Maria Rasputin

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Maria Rasputin
Матрёна Распутина
Rasputindaughtercropped.jpg
Maria Rasputina, right, with her father and mother in March 1911
Born Matryona Grigorievna Rasputina
March 27, 1898
Pokrovskoye, Russian Empire
Died September 27, 1977 (aged 79)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Other names Mara, Matrena, Marochka, Maria Rasputina
Occupation Writer, cabaret dancer, circus performer, riveter
Spouse(s)
Boris Soloviev

(m. 1917; div. 1926)

Gregory Bernadsky

(m. 1940; div. 1946)

Children 2
Parents
Grigori Rasputin (father)
Praskovya Fedorovna Dubrovina (mother)
Maria Rasputin (born Matryona Grigorievna Rasputina, Russian: Матрёна Григорьевна
Распутина; 27 March 1898 – 27 September 1977) was the daughter of Grigori Rasputin
and his wife Praskovya Fyodorovna Dubrovina. She wrote two memoirs about her
father, dealing with Tsar Nicholas II and Tsaritsa Alexandra Feodorovna, the attack
by Khionia Guseva, and the murder. A third one, The Man Behind the Myth, was
published in 1977 in association with Patte Barham. In her three memoirs, the
veracity of which have been questioned,[1][2] she painted an almost saintly picture
of her father, insisting that most of the negative stories were based on slander
and the misinterpretation of facts by his enemies.

Contents
1 Early life
2 Her father
3 Life following the Revolution
4 Exile
5 Legacy
6 See also
7 Notes
8 References
Early life

Rasputin with his children

Matryona (or Maria) Rasputin was born in the Siberian village of Pokrovskoye,
Tobolsk Governorate, on 26 March 1898, and baptized the next day. Some people
believe she was born in 1899; that year is also on her tombstone, but since 1990
the archives in Russia opened up and more information became available for
researchers. In September 1910[3] she went to Kazan (perhaps the Kazan Gymnasium)
and then came to St. Petersburg, where her first name was changed to Maria to
better fit with her social aspirations.[4] Rasputin had brought Maria and her
younger sister Varvara (Barbara) to live with him in the capital with the hope of
turning them into "little ladies."[5] After being refused at the Smolny Institute,
[6] they attended Steblin-Kamensky private preparatory school in October 1913.
Her father

Entrance of Gorochovaia 64. Rasputin's apartment, No. 20, was on the third floor
with a view in the courtyard,[7] but the Tsarskoe train station near. He lived in
this 5-room apartment from May 1914 with a housemaid, her niece and his two
daughters.
What little is known about Rasputin's childhood was passed down by Maria.[8] Maria
expressed her ideas about their surname; Rasputin. According to her, he was never a
monk, but a starets. (As he was not an elder he would be referred to as a pilgrim.)
For Maria, her father's healing practices on Tsarevich Alexei were based on
magnetism.[9] According to Maria, Grigory did "look into" the Khlysti's ideas.[10]

Maria records that Rasputin was never the same after the attack by Khioniya Guseva
on 12 July [O.S. 29 June] 1914.[11][12] Maria and her mother accompanied their
father to hospital in Tyumen. Seven weeks later, Rasputin left the hospital and
returned to St Petersburg. According to Maria her father started to drink dessert
wines.[13]

Maria was briefly engaged during World War I to a Georgian officer named Pankhadze.
Pankhadze had avoided being sent to the war front due to Rasputin's intervention
and was doing his military service with the reserve battalions in Petrograd.[14]
Maria liked to visit the opera and the Ciniselli Circus.

On 17 December 1916, Rasputin was lured to the Moika Palace for a house warming
party organized by Felix Yusupov, whom Rasputin called "The Little One".[15]
Yusupov had visited Rasputin regularly in the past few weeks or months.[16] The
following day, the two sisters reported their father missing to Anna Vyrubova.
Traces of blood were detected on the parapet of the Bolshoy Petrovsky bridge, as
well as one of Rasputin's galoshes, stuck between the bridge pile. Maria and her
sister affirmed the boot belonged to their father.[17]

Maria asserts that after the attack by Guseva, her father suffered from
hyperacidity and avoided anything with sugar.[18] She and her father's former
secretary, Simanotvich, doubted he was poisoned at all.[19][20] It is Maria who
mentioned the homosexual advances of Felix Yusupov towards her father. According to
her he was murdered when this was denied. Fuhrmann does not believe Yusupov found
Rasputin attractive.[21]

It is not clear whether Rasputin's two daughters were present at Rasputin's burial
in Vyrubova's garden, next to the Alexander Palace and the surrounding park,
although Maria claimed she was.[22][23] The two sisters were invited in the
Alexandra palace to play with the four grand duchesses, quite often referred to as
OTMA; meanwhile, Maria and her sister had moved into a smaller apartment, owned by
her French teacher. They each received an allowance of 50,000 rubles. In April
1917, their mother returned to Pokrovskoye. The next day the two sisters were
locked up in the Tauride Palace and questioned. Boris Soloviev succeeded in gaining
their release.

Life following the Revolution

Maria Rasputin being interviewed by a journalist from the Spanish magazine Estampa
in 1930.
Rasputin had persuaded Maria to marry Boris Soloviev, the charismatic son of
Nikolai Soloviev, the Treasurer of the Holy Synod and one of her father's admirers.
[24] Boris Soloviev, a graduate of a school of mysticism, quickly emerged as
Rasputin's successor after the murder. Boris, who had studied Madame Blavatsky's
theosophy,[25] and hypnotism, attended meetings at which Rasputin's followers
attempted to communicate with the dead through prayer meetings and séances.[26]
Maria also attended the meetings, but later wrote in her diary that she could not
understand why her father kept telling her to "love Boris" when the group spoke to
him at the séances. She said she did not like Boris at all.[27] Boris was no more
enthusiastic about Maria. In his own diary, he wrote that his wife was not even
useful for sexual relations, because there were so many women who had bodies he
found more attractive than hers.[28] In September 1917, Boris received jewels from
the Tsarina to help arrange for their escape,[29] but according to Radzinsky, he
kept the funds for himself. Nonetheless, she married Boris on October 5, 1917 in
the chapel of the Tauride Palace. After the fall of the Russian Provisional
Government the situation got worse. In spring 1918, the couple fled to her mother.
[30] They lived in Pokrovskoye[27] Tyumen and Tobolsk.

Boris and her brother Dmitry turned in the officers who had come to Ekaterinburg to
plan the escape of the Romanovs. Boris lost the money he had obtained from the
jewels during the Russian Civil War that followed.[31] Boris defrauded prominent
Russian families by asking for money for a Romanov impostor to escape to China.
Boris also found young women willing to masquerade as one of the grand duchesses
for the benefit of the families he had defrauded.[32] (For more information on the
betrayal and jewels see the account of Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden.)

Exile

Maria Rasputina as a circus performer in 1932.[citation needed]

Boris and Maria escaped to Vladivostok, where they lived for almost a year. Boris
was arrested by the White Army and sent to Chita, Zabaykalsky Krai. Maria was
questioned by Nikolai Sokolov about the Romanov jewels, which had disappeared.[33]

The White émigrés were detained by the revolutionaries. After Tatyana (1920–2009)
was born they left by ship for Ceylon, Suez, Trieste and Prague, where the couple
opened a Russian restaurant, but business was slow. Then she was invited to work in
Vienna. Their second daughter Maria (1922–1976) was born in Baden, Austria.[34]
Maria took dancing lessons in Berlin and stayed with Aron Simanovich, her father's
former "bookkeeper". They settled in Montmartre, Paris, where Boris worked in a
soap factory, as night porter, car-washer and for the Waterman Pen Company; they
lived at Avenue Jean Jaurès. He died of tuberculosis in July 1926 in Hôpital
Cochin. Maria was offered a job as a cabaret dancer because of her name.[35] She
took more dancing lessons to support their two young daughters and invited her
sister Varvara to come to Paris, but she died in Moscow.

After Felix Yusupov published his memoir (in 1928) detailing the death of her
father, Maria sued Yussupov and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia in a Paris
court for damages of $800,000. She condemned both men as murderers and said any
decent person would be disgusted by the ferocity of Rasputin's killing.[36] Maria's
claim was dismissed. The French court ruled that it had no jurisdiction over a
political killing that took place in Russia.[37][38][39] Maria published the first
of three memoirs about Rasputin in 1929: The Real Rasputin.

In 1929, she worked at Busch Circus, where she had to dance to "the tragedy of my
father's life and death, and be brought face-to-face on the stage with actors who
were impersonating him and his murderers. Every time I have to confront my father
on the stage a pang of poignant memory shoots through my heart, and I could break
down and weep."[40][41] In 1932, Rasputin, My Father was published. In January
1933, she performed in Cirque d'hiver with a pony act.[42] In December 1934 Maria
was in London. In 1935 she found work in the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus, based in
Peru, Indiana.[43] The circus toured America and Maria acted one season as a lion
tamer, with Maria billed as "the daughter of the famous mad monk whose feats in
Russia astonished the world."[44] She was mauled by a bear in May 1935[45] but
stayed with the circus until it reached Miami, Florida, where she quit before it
ceased operations.[46] In 1938, her two daughters were denied entry to the US.[47]
Maria was ordered to leave the country within 90 days, but then, in March 1940, she
married Gregory Bernadsky, a childhood friend and former White Russian Army
officer, in Miami.[48] In 1946, they divorced and she became a U.S. citizen. In
1947 the youngest of her daughters married in Paris to Gideon Walrave Boissevain
[nl] (1897–1985), minister plenipotentiary in Greece, Chile, Israel and the Dutch
ambassador to Cuba.[34][49]

She began work as a riveter, either in Miami or in a San Pedro, Los Angeles,
California shipyard during World War II.[35][citation needed] Maria worked in
defense plants until 1955 when she was forced to retire because of her age. After
that, she supported herself by working in hospitals, giving Russian lessons, and
babysitting for friends.[50]

In 1968, Maria claimed to be psychic and said Pat Nixon had come to her in a dream.
[35] At one point, she said she recognized Anna Anderson as Grand Duchess Anastasia
Nikolaevna of Russia, a claim she would later recant.[51] Maria had two pet dogs,
whom she called Youssou and Pov after Felix Yussupov.[52]

During the last years of her life, she lived in Los Angeles, living on Social
Security benefits. Her home was in Silver Lake, an area of Los Angeles with Russian
émigrés. Maria is buried in Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery.[53]

Legacy
Maria told her grandchildren that her father taught her to be generous, even in
times when she was in need herself. Rasputin said she should never leave home with
empty pockets, but should always have something to give to the poor.[54] Her
granddaughter Laurence Huot-Solovieff, the daughter of Maria's daughter Tatyana,
recalled in 2005[54] that according to Maria, their infamous great-grandfather was
a "simple man with a big heart and strong spiritual power, who loved Russia, God,
and the Tsar."