Rasputin descendant looks for truth

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia, Sept. 6 (UPI) -- Grigory Rasputin's great-granddaughter tells a Russian newspaper that she believes her ancestor is misunderstood.

Laurence Huot-Solovieff, who grew up in France, is the only one of Rasputin's surviving descendants to have visited Russia, the St. Petersburg Times reports.

"He is either demonized or deified and my mission is to try and make his image look more human, more normal, if you like," she told the newspaper.

Rasputin, a mystic, became a favorite of Czar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra, because they believed he could treat their son's hemophilia. He was assassinated by courtiers who feared his power.

Huot-Solovieff, on her fifth trip to Russia since 1992, visited Rasputin's native village for the first time.

"It is only now that I have been there that things finally came together with what my grandmother was telling me about him: I have heard the locals call him a simple man with big heart and strong spiritual power, who loved Russia, the God and the tsar," Huot-Solovieff said. "This was exactly what I was told at home by my grandmother Matryona."

Huot-Solovieff says that Rasputin's reputation has become so buried in myth that she must dig to get the truth.