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Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was born in Pokrovskoye, Siberia. The likeliest date for his birth is 21 January 1869.
Rasputin came from a family of rural peasants, and grew up illiterate, developing a taste for alcohol and women early, and quickly earning a reputation as a dissolute character. At the age of 17 he fell in love with Praskovaya Fedorovna Dubrovina, and the two married soon after his eighteenth birthday. They had seven children, of whom three survived, but domestic life did not suit him, and nor did it curtail his hard drinking and philandering.
Aged 28, as atonement for horse stealing. Rasputin set out on a pilgrimage to the Siberian monastery of St Nicholas at Verkhoturye. While there, he experienced a religious conversion, and returned home aflame with Christian zeal.
Although baptised into the traditional Orthodox church, he was open to experimentation, and became friendly with a sect known as the Khlysty, famed for ceremonies in which they sang, danced, and whipped themselves. Rasputin was drawn to their theology of sinning in order to obtain salvation, and soon evolved his own doctrine of entering a state of religious grace through sexual excess.
He took to the road as a pilgrim, first visiting Mount Athos and then Jerusalem. By now he was widely viewed by Siberian villagers as a starets — a poor holy man — with a growing reputation as a healer and clairvoyant. Although he later earned the nickname “the mad monk”, he never took monastic vows, but instead lived as an itinerant beggar. He did not change his clothes, and according to contemporary reports smelled like a goat.
By 1903 he had found his way to St Petersburg, capital of the Russian empire, where his filthy appearance, piercing eyes, charisma, and holy grubbiness caused something of a stir. The city’s religious hierarchy was keen on mysticism, and rapidly adopted Rasputin. Before long, he was welcomed into the highest circles, and even introduced to members of the imperial house of Romanov.
None of this stopped him maintaining his dissipated lifestyle. He continued to drink heavily, and bedded any woman who would sleep with him. He caroused with street girls, and seduced high society ladies with promises that sleeping with him would bring them spiritual and physical health. Back in Pokrovskoye, his wife remained devoted to him, regardless of his absence and debauchery, maintaining that he had been specially chosen by God for great things. In particular, she believed his sexual endeavours to be a burden and religious trial for him.
Tsar Nicholas II and Tsaritsa Alexandra had four daughters before having a son and heir: Tsesarevich Alexei. Tragically, Alexei suffered acutely from haemophilia, which he inherited through his mother, who was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Nicholas and Alexandra tried all sorts of remedies to ease his suffering, but to little avail. Eventually, when Alexei was experiencing a particularly acute bout of bleeding, they summoned Rasputin. The session was unexpectedly successful, and Rasputin used the opportunity to confide in the Tsar and Tsaritsa that he was part of their family’s destiny.
Rasputin’s unusual abilities with Alexei led to his frequent presence at the palace, and an increasingly intimate relationship with the royal family. What, exactly, he did to help Alexei during the episodes of bleeding is not certain, but it is known that he told him stories, prayed, and possibly hypnotised him. Some of this may have helped calm Alexei and lower his blood pressure, easing the discomfort.
Details are scanty, but Rasputin also insisted that doctors not be allowed to bother Alexei too much, sparing the prince a raft of experimental cures and medicines – including doses of aspirin, which, as an anticoagulant, caused his bleeding to increase.
Inside the palace, Rasputin was venerated as a healer and holy man. Outside in the city, he continued with his life of dissipation, which was widely discussed throughout St Petersburg. He was by now a scandalous figure, whose lifestyle was bringing the royal family into disrepute, and his closeness to the Tsar and Tsarina became a matter for the government.
In 1911, Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin – who thought Rasputin a “reptile” – passed Tsar Nicholas a secret report, detailing Rasputin’s notorious activities outside the palace. Nicholas dismissed Rasputin immediately, but the Tsaritsa summoned him back and reinstated him as if nothing had happened.
With Russia becoming increasingly involved in World War One, Nicholas left St Petersburg in the summer of 1915 to lead his armed forces personally. In his absence, Alexandra assumed control of state affairs, and openly relied on Rasputin, who guided her on policy and appointments. His involvement in government resulted in chaos and incompetence, as he fired any ministers who opposed him, and replaced them with men of minimal experience or ability.
Inevitably, Rasputin left a growing army of angry husbands and disgruntled politicians in his wake, and there were at least four recorded attempts on his life. In one, a woman managed to stab him in the stomach, but he made a full recovery.
Eventually, fearing that Rasputin’s hold over the Tsaritsa and his involvement in state politics would bring down the monarchy, an influential group decided they would remove him permanently. Two of the plotters were young nobles: Prince Felix Yusupov and Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich. The third was Vladimir Purishkevich, a reactionary member of the Duma.
In the early hours of 30 December 1916, Yusupov invited Rasputin to his imposing palace by the River Moika on the pretext that his wife wanted a meeting. When Rasputin arrived at the palace, Yusupov took him to a private room, where he offered him pink cream cakes laced with grains of potassium cyanide and wine spiked with liquid potassium cyanide.
Rasputin consumed it all, but the large amount of poison had no noticeable effect except to make him belch and dribble a little. Panicking, Yusupov drew a handgun and shot Rasputin in the chest, then left the room leaving Rasputin to die alone on the floor. The conspirators regrouped in the hallway, and were startled when Rasputin opened the door, crawled out of the room, out of the house, and into the night.
Alarmed and incredulous, they followed him outside, where Purishkevich pulled out another weapon and shot Rasputin several more times. They then burned his clothes, wrapped the body in a sheet, weighted it with chains, and dropped the bundle through a hole in the ice covering the River Neva. The corpse washed up several days later, was buried in a small church, but dug up soon afterwards and burned.
Writing in the international press a few days later, the historian Zinovy Preev summed up the feelings of many:
“Whether he was a mystic or a charlatan, or a mixture of both elements, a mixture well known to neuro-pathologists, it is certain that his death removes from Russian life a most sinister and dangerous figure, an implacable enemy of all that is best in Russian political, religious, and social life, and as such his disappearance will be welcomed by all Russians.”
Before his death, Rasputin had told Tsar Nicholas that if nobles killed him, the monarchy would fall. As it happened, the Romanovs were toppled within two months when, in February 1917, the monarchy was swept aside by the Russian revolution.
The Romanovs were arrested. On the orders of Lenin, the family was taken to Yekaterinburg where, probably on 17 July 1918, Nicholas, Alexandra, and their five children – Olga (22), Tatiana (21), Maria (19), Anastasia (17), and Alexei (13) –were herded into a basement, shot, and bayoneted. They were then stripped, their heads smashed to prevent recognition, their bodies doused in acid and quicklime, and their remains buried secretly.
The dates in this piece are New Style. In Old Style, Rasputin was born on 9 January 1869 and murdered on 17 December 1916.
On this day in 1869: Rasputin was (probably) born