On the anniversary of Rasputin’s death, Faith healer or religious charlatan?

Although it’s been 107-years since Rasputin’s own death, he remains one of the most captivating and controversial figures of modern times

Grigori Rasputin

On the anniversary of Rasputin’s death,
Faith healer or religious charlatan?

Sami Moubayed

last update on 30 Dec 2023

In 1929, the Busch Circus toured France with a special programme featuring 31-year-old Russian lion-tamer and dancer Maria Rasputin as “daughter of the famous mad monk whose feats in Russia astonished the world.”

She of course was the daughter of the infamous Grigory Rasputin, a legendary monk who captivated the Russian Imperial family and before he was dramatically murdered by a handful of notables in December 1916.

Future generations got familiar with the name through a popular 1978 disco song by the German band Boney M, yet long before that during World War I, Rasputin had been the subject of much speculation and myth, both in the Russian press and beyond.

Reports varied but all of them were extremely negative, describing him as an evil hypnotist, a religious charlatan, a crook, and a rapist.

Maria Rasputin was eighteen when her father was killed and it wasn’t easy for her to dance on stage with actors poking fun at him in the most ridiculous of ways. Writing in her memoirs many years later, she confessed that after every show in France she would break down and weep at being forced into being part of a show that insulted her father so harshly.

She was doing it for the money – to help raise her little children - having been forced out of her country in disgrace after the 1917 revolution in her country, which had led to the abdication and eventual execution of Tzar Nicholas II and his entire family.

The revolutionaries summoned her for questioning, asking about the royal family’s jewels, which she knew nothing about. Her story is an often-forgotten chapter of Rasputin’s life, and she would eventually settle in the United States where towards the end of her life, claimed that she too was psychic before her death in Los Angeles in 1977.

Although it’s been 107-years since Rasputin’s own death, he remains one of the most captivating and controversial figures of modern times, portrayed as recently as 2021 by Welsch actor Rhys Ifans in The King’s Man, an American-British action movie.

From peasant to the Imperial Palace

Born to a peasant family in 1869, Rasputin began his life as a wandering monk, despite having no affiliation with the Russian Orthodox Church.

In the winter of 1904, he landed in the imperial capital of St. Petersburg, where he began befriending the Russian aristocracy. The Russian elite was enchanted with the supernatural, the abnormal, and mystical, which took Rasputin far in society.

In November 1905 the 36-year-old cleric met Tzar Nicholas II and his wife at the Peterhof Palace, where he was introduced as a “man of God.” They had a single child named Alexei who suffered from haemophilia and sometime in October 1906, Rasputin promised to heal him.

Born to a peasant family in 1869, Rasputin began his life as a wandering monk, despite having no affiliation with the Russian Orthodox Church.

It remains unclear whether the imperial couple sought out Rasputin's help or if he showed up offering his services, which started out by simply praying for the little boy.

Every time he did, however, the prince's health would improve significantly, convincing the empress that he was a miracle worker. That remains strange since Alexandra was an educated woman, trained by the finest tutors at the palace of her grandmother, Queen Victoria of England, but it was hope that got her so attached to Rasputin.

She began taking him with her everywhere the family went, leading some to speculate that they were having an affair. The Tsarina turned a deaf ear to all rumors, seeing that Rasputin was better than all of her son's doctors combined. There have been many rumors on how he managed to stop the prince's bleeding, the most common of which was that he stopped administering aspirin to the boy, realizing that it was an anti-clotting agent (knowledge that didn't become mainstream until the 1950s).

AFP — Czar Nicolas II with the army chief in 1915

To give him open access to the palace, the tzar appointed Rasputin lamplighter of the royal chambers, which made him a regular visitor at the children's rooms and nursery.

One tutor objected to a grown man seeing the girls in their nightgowns, asking that he is barred from the bedrooms. The Tsarina responded by having her fired and would do the same with another nanny in 1910, when she claimed that Rasputin had raped her.

Stories of his womanizing became public knowledge in Russia, along with rumors that he was asking for sexual favors in exchange for his religious blessings.

The Russian Orthodox Church denounced him as a heretic and asked for his interrogation, and so did the Tzar's secret police, who hated Rasputin, and his prime minister Pyotr Stolypin who pleaded with Nicholas II to disassociate himself and his family from the controversial monk.

One member of the Russian Duma, Vladimir Purishkevich came out saying that the Tzar's ministers had been turned into "marionettes" whose threads have been taken "firmly in hand by Rasputin."

On 12 June 1914 Rasputin survived an assassination attempt when a young peasant woman stabbed him in the stomach, reportedly at the request of a priest who had fallen out with Rasputin.

On 12 June 1914 Rasputin survived an assassination attempt when a young peasant woman stabbed him in the stomach, reportedly at the request of a priest who had fallen out with Rasputin.

Murder

A group of Russian notables, led by Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich and Prince Felix Yusupov decided to rid the nation of Gregory Rasputin. The man had become too strong, they said, and was threatening their collective standing in Russian society and the core essence of the Russian Empire. This became especially true after the Tzar became occupied with World War I, leaving state affairs in the hands of his wife and Rasputin.

The conspirators decided to lure Rasputin into Prince Yusupov's palace for tea and cake injected with poison on 30 December 1916. Russia at the time was still following the old Julian calendar, which was roughly 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar, explaining why Russian sources put his murder on 17 December 1916.

On that fateful night, Rasputin began to eat but was completely unaffected. They then offered him some wine – also poisoned – which did nothing to him; he drank three glasses and was ready for more. When all that failed, one conspirator took out a pistol and asked Rasputin to say his final prayer, before shooting him in the chest.

He sank in his blood and they thought him dead. As they came close to inspect his lifeless body, Rasputin leaped up to strangle them, with fire in his eyes. Terrified, they fled to the courtyard and a bloodied Rasputin followed them in rage, cursing them all and promising to kill them, one-after-another, when he was shot a second time, this time in the forehead. He collapsed into the snow and they wrapped his body with a cloth and disposed it into the Little Nevka River.

There was speculation that his final death was from drowning, rather than either the poison or the bullets. Rasputin's body was washed under the ice and found a few days later, where he was given a private funeral at a small church, attended by the Imperial Family.

After Nicholas abdicated the throne in March 1917, Russian revolutionaries had it exhumed and burned, so as not to become a rallying point for the royalists. They blamed him for many of the ills that took place during the final years of the Tzar's rule, including corruption, poverty, and military defeats, although others would argue that he did the Russian Revolution a great service. Had it not for Putin, they claimed, then corruption would have not spread at the Imperial Palace, and thus, there would have been no revolution, and no Vladimir Lenin.

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