When Peter the Great completed the Winter Palace in his new capital city, St. Petersburg, he naturally displayed some art he had collected on his trips through Europe. It was Catherine the Great, however, who established a museum in the Small Hermitage in 1764. She had purchased about 300 primarily French and Flemish paintings from a Berlin art dealer. The dealer had accumulated the collection on behalf of King Frederick II of Prussia, who reneged on the deal. Without benefit of e-bay, somehow the buyer and seller met and agreed to terms.
Over the years, Catherine and her successors accumulated great artworks, including many by Italian masters purchased from the Papal Museum of the Catholic Church. By the time Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra came to power, the Hermitage housed arguably the greatest art collection in Europe. It was in 1904 that this couple introduced one of the most fascinating characters into the already outlandish lore of Russian royalty.
The heirs of Great Britain’s Queen Victoria married into royal families throughout Europe, since arranged marriages could be good foreign policy and kept the blood royal. However, her ancestors didn’t realize that Victoria’s royal blood often carried a recessive gene for hemophilia, which her granddaughter Tsaritsa Alexandra did, until the “Royal Disease,” hemophilia, showed up in a child, as it did in this case with Alexei, heir to the throne.
As loving parents, they naturally tried everything to cure their boy, but modern medicine had no answers. They turned in desperation to a Siberian mystic named Grigori Rasputin, who somehow managed to not only calm their fears but help the boy when doctors could do nothing. In fact, once while traveling in Siberia, his telegraph apparently helped. Now rationally, it has been theorized that Rasputin was a master of hypnosis, and his telegraph contained common sense, telling the parents to stop doctors from pestering the child and let him rest, but for the parents, each healing was miraculous. They eventually looked to Rasputin for help in other areas, and his power over the affairs of Russia grew.
Other nobles looked with skepticism at this “Mad Monk,” a peasant whose drinking and womanizing seemed rather unsaintly. Rasputin said that he had to undergo the humiliation of submitting to temptation in order to reap the benefits of salvation. Regardless, the prophecies of Rasputin were heeded by Nicholas and Alexandra. Rasputin told Nicholas that the Russian military would not be successful in World War I until the Tsar took command personally, so Nicholas left the capital to lead his troops. In his absence, Rasputin’s control over Alexandra and subsequently the affairs of state grew. It was rumored that he might have even had an affair with the Tsaritsa, which considering his philosophy and affairs with many other noble women seems possible.
In 1914, a former prostitute slit open Rasputin’s stomach with a knife. She proclaimed proudly that she had killed the antichrist. With his guts extruding out the gash, he certainly seemed sure to die, but after extensive surgery, Rasputin recovered from what seemed to be a mortal wound, adding to his mystique.
Near the end of 1916, Rasputin inexplicably wrote a letter in which he said he would be gone by the New Year. If he was killed by peasants, he said, then the royal Romanov family would rule for many years. If he was killed by a relative of the Tsar, then the Tsar and his descendents would all be killed by the Russian people.
Enough was enough for the other nobles. Prince Yusopov, the husband of a niece of Nicholas, conspired to pull the problem out by its roots.
The conspirators lured Rasputin to the basement of a palace and fed him cakes and wine laced with copious amounts of cyanide, enough to kill five men. Rasputin’s daughter said he wouldn’t have eaten the cakes, because he never ate sugar. Then again, he doesn’t seem to have been a man to shy from temptation, so he undoubtedly drank the wine, even if he denied himself cake. Just to be sure, Yusopov shot Rasputin with a revolver and left him to die. When Yusopov returned later for his jacket, however, he decided to check to be sure Rasputin had no pulse. Rasputin’s eyes opened, and he grabbed Yusopov around the neck. The co-conspirators heard the struggle as Yusopov fought for his life, and they came to his aid, firing shots at Rasputin, hitting him three more times. Finally dead, they thought.
As they grabbed him to carry him away, Rasputin struggled to the point where they dropped him. They clubbed him and beat him into submission. After wrapping him in a sheet, they carried him out and dumped the body in the freezing Neva River, never to see him again.....until he surfaced three days later, his arms stretching up as if he had been trying to claw his way out from under the ice. The autopsy determined there was water in his lungs, meaning that poisoned with cyanide, beaten with clubs, and shot with four bullets, Rasputin had drowned trying to break out of his icy grave. He had died before the end of the year, as he seemingly foresaw.
About two months later, the Bolshevik Revolution overthrew the government, ending the reign of the Romanovs, who had ruled Russia for over four hundred years. Revolutionaries dug up Rasputin’s body, which had been buried by Alexandra, and took it to the woods to be cremated. As his body burned in the fire, Rasputin sat up! Had he unfrozen and come back to life?
Of course, this seems like it came straight from a horror movie, and it’s not hard to guess the reaction of the crowd watching. Rasputin hadn’t come back to life. The scientific explanation is that the body had not been properly prepared for cremation, which would include cutting the tendons. When the tendons heated up, they shrank, pulling Rasputin into a sitting position. Believe what you want. Nineteen months after Rasputin’s death, Nicholas, Alexandra and their five children were gathered in a basement and systematically shot to death.
The Hermitage had been open to the public since the middle of the 19th Century, but the Bolsheviks expanded it to encompass not only all three Hermitages but the Winter Palace itself and other buildings. The art collection now contains over three million items, although not all are displayed at the same time.
When we arrived, long lines had already formed, but being with a private guide allowed us to go to the front of the lines then and for the rest of our tour. It proved to be a terrific way to see the museum, as Sophia allowed us to spend as much time as we wanted in any particular area, although she definitely became a bit frustrated when our party would disperse around a room rather than gathering around her.
It is a magnificent collection. For example, there are twelve known paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci in the world, and the Hermitage houses two of them. Darlene and Brooks had to repeat the “greatest hits” from the day before, but they said this was a much better pace, with fewer people pushing to see the same artworks simultaneously, so they were happy to have the chance to re-visit them.
Our guide had studied art at the university, and she happily shared detailed information with us, not only about the art but about the history of the museum buildings. She told us the Hermitage was named for the quarters for guests at the Winter Palace, who would find temporary rest from palace life by taking refuge there, like hermits.
At the point when she probably normally would break for lunch, she asked what else we would like to see, and we definitely wanted more. In addition to the standard exhibits, the Hermitage rotates through special exhibits from its own vast storehouses or touring collections from other museums. We backtracked to see other exhibits, including some additional impressionist paintings and “The Perfect Victory,” a collection celebrating the 300th Anniversary of Peter the Great’s victory over Sweden’s King Karl XII at the Battle of Poltava.
Included in the latter were uniforms actually worn by Peter plus the only remaining dress uniform of King Karl, although he didn’t actually wear it at the battle. This battle marked a shift in power from the formerly formidable Sweden to the emerging Russia. It is considered to have been the deciding battle in the war in which Russia won the land which included what became St. Petersburg.
