Grigori Rasputin

Grigori Rasputin was born to peasants in a Siberian village in 1869, had a religious conversion after a pilgrimage in 1897, and began wandering as a strannik with no official church rank. He arrived in Saint Petersburg in 1903 or 1904, captivated religious and social leaders, and by November 1905 had met Nicholas II and Alexandra. In late 1906 he became faith healer to their hemophiliac son Alexei, a role that split the court between those who saw him as mystic prophet and those who called him charlatan. When Nicholas left in 1915 to command the army, Rasputin and Alexandra consolidated power across the empire, growing deeply unpopular as military losses mounted. Conservative noblemen assassinated him in the early hours of 30 December 1916, hoping to break his hold - but historians argue his scandalous reputation had already poisoned the Romanovs' legitimacy, greasing the path to their overthrow months later.