Читать книгу The Minister of Evil: The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia - Le Queux William - Страница 1

TO THE READER

After the issue to the public of the curious chronicle of "Rasputin the Rascal Monk," based upon official documents, and its translation into a number of languages, I received from the same sources in Russia a bulky manuscript upon very thin paper which contained certain confessions, revelations, and allegations made by its writer, Féodor Rajevski, who acted as the mock-saint's secretary and body-servant, and who, in consequence, was for some years in a position to know the most inner secrets of Rasputin's dealings with those scoundrelly men and women who betrayed Holy Russia into the hands of the Hun.

This manuscript, to-day before me as I write, is mostly in Italian, for Rajevski, the son of a Polish violinist, lived many years of his youth in Bologna, Florence, and old-world Siena, hence, in writing his memoirs, he used the language most familiar to him, and one perhaps more readily translated by anyone living outside Russia.

In certain passages I have been compelled to disguise names of those who, first becoming tools of the mock-saint, yet afterwards discovering him to be a charlatan, arose in their patriotism and—like Rajevski who here confesses—watched patiently, and as Revolutionists became instrumental in the amazing charlatan's downfall and his ignominious death.

These startling revelations of the secretary to the head of the "dark forces" in Russia, as they were known in the Duma, are certainly most amazing and unusually startling, forming as they do a disgraceful secret page of history that will prove of outstanding interest to those who come after us.

I confess that when first I read through the bald statements of fact, which I have here endeavoured to place in readable form for British readers, I became absorbed—therefore I venture to believe that they will be just as interesting to others who read them.

William le Queux.

Devonshire Club, London,

January, 1918.