such waywardness (and transgressions, as we see it from our human moral perspective). It is an agonisingly slow process.
Were the aristocrats who killed Rasputin merely motivated by a personal genetic driver, or consciously or unconsciously acting on behalf of cultural parameters hard-wired into their class? Were they consciously trying to protect their privileges and their entrenched soon-to-be-overthrown class system? Or, more likely, a combination of all factors?
What actually drives individuals in their conduct, good or bad? Is it not dark energy, mostly?
Jacob, Rasputin was clearly a threat to the security of the Russian State because of his involvement with the royal family. The officers were, no doubt, well meaning patriots. Revolution was already “in the air” and took place in 1917, the following year. I was not “jesting” as you suggest but pointing out how easily a military caste can become effete and incompetent. The recent concern with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the armed forces may prove to be a step in the wrong direction in this regard.
For the record, I grew up in the west midlands of England in the 1940s. I remember the air raids.
Yes, points taken. I don’t know enough about the Russian Revolution to add much, but the officers in question, if they had seen it coming, might not have bothered. Feet of clay, brain fog. When a regime or system is due for the chop, it’s demise is systemic. Did Rasputin’s death make a difference in that regard? Not likely, I should think. Same now in the West, and perhaps generally for hegemons and power-mongers-Here’s hoping for a better world.
Did Rasputin’s death make a difference? One of the “ifs of history”, of course, and we can never know, but I would argue that it could have done. The Tsarina believed that he was the only thing keeping her son alive and he may well have persuaded her, and through her, the Tsar, to make peace with Germany and withdraw from the war. This may have defused the Revolution and discredited the Bolsheviks. It may also have led to Germany winning the war. What a pity we don’t have history models like climate models in which we can change one key event and see what would have happened. Oh well.
“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” -George Orwell. I would make it “… rough, competent men …”.
Two mays make a might. Too many mays a might too slight,
to make a difference. However, it must be reckoned true that minor consequences can make a huge difference to subsequent developments. Conversely, a slight difference early in the development of a certain chain of events can have huge consequences. As to Rasputin and, had he lived, longer, a different fate for Russia (and Ukraine, and the Baltics, etc., etc.), the answer is long blown away by the winds of change, I’m afraid.
It’s true also that we are prevented from sleeping peacefully in our beds at night because rough, incompetent (mostly) men stand ready to do violence on their own behalves.