Grigori Rasputin’s death was as difficult as the times he lived through, much of which he had a direct hand in creating.
It reportedly took several doses of cyanide and two fatal gunshot wounds to finally put down the Mad Monk of Russia, the spiritual guru to the Tsar and Tsarina, a man widely feared as the power behind the throne of the Russian empire in the final stages of its collapse.
From Mystery To History: Grigori Rasputin’s Rise To Power
Born in 1869 in relative obscurity to a peasant family in Siberia, Grigori Rasputin didn’t show much inclination to religion early on. His spiritual awakening came after visiting a monastery at 23.
Though he never took the holy orders, he rose to prominence as a mystical religious figure; more like an Old Testament prophet than a Russian Orthodox priest.
Dressed in dirty monk’s robes and unconcerned with personal hygiene, Rasputin would be the last person you would expect to be invited to attend the aristocratic events St. Petersberg’s elite, but he was a singularly unique figure in the then-capital of the Russian Empire.
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