Rasputin's Daughter, Maria

(Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin 1869 – 29 December was a Russian mystic who is perceived as having influenced the latter days of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II. Rasputin had often been called the "Mad Monk", while others considered him a "strannik" (or religious pilgrim) and even a staret, believing him to be a psychic or faith healer.

Rasputin's daughter, Maria Rasputin (Matryona Rasputina) (1898–1977), emigrated to France after the October Revolution, and then to the U.S. There she worked as a dancer and then a tiger-trainer in a circus. She left memoirs about her father, wherein she painted an almost saintly picture of him, insisting that most of the negative stories were based on slander and the misinterpretations of facts by his enemies.

thought was predatory. Her strong body seemed about to burst out of its cashmere dress and smelled of sweat. Society ladies kissed the tall teenager and called her by her pet names "Mara" and "The writer Vera Zhukovskaya later described sixteen-year-old Maria as having a wide face with a square chin and "bright-colored lips" that she frequently licked in a movement ZhukovskayaMarochka" during one gathering at her father's modest apartment. Zhurovskaya thought it was odd to see Rasputin's daughter receiving so much attention from princesses and countesses.

Maria published the first of three memoirs about Rasputin in 1932. It was entitled Rasputin, My Father. She also later co-authored a cookbook, which includes recipes for jellied fish heads and her father's favorite, cod soup. She also worked as a cabaret dancer in Bucharest, Romania and then found work as a circus performer for Ringling Brothers Circus. During the 1930s she toured Europe and America as a lion tamer, billing herself as "the daughter of the famous mad monk whose feats in Russia astonished the world." She was mauled by a bear in Peru, Indiana, but stayed with the circus until it reached Miami, Florida, where she quit and began work as a riveter in a defense shipyard during World War II. She settled permanently in the United States in 1937 and became a United States citizen in 1945. She was married to a man named Gregory Bernadsky in 1940.

Maria worked in defense plants until 1955 when she was forced to retire because of her age. After that, she supported herself by working in hospitals, giving Russian lessons, and babysitting for friends.