Grigori Rasputin

A Siberian peasant turned wandering holy man, Grigori Rasputin won the trust of Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra by appearing to ease the illness of their son. His closeness to the imperial family made him one of the most talked-about men in Russia during the First World War, and his scandalous reputation helped undermine the monarchy shortly before its fall. His murder in December 1916 is surrounded by legends that the evidence does not support.

Rasputin was born in the village of Pokrovskoye, on the Tura river in western Siberia, and official records give his birth date as 21 January 1869 (9 January in the old Russian calendar). Little reliable is known of his early life; like most Siberian peasants he had no schooling and was long illiterate. In 1887 he married Praskovya Dubrovina. In 1897, for reasons that remain unclear, he left home on a pilgrimage to the monastery at Verkhoturye and returned transformed, giving up meat and alcohol. For years he wandered between holy places as a strannik, or pilgrim. He never held church office. Rumours that he belonged to the Khlysty, a secretive sect with notorious rituals, were investigated repeatedly but never proven.

Recommended by churchmen in Kazan, he reached Saint Petersburg around 1903–1905, where high society, fascinated by mysticism, welcomed him. On 1 November 1905 he met Nicholas and Alexandra, who soon came to believe he could help their only son, Alexei, who had haemophilia. In 1912, when Alexei seemed close to death after a bleeding attack, a telegram from Rasputin assured the empress the boy would live; the bleeding stopped the next day, which even one of the doctors could not explain. Historians have suggested that his calming effect on mother and son, or his advice to keep doctors away and avoid aspirin, may have helped.

Rasputin's access to the palace drew mounting hostility. Clergy accused him of heresy, Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin investigated him, and at least two women accused him of rape. He drank heavily, had many affairs and took bribes. Unsubstantiated rumours, spread by gossip and pornographic cartoons, linked him sexually with the empress and her daughters. In July 1914 a woman named Khioniya Guseva stabbed him in the stomach at Pokrovskoye, and he barely survived. After Nicholas left for the front in 1915, Rasputin and Alexandra gained still more influence over government, and as Russia's defeats mounted, both became deeply unpopular.

The Duma deputy Vladimir Purishkevich, Prince Felix Yusupov and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich plotted to kill him. In the early hours of 30 December 1916 (17 December in the old calendar), Rasputin was lured to Yusupov's Moika Palace in Petrograd and shot. His body was dropped from a bridge into the Little Nevka river and found under the ice two days later. The autopsy surgeon, Dmitry Kosorotov, reported three gunshot wounds, one fired at close range into the forehead, found no evidence of poison, and found no water in the lungs.

Most of the famous story comes from Yusupov's later memoirs: cakes and wine laced with cyanide that failed to harm him, a seemingly dead man leaping up to attack his killer, and a victim still alive when thrown into the river. The autopsy findings contradict the poison and drowning, and his daughter said he did not eat sweet foods. Later claims that he was castrated were also false, according to Kosorotov. As the historian Douglas Smith has written, exactly what happened inside the palace may never be known.

Rasputin was buried at Tsarskoye Selo in January 1917, attended by the imperial family. After Nicholas abdicated in March 1917, soldiers acting on Alexander Kerensky's orders dug up and burned the body so that the grave would not become a shrine for monarchists. Historians often argue that the Rasputin scandal did lasting harm to the reputation of the dynasty in the months before the Russian Revolution.

Our 1914 map shows the Russian Empire on the eve of the First World War, as Rasputin's influence was growing.