Rasputin, Grigory (1869 or 1872–1916)

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RASPUTIN, GRIGORY (1869 or 1872–1916)

Russian mystic and court favorite.

With good reason it has been argued that Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin, an unordained Russian mystic and holy man, helped discredit the tsarist government, leading to the fall of the Romanov dynasty in 1917. Contemporary opinions variously saw Rasputin as a saintly mystic, visionary, healer, and prophet, or as a debauched religious charlatan. Historians can find evidence for both views, but also much uncertainty: accounts of his life have often been based on dubious memoirs, hearsay, and legend.

Rasputin was born in the western Siberian village of Pokrovskoye in either 1869 or 1872. A pilgrimage to a monastery in 1885, as penance for theft, and a reported vision of the Mother of God on his return, turned him toward the life of a religious mystic and wanderer. He also evidently came into contact with the banned Christian sect known as the khlysty (flagellants), whose impassioned services ending in physical exhaustion led to rumors that religious and sexual ecstasy were combined in their rituals. Suspicions, generally not accepted by historians, that Rasputin was a khlyst—how else to explain the notorious sexual life of this "holy man"?—threatened his reputation to the end of his life. As Rasputin's renown grew, he attracted the attentions of critics who accused him of using religion to mask his desire for sex, money, and power. Still, many people, from clergy to society ladies to members of the imperial court, were drawn to Rasputin's magnetic personality, spiritual passion, and simple words of wisdom.

In 1905, amidst the upheavals of revolution, Nicholas II and his family "came to know a man of God, Grigory, from Tobolsk Province" (Nicholas II's diary, 1 November 1905). Rasputin would remain, until his death in 1916, a trusted friend and confidant of the imperial family and a growing force in the life of the state and the church. For Nicholas, the peasant and holy man Rasputin was what the tsar urgently needed in these years of crisis: a voice of the common people loyal to the sacred principle of autocracy; a man whose reputation as a seer could help the tsar hear God's voice; and a healer whose prayers visibly relieved the agonizing pain from hemophiliac bleeding of Alexei, the tsar's young son and heir. Contemporaries and historians have variously attributed Rasputin's effect on Alexei to hypnotism, autosuggestion, traditional Russian healing practices, and an authentic power to heal through prayer. Between 1905 and 1916, a series of investigations revealed Rasputin's debauchery, but the tsar dismissed these reports.

Like many spiritually minded Russians, Rasputin spoke of salvation as depending less on the clergy and the church than on seeking the spirit of God within. He also maintained that sin and repentance were interdependent and necessary to salvation. Thus, he claimed, yielding to temptation (for him personally, this meant sex and alcohol), even to humiliation (to dispel the sin of vanity), was a necessary step on the road to repentance and salvation. Rasputin was deeply opposed to war, both from a moral point of view and as likely to lead to political catastrophe. During World War I, Rasputin's increasing drunkenness, sexual promiscuity, willingness to accept bribes in return for helping petitioners who flocked to his apartment, and efforts to have his critics dismissed from their posts made him appear increasingly cynical.

Rasputin exercised considerable political influence, especially during the war, through his friendship with Nicholas and Alexandra, the tsaritsa, and his cultivation of a network of high-placed allies in state and church. There is no evidence that he directly shaped policy, but he did influence appointments of officials, and many of these officials then became part of the "Rasputin clique." Nicholas did not always accept Rasputin's advice, however, and he reminded his wife in 1916 that "Our Friend's opinions of people are sometimes very strange." In the notorious "ministerial leapfrog" of these years, marked by a flurry of high-level dismissals and appointments, Rasputin's nominees were often successful, though public rumors of his influence (as well as of intimate relationships with the empress and perhaps her children) exaggerated his power.

To end this scandal, a group of conservatives—a prince, a right-wing member of the Duma (parliament), and a grand duke—murdered Rasputin on the night of 29–30 December (16–17 December, old style) 1916. He was poisoned, shot when the poison proved ineffective, and dumped in the river; an autopsy found that Rasputin had drowned. When the Romanov family was executed by the Bolsheviks less than two years later, the daughters were discovered to be wearing amulets containing portraits of Rasputin.

See alsoNicholas II; Russia; Russian Revolutions of 1917.