When Russia''s Dowager Empress was pregnant with the future Tsar, she dreamed that a peasant would one day kill her son. The idea terrified her, and for the rest of her days she ''lived under the pressure of the prophecy''. Rasputin had no official position. A barely literate moujhik from Siberia, he had no forces at his command. He was a devoted monarchist, not a revolutionary. And yet, through his uncanny seduction of the imperial household, he contributed more than any other individual to the collapse of the greatest autocracy in the world. ''This man was unique'', observed one writer. ''Like a character out of a novel, he lived in legend, he died in legend, and his memory is cloaked in legend.'' In this extraordinary new work, Antony Beevor, master of narrative history on the grandest scale, sharpens his focus to pierce the fog of fantasy that has only grown denser over time. The result is an unparalleled portrait of one of history''s most dubious masterminds.

Autorentext

ANTONY BEEVOR's previous book was Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921. Earlier works include Stalingrad, Berlin, D-Day, The Battle for Spain and The Second World War. His writing, which has received major prizes, has appeared in thirty-seven languages and sold more than nine million copies. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Historical Society, he has received honorary doctorates and fellowships from five universities. He was knighted in 2017.

Klappentext

Rasputin: visionary, fraud or victim of history?
THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
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'THE GOLD STANDARD OF NARRATIVE HISTORY' DAN SNOW
'ONE OF THE GREAT STORIES OF HISTORY, TOLD BY ONE OF OUR GREATEST HISTORIANS' SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE
'THIS EXTRAORDINARY STORY HAS NEVER BEEN BETTER TOLD' ANTHONY HOROWITZ
'A STUNNING BANQUET OF A BOOK' ROSE TREMAIN
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How could a barely literate peasant from Siberia determine the fate of the world? Undoubtedly, the so-called 'mad monk' Rasputin bewitched Tsar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra. Yet their strange and scandalous relationship conceals a riddle, one that casts an intriguing light on the controversial 'great man' theory of history.

Rasputin was a devoted monarchist, not a revolutionary. He had no official position, no forces at his command. Nevertheless, he contributed more to the fall of the Romanov dynasty than any other individual. So demoralised was the Tsarist officer corps by stories of corruption, to say nothing of the rumours of his debauchery with the Empress - and even her daughters - that when the February Revolution broke out, not a sword was raised in defence of the regime.

Just as Rasputin cast a spell over the Romanovs, his legend has bewitched historians. More than a century later, we still fail to comprehend fully the collapse of the greatest autocracy on Earth. Was there any truth to the wild tales that brought down the empire? Or was his true legacy an unsettling lesson on the potency of myth?

From the bestselling author of Stalingrad comes a fascinating and deeply insightful historical post-mortem