Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin

Russian mystic

• Born: c. 1870
• Birthplace: Pokrovskoye, Siberia, Russia
• Died: December 30, 1916
• Place of death: Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), Russia

Because of his apparently mystic ability to amelioriate the hemophilia of the heir to the Russian throne, Rasputin ingratiated himself to Czar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra. Rasputin’s profligate ways and the refusal of the rulers to believe the scandal he consistently generated increased the estrangement between the rulers and their people, thus contributing to the Russian Revolution.

Early Life

The exact date of the birth of Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin (rahs-PEW-tyihn) is unknown, as was true for most Russian peasants at the time he was born. As a young boy, Rasputin exhibited a remarkable ability to commune with and heal animals. Although illiterate, he liked to memorize Scripture, and at the age of eighteen, he had a vision of the Virgin Mary. Legend claims that he also possessed gifts of precognition and clairvoyance, but villagers later remembered him primarily for his excessive drinking and proclivity toward sexual depravity. These apparently irreconcilable impressions were indicative of his whole life: Times of prayer and generosity coexisted with epic debauchery. He was variously viewed as a pious holy man and an insatiable satyr.

In 1889 Rasputin married Praskovya Fedorovna Dubrovina, who bore him three children. Rasputin became a farmer, but he was apparently unwilling to abandon his disorderly life; his drinking increased, and he was accused of petty thievery. He soon moved to a nearby monastery where he lived as a monk for three months. Some sources claim that the trouble he had stirred up in Pokrovskoye made temporarily vanishing a prudent idea. His time at the monastery proved to be a watershed. He permanently gave up tobacco and meat, and he temporarily gave up alcohol. He appeared nervous and restless, with moods swinging between severe depression and religious ecstasy. He prayed frequently, learned to read the Orthodox liturgy, and memorized huge segments of Scripture. He also began to attract followers.

Within one month of his return from the monastery, Rasputin embarked on a series of long pilgrimages, traveling to holy shrines as a religious mendicant begging for food and lodging. Between pilgrimages, he awed his growing circle of admirers with descriptions of the holy places he had visited. Rasputin’s physical endurance and self-confidence enabled him to spend the better part of a decade meandering throughout Siberia. He was welcomed into homes as a true holy man, perhaps because of his uncanny ability to recognize people with troubled minds and provide a calming peace.

Rasputin’s wanderings eventually brought him into contact with Russian aristocrats, many of whom were awed by his magnetic personality. In 1903 he visited Kazan, a religiously important city, where his piousness so impressed officials of the Russian Orthodox Church that he was welcomed as a true holy man. By ingratiating himself with progressively more important holy officers, he managed to gain valuable friends and allies. Rasputin’s triumphant acceptance in Kazan paved the way for his welcome reception by the upper-class society of St. Petersburg, the Russian Empire’s capital city.

Life’s Work

Rasputin, fortified by introductions to important religious and political personages, took up residence in St. Petersburg in 1905. The aristocratic citizens were fascinated by this unruly and unkempt peasant from the Siberian wasteland. His status as a religious teacher soon attracted a coterie of fawning disciples, mostly women. Rasputin expounded perverted twists to Christian doctrine, including the idea that salvation could be achieved only through repentance; therefore, one had to sin in order to have the opportunity to repent. His doctrine resolved the fundamental, seemingly irreconcilable conflict between religion and carnal appetites. He was always willing to help provide salvation through sexual sin for the many attractive, willing women who flocked to his apartment.

Alexandra Fedorovna, the wife of Czar Nicholas II and empress of Russia, had given birth to four daughters before producing an heir to the Russian throne, Alexei, on July 30, 1904. Shortly after Alexei’s birth, his parents learned that he was a hemophiliac; any bruise caused painful internal hemorrhaging, and the slightest injury could be fatal. Because hemophilia was incurable and because simple childhood accidents could lead to days of unrelenting agony, the czar and empress lived in a state of relentless distress. They sought solace through holy men, clairvoyants, and other dabblers in the occult arts whom they hoped could help relieve the sufferings of the heir apparent.

Rasputin’s reputation for marvelous healing powers soon brought him to the attention of the royal couple. When he was introduced to them in October, 1905, they were convinced that this simple yet devout man was the very holy man for whom they were searching. Their faith was not entirely misplaced. When young Alexei next suffered from serious internal bleeding, Rasputin’s bedside prayers caused an immediate improvement. The doctors had thought that Alexei would not survive, but he soon recovered. Over the next decade, Rasputin consistently alleviated the young heir’s suffering. Whatever the explanation, there can be no doubt that his soothing presence or his prayers were effective. To the empress, Rasputin was a saint whom God used to effect miraculous cures.

Although Rasputin’s debauchery continued to escalate, he always maintained a pious facade before the royal family. They trusted him implicitly and soon began to seek his council for appointments in the church hierarchy. Rasputin cleverly placed his cronies in important posts and had his enemies transferred to distant provinces. He soon began to meddle in civil appointments as well. His double life required supporters in key government posts and the dispatching of enemies. As his power grew, his spiritual demeanor eroded, and his ambition for political control was progressively magnified.

By accepting bribes to help people gain political offices or achieve their goals, Rasputin also accumulated considerable wealth, although his inherent generosity caused him to give much of it to needy people. Influential merchants flocked to Rasputin’s sitting room, where the miracle-worker simplified business transactions by short-circuiting typical bureaucratic delays. He scribbled a few words to people whose help he needed, and his access to the czar assured that the simple sentence worked wonders.

As his political power grew, so did his number of enemies, including many former allies who had lost confidence in him. When drunk, he often boasted about his control over the czar and empress, causing ordinary citizens to lose faith in a monarch who would allow an ignorant lout of a peasant to be virtually omnipotent. Any incompetent fool who struck the fancy of this arrogant peasant could easily be assigned to an important ministerial post, while those best qualified were ignored. Nicholas and Alexandra lived in blissful ignorance of the escalating problems caused by Rasputin’s political meddling. Harassed by perpetual fear for the heir and reassured by Rasputin’s miraculous cures, they turned a deaf ear to all warnings.

As the number of Rasputin’s enemies increased, so did the number of murder plots being hatched against him. In November of 1916, four noblemen formed a conspiracy to eliminate Rasputin. The conspirators, headed by Prince Felix Yusupov, lured Rasputin to Yusupov’s palace during the late night of December 29 to poison him with potassium cyanide. Although Prince Yusupov later claimed that they murdered Rasputin for the idealistic and patriotic reasons of saving the Russian autocracy, the lofty aims were not justified by the hypocritical means and their cowardly denials when later accused of murder.

Rasputin had been told that he was being taken to meet Yusupov’s beautiful wife, although she was not even in St. Petersburg at the time. Yusupov brought Rasputin into a basement room and served him poisoned cakes and poisoned wine while the others waited upstairs. Although enough poison had been used to kill a battalion, the lethal cakes and wine seemed to have no noticeable effect. A disconcerted Yusupov raced upstairs, retrieved a small revolver, and returned to shoot Rasputin. He appeared to die instantly, and Yusupov left.

Returning later to examine the corpse, the prince noticed Rasputin’s left eyelid trembling. Suddenly Rasputin’s eyes popped open, and he jumped up and seized Yusupov by the neck. The prince ran up the stairs in horror; the others bounded down the stairs just in time to see Rasputin sprinting across the courtyard toward an open gate. After taking two shots in the back, Rasputin collapsed in the snow. The conspirators kicked him in the head to convince themselves that he was finally dead. They then bound the body with ropes and dumped it off a bridge over the Neva River through a hole in the ice.

The body was not found for several days, but when it was recovered it became apparent that Rasputin had still been alive when he was thrown into the water. One arm was half out of the rope, and his lungs were full of water, indicating that the actual cause of death was drowning. Rasputin was buried on the grounds of the czar’s palace, but during the night of March 22-23, 1917, a crowd of rebel soldiers exhumed the grave and carried the coffin to a nearby forest, where the decomposing body was burned on an improvised pyre.

Significance

Because of Empress Alexandra’s concern for young Alexei, she would believe no ill rumors about Rasputin. He had incredible power over her, and he misused it for his own nefarious purposes. Czar Nicholas II was a timid and vacillating man who consistently acquiesced to his wife’s demands. If Rasputin wanted someone put into or out of office, he had only to mention it to the empress, who would request it of the czar.

The heavy casualties suffered by the Russian army during the first years of World War I caused the czar to take command of the troops at the front lines in 1915, effectively leaving Alexandra and Rasputin in charge of the country. Competent ministers were dismissed and replaced by Rasputin’s unpopular and incompetent nominees. In just one year there were five interior ministers, three war ministers, four agriculture ministers, and three justice ministers. Economic conditions deteriorated, transportation was chaotic, and supplies for the military were chronically short.

Rasputin’s constant meddling in political affairs had weakened an already weak government beyond the point of no return. By 1917 the czar had no credibility with his people or with government officials. Scarcely two months after Rasputin’s murder, the czar was forced to abdicate, and a moderate provisional government took control. In October, 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power, and the country degenerated into a civil war that ultimately transformed the communist regime into a dictatorship of terror. Although one cannot claim that Rasputin was responsible for the Russian Revolution, by fueling the rising tide of discontent against the monarchy, he was certainly a major contributing factor.

Bibliography

Fulop-Miller, René. Rasputin: The Holy Devil. New York: Garden City, 1928. One of the earliest accounts of Rasputin’s life. The author succeeds in presenting the divergent facets of Rasputin’s personality in a well-researched and unbiased manner.

Furhmann, Joseph. Rasputin: A Life. New York: Praeger, 1990. A well-researched history written from the perspective that there were always two Rasputins, the “real” one and the one who was said to exist. Furhmann consistently strives to disentangle these two.

Moynahan, Brian. Rasputin: The Saint Who Sinned. New York: Random House, 1997. This volume’s meticulous attention to detail and historical accuracy does not render it any less readable.

Myles, Douglas. Rasputin: Satyr, Saint, or Satan. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990. Myles provides a well-written and highly entertaining account of the Rasputin story. This work includes a glossary of foreign words with a guide to their pronunciation.

Radzinsky, Edvard. The Rasputin File. Translated from the Russian by Judson Rosengrant. New York: Nan Talese/Doubleday, 2000. In 1917, a revolutionary commission compiled an evidentiary file to determine the cause of Rasputin’s death. Radzinsky obtained the file and uses it and other sources to present a detailed account of Rasputin’s actions from 1903 until his death in 1916. Recommended for readers with a specialized knowledge of Russian history.

Rasputin, Maria, and Patte Barham. Rasputin: The Man Behind the Myth—A Personal Memoir. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1977. These personal and favorably biased recollections were written by Rasputin’s daughter six decades after his murder. Several of the accounts clash with other, less biased, evidence.

Youssoupov (Yusupov), Felix. Rasputin: His Malignant Influence and His Assassination. 1927. Reprint. Salisbury, N.C.: Documentary Publications, 1976. This is an obviously biased apologia written by Rasputin’s primary murderer ten years after the event. He maintains that Rasputin was the devil incarnate and that his murder was justified and necessary to save the Russian monarchy.