Jacinto AntónBarcelona – Jun 04, 2026 – 15:00CESTShare on WhatsappShare on FacebookShare on TwitterDesplegar Redes SocialesPrefer EL PAÍS on GoogleCompartir:WhatsappFacebookTwitterBlueskyLinkedinCopy linkUsed to hearing Antony Beevor detail troop movements at Stalingrad, the siege of Berlin, the Normandy landings, the paratroopers’ effort at Arnhem or the Panzer offensive in Hitler’s last stand in the Ardennes, it is surprising to hear him talk about Rasputin’s penis. In truth, he adopts the same look of intense concentration he brings to his usual military topics. “Rasputin’s penis… is an object of interest, certainly,” he says when his interlocutor mentions that, during an afternoon of astonishment and vodka, he saw on display in a St. Petersburg museum the appendage shown as such in a glass jar. “Yes, it is said to measure 13 inches, about 33 centimeters, but I don’t know that it’s something to take seriously. My father-in-law, the historian John Julius Norwich, used to explain that his father, Duff Cooper, the first British ambassador to France after the Liberation and also a historian [and father of the notable writer Artemis Cooper, Beevor’s wife], was convinced that part of Rasputin’s sexual success and magnetism lay in his member and his muscular control, but there is no historical record that it was cut off after his murder. Today it is impossible to assert that what is on display is his; I don’t believe any DNA test has been done.” In fact, some say it is a horse’s penis, or, if not that, a dried sea cucumber, as has also been suggested. Beevor recalls, in any case, that at the time in Tsarist Russia, Rasputin was credited with extraordinary sexual potency and caricatures circulated showing his organ, in reference to the monk’s influence over the Tsarina Alexandra and, through her, Tsar Nicholas II, with the legend: “The rod that rules Russia.”This singular conversation with Sir Antony Beevor (London, 79), recognized as one of the finest military historians of our time, and which will later include him humming the famous Boney M song Rasputin, is relevant because the author has just published a book centered on the controversial figure known as the mad monk, Rasputin: And the Downfall of the Romanovs (2026), a compelling and revealing work that falls within another of the scholar’s areas of interest, Russia (with titles including Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917–1921; A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941–1945, in collaboration with Luba Vinográdova; The Mystery of Olga Chekhova; and his own Stalingrad). In his new book, Beevor investigates the truth behind the extravagant figure of Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin (1869–1916), the great seducer, the wild mystic, the libidinous, drunken and somewhat grubby muzhik (the typical rough, poor peasant of Russian literature), who fascinated Tsar Nicholas and his wife Tsarina Alexandra, and whom Beevor says has long fascinated him.The historian stresses that, despite holding no official position and being an almost illiterate Siberian peasant, Rasputin — an almost novelistic character with a life (and a death) of legend or farce, depending on one’s view — “contributed, unintentionally and as a devoted monarchist rather than any kind of revolutionary, more than any other person to the collapse of the world’s greatest autocracy,” the Romanov empire. In that sense, Beevor believes there is “some truth” in Kerensky’s judgment, which, expanding on the idea that the monk’s influence over the tsarina destabilized the empire, stated that “without Rasputin there would have been no Lenin.” The historian reminds us that Rasputin, by influencing Nicholas’s governments, had responsibility for, for example, bread shortages in St. Petersburg that led to unrest, and is therefore “a direct link to the revolution.”The historian Antony Beevor.David Levenson (Getty Images)In his book, Beevor traces Rasputin’s life not as a conventional biography but by inserting it into the b
Fuente: El Pais — Ver nota original
