Between 1905 and 1912, the monk Iliodor (Trufanov) set Russia ablaze with his inflammatory right-wing rhetoric, causing scandal after scandal. In this episode, we follow Iliodor's remarkable life from humble beginnings to would-be assassin of Grigorii Rasputin.
Sources
S. Dixon, ‘The “Mad Monk” Iliodor in Tsaritsyn’ in S. Dixon, ed., Personality and Place in Russian Culture: Essays in Memory of Lindsey Hughes (London: Modern Humanities Research Association for the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 2010), pp. 377-415.
D. Smith, Rasputin (London: Pan Macmillan, 2017).
M. Iu. Krapivin, ‘Deiatel’nost’ S. M. Trufanova (byshego ieromonakha Iliodora) v Sovetskoi Rossii (1918-1922) v sviazi s formirovaniem gosudarstvennoi politiki v otnoshenii pravoslavnoi tserkvi’, Vestnik tserkovnoi istorii, no. 1/2 (21/22), 2011, pp. 137-149.
On Easter morning 1831, Joseph Major was murdered in his Urals home. A Scottish engineer, he had lived for 26 years in the gateway...
Abandoned in 1852 when scarcely two weeks old, Vasilii Gerasimov ultimately became a child worker at the Kreenholm cotton factory, where he worked for...
Abandoning his job as a domestic servant in 1735, Ivan Osipov, AKA Van'ka Kain, became one of imperial Russia's most legendary criminals, performing an...
