A good site to find info on Rasputin?

SnowFaerie says

Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin (Russian: Григо́рий Ефи́мович Распу́тин) (10 January 1869 – 29 December [O.S. 16 December] 1916) was a Russian mystic with an influence in the later days of Russia's Romanov dynasty. Rasputin played an important role in the lives of the Tsar Nicholas II, his wife the Tsarina Alexandra, and their only son the Tsarevich Alexei, who suffered from hemophilia coming from Queen Victoria.

Rasputin has often been called the Mad Monk, although he was never a monk and made no secret of being married. Some considered him to be a "strannik" (religious pilgrim) or even a starets (ста́рец) ("elder", a title usually reserved for monk-confessors) and believed him to be a psychic and faith healer. He can be considered one of the more controversial characters in 20th century history, although Rasputin is viewed by most historians today as a scapegoat. He played a small but spectacular role in the downfall of the Romanov dynasty.

For a great while, Rasputin's birth date remained questionable. "It is still not known with any certainty when Rasputin was born, and all the books which deal with him and his career give differing dates; not even his biographers — and there have been many — have been able to agree. The closest one can come with certainty is sometime between the years 1863 and 1873." (Heinz Liepman, Rasputin and the Fall of Imperial Russia, 21). It was not until recently that new documents surfaced revealing Rasputin's birthdate as January 10, 1869 (Radzinsky, Edvard, The Rasputin File, 25).

Contents [hide]
1 Early life
2 Healer to the Tsarevich
3 Controversy
4 Assassination beliefs
4.1 Recent evidence
5 "The spirit of Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin"
6 Reputation
7 Name meaning
8 See also
9 External links

[edit]
Early life
Grigory Efimovich Rasputin was possibly born a peasant in a small Siberian village along the Tura River called Pokrovskoye. This village was located in the Tobolsk guberniya (now in Tyumen Oblast, Russia). When he was around the age of eighteen, he spent three months in the Verkhoturye Monastery. There, he joined the Khlysty, a renegade sect of Russian Orthodox creed. Shortly after leaving the Monastery he visited a holy man named Makariy, whose hut was nearby. Makariy had an enormous influence on Rasputin, who would model himself after the older man. Rasputin married Praskovia Fyodorovna in 1889 and had three children with her (and another child with someone else). In 1901, he left his home in Pokrovskoye as a strannik, or pilgrim. During the time of his journeying, he traveled to Greece and Jerusalem. In 1903, Rasputin arrived in Petrograd (Saint Petersburg), where he declared himself a starets, or holy man, with healing and prophetical powers.

[edit]
Healer to the Tsarevich
There are many theories as to Rasputin's early life, but the most widely accepted by historians is that of George Still, a British historian.

Rasputin was wandering as a pilgrim in Siberia when he heard reports of Tsarevich Alexei's hemophilia in 1904. The disease had been inherited from his great-grandmother (Queen Victoria). When the young Tsarevich got a bruise after he fell off of a horse, he suffered from internal bleeding for days whilst vacationing with his family. The Tsarina, looking everywhere for help, asked her best friend Anna Vyrubova to secure the help of the charismatic peasant healer in 1905. He was said to possess the ability to heal through prayer, and he was indeed able to give the boy some relief. Skeptics have claimed that he did so by hypnosis, though during a particularly grave crisis, Rasputin, from his home in Siberia, was believed to have eased the suffering of the tsarevich (in Saint Petersburg) through prayer.

The Tsar referred to Rasputin as 'our friend', a sign perhaps of the trust the family put in him. Rasputin had considerable personal and political influence on Alexandra especially after Alexei encountered a bee attack in the summer of 1905. Rasputin allegedly ran to the boy's help and yelled at the bees, "ужальте его и вы умретe!" ("Sting him and you will die!”).Supposedly the bees left because of Rasputin's holy powers, but now it is more commonly believed that the bees left because their hive was no longer being threatened. His position within the church further enabled him to influence young Alexei; it was verified that before the pair were introduced, the Tsarina lamented her son 'made Jesus sad' with his blasphemous ways. However, upon meeting Rasputin, she proclaimed exultantly that Alexei had 'learned the error of his ways'.

The Tsar and Tsarina considered him to be a man of God and a religious prophet, and Alexandra believed God spoke to her through Rasputin. This relationship can also be viewed in the context of the very strong, traditional, age-old bond between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian leadership. Another important factor was probably the Tsarina's German-Protestant origin: she was highly fascinated by her new Orthodox religion, but seems to have lacked some discernment regarding its practices.

[edit]
Controversy
Rasputin in the meantime became a controversial figure, leading a scandalous personal life with his mostly female followers from Saint Petersburg high society. Furthermore, he was frequently seen picking up prostitutes, and drinking himself into a stupor, not arriving home until early in the morning. He was unsavory, ill-mannered, bathed infrequently, and often exhibited outrageous behavior in public.

While fascinated by him, the Saint Petersburg elite did not widely accept Rasputin. He did not fit with the royal family.

Rasputin and the Russian Orthodox Church had a very tense relationship. Holy Synod frequently attacked Rasputin, and because of this, a lot of fakelore about his life were deliberately spread by the competing religion. Therefore, a lot of anecdotal evidence about Rasputin's life has to be taken with a grain of salt. Because Rasputin was a court official, however, his apartment was under 24-hour surveillance, so there exists some credible evidence about his lifestyle.

According to Rasputin's daughter, Maria, Rasputin did "look into" the Khlysty sect, and rejected it. While the Western world is particularly interested in the sexual practices of this sect (supposedly tied to a belief that one can only obtain a connection to God through sinning), Rasputin was particularly appalled by the belief that grace is found through self-flagellation.

Like most Orthodox Christians, Rasputin was brought up with the belief that the body is a sacred gift from God. Attaining divine grace through sin seems to have been one of the central secret doctrines that Rasputin preached to (and practised with) his inner circle of society ladies. The idea that one can attain grace through correction of sin is not unique. It is also understood that sin is an inescapable part of the human condition, and the responsibility of a believer is to be keenly aware of his sins and be willing to confess them, thereby attaining humility.

A 1916 cartoon suggesting Rasputin's influence over the Tzar and TzarinaDuring World War I he became a focus of accusations of unpatriotic influence at court; the unpopular Tsarina was of German descent, and her "friend" Rasputin was accused of being a spy in German employ.

When Rasputin expressed an interest in going to the front to bless the troops early in the war, the Commander-in Chief, Grand Duke Nicholas, promised to hang him if he showed up. Rasputin then claimed that he had a revelation that the Russian armies would not be successful until the Tsar personally took command. With this, the ill-prepared Nicholas proceededed to take personal command of the Russian army, with dire consequences for himself and for Russia.

While Tsar Nicholas II was away at the front, Rasputin’s influence over Tsarina Alexandra increased immensely. He soon became the confidant and personal advisor of Alexandra. He also convinced her to fill some government offices with his own handpicked candidates. To further advance his power, Rasputin slept with upper-class women in exchange for granting political favors. Because of World War I, and to a lesser extent because of Rasputin, Russia’s economy was declining at a rapid rate. Many placed the blame with Alexandra, and with Rasputin, because of his influence over her. An example:

Vladimir Purishkevich was an outspoken member of the Duma. On November 19, 1916, Purishkevich made a rousing speech in the Duma, in which he stated, 'The tzar’s ministers who have been turned into marionettes, marionettes whose threads have been taken firmly in hand by Rasputin and the Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna — the evil genius of Russia and the czarina… who has remained a German on the Russian throne and alien to the country and its people.' Felix Yusupov attended the speech and afterwards contacted Purishkevich, who quickly agreed to participate in the murder of Rasputin.

Rasputin’s influence over the royal family was used against him and the Romanovs by politicians and journalists who wanted to weaken the integrity of the dynasty, make the Tsar give up his absolute political power, and separate the Russian Orthodox Church from the state. Rasputin unintentionally contributed to the propaganda by having public disputes with clergy members, bragging over his ability to influence both the Tsar and Tsarina, and by his dissolute lifestyle. Nobles in influential positions around the Tsar as well as some parties of the Duma, the Russian parliament, clamoured for his removal from the court. Perhaps inadvertently, Rasputin added to diminishing respect for the Tsar by his subjects.

[edit]
Assassination beliefs
The legends recounting the death of Rasputin are perhaps even more bizarre than his strange life. Having decided that Rasputin's influence over the Tsarina made him too dangerous to the Empire, a group of nobles apparently lured Rasputin to the palace of their ringleader, Prince Felix Yusupov, where they served him cakes and red wine laced with measured amounts of cyanide. According to the legend, Rasputin was not affected. (It is rumored that the amount of cyanide was enough to kill ten men.) Determined to finish the job, Yusupov went upstairs, then came back down and shot him through the chest with a revolver. Rasputin fell. A half an hour or so later when Yusupov returned to check the body (or as some versions go, Yusupov came back for his jacket), Rasputin sprang to his feet and began to throttle Yusupov, who fled in horror and told the other conspirators.

Heavily drugged by this time, Rasputin attempted his escape. He bolted outside and ran across the courtyard toward the gate, threatening that he would tell everything to the Tsarina. Another conspirator shot three bullets that passed Rasputin, then he shot two more which hit Rasputin. The conspirators then clubbed him unconscious and flung him into the icy Neva River, but there was no splash. Rasputin had fallen on the ice (it was winter at this time), so they went down and cut a hole in the ice and stuffed him through it into the icy water. They were finally satisfied that the "Enemy of the State" was dead.

Three days later the body of Rasputin – poisoned, shot three times, and badly beaten – was recovered from the river and autopsied. The cause of death was drowning. His arms were apparently found in an upright position, as if he had tried to claw his way out from under the ice.

[edit]
Recent evidence
The details of the assassination given by Felix Yusupov have never stood up to close examination. The statement given to the Petrograd police on 16 December; the account he gave whilst in exile in the Crimea in 1917; his 1927 book, and the accounts given under oath to libel juries in 1934 and 1965. No two accounts were entirely identical. Until recently, lack of proof has ruled out any other credible evidence-based theories.

According to the unpublished 1916 autopsy report by Professor Kossorotov and subsequent reviews by Dr Vladimir Zharov in 1993 and Professor Derrick Pounder in 2004/5, no active poison was found in Rasputin's stomach. It couldn't have been said with certainty that he drowned, as the water found on his lungs is a common non-specific autopsy finding. All three agreed that Rasputin had been systematically beaten and attacked with a bladed weapon, but most importantly there were discrepancies regarding the number and calibre of handguns used.

This discovery may have significantly changed the whole premise and account of Rasputin's death. British intelligence reports between London and Petrograd in 1916 indicate that the British were extremely concerned about Rasputin's replacement of pro-British ministers in the Russian government, but more importantly his apparent insistence on withdrawing Russian troops from the First World War. This withdrawal would have allowed the Germans to move their Eastern Front troops to the Western Front, massively outnumbering the Allies and spelling almost certain victory. Whether this was actually Rasputin's intention is in dispute, but it is clear that the British viewed him as a real danger.

According to Professor Pounder, of the three shots fired into Rasputin's body, the third (which entered his forehead) was instantly fatal. This third shot also provides some intriguing evidence. In Pounder's view, concurred by the firearms department of the Imperial War Museum in London, the third shot was fired by a gun different to those responsible for the other two wounds. The "size and prominence of the abraded margin" suggested a large lead non-jacketed bullet. At that time, the majority of weapons used hard metal jacketed bullets, with Britain virtually alone in using lead unjacketed bullets for their officers' Webley revolvers. Pounder came to the conclusion that the bullet which caused the fatal shot was a Webley .455 inch unjacketed round, and was the best fit with the available forensic evidence.

Witnesses to the murder itself have stated that the only man present with a Webley revolver was one Lieutenant Oswald Rayner, a British officer who was attached to the SIS station in Petrograd. This account was further backed up during an audience between the British Ambassador, Sir George Buchanan, and Tsar Nicholas, when Nicholas stated that he suspected a young Englishman who had been an old school friend of Yusopov. Indeed, Rayner had known Yusopov at Oxford University. Another SIS officer in Petrograd at the time, Captain Stephen Alley, had actually been born in the Yusopov Palace in 1876, and both families had strong ties.

Confirmation that Rayner, along with another officer, Captain John Scale, met with Yusopov in the weeks leading up to the assassination can be found in the diary of their chauffeur, William Compton, who recorded all the visits. The last entry was the night before the murder. According to Compton, "it is a little known fact that Rasputin was shot not by a Russian but by an Englishman". He indicated that the culprit was a lawyer from the same part of the country as Compton himself. Dewdney was indeed born some ten miles from Compton's hometown, and throughout his life described himself as a "barrister-at-law", despite never practising that profession.

Evidence that the assassination attempt had not gone quite to plan is hinted at in a letter that Alley wrote to Scale eight days after the murder, saying "Although matters here have not proceeded entirely to plan, our objective has clearly been achieved… a few awkward questions have already been asked about wider involvement. Rayner is attending to loose ends and will no doubt brief you".

Upon his return to England, Oswald Rayner not only confided to his cousin, Rose Jones, that he had been present at Rasputin's murder, but also showed family members a bullet which he claimed he had acquired at the murder scene.

None of this is absolutely conclusive evidence of what happened that night of 16 December – 17 December, but it provides a more logical evidence-based account of what occurred. Rayner burnt all his papers before he died in 1961, and his only son also died four years later.

[edit]
"The spirit of Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin"
After his death, his secretary Simonovich realized that Rasputin had moved a lot of money into his daughter Maria's account, and generally set all his affairs in order.

Weeks before he was assassinated in December 1916, according to his secretary Simanovich, Rasputin wrote the following:

"I write and leave behind me this letter at St. Petersburg. I feel that I shall leave life before January 1. I wish to make known to the Russian people, to Papa, to the Russian Mother and to the Children, to the land of Russia, what they must understand. If I am killed by common assassins, and especially by my brothers the Russian peasants, you, Tsar of Russia, will have nothing to fear for your children, they will reign for hundreds of years in Russia. But if I am murdered by boyars, nobles, and if they shed my blood, their hands will remain soiled with my blood, for twenty-five years they will not wash their hands from my blood. They will leave Russia. Brothers will kill brothers, and they will kill each other and hate each other, and for twenty-five years there will be no nobles in the country. Tsar of the land of Russia, if you hear the sound of the bell which will tell you that Grigori has been killed, you must know this: if it was your relations who have wrought my death, then no one in the family, that is to say, none of your children or relations, will remain alive for more than two years. They will be killed by the Russian people. I go, and I feel in me the divine command to tell the Russian Tsar how he must live if I have disappeared. You must reflect and act prudently. Think of your safety and tell your relations that I have paid for them with my blood. I shall be killed. I am no longer among the living. Pray, pray, be strong, think of your blessed family. -Grigori"

Why he wrote this prophetic letter, if it was not made up by Simonovich, is a mystery. Some speculate that Rasputin had a spiritual vision foreshadowing such an event. Others believe that Rasputin knew that he was widely reviled by the Russian people at the time he wrote the letter and that some wanted to kill him.

[edit]
Reputation

The contemporary press, as well as sensationalist articles and books published in the 1920s and 1930s (one of them even by Yussoupov), turned the charismatic peasant into something of a twentieth century folk belief. To Westerners, Rasputin became the embodiment of purported Russian backwardness, superstition, irrationality and licentiousness, and an object of sensational interest; to the Russian Communists, he represented all that was evil in the old regime and had been overcome in the revolution. Yet to some Russians, he remained a symbol of the voice of the peasantry, and some (Russians) to this day reject the beliefs, honoring the man. However, the Moscow Patriarchate has condemned the fledgling movement seeking canonization of Rasputin. In reference to Rasputin's promiscuity, Moscow's Patriarch Alexei II said in a statement in 2003: "This is madness! What believer would want to stay in a Church that equally venerates murderers and martyrs, lechers and saints?".

Since the fall of Communism in Russia in the 1990s, some Russian nationalists appeared to have tried to whitewash Rasputin's reputation, and use the powerful twentieth century archetype he has become for their own end. New evidence that has surfaced since the end of the Soviet Union, however, at first appeared to refute their claims of his saintliness.

This documentation is primarily in the form of notes written by individuals paid to keep surveillance on Rasputin's apartment, and to record his comings and goings as well as make note of visitors. This was no secret at the time, and Rasputin occasionally expressed his annoyance. It has been remarked in books written as early as 1919 that those notes are, at best, highly questionable, intending to "prove" the allegations of those who paid to have such "proof" documented.

[edit]
Name meaning
The name Rasputin in Russian does not mean "licentious," as is often claimed. There is, however, a very similar Russian adjective rasputny (распу́тный) which does mean "licentious" and the corresponding noun rasputnik. There is no definite explanation of the origin of this not uncommon surname which does not have a "disgraceful" meaning, as the contemporary Russian writer Valentin Rasputin would be quick to explain. There are at least two options for the root of the word. One of them is "put' ," which means "way," "road." Close nouns are rasputye, a place where the roads diverge or converge and rasputitsa (распу́тица, "muddy road season"). In occult traditions, a crossroad is a place of magical portent for good as well as evil; various folk beliefs state that one might meet the devil there, but also Saint Peter. Some historians argue that the name Rasputin may be a place name, since it roughly signifies "a place where two rivers meet", which describes the area from which the Rasputin family originates. Another possibility is "put', " which gives rise to the verb "putat' ": "entangle" or "mix up," with "rasputat' " being its antonym: "detangle," "untie," "clean up a misunderstanding," etc.

However the most well founded explanation is a standard Russian surname derivation from the old Slavic name "Rasputa" ("Rasputko") (recorded as early as in sixteenth century) with the meaning "ill-behaved child," the one whose ways are against traditions or the will of parents.

It is said that Rasputin tried to have his name changed to the inconspicuous "Novykh" after his first pilgrimage to the Holy Land ("Novykh" – from the Russian Новый, " otes to "Novice"), but that is a subject of dispute

Comments ( 3 )

get_tubed_with_me says

wikipedia.org search. It has lots of information and a REALLY crazy picture of him. He was a wild man.

SnowFaerie says

Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin (Russian: Григо́рий Ефи́мович Распу́тин) (10 January 1869 – 29 December [O.S. 16 December] 1916) was a Russian mystic with an influence in the later days of Russia's Romanov dynasty. Rasputin played an important role in the lives of the Tsar Nicholas II, his wife the Tsarina Alexandra, and their only son the Tsarevich Alexei, who suffered from hemophilia coming from Queen Victoria.

Rasputin has often been called the Mad Monk, although he was never a monk and made no secret of being married. Some considered him to be a "strannik" (religious pilgrim) or even a starets (ста́рец) ("elder", a title usually reserved for monk-confessors) and believed him to be a psychic and faith healer. He can be considered one of the more controversial characters in 20th century history, although Rasputin is viewed by most historians today as a scapegoat. He played a small but spectacular role in the downfall of the Romanov dynasty.

For a great while, Rasputin's birth date remained questionable. "It is still not known with any certainty when Rasputin was born, and all the books which deal with him and his career give differing dates; not even his biographers — and there have been many — have been able to agree. The closest one can come with certainty is sometime between the years 1863 and 1873." (Heinz Liepman, Rasputin and the Fall of Imperial Russia, 21). It was not until recently that new documents surfaced revealing Rasputin's birthdate as January 10, 1869 (Radzinsky, Edvard, The Rasputin File, 25).

Contents [hide]
1 Early life
2 Healer to the Tsarevich
3 Controversy
4 Assassination beliefs
4.1 Recent evidence
5 "The spirit of Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin"
6 Reputation
7 Name meaning
8 See also
9 External links

[edit]
Early life
Grigory Efimovich Rasputin was possibly born a peasant in a small Siberian village along the Tura River called Pokrovskoye. This village was located in the Tobolsk guberniya (now in Tyumen Oblast, Russia). When he was around the age of eighteen, he spent three months in the Verkhoturye Monastery. There, he joined the Khlysty, a renegade sect of Russian Orthodox creed. Shortly after leaving the Monastery he visited a holy man named Makariy, whose hut was nearby. Makariy had an enormous influence on Rasputin, who would model himself after the older man. Rasputin married Praskovia Fyodorovna in 1889 and had three children with her (and another child with someone else). In 1901, he left his home in Pokrovskoye as a strannik, or pilgrim. During the time of his journeying, he traveled to Greece and Jerusalem. In 1903, Rasputin arrived in Petrograd (Saint Petersburg), where he declared himself a starets, or holy man, with healing and prophetical powers.

[edit]
Healer to the Tsarevich
There are many theories as to Rasputin's early life, but the most widely accepted by historians is that of George Still, a British historian.

Rasputin was wandering as a pilgrim in Siberia when he heard reports of Tsarevich Alexei's hemophilia in 1904. The disease had been inherited from his great-grandmother (Queen Victoria). When the young Tsarevich got a bruise after he fell off of a horse, he suffered from internal bleeding for days whilst vacationing with his family. The Tsarina, looking everywhere for help, asked her best friend Anna Vyrubova to secure the help of the charismatic peasant healer in 1905. He was said to possess the ability to heal through prayer, and he was indeed able to give the boy some relief. Skeptics have claimed that he did so by hypnosis, though during a particularly grave crisis, Rasputin, from his home in Siberia, was believed to have eased the suffering of the tsarevich (in Saint Petersburg) through prayer.

The Tsar referred to Rasputin as 'our friend', a sign perhaps of the trust the family put in him. Rasputin had considerable personal and political influence on Alexandra especially after Alexei encountered a bee attack in the summer of 1905. Rasputin allegedly ran to the boy's help and yelled at the bees, "ужальте его и вы умретe!" ("Sting him and you will die!”).Supposedly the bees left because of Rasputin's holy powers, but now it is more commonly believed that the bees left because their hive was no longer being threatened. His position within the church further enabled him to influence young Alexei; it was verified that before the pair were introduced, the Tsarina lamented her son 'made Jesus sad' with his blasphemous ways. However, upon meeting Rasputin, she proclaimed exultantly that Alexei had 'learned the error of his ways'.

The Tsar and Tsarina considered him to be a man of God and a religious prophet, and Alexandra believed God spoke to her through Rasputin. This relationship can also be viewed in the context of the very strong, traditional, age-old bond between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian leadership. Another important factor was probably the Tsarina's German-Protestant origin: she was highly fascinated by her new Orthodox religion, but seems to have lacked some discernment regarding its practices.

[edit]
Controversy
Rasputin in the meantime became a controversial figure, leading a scandalous personal life with his mostly female followers from Saint Petersburg high society. Furthermore, he was frequently seen picking up prostitutes, and drinking himself into a stupor, not arriving home until early in the morning. He was unsavory, ill-mannered, bathed infrequently, and often exhibited outrageous behavior in public.

While fascinated by him, the Saint Petersburg elite did not widely accept Rasputin. He did not fit with the royal family.

Rasputin and the Russian Orthodox Church had a very tense relationship. Holy Synod frequently attacked Rasputin, and because of this, a lot of fakelore about his life were deliberately spread by the competing religion. Therefore, a lot of anecdotal evidence about Rasputin's life has to be taken with a grain of salt. Because Rasputin was a court official, however, his apartment was under 24-hour surveillance, so there exists some credible evidence about his lifestyle.

According to Rasputin's daughter, Maria, Rasputin did "look into" the Khlysty sect, and rejected it. While the Western world is particularly interested in the sexual practices of this sect (supposedly tied to a belief that one can only obtain a connection to God through sinning), Rasputin was particularly appalled by the belief that grace is found through self-flagellation.

Like most Orthodox Christians, Rasputin was brought up with the belief that the body is a sacred gift from God. Attaining divine grace through sin seems to have been one of the central secret doctrines that Rasputin preached to (and practised with) his inner circle of society ladies. The idea that one can attain grace through correction of sin is not unique. It is also understood that sin is an inescapable part of the human condition, and the responsibility of a believer is to be keenly aware of his sins and be willing to confess them, thereby attaining humility.

A 1916 cartoon suggesting Rasputin's influence over the Tzar and TzarinaDuring World War I he became a focus of accusations of unpatriotic influence at court; the unpopular Tsarina was of German descent, and her "friend" Rasputin was accused of being a spy in German employ.

When Rasputin expressed an interest in going to the front to bless the troops early in the war, the Commander-in Chief, Grand Duke Nicholas, promised to hang him if he showed up. Rasputin then claimed that he had a revelation that the Russian armies would not be successful until the Tsar personally took command. With this, the ill-prepared Nicholas proceededed to take personal command of the Russian army, with dire consequences for himself and for Russia.

While Tsar Nicholas II was away at the front, Rasputin’s influence over Tsarina Alexandra increased immensely. He soon became the confidant and personal advisor of Alexandra. He also convinced her to fill some government offices with his own handpicked candidates. To further advance his power, Rasputin slept with upper-class women in exchange for granting political favors. Because of World War I, and to a lesser extent because of Rasputin, Russia’s economy was declining at a rapid rate. Many placed the blame with Alexandra, and with Rasputin, because of his influence over her. An example:

Vladimir Purishkevich was an outspoken member of the Duma. On November 19, 1916, Purishkevich made a rousing speech in the Duma, in which he stated, 'The tzar’s ministers who have been turned into marionettes, marionettes whose threads have been taken firmly in hand by Rasputin and the Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna — the evil genius of Russia and the czarina… who has remained a German on the Russian throne and alien to the country and its people.' Felix Yusupov attended the speech and afterwards contacted Purishkevich, who quickly agreed to participate in the murder of Rasputin.

Rasputin’s influence over the royal family was used against him and the Romanovs by politicians and journalists who wanted to weaken the integrity of the dynasty, make the Tsar give up his absolute political power, and separate the Russian Orthodox Church from the state. Rasputin unintentionally contributed to the propaganda by having public disputes with clergy members, bragging over his ability to influence both the Tsar and Tsarina, and by his dissolute lifestyle. Nobles in influential positions around the Tsar as well as some parties of the Duma, the Russian parliament, clamoured for his removal from the court. Perhaps inadvertently, Rasputin added to diminishing respect for the Tsar by his subjects.

[edit]
Assassination beliefs
The legends recounting the death of Rasputin are perhaps even more bizarre than his strange life. Having decided that Rasputin's influence over the Tsarina made him too dangerous to the Empire, a group of nobles apparently lured Rasputin to the palace of their ringleader, Prince Felix Yusupov, where they served him cakes and red wine laced with measured amounts of cyanide. According to the legend, Rasputin was not affected. (It is rumored that the amount of cyanide was enough to kill ten men.) Determined to finish the job, Yusupov went upstairs, then came back down and shot him through the chest with a revolver. Rasputin fell. A half an hour or so later when Yusupov returned to check the body (or as some versions go, Yusupov came back for his jacket), Rasputin sprang to his feet and began to throttle Yusupov, who fled in horror and told the other conspirators.

Heavily drugged by this time, Rasputin attempted his escape. He bolted outside and ran across the courtyard toward the gate, threatening that he would tell everything to the Tsarina. Another conspirator shot three bullets that passed Rasputin, then he shot two more which hit Rasputin. The conspirators then clubbed him unconscious and flung him into the icy Neva River, but there was no splash. Rasputin had fallen on the ice (it was winter at this time), so they went down and cut a hole in the ice and stuffed him through it into the icy water. They were finally satisfied that the "Enemy of the State" was dead.

Three days later the body of Rasputin – poisoned, shot three times, and badly beaten – was recovered from the river and autopsied. The cause of death was drowning. His arms were apparently found in an upright position, as if he had tried to claw his way out from under the ice.

[edit]
Recent evidence
The details of the assassination given by Felix Yusupov have never stood up to close examination. The statement given to the Petrograd police on 16 December; the account he gave whilst in exile in the Crimea in 1917; his 1927 book, and the accounts given under oath to libel juries in 1934 and 1965. No two accounts were entirely identical. Until recently, lack of proof has ruled out any other credible evidence-based theories.

According to the unpublished 1916 autopsy report by Professor Kossorotov and subsequent reviews by Dr Vladimir Zharov in 1993 and Professor Derrick Pounder in 2004/5, no active poison was found in Rasputin's stomach. It couldn't have been said with certainty that he drowned, as the water found on his lungs is a common non-specific autopsy finding. All three agreed that Rasputin had been systematically beaten and attacked with a bladed weapon, but most importantly there were discrepancies regarding the number and calibre of handguns used.

This discovery may have significantly changed the whole premise and account of Rasputin's death. British intelligence reports between London and Petrograd in 1916 indicate that the British were extremely concerned about Rasputin's replacement of pro-British ministers in the Russian government, but more importantly his apparent insistence on withdrawing Russian troops from the First World War. This withdrawal would have allowed the Germans to move their Eastern Front troops to the Western Front, massively outnumbering the Allies and spelling almost certain victory. Whether this was actually Rasputin's intention is in dispute, but it is clear that the British viewed him as a real danger.

According to Professor Pounder, of the three shots fired into Rasputin's body, the third (which entered his forehead) was instantly fatal. This third shot also provides some intriguing evidence. In Pounder's view, concurred by the firearms department of the Imperial War Museum in London, the third shot was fired by a gun different to those responsible for the other two wounds. The "size and prominence of the abraded margin" suggested a large lead non-jacketed bullet. At that time, the majority of weapons used hard metal jacketed bullets, with Britain virtually alone in using lead unjacketed bullets for their officers' Webley revolvers. Pounder came to the conclusion that the bullet which caused the fatal shot was a Webley .455 inch unjacketed round, and was the best fit with the available forensic evidence.

Witnesses to the murder itself have stated that the only man present with a Webley revolver was one Lieutenant Oswald Rayner, a British officer who was attached to the SIS station in Petrograd. This account was further backed up during an audience between the British Ambassador, Sir George Buchanan, and Tsar Nicholas, when Nicholas stated that he suspected a young Englishman who had been an old school friend of Yusopov. Indeed, Rayner had known Yusopov at Oxford University. Another SIS officer in Petrograd at the time, Captain Stephen Alley, had actually been born in the Yusopov Palace in 1876, and both families had strong ties.

Confirmation that Rayner, along with another officer, Captain John Scale, met with Yusopov in the weeks leading up to the assassination can be found in the diary of their chauffeur, William Compton, who recorded all the visits. The last entry was the night before the murder. According to Compton, "it is a little known fact that Rasputin was shot not by a Russian but by an Englishman". He indicated that the culprit was a lawyer from the same part of the country as Compton himself. Dewdney was indeed born some ten miles from Compton's hometown, and throughout his life described himself as a "barrister-at-law", despite never practising that profession.

Evidence that the assassination attempt had not gone quite to plan is hinted at in a letter that Alley wrote to Scale eight days after the murder, saying "Although matters here have not proceeded entirely to plan, our objective has clearly been achieved… a few awkward questions have already been asked about wider involvement. Rayner is attending to loose ends and will no doubt brief you".

Upon his return to England, Oswald Rayner not only confided to his cousin, Rose Jones, that he had been present at Rasputin's murder, but also showed family members a bullet which he claimed he had acquired at the murder scene.

None of this is absolutely conclusive evidence of what happened that night of 16 December – 17 December, but it provides a more logical evidence-based account of what occurred. Rayner burnt all his papers before he died in 1961, and his only son also died four years later.

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"The spirit of Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin"
After his death, his secretary Simonovich realized that Rasputin had moved a lot of money into his daughter Maria's account, and generally set all his affairs in order.

Weeks before he was assassinated in December 1916, according to his secretary Simanovich, Rasputin wrote the following:

"I write and leave behind me this letter at St. Petersburg. I feel that I shall leave life before January 1. I wish to make known to the Russian people, to Papa, to the Russian Mother and to the Children, to the land of Russia, what they must understand. If I am killed by common assassins, and especially by my brothers the Russian peasants, you, Tsar of Russia, will have nothing to fear for your children, they will reign for hundreds of years in Russia. But if I am murdered by boyars, nobles, and if they shed my blood, their hands will remain soiled with my blood, for twenty-five years they will not wash their hands from my blood. They will leave Russia. Brothers will kill brothers, and they will kill each other and hate each other, and for twenty-five years there will be no nobles in the country. Tsar of the land of Russia, if you hear the sound of the bell which will tell you that Grigori has been killed, you must know this: if it was your relations who have wrought my death, then no one in the family, that is to say, none of your children or relations, will remain alive for more than two years. They will be killed by the Russian people. I go, and I feel in me the divine command to tell the Russian Tsar how he must live if I have disappeared. You must reflect and act prudently. Think of your safety and tell your relations that I have paid for them with my blood. I shall be killed. I am no longer among the living. Pray, pray, be strong, think of your blessed family. -Grigori"

Why he wrote this prophetic letter, if it was not made up by Simonovich, is a mystery. Some speculate that Rasputin had a spiritual vision foreshadowing such an event. Others believe that Rasputin knew that he was widely reviled by the Russian people at the time he wrote the letter and that some wanted to kill him.

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Reputation

The contemporary press, as well as sensationalist articles and books published in the 1920s and 1930s (one of them even by Yussoupov), turned the charismatic peasant into something of a twentieth century folk belief. To Westerners, Rasputin became the embodiment of purported Russian backwardness, superstition, irrationality and licentiousness, and an object of sensational interest; to the Russian Communists, he represented all that was evil in the old regime and had been overcome in the revolution. Yet to some Russians, he remained a symbol of the voice of the peasantry, and some (Russians) to this day reject the beliefs, honoring the man. However, the Moscow Patriarchate has condemned the fledgling movement seeking canonization of Rasputin. In reference to Rasputin's promiscuity, Moscow's Patriarch Alexei II said in a statement in 2003: "This is madness! What believer would want to stay in a Church that equally venerates murderers and martyrs, lechers and saints?".

Since the fall of Communism in Russia in the 1990s, some Russian nationalists appeared to have tried to whitewash Rasputin's reputation, and use the powerful twentieth century archetype he has become for their own end. New evidence that has surfaced since the end of the Soviet Union, however, at first appeared to refute their claims of his saintliness.

This documentation is primarily in the form of notes written by individuals paid to keep surveillance on Rasputin's apartment, and to record his comings and goings as well as make note of visitors. This was no secret at the time, and Rasputin occasionally expressed his annoyance. It has been remarked in books written as early as 1919 that those notes are, at best, highly questionable, intending to "prove" the allegations of those who paid to have such "proof" documented.

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Name meaning
The name Rasputin in Russian does not mean "licentious," as is often claimed. There is, however, a very similar Russian adjective rasputny (распу́тный) which does mean "licentious" and the corresponding noun rasputnik. There is no definite explanation of the origin of this not uncommon surname which does not have a "disgraceful" meaning, as the contemporary Russian writer Valentin Rasputin would be quick to explain. There are at least two options for the root of the word. One of them is "put' ," which means "way," "road." Close nouns are rasputye, a place where the roads diverge or converge and rasputitsa (распу́тица, "muddy road season"). In occult traditions, a crossroad is a place of magical portent for good as well as evil; various folk beliefs state that one might meet the devil there, but also Saint Peter. Some historians argue that the name Rasputin may be a place name, since it roughly signifies "a place where two rivers meet", which describes the area from which the Rasputin family originates. Another possibility is "put', " which gives rise to the verb "putat' ": "entangle" or "mix up," with "rasputat' " being its antonym: "detangle," "untie," "clean up a misunderstanding," etc.

However the most well founded explanation is a standard Russian surname derivation from the old Slavic name "Rasputa" ("Rasputko") (recorded as early as in sixteenth century) with the meaning "ill-behaved child," the one whose ways are against traditions or the will of parents.

It is said that Rasputin tried to have his name changed to the inconspicuous "Novykh" after his first pilgrimage to the Holy Land ("Novykh" – from the Russian Новый, " otes to "Novice"), but that is a subject of dispute

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