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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Intuition of the Abyss. How Rasputin's Biography Got Its Start |
| 2025-03-19 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Alexander Rokhlin [REGNUM] The man in the portrait has a terrible, repulsive face. The beard, moustache and hair can still be tolerated - there were many of those shaggy, thick, wild ones back then. But the eyes... The eyes are fiercely sullen and piercingly, unnaturally alive. Eyes that yearn, suffer and burn with an unbearable, otherworldly un-light. Burning with fire. It seems that if you continue to look for another moment, all the horror from these eyes will flow into yours and you will no longer exist. Because you will not be able to bear such internal pain. Not everyone is given it. He was given it… A petite woman, more than of a respectable age, dressed elegantly, subtly and discreetly, just so that you have to look closely, look closely, see how the details of the costume and jewelry play, and only then gasp and shower compliments, comes out of the gate onto the street. Frost -19. The village in a white shroud of snow, under a bright icy sun, the white-blue sky washed and cleaned like sheets, and starched by frost to a state close to paradise. We are in Siberia. We are so far away that there are no borders and there can't be any. Now a sleigh with Petrusha Grinev will fly out from around the bend. Or fifty wild men led by Yermak Timofeevich. In extreme cases, a kibitka with Mr. Chichikov. Or suddenly a carriage with the royal family? Anything can be expected - the terrible, the beautiful, the unbearable. There is a crowd of people at the gate. They could be from anywhere. From Brazil, China, Surinam, Paris, Uchkuduk, Tyumen and Spitsbergen. They have all come specifically to the village, whose life is completely unsophisticated and spread across the steppe like a thin film of butter. Between Tyumen and Tobolsk. And they are all going to this terrible man. In a sense, he is an idol. An object of burning curiosity, admiration and worship for some, hostility and disgust for others. This has been the case for the last 110 years. Not calming down, not appeasing, still implacably and furiously. But the only way to get to him, to this terrible and most famous of all living Russians, is through this tiny woman in a black fur coat. No other way. Because she has the key. She knows more about him than everyone else. But it's not about knowledge... Through her, this man with fierce eyes ceases to be an idol. There is a stone near the fence. This is not a random boulder, but an important attribute. And the first thing the miniature woman does is climb onto this stone. It is very beautiful. Then she suddenly looks like the Girl on the Ball, the Princess on the Pea or Thumbelina on a water lily. But all this is lyricism. The stone by the road makes her taller by as much as 13 centimeters. Only then can the listeners see her, and not jump from behind the backs of those standing in front. Marina Yuryevna Smirnova climbs up on a rock. And begins to speak. And then, believe me, I have seen and heard it twice, the entire steppe - from the Urals to the Yenisei - rises like a whirlwind above our heads, and the story that the little woman tells screws into our heads like a corkscrew. It is very painful. It is almost unbearable to listen to. And it is impossible not to listen to it. That same force - fierce, terrible, shaggy - expressed in a beautiful, light, flying Russian word, presses you to the spot. And people stand, not moving, all turning into hearing, following the word, like sheep following a shepherd, and will wake up from this haze only after two hours. With a heart torn in half. But we don't know anything yet. The most ordinary village street, a fence, a house, a stone by the road. All of them witnesses to the crime and the miracle that followed. In the summer of 1914, a shaggy and bearded man went out into the street of his native village for the most ordinary of reasons - to send a telegram. A beggar woman approached him - a common occurrence: everyone knew that a crowd of people flocked to the man for alms and conversation. But the beggar woman came for something else, she snatched a dagger from under her clothes and stabbed the "benefactor" with it. The blade entered the stomach by thirteen centimeters. A normal person dies. Shaggy survived. Marina Yuryevna tells this story from the "height" of her pebble under her feet and in such detail that people start looking around, as if they expect to see a beggar with a dagger and a wounded man who will run another 180 meters before falling, picking up a stick on the road and knocking the knife out of the killer's hands. But there is no one there! When Smirnova speaks, the shadows do not disappear at midday, but come to life. But as soon as Marina Yuryevna falls silent, the spell dissipates, and you see before you the most ordinary fence, gate, front garden, and a bare street not in dust, but in snow. All those who have arrived in a crowd pass through the gate, now the main magic will begin. Because there, behind the gate, in theory, is the main thing. For the sake of which everyone has gathered. The courtyard and house where Grigory Efimovich Rasputin lived. But the yard is blatantly empty. That is, you expect to be immersed in authenticity, in the everyday Russian peasant chthonicity, but you see before you... You see nothing. A well frame, a woodshed, a toilet booth. And two five-wall houses. You stand in front of the near one, and the far one, although it looks old, "authentic", is not lived in, but rather heavily shell-shocked, tired of life. And disappointment begins. Having climbed the steps of the porch, we enter the vestibule - there are photographs on the walls. They are of barely recognizable celebrities from a former life - politicians, musicians, astronauts, athletes, musicians. They also make up their own little "crowd" of visitors and those crowding in the corridor to get to Grigory. We enter the Grigory Rasputin Museum in the village of Pokrovskoe, Yarkovsky District, Tyumen Oblast. This museum is death to aesthetes. It is organized in the most incorrect way. We expect expositions, exhibits, immersions and entertainment, but we end up in some gallery of a crazy collector. Because 90% of the entire space in the two rooms is occupied by images of Grigory Efimovich Rasputin. The quality ranges from childishly home-grown to pompous parsun. Pencil drawings, oil paintings, beadwork, black-and-white and colored photographs, posters, postcards, calendars, movie posters, advertising banners, postal envelopes, vodka labels and icons. Rasputin looks at you from every corner, wall, window and curtain. This is a hard-to-bear phenomenon. The appearance of the Tobolsk elder, to put it mildly, does not encourage contemplation. But this entire visual "nightmare" lasts exactly until Marina Yuryevna places a tiny stool under her feet - they were bought for bathrooms in a famous Swedish store - does not extend her pointer with a laser point, does not adjust the bracelet on her wrist and does not start telling a story... Living speech is music. And it is impossible to "retell" music. Marina Yuryevna Smirnova is one of those rare people for whom the Russian language is a gift. Something incredibly integral, deep, beautiful, alive. A very rare person is able to speak the great and mighty language like that. Science, space, life and everyday life – everything is present in it and none of it exhausts it. And she speaks easily, naturally, the words flow, filling you faster than air. And you stand as if enchanted. And you understand everything she talks about on some deeper level. Maybe this is what it means to understand with the heart? What do you need to understand? She is a school teacher of Russian language and literature. She has been going out to the "public" with a pointer for almost 50 years. Hence the ability to "hold" attention with a death grip. And to enchant with beauty and meaning. But if we put aside the lyricism. Strange as it may seem, but for all the hundred years since Rasputin's death, the terrible myth about his life and participation in the life of the imperial family has never been subjected to any reasonable doubt. It has only become increasingly overgrown with husk and riffraff. Here, in a rural, purely private museum, made on the knee, on a kopeck, with a collection of colored postcards, a broken mirror, a lisping gramophone and a magical wooden chair, the husk and riff-raff are pouring out and falling off. The creepy old man suddenly acquires human features. And Smirnova's Russian language is to blame for this. - My husband is to blame for this, - says Marina Yuryevna. - The museum was conceived and created, of course, by him. People ask me, how did this even come to your mind? And I answer: listen to men. And no one believes me. Here I make a surprised face. Because I am sure - this is coquetry on her part, curtseys. Well, who else can co-exist as equals next to such a star as Smirnova? Marina Yuryevna's husband is neither seen nor heard. I could not imagine that that shabby man with a snow shovel at the gate, who let in a group of visitors and closed the gate with a hook, was Vladimir Lyubomirovich Smirnov. To which Russian historical science owes at least the discovery of the exact date of Rasputin's birth. A date that the capital's historians, archivists, writers, etc. did not know. And everyone else that surrounds me in this museum, too. But it all started with one number. It all started back in the last year of school, when tenth-graders Marina and Volodya meet each other. And it’s hard to imagine two people more different in character. Wave and stone, ice and fire. The brightest, most self-confident, knowing exactly and best “how it should be” Marina. And the quiet, focused, not public, thinking Vladimir. The seventies of the 20th century. On TV - Kobzon and Leshchenko, in the kitchens - Vysotsky and Galich. Say one thing, think another, do a third. Or better yet, don't do anything at all. But where does this interest come from in the head of the young historian Smirnov? Why is there no beginning to Rasputin's biography? And the newly minted history student shares this simple question with his girlfriend, a linguistics student. Rasputin is known in China and Jamaica, but in his homeland, in the funds of the Tyumen Museum of Local History, there are only two authentic documents with his name. One note and one photograph. And she casually tells him - my grandmother is from this Pokrovka. That is, Rasputin is a fellow countryman. A secret conspiracy... They are seventeen or eighteen years old. As a historian, he was interested in finding at least something. He dug through the Tobolsk and Tyumen archives. And he says, let's go to the archive of the Yarkovsky district. — And I contradicted him — quite reasonably: if there is none in the central ones, what good can there be in the backwaters? But Vladimir Lyubomirovich took a regular bus to Yarkovo. And there a find awaited him - an authentic record with the date of birth of Grigory Rasputin. That's where it all started. We started traveling. Writing down the memories of old people, collecting photographs. And then, as Marina Yuryevna says, "time fell apart." Some went on an untimely bender, others went into business and began to fight for their well-being. And her "quiet" husband thoughtfully collected all the family money, took it out of the savings book, borrowed some more from his mother-in-law - and bought a house in Pokrovskoye. The house where Rasputin's parents once lived. (Grigory's own house was barbarically destroyed in 1980.) A powerful investment. The investment looked incredible. A house without windows or doors, everything that could be taken away had been taken away, burdock and wormwood grass were in full growth. - When he brought me here to show me the house, - says Marina Yuryevna, - I thought I would kill him. What did he spend all our savings on?! And he quietly, heartfeltly says to me. Marina, you are a smart person, but a complete fool. Believe me, people from all over the world will come to you. And I thought: I married an idiot. In our city, the mammoth museums are empty, no one goes. And here there are 100 km of broken roads. Who will go?! Who needs your leaflets and photographs? “Where did he get such confidence in his own rightness?” I ask. - From Count Dracula, - Marina Yuryevna answers. - Back in Soviet times, he went to socialist Romania on a trip. But everyone there was just hanging out in the shops, and he went to this Dracula's castle. So that he could tell me later on the steps of Rasputin's house. There are names in the history of mankind that the whole world knows. Dracula, Casanova, Marco Polo. And our Pokrovsky peasant Rasputin is one of them. You have to listen to a man! Could I have imagined that just a few years later, on the porch of this house, I would be pouring vodka for the Boneham ensemble and drinking with them for the remembrance of Grigory Efimovich's soul?! They mow down burdocks, glaze windows, whitewash walls, make stands from scrap materials. They hang up photographs, found birth certificates, several icons. And all this when there are no salaries, a bag of frozen mushrooms in the refrigerator, and a sack of potatoes in the cellar. And that's all the food. “I’m afraid to seem like an idiot,” Marina Yuryevna begins the next chapter, “but then the mysticism begins.” One day, Marina's mother comes to her apartment and tells her that the director of the Tyumen Battery Plant has just called her - her mother is the only one with a home phone - and said that he is going to take foreign guests to Tobolsk, and on the way to show them the Rasputin Museum. At 6 am on Saturday, the newly-minted "museum workers" Smirnovs are already there. Marina Yuryevna has washed the floor. They are waiting for the foreigners. Somewhere around 11 am, a foreign car stops at the gate, respectable people get out. Austrians. With a translator. They did not know what awaited them. And what awaited them was… Grigory Efimovich in the flesh. This is no longer about History with documents, but about a theater with braid. In the village of Pokrovskoe lived Viktor Fyodorovich Prolubshchikov, a local cultural and educational worker, an actor of the folk theater, a colorful personality. Smirnova, by her own admission, “burning with shame,” persuaded him to “work” as a hero. He put on a kosovorotka from theatrical props, his own cowhide boots, combed his beard and became eerily similar to Rasputin. Only much shorter. She was giving a tour, telling something, and at the end she rang the bell that had once hung on the door of Rasputin's family. And then the Siberian Elder appeared before the Austrians. He came out sideways from behind the stove. In his hands was a plate of pancakes with pike caviar, pickles and glasses of vodka on a tray. And he offered to drink to the remembrance of Grigory Efimovich's soul. It is clear that the effect is devastating. The plant director pays for the pancake show and the memorial service as much as the Smirnovs spent on the entire renovation of the museum. When leaving, the foreigners leave a written thank you. On an ordinary A4 sheet of paper, which Marina Yuryevna will put under the cover of the first Guest Book and forget about it for a long time. When the Book is filled, she will take off the cover and find that sheet of paper with the Austrian text. And what is mystical about it? In the date. The Austrian visit took place on July 17, 1992. This is the day when the royal family was shot in 1918. And then - thirty years of life. Real scientific research work, archives, documents, people, testimonies and books. And yes - queues of buses with tourists, delegations of the powerful, fame all over the world and not a penny of state money. What does Marina Yuryevna talk about for two and a half hours? I would dare to say it this way - about the day of July 17, 1918. About an event in which, like the sun in a drop, everything is contained - the life and death of her fellow countryman from the village of Pokrovskoe, the life and death of the Russian Tsar, his wife, his children, the death of the Empire and, as a consequence, the suffering of millions of Russian people, blood, tragic beauty and unfading questions. She tells it in such a way that whether you like it or not, you follow her voice. And you see how Russia, like a thousand-fold enlarged Titanic, is sailing towards its thousand-fold enlarged iceberg, and the people on board have their own truth, pain, beauty, stupidity, courage, meanness, vileness, blindness, deafness and late remorse. The Smirnovs talk about their hero in such a way that you no longer care about all the things that were poured on him, accused, killed, buried, horrified, admired and hated. Grigory Efimovich Rasputin, a peasant from the Tobolsk province, possessed a gift - an intuition of the abyss. What did Russians have in common a hundred years ago? Not God, not the Tsar, not freedom, not hope, not good intentions. The intuition of the abyss. The approach of the inevitable. The breath of darkness. And where is salvation? Russian language. In the Znamensky Cathedral in Tyumen, every Sunday after the big festive service, the priest comes to the center of the church, places an analogion with notes, opens the service book and begins to pray for all those who are now at the front. Names, names, names... The church is full of people, following him, with their lips alone - names, names, names. And so for more than an hour. And the longer this standing and praying lasts, the more clearly you understand: here it is - ours, common, the only thing that unites us all. Lord, have mercy - in Russian. And it retreats, retreats... |
| Posted by:badanov |