15 Incredible Facts about Rasputin, the mystic who destroyed Tsarist Russia

Was he a saint, a demon, or just a depraved charlatan? Today Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin would probably be called a psychic and would be welcomed everywhere and everywhere in the same way. And then, at the beginning of the XX century, a Siberian peasant with a reputation as a great healer reached the very top, becoming the personal doctor of Tsarina Alexandra and her son with hemophilia…

Treatment was mainly reduced to relaxing techniques and the rejection of aspirin, at that time the newest medicine that everyone was trying to treat and which is contraindicated in hemophilia. For the royal family, Rasputin was the savior. The others treated him differently — some with respect, some with disgust, but all agreed that he exerts too much influence on the royal family, not limiting himself to "healing" and getting into everything. In addition, Rasputin behaved in accordance with his speaking surname and debauched recklessly, believing that it is useful for a believer to sin, because the more you repent, the purer you become.

By the beginning of the First World War, society was already set up against both the tsar and Rasputin, seeing in them all the troubles of Russia. Attempts on the life of the "holy elder" began, but each time he managed to mysteriously survive. Only in December 1916, another attempt to kill him succeeded. An interesting fact: after the execution of the royal family, medallions with Rasputin's photo were found on the breasts of all the women. Apparently, he had to protect and heal them even after his death, and they prayed to him as a saint. What was the secret of this man?

As unusual and amazing as Rasputin's life was, his death became just as insane. A group of conspirators - all from high-ranking families - under the leadership of Prince Felix Yusupov and Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich decided to put an end to Rasputin's influence on the tsarina, the tsar and the entire Russian government.

On December 30, 1916, they lured him to a late dinner, promising sex with Felix Yusupov's wife (and the elder, unlike Felix, was eager for women). At dinner, they tried to poison him with cyanide, mixing poison into cakes and wine. There was so much poison that Rasputin should have died on the spot, but it did not seem to affect this man.

Felix Yusupov got tired of waiting and shot Rasputin in the back — he fell. But the shot only provoked Rasputin — he rushed at Yusupov, trying to strangle him and sentencing: "Bad boy." His rich noble friends came to the prince's aid: they shot Rasputin several more times. He managed to get up and run out into the street, but they caught up with him and beat him with sticks, and then, as if that wasn't enough, they castrated him. Then they wrapped the body in a carpet and threw it into an ice hole — but after the autopsy of the found corpse, it turned out that Rasputin got into the water still alive and tried to get out, but he overcooled and drowned.

This was the last, but not the first attempt on Rasputin's life, just the previous ones turned out to be unsuccessful. So, in 1914, Rasputin was visiting his native village of Pokrovskoye near Tobolsk, and one day a woman rushed at him right on the street with a dagger and shouting: "I killed the Antichrist!" She really almost succeeded: the punch in the stomach was strong, just a little bit more - and she could have gutted Rasputin like a fish. However, he managed to grab the shaft lying on the ground and hit the woman on the head.

The attacker's name was Khionia Kuzminichnaya Guseva, and she was under the strongest religious influence of hieromonk-Black Hundred Iliodor. Iliodor (what a gift) he was a sharp opponent of Rasputin and threatened to kill him many times, stating that he had already prepared 120 bombs for this purpose. He did not use these bombs, but - there was a case - he ran after Rasputin with an axe, threatening to castrate him.

However, not by Iliodor alone! There was also such a holy man named Mitya the Blessed — so he also attacked Rasputin, trying to tear him to pieces.

Even after his death, Rasputin continued to influence people's minds — at least some part of his body. Rasputin's severed 30-centimeter penis was rumored to have been found by some lady and kept in a safe place, and later surfaced in Paris as a fetish of a group of Russian aristocrats who used it as a sex amulet. Rasputin's daughter Matryona heard about this and demanded to return the holy to her. It is said that she kept her father's genitals as a great jewel until her death in 1977.

Then Matryona Grigoryevna's things were sold, and later a certain man named Michael Augustin tried to sell the dried "Rasputin penis" at auction, but it turned out that it was a sea cucumber. Then, already in 2004, the head of the Prostate Research Center at the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences Igor Knyazkin opened in St. Petersburg Museum of Eroticism named after Rasputin. He claims that among the exhibits of the museum there is also a jar with a preserved reproductive organ of the "mad monk", bought from a certain French collector.

Rasputin consolidated his reputation as an omniscient visionary when he predicted his death. Shortly before the murder, he wrote a will with terrible prophecies and sent it to Tsar Nicholas. Russian russians, my brothers, if hired assassins kill me, then you, the Russian tsar, have no one to fear. Stay on the throne and reign. And you, the Russian tsar, don't worry about your children. They will rule Russia for hundreds of years. If the boyars and nobles kill me and they spill my blood, then their hands will remain stained with my blood, and for twenty-five years they will not be able to wash their hands. They will leave Russia. Brothers will rise up against brothers and kill each other, and within twenty-five years there will be no nobility in the country."

Somehow Rasputin managed to spend several years in a rural school, and then a couple of years in a monastery, without learning to read. It's true: the man who practically "ruled" the Russian government in 1914 and 1915, while the tsar was disappearing at the front, and the tsarina was completely under the influence of the "elder", was really illiterate.

Of course, we understand that the village of Pokrovskoye in the Tobolsk province was hardly a hotbed of science and culture, but you had to be a very confident person to be at the very top with such baggage. By the way, Rasputin was not actually a monk either: there is unverified information that he was a novice at the Verkhotursky Nikolaevsky monastery for two years, but left it at the age of 19 and went to wander around Mother Russia and "help people".

If we leave aside his personal life, we can say that Rasputin was a fighter for social justice of his time. In 1914, he opposed the war. He also advocated equal rights for everyone (including Jews, which was extremely unpopular at the time, to say the least), for supporting the poor, and against the death penalty.

There were several cases when Rasputin defended people from Jewish business circles from state persecution. For example, in 1913 there was such a high-profile trial in Kiev, accompanied by an anti-Semitic campaign - the Beilis case, when the Jew Menachem Mendel Beilis was accused of the ritual murder of a 12-year-old student of the Kiev-Sofia Theological School. Rasputin was on the side of the defense. Baylis was acquitted.

However, Rasputin would not be himself if he did not know how to get material benefits even from his beliefs. So, if he was asked to put in a good word at the imperial court in order, say, not to send his only son to the army, it cost 200 rubles (a lot of money!).

The song of the band Boney M about Rasputin does not lie: this man really was a "sex machine race" and a downright indefatigable ladies' man. There have been rumors that he is in a sexual relationship with the queen, but this seems unlikely, given her extreme hypocrisy. This woman even ordered the bath to be covered when it was not in use, so that this item would not confuse anyone.

But it seems she was practically the only aristocrat in the St. Petersburg, not succumbing to the insane sexual charisma of Rasputin. He generally had a lot of fans - they gathered in droves on the street in front of his house and waited for him to come out to them. Sometimes they waited for several days just to look at the "holy elder" and give him their gifts. He invited the chosen lucky women to his house for a private conversation. It seems that the sofa in his office has seen so much in its lifetime that we never dreamed of.

Most historians are inclined to believe that Rasputin did not have a sexual relationship with Tsarina Alexandra, but this did not prevent him from bragging and saying that he actually had.

One day Rasputin was in a restaurant with a large crowd of people and, as usual, began to boast about how much influence he had on the tsar and the tsarina, and that he slept with an "old lady". The people at the neighboring tables, interested, asked if he was really the same Rasputin. In response, he got up and pulled down his pants, exposing a huge 30-centimeter penis for everyone to see — apparently, this proof was enough.

When such rumors were passed on to the tsarina, she refused to believe them and claimed that these were the tricks of some impostor running around the city and posing as Grigory Yefimovich.

Grand Duke Nicholas, the uncle of Nicholas II, was an enemy of Rasputin and resented his influence on the tsarina. It just so happened that Tsar Nicholas was not a particularly strong man and often succumbed to pressure from his wife. It went so far that the Grand Duke threatened to hang Rasputin. That is why in 1915 Rasputin advised Nicholas II to remove Grand Duke Nicholas from the post of commander of the Russian army.

In fact, he, using the position of a "holy man", predicted that Russia would not win the war until the tsar himself led the troops — and the tsar was not ready for this task. This decision was decisive. The Russian army numbered more than a million people, and Europe was already in the fire of the First World War.

And yet the tsar followed Rasputin's advice and took command of the army himself. He left the management of the country to the tsarina, and she practically handed over the reins to Rasputin, trusting him completely. An extremely short-sighted step, I must say. It was the problems associated with the war and economic problems that led to the growing popularity of Bolshevik sentiments in Russia.

Rasputin's ideas about sin and redemption are very unusual. He said that sin brings a person closer to God, and he successfully implemented this philosophy himself every day. That is, the best way to be saved is to be in a state of constant sin. The more drunkenness and sexual orgies— the better, and after the pleasures you just go and ask God for forgiveness, and the ideal situation is when you ask forgiveness for sins all the time.

According to Rasputin's perverted philosophy, a woman who has entered into a relationship with a "holy man" assumes part of his holiness and is thus cleansed. So sex with him is a holy, God-pleasing thing. And this philosophy worked great! They say Rasputin also had such a habit - to lead women into the forest, where they danced naked, burned incense, and then arranged an orgy.

Back in 1901 in In Pokrovsky, a local priest accused Rasputin of belonging to an apocalyptic sect of "whips" who performed ecstatic rites of "joy" tied to self-flagellation, sex and paganism. There is no evidence of this, and Rasputin himself denied it, but in In St. Petersburg, for example, he began to arrange seances. He was credited with incredible hypnotic power, it was said that he could make a person's pupils dilate at will. It was also said that such a strong influence on the royal family was due to nothing other than hypnotic influence.

In general, rumors about Rasputin's healing powers went back to his youth, but his parents, for example, did not have a very high opinion of their son's abilities. Rasputin's father said that Grigory became a pilgrim only because he was extremely lazy.

Do you think that if this man was so popular with women, then he was some kind of macho or metrosexual? As if not so. Take a close look at the picture. It seems that the dude did not believe in personal hygiene and did not try to observe it, but no one bothered.

His long beard was always full of stuck crumbs after eating, he washed extremely rarely and even boasted that he had not changed his underwear for six months once. He smelled like a goat, and his teeth looked like black stumps. It is unclear why all this did not become an obstacle in sexual life, but for some reason it did not.

But we must admit that Rasputin often went to the bathhouse - not necessarily for the purpose of washing, mostly for a slightly different purpose, as we understand. He went there with women chosen by him from a multitude of admirers, and in every way rejoiced in life. After the steam room, he was whipped with brooms, and then he usually went to church to repent. "Without sin there is no repentance," we recall.

In addition to personal rituals, Rasputin also had quasi-religious rituals of his own composition. According to the book by Matryona Rasputina, her father's admirers worshipped his penis in the literal sense of the word. Their meetings, as a rule, began with some kind of religious ritual, during which he began to caress the breasts of women, and everything ended with a sin. Then Rasputin meditated for several hours.

Another passion of Rasputin, in addition to sex, was alcohol. Eyewitness accounts of the last day of his life have been preserved.

The night before December 30, 1916, the day he was killed, Rasputin spent drinking somewhere. He returned home early in the morning and was "dead drunk." After sleeping only a few hours (it is known that he slept very little at all), Rasputin went on his usual bath-sexual route, and in between entertainments managed to consume 12 more bottles of 20-degree madeira (for about 12 hours).

In the evening, still standing firmly on his feet, Grigory Efimovich went to a party at Prince Yusupov's - where, as he thought, fun, sex and alcohol were waiting for him again. Well, the party was a success.

At the age of 18, Rasputin married a peasant woman, Praskovya Fedorovna Dubrovina, who was three years older than him. They had three children. Praskovya stayed to live in Pokrovsky, while her husband Grigory sailed to St. Petersburg to its glory and its ruin.

He visited her periodically, and - surprisingly - she was completely calm about his rampant lifestyle, knowing perfectly well about him. Or maybe she was just tired or she had no way out. They say she used to say: "There's enough for everyone." Praskovya remained faithful to her husband until the very end.

By the way, as for Rasputin's love affairs: he never had any problems on the part of cuckold husbands, since he was able to convince them that he was not doing anything wrong — only good.