The Peculiar Truth about Rasputin’s Daughter

• Grigori Rasputin left his Siberian village on a pilgrimage. He joined monks and became a teetotaler and a vegetarian and had a spiritual awakening. Upon his return to his family, neighbors saw a changed man with a hypnotic aura. Within a few years, he became notorious as the Mad Monk of the Romanovs. Many books have been written about him.

• His eldest daughter, however, might have had a life equally as fascinating.

• Maria was born in Siberia in 1899. She and her sister and brother were raised in rural poverty. Their father gained a reputation as a mystical figure.

• 1905: Tsarina Alexandra turned to Rasputin to save the life of her hemophiliac son Alexi, the heir to the Romanov throne. Rasputin claimed to spare the boy through prayer and hypnotism. Alexi healed. The Tsarina then welcomed the Mad Monk into their lives.

• By age 11, Maria and her sister moved to St. Petersburg to live with their father among the monarchs while their brother remained in Siberia with their mother. Maria grew up with the royal family’s four daughters. It was a charmed life.

• However, while Rasputin grew too informal with the Tsar’s children, he treated his own daughters like captives, never letting them venture out alone. Maria also hated her father’s demands for never-ending prayers.

• People close to the Tsar despised Rasputin and the power he wielded over the monarchy. The Mad Monk gained ill-repute as a drunk who slept with society women all around St. Petersburg, and he acquired many enemies.

• Maria’s life was turned upside down with her father’s murder in December 1916. Three months later, the Tsar and his family were taken prisoner and sent to Siberia.

• Maria married Boris, her father’s protege. They never loved one another, and he swindled the royal family out of valuable jewelry. Maria’s sister died while her mother and brother were sent to the gulags.

• When the Royal Family was killed in 1918 amidst the Russian Revolution, Maria and Boris escaped to Paris.

• They accepted menial jobs and carried on life as best they could. Maria became a mother to two daughters.

• Boris died in 1926. Maria and her girls had to fend for themselves. Life became even more of a struggle.

• In Bucharest, she took on the unlikely career of a cabaret dancer. Not because she possessed dancing skills but because her famous surname attracted audiences.

• In the 1930s, Maria wrote and published two books defending her infamous father. She claimed he was misunderstood.

• During that same period of time, she also became a lion tamer in the circus.

• By 1935, Ringling Brothers brought her to the United States to join their traveling company. Audiences filed into circus tents to see the Mad Monk’s daughter “hypnotize” wild animals. Wheaties even featured her photo on the back of their cereal boxes along with other Ringling attractions.

• Although her grown daughters remained in Europe, Maria permanently moved to the United States in 1937 and became a naturalized citizen. Years later, she gave up her Ringling Brothers career after a harrowing attack by a circus bear.

• Maria married an engineer and they moved to Los Angeles. After nine years of matrimony, the abusive man left her one day never to return. She was all alone and had to start another new career to get by.

• Maria became a lathe operator and machinist at a shipyard. When faced with adversity, she worked hard and excelled.

• Eventually, she retired to live a quiet life in her later years in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Silver Lake, home to many ex-pat Russians. She was a regular at the local church.

• 1977: Maria published one last book in defense of her father’s life titled Rasputin: The Man Behind the Myth. She died in Los Angeles shortly after its publication.

• From a Siberian peasant girl to the royal palace in Russia to fugitive living in abject poverty to lion tamer to shipyard machinist to a humble life in California. Maria Rasputin lived a life as astounding as that of her historic father.