Douglas Smith.
DOUGLAS SMITH
RASPUTIN: THE BIOGRAPHY (2017)
Grigori Rasputin (1869 - 1916) was a Russian mystic and faith healer. He was deeply religious, and had a magnetic personality which fascinated those around him. In 1906 he began acting as a faith healer for Alexei Nikolaevich, the only son of Tsar Nicholas of Russia and his wife Alexandra who suffered from heamophilia. At court Rasputin was a divisive figure, some regarding him as a visionary, others as a fraud.
In 1916 Rasputin was assassinated by a group of conservative Russian aristocrats, who were alarmed at his influence over the imperial family - in particular his influence over Alexandra. In March 1917 the Tsar was overthrown. He and his family were kept under house arrest in remote parts of Russia, and were executed without trial in July 1918.
The Sunday Times wrote of the book: ‘Utterly fascinating and foreniscally detailed . . .There are plenty of Rasputin biographies already, but its superlative scholarship and attention to detail put this one in a class of its own.’ The Times wrote: ‘Douglas Smith begins this impressive biography by rubbishing almost everything previously written, stripping away a century of myth, fabrication, gossip and lies . . a fascinating, often entertaining, biography.’
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Douglas Smith is an American author of several books on Russian history. Born and brought up in Minnesota, Smith studied German and Russian at the University of Vermont and went on to obtain a PhD in History from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has worked for the USA State Department in the Soviet Union, and also at Radio Free Europe.
