Four Persistent Myths About Rasputin, the Infamous Russian Bogeyman
Don’t believe the hype; he wasn’t the devil
A few days ago I wrote an article about Vladimir Putin’s quest to become a new Russian Tsar. In researching the period of the Russian Empire, I repeatedly came across a man who is at least as famous as the Tsars, and perhaps more famous than any except Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. That man is Grigori Rasputin, the mad monk who exerted a stunning amount of influence over the last Tsar and Tsarina, Nicholas II and Alexandra.
Rasputin’s impact on every facet of court life just prior to the Russian Revolution cannot be overstated. He was a political, military, religious, medical, and mystical advisor to the royal family; this was particularly true of Alexandra, who firmly believed Rasputin was the only man alive who could keep her hemophiliac son Alexei from dying. Rasputin was an enigma: a heavy drinker and petty thief in his youth, he experienced a dubious religious conversion that led him to become a wandering mystic. This eventually led him to the Court of the Romanovs.
Both during his life and in the century since his murder at the hands of nobles alarmed by his influence over the Tsar and Tsarina outlandish myths have grown up around Rasputin. In death he has become even more ominous a figure…
