RASPUTIN

A brilliant new biography by one of our most acclaimed historians reveals the remarkable impact of the so-called mad monk

- MATT NIXSON

FOR A virtually illiterate peasant born in the depths of Siberia in January 1869, Grigori Rasputin had the most extraordinary impact on history. In fact, muses Sir Antony Beevor, the Russian mystic/sex maniac might be the most significant individual ever to have lived - and his influence reverberates nearly 110 years after his death.

Beevor, the acclaimed chronicler of Stalingrad, has put the monk womaniser, rapist, drunk and subject of the insanely catchy Boney M pop song - under the microscope in his magnificent new biography, and his conclusions are startling. Indeed, without Rasputin's influence over Russia's doomed last royal family, he believes the country's history and that of the wider 20th century would have been wildly different.

"Alexander Kerensky, the leader of the provisional government after Russia's February Revolution, said that without Rasputin there would have been no Lenin," he explains.

"This was absolutely true and it shows how Rasputin had more impact on history than almost any other individual without him and therefore without Lenin, not only would Russia have been totally different but the 20th century with it." In a nutshell, the unkempt yet charismatic Rasputin's powerful hold over the Romanovs, and what was publicly perceived as his sexual seduction of the Tsarina Alexandra, undermined the royal family's position in society and among supporters - most damagingly the soldiers who were pledged to protect them.

"The idea that Nicholas II was weak or, worst of all, that he was being cuckolded by a peasant and had no control over his wife meant all respect for the Tsar started to collapse," the historian continues.