This is not just another new biography of the adventurer peasant Grigori Yefimovich, who managed to become Rasputin (1869-1916), a figure that continues to captivate the general public to this day. Historian Alexandre Sumpf has successfully completed a multifaceted research project, approaching Rasputin’s life through a kaleidoscopic lens, as demanded by the multifaceted identity of the "starets" ("elder" in Russian religious terminology).

The analysis, for example, of various well-known photographs shows with surgical precision — the historian here operates anatomically — how a simple peasant from Siberia transforms into one of the most significant figures within the realm of tsarist power. What the author analyzes with clarity is the position of the Russian press in the 1910s regarding Rasputin and how it constructs an "idol." The case of the assassination is also examined in depth, but only after the author takes the necessary distances from the testimonies of those involved in the "elder's" demise, starting from that of Prince Yusupov, who considers Rasputin a precursor of Bolshevism!

Alexandre Sumpf also successfully analyzes the "myth-making" and the "myth" of Rasputin, and with the tools of a persistent researcher, ultimately acts as an excavator to bring to light, from archives, iconographic, cinematographic, literary, and all sorts of available materials, a renewed and more truthful portrait of the man whom Lenin described as "coarse, primitive, and unbearably ignorant." Additionally, the structure of the book is interesting as it is based on multiple assessments. It is not only Lenin, Yusupov, and the romances of the 1920s that are evaluated, but also much more contemporary elements such as the well-known song "Ra ra Rasputin" by the group Boney M, among others.

This may be the most in-depth biography released to date.