“Is it true that Grigorii Efimovich – is a holy man? ¹

This was the question which Alexei had asked his father the Emperor of Russia shortly before Grigorii Rasputin was murdered. The emperor silently glanced at Father Alexander Vasiliev, the Family’s priest, consenting for him instead to respond to this complex question. Perhaps we can try to answer this question ourselves, but in order to accomplish that task we must first understand why Grigorii Rasputin became so prominent in Russian high society.

Rasputin continues to be an enigma ninety years after his death. When Lenin came to power the Soviet regime was perfectly content to allow the myths about Rasputin to stand. The Soviet government’s philosophy to avoid or revolutionize many facts pertaining to its Imperial history including the adoption of extreme censorship that affected what was permitted to be published inside the Soviet Union had served the Bolshevik regime well to further help discredit the last reigning Emperor of Imperial Russia.

It was up to the key individuals, after they had fled to Western Europe and elsewhere around the globe placed in a more open-minded position to continue with their stories relating to Rasputin. Only three publications were published before 1924 before the censors had sealed access to the archives.¹ The first book on the subject of Rasputin’s murder was the diary of Vladimir Puriskevich² who was an active accomplice at the scene of Rasputin’s murder. His small book had first appeared in 1918 in Kiev, in Southern Russia, whilst the civil war raged in the region against the revolutionaries. The press was more at liberty to print material during the brief Provisional Government period than it was under Nikolai II, and that hiatus permitted the publication of several of the police protocols and other material that related to the police investigation in a few newspapers, journals and small booklets after March 1917 and that freedom had continued until Vladimir Lenin’s death in 1924. These publications had included the journal “Byloye” (“Past Times”) and newspaper “Russkaya Volya” (“Russian Will”).

The second book which came to light was authored by the jurist and poet Alexander Blok,³ who was employed to collate all the transcripts from the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry (The Kerensky Inquiry) in 1917. Essentially the Commission was authorized to investigate the influence of Rasputin over Nikolai II and his government. These proceeding were headed by jurist Vladimir Rudnev as one of the Commission’s key investigators who fled to Europe with many of the original Commission documents in his possession. As an émigré in Berlin he published his conclusive remarks in 1920 titled “Pravda o Tsarskoi Sem’i i Temnih Silah” (The Truth about the Tsarist Family and the “Dark Forces”).⁴ The Bolsheviks stopped the Inquiry but later enabled the publication of a seven volume compilation of the records from the Kerensky Inquiry that appeared in 1924. With the death of Lenin in 1924, the clamps were further tightened around the Archives and all valuable research stopped.

Welcome to the first online Russian history and cultural Journal, established in 2005! 

"Faces of Russia: Past and Present - The Online Journal".

We are pleased to introduce our new look.

This website is dedicated to all aspects of Russian history and culture.

“Faces of Russia” is a unique online journal, which offers a creative and intellectual outlet for those who would like to contribute their Russia-related articles as guest authors. We offer our readers a unique opportunity to contribute scholarly articles without the need for hard copy publication. The online format of our journal minimizes the time lag and other technical issues often experienced by authors and permits a more rapid process of review.  
 
The subject matter of the journal offers a diversity of topics that include Russian imperial and contemporary history, art, music, literature, and traditions among the many themes. We look into Russia’s rich and variable past in order to reflect upon her future - no matter where we live today. We hope that there is something to appeal to everyone!

Each of our many articles is written by talented international writers from Australia, the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Japan.

We would like to acknowledge our warm appreciation to Vlad Markov without whom the new format of this site would not have been possible.

In addition we thank Link Foundation Inc. for their professional support and advice.

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What Was the Real Medical Tragedy Faced by Russia’s Last Imperial Heir?

Introduction

Hemophilia, a serious disorder that affects the clotting of blood, became known as the Royal Disease in the 19^th century after a number of male members belonging to the European Royal Houses suddenly presented with this incurable and devastating condition. Although its distressing appearance in several family branches of Queen Victoria’s royal descendants made some medical waves during that time, hemophilia gained most of its historical notoriety in the early 20^th century through the well-known legend of Grigori Efimovich Rasputin^[1] and his alleged unique ability to stop the bleeding of the hemophiliac heir to the Imperial Russian throne. Sadly the life of Tsesarevich Alexei who suffered from this incurable blood disorder would often hang by a thinnest thread while the best specialists, both in the Empire and abroad, could only helplessly shrug their shoulders in the face of each respective bleeding episode, knowing that there was little that could be done except alleviate his considerable pain. But, as the legend goes, Rasputin - an uneducated Siberian peasant with no formal medical background seemed to be able to stop the bleeding and appeared to save the boy’s life more that once. As a consequence, Rasputin was to gain the complete trust and confidence of the Emperor and the Empress who referred to himas a “Man of God.”^[2]

Many remain convinced that it was Rasputin who was responsible for launching the Russian Empire into its cataclysmic revolutionary downfall, which included the violent demise of the entire imperial family.Even during his own lifetime, Rasputin grew - for better or worse – into a legendary figure, while hemophilia came to be closely associated with monumental historical events ever since.

Although official State documents never mentioned the term “hemophilia” when referring to the heir to the Russian throne, it had become an accepted fact that the boy had indeed suffered from this disease - a condition that put him at constant daily risk of literally bleeding to death. This has been an unquestioned fact until recently, when some surprising doubts as to the nature of the Tsesarevich’s medical condition had arisen in the form of a Historical Perspective investigative article published in a respected medical journal – the American Journal of Hematology (A. J. H.).

The article’s author, John Kendrick, a Canadian journalist argues that Alexei did not have hemophilia after all. Kendrick introduces a number of reasons he believes to be compelling enough to make a case against the traditional historic contention that, he claims, convinced him of the fact that Alexei may have suffered not from hemophilia but a non-fatal blood ailment that was acquired sometime during his short life.

Could it be possible that Alexei did not have hemophilia but another similar condition that was misdiagnosed as hemophilia? While it is unsafe to provide a clinical diagnosis for anyone who died that long ago, in the absence of complete medical records, we believe that it is possible to form a reasonable assessment from diary extracts, memoirs and other documented historical and medical facts to determine whether Alexei’s condition was indeed hemophilia. This is precisely what we have set out to do in the pages you are about to read.