The mad monk

Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin

As with much that happened during this period of Russian history, the truth about Rasputin is greatly obscured by embellishment and outright manipulation of the facts. Details of the man, his life, and his influence is uncertain. But here is what we think we know:

Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was born a peasant in Siberia. At 28 years old he found religion. He began making pilgrimages to various monasteries and holy places to learn more, and claimed that he began receiving visions of "the Saviour Himself" and "the Mother of God," bidding him go forth and spread their message and cleanse the people of their sins. As the stories of his endeavors spread, he came to be known as a mystic, a faith healer, a pilgrim, an elder, and a holy man. "He amazed us all with his psychological perspicacity. His face was pale and his eyes unusually piercing..." Rumor had it that Rasputin was a member of the Khlysty (Flagellants), a Christian sect that combined fanaticism, lechery, and faith in God. The stories said that these groups met in secret for their services, joined together in frenzied dancing, and ended the affair with an orgy. Some people, however, contend that Rasputin's involvement with the Khlysty was a lie propagated by his enemies.

Holy man

What do you think?

Are these unusually piercing eyes?

Or simply just creepy as fuck?

Over time Rasputin's reputation as a great holy man grew. Many members of the Russian aristocracy were enthralled with mysticism and the occult during this time, and some of these who were impressed with Rasputin's apparent skill and the forcefulness of his personality (and creepy eyes, and possibly his sexcapades) ended up introducing him to the Tsar and his wife.

The Empress was rather obsessed with religion, and quickly became convinced of Rasputin's holiness. The man was said to be able to heal through prayer. This particularly appealed to Alexandra, as her only son and the heir to the throne suffered from hemophilia.

The Empress was likely something of a hypochondriac. She often had attacks of nerves and sometimes was relegated to a wheelchair (not for any real reason that I know of). She and her son often took to bed ill.

Hemophilia is a sex-linked trait. Males are more likely to be afflicted, as they only need to inherit one X chromosome carrying the trait, while females would have to inherit one from each of their parents. And since European royalty at the time was much more...ahem, closely related (see photos of contemporary Russian and English rulers in previous post), hemophilia had a field day with royal males (particularly those in Queen Victoria's line.)

Alexandra spent much of her time at Alexei's bedside when he suffered injuries and the resulting hemorrhaging

Hemophilia prevents its sufferers' blood from being able to clot adequately. Tsarevich Alexei, as any young child, would occasionally earn himself bumps and bruises during play. The difference was that his injuries would grow swollen and painful, and sometimes threatened his life from his body's difficulty with stopping the bleeding. The desperate Tsarina, in Rasputin's thrall, called on the holy peasant to heal her son during these episodes. Several times the court doctors said there was nothing more to be done for the boy and he would likely die, but then Rasputin would pray for him and announce that the boy would recover. And always his words proved true. He was also called to the palace to soothe Alexandra whenever she suffered an attack of nerves. Rasputin had earned in the Empress a devotee for life - not a bad thing to have in your pocket. Alexandra even had a telephone installed in his home that only she had the number for, so that she could summon him whenever he was needed. Soon it was Rasputin calling the shots over the empire, and the Empress would then beg and flatter and coerce her pushover husband into following Rasputin's advice.

Political cartoon from 1916

Rasputin's influence over the Tsarina, and her influence over the Tsar, displeased many Russian citizens

A smear campaign was initiated against the "foreign" empress

While many people believed in Rasputin's nature as a holy man, other were less than fond of him. There were those who believed he was part of the fanatical Khlyst sect, and some who simply found the idea of a mere peasant having so much influence over the royal family, and thus the empire, distasteful. In addition, there were many stories making the rounds of the man's less-than-holy behavior outside of the Empress's company. Rumors abounded of the man's social gatherings at his home, which were said to evolve into sexual orgies, and this not with other peasants but with the aristocracy of St. Petersburg. The reasoning for this was that Rasputin saw sin as a necessary part of redemption. Only after sinning could you repent, thus getting closer to God. By holding these gatherings, he was leading those people on the path to God...

Party time, alright!

Legend of his sexual prowess and debauchery grew. Then again, other stories have it that he would hire prostitutes but would watch them only, as a way of testing his faith and refining his resistance to physical temptation. The sex was merely a method to prove his ability to overcome man's baser urges.

Holy man or notorious playboy. There were many who viewed Rasputin as the former, and just as many who saw him as the latter. Perhaps he chose which mask to wear whenever it suited him. "To the nobles and Nicholas’s family members, Rasputin was a dual character who could go straight from praying for the royal family to the brothel...down the street."

There were many members of the government who wished to see Rasputin removed from matters altogether. It may have been one of these who organized the assassination attempt in 1914. When he was visiting back home, a peasant woman approached Rasputin and stabbed him in the belly, exposing his entrails. It was ten hours before a doctor arrived to operate on him. The Tsar also sent his own personal physician to tend to the fallen mystic. Rasputin recovered from the incident.

Recovering from the first attempt on his life

When World War I came, Rasputin's influence over the Tsar (through the Tsarina) grew, further infuriating other members of the Russian government. There were more plans for attempts on the man's life, and the Tsar placed him under imperial protection. If Nicholas had reservations, he hesitated to dismiss the holy man. "...he had tolerated him because he dare not weaken the Tsarina's faith in him - a faith which kept her alive. He did not like to send him away, for if Aleksey Nicolaievich had died, in the eyes of the mother he would have been the murderer of his own son."

Before we talk about the final, successful, attempt to kill Rasputin, let's first take a look at his killer.

Felix Yusupov, minor Russian royalty and sometime cross-dresser

Looking good, Felix. Probably not as good as when you went out wearing your mother's dresses, but dashing nonetheless

Felix and Princess Irina

Felix Yusupov, 29 years old at the time, was married to the Tsar's only niece. He was one of the richest men in Russia (even before his marriage), and was fond of wearing women's clothing, sometimes even going out to restaurants in his mother's dresses.

Felix recruited a few other notable men to help him in his endeavor to "save Russia" by murdering Rasputin. He first gained the man's trust by seeking his assistance in curing some malady he claimed to suffer from.

Felix's many and varying accounts of the murder are suspect; he changed his story several times, seems particularly fond of embellishing the truth, and making changes to cast things in a light that best suits him. His story goes like this:

The Yusupov Palace, where Rasputin's murder took place

Creepy-ass wax scene of the basement Rasputin was wined and dined in before his murder

On a December night in 1916, the men invited Rasputin over to Felix's palace. He was brought to a room in the basement and offered drinks and food laced with cyanide. It is unclear whether he consumed any and failed to show any effect of the poison, or if that is merely a fabrication to make him out as more of a monster. When the poison failed to fell him, Felix went to get his revolver instead. He shot Rasputin twice. Assuming the man would die of his wounds before long, Felix left the basement to tell his friends upstairs what had happened. But Rasputin did not die, and the men discovered that he had crawled up the basement stairs and out into the snowy courtyard. Catching him in his escape attempt, Felix clubbed Rasputin badly and then shot him in the head. The men then drove him out to a bridge over the Melaya Nevka River. They bound his hands and feet and threw him off of the bridge into the water below.

The courtyard where the final blows fell

The bridge the body was dumped from

Rasputin's corpse after being fished from the river in winter

When Rasputin was reported missing, the Tsarina ordered an investigation. The murderers had not done a particularly good job covering up their acts, with blood being discovered at the bridge and at Yusupov's home. The body was found after it surfaced. It was buried on the grounds of the imperial palace. At a later time, during political upheaval that followed in the next few years, it was worried that his place of burial would invite unwelcome behavior from those who felt strongly, one way or the other, about the dead man. Members of the government ordered his body to be dug up and moved. The truck broke down on the way moving the corpse, and so it was burned right then and there instead.

The Empress wanted the men killed. Instead, without even a trial, the Tsar dispatched all of those involved out of St. Petersburg. Two of the men soon found themselves at different fronts of the ongoing war, and Yusupov was banned to one of his estates outside of the capital. When the Tsar was forced to the abdicate the throne and Russian aristocracy was being murdered left and right by members of the uprising during Russia's civil war, Felix and Irina fled the country and lived out the rest of their lives in exile.

Felix, Irina, and their baby

Felix and Irina, living large in exile

Felix published a book giving an account of the murder. In 1932 the couple won a lawsuit against MGM for portraying the character based on Irina being seduced by Rasputin in the film, Rasputin and the Empress. "The disclaimer which now screens at the end of every American film, "The preceding was a work of fiction, any similarity to a living person etc.," first appeared as a result of the legal precedent set by the Yusupov case."

In 1965 Yusupov tried to sue CBS, saying that in a play they broadcast about the assassination of Rasputin, Felix's commercial rights had been misappropriated. CBS won that case.

Felix and Irina founded a short-lived couture house called Irfe, named after the first letters of their names. The couple designed the dresses themselves, and Irina modeled them. They were said to enjoy a successful, happy 50-year marriage, during which Felix continued his pursuit of men.

We don't know much for certain about Rasputin, but no matter what else he was, he was certainly intriguing. The fact that he rose from a peasant in the relative wilderness of Siberia to the man who had the Empress' ear and perhaps the most influence over how the country was run for a time goes a long way to show this. The Romanov women maintained their faith in him right up until their own execution less than two years later; taken from around the necks of the bodies of Alexandra and each of her daughters were amulets holding a picture of Rasputin and one of his prayers.