Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin

Rasputin, Grigori Yefimovich (c. 1872–1916) was Russian mystic, healer, and prophet who predicted his own death, the deaths of the czar Nicholas II and his family, and the downfall of the nobility in Russia.

Rasputin was born in Pokrovskoye to Siberian peasant parents; he may have been the distant descendent to Siberian shamans. His real name was Novykh, but he acquired the name of Rasputin, which meant “licentious” or “debauched one.”

At age 20, he married a woman four years older than he an became a farmer. Rasputin experienced a vision of the Virgin Mary calling to him, and he set out on a two year religious pilgrimage.

Despite his scruffy appearance and odd ways, Rasputin gained quick fame with his healing abilities He attracted the attention so the royal family Nicholas and Alexandra, whose sole male heir, Alexis was threatened by hemophilia.

Most of Rasputin’s intercession in appointment concerned positions in the church, but later when his influence extended to the political sector, he often cause chaos in the functioning of the government.

He also attracted suspicion because of his advocacy of sexual ecstasy as a means of religious salvation.

On the night of December 3th 1916, the group of nobles threw a party for Rasputin in St. Petersburg, serving him wine and cakes lace with cyanide. He ate and drank well but proved unnaturally hard to kill.

When the cyanide failed, the plotters shot him three times in the chest, back and head, they beat him with an iron bar. They tied him, still struggling, in a sheet and dropped it into the frozen River Neva, there he finally drowned.
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin