Douglas Smith > Quotes

“To separate Rasputin from his mythology, I came to realize, was to completely misunderstand him. There is no Rasputin without the stories about Rasputin.”
― Douglas Smith, Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs

“It pained Maria Fyodorovna to watch how her daughter-in-law dominated her son. Nicholas never once mentioned Rasputin in any of his letters to his mother. The subject for him was taboo. His mother wept: “My poor daughter-in-law does not perceive that she is ruining the dynasty and herself. She sincerely believes in the holiness of an adventurer, and we are powerless to ward off the misfortune, which is sure to come.” It was possible she was then recalling that upon her arrival in Russia from her homeland of Denmark in 1866, an old woman had foretold that her son would rule over Russia with great wealth and power, only to be cut down by “a moujik’s hand.”13”
― Douglas Smith, Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs

“Ilya Kovylin, a Moscow merchant born in 1731 and one of the founders of the Old Believer sect of the Fedoseevtsy, taught his followers that “without sin there is no repentance, without repentance no salvation. There will be many sinners in heaven.” It was Kovylin who coined the famous (or infamous) phrase “If you don’t sin, you don’t repent, if you don’t repent, you can’t be saved.” This Kovylin is immensely important, for his words have mistakenly been attributed to Rasputin, as if he spoke them first, having himself created some new perversion, when in fact they have a much older tradition and represent an idea shared by various sectarian groups.”
― Douglas Smith, Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs

“the Church of the Savior on the Spilt Blood on the Catherine (now Griboedov) Canal, built on the site where Tsar Alexander II had been blown up by revolutionaries in 1881.”
― Douglas Smith, Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs