Rasputin's penis

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When "The Mad Monk" Grigori Rasputin was murdered in 1916, some claim he was also castrated. ^[1] Since then, a number of people boasting to be in possession of his severed penis and testicles have come forth, although none of them have been able to come up with conclusive evidence. ^[2]

1 History of the alleged remains
- 1.1 1900s
- 1.2 2000s
2 References
3 External links

[edit] History of the alleged remains

[edit] 1900s

Conservatives feared Rasputin’s significant and increasing influence on the tsar’s wife, and so, on December 29, 1916, he was murdered. ^[3] Some accounts say that his killers also castrated him ^[1], although the official autopsy report claimed that his genitalia were left intact. ^[4]

According to some, a maid discovered the severed organ at Rasputin’s murder site, keeping it until somehow being acquired in the 1920s by a group of female Russian expatriates living in Paris. ^[2] The women worshiped the member as a fertility charm, storing it inside a wooden casket. ^[2] Upon learning of the women, Rasputin's daughter, Marie, demanded that the item be returned to her. ^[2] She maintained custody of the object until her death in 1977. ^[2]

A man named Michael Augustine claimed to have purchased the member, along with a number of Rasputin's other personal items, at a lot sale following Marie Rasputin's death. Augustine sold the artifact to Bonhams auction house, but officials quickly realized that the item was not a penis, and was in fact a sea cucumber. ^[2] It is unclear if the sea creature was the same item worshipped by the aforementioned Russian women in the 1920s, or if Augustine was simply attempting to defraud the auction house.

[edit] 2000s

In 2004, Igor Knyazkin, the chief of the prostate research center of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, announced that he was opening a Russian museum of erotica in St. Petersburg, Russia. Among the exhibits, Knyazkin claims, is the 29cm (11.8 inch) long "preserved penis" of Grigory Rasputin ^[5], along with several of Rasputin's letters. ^[2] He stated that he purchased the items from a French collector of antiquities and artifacts for €6,600 (US $8,000). Knyazkin had said that merely viewing the supposed penis will cure males of impotency. ^[6] No known tests have been done to verify these claims, or that the genitalia is indeed that of the Rasputin.