Edvard Radzinsky, the author of the international bestseller The Last Tsar, had long been frustrated by limitations in contemporary accounts of Rasputin's malign authority over the last Romanov court. Then, in 1995, a file from the State Archives that had been missing for years came up for auction at Sotheby's, and was put in Radzinsky's hands. It contained the interrogations of Rasputin's inner circle of admirers and those who kept him under police surveillance -- documents never seen by any other historian. With this extensive file, Radzinsky has been able to lift the haze of legend that has obscured the real Rasputin.

Using the depositions of Rasputin's friends, teachers, devotees, and fanatical female fans, Radzinsky presents a fascinating account of how Rasputin exercised and increased his power. Radzinsky reveals the full extent of Rasputin's charged relationship with the tsarina, and chronicles his famous sexual odyssey through the demimonde of St. Petersburg, using the women's own astonishingly frank testimony.

Here, documented for the first time, is the way in which Rasputin actually gained access to the tsarist court, and the true identity of the man who shot and killed Rasputin in 1916. And Radzinsky explains how, towards the end of the Romanov dynasty, Rasputin came to hold sway over virtually every imperial decision.

Through his exclusive access to the Rasputin File, unrivaled research, and his proventalent for dramatic storytelling, Radzinsky offers, at last, the complete, sensational -- yet fully documented -- story of Rasputin.