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church hierarch and ascetic through whom, as had often been claimed before the File, Rasputin had gained access to the royal family. The File also contained the testimony of monks from faraway Siberian monasteries and from the Verkhoturye Monastery where the mysterious transformation of Rasputin began. And, finally, it had the testimony so important to me and so desired by me — the testimony of those who had especially valued and liked Rasputin.
    A Photograph Brought To Life
    There is a famous photograph of Rasputin that has been compulsory in all the biographies of him. In it Rasputin is depicted surrounded by eighteen or so women and a few men. The photograph is mutely entitled, ‘Rasputin surrounded by his devotees’.
    The testimony from the File now makes it possible for the first time to identify everyone in the photograph. And not merely to identify them. Included in the File is direct testimony about Rasputin by several of the people in the famous photograph. So that in the pages of this book the famous picture will, as it were, come to life, and the people who were able to observe Rasputin almost every day will begin to speak.
    The File also turned out to contain the testimony of people without whom it would be hard to write an impartial biography of Rasputin. The first of these is Alexei Frolovich Filippov, ‘Rasputin’s publisher and sincere admirer’, as he is fairly characterized by those adhering to the new ‘holy Rasputin’ legends. Filippov was not merely an ‘admirer’ but a fierce defender of Rasputin. In his testimony, the publisher (and, I shall add, rich man and banker) by force of literary habit described everything to the investigator in detail — from Rasputin’s psychology and sexual life to his body and even his reproductive organs, which so preoccupied Petersburg society of the day. The File also includes the testimony of Georgy Petrovich Sazonov, another ‘ardent admirer of Rasputin’, as he is characterized by the elder’s new devotees. And it includes the testimony of Rasputin’s friend and one of the most mysterious figures in Petersburg, the Asian healer Badmaev, who treated the most important tsarist dignitaries with Tibetan herbs. And, finally, the File includes the testimony of a whole group of ladies suspected of the most intimate of relations with Rasputin: the young Baroness Kusova, the singer Varvarova, the young widow Voskoboinikova, and the cocottes Tregubova and Sheila Lunts.
    In addition to all this, there are several extended interrogations of Rasputin’s devotees Maria Golovina and Olga Lokhtina, the latter a lioness of Petersburg society whom acquaintance with Rasputin turned into a half-mad holy fool (yurodivaya); the tsarina’s friend Yulia [Lili] Dehn; and so on. Many of the interrogations were transcribed in the investigators’ own handwriting (specimens of which are in the possession of the Archive of the Russian Federation, as are specimens of the handwriting of many of those who were subjected to interrogation and who signed the documents). So it was not very difficult to establish the documents’ authenticity.
    The File also allowed me to confirm the authenticity of Zhukovskaya’s astonishing memoirs. I found the detailed testimony of Alexander Prugavinhimself, in which that expert on Russian sectarianism corroborated what Zhukovskaya had written in regard to both her having met Rasputin through Prugavin and Prugavin’s visit to Rasputin with her, and to her stories about Rasputin having permitted Prugavin to write his tale. Moreover, in Prugavin’s view, it was ‘Zhukovskaya’s eroticism’ that compelled her to try to understand to the fullest the enigmatic doctrine of the ‘elder’. So she had in fact known very well what she was writing about.
    And, lastly, there is in the File discussion of the man who became first Rasputin’s friend and then his enemy, the monk Iliodor, who published abroad a famous book about Rasputin, A Holy Devil . That