Grigori Rasputin: The Mystic Who Enchanted A Queen And Whose Prophecy Ended The Russian Empire

Last Updated:December 04, 2025, 16:53 IST

Rasputin was a Siberian wanderer whose hypnotic eyes and whispered prophecies drew Russia's royal family into a web of blind faith, scandal, and political ruin

Over a century after his death, Rasputin's legacy of power and mysticism still stirs strong emotions in Russia. (News18 Hindi)

As New Delhi prepares to host Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday for a high-security, two-day visit, the capital is steeped in anticipation. The Russian leader’s name carries a certain aura of power. Yet history remembers another man whose shadow once loomed even larger over Russia, a mystic whose very name still unsettles the country more than a century after his death.

He was Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, the Siberian wanderer whose hypnotic eyes and whispered prophecies drew Russia’s royal family into a web of blind faith, scandal, and political ruin. It was said that a single prediction from this dishevelled mystic sealed the fate of the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty.

Who Was Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin?

Born in 1869 in the icy backwater village of Pokrovskoye, Rasputin grew up as a troubled, wayward youth. The villagers called him the “mad monk", a man who drifted between alcohol, petty theft, and spiritual trances. Yet there was something captivating about him.

While some claimed his eyes held an inexplicable force, others believed that he possessed healing powers. By the early 1900s, drawn by a mixture of religious fervour and wanderlust, Rasputin arrived in St Petersburg. He looked every bit the vagrant with long, matted hair, unwashed robes, and the odour of a man who had slept on streets and in stables. But his voice, his presence, and his uncanny ability to sway people soon opened doors even the most polished clergy struggled to enter.

Rasputin’s ascent from drifter to imperial confidant began in 1907, when the royal household found itself gripped by despair. Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna’s only son, the young Tsarevich Alexei, was battling hemophilia, a condition that made even a minor injury potentially fatal. Doctors had surrendered hope. But one night, as the child bled uncontrollably, Rasputin was summoned. He sat by the boy, murmured prayers, stroked his frail body; and the bleeding stopped.

Alexandra, overwhelmed and trembling with relief, believed she had witnessed a miracle. From that moment, Rasputin became “our friend", a spiritual guardian whose counsel she trusted above generals, priests, and ministers.

His influence only deepened. Rasputin moved freely through the palace, whispering advice on matters of state, recommending and dismissing ministers, and convincing Alexandra that Russia’s destiny was intertwined with his survival. He made a chilling prophecy, “As long as I live, the Romanov throne will stand. When I die, the empire will fall."

Beyond the palace walls, Rasputin lived a dual life. By day, he presented himself as a holy man; by night, he revelled in debauchery. St Petersburg’s elite women including some princesses and noblewomen, and the wives of influential ministers flocked to his gatherings. He preached a strange doctrine that purity could only be achieved through sin, and his notoriety surged with every whispered rumour of clandestine affairs. Politicians muttered that he had reduced the imperial court to a puppet show operated by a mystic with a taste for excess.

As Russia stumbled through the chaos of World War I, Rasputin advised Nicholas II to take direct command of the army, a disastrous decision that left the Tsar at the battlefront and Rasputin wielding unprecedented authority in the capital. With each passing month, resentment hardened into rage among the nobility.

It was this anger that culminated in a chilling winter night on December 30, 1916. Prince Felix Yusupov, scion of Russia’s wealthiest family, plotted an elaborate assassination. Rasputin was lured to Yusupov’s palace, offered wine and cakes laced with cyanide, and, according to legend, consumed them without effect. A gunshot followed. Rasputin collapsed, only to rise again and flee into the snow. More bullets were fired. Still he clung to life, forcing his killers to bind him and hurl him into the frozen Neva River. When his body was recovered, his prophecy came roaring back to haunt the throne.

Just fourteen months later, in February 1917, the Russian Revolution erupted. Nicholas II abdicated. The following year, in July 1918, the Bolsheviks executed the Tsar, the Tsarina, and their five children in a dimly lit cellar, an execution that extinguished the Romanov dynasty forever, exactly as Rasputin had foretold.

More than a century has passed since then, yet the mere mention of Rasputin still unsettles Russia. His grave no longer exists; even his remains were burned. But his photographs, especially those uncanny, unblinking eyes, linger in Russian households, often kept as talismans believed to ward off evil. To some, he remains a saint; to others, the embodiment of darkness.

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