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Rasputin and the Jews: A Reversal of History Reviewed By John Cowans of Bookpleasures.com
http://www.bookpleasures.com/websitepublisher/articles/4944/1/Rasputin-and-the-Jews-A-Reversal-of-History-Reviewed-By-John-Cowans-of-Bookpleasurescom/Page1.html
John Cowans

Reviewer John Cowans:  John  lives in retirement in Chester, NS ,where he has been an Instructor with Seniors College Association of Nova Scotia.

He is currently working on a personal memoir, Other People’s Children, and his first poetry collection, Hope.




 
By John Cowans
Published on May 23, 2012
 

Author: Delin Colon

Publisher: Createspace

ISBN: 97811461027751



Follow Here To Purchase Rasputin and The Jews: A Reversal of History

Author: Delin Colon

Publisher: Createspace

ISBN: 97811461027751

It is common knowledge that history is written not by the losers of battles but by the winners; similarly the downtrodden are rarely the chroniclers of revolutions and social upheaval. Until the publication of Delin Colon’s Rasputin and the Jews: A Reversal of History, Grigory Rasputin, spiritual advisor to Russia’s last Tsar and Tsarina, had been regarded as a disreputable mystic whose hold on the Russian Royal Family was largely due to his apparent healing powers which he exercised over young Alexei, the Tsarevitch, who suffered from hemophilia. For example, in a recent autobiography written by one close to the British Royal Family, Rasputin is referred to as ‘that degenerate mystic‘ Who better to set matters right than Delin Colón, a great-great niece of Aron Simanovitch (Rasputin's Jewish secretary).

Ms Colon has worked as a technical writer for Sociological Abstracts and started a company which matched technical and creative writers with writing jobs. Intrigued by the memoirs of her great-great uncle, she has spent the last dozen years researching his claims that Rasputin was maligned primarily due to his support of the Russian Jewish community. Colón is retired and lives with her photographer husband in the Pacific Northwest, where she continues to write.

The Russian aristocracy during the reign of Tsar Nicholas II were largely anti-Semitic and were opposed to anyone who would champion the cause of the oppressed peasants and especially the Jews who they blamed for lost battles and eventually for the downfall of the Romanov Empire. Delin Colon points out in this excellent little history that the downtrodden, the underdogs of society, were the very people that Rasputin helped, thus bringing disrepute upon his own head. Most records of his good works were destroyed by his allies to avoid prosecution. But there are some incidents recorded of Rasputin helping the Jews; he pleaded their cases with the Tsar on many occasions; he interceded in legal cases including one famous case where 300 dentists were imprisoned. He regularly petitioned the Tsarina to allow Jewish students to attend university, to allow performances in the Yiddish theatre, and to free those who had been summarily imprisoned.

He made many recommendations to the Tsar on behalf of the poor and the peasants, but these requests usually fell on deaf ears. Rasputin was also a popular preacher and so the clergy were jealous of him and spread rumors about him. It has been suggested that had Rasputin been listened to, had for instance the Tsar allowed the nobility to sell land to the peasants for the purpose of farming thus creating a food supply for the poor, perhaps the

Revolution could have been avoided, but that was not to be.

For anyone interested in this particular period in history, this book is a must . It is well written and suitably documented and hence is an worthy addition to historical scholarship.

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