Rasputin in St Petersburg: Tour of his last apartment on 64 Gorokhovaya Street.

In July of 2018, IN THE STEPS OF THE ROMANOVS visited 64 Gorokhovaya Street, on the third floor of which, until late 1916, lived one of Russia's most mysterious and controversial personalities: Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin. From this apartment, on the evening of 30 December, 1916, he was picked up by Prince Felix Yusupov, and driven 3 kilometers to the palace on Moika Embankment, to his ultimate murder.

On the staircase to the apartment and among its walls, walked the chairman of State Duma, Mikhail Rodzyanko, Ministers Alexei Khvostov, Alexander Protopopov, Ivan Goremykin. And of course the imperial family friend Anna Vyrubova, as well as the husband of the Tsar's only niece, Yusupov himself, - who then infamously became one of Rasputin's murderers. Plus hundreds of lesser known contemporaries who crowded the reception room daily, 365 days a year. Merchants, bureaucrats, noblemen and women, military men, - they all came to see the simple Siberian peasant with requests for assistance, petitions, ideas, and proposals. Individual human fates may have been changed in this very location, yet Rasputin's influence on politics and on the Tsar, through the Empress, was highly exaggerated, and this supposed influence was even more amplified through the last century, reaching mythical proportions.

Today, this legendary apartment is a typical shabby St Petersburg communal flat.
In Rasputin's former bedroom lives the artist Alexander Dumchenko, who allows occasional tours of the place, - for a fee of course. Dumchenko claims that one night, he saw the ghost of Father Grigori - "a tall bearded peasant in a red blouse, leather knee-high boot, with a whip in his hand, - who stood just across from the bedroom door.... Ever since then, he started painting Rasputin's portraits and icons.

In this video, you will get the chance to enter the apartment with us, for a very unique tour. You will see some of the original artifacts, which remain from Rasputin's time, including the stairs, banisters, door handles, floors and walls. On these walls, you will see several layers of wallpaper, including the dark blue one, which remembers Rasputin himself, and so many of his contemporaries and important guests who came to the apartment.

The following description is from the memoirs of Matryona Rasputina, who lived there with her father and sister:

"Our apartment consisted of five rooms. There was no luxury at all. Our rooms and furnishings were most simple. In our dining room stood a table, with common Vienna chairs and an ottoman, the fanciest thing was the gift from a certain Volynsky, who was freed from prison on father's request; in father's bedroom - a brass bed, American style side table, in which a number of various petitions were kept under lock and key, a wardrobe and a sink; in father's study - a desk, which had nothing on it, an armchair and a sofa; in the reception room were only chairs. Only our children's bedroom were we able to furnish according to our taste: we had a bed, a couch, a little table, a small sofa, armchairs, a vanity, wardrobe. The receptions always took place in the study, furnished with oak furniture, where, among other things stood a large bureau."

Nikolai Burdukov, a former imperial state councilor, remembered much later, from immigration in Paris: "Rasputin's infamous work study, where he received the powerful elite, was only a small room with a single window, looking out onto the courtyard, and as for furniture - besides a few Viennese chairs, and a small kitchen-type table, there was nothing else. No lamps, costly blotters or fancy ink pots."

Other eyewitnesses described the study as a "small dirty room, furnished with a jar of ink on a cheap desk, an armchair and a sofa, covered with a shabby old cloth".

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