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- The official explanation is that Prince Felix Yusupov and his four co-conspirators killed Rasputin. One cold December evening, Rasputin went to the Yusupov Palace in St Petersburg at the invitation of Prince Felix Yusupov. Rasputin's dead body was recovered from the frozen Neva River two days later.
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Prince Felix Yusupov lured Rasputin to Youssupov Palace on the night of December 29, 1916 to commit one of the world's most famous murders
Mar 4, 2024 · A group of Russian nobles conspired to kill Rasputin on December 30, 1916, in the basement of the Moika Palace, the St. Petersburg residence of Prince Felix Yusupov, one of the richest...
Jun 20, 2017 · Although pronounced dead by the doctor, Rasputin shortly revived and lunged after Felix. Exiting the palace, Rasputin ran toward the gate. Vladimir Purishkevich, however, fired several shots at the fleeing man, eventually bringing him down as Felix proceeded to beat Rasputin with a rubber club.
- Overview
- From country to court
- Entering royal circles
- Dangerous influence
- Less-than-kind depictions
- Danger to Russia
- Murder of the monk
- The plotters
- Murder attempts
- The fallout
The mystic peasant Rasputin was a trusted adviser of the Russian royal family but made deadly enemies. His violent 1916 assassination is the stuff of legend, leaving historians to piece together what is fact and what is fiction.
Penetrating stare
Photographed in the year of his death, Grigory Rasputin was famous for the intensity behind his piercing blue eyes, revealed in this colorized image.
On the night of December 16-17, 1916*, a murder took place at one of Russia’s grandest palaces. The crime marked the culmination of an ugly, concerted campaign against both the victim and his imperial Russian patrons. It would rock the tsarist elite at a time when World War I was ravaging Europe and Russia was inexorably sliding toward revolution.
More than a hundred years later, the sensationalist reporting of the murder of Grigory Rasputin—for so long erroneously portrayed as a mad monk—has persisted in distorting the truth about his close relationship with Russia’s last tsar and tsarina, Nicholas and Alexandra. How this lowly peasant and former horse dealer achieved such unique access to the reclusive Romanovs alarmed the imperial inner circle, who demonized Rasputin and those who followed him.
*Editor's note: The dates in this article correspond to the Julian calendar that was in use in Russia at the time. There is a 13-day lag with respect to the Gregorian calendar used now.
Born in 1869 to peasant farmers, Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin grew up in Pokrovskoye—an obscure village in western Siberia some 1,600 miles from St. Petersburg. Little is known for sure about his upbringing, as records are scarce. At age 19, he married Praskovya Fyodorovna Dubrovina, who later bore him four children. When he left home in 1892, his family stayed behind. Rasputin is said to have experienced a religious epiphany and spent three months at a monastery, though he never became an ordained priest. Instead, he wandered Russia for several years seeking personal spiritual enlightenment—very much in the tradition of the itinerant Russian holy man.
By 1905 Rasputin had established himself in St. Petersburg as a spiritual guru and healer at a time when interest in alternative medicine and the occult were fashionable among Russia’s elite. There, he gathered around himself a clique of adoring, mainly female, acolytes who revered him as a man of God. But soon rumors began to circulate about Rasputin’s libidinous behavior as a heavy drinker and sexual predator.
Rasputin led a strange and contradictory double life. In the presence of his admirers, he cultivated a persona that was sober, wise, and advocated purity of body and mind. While away from them, Rasputin would sometimes run riot as a drunken, sexual degenerate. Projecting a perpetual pious image was hard work; Rasputin was a deeply conflicted man, torn between his profound religious beliefs and a deep, rebellious compulsion to sin.
The Russian public was already deeply suspicious of Rasputin when he was introduced to the tsar and tsarina in 1905. His reputation as a healer drew him in closer to the royal family because of the poor health of their son and heir, Tsarevitch Alexei, who suffered from hemophilia. In 1908 Rasputin allegedly used his abilities to ease Alexei’s suffering during a severe episode. Alexandra saw Rasputin as a healer and relied on him to help in Alexei’s care.
Rasputin, however, could not limit his role to health and spirituality. He also began offering political advice to both Nicholas and Alexandra. In doing so, he began making enemies for himself in the Russian aristocracy and government. Other members of the Romanov family despised Rasputin as a quack and con man. Alexandra became estranged from her own sister, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna, after she warned the tsarina about Rasputin. The situation grew so dire that even Alexandra could not protect her beloved “Father Grigory” from the hatred of her own family and friends.
In 1915 World War I was raging, and Nicholas left Russia to spend time on the eastern front. Lonely and distraught, Alexandra began spending more and more time in Rasputin’s company. Rasputin now had his own personal chauffeur to take him out to Tsarskoye Selo for private prayer meetings with the tsarina.
(Has the U.S. ever fought on Russian soil? You’d be surprised.)
Gossip about their relationship took an ugly turn. Concern grew within the Romanovs that Alexandra was leading the family into disrepute. Lurid rumors flew that her relationship with Rasputin had become sexual, as pornographic images of them were circulated in St. Petersburg. Rasputin and Alexandra were talked of as dark forces who would bring Russia to ruin.
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Depicting him as the true ruler of Russia, a caricature shows Rasputin manipulating Nicholas and Alexandra.
Depicting him as the true ruler of Russia, a caricature shows Rasputin manipulating Nicholas and Alexandra.
Rasputin had long been the target of death threats, and soon there were open and widespread calls for his removal—by whatever means necessary. After a knife attack by a woman in June 1914 left him with a near-fatal stomach wound, he was accompanied everywhere by a police agent. No one could get close enough to kill him because Rasputin was always carefully guarded.
Rasputin’s alleged influence over the tsarina generated serious concerns among several senior members of the Romanov family. They tacitly encouraged a murder plot hatched by a young, impetuous, and inexperienced 29-year-old: Prince Felix Yusupov.
Born into one of Russia’s wealthiest families and married to Nicholas II’s niece Irina, Yusupov considered it his patriotic duty to rid Russia of Rasputin. With Rasputin out of the picture, Yusupov hoped to restore the reputation of the tsar, as well as help Nicholas rely more on his extended family, the nobility, and the Duma.
In October 1916 Yusupov inveigled his friend (and Tsar Nicholas’s cousin), 25-year-old Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, into planning the murder with him. At the end of November, they had recruited Vladimir Purishkevich, a member of the Russian State Duma who had already openly lambasted Rasputin. Two others were taken on to assist in the final plan: a Life Guards officer, Lieutenant Sergei Sukhotin, and a Polish doctor, Stanislav Lazovert, who was to help with administering the poison—potassium cyanide crystals—which Yusupov had obtained.
The best known account of the events of December 16-17, 1916, comes from Yusupov’s own writings published some 10 years after Rasputin’s death. In La Fin de Raspoutine (and later in his memoirs, Lost Splendor, that followed in the 1950s) Yusupov lays out the assassination plans from start to finish. To begin, Yusupov had already made Rasputin’s acquaintance in the preceding weeks by consulting him a few times about health problems.
The Yusupov family owned a palace on St. Petersburg’s Moika Canal, which was chosen as the location for the murder. Yusupov would invite Rasputin to the Moika to meet his wife, the beautiful Princess Irina. To conceal the visit and elude his security detail, Rasputin would arrive very late on December 16.
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Nicholas was extremely fond of his cousin Dmitri Pavlovich, pictured here, whose involvement in Rasputin’s murder was a heavy blow to the sovereign.
Royal assassin
Nicholas was extremely fond of his cousin Dmitri Pavlovich, pictured here, whose involvement in Rasputin’s murder was a heavy blow to the sovereign.
Album
Yusupov offered Rasputin the cakes. At first he refused, then reluctantly took one, then a second. Nothing happened. Yusupov could not understand why the poison had not worked. He then persuaded his guest to sample Madeira wine from his own Crimean vineyards, having managed surreptitiously to slip some poison into the glass. Rasputin drank the wine “like a connoisseur,” then took some more, but still, mystifyingly, the poison had no effect.
Things continued in this way for some time. Rasputin prevailed on Yusupov to entertain him with a guitar. He drank more tea, his head drooped, and his eyes closed. He was tired—but yet, more than two hours later, the poison had not done its work.
All this time Yusupov’s co-conspirators were waiting upstairs. Eventually, an increasingly frantic Yusupov went to consult with them. Purishkevich recalled Yusupov frantically telling them that “the only effect that I can see of the poison is that he is constantly belching and that he dribbles a bit.”
The trio resolved they had no option but to shoot Rasputin. Yusupov removed a Browning pistol from his writing desk and returned to the basement, where he found Rasputin breathing heavily and complaining of a heavy head and a burning sensation in his stomach. As Rasputin stood up, Yusupov raised his pistol and fired at him, hitting him in the side of the chest. Pavlovich and Purishkevich rushed down to see Rasputin lying on the bearskin rug. Lazovert declared that Rasputin was dead, and the conspirators disappeared upstairs.
Yusupov was uneasy and went back down to double-check the body. As he drew close, Rasputin’s eyes suddenly opened wide: “the green eyes of a viper staring at me with an expression of diabolical hatred,” he recalled.
Suddenly, with a superhuman effort, Rasputin lunged to his feet and rushed at Yusupov with an animalistic roar, trying to grab his throat. Despite the poison and the bullet in his chest, Rasputin seemed to find enormous strength but then crashed onto his back. Yusupov’s account at this point strains credibility, ascribing demonic powers to the injured man.
Rumors of Rasputin’s disappearance and probable murder began to circulate rapidly in St. Petersburg. At the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, the tsarina waited anxiously for news while the police initiated a search. On December 19 Rasputin’s body—his arms frozen over his head in an eerie gesture—was found by the river police near Krestovsky Island. When the news got out, the public rejoiced on the streets, said prayers of thanks in church, and lit candles in front of the icons. Yusupov and Pavlovich were feted as national heroes.
Rasputin’s remains were taken in a Red Cross van to a home for army veterans. On Nicholas II’s specific instructions, an autopsy was conducted on the still frozen body that evening. A doctor named Dmitry Kosorotov ascertained that Rasputin had been shot three times by different caliber revolvers: once in the left side of the chest, another in the back, and the fatal shot—fired at point-blank range, possibly from a .455 Webley revolver—in the head. There were no traces of poison found in the body, only alcohol.
Dec 31, 2016 · Prince Felix Yusupov and his wife Princess Irina Alexandrovna (circa 1925) Yusupov claimed that he took Rasputin into a basement where he fed him cakes laced with poison.
Jul 11, 2021 · Soon, the Tsar’s nephew-by-marriage, Prince Felix Yusupov, came to the conclusion that only Rasputin’s death would end his control of the Romanovs and restore the legitimacy of the Russian monarchy, which was quickly being destroyed by Rasputin’s actions.
Dec 17, 2012 · The official account given by each of the conspirators, including Prince Felix Yusupov and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, among other members of the political elite, doesn’t line up with each...
