“A NEW RASPUTIN”

Timaru Herald, Volume CXL, Issue 20281, 3 December 1935, Page 14

“A NEW RASPUTIN”

KING OF THE PEASANTS Eighty thousand peasants in Bessarabia, the province of Rumania which adjoins Russia, are following a new Rasputin. They refuse to pay taxes to any but him. They have beaten off gendarmes and troops sent out after them. The new Rasputin is a young man, Nicholas Climovitch. He was ordained by a Bolshevist bishop, so the Rumanian church authorities refuse to acknowledge him. When the government of King Carol decreed that Rumania should adopt the Julian calendar, the new Rasputin roused the countryside. When troops were sent to arrest him he disappeared with the aid of his devoted followers, most of them women. Now he is opposing the prefect of the district, the general of gendarmerie, the public prosecutor, and two battalions of King Carol’s infantry. His cult is spreading so fast that the Government recently sent a senator and an alienist to examine one of his most perfervid disciples. They reported that he was perfectly sane. Nicholas Climovitch declares that he has had three visions. In each a wise patriarchal old man appeared and warned him to tell the King that misfortune would befall the country if certain changes were not immediately introduced. Peasants declare he can hold a live coal in his hand without feeling any pain, pass through a closed door, and reveal things which are happening miles away. They want to follow him to Bucharest and enthrone him there as head of the Church.