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.
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.