Grigori Rasputin (1869-1916) was a self-styled holy man and faith healer from Siberia who ingratiated himself with the family of Tsar Nicholas II (reign 1894-1917). Rasputin was particularly valued by the empress Alexandra Feodorovna (1872-1918) because it seemed he could help her son and heir to the throne, Alexei, who suffered from haemophilia. Rumours of Rasputin's loose living and concerns over just how much influence he had in the halls of power eventually led to his assassination by a group seeking to protect the already waning prestige of the autocratic Romanov dynasty.
Early Life & Appearance
Grigori Efimovich Rasputin was born in Pokrovskoe, a village in Siberia, in 1869. The name Rasputin was later identified with the Russian word for 'libertine', but this was part of the mythology that surrounded this controversial figure, since Rasputin was his father's name and not chosen by him, as some have reported. Born into the peasant class, Grigori stole horses according to legend (although no police records exist to that effect) before settling down to marry a local peasant girl, Praskovia Dubrovina, with whom he had several children.
Rasputin became a starets, that is, a sort of wandering, unordained holy man and faith healer. He embarked on several pilgrimages but did not adhere to an ascetic lifestyle like most starets. As the historian A. Wood summarises: "Rasputin was not, as he is often described, a 'mad monk' but a member of an extreme religious sect of sexually promiscuous flagellants in Siberia known as khlysty." (37). This membership is, in fact, also disputed. As the historian S. S. Montefiore states, "he was not a member of the sect and denied any connection" (535), a position repeated by D. Smith in his biography of Rasputin. More certain is that during his travels, Rasputin became highly skilled at reading people psychologically and offering them suitable advice, usually couched in a vague quasi-religious speech sprinkled abundantly with biblical quotes and folk proverbs.
Rasputin was a physically striking person, tall and with long hair and a long beard, usually neatly trimmed and well-combed. He had deep-set grey-green eyes and a penetrating, mystical gaze. One of Rasputin's friends (and many others, both men and women) recorded the striking effect of the Siberian's eyes: "The charm of this man lies in his eyes. There is something in them that draws you in and forces you to submit to his will. There is something psychologically inexplicable in all this" (Smith, 105). Some women said that Rasputin's stare seemed all-knowing or even made them want to scream.
Rasputin's voice was ordinary enough, but his odd words were usually accompanied by equally odd or esoteric gestures and a constant movement of the fingers. He was extremely tactile, often touching people's hands and kissing women. Unlike the uncharitable press reports, Rasputin was clean and trim in appearance, points noted by many of those who actually met him.
The Guru of St. Petersburg
Rasputin made his way to the Russian capital, St. Petersburg, in 1903, where he lived off the charity of the well-off, to whom he became a sort of guru. He first became associated with the Romanovs, the ruling house of the tsars in Russia, in 1905. The heir to the throne (tsarevich) and only son of Tsar Nicholas II was Alexei (1904-1918), who suffered from haemophilia. Rasputin was encouraged to try and alleviate Alexei's condition. Remarkably, Rasputin seems to have had some sort of positive effect on his patient. Rasputin may have used hypnosis (although he himself denied he had any such ability), but whatever method he used, the result was a calming effect on the young heir and his constantly preoccupied mother, Empress (Tsarina) Alexandra Feodorovna. Rasputin's reputation really soared after Alexei suffered an accident and seemed about to die, so much so that the royal physicians declared there was no hope, and the prince's death bulletin was prepared to release the sad news to the people. Rasputin, however, sent the royal family a telegram stating: "God has seen your tears and heard your prayers. Do not grieve. The Little One will not die. Do not allow the doctors to bother him too much" (Hasegawa, 34). The prince did indeed recover. Rasputin repeated the trick in a second, similar episode, although this time he visited the prince in person and reassured him, "Don't be alarmed. Nothing will happen" (ibid). Again, the boy made a full recovery. Henceforth, Rasputin was a permanent member of the royal court.
The problem was Rasputin did some rather strange things besides writing well-timed telegrams and calming the heir to the throne, and when word got out, this strange man began to receive criticism for his 'dark arts' and the obvious influence he had over the tsar's wife, and through her, on the tsar himself. Political rivalries and a rampant speculative press ensured that much was said of Rasputin that was untrue, but unravelling the mythology from real events is far from easy.
Rasputin preached a strange form of Orthodox Christianity. One of his more notorious principles (but not an original idea) was that one received redemption through sin, and so the more sins one committed, the better. Rasputin practised what he preached, it seemed. The historian H. Shukman notes:
Patronized by no less than the empress herself, his mystical oracles and charismatic presence aroused many high-born females in St Petersburg an exalted response which, when exploited for his sexual appetite — said to be insatiable — created around him an aura of unctuous debauchery.
(374)
Friend or Foe of the State?
Enemies of the Tsar issued propaganda leaflets, which often included lurid cartoons, full of sensational stories such as the idea that Rasputin was sleeping with the tsarina and her daughters. The scandalous talk was bad enough, but more seriously for Rasputin's future, he also got himself involved in political and financial intrigues. Rasputin certainly used his influence to have friends receive positions in the government. The tsar, meanwhile, valued Rasputin as he saw him as a direct line of communication with ordinary Russians. The tsar once said: "He is just a good, religious, simple-minded Russian. When in trouble or assailed by doubts, I like to have a talk with him, and invariably feel at peace with myself afterwards" (Hosking, 439). The tsar forbade anyone at court to speak badly of Rasputin. In addition, members of the Orthodox Church who publicly spoke out against Rasputin usually suffered some negative consequences, such as banishment to a remote monastery. There was a clear divide between the public image of Rasputin and how he was viewed by the royal family.
The suspicion of the holy man's credentials seemed to be proved by an infamous episode in March 1915 when Rasputin got drunk in a Moscow restaurant-nightclub, groped the chorus girls, danced about wildly, boasted in obscene language why he had the empress in his pocket, and indecently exposed himself to everyone present. Rasputin was arrested and spent the night in a police cell. The press had a field day with the story, but it was perhaps just that, a story entirely concocted by Rasputin's enemies, since evidence in police reports and from the staff of the restaurant does not confirm any of it. As usual with Rasputin, the stories, even if they were merely smoke and mirrors, were the problem, not the facts themselves. People – powerful people – were increasingly determined to eliminate this strange Siberian one way or another.
Royalists hated Rasputin, but enemies of the tsar and his authoritarian regime saw the controversies surrounding the Siberian as a way to help bring about nothing short of a revolution. Unrest grew worse following the military disasters in the First World War (1914-18), and then deepened further when, in August 1915, Nicholas left St. Petersburg to take personal command of the Russian army. Rasputin had warned the tsar that the war would spell nothing but disaster for Russia, and so it turned out.
As the tsar played commander-in-chief, he effectively left his wife in charge of the politicians in the capital, and she was keen to take an active role in government. Alexandra Feodorovna appointed and dismissed a number of ministers, so many in fact that the rapid changes were called 'ministerial leapfrog' by critics. In addition, there were rumours that such decisions were based on judgements made by Rasputin, himself influenced by bribes. There were even unfounded claims that Rasputin was influencing military decisions and that there was some sort of pro-German faction within the halls of power (the tsarina was herself of German origin). Alexandra remained convinced of Rasputin's loyalty and usefulness. She wrote to her husband:
Oh, my dear, I pray to God so passionately to convince you that in Him [Rasputin] lies our salvation. If He weren't here, I don't know what would become of us. He is saving us with His prayers and His wise advice…He [Rasputin] lives for you and for Russia.
(Hasegawa, 113)
Not all members of the royal family were bewitched by Rasputin. The tsar's mother, the dowager empress, once told one minister:
My poor daughter-in-law does not perceive that she is ruining both the Dynasty and herself. She sincerely believes in the holiness of an adventurer and we are powerless to ward off the misfortune which is sure to come.
(Hasegawa, 40)
Another figure who saw Rasputin as a charlatan was the prime minister, Pyotr Stolypin (1862-1911), the man responsible for the Stolypin land reforms. Stolypin noted Rasputin's peculiar effect on people, although he himself was put off:
He ran his pale eyes over me, mumbled mysterious and inarticulate words from the Scriptures, made strange movements with his hands, and I began to feel an indescribable loathing for this vermin sitting opposite me. Still, I did realize that the man possessed great hypnotic power which was beginning to produce a fairly strong impression on me, though certainly one of repulsion.
(Smith, 151)
Assassination Attempts
As the historian T. Hasegawa notes, "More than anything else, the Rasputin affair contributed to the catastrophic erosion of the autocracy's prestige" (39). Mikhail Rodzianko (1859-1924), chairman of the Duma, the Russian parliament, warned the tsar that Rasputin was deeply unpopular with a large section of society, but without result. A growing number of the political elite, the propertied classes, and officers in the army were outraged at Rasputin's perceived influence on the royal family, and they were prepared to take drastic measures. They had been, though, pre-empted by another would-be assassin. In the summer of 1914, Rasputin was back in Siberia, and there, a peasant woman stabbed him in the stomach. The woman was a follower of an influential priest called Iliodor, who had denounced Rasputin as a fraud. Rasputin was admitted to the hospital, but he recovered from the attack.
Tsar Nicholas continued to rebuff any criticism of Rasputin's relationship with the royal family. The tsar regarded this as an entirely personal affair, which was neither political in nature nor the business of the people. The political elite, however, disagreed. At least one attempt to bribe Rasputin to leave the capital was made.
Finally, Rasputin was murdered by right-wing monarchists on 30 December 1916. The conspirators included Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich (1891-1942), a cousin of the tsar, Prince Felix Yusupov (1887-1967), husband of the one of tsar's nieces, and Vladimir Purishkevich (1870-1920), leader of the monarchist, reactionary, and anti-Semitic organisation the Black Hundreds. The group invited Rasputin to a party at Yusopov's palace and then attacked him, first poisoning the priest with cyanide-laced cakes and madeira wine, then beating, and then shooting him several times. Next, a hole was made in a nearby frozen river, and Rasputin, still not quite dead, was pushed through it and into the icy deathtrap. Rasputin's lifeless body was found two days later. So the story goes. The reality may have been more mundane, since the autopsy report found no trace of poison. There were three bullet wounds, one of which was in the forehead, made from a shot fired at close range.
Rasputin was buried in church grounds near the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, south of St. Petersburg. No member of Rasputin's family was invited to the service, but the royal family was there to see his plain coffin lowered into the ground. An official investigation into the murder was soon dropped when it was revealed just who was behind it. Revealing the names of the plotters would have seriously undermined the tsar's authority and shown to the public just how fractured the autocracy was. None of the murderers was brought to justice.
The violent Russian Revolution of 1917 (actually two revolutions, one in March and the second in November) deposed the tsar in March, and Soviet Russia was established with Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) as its leader. Rasputin had warned the royal family that they would not survive six months after his death, and he had written to the tsar that WWI would destroy Russia, "drowned in her own blood. Great will be the ruin, grief without end" (Smith, 363). When the tsar and his family were executed in July 1918, the bodies were stripped of valuables, and it was noted that the four daughters each wore an amulet around their necks which contained a picture of Rasputin and the words of one of his prayers.
In the chaos of the revolutionary years, Rasputin's coffin was exhumed and his body defiled by soldiers. A legend grew that Rasputin's remains were then burned in the forest. The cremators failed to put sufficient fuel on the pyre, and so the body would not at first burn, an event that local peasants considered proof that Rasputin had been a saint. None of this, alas, is true since Rasputin's remains were actually sent to a crematorium on the orders of Prince Lvov. In death, as in life, Rasputin continued to gather around him an almost impenetrable cloak of truth, rumour, and fabrication.
