Grigory Rasputin. Part 1. Between the king and his people
Telling about the life of Rasputin, modern historians refer to Western sources and memories of people, most of whom not only did not know Grigory Rasputin, but never saw him. Researchers in the life of Father Gregory find it beneficial to endow a simple Russian muzhik with the properties of a "switchman" of history, who posed a threat to the tsarist dynasty, and hence to Russia …
Exactly 100 years ago, one of the most terrible wars in the history of mankind began - the First World War, which entailed the Russian Revolution and the geopolitical redistribution of Europe. The simple Russian peasant Grigory Rasputin, a peasant from the Tobolsk province who later became the most famous Russian in the whole world, tried to prevent Russia's participation in this war.
Between the king and his people
It is difficult to find a genre that does not reflect, to one degree or another, the life and participation of Grigory Rasputin in Russian society on the eve of the last two Russian revolutions. The largest number of studies and descriptions of the life of St. Gregory, awaiting his canonization, have been created abroad. By the mythologization and demonization of the Siberian elder, they are safely speculating in the West to this day, promoting his name as a brand and replicating from labels on vodka bottles to cartoons and musicals. Through the ominous image of Rasputin, a negative image of Russia itself is created as a barbaric, dark state, with semi-savage and demoniac inhabitants.
Telling about the life of Rasputin, modern historians refer to Western sources and memories of people, most of whom not only did not know Grigory Rasputin, but never saw him. Researchers of the life of Father Gregory find it beneficial to endow the simple Russian peasant with the properties of a "switchman" of history, who created a threat to the tsarist dynasty, and therefore to Russia, to come up with the most implausible mystical traits of his character, ranging from abilities allegedly aimed at massive psychological impact, devilish magnetism, and ending the psychiatrist Bekhterev'st to possessing the so-called "sexual hypnotism" noted in the elder.
Man of god
So, to this day, some people see him as an evil spirits, while others see in him a bright "man of God", a people's sadler and prayer book, who suffered for our sins, glorified by a non-edible hymn - an akathist to the martyr Grigory Rasputin-New, the prophet and miracle worker of Russia. Grigory Efimovich had no other thoughts, except one - to comprehend God and to know the ways of salvation, and having learned, to carry this understanding to people.
From time immemorial in Russia "the man of God" was called all who prophesied and prophesied, prayed and played the fool. God's people traveled a lot from city to city, from village to village, ascetic and limiting themselves in everything … God's people in Russia were always and everywhere accepted, fed and listened to. The peasants shared with them their last meager piece, and the visual merchants and fearful Russian ladies, fearing heavenly punishment for the rejected and banished divine wanderer, fed them in human or smoky kitchens of their estates.
The tradition of itinerant people of God is deeply rooted in antiquity and is characteristic, perhaps, only for Russia, if we consider it among the European states. Wandering monks were allowed in Europe, but their goal was not to express pity and comfort the suffering and unfortunate, as Luke did in Gorky's play At the Bottom, but to involve new believers and Christian adherents with their conversations about God in the denomination they represent.
True, in Western Europe, this practice ended in the Middle Ages with almost universal Catholicism and Protestantism, and any other interpretations of Christianity, if not persecuted, then, in any case, were not encouraged.
The Skin West has also regulated this spiritual side of human existence with a standardized law. The imposition of "fire and sword" on the faith of the crusaders and their followers sharply limited Europeans in any attempts at spiritual search.
In the old days, and even now, the Western law on church tax accounted for every resident of the state, officially declaring himself a believer. Any wanderer carrying the "good news" not sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope himself was declared a vagabond and a bum, was immediately arrested, isolated from society, so as not to confuse the pure minds of honorable burghers with his heresy.
The skin European civilization, which was nascent in the 16th century, by wars and religious purges drove out to the East non-believers who did not want to accept Christianity, clearly defining and regulating the cult interests of the West.
As a rule, a person with a sound vector carries a religious idea, and together with a dermal one, he is capable of inducing large groups of people whose faith can be driven to fanaticism. When a visual vector is added to the sound vector, humility, forgiveness, universal love, compassion and compassion are preached.
The ideas of love, mercy and justice have always evoked a response in the souls of Russians, and the people calling for them - respect and worship. Their religious expansion became especially noticeable and comprehensive if the prophets carried a combination of two vectors - the urethral and the sound.
The power of the urethral vector and the purity of the sound vector at all times distinguished the Great spiritual teachers, who gave their lives for an idea that, with its goodness, created the world or led it to self-destruction.
Behind the vast expanses and vast distances between settlements, the absence of roads and any other connection, God's wanderers who saw the world, who visited Athos, Jerusalem and other holy places, were connoisseurs - interpreters, each retelling the Holy Scriptures in their own way. They explained his postulates to the illiterate population of Siberia and the Trans-Urals, at the same time becoming seasoned storytellers-storytellers, carrying new information about the events taking place west of the Urals. These heralds on foot connected the distant imperial territories with Russia. In the local "Siberian" dialect, Russia was the name for the entire space from St. Petersburg to the Ural Mountains.
Grigory Rasputin was also such an associate of God, a wanderer, and not a holy fool. He was not blessed, although he spent a lot of time in prayer and detachment, asking the Lord for mercy for others. Long pilgrimages taught him to be an ascetic, to give up everything that prevented him from concentrating on the main sound idea - the search for God.
In the world, Grigory Efimovich led the usual way of life for any person and, as an Orthodox Christian, did not like idle talk, deliberately limited himself to fasting, refusal to drink wine and tobacco. Going on long pilgrimages, he did not think about his daily bread, often sounding like he could just forget to eat and remember it only after a few days, when his legs gave way from fatigue and hunger.
All the same qualities of the holy fool, expressed in outward madness, eccentricity, abnormality or "unattainable" holiness, were awarded to him by those who wanted to see Rasputin as such. And it was beneficial for someone to create a mystical, dissolute, according to his last name, personality out of the old man. The surname itself is still savored in every way, looking for echoes of something indecent, obscene in it. But Rasputin also had another surname - Novy. In a number of sources, both of them are found together.
Father Gregory, as some of his adherents respectfully called Rasputin, who learned in a simple and accessible language to express the Holy Orthodox truths often in his own interpretation, himself, being illiterate, eagerly heard everything he heard in monasteries and on foot pilgrimages.
Once, in his long sound prayers at the miraculous icon of the Kazan Mother of God “seeing the will of heaven”, Grigory Efimovich left his native village of Pokrovskoye and went to wander around the holy places, overcoming 40-50 versts a day, “eating just a little”. He spent two years as a novice in a monastery. For three years he learned to wear chains, subjecting his flesh to the strongest test.
Verigi - various types of iron chains, strips, rings worn by Christian ascetics on their naked bodies to humble the flesh; an iron hat, iron soles, a copper icon on the chest, with chains from it, sometimes pierced through the body or skin, and so on. The weight of the chains can reach tens of kilograms. (from Wikipedia)
It took Grigory Efimovich a lot of time to go through many conventions, traditions and Orthodox rituals to understand that voluntarily wearing iron fetters does not bring one closer to God, does not bring any benefit, nor the long-awaited understanding of oneself, nor comfort to the soul.
We are tormented by spiritual thirst
The Russian man who seeks God occupies a special place among other nations. Russians, brought up in the spirit of urethral justice and mercy, in a thirst for spiritual knowledge, have always been inclined to caress any blessed and holy fools. They were assigned the role of the righteous and prophets, of whom they either created the great martyrs, exalting and canonizing, then with all the hysterical ardor they trampled and trampled into the mud. The same, perhaps even more tragic fate befell Grigory Rasputin-Novy.
You can learn more deeply about the peculiarities of the Russian urethral mentality, thanks to which there is a special attitude towards people seeking God in our country, at the training “System-vector psychology” by Yuri Burlan. Registration for free online lectures at the link:
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