On This Day in History: December 30

The death of Rasputin

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If you’re my age, there is a fair chance the first you ever heard of Rasputin was the 1978 Boney M. disco song. Apologies if it’s in your head now. Anyway, he probably wasn’t banging the Russian queen. Although he was known to visit brothels. Probably not the greatest of love machines after all. Another myth was the “impossible to kill” one. He died fast from a bullet to the brain.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: December 30, 1916--

That fucking song. If you haven’t heard it, do NOT google. Born a lowly Siberian peasant in 1869, Grigori Rasputin became a self-proclaimed holy man even though the Russian Orthodox Church was all nah fuck that guy he’s not one of ours. He had a religious experience at age 28 and started preaching all sorts of fucked-up shit which of course gained him cult followers because humans are stupid and that’s how it works.

Around 1904 he traveled to St. Petersburg, the center of Russian power at the time, and charmed his way into high society, befriending Emperor Nicholas and Empress Alexandra. Their son Alexei had hemophilia and Rasputin was all hey I have magic powers and I’ll heal the little rapscallion for ya. The kid had some bleeding events and Grigori prayed and Alexei got better so of course it was Rasputin’s magic that did it.

As a result, over the next 10 years Rasputin’s power in the Russian court grew. Being a dick, he used it to accept bribes and sexual favors. There was a myth that he controlled Russia and Nicholas and Alexandra were his puppets, but that’s a gross overstatement. He was influential, and plenty of other people didn’t like that, seeing him as a danger to the country and the monarchy, but he wasn’t running the show. But things came to a head after 1915 when Nicholas left St. Petersburg to lead Russian troops on the Eastern Front during World War I and Rasputin had increased influence over Alexandra back home. A while later the nobles decided they’d had enough and decided to waste his hairy ass.

Prince Yusupov invited Grigori to his palace for some feasting. Allegedly the food was poisoned but Rasputin just refused to fucking die, so they shot him a bunch of times and he still didn’t die so they threw him in the freezing cold river and he finally drowned, the fucker. Except that’s a fairy tale. There was no poison, and he died from a close-range adios-motherfucker shot to the head in the early morning of December 30, 1916.

He was thrown in the butt-ass cold Malaya Nevka River though; his body was found three days later.

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