Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin (January 10, 1869 - December 16, 1916), also known as the 'Mad Monk' was a Russian monk and professed miracle healer who can be considered one of the more controversial characters in 20th century history. He played a small but extremely pivotal role in the downfall of the Romanov dynasty that finally led to Bolshevik victory and the establishment of the Soviet Union.
Rasputin played an important role in the lives of the Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, the Tsarina Alexandra and their only son, the Tsarevich Aleksey, who was a hemophilia patient and suffered from a lot of pain.
The name Rasputin in Russian means "licentious", and may also bear the connotation of "mud", as in "rasputitsa" -- "mud season" (i.e., "rainy season"). Rasputin tried to have his name changed to the inconspicuous "Nowy" ("New") when he had gained influence in St. Petersburg, but his detractors did not let him - they used the disgraceful name further in ther campaigns against him.
Rasputin, who was born on January 10, 1869 to a Siberian peasant family in the Tyumen district, may have been the last resort of the desperate Tsar and Tsarina. They had tried everywhere to find a cure for their son and in 1905 asked the charismatic peasant healer for help. He was said to possess obscure mystical powers and he was indeed able to give the boy some relief, through the use of what was later recognised to be hypnosis which can be useful in treating the symptoms of hemophilia.
He was called "Our friend" by the tsar, a sign perhaps of the trust the family put in him. Especially on Aleksandra he had a considerable personal and political influence. They considered him to be a man of God and a religious prophet. Their relationship can also be viewed in the context of the very strong, traditional, age-old bond between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian leadership.
Rasputin in the meantime became a controversial figure, leading a scandalous personal life with his mostly female followers from the St. Petersburg high society. Furthermore, he was frequently seen picking up prostitutes and often drank himself into a stupor. Most probably, he did in fact at some stage of his life before St.Petersburg belong to the Siberian underground sect called Chlysty, who practised the attainment of divine grace through sin in ecstatic rituals that sometimes seem to have turned into mass orgies. Attaining divine grace through sin seems to have been one of the central secret doctrines that Rasputin preached to (and practiced with) his inner circle of society ladies.
During World War I he became a focus of accusations of unpatriotic influence at court; the unpopular Tsarina was of German descent, and her confidante Rasputin was accused of being a spy in German employ. Nobles in influential positions around the tsar as well as all parties of the Duma, the Russian parliament, clamoured for his removal from the court of the tsar.
Prince Felix Yussupov, an important member of the elite of St. Petersburg, finally took the lead in the decision to murder Rasputin. On the night of 29/30 December 1916 (16 December according to the Julian calendar that was still used in Russia at the time), Yussupov invited Rasputin to his palace on the pretext of his wife Irina needing his attentions as a healer. In a dining room in the palace basement, the Prince plied his guest with poisoned wine and cakes; when the Siberian peasant failed to die, he and his co-conspirators repeatedly shot Rasputin in the chest, back and head, and beat him around the head with a dumb-bell handle. They then tied the purported corpse into a sheet and dropped it through a hole in the ice into the river Neva, where the sturdy peasant finally drowned, having drifted under the ice, still fighting to free himself.
Within three months Nicholas II and the Romanov dynasty were overthrown; within 19 months the tsar and his family were all dead.
The contemporary press as well as sensationalist articles and books that were published in the 1920s and 1930s (one of them even by Yusupov, Rasputin's main murderer) turned the charismatic peasant into something of a 20th-century folk myth. To Westerners, Rasputin became the embodiment of the purported Russian backwardness, superstition, irrationality and licentiousness, and an object of sensational interest; to the Russian Communists, he represented all that was evil in the old regime and had been overcome in the revolution. Through the decades, he was even the subject of several movies.
Since the end of Communism in Russia in the 1990s, some Russian nationalists have tried to whitewash Rasputin's reputation and use the powerful 20th century archetype that he has become for their own end. New evidence that has surfaced since the end of the Soviet Union, however, clearly refutes their claims of his saintliness.