LONDON -- The fearsome story of Rasputin surviving huge doses of poisoned pastries before he was killed by a group of noblemen falls apart on one detail: The "mad monk'' didn't have a sweet tooth, Russian historian Edvard Radzinsky says in a new book.
Radzinsky doesn't dispute that the noblemen tried to poison Rasputin before shooting him, or that they shot him again after he revived and tried to escape, then dumped his still-breathing body into the icy Neva River in St. Petersburg early Dec. 30, 1916.
But in the pastry story, Radzinsky detects a lie - woven by the conspirators to create a thriller about the mystic priest they murdered because of his enormous influence on the royal family.
The truth, he said, is in an official file that disappeared from Soviet archives decades ago and turned up at an auction in London in 1995. The renowned cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich bought the file and presented it to Radzinsky the following year.
"When he showed me this file, I was shocked. I understood that what I tried to find many years, the testimonies of people who liked Rasputin, existed there,'' Radzinsky said in an interview.
The 500-page file was the work of "The Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry of the Investigation of Illegal Acts by Ministers and Other Responsible Persons,'' appointed by the revolutionary government that deposed Tzar Nicholas II in February 1917.
Radzinsky's book, titled "Rasputin: the Last Word,'' was published in Britain by Weidenfeld and Nicolson. In the United States, it was titled "The Rasputin File'' and published by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday.
The murder of Rasputin was one of the last gasps of the old regime. An illiterate peasant from Siberia, he had gained extraordinary influence with Nicholas' wife Alexandra because of his apparent power to ease her hemophiliac son's intermittent bleeding.
Two of the murderers, Vladimir Purishkevich and Prince Felix Yusupov, said they put potassium cyanide into the pink cream filling of some petit fours, and also laced some wine with the poison. They then lured Rasputin to Yusupov's palace.
In his memoir, Yusupov said Rasputin at first refused the pastries, saying they were too sweet, but later, "took first one and then another,'' Yusupov said.
Radzinsky believes it was a lie.
Rasputin's daughter Matryona wrote in her memoirs that, "Father never ate sweets, meat or pastries.''
Radzinsky found more confirmation in the file, including a statement from Konstantin Chikhachev, deputy chief of the Saratov Judicial Chamber, who spoke of chocolates given to Rasputin by admirers: "In the compartment lay boxes of candy, which he shared but did not touch, expressing himself vulgarly that he didn't eat that 'scum.'"
Rasputin's friend Alexei Filippov, in his statement, said Rasputin followed a strict diet of fish and no sweets.
So why did Yusupov write what he did?
"Because he decided to create a thriller,'' Radzinsky said.
Radzinsky is preparing a television series on Rasputin for broadcast in Russia in September, to be followed by a Russian edition of the book.
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