BSB #16 Grigori Rasputin -

Alright, welcome back to another episode of Bite Size Bios, BSB, this week we are gonna learn about Grigori Rasputin. I did not know much about this guy going in.

I knew he was kinda weird looking and that he was connected to Russia. That’s about it. We are gonna dive into the life of a man who was basically Russian royalty for a period of time. Don’t at me.

But before we get to the episode as always since this is a HDTH mini episode we have to talk about last week’s topic. Tattoos. That was also a subject that I knew little about. If you listened to the ep then you know that I don’t have any tattoos.

We found out that tattoos were common in basically all cultures and civilizations and that most of the early ones were used as some form of acupuncture or to help with child birth.

The next evolution saw them being used to mark criminals and that is where the criminal aspect of tattoos really begins to take shape.

As always if you like what you hear here there is more where that came from over at HDTHappen.com. there you will find episode transcripts as well as work cited. There is also a blog there with interesting articles written by yours truly.

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Early Life

Rasputin was born a peasant in the small village of Pokrovskoye, along the Tura River in the Tobolsk Governorate (now Tyumen Oblast) in the Russian Empire. According to official records, he was born on 21 January [ 9 January] 1869 and christened the following day.

There are few records of Rasputin’s parents. His father, Yefim, was a peasant farmer and church elder who had been born in Pokrovskoye in 1842 and married Rasputin’s mother, Anna Parshukova, in 1863.

Yefim (the father) also worked as a government courier, ferrying people and goods between Tobolsk and Tyumen.

Although he attended school, Grigori Rasputin remained illiterate, and his reputation for licentiousness (lewd behavior) earned him the surname Rasputin, Russian for “debauched one.”

He evidently underwent a religious conversion at age 18, and eventually he went to the monastery at Verkhoture, where he was introduced to the Khlysty (Flagellants) sect.

Rasputin perverted Khlysty beliefs into the doctrine that one was nearest God when feeling “holy passionlessness” and that the best way to reach such a state was through the sexual exhaustion that came after prolonged debauchery. Rasputin did not become a monk.

In 1886, Rasputin traveled to Abalak, Russia, some 250 km east-northeast of Tyumenand 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 (b. 1895), Maria (b. 1898), and Varvara (b. 1900).

In the presence of the royal family, Rasputin consistently maintained the posture of a humble and holy peasant. Outside court, however, he soon fell into his former licentioushabits.

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 Efim’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 him 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.

Rasputin was introduced to church leaders, including Archimandrite Theofan, inspector of the theological seminary, who was well-connected in St. Petersburg society and later served as confessor to the tsar and his wife.

Theofan was so impressed with Rasputin that he invited him to stay in his home. Theofan became one of Rasputin’s most important and influential friends in St. Petersburg, and gained him entry to many of the influential salons where the aristocracy gathered for religious discussions.

Rasputin, who combined a dirty, scruffy appearance with piercing eyes and evident charisma, and who proclaimed himself a wandering mystic, was introduced to court by members of the church and the aristocracy, who were looking for holy men of common stock who would appeal to the court, and who would thus boost their own importance.

It was through these meetings that Rasputin attracted some of his early and influential followers—many of whom would later turn against him.

Rasputin first met the tsar on 1 November 1905, at the Peterhof Palace. The tsar recorded the event in his diary, writing that he and Alexandra had “made the acquaintance of a man of God – Grigory, from Tobolsk province”.

In late 1906, he began acting as a faith healerfor Nicholas’ and Alexandra’s only son, Alexei Nikolaevich, who was suffering from haemophilia.

Which is a condition that keeps the blood from clotting. This means that even a small cut could lead to bleeding out.

Rasputin was said to have called the Tsar and Tsarina mama and papa as if he was one of their children.

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 Tsar’s court had a long tradition of holy men, mystics and other esoteric people, and Nicholas II and his wife were heavily involved in the occult revival: a succession of con people and failures went through, and Nicholas thought he was in contact with his dead father.

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 World War I. In Nicholas’ absence, Rasputin and Alexandra consolidated their influence across the Russian Empire.

Preaching that physical contact with his own person had a purifying and healing effect, he acquired mistresses and attempted to seduce many other women.

When accounts of Rasputin’s conduct reached the ears of Nicholas, the tsar refused to believe that he was anything other than a holy man, and Rasputin’s accusers found themselves transferred to remote regions of the empire or entirely removed from their positions of influence.

Rasputin reached the pinnacle of his power at the Russian court after 1915. During World War I, Nicholas II took personal command of his forces (September 1915) and went to the troops on the front, leaving Alexandra in charge of Russia’sinternal affairs, while Rasputin served as her personal advisor.

Rasputin’s influence ranged from the appointment of church officials to the selection of cabinet ministers (often incompetent opportunists), and he occasionally intervened in military matters to Russia’s detriment.

Though supporting no particular political group, Rasputin was a strong opponent of anyone opposing the autocracy or himself.

Rasputin married Praskovia Fyodorovna Dubrovina in 1889, and they had three children, named Dmitri, Varvara, and Maria. Rasputin also reportedly had a child with another woman. In 1901, he left his home in Pokrovskoye as a pilgrim and traveled widely, mostly on foot.

Rasputin survived one assassination attempt and almost survived a second, in which he was reportedly poisoned, shot, and left for dead, shot again when he revived, beaten, and drowned.

In June 1914, Rasputin was visiting his wife and children in his hometown of Pokrovskoye. On June 29, he had either just received a telegram or was just exiting church, when he was attacked suddenly by Khionia Guseva, a former prostitutewho had become a disciple of the monk Iliodor, once a friend of Rasputin’s but now absolutely disgusted with his behavior.

Guseva thrust a knife into Rasputin’s abdomen, and his entrails hung out of what seemed like a mortal wound. Convinced of her success, Guseva supposedly screamed, “I have killed the Antichrist!” After intensive surgery, however, Rasputin recovered.

His daughter stated in her memoirs that he was never the same man after receiving this wound: He tired more easily and frequently took opium for pain.

This happened the same day that Arch duke Ferdinand was assinated which is widely believed to be what started the First World War.

Rasputin’s Death

Sometime over the course of the night and the early morning of December 29-30, 1916, Grigory Efimovich Rasputin, a self-proclaimed holy man, is murdered by Russian nobles eager to end his influence over the royal family.

First, Rasputin’s would-be killers gave the monk food and wine laced with cyanide. When he failed to react to the poison, they shot him at close range, leaving him for dead. A short time later, however, Rasputin revived and attempted to escape from the palace grounds, whereupon his assailants shot him again and beat him viciously.

Finally, they bound Rasputin, still miraculously alive, and tossed him into a freezing river. His body was discovered several days later and the two main conspirators, Youssupov and Pavlovich were exiled.

Contrary to earlier reports—no active poison was found in Rasputin’s body. All three sources agree that Rasputin had been shot, systematically beaten, and attacked with a bladed weapon.

He also had water in his lungs when they found him which indicated that he was probably alive even when they threw him in the freezing river.

However, there were discrepancies between the autopsy and the statements of the supposed killers regarding the number and caliber of handguns used.