How the daughter of the Russian mystic and prophet Grigory Rasputin became a tamer of predators

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In the 30s of the last century, many residents of Europe and America went to the performances of the Ringling Brothers' touring circus specifically in order to look at the tamer Matryona Rasputinfearlessly working with lions and tigers in a cage. She was advertised as "the daughter of a famous mad monk whose exploits in Russia surprised the world." And, of course, that at that time many were interested to see firsthand the daughter of the legendary mystic and prophet Grigory Rasputin. What made a woman, risking her life, enter the cage of predators and how her father's name helped Matryona survive in difficult conditions, further - in our publication.

Matryona Rasputin is the daughter of the Russian mystic-prophet, peasant Grigory Rasputin and Praskovya Dubrovina. She lived a rather long and eventful life. Many trials fell to her lot, but she managed to overcome them with dignity and convey to her descendants invaluable memories of Grigory Rasputin, Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra Fedorovna and their death.

Family of Grigory Rasputin

Grigory Efimovich Rasputin was a native of the village of Pokrovskoe, Tobolsk province, Tyumen district. According to the register of births, he was born in 1869. However, in his mature years he exaggerated his true age in order to better correspond to the image of the “old man”. Grigory married in 1887 to a peasant woman, Praskovya Dubrovina, with whom he had seven children. But, only three of them managed to survive their childhood - Dmitry, Varvara and Matryona (1898). For his family, Grigory built the largest hut in the village of Pokrovskoye, and he himself went on pilgrimage to the holy places of Russia. He visited Mount Athos in Greece, then Jerusalem, visited Kiev, lived a little in Kazan. Everywhere he made acquaintances with many representatives of the clergy, monks and pilgrims.

And at home, his wife Praskovya herself had a chance to raise children. In her memoirs, Matryona Grigorievna later wrote that her mother

And Grigory Efimovich, a simple and semi-literate peasant, who came to St. Petersburg in 1905, soon became close to the imperial court as an elder healer with the gift of providence. And soon he became a close friend of the royal family of the Romanovs, who had a tremendous influence on the policy of the Russian Empire. Alexandra Feodorovna literally prayed for Rasputin, because it seemed to her that he was the only doctor who could alleviate the suffering of her only son, Tsarevich Alexei.

When Rasputin firmly established himself in the northern capital, he decided to move his family to him. However, Praskovya flatly refused to go anywhere from his native village, the son also stayed with his mother. And Grigory took his young daughters with him. Matryona recalled that.

The father placed the girls in a boarding school at a prestigious private gymnasium, where they began to study various sciences. And on weekends, Matryona and Varvara visited their father and often visited the royal court with him. It should be noted that the daughters of Grigory Efimovich, like himself, received favor and attention from the empress, were friendly with her children. When the World War broke out, and Rasputin's son received a summons to the front, Alexandra Feodorovna helped to send the guy to the hospital train as an orderly, and not in the trenches as a soldier.

Will. The death of Grigory Rasputin

Grigory Rasputin was a bright and odious person. For almost 10 years he, close to the emperor, was his main adviser. True, although this friendship with the tsar had recently cooled, it nevertheless put Rasputin's life at risk, and he understood this perfectly. Moreover, he foresaw his death in advance. He fell into deep despondency and "wandered around the apartment, crushed by the weight of his foresight," drank a lot, talked to almost no one. Three days before the fateful day, Grigory Efimovich ordered a monetary contribution in the name of his daughters. And the day before Rasputin voluntarily got into the car sent by Felix Yusupov and drove towards his death, the seer ordered to summon Aronson's lawyer to write his last letter addressed to the emperor's family, later called the "will of the elder."

In a letter, Rasputin gave warnings and friendly instructions to Nicholas II, despite the fact that recently he was practically excommunicated from the royal court, and not only because his views on the war were fundamentally at odds with the decisions of the king, but to a greater extent because of the fact that rumors persistently spread about Rasputin's connection with Alexandra Fedorovna, of course, are not substantiated. Briefly, this letter said:

The prediction came true on the night of December 16-17, 1916. Felix Yusupov fraudulently lured Gregory to his palace, allegedly for the secret "healing" of his wife. Together with other conspirators, he first tried to poison Rasputin, and when it did not work, he shot the old man with a revolver right in the forehead. Then the dead man was lowered under the ice of the Malaya Nevka. However, when the healer's numb body was fished out of the river, it turned out that Rasputin remained alive for some time under water and tried to free his hands from the ropes with which they tied him, just in case. But, did not have time - suffocated. And the worst thing that Rasputin's 18-year-old daughter, Matryona, had to endure at that time, was the identification of his body a few days after the disappearance. By the way, during a 3-day search, she was the first to see her father's galoshes on the water …

An interesting fact: whatever Grigory Rasputin did not say about his own death, he always connected this event with the future fate of all of Russia. He often repeated:.

Many others facts from the biography of the Russian predictor Grigory Rasputin- read in review.

Emigration of Matryona Rasputina

On the identification, this business did not end for Matryona. The money left by Rasputin to his daughters disappeared from the bank, and she herself was summoned several times for interrogation, trying to find out whether her deceased father was in a reprehensible relationship with Alexandra Feodorovna, who already then began to be called "the former queen."

And two months after the death of Grigory Rasputin, the February revolution took place in Petrograd. And if before that the Rasputin family was under the protection of the royal family, now a real threat hung over them - so strong was the hatred of the "dark forces" - which Rasputin and his entourage personified. Matryona Rasputina was lucky, unlike her mother, sister and brother, who were exiled by the new authorities to Salekhard for an eternal settlement. Their house in Pokrovskoye was plundered and burned down. And the trace of the entire Rasputin family was soon completely lost in Salekhard. Matryona's relatives died of scurvy and diphtheria.

The girl herself, on the eve of the revolutionary events, married the officer Boris Solovyov, who was a monarchist and took an active part in the attempt to free Nicholas II and his family during exile to Siberia. This marriage was not built on love, rather - it was a union of two like-minded people who needed each other's support. Two girls were born in their family, named after the emperor's daughters - Tatiana and Maria. The eldest was born in Russia, and the younger was already in Europe, where they barely managed to emigrate.

Boris worked for some time at an automobile plant, and after moving to Paris, he and his wife even opened their own restaurant, but the business did not go: only poor compatriots-emigrants came to them to dine "on credit." In 1924, Matryona's husband fell ill with tuberculosis and burned out like a match. And the woman, left alone with two small children in her arms, had such a hard time that she did not shy away from any of the most difficult and dirty work.

By chance, Rasputina somehow learned that Felix Yusupov, the murderer of her father, had also settled in Paris. The woman dared to take a decisive step and went to court with a statement. She wanted the perpetrator to be convicted, and he paid her compensation. This high-profile case, of course, caused quite a stir among the Parisians. In court, she was denied help, arguing that the massacre of Grigory Rasputin was a political murder committed in another country, to which France has nothing to do. But, most of all, Matryona was shocked by the fact that most of the emigrants-compatriots took the side of Yusupov.

The plight made the woman remember that in her youth she took ballet lessons. And Matryona got a job in a local cabaret, where a significant meeting with a circus entrepreneur from Britain took place. The impresario, delighted with the talent of the Russian dancer, offered the woman a job in his circus as a tamer, as if casually dropping: And Rasputin crossed herself and entered.

Matryona Grigorievna Rasputina - tamer of lions and tigers

For her, a special circus act was even invented, for the sake of which the audience went to the circus in droves. Everyone wanted to see how the daughter of a Russian healer-seer with only one of her "Rasputin" glances pacifies wild animals. For advertising posters, Rasputin posed with the lion. And the signature: fueled the interest of the public. With the circus Matryona has traveled almost all countries of Europe and America. Her circus career went incredibly fast uphill. Until one fatal incident happened.

Once on a tour of South America in Peru, Matryona was attacked by a circus polar bear. The tamer was seriously injured, she had to lie in the hospital for a long time. And then the newspapermen unearthed a mystical sensation: the skin of the bear, on which Rasputin, who was killed by Yusupov, fell in 1916, was also white. They began to write about this that the tragedy that happened was a warning from above. One way or another, but Matryona decided not to tempt fate anymore. Having recovered physically, she abandoned her career as a predator tamer and took up a simpler job.

Published Memoirs and the Grigory Rasputin Museum

In 1940, Matryona Grigorievna remarried and moved to Los Angeles to the United States, where she lived until her death in 1977, not having lived a year before her 80th birthday and outliving her sister and brother by almost half a century. She worked as a riveter at an American shipyard, and after the end of World War she worked in various defense enterprises until she retired by age. In her old age Matryona Grigorievna worked as a nanny and a nurse, was engaged in tutoring, giving private lessons in Russian, and in her free time she wrote a book about her father - “Rasputin. Why?". In it, she collected memories of the legendary Grigory Efimovich - from childhood in Pokrovskoye Selo to the massacre of him in St. Petersburg. She also tried to interpret his actions incomprehensible to common sense. According to the publisher, this work is "a sincere explanation with those who consider Grigory Rasputin to be the culprit of almost all the troubles that befell Russia."

However, for unknown reasons, during her lifetime Matryona Grigorievna never published her work. Only in 1999 did the manuscript fall into the hands of a Russian publisher and, finally, the book was published. Matryona Rasputina always considered her father an honest man who loved. Later Matryona Grigorievna wrote a cookbook with recipes for Russian cuisine, which included her father's favorite dishes.

It remains to add that in the homeland of G. E. Rasputin in the village of Pokrovskoye, Tyumen region, a private museum named after him was opened, where an extensive exposition is collected. In the early 2000s, his great-granddaughter Laurence Io Solovieff came there and donated rare photos and archival documents to the museum.

More than a century later, it is difficult to judge where is the truth, and where is fiction, passed off as real, regarding the acts of the odious elder, prophet and healer Grigory Rasputin. But the fact that a unique person of his era still remains an unsolved mystery is undoubtedly. How Rasputin "delivered" women from sins, and who was among his fans - in our publication.