Rasputin (photo:public domain)

Grigory Rasputin

A Russian peasant who claims to be an Orthodox monk, a favorite of the tsarist family. Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin was probably born in 1869, although he himself gave different dates at different stages of his life. Already in his youth, in his native village, he gained a reputation as a drunkard, womanizer and thief. He married and fathered four children. The turning point in his life was probably the death of one of them.

Seeking spiritual guidance, he visited successive monasteries and hermitages; he was eventually declared a monk himself, although he never took any vows. In 1893 he went to the center of the Orthodox world - to a monastery on the Greek Mount Athos. He learned theology from local monks, but as a semi-illiterate he never even read the Bible. After returning to Russia, he was labeled an exorcist, clairvoyant and healer.

In 1905, Tsarina Alexander Romanov heard about Rasputin, whose only son, the heir to the throne, Alexios, suffered from hemophilia. The charismatic monk, who managed to stop the tsarevich's haemorrhages several times, quickly gained influence with the tsarist family. After the outbreak of World War I, its importance increased significantly when he proclaimed that entering the conflict would be a fatal idea and that Russia's defeat would result in the collapse of the dynasty.

Tsarina Alexander was completely under the spell of Rasputin, which made him one of the most powerful people in the state. The Russian monarchists decided to kill him. They plotted against Rasputin's life. First they poisoned him, then shot him, then fired two more shots at him, and finally smashed his head with a truncheon to be sure. They dumped the body on the Neva.