49 Fun Facts About Grigori Rasputin

Rasputin gained his influence through his friendship with the family of which ruler?

Nicholas II. Russia's last tsar brushed off most warnings about Rasputin: the more the press and the public attacked the healer, the more firmly the imperial family stood by him.

In which region of Russia was Rasputin born?

Siberia. He was a peasant's son from a village on the Tura River, and that was part of his pull: the tsar prized him as a plain man who spoke for ordinary Russians.

What was the name of Rasputin's home village?

Pokrovskoye. Fame never uprooted him: he kept going back to the village on the Tura River for long spells, and it now has a museum devoted to him.

A popular myth says the surname Rasputin was a nickname meaning what?

Debauched one. The Russian word rasputnik means a libertine, so the story spread that he had earned the name, but it was simply the family surname he got from his father.

Which feature of Rasputin did people who met him most often single out?

His eyes. Witness after witness described a piercing, almost hypnotic stare, which is one reason some historians think hypnosis lay behind his apparent healing.

Despite the nickname 'the Mad Monk', what was Rasputin's actual rank in the Orthodox Church?

A plain layman. He never took vows or holy orders: the 'monk' was a married peasant with three surviving children, and the tutor of the tsar's son called the label quite inaccurate.

During the First World War, rumour accused Rasputin and the empress of secretly serving which enemy power?

Germany. Alexandra had been born a German princess, so leaflets and cartoons showed the pair plotting with the Kaiser, though the claims were unfounded.

What happened in Russia less than three months after Rasputin was killed?

The tsar abdicated. He gave up the throne in March 1917, and many historians argue the scandal around Rasputin had already wrecked the monarchy's standing.

Where did Rasputin stay before he came home a changed man who had sworn off alcohol?

A monastery. He came back from Verkhoturye a changed man who had given up drink, though by his daughter's account he took to wine again once he was famous in the capital.

Rasputin lived for years as a 'strannik', a Russian word meaning what?

A wandering pilgrim. Such men tramped from church to church living on charity, and Rasputin may have walked as far as Mount Athos in Greece.

What lure brought Rasputin to the palace on the night he was murdered?

A chance to meet his host's wife. Princess Irina, the tsar's niece and a famous beauty, was the bait, though she was in fact far away in Crimea that night.

Rasputin was repeatedly rumoured to belong to which ecstatic sect, though investigations never proved it?

The Khlysty. Repeated church inquiries failed to show he had ever joined and were closed for lack of evidence, yet historians still argue over how much of the sect's teaching he borrowed.

Princesses Militsa and Anastasia, who brought Rasputin to the tsar's notice, came from which Balkan country?

Montenegro. The sisters had married into the Romanov family and were devotees of the occult, and Rasputin was not their first find: they had already steered an earlier wonder-worker to the palace.

How were Rasputin's aristocratic killers punished?

Exiled without a trial. The tsar banished one to a country estate and another to the army in Persia, a posting that kept him out of the Bolsheviks' reach when the revolution came.

From what condition did the tsarevich Alexei suffer, which Rasputin was believed able to ease?

Haemophilia. The gene came down from Queen Victoria, his great-grandmother, and because the family kept the illness secret, outsiders could not see why Rasputin was always at the palace.

Which confidante of the empress became one of Rasputin's chief advocates from around 1907?

Anna Vyrubova. Her devotion became absolute after a 1915 train crash, when Rasputin came to her bedside and, she believed, prayed her back from the brink of death.

In 1912, with the tsar's son close to death, how did the far-off Rasputin deliver his famous reassurance?

By telegram. 'The Little One will not die,' he wired, telling the doctors not to bother the boy too much; Alexei pulled through, and from then on Alexandra thought Rasputin indispensable.

Some historians think Rasputin helped Alexei simply by keeping doctors from giving him which common painkiller?

Aspirin. The widely used painkiller may have been making the boy worse, for a reason medicine only worked out decades later, so waving the doctors away could truly have helped.

In their wartime letters to each other, how did the tsar and tsarina usually refer to Rasputin?

'Our Friend'. The phrase became a test of loyalty: Alexandra objected to one new war minister by asking her husband whether the man was not 'our Friend's enemy'.

Which tsarist secret police force shadowed Rasputin day and night in his final years?

The Okhrana. Its agents were his bodyguards and his watchers at once, keeping an eye on the callers from every class of society who filled his flat from morning to night.

In a 2022 Doctor Who special, which villain posed as Rasputin at the tsar's court?

The Master. Sacha Dhawan's villain taunts the Doctor by dancing to a 1978 disco hit about Rasputin, a scene he said he had only one or two takes to get right.

Which British actor won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for playing Rasputin in a 1996 HBO film?

Alan Rickman. The film was shot in Russia inside several of the tsars' own restored palaces, and its story is narrated by the tsar's young son.

Which future star of Doctor Who played Rasputin in a 1971 film epic about the last tsar?

Tom Baker. Laurence Olivier, his boss at the National Theatre, put his name forward, and the little-known actor came away with two Golden Globe nominations.

Which prime minister ordered an investigation into Rasputin and took the findings to the tsar?

Pyotr Stolypin. Even he felt the pull: after one meeting he recalled that Rasputin plainly had great hypnotic power and had made a strong impression on him, though one of sheer revulsion.

What did the tsar do in 1915 that left the empress and Rasputin holding sway in the capital?

Took command of the army. With him away at headquarters, Alexandra hired and fired ministers so fast that critics called it 'ministerial leapfrog', and gossip credited every change to Rasputin.

What did a woman use when she tried to kill Rasputin outside his home in 1914?

A knife. Khioniya Guseva, a follower of a priest who had turned on Rasputin, stabbed him in the stomach, and he spent weeks in hospital before he recovered.

In the crisis of July 1914, what did Rasputin urge the tsar to do?

Keep Russia out of the war. He warned that fighting would bring nothing but disaster; the tsar went to war anyway, and as the defeats mounted the country blamed Rasputin and the empress.

Which prince lured Rasputin to his palace on the night of the murder?

Felix Yusupov. Married to the tsar's niece, he escaped the revolution and lived in Paris until 1967, telling and retelling in his memoirs how he had done it.

By the killers' own account, which poison laced the cakes and wine they served Rasputin?

Cyanide. Yet the autopsy found no trace of poison, and his daughter insisted he never ate sweet things, so the famous cakes may owe more to the telling than to the night.

In comics and film, Rasputin leads the wartime occult ritual that brings which demon hero to Earth?

Hellboy. In Mike Mignola's story Rasputin is working for the Nazis in 1944, but the infant demon his ritual summons is found and raised by the Allies instead.

In the 1997 animated film Anastasia, what kind of animal is Rasputin's sidekick Bartok?

A bat. Director Don Bluth said he added the wisecracking albino so audiences would know it was all right to laugh, and Bartok later got a spin-off film of his own.

Rasputin's killers threw his body from a bridge into an ice-bound arm of which river?

The Neva. They dropped him from a bridge into the Little Nevka, one of the river's delta channels, but the cover-up failed: police pulled the body from under the ice within days.

Rasputin's autopsy found a close-range shot to which part of his body?

Forehead. Oddly, neither of the two killers who published accounts of the night mentions a close-range shot to the forehead, one reason their story is doubted.

Legend says Rasputin survived poison and bullets and finally died how, a claim his autopsy contradicts?

By drowning. The tale of a man still struggling under the river ice grew with every telling, but the autopsy found he was dead before he ever reached the water.

What did soldiers of the new revolutionary government do with Rasputin's body in 1917?

Dug it up and burned it. Within weeks of the revolution his grave was opened and the coffin hauled away; exactly where and how the body was burned is still told in rival versions.

Which profession did Rasputin's daughter Maria take up after emigrating to the United States?

Circus lion tamer. An American circus billed her as the daughter of Russia's famous mad monk, and when a bear mauled her in Indiana in 1935 she went back on tour with the show all the same.

A lawsuit over MGM's 1932 film Rasputin and the Empress led Hollywood to adopt which lasting practice?

Fictitious-persons disclaimers. The wife of one of the real killers sued over a scene implying Rasputin had raped her, and won, although a studio researcher had warned of exactly that and been fired.

Which horror star played the title role in Hammer's Rasputin the Mad Monk (1966)?

Christopher Lee. By his own account he had been introduced as a small boy to two of the men who really killed Rasputin, decades before Hammer cast him in the part.

Which vocal group had a 1978 hit song called 'Rasputin'?

Boney M. More than forty years on, a TikTok dance craze sent the disco hit viral again, and a 2021 remix carried it back into the UK top twenty.

Who voiced Rasputin in the 1997 animated musical Anastasia?

Christopher Lloyd. He spoke the part but had trouble with the villain's big song, so voice actor Jim Cummings stepped in and sang it for him.

Which Welsh actor played Rasputin in The King's Man (2021)?

Rhys Ifans. His Rasputin heals a spy's wounded leg by licking it, throws up a poisoned cake, then takes on father and son in a leaping, dance-like fight set to the 1812 Overture.

Why did Soviet audiences wait a decade for Elem Klimov's Rasputin film Agony?

Censors banned it. Officials balked at its orgy scenes and at a doomed tsar they found too sympathetic, so the film stayed on the shelf until the glasnost years.

Before Rasputin, the imperial couple consulted the occultist Papus, who came to Russia from which country?

France. Papus and the Lyon healer Philippe both advised the couple in the early 1900s, which may help explain Rasputin's pull: after foreign occultists, here at last was a holy man from the Russian soil.

According to a famous story, what did Rasputin predict would follow if he were murdered?

The royal family's own deaths. Versions of the warning differ in their details, but the ending does not: the tsar, his wife and all five children were shot by the Bolsheviks in 1918.

A disputed theory says the shot that killed Rasputin was fired by a secret agent of which country?

Britain. The theory names Oswald Rayner, an intelligence officer and old friend of the prince who knew of the plot, but MI6's official historian found no trace of it in the files.

Which fortified wine, a favourite of Rasputin's, did his killers claim to have laced with poison?

Madeira. In his host's memoir Rasputin sips glass after poisoned glass 'like a connoisseur' and asks for more, and his daughter said he loved it above almost any other drink.

Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, one of Rasputin's killers, later had a notorious affair with which fashion designer?

Coco Chanel. The romance of 1921 did more for her than for him: the émigré grand duke introduced her to Ernest Beaux, the perfumer who went on to create Chanel No. 5.

Where was Rasputin buried in January 1917?

Tsarskoye Selo. He was laid to rest in the grounds of an unfinished church near the imperial palace, with the royal family at the graveside but his own wife and children not invited.

In which video game series is Rasputin the name of an ancient 'Warmind', an AI built to defend Earth?

Destiny. Bungie's Rasputin is a planetary defence computer that speaks in Russian, and a 2018 expansion sent players to Mars to protect its central core from attack.