The Jews Behind Rasputin

THERE EXISTS in the popular American mind, largely induced by a ridiculous Hollywood film that was successfully sued for perversion of historic fact, a conception of Grigory Efimovich Rasputin (“The Mad Monk of Russia” — pictured) as a lurid mastermind of quintessential evil, dominating the corrupt and idiotic government of the Czar and ushering in its downfall through control of the superstitious Czarina; his uncanny power to cure the sick Czarevitch; and his usurpation of the Czar’s authority. However, it is forgotten that nearly all of the hundred or more books ground out about Rasputin have been written from a pro-Marxist viewpoint and that a necessary prerequisite for a successful takeover of a country by proletarian revolutionaries is to prove it “corrupt.” The popular view of Rasputin is greatly appealing to the imagination of the public, but the general nonsense about his bestial personality is not nearly as interesting as the almost unknown facts about his sponsors. For Rasputin was in reality obsessed by religion and sex, sex being an essential facet of the Khylysty sect. He cared little for political power, but he soon met, upon his arrival in St. Petersburg, political plotters who saw in him an invaluable tool.

Rasputin came to St. Petersburg in 1905. In the course of time, as his talents began to circulate among the Russian public, he acquired, as a close friend, a Jewish gentleman by the name of Aaron Simanovich, a jeweller who suddenly discovered that Rasputin had cured his son of St. Vitus Dance. Simanovich had moved to St. Petersburg in 1902, whereupon he had become the Czarina’s jeweller. Simanovich had found out that the Czarina was somewhat miserly around money, an odd trait for a member of Russia’s monarchy, which had access to great resources. Once having made contact with the Czarina, Simanovich plied her with bargains, selling her very expensive jewels on extended credit and at extremely low prices. Although Aaron lost money on the deals, he gained it back from other members of the Court. He often spoke contemptuously of the extraordinary ignorance of the Russian nobles in business matters.

Now if a conspiratorial cabal — and in St. Petersburg such cabals were legion — had wished to subvert the Czar’s government, and this was the principal mission of almost every cabal, there would be nothing that could accelerate the process from within as much as the introduction of a quack faith healer, libertine, and degenerate like Rasputin into the Imperial Court. It would be fine copy for every newspaper in the world to project, free of charge, an image of utter degradation.

It must be remembered that Lenin’s seizure of power took place in St. Petersburg and that the city had intellectual and conspiratorial revolutionary elements within it in great depth. And in this city of plotters, Simanovich was a stellar light; it would be naive indeed to think that he did not know the leaders of the Bolshevik groups. Aaron moved through the maze of St. Petersburg conspiracies with great success and delight, seeing endless opportunities for moneymaking, organizing nightclubs, cabarets, gambling hells, and brothels, all activities, with unlimited facilities for espionage and blackmail. Simanovich’s activities, unknown to the Czar and Czarina, would have confirmed the worst fears of the anti-Jewish “Union of True Russians,” a group to which Rasputin at one time belonged, in somewhat the way the late liberal Justice Hugo Black was once a dues-paying member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Aaron’s triumphs rendered void, as they applied to himself, the deprivation in Russia of the Jews’ civil rights, where they were confined to settlements on the edges of towns, forbidden to have Christian servants, and not allowed to send their children to school. Russian police treated their Jewish fellow countrymen with legal tyranny; there was no protection of law for them. Jews were permitted to run protection rackets among themselves without hindrance. The probability, therefore, that Simanovich, given a good chance, would strike back at the tormenters of his people was naturally high. Here again is posed the age-old question: Did the Jews get that way because of repressive measures against them or were repressive measures exerted against the Jews because they were that way?

The facts presented by all historians, Marxists or not, lead to the belief that (1) Aaron Simanovich saw great possibilities for Grigory Rasputin at the Czar’s court; and (2) Aaron Simanovich introduced his faith-healer by way of an intermediary to the Czarina. Here was a situation made to order for a conspirator: an ignorant and superstitious Czarina in an absolutist regime; a sickly and pampered heir to the throne on whom the physicians had given up hope; a weak and unintelligent Czar; a venal court; and a general ministry composed of one sad mediocrity after another.

The golden opportunity apparently came with the daughter of the Chief of the Imperial Chancery, Anna Vyrubov, the Czarina’s favorite. Her father, Alexander Tanayev, a distinguished composer, had acquired the favor of the Czar (and very probably the post in the Chancery) through the Czarina’s love of music. Anna’s husband-to-be was a naval lieutenant shell-shocked at the Battle of Tsu-Shima in the Russo-Japanese War. Aaron Simanovich acted as a solicitous go-between for Anna with Rasputin in the interest of a possible cure. In April 1907, Anna came to the house of the Grand Duchess Militsa and met Simanovich’s new guru, Rasputin, who immediately predicted that the marriage of Anna and the lieutenant would not work out. His prophecy, of course, came true, but the issue of his talent was small compared to the monstrous fact that the Mad Monk had thus become ensconced solidly in the Russian Court as a successful prophet and was poised ready to exercise his considerable hypnotic ability on the afflicted Czarevitch, which would make him indispensable and in a position to exercise great influence or possible coercion.

Aaron Simanovich began to monopolize Rasputin’s time as the Mad Monk’s political tutor. Aaron had devoted his entire life to intrigue and considered, by his own statement, idealism to be ridiculous and useless. His opinion of Rasputin was charged usually with contempt. It seems Aaron sometimes had to scold Rasputin about like a child to make him obey, for in spite of repeated instructions and forcefully delivered guidelines, Rasputin showed little ability to learn how to operate politically on his own. Simanovich, the Svengali behind the Svengali, frequently became disgusted with his planted faith healer and found him stupid and difficult to steer properly. To help out, another guru named Badmaev (who hinted at secret connections with Tibet) was hustled into the Court along with a number of ordinary accomplices, assistants, and lesser crackpots. Badmaev, however, was soon accused of engineering the Czarevitch’s illnesses so that Rasputin could “cure” them.

It became obvious to Aaron Simanovich that he was on to something big and needed professional assistance of a high order if he were to control efficiently the mess that he had already created in the Czar’s court. He got it. Soon materializing as Simanovich’s and Rasputin’s most important “adviser” came none other than Manasevitch Maniulov, an intriguer to the purple born, a Jewish gentleman of taste and quality and a snappy dresser. Manasevitch had started on the road to power as a protege of a homosexual prince named Meshchersky, who groomed Maniulov initially as a police spy.

Manasevitch was so extraordinarily gifted that he was sent to Paris to assist the Russian espionage head, Rachkovsky, but was soon dismissed for spying on Rachkovsky himself, whereupon Maniulov was dispatched by the home office to Rome, where his occupational specialty became the corruption of members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Triumphant again, Maniulov was soon back in Russia working for Plehve, the Chief of Police, who directed him to intrigue against the Czar’s most trusted minister, Sergius Witte. In a masterpiece of dupery, Manasevitch, who always tried harder, first betrayed Witte to Plehve, then betrayed Plehve to Witte. His conspiracies and treacheries became so complicated that supervisors and close observers had difficulty in determining exactly who Maniulov was betraying at a particular time.

Did Aaron Simanovich have direct contact with the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks who were insterested in descrediting the Czarist government? And therefore deliberately wiggled Rasputin into the Czar’s Court with the express purpose of wrecking it by inducing an image of corruption and cretinism in the court? If he did not, he would have been guilty of an unlikely and most untypical oversight.

As for Maniulov there is no question whatsoever that he had close connections with revolutionaries, having in fact posed as a revolutionary and having betrayed the revolutionaries to the Czar’s police. He then divulged police secrets to the revolutionaries, particularly to Vladimir Burtsev, the noted terrorist. Needless to say, by all these complex treacheries, Maniulov had amassed a fortune. “I am a vicious man,” he remarked. “I love money and I love life.”

In 1905 Maniulov accomplished the supreme feat of conspiratorial prowess — he managed to steal the Japanese cryptographic cipher, an act for which the Czar, no doubt as a result of Russia’s million-dollar infield, Simanovich-to-Rasputin-to-the-Czarina, awarded him the Order of Vladimir, a high Russian decoration. Maniulov’s position in the court was now secure. Who actually stole the Japanese cipher will probably never be revealed. All that is known is that Maniulov was credited with it, although judging from Russia’s defeat by the Japanese it did little good.

Such was the new manipulator who began to be seen in Rasputin’s house on a daily basis. When Maniulov appeared, the Mad Monk would abruptly cut short any interview and rush to embrace him. Meanwhile, through the court began to swarm the worst elements in St. Petersburg — intriguers, cheats, thieves, swindlers, prostitutes, self-seekers, gurus — all of whom had to be approved by Rasputin’s “counselors.” With Rasputin it had become a case of “clear it with Manasevitch or Aaron.” And Rasputin who never at any time had been fundamentally interested in politics, began to appear ostensibly as the real ruler of Russia. But few realized who was running Rasputin. Under the political direction, guidance, and tutelage of his mentors, Simanovich and Maniulov, Rasputin had become the focal point of Russian politicking.

All available evidence indicates that Rasputin was a primitive, crude, naive, open soul — traits not all uncommon to the Russian peasant. Under the guidance of the two conspirators, he was gradually moved into a position where he could make high appointments. He had been placed in a unique position for obtaining all sorts of secret data and, to the cabal “advising” him, information was the most valuable commodity that could be peddled.

The final triumph in the manipulation of the Mad Monk by Simanovich, Maniulov and Co. was the appointment of Sturmer as Prime Minister in 1916, the most disastrous nomination in the history of the Russian Empire. During the premiership of Sturmer, which coincided with a wave of Russian military disasters, the superconspirator Maniulov continued his maniacal campaign of swindles and extortions, piling up masses of money. Trapped by Hovstov, the Minister of the Interior, with marked money during a bribery, Maniulov manipulated Rasputin into getting the Czar to order Hovstov’s dismissal. After the final murder of the Czar and his family, the assassination of Rasputin, and the seizure of the Russian government by the Communists, Aaron Simanovich, wining and dining in Paris, well-heeled financially and completely unscathed, cashed in on a sensational book entitled Rasputin the All-Powerful Peasant, which he published in Paris. It is the most unreliable book on Rasputin that has ever been written.

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Source: Instauration magazine, November 1976