Senile enthusiasm

The series about Rasputin "Grigory R.", shown on the first channel, is designed to prove that the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century was a wonderful country, where everyone lived peacefully and happily and even the poor were clean and neatly dressed. And the 1917 revolution happened only because some dark forces first dragged Russia into the first world war completely unnecessary to it, and then killed the holy elder Gregory, the true keeper of the royal family, as well as the real healer and clairvoyant. In the documentary "Grigory Rasputin. Sacrifice", shot on the topic of the series, the television journalist Sergei Medvedev generally agreed that in two books of the sermons that were published under the name Rasputin, he predicted the second world war and the blockade of Leningrad and the flight of Gagarin Cosmos. It seems that Medvedev has never read these books: there is no similar one there. The "works" Rasputin is a set of banalities in the form of retelling of the gospel episodes. And they were clearly written by an obviously not illiterate "old man".

The storyline of the series is the investigation of the activity and murder of Rasputin, which on behalf of Kerensky is carried out by investigator Henry Svitten. He exposes the myths of Rasputin as a mystical villain, claiming that the legends of his incredible drunkenness and lust were created by liberals and revolutionaries hostile to him. The series contains mention of Rasputin’s connections with women, but they are made deaf, so that the viewer remains in the conviction that Rasputin’s novels were purely platonic, which is proved by the example of Vyrubova and the remaining virgin. As for the drunkenness of the "old man" it is said more definitely, but on the principle of "who without sin" - they say, the journalists who wrote about the drunkenness of Rasputin were still those alcoholics. In general, the series is quite in the spirit of those fans of Rasputin, who, not so long ago, in complete seriousness offered the Moscow Patriarchate to canonize Grigory Efimovich as a new Orthodox saint. Fortunately, the Patriarchate, remembering the Khlystov’s youth of the "old man" and his no holy lifestyle, rejected this idea.

The influence of Rasputin on politics, including the appointment of ministers, is also said very casually. Probably, the authors remember the sad fate of the Soviet film -reputinian - the film "Agony", which lay on the shelf until the perestroika, as officials saw in it dangerous hints of the customs of Brezhnev times. Such allusions are undesirable now. Although in general "Grigory R." It is built quite in the spirit of the current official historical concept. There was a great Russia, which was kept by a wise and kind old man. Then the villains killed the old man, destroyed the empire. And now Putin with great difficulty restores great historical Russia.

The murder of Rasputin in the series is depicted as the fruit of the conspiracy of liberals and revolutionaries with the vivid participation of British intelligence. True, if you look at the killers themselves, then the idea of ​​the liberal-revolutionary conspiracy will hang in the air. One of the richest people in Russia Felix Yusupov Jr., married to the royal niece, Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich and the leader of the extreme right in the Duma of Vladimir Purishkevich, neither to the liberals or revolutionaries cannot be considered. Feeling the weakness of this version, Sergei Medvedev puts forward another, no less extravagant. As if the supporters of the monarchy decided to make Rasputin an atoning sacrifice, but the king and his family were still not saved. At the same time, however, it remains a mystery to whom and why this sacrifice was brought.

But the motive of non -traditional sexual relations comes to the fore. Bisexual lovers Felix Yusupov and Dmitry Pavlovich take revenge on the "old man": the first - for the alleged interest of Rasputin in his wife, the second - for the fact that Grigory Efimovich built his marriage with the eldest daughter of Emperor Olga, telling the tsarist cement that Dmitry was committed to the Sodom sin. By the way, Felix and Dmitry on the screen are quite openly demonstrated by gentle feelings, but the creators of the series, as it seems, no one is going to hold accountable under the law on promoting unconventional sexual relations.

Contrary to the adopted version of the murder, the series is presented in the series as if Yusupov, being a complete insignificance, was unable to shoot at Rasputin and instead of him a British intelligence officer and a friend of Felix Oswald Reiner made a control shot. And the whole conspiracy with the murder of a friend of the royal family, they say, arranged England - either to try to save the Russian monarchy, or, on the contrary, to destroy it as a dangerous geopolitical rival. In fact, Oswald Reiner, who really made friends with Yusupov while studying in Oxford, was noted in this story only by the fact that in the 30s he transferred the Yusupov memoirs about the murder of Rasputin into English. Reiner died only in 1961, but he did not write any memories of how he allegedly finished off Rasputin - although they could bring him a fortune. There is even no indications that Reiner was generally in Petrograd during the First World War. So the version of the English control shot seems to be sucked out of the finger - as, however, the whole series.