Murder of Rasputin (1916): The Death of the Tsarina's Favourite

The murder of Rasputin took place in Petrograd in the early hours of 30 December 1916 (17 December in the Old Style calendar then used in Russia). Grigori Rasputin, a Siberian peasant and self-proclaimed holy man who had become a favourite of Empress Alexandra, was lured to the Yusupov Palace and killed by a group of aristocratic conspirators. They hoped to save the monarchy, but it collapsed only ten weeks later.

Who was Rasputin?

Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was born in 1869 in the village of Pokrovskoye in western Siberia. After a religious conversion he wandered as a pilgrim and gained a reputation as a starets, a spiritual elder and healer, though he was never ordained as a priest.

He met Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra in 1905. Their only son, the heir Alexei, suffered from haemophilia, a condition in which blood does not clot properly. Rasputin appeared to ease the boy’s bleeding crises, most famously in 1912 at Spała in Poland, when a telegram from him was followed by Alexei’s recovery. To Alexandra, he became indispensable.

Influence and scandal

Rumours about Rasputin’s drinking, sexual behaviour and influence spread widely from about 1910. After Nicholas took personal command of the army in September 1915 and left for headquarters, Alexandra played a larger role in government in Petrograd, and Rasputin’s advice on appointments became a source of public outrage.

Ministers were replaced so often that critics spoke of “ministerial leapfrog”. Because Alexandra was German-born, rumours also accused the court of treachery during the war against Germany. In November 1916 the liberal leader Pavel Milyukov attacked the government in the Duma, and the monarchist Vladimir Purishkevich denounced the “dark forces” around the throne.

The plot

Prince Felix Yusupov, heir to one of Russia’s richest families and married to the Tsar’s niece Irina, decided Rasputin had to die. He was joined by Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, the Tsar’s cousin, by Purishkevich, by the army doctor Stanislaus Lazovert and by Lieutenant Sergei Sukhotin.

Yusupov invited Rasputin to his palace on the Moika embankment late on the night of 29 December (16 December Old Style), reportedly with the promise of meeting his wife, who was in fact in Crimea. He took his guest to a basement room prepared as a dining room, while the other conspirators waited upstairs.

The killing

According to the conspirators’ accounts, Rasputin was offered cakes and wine laced with potassium cyanide but showed no effect. Yusupov then shot him with a revolver. When Rasputin, apparently dead, revived and ran out into the courtyard, Purishkevich fired several more shots and hit him.

The conspirators wrapped the body and drove it to the Petrovsky Bridge, where they threw it through a hole in the ice into the Malaya Nevka river. Police found the body on 1 January 1917 (19 December Old Style).

The autopsy, conducted by Professor Dmitry Kosorotov, found three gunshot wounds, one of them a shot to the forehead that would have been fatal. Accounts of the investigation differ on whether there was water in the lungs and whether any poison was found, and the original records are incomplete.

Myths and facts

The best-known version of the story, that Rasputin survived poison and bullets and finally died by drowning, comes largely from Yusupov’s memoir published in 1927 and Purishkevich’s diary. The two accounts contradict each other in places, and both men had reasons to dramatise the night. Most historians now think Rasputin died from the gunshot wounds, most likely the shot to the head.

Another claim, that British agents took part, was popularised in the early 2000s. It focuses on Oswald Rayner, a British intelligence officer and friend of Yusupov who was in Petrograd at the time. The evidence is circumstantial and the theory remains unproven.

Aftermath

The murder was hailed in high society, but Nicholas II was furious. No one was put on trial. Dmitri Pavlovich was sent to the Persian front, which probably saved his life after the revolution, and Yusupov was exiled to his family estate. Rasputin was buried at Tsarskoye Selo near the imperial residence.

Alexandra was devastated and attended the burial with her family. Some members of the wider imperial family petitioned the Tsar for leniency towards Dmitri, which only deepened the rift between Nicholas and his relatives at a moment when the dynasty needed unity.

The killing changed little. Popular anger was directed at the whole regime, and the February Revolution overthrew Nicholas in March 1917. Revolutionary soldiers dug up Rasputin’s body that month and burned it. The imperial family he had served was killed in the execution of the Romanovs in July 1918.

Timeline

• 1869: Grigori Rasputin is born in Pokrovskoye, Siberia.
• 1905, November: Rasputin first meets Nicholas II and Alexandra.
• 1915, September: Nicholas II takes personal command of the army.
• 1916, 30 December (17 Dec Old Style): Rasputin is killed at the Yusupov Palace.
• 1917, 1 January: His body is recovered from the Malaya Nevka river.
• 1917, March: The monarchy falls; Rasputin’s body is exhumed and burned.

Why it matters

The murder of Rasputin showed how deeply the Russian elite had lost faith in its own rulers. Rather than strengthening the throne, it exposed the isolation of Nicholas and Alexandra on the eve of the revolution, and it became one of the most mythologised events of the twentieth century.