Epstein Scandal Resembles Rasputin Scandal of 1916 and Could Have Equally Fateful Consequences, Akunin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 5 – As the Epstein scandal continues to grow and involve more people in more countries, Russian writer Boris Akunin suggests that perhaps the best way to understand what it is and what it may become is to recall the Rasputin scandal at the end of tsarist times, given that the two have so much in common.

            He argues that “the Epsteinshchina” – inventing a word that combines the figure at the center of this and the Russian suffix for affair -- is “pure ‘Rasputinism,” that is, “an old scandal that in new circumstances has grown to universal proportions” (t.me/EtoBorisAkunin/706 reposted at https://echofm.online/opinions/epsteinshchina).

            Akunin says that in 1916 “there was an indecent man who attached himself to the royal family” of the Russian Empire. Now, there is “an indecent high-society manipulator” who attached himself to some of the elites in a wide variety of countries. In neither case is the individual “remarkable” but the consequences of their actions clearly are.

            Rasputin did not do everything he was accused of doing, and it may be the case that neither did Epstein. But in the former case, it was widely believed that he had and even more widely believed that Rasputin succeeded in penetrating the Russian imperial elite because it was so corrupt; and in the latter, something similar is happening; and the elites are terrified.

            “Epstein has been gone for a long time, his dirty tracks have already been overgrown with grass – and suddenly such a stir,” Akunin says. While some doing the exposes are focusing on Trump’s political opponents, many who support Trump “are perfectly aware of Trumps ‘moral character,’ and they don’t care.”

            Akunin continues: “But the politicians and oligarchs of the opposing camp who have also been caught up in the crossfire have something to lose. And they are losing it.” Indeed, many in Western societies are less interested in Trump that in the moral collapse of “the respectable pillars of society.”

            What such people have concluded on the basis of the Epstein files is “how disgusting you all are up there!” Existing elites are being discredited and that “clearly isn’t accidental” given that these elites really “are tiresome, they have disappointed and many people really want them to disappear.”

            Akunin says that he believes “’the Epstein affair’ is another harbinger of big changes in the countries that are commonly called ‘democratic.’ Of the same kind as the widespread crisis of old parties, the success of far-right movements, the collapse of international organizations and alliances, and the destruction of the old rules of political behavior.”

            It thus appears, the Russian writer concludes his post, that “we are in [another] 1916” and that “ahead of us are upheavals, a redrawing of the world map, a change of elites, different norms of relations between ‘the top’ and ‘the bottom, the collapse of old alliances and the emergence of new ones.”

            “In ten or even five years, the world will be completely different from what it is now,” Akuninn says, a prospect that is both “disturbing and interesting.”