Russian biography the saint who sinned

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RASPUTIN: The Saint Who Sinned. By Brian Moynahan. Random House.

This article written by LYNWOOD ABRAM


IN the fall of , Czar Nicholas II of Russia wrote in his diary, "We have got to know a man of

God, Grigory, from Tobolsk province."

It is safe to say that no sentence in the czar's diaries could be more ominous than this.

Rasputin : the saint who sinned : Moynahan, Brian, 1941 ...

The reference is to Grigory Rasputin, who later would be known by other names, including "the Mad Monk." Although that nickname stuck, it was inaccurate: Rasputin was neither a monk nor mad.

Ignorant, almost illiterate, uncouth and unwashed, this Siberian peasant was a character so outrageous that, for once, the cliché is apt: He seems to have emerged from a pulp novel.

He was many things: unordained preacher, faith healer, prophet, alcoholic, seducer of high-born women, liar, swindler and conniver. The subtitle of Brian Moynahan's new biography, however, is wrong: Rasputin was no saint.

Rasputin's great distinction is that RASPUTIN: The Saint Who Sinned.<i> By Brian Moynahan</i> .<i ...

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