Antony Beevor, historian: ‘Rasputin combined spirituality with extreme lust and lasciviousness’

Used to hearing Antony Beevor detail troop movements at Stalingrad, the siege of Berlin, the Normandy landings, the paratroopers’ effort at Arnhem or the Panzer offensive in Hitler’s last stand in the Ardennes, it is surprising to hear him talk about Rasputin’s penis. In truth, he adopts the same look of intense concentration he brings to his usual military topics. “Rasputin’s penis… is an object of interest, certainly,” he says when his interlocutor mentions that, during an afternoon of astonishment and vodka, he saw on display in a St. Petersburg museum the appendage shown as such in a glass jar. “Yes, it is said to measure 13 inches, about 33 centimeters, but I don’t know that it’s something to take seriously. My father-in-law, the historian John Julius Norwich, used to explain that his father, Duff Cooper, the first British ambassador to France after the Liberation and also a historian [and father of the notable writer Artemis Cooper, Beevor’s wife], was convinced that part of Rasputin’s sexual success and magnetism lay in his member and his muscular control, but there is no historical record that it was cut off after his murder. Today it is impossible to assert that what is on display is his; I don’t believe any DNA test has been done.” In fact, some say it is a horse’s penis, or, if not that, a dried sea cucumber, as has also been suggested. Beevor recalls, in any case, that at the time in Tsarist Russia, Rasputin was credited with extraordinary sexual potency and caricatures circulated showing his organ, in reference to the monk’s influence over the Tsarina Alexandra and, through her, Tsar Nicholas II, with the legend: “The rod that rules Russia.”

This singular conversation with Sir Antony Beevor (London, 79), recognized as one of the finest military historians of our time, and which will later include him humming the famous Boney M song Rasputin, is relevant because the author has just published a book centered on the controversial figure known as the mad monk, Rasputin: And the Downfall of the Romanovs (2026), a compelling and revealing work that falls within another of the scholar’s areas of interest, Russia (with titles including Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917–1921; A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941–1945, in collaboration with Luba Vinográdova; The Mystery of Olga Chekhova; and his own Stalingrad). In his new book, Beevor investigates the truth behind the extravagant figure of Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin (1869–1916), the great seducer, the wild mystic, the libidinous, drunken and somewhat grubby muzhik (the typical rough, poor peasant of Russian literature), who fascinated Tsar Nicholas and his wife Tsarina Alexandra, and whom Beevor says has long fascinated him.

The historian stresses that, despite holding no official position and being an almost illiterate Siberian peasant, Rasputin — an almost novelistic character with a life (and a death) of legend or farce, depending on one’s view — “contributed, unintentionally and as a devoted monarchist rather than any kind of revolutionary, more than any other person to the collapse of the world’s greatest autocracy,” the Romanov empire. In that sense, Beevor believes there is “some truth” in Kerensky’s judgment, which, expanding on the idea that the monk’s influence over the tsarina destabilized the empire, stated that “without Rasputin there would have been no Lenin.” The historian reminds us that Rasputin, by influencing Nicholas’s governments, had responsibility for, for example, bread shortages in St. Petersburg that led to unrest, and is therefore “a direct link to the revolution.”

In his book, Beevor traces Rasputin’s life not as a conventional biography but by inserting it into the broader history and trajectory of tsarist Russia toward disaster, observing the connection between the man and the events that precipitated the end of the House of Romanov. “The fall of an empire is an immensely dramatic moment, worthy of Shelley’s Ozymandias, and it fascinated me as did the collapse of the Nazi empire that I recounted in Berlin.” The historian, who regards Romanov Russia as “a narcissistic empire whose fall is a kind of poetic justice,” is particularly interested in the web of myths and lies — many of them sexual — that swirled around the tsarina’s favorite and compares them to today’s fake news. And how paranoid rumors about conspiracies could (and can) produce effects as powerful as, or more powerful than, reality.

Indeed, Rasputin’s murder in 1916 was the result of the obsession of part of the supporters of the tsar and the monarchy — among them the dowager empress, Nicholas’s mother, and several grand dukes — who viewed the monk’s influence over the imperial family with alarm and wanted to free them of him. The conspiracy to kill the rakish holy man and the act of his removal, which included the clumsy use of expired poison in cakes and wine, and shots fired from an unreliable pistol, have the same surreal tones as much of the story of the man and the regime’s final years. On this point Beevor recalls that there is an element in the great eastern country that defies logic. He cites Churchill’s phrase (after the USSR’s unexpected pact with the Nazis in 1939) that “Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” and the maxim of the poet Fyodor Tyutchev that “Russia cannot be known by the mind.” Beevor adds: “Nor Rasputin.”

“He was partly a charlatan, but I think there was also a genuine side to his personality, a sincere, almost innocent spirituality,” Beevor reflects. “The most surprising thing is that he switched from one persona to another; there was an almost schizophrenic element to him.” And what about the lust attributed to him? “Undoubtedly there was that component in Rasputin — pure lust and extreme lasciviousness; testimony speaks of a compulsion to touch women — he said this established a special communication. Many were captivated by his charisma and shameless, indecent behaviour; his mix of eroticism and mysticism led to intimate relations, and there were even grande dames who volunteered to cut his nails and kept the clippings as talismans, and who also kept remnants of his food. The fact is he was attracted to the female body. Obsessed with temptation, sin and repentance, he felt an irresistible pull toward prostitutes, whom he hired even in pairs, and sometimes tested himself to see if he could restrain himself by sleeping with them and remaining nude with nothing else — mortification with echoes of the flagellant sect of the Khlysty. There is evidence he treated numerous women of all classes perversely, many lonely, unhappy or vulnerable, and that he harassed, abused and raped them. Behavior that today would be judged absolutely criminal.”

“Equally eccentric, certainly, were the tsar and tsarina,” he continues, “who were not normal people either.” Beevor highlights the contradictions of the German-born Alexandra, raised as a poor Lutheran princess (Alix of Hesse and by Rhine) and later elevated to imperial grandeur, even taking a new name, to the point that Queen Victoria, her grandmother, was astonished to see her adorned with the Romanovs’ impressive crown jewels and said: “Who would have thought it.” As for Nicholas, “he was not well prepared for his role as autocrat, and was, besides being fatalistic and unimaginative, stubborn and indecisive,” a very poor combination for running an empire in troubled times. They were both very attractive, admittedly (he shorter than she, which caused him insecurity), and both were marked by the illness of their only son and heir, the hemophiliac Tsarevich Alexei.

“One must see Rasputin as a symptom,” Beevor continues. “At the time there existed in Russia a predisposition toward mysticism, spiritism, and holy men that facilitated his rise in imperial society; in part it was entertainment, but the tsar and tsarina took it very seriously and for them, especially for Alexandra, Rasputin was truly a saintly man and a guru, a spiritual teacher and a healer.” Was there anything true in the mental powers attributed to him? “Well, he was very intuitive but he was unable to foresee that they were going to kill him. As for his capacity for survival and his ‘diabolical refusal to die,’ the whole popular account of the murder is rubbish. It was simply a bungled job: the cyanide was expired or the sugar in the cakes rendered it ineffective, and the pistol used to shoot him first was a very light weapon. It was the most incompetent murder in Russian history.” Speaking of gurus, does he see a link with the Armenian Gurdjieff? “I don’t know him well enough to pass judgment, but it is interesting how such figures fill some women’s male fantasies.” The historian stresses that the Siberian monk arrived at a very bad moment for the monarchy but a very good one for him, after the disaster of the Russo-Japanese War and popular unrest. “Rasputin’s call to contemplate the beauty of God and the spirituality of nature comforted Nicholas, but at the same time the monk eroded the tsar’s reputation, who was seen as cuckolded and as unable to stop the man’s interference in Russian politics.”

It is curious that Rasputin was eliminated by the most reactionary and far-right sector of Russia. “Yes, the most rancid absolute monarchists, desperate over his influence and arrogance — he was even interfering in military decisions during the First World War — and who believed he had bewitched the royal family. They killed him because they believed this would save the Romanov dynasty; the murder caused a sensation across Europe, where Rasputin was well known. Figures like Yusupov, the main killer, who cross-dressed, are almost as extravagant as Rasputin himself.”

Some of those anti-Rasputin characters, not to mention Rasputin himself, seem drawn from Dostoyevsky or Chekhov. “It’s true, art imitates life, but Rasputin had read neither; in fact I don’t see him as interested in any figure of Russian literature.” Boney M, on the other hand, were interested in Rasputin — does he remember the 1978 song? It had some memorable lines, like “he was big and strong / in his eyes a flaming glow” or “full of ecstasy and fire.” Beevor smiles and, surprisingly, quotes other verses of the popular tune: “The ‘Russia’s greatest love machine’ bit was nonsense, let’s be frank, and so was ‘lover of the Russian queen,’ all very superficial and false, of course. Sorry I won’t hum it — I sing terribly.” Curiously, Boney M sang a line that matches much of what the historian thinks: “Oh, those Russians.”

On the internet, incidentally, one can find a Boney M parody with Vladimir Putin singing and dancing to Rasputin. Ras-Putin — any connection between the two Russians? “I don’t see one, beyond Putin’s claim that his grandfather, Spiridon Ivanovich, had been a chef at the Astoria and that Rasputin always tipped him with a ten-ruble gold coin, which may be another of Putin’s fantasies and inventions.”

Will Beevor return to World War II as all his readers hope? “I don’t see myself emulating my father-in-law, who wrote his last book about France at 88, but I will do another — my last — and it will be about the Battle of Britain, which is a major turning point when Hitler’s failure made it clear he could not win the war. And I want to write about the air war, something I have never done.”

Regarding the current international situation, Beevor is not especially worried that the traditional ally, the U.S., is stepping back from European defense. “To some extent it’s our fault; we should have done more before Trump. I trust that the new European army will know how to defend Europe, because I am sure there will be a war in the Baltic in three or four years, and we must be prepared. Spain, you’re far away, and we have the Channel, but if you live near the border with Russia you are very aware of the danger.” As for the Iran war, “I fear it is impossible to predict how events will evolve but I do not think there will be a massive escalation; it will be a matter of degree. We live in dark times, yes.”

Beevor notes differences between the historians of his generation who have tackled the history of war and the new ones. “I don’t want to sound pedantic, but authors like Max Hastings, the great Michael Howard, or myself have a different, more global perspective. We do not call ourselves military historians in the way younger scholars do but historians of war, in the sense that we are especially interested in the effects on the population and not only the movements on the battlefield. The younger generation has a more individual focus and often inserts themselves into the history they tell. We changed the way of telling, offering a more realistic view of how terrifying war is. One must be very aware of the horrors it brings and that conflicts like the Second World War were no joke. Explaining the horror of war clearly is our duty.”

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