In 1916, a Russian forty entered through the door of the British consulate in New York, which at that time was a hotbed of secret activities.They explain Sean McMeekin in New History of the Russian Revolution (2017).The allied spies did not stop repeating a name: Grigori Rasputin.They feared that the trusted man of Tsar Nicolás II was a Germanophilic who convinced him to get Russia out of war.On this, they expected that mysterious Russian, called Serguéi Trufánov, had something to say.

“Rasputin [...] was the‘ Holy Demon ’in a body revered by all.He represented darkness, corruption, the source of evil in Russia. ”This fragment belongs to The Mad Monk of Russia, Iliodor: Life, Memoirs and Confessions of Serguéi Michailovich Trufanoff (Iliodor), the memories that Trufánov wrote in 1918 in his exile in Norway.Unjured, what the British did not know is that behind that charismatic man and innocent features a manipulator was hidden.

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Iliodor saw everything with suspicion.Proof of this are his essays, where he mixed religious fanaticism with anti -Semitism.He with equal intensity despised the members of Russian intelligentsia, secular left and right -wing intellectuals.As Simon Dixon explains, who dedicated extensive work to the figure of Trufánov, the young man was a perfect product of the theological academy, which had long been meant because it was a focus of the reactionary movement.

They started as friends

In the halls of the institution he looked friendship with other conservative religious.But, without a doubt, the one who impressed him most was an imposing physicist and serious gesture, Grigori Rasputin."Under the influence of prayer, Rasputin has sublimated his sexual instincts to the point that he no longer sleeps with his own woman," he said of him on one occasion.It is evident that the very innocent still did not know his colleague.

Be that as it may, that was a very profitable friendship, because at that time Rasputin had already made a name in court.After graduating, Iliodor was assigned to the Yaroslavl seminar.According to Dixon, the choice was not accidental.It was in that city where the union of the Russian people (UPR), a political organization of the radical right, opened its first provincial subsidiary.A perfect scenario for the young iliodor to give free rein to his speech more incendiary.

His arrival could not be more inopportune.After the 1905 revolution, and with the hope of calming peasants and workers, the Tsar had granted the Russian political and religious freedoms.In addition, the October manifesto also legitimized the creation of a Parliament and opened the door to a constitutional monarchy.

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For Iliodor, that was a satanic document from Cabo on a tail, which did not hesitate to demonize through the pages of the Russkii newspaper Narod.The waits of the UPR, in turn, responded to the call to the action of the friar with violence in the street.

An uncontrollable beast

For the rector of the seminar, Evsevii, who had to do since the window of his office as Jewish businesses burned, that was too much.Also for the Blessed Governing Synod, the governing body of the Russian Church.The Synod had accepted part of the principles of the October manifesto, and was suspicious of the reactionary religious.Although they said to be the shield of Tsarism, these "peasants" priests could tighten the social order to the point of endangering the continuity of the monarchy.

The decision was taken: Iliodor had to leave for the Nóvgorod seminar.But the monk had powerful friends.From the UPR to Rasputin, there were so many requests that Nicolás II received that he ended up revoking the decision.However, many of his courage would warn that they had fed an uncontrollable beast.If he had been sympathetic in the eyes of the right, it was not so much when his diatribes headed towards the bourgeois, the aristocrats and the state bureaucrats.

The endless death of the Tsar

There that unredeemed monk landed, distributing insults and threats to right and left.The Interior Ministry had to put men in uniform in all its public appearances.More hidden, it was also usual to see countryman agents taking note of everything he said.It soon produced an algarada with injured, and once again the Syno asked for its transfer.After an interview with La Tsarina, Iliodor was forgiven, with the warning that it would be the "last time."They were wrong.

The Tsar's attempt to contain the misguided sheep could not be more unproductive.The monk returned to Tsaritsin more conceited than ever, initiating the construction of a large monastic complex, which included a cathedral and would become the center of his public life.From there, Iliodor ravages violence, and in a short time the Synod was asking for his transfer to the distant province of Tula.

Rasputin and La Tsarina

This time there would be no real protection, and this is where this story becomes incredible."There are no laws in the empire that can force me to go to Tula," he exclaimed before the media.While the related press was sure to keep him in the headlines, Iliodor called his followers to get entrenched next to him, as if he were a martyr.

The crisis was extended for several weeks until the Synod asked for help from the civil authorities: it would be the police to evict the monastery.The result was a picturesque scene, with the Imperial Army surrounding the walls of the complex, while a train remained in the nearest station in case the evacuation of the monk should be fast.Never happened.A Dubitative Stolypin feared a bloodbath, and the authorities decided to postpone sine die the transfer.

As if it were a chess game, and luckily for the prime minister, he was his opponent to take a false step.It happened when Iliodor wanted to face an enemy greater than him: Rasputin.He did not do it as punishment for his agitated sex life, as he said in his memoirs, but for pure tacticism.

Grigori Rasputin had more and more enemies in court.What better time to get rid of the only one who could shade him?Although little is known about the real motivations of such a cryptic man, that is what most historians believe.

His attempt to discredit him was fierce.He came to affirm that Rasputin maintained an indecent relationship with the Tsarina.Big mistake.In a short time, Iliodor already occupied a small cell in a remote community of fourteen religious.Meanwhile, the police entered his monastery, where they discovered large amounts of illicit money.After this blow, Iliodor took little to present the voluntary resignation of him.

From Norway to New York

Immediately afterwards he was put under close police surveillance, partly because he had planned to murder in Rasputin.However, such surveillance did not prevent him from escaping Norway.He did it with the help of the writer Máximo Gorki, willing to use any tool to undermine the reputation of Tsarism.From that strange alliance between a reactionary and a left -wing thinker, Iliodor's memoirs were born.Of all, this is perhaps the text that helped to cement the black legend on Rasputin.

After writing his book, in 1916 he took a ship to New York.Thinking about how to get economic benefit to his vital experience, he cared to sell his articles to Jewish newspapers.He even interpreted himself in a film entitled The fall of the Romanov (1917), where he told his particular version of the facts.

In a nth script, after the end of the film he returned to Russia, where he hoped to find a hole in the new regime.He sent a letter to Lenin talking about what he considered a "religious revolution", although he did not get an answer.

Less success was when, back in the US, he tried to carve a career as an opponent of Bolshevism.He died in 1952 in the most absolute anonymity.Although it is not known with certainty, it seems that his last job was the janitor of the Roscacielos Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower, in Manhattan.

In the light of its extravagances, Trufánov's biography runs the risk of being taken lightly.Indeed, he was a terrible enfant of the Russian monarchy, but also who highlights his weakness.Someone more Tsarist than Tsar himself, very dangerous in a Russia that bleeding for the tension between the new and the old.He lived enough to see the outcome and how the bloodiest pages in the history of his country were written.