Rasputin: die hard; Abe: die easy

By Alex P. Vidal

“Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future.”—Adolf Hitler

THE improvised or handmade gun 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami used to kill former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, 67, was equivalent to a “paltik” pistol made mostly in Danao, Cebu in the Philippines.

But the well-loved Abe succumbed in the hospital after his heart was reportedly damaged when he incurred wounds on his neck and chest.

An “easy” job for the assassin, to say the least, despite the presence of the Nara perfectural police.

It’s hard to imagine how lax was Abe’s security and how accurate and sharp was the lone assassin who boldly approached the Japanese leader from behind and pulled the trigger from a long distance.

But there was a man in history whose assassins had to employ different  methods and multiple attempts before they finally succeeded in killing him.

His name was Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin or simply Rasputin, a Russian mystic and self-proclaimed holy man who befriended the family of Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia, thus gaining considerable influence in late Imperial Russia.

In the 70s, an Afro-German-Caribbean vocal group, Boney M, celebrated Rasputin in a song:

There lived a certain man in Russia long ago

He was big and strong, in his eyes a flaming glow

Most people looked at him with terror and with fear

But to Moscow chicks he was such a lovely dear

He could preach the Bible like a preacher

Full of ecstasy and fire

But he also was the kind of teacher

Women would desire

Ra ra Rasputin

Lover of the Russian queen

There was a cat that really was gone

Ra ra Rasputin

Russia’s greatest love machine

It was a shame how he carried on…

-o0o- 

A Siberian-born muzhik, or peasant, who underwent a religious conversion as a teenager and proclaimed himself a healer with the ability to predict the future, Rasputin won the favor of Czar Nicholas II and Czarina Alexandra through his ability to stop the bleeding of their hemophiliac son, Alexei, in 1908.

From then on, though he was widely criticized for his lechery and drunkenness, Rasputin exerted a powerful influence on the ruling family of Russia, infuriating nobles, church orthodoxy, and peasants alike, according to History.

He particularly influenced the czarina, and was rumored to be her lover. When Nicholas departed to lead Russian forces in World War I, Rasputin effectively ruled the country through Alexandra, contributing to the already-existing corruption and disorder of Romanov Russia.

A group of nobles, led by Prince Felix Youssupov, the husband of the czar’s niece, and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, Nicholas’s first cousin, lured Rasputin to Youssupov Palace on the night of December 29, 1916.

According to History, first, Rasputin’s would-be killers gave the monk food and wine laced with cyanide. When he failed to react to the poison, they shot him at close range, leaving him for dead.

A short time later, however, Rasputin revived and attempted to escape from the palace grounds, whereupon his assailants shot him again and beat him viciously.

Finally, they bound Rasputin, still miraculously alive, and tossed him into a freezing river. His body was discovered several days later and the two main conspirators, Youssupov and Pavlovich were exiled.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)