Grigori Rasputin
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was a Russian mystic and faith healer. He is best known for having befriended the imperial family of Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia, through whom he gained considerable influence in the final years of the Russian Empire.
Rasputin was born to a family of peasants in the Siberian village of Pokrovskoye, located within Tyumensky Uyezd in Tobolsk Governorate. He had a religious conversion experience after embarking on a pilgrimage to a monastery in 1897 and has been described as a monk or as a strannik, though he held no official position in the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1903 or in the winter of 1904–1905, he travelled to Saint Petersburg and captivated several religious and social leaders, eventually becoming a prominent figure in Russian society. In November 1905, Rasputin met Nicholas II and his empress consort, Alexandra Feodorovna.
In late 1906, Rasputin began acting as a faith healer for Nicholas' and Alexandra's only son, Alexei Nikolaevich, who suffered from haemophilia. He was a divisive figure at court, seen by some Russians as a mystic, visionary, and prophet, and by others as a religious charlatan. The extent of Rasputin's power reached an all-time high in 1915, when Nicholas left Saint Petersburg to oversee the Imperial Russian Army as it was engaged in the First World War. In his absence, Rasputin and Alexandra consolidated their influence across the Russian Empire. However, as Russian military defeats mounted on the Eastern Front, both figures became increasingly unpopular. In the early morning of, Rasputin was assassinated by a group of conservative Russian noblemen who opposed his influence over the imperial family.
Historians often suggest that Rasputin's scandalous and sinister reputation helped discredit the Tsarist government, thus precipitating the overthrow of the House of Romanov shortly after his assassination. Accounts of his life and influence were often based on common rumors; he remains a mysterious and captivating figure in popular culture.
Early life
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was born a peasant in the small village of Pokrovskoye, along the Tura River in the Tobolsk Governorate in the Russian Empire. According to official records, he was born on and christened the following day. He was named for St. Gregory of Nyssa, whose feast was celebrated on 10 January.There are few records of Rasputin's parents. His father, Yefim, was a peasant farmer and church elder who had been born in Pokrovskoye and married Rasputin's mother, Anna Parshukova, in 1863. Yefim also worked as a government courier, ferrying people and goods between Tobolsk and Tyumen. The couple had seven other children, all of whom died in infancy and early childhood; there may have been a ninth child, Feodosiya. According to historian Joseph T. Fuhrmann, Rasputin was certainly close to Feodosiya and was godfather to her children, but "the records that have survived do not permit us to say more than that".
According to historian Douglas Smith, Rasputin's youth and early adulthood are "a black hole about which we know almost nothing", though the lack of reliable sources and information did not stop others from fabricating stories about Rasputin's parents and his youth after his rise to prominence. Historians agree, however, that like most Siberian peasants, including his mother and father, Rasputin was not formally educated and remained illiterate well into his early adulthood. Local archival records suggest that he had a somewhat unruly youth—possibly involving drinking, small thefts and disrespect for local authorities—but contain no evidence of his being charged with stealing horses, blasphemy or bearing false witness, all major crimes later imputed to him as a young man.
In 1886, Rasputin traveled to Abalak, some 250 km east-northeast of Tyumen and 2,800 km east of Moscow, where he met a peasant girl named Praskovya Dubrovina. After a courtship of several months, they married in February 1887. Praskovya remained in Pokrovskoye throughout Rasputin's later travels and rise to prominence, and remained devoted to him until his death. The couple had seven children, though only three survived to adulthood: Dmitry, Maria, and Varvara.
Religious conversion
In 1897, Rasputin developed a renewed interest in religion and left Pokrovskoye to go on a pilgrimage. His reasons are unclear; according to some sources, he left the village to escape punishment for his role in horse theft. Other sources suggest Rasputin had a vision of the Virgin Mary or of St. Simeon of Verkhoturye, while still others suggest that a young theological student, Melity Zaborovsky, inspired his pilgrimage. Whatever his reasons, Rasputin cast off his old life: he was 28 years old, married ten years, with an infant son and another child on the way. According to Smith, his decision "could only have been occasioned by some sort of emotional or spiritual crisis".Rasputin had undertaken earlier, shorter pilgrimages to the Holy Znamensky Monastery at Abalak and to Tobolsk's cathedral, but his visit to the St. Nicholas Monastery at Verkhoturye in 1897 transformed him. There, he met and was "profoundly humbled" by a starets known as Makary. Rasputin may have spent several months at Verkhoturye, and it was perhaps here that he learned to read and write. However, he later claimed that some of the monks at Verkhotuyre engaged in homosexuality and criticized monastic life as too coercive. He returned to Pokrovskoye a changed man, looking disheveled and behaving differently. He became a vegetarian, swore off alcohol, and prayed and sang much more fervently than he had in the past.
Rasputin spent the years that followed as a strannik, leaving Pokrovskoye for months or even years at a time to wander the country and visit a variety of holy sites. It is possible he wandered as far as Mount Athos—the center of Eastern Orthodox monastic life—in 1900.
By the early 1900s, Rasputin had developed a small circle of followers, primarily family members and other local peasants, who prayed with him on Sundays and other holy days when he was in Pokrovskoye. Building a makeshift chapel in Yefim's root cellar—Rasputin was still living within his father's household at the time—the group held secret prayer meetings there. These meetings were the subject of some suspicion and hostility from the village priest and other villagers. It was rumored that female followers were ceremonially washing Rasputin before each meeting, that the group sang strange songs, and even that Rasputin had joined the Khlysty, a religious sect whose ecstatic rituals were rumored to include self-flagellation and sexual orgies. According to Fuhrmann, however, "repeated investigations failed to establish that Rasputin was ever a member of the sect", and rumors that he was a Khlyst appear to have been unfounded.
Rise to prominence
Word of Rasputin's activity and charisma began to spread in Siberia during the early 1900s. At some point during 1904 or 1905, he traveled to the city of Kazan, where he acquired a reputation as a wise starets who could help people resolve their spiritual crises and anxieties. Despite rumors that Rasputin was having sex with female followers, he made a favorable impression on several local religious leaders. Among these were Archimandrite Andrei and Bishop Chrysthanos, who gave Rasputin a letter of recommendation to Bishop Sergei, the rector of the theological seminary at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, and arranged for him to travel to Saint Petersburg.Upon arriving at the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, Rasputin was introduced to church leaders, including Archimandrite Theofan, inspector of the theological seminary, who was well-connected in Saint Petersburg society and later served as confessor to the imperial family. Theofan was so impressed with Rasputin that he invited him to stay in his home; he went on to become one of Rasputin's most essential friends in Saint Petersburg, gaining him entry to many of the influential salons where the local aristocracy gathered for religious discussions. It was through these meetings that Rasputin attracted some of his early and influential followers—many of whom would later turn against him.
Alternative religious movements such as spiritualism and theosophy had become popular among Saint Petersburg's aristocracy before Rasputin's arrival, and many of the aristocracy were intensely curious about the occult and the supernatural. Rasputin's ideas and "strange manners" made him the subject of intense curiosity among the city's elite, who, according to Fuhrmann, were "bored, cynical, and seeking new experiences" during this period. Rasputin's appeal may have been enhanced by the fact that he was also a native Russian, unlike other self-described "holy men" such as Nizier Anthelme Philippe and Gérard Encausse, who had previously been popular in Saint Petersburg.
According to Fuhrmann, Rasputin stayed in Saint Petersburg for only a few months on his first visit and returned to Pokrovskoye in the fall of 1903. Smith, however, argues that it is impossible to know whether Rasputin stayed in Saint Petersburg or returned to Pokrovskoye at some point between his first arrival and 1905. Regardless, by 1905 Rasputin had formed friendships with several members of the aristocracy, including the "Black Princesses", Militsa and Anastasia of Montenegro, who had married cousins of Tsar Nicholas II and were instrumental in introducing Rasputin to the tsar and his family.
Rasputin first met Nicholas on 1 November 1905, at the Peterhof Palace. The tsar recorded the event in his diary, writing that he and his empress consort, Alexandra Feodorovna, had "made the acquaintance of a man of God – Grigory, from Tobolsk province". Rasputin returned to Pokrovskoye shortly after their first meeting and did not return to Saint Petersburg until July 1906. On his return, he sent Nicholas a telegram asking to present the tsar with an icon of St. Simeon of Verkhoturye. He met with Nicholas and Alexandra on 18 July and again in October, when he first met their children.
At some point, Nicholas and Alexandra became convinced that Rasputin possessed the miraculous power to heal their only son, Tsesarevich Alexei Nikolaevich, who suffered from haemophilia. Historians disagree over when this happened: according to Orlando Figes, Rasputin was first introduced to the tsar and tsarina as a healer who could help their son in November 1905, while Joseph T. Fuhrmann has speculated that it was in October 1906 that Rasputin was first asked to pray for the health of Alexei.