You may have heard of this name before, but many don’t know much about who he was. He was a mythical figure in his time and his legend remains to this day. Here’s some cool info about an enigmatic dude with a crazy life.
No Tl;DR. I think it’s pretty interesting, and I tried to keep it fairly short.
Grigori Rasputin:
“Follow me in the summer to Pokrovskoye, to the great freedom of Siberia. We will catch fish and work in the fields, and then you will learn to understand God.”
When Rasputin was eight years old, and his brother Dmitri was twelve, his brother was pulled into the water while they were swimming. He later died of pneumonia. Rasputin was never the same after this tragedy; he became moody and withdrawn. Two years later he sort of got over the incident, but he emerged a different person. People claimed he could read their minds. Moreover, it was said that he could lay his hands on sick farm animals and cure them.
People said his powers came from God, but he was certainly no saint. Even from a very young age Rasputin was extremely sexually active, and it was also said that he was pretty freaking good at it (historically fist bumps). He married a twenty-three year old woman when he was nineteen, and they stayed married throughout his life. Nonetheless, he always continued his sexual conquests until the day he died. His wife said that he was man enough for more than just one woman (historically fists bumps his chill ass wife). His sexual escapades would later come back to haunt him, almost getting him killed. I’ll get to that a little later.
Transformation:
Eventually the people in his village got sick of his ways. On top of his womanizing, he drank heavily, and sometimes vandalized property. They wanted to kick him out of the village. Instead, Rasputin volunteered to make up for his rockstar ways by walking a 260 mile pilgrimage to a famous monastery. When he left there, he returned home a new man. His entire attitude was noticeably changed (except for the drinking…and later the womanizing again).
He later joins a traveling group of monks, and meets all kinds of people from all over Russia. Everywhere he goes people are captivated by his luring personality. He truly sought God, and people mostly saw him in this light. But he was well-aware of the practical opportunities presented to him by gaining people’s trust.
Rasputin’s Eyes:
Eventually the de facto monk ends up in the bustling city of St. Petersburg, home to the royal Tsar family. Even though he was a peasant, he became a prominent figure here. Much of his commanding magnetism was attributed to his eyes. They were blue, piercing, and he always looked whoever he was talking to directly in the eyes as long as they were talking. Even his pictures show the intensity of his notorious gaze. Within months of his arrival to St. Petersburg, Grigori Rasputin is granted the ultimate honor of meeting Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra
The Tsar’s Secret:
The tsar’s only son Alexei was a hemophiliac. This meant that he had to be on constant guard, as even a small cut would not clot. The bigger problems occurred when even a minor fall would cause internal bleeding, resulting in agonizing pain for the child for days at a time. The doctors said that one day it would kill him. So it was a closely kept secret, since he was the only heir to the throne. During one of these events, Rasputin asked to see the child. The child’s mother and the Tsar’s wife asked Rasputin not to wake the child. Rasputin said that he must. He woke the kid up, made him laugh and smile, and the child went back to sleep. The next day the child was miraculously cured. From this day on Rasputin was always able to heal the Prince. Because of this, he would become a fixture in the Tsar family, and develop a close relationship with the Tsar’s wife..
So now we have a common peasant who managed to work his way into the royal circle, a previously unheard of feat. People everywhere knew of him. Many thought he was secretly controlling the royal family. Some thought he was sleeping with the Tsar’s wife (he actually probably wasn’t). Some thought he was Satan himself.
On the same day the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated (a major catalyst for the spark of World War 1) there was also an assassination attempt on Rasputin. During a visit to his home village, an ex-lover stabbed Rasputin in his abdomen. She was so disfigured by syphilis that he didn’t even recognize her at first. This is the aforementioned incident when his sexual proclivities come back to haunt him, although it turned out that she was actually pretty insane. He survived after 6 weeks in the hospital (six weeks with no sex must have been miserable for him). This only added to his mystique.
From his hospital bed Rasputin sent the Tsar a warning letter of an apocalyptic vision, which would later come to fruition:
“A terrible storm cloud lays over Russia. Disaster, grief, murky darkness and no light, a whole ocean of tears, there is no counting them. And so much blood. The disaster is great. The misery: infinite.”
I know this is a somewhat vague and general warning on the eve of a war, but these can certainly add to a man’s legendary reputation. Moreover, some of the language is pretty spot on, considering that over 1.5 million Russians will die in WWI.
(Last part coming up next. This is what initially drew me to Rasputin.)
Rasputin’s Death:
Felix Yusopov, along with fellow conspirators, planned to kill Rasputin. They were all political figures more or less. He invited Rasputin into his home, took him to the basement, and offered him sweets laced with large amounts of cyanide. He ate one, then he ate another. Then he consumed copious amounts of cyanide laced wine. When this seemingly did nothing, Yusopov went upstairs to grab a revolver from one of the waiting co-conspirators. He shot Rasputin, hitting him in the chest and penetrating his stomach and liver. Rasputin collapsed and Yusopov went upstairs to celebrate with the rest, but a short time later Rasputin opened his eyes and somehow managed to make an escape up the stairs and out to the courtyard. They chased him, fired multiple shots, and eventually one bullet penetrated his kidney and lodged in his spine. A bit later, the body reportedly made a sudden movement, so they shot him in the forehead one more time.
His body was thrown away in the river and eventually washed up on shore. When the body was recovered the hand ties were off and his hands were in the air. This lead people to believe that he was still fighting to survive in the river. They also said his hands were held up to make the sign of the cross. They said that he either drowned or died of hypothermia. These can’t be true since he was shot in the head, but once again it added fuel to the fire of Grigori Rasputin’s legend.
Shortly before his death, Rasputin sent Tsar Nicholas II a strangely specific prophecy which would come to pass shortly:
“If i’m killed by my brothers the Russian peasants, you have nothing to fear. If it is your relations who have brought about my death, then none of your family will remain alive for more than 2 years. They will all be killed by the Russian people.”
Fifteen months after this prophecy, the entire royal family will be killed during the Russian Revolution. The royal wife and all her children will be shot, bayoneted, and beaten to death by the Russian people,
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Sorry if this was too long.
