Magnetic and repellent

When he first came to public notice, Rasputin was described in a Russian newspaper as ‘a symbol. He is not a real person. He is a characteristic product of our strange times.’ With his hypnotic eyes, long hair and peasant simplicity, Rasputin was as mesmerisingly attractive to upper-class and royal women in his 47 years of life, as, in afterlife he would be for biographers.

Who can resist the story of the Siberian peasant, leaving his wife and nippers to wander the roads of Russia, imbibing, and then dispensing, a mixture of spiritual truths and claptrap, and worming his way first into the salons of gullible St Petersburg ladies and finally to the court itself? As Russia sleepwalked towards disaster, however, Rasputin — sometimes held to be a symptom, sometimes a cause of its sickness — was not to blame. Indeed, according to his latest biographer, the distinguished historian Douglas Smith, there was actually a moment when Rasputin might have saved Russia from itself.