The Rasputin Episode, Part Two: A Death and Mysterious Rumors

Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Thank you, as always, so much for tuning in. Let's hear it for the number one nemesis of Ohio, our super producer, Mr. Max Williams.

I just got to say, I mean, we've recently had a lot of good claps, but that was not just like a perfectly timed one. But the amount of enthusiasm that we all had in our clap was so impressive. It was a loud one.

Have we talked about what the clap is to the folks at home? I don't know.

I don't know.

I mean, nine years in, I think we can break the fourth wall some.

I suppose. It's a thing we do that we don't really need to do, but we do it out of a sense of duty and history and in tradition where we clap all at the same time as Max counts down. Sort of like in Wayne's World where they go three, two, one. And then they point.

Oh, wait. I was programmed.

Yeah, we were all programmed. It's like an old school way of syncing up our audio because we're actually not in the same place.

What? Hey, folks, before you listen to this episode, we've got a little bit of housekeeping. First off, that is the legendary Mr. Noel Brown coming live and direct from Nashville, Tennessee. Yeah, this is Ben Bullen for tax purposes. And this is episode two of our anniversary show regarding a guy named Greg.

Oh, that'd be a better name for the biography or the book regarding Greg.

You're still so mad about that story. About that story. So in a previous life. Yeah. In a previous episode, Noel, you got you got rightly irritated by an historian's book about Grigori Rasputin that was just titled. What was it? Rasputin colon a life. A life. Yeah.

A life of what?

Right. So our last thing at the top here, thank you so much for joining us, folks. We are getting into deep water. So some of the stuff we are exploring today may not be appropriate for all audiences. Yeah.

Episode one was the appropriate one. Yeah. And we still talked about blood sugar sex magic.

We did. We are joining the story right in the moment where our pal Greg has ascended. Yeah, he's ascended. He's used his Machiavellian wiles to make increasingly important social connections in St. Petersburg, leading up to him meeting the royal family.

And here's what we do know for sure in a story full of a lot of things that we don't know for sure. Rasputin got super tight with two aristocrats from Montenegro, these so-called black princesses, Melitza and Anastasia from the movie.

Which we're big fans of and inspired an episode in the future. These two princesses, had married cousins of Tsar Nicholas II. And so they had the access to vouch for Rasputin. And they said, look, he's really a mystic dude. He's a legit spiritual leader. He has crazy cool powers. You run Russia. You got to meet this guy.

Dude, you know who does the voice of Rasputin in Anastasia?

I knew you were looking this up.

I was looking up a couple of things. I'll get to the second one in a minute. But it was Doc Brown himself, Christopher Lloyd.

That makes so much sense.

I can picture it. I can't picture it, actually. I can't picture the voice, but I bet you he does a hard Russian accent. But, dude, Anastasia was from the Don Bluth of the Bluth Company, of The Secret of NIMH and Five Olts. Goes West and An American Tale and The Land Before Time. All the bummer ones from the late 80s and early 90s.

Yeah, the deep cuts that really stay with you. All of those go to heaven.

Sorry, carry on.

That's perfect.

Wait, wait, The Land Before Time was a bummer one?

Are you joking?

Of course it was a bummer.

It's sadder than Bambi when Littlefoot's mother dies. That's the inciting event. That's the inciting event of the whole adventure.

I impressed that part of the movie.

That's the whole reason that he goes a-wandering and meets a ragtag gang of anthropomorphic dinos.

I'm going to go cry.

It's okay to have feelings. I have about three a year.

Watch The Land Before Time, and you might be able to crank that up to four.

Thanks, man. Hope springs eternal, and that is exactly where our buddy Nick II is coming from, because despite ruling one of the most important empires on the planet— Stuff is not going well at the czar's household. He has a bunch of kids. He's got four daughters. He's got one son, a kid named, well, we'll call him Alexei.

For tax purposes.

Yeah. And pronunciation.

Right.

Yes. For tax and pronunciation purposes. This poor kid, through no fault of his own, suffers from hemophilia.

Which was a kind of a common princely ailment that often stemmed from inbreeding. Inbreeding.

Yeah, yeah.

It's the one where your blood's real thin and you bleed out real easily if you get a little boo-boo.

Yeah, your blood doesn't clot as well. So at the time, there is not much in the way of legitimate medical treatment for hemophilia. And the czar is worried on two fronts. First, he's trying to be a good dad. He wants his son to, you know, not die.

Not die, right. But then there's also the whole line of succession to consider.

Yeah, that's our second thing. He's the ruler of Russia and he doesn't want to endanger his family's grip on the throne. So he and his wife, Alexandra, are growing increasingly desperate. It is no surprise then that when his Montenegrin cousins come up to him and tell him these things, wild tales of a strange man from Siberia that he kind of considers it as an option.

Well, I'll try anything at this point, you know.

Yeah, yeah. That's what he was saying. That's exactly what he was saying, yeah. And so it comes to pass that on November 1st of that year, Greg meets up with Nick. Rasputin meets up with the Tsar at the Peterhof Palace. We know the exact date was November 1st, Because old Nick writes about it in his diary, which he had. Yes, he did.

And he kept up with the regularity.

Yes, yes, just so. And he says, he and his.

Dear diary. He says, I met a strange man today. Yeah.

He notes that he and his empress, Alexandra Feodorovna, made the acquaintance of a man from God. Okay. Grigori from Dobloch province.

Yeah. A man for, wow. We met him. We met a man from God today. Uh, we're not a hundred percent sure what exactly they talked about, but it's very likely that they discussed religious matters as well. as the trouble with their young son, Alexi, and his, you know, his blood, his bum blood. And Greg probably tried his best to come off as charming, a little enigmatic, as was his reputation. And most importantly, Ben, as you point out, like ZZ Top levels of cool.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because of the beard.

Yeah. Yeah. He had a cool beard. He was one pair of Ray-Bans away.

Right. So, We should have gone with the sunglasses version of the logo.

We should have. It's never too late, right? A little bit after this hang sesh, our buddy Greg goes back home to Siberia and he doesn't make his way to St. Petersburg again until July of the next year. And once he gets back to the big city, he sends the ruler of Russia a telegram. And it's got kind of this you up vibe. He's saying, hey, Nick, can I send you an icon of Saint Simeon that I was talking about earlier, the patron saint of the Urals? If the legend about Greg receiving a vision of this saint is actually true, then, Noel, I think we can reasonably assume he told the Tsar about his visions during their first meeting, and he may have used that story to support his claims of magical power.

For sure. This also would seem to be his kind of calling card, you know, this particular patron saint that he claims to have been visited by in the night. Nick and Alexandra were pretty taken by this in a good way. They met with Rasputin on the 18th of July, and then once again in October, and the last meeting was a huge opportunity for our boy Greg. His next step towards world domination Here, he was able to meet the Tsar's children.

Yeah. And this is a part, folks, where Noel, Max, and I may not entirely agree. Guys, I think Rasputin was planning this all along.

You think he was playing the long game from the start, working his way up to getting in with the clergy, getting introduced around to the inset there in St. Petersburg, and ultimately with the end goal. of influencing politics.

Yeah, man, because we don't know exactly when Rasputin learned of Alexei's hemophilia, but it's fair to assume that he caught wind of it through the aristocratic rumor mill before his first meeting with the Tsar. In August of 1906, he asked for permission to pray for Alexei's health. And after Rasputin meets the boy one time, the Tsarina, the Empress Alexandra, is sold. And she's walking around, she's saying, oh, this guy Rasputin, he genuinely does have holy powers. Not once, but multiple times, he has used these powers to stop my son's pain and to staunch his bleeding.

He's a magic man. It's true. At least that's what she believed. And her conviction only grew from there, especially once it came to be the spring of 1907 when the Tsarina summoned Rasputin to pray over her son after he had a very dangerous internal hemorrhage, which as we know, if your blood's not clotting, that's going to potentially be a death sentence. So the boy did recover the next morning.

This also won over Alexandra's close friend, Anna Virbova. who would later become one of Rasputin's biggest boosters and disciples.

Yeah, and Rasputin was able to leverage these apparent miracles to great success. He insulated himself further and further into the inner life of the Tsar. If we fast forward a little bit, we're going to be jumping in time here. If we fast forward to the summer of 1912, again, Alexei has a problem. He develops a hemorrhage in his thigh and groin after a rough carriage ride near the imperial hunting grounds. This creates a large hematoma, and it brings with it a serious fever, a lot of pain, the genuine possibility of death. At the time this occurs, Rasputin is back in Siberia, so the Empress of Russia is sends a frantic telegram and she's like, oh, please, Rasputin, you holy man, pray for my Alexei. And Rasputin responds

pretty lickety split for the telegram system at the time. We have the direct quote. God has seen your tears and heard your prayers. Do not grieve. The little one will not die. Do not allow the doctors to bother him too much. Ben, that right there is a big key.

Because as we know, a lot of times in these early-ish days of medicine, practicing medicine really did have a different meaning because a lot of times they would do more harm than good when you had doctors poking around, bloodletting, doing all kinds of things like that, potentially using contaminated instruments.

So the suggestion to maybe have the doctors just back off a little bit may have been enough to cause the boy to heal kind of naturally.

Yeah, I appreciate that point you make about bloodletting. That is not a good course of treatment for a hemophiliac. The czar, of course, has the best medical minds in the country at his beck and call. These moffins are keep and watch over young Alexei day and night. By the next morning, the kid still is not getting better.

He very well could pass away. But the empress, Alexandra... knows that Rasputin is praying for her son. So she's encouraged and lo and behold, the kiddo stops bleeding the next day and the doctors are flummoxed. One of them comes up a lot in several of the accounts we've read about this is a guy named Dr.

S.P.

Federov. And he says this recovery is, quote, wholly inexplicable from a medical point of view.

Based on what they knew at the time. Yep.

Important caveat.

That same doctor, Fedorov, would later really kind of understand the empress's perspective in saying Rasputin would come in, walk up to the patient, look at him, and spit. Okay, that's a new one. The bleeding would stop in no time. How could the empress not trust Rasputin after that?

Okay, yeah, it's a good question, Doc, because this bizarre recovery, nigh inexplicable, remains one of the most mysterious chapters of the whole Rasputin legend. And honestly, from a statistical standpoint at this time in history, the kid should have died. We don't know exactly how he recovered, but it leads us to a fascinating run of speculation.

Here's where we really cross over into stuff they don't want you to know territory.

Yeah, man. It's possible that Rasputin actually did help Alexei by advising the doctors not to mess with him. It's nuts because, okay, he may have been able to use hypnosis to stem Alexei's bleeding, which we know sounds crazy to your earlier point, but some modern doctors in 2026, even now, argue that hypnotic techniques can be effective in managing hemophilia. Max, let's get a sound cue. This is not medical advice.

To do with calming him down, right? And like lowering his blood pressure potentially just literally by lulling him into a calmer state. What happens if you ever like have a heart monitor or like a fitness tracker and you do say like yoga or like some kind of really low impact yoga or meditation, you will see your heart rate go down significantly. Yeah.

Actually, I really like the way you put that because it does make sense. That may be the efficacy. The most interesting theory that we have found comes from folks like Alexei's French tutor. It's a guy named Pierre Gilliard. He and others argue that Rasputin actually controlled Alexei's bleeding and By stopping doctors, the best doctors in the country, from giving the kid a newfangled drug called aspirin.

Which is a blood thinner.

They didn't know that though, right?

They didn't know. They knew it could relieve all sorts of pain, but... People didn't learn it was an anti-clotting agent. So some people take it, older people take it for that very reason. It's got a dual purpose, but they didn't know about that. People didn't learn it was an anti-clotting agent until the 1950s. So other people might have hemophilia and take aspirin for pain and they would die as their blood refuses to clot. So, you know, by hook or by crook, Rasputin banning medical treatment for Alexei may have actually saved the kid's life.

You know, and this is a story you hear often, but I watched the Netflix series Death by Lightning, which is about James A. Garfield and his assassin, Charles J. Guto, I believe was his name. Really, really interesting four-episode miniseries. But what ultimately killed Garfield was the doctors poking around in there way too much.

Right, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Jump in here. Isn't Garfield the one where Alexander Graham Bell got involved in stuff?

It is the one. Yes. Yeah.

Or was it somebody else? It was Graham Bell.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And both of those folks are dead.

Yes. Great.

Just quick update on Bell and Garfield. So now we're in a situation, if we're Rasputin, where we are set for life. So long as the son of the emperor survives, we don't really have to do anything else. We don't have to struggle as a Siberian peasant anymore. Unfortunately, there's a bit of an ego and a bit of a dark side to this so-called miracle man. Rumors start with the other children, the four daughters, but Noel We gotta do something else before we get to that.

That's right, Ben. We have to paint a little bit of a larger picture here because the actual rulers of Russia at the time truly believed that man was God's gift, that he was imbued with mystical powers.

A magic man like the Barracuda song.

He's a magic man.

Oh, wait. What's the band?

Well, Barracuda is another song.

Yeah, but it's the same band.

Magic Man song band. It is Heart.

Heart. It was Heart who did Barracuda and Magic Man.

Correct. Barracuda. We got there. We did. They believe in this guy. They're all in. They're all in with Rasputin. And they, of course, are putting a lot of faith in him. They are using, they are taking advice and I mean, that's the kind of advice that can become policy.

Right. Yeah.

That can truly change the course of history.

Yeah. Old Tsar Nick II even gives Rasputin an official position on the court. He deems him or hires him as the lampadnik, lamplighter. The entire job of the lamplighter is to keep the lamps lit before religious icons or shrines throughout the palace. Interesting gig. Yeah, it's also somehow a real job. Yeah, I know. It reminds me of, not naming names, but it reminds me of some of our more big britches friends who have an entourage of inexplicable jobs. Like this guy, Snacks. What's he do? He gets the snacks.

And to jump in here real quick, it does remind me of, we actually have an episode from a number of years ago about a Russian empress who, that was just like, everyone hated her and she was really mean and she became really bitter. I mean, she had an ice palace and there was someone who stood inside of like a statue of an elephant and blew water out.

So it's kind of like a Russian thing to have the most awful jobs.

For sure. Well, in this case, it was a feature, not a bug because it gave him access. Yeah.

He had free roam of the joint as a Lampidnik. He was able to, Get into any room in the palace, essentially, even one without an icon or a shrine. He was able to walk around the grounds as he pleased and.

Traverse the secret passages, no doubt.

Oh, yes, sir. And he had his... He asked Tsar Nick for a favor. And this calls back to our first episode on Rasputin. He said, hey, buddy... Can you help me officially change my name? I don't want to be Rasputin anymore. I want to be Rasputin Novie, which means Rasputin New.

Yeah, he had that New Coke feel. So despite his priestly persona, I guess, I mean, he had styled himself as a holy man.

Yeah.

It was kind of an open secret that he was all about accepting bribes, which included sexual favors. The rumors of all of the, you know, canoodling with his various followers over the years continued to follow him around, likely for a very good reason. He also ruthlessly worked behind the scenes in order to, you know, expand his influence in whatever situation he found him in. And in terms of like the society that he lived in, this is about as high as you can get in terms of expanding your influence. So he was going to take that opportunity and run with it. You can say a lot of things about this guy, but he was not a good dude.

Yeah. Let's be clear. Not a good dude. Along with his followers, he gained a lot of enemies. These old rumors of heresy and sexual abuse from his hometown were Pokrov Yusko, they follow him like a shadow to St. Petersburg. The prime minister orders an investigation by the secret police. In fact, the prime minister goes to the czar himself and he's like, Nick, you got to get rid of this creepy guy. The prime minister and the secret police are unsuccessful. They have proven shenanigans. Rasputin is not exiled.

His influence keeps growing.

Yeah, yeah, he really had his creepy claws in the royal family. So now Rasputin wasn't necessarily trying to keep all of this stuff secret anymore because I think he just had gotten pretty emboldened by his newfound power and influence. He felt a little bit untouchable, right? So outside of the royal court, he would often preach that physical contact with him was a right of purification.

That's so David Koresh, dude.

Yeah, well, exactly. And it's something you hear a lot about in these– Even today, there's a lot of little weird subsets of Christianity. I think there's one that's called the International House of Prayer for All People, where their leader grows his fingernails out really mega, mega long and has his disciples wash his feet. And I think you can buy the water even or something like that.

And the International House of Prayer is literally IHOP.

That's true.

That is true. For all people. It's for all people. I'm not here to demonize anybody's faith, of course. I just seem to have heard these rumors about that particular sect. I did go eat at a lovely buffet that they have in one of their chapters in my hometown. Really, really good food, but hanging over the fellowship hall.

No, they don't.

They serve like soul food and stuff, but hanging over the fellowship hall is a giant portrait of this dude.

Yes, of course. And obviously, Greg would have loved a giant portrait of himself.

Oh, certainly. They exist and were haunted and made the subject of Ghostbusters 2.

Yeah. So this guy is banging left and right, and he is rationalizing it by saying, sleeping with me is purifying yourself for God. He's off the wagon. He's back on the booze. He has tons of affairs with everyone in society that he can get a hold of, from sex workers on the street to married women of the upper class. And several of his earlier followers are recanting their allegiance. And these women who have been manipulated and abused by him come public and say, you have sexually assaulted me. One of his accusers is a woman named Kionya Berletskaya. She looks for help from the guy we mentioned earlier.

Oh, he'll be backstabbed.

Yeah, he got screwed by Rasputin. This is Rasputin's original patron, now estranged and discarded. Theophan doesn't just believe this lady. He also becomes convinced that his once-upon-a-time friend is an actual snake and a threat to the overall monarchy.

No, but he was sort of the lone voice screaming into the abyss. Everyone else seemed to be under this dude's spell. So his concerns, try as he might, fell on deaf ears, and he found himself increasingly alienated as Rasputin began to gain more and more control. Anybody speaking ill of Rasputin would probably begin to be looked at as an enemy of the state. Political opponents of the monarchy leveraged Alexandra's German heritage and claimed that she had loyalties to Germany rather than Russia, and that Rasputin wasn't just making the decisions, being the power behind the throne, but he himself was also, this is another kind of echo of a previous spy accusation, was a spy for Germany.

Yeah, yeah, and tensions are growing because we're rocketing toward World War I at this time, and Russia and Germany are beefed up. But throughout all of this scandal, throughout all these rumors, the Tsar's family still is ten toes down for Rasputin. They treat him like a family member. Before we get to the World War, we got to return to the story of the kids.

Yeah. I mean, they basically are told to treat him like a. like a, I don't know, a grandpapa type figure or a cool uncle. At the very least, they were referred to him as our friend, friend of the family. And they, Rasputin, Alexei, and Lazar's four daughters, all kind of kicked it and seemed to get along like an extended, weird extended family. Rasputin would send them telegrams when he was away, well wishes, encouragements, birthday greetings. like this one from 1908 to directly to the nine-year-old at the time, Maria.

And yeah, Ben, you want to read this one? This is very telling.

Yeah, this is something we should look into. The telegram goes, My dear M, my little friend, may the Lord help you to carry your cross with wisdom and joy in Christ. This world is like the day. Look, it's already evening. So it is with the cares of the world.

Yeah, telling, I think, in the sense that it shows sort of what you might argue is a character that he was playing, you know, like this kind of jovial, holy man that was sort of a friend to the children. Not bad, you know, kind of charming, to be honest.

It's saying, look, it's later than you think. Time passes quickly. You don't have to worry about everything.

Carpe diem.

Yeah, very hallmarky, right? It's a genuinely touching sentiment, but in 1910, one of the royal governesses is scandalized because she learns that Rasputin is allowed... to enter the nursery while the girls are in their nightgowns. Yes, yes.

And this would have been considered wildly inappropriate at the time. And governess Sofia Ivovna Choyucheva desperately wanted to, was petitioning even to get Rasputin banned from the nurseries. Tsar Nicholas was on board and he did ask Rasputin to maybe stop lurking around the nursery, scantily clad children. And eventually, however, Alexandra fired the governess.

Yeah. Yeah. This is getting tough. The governess again, Sophia, as you said, no reaches out to other members of the Imperial family. And these folks who are not in the Rasputin bubble are scandalized by the story. One of those scandalized people is grand Duchess Xenia and Alex Janova, she is Nick's sister. She had heard these earlier rumors about Rasputin. It shows up in her writing. We've got to give you the quote. Noel, if you could do the honors, this calls back to the first episode.

The attitude of Alex and the children to that sinister Grigori, whom they consider to be almost a saint, when in fact he is only a kilst, What is that word again? This is for a second time this has come up. No, no, no. That's the weird cult, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. So they're using that almost as a direct insult.

Yeah.

That makes sense based on what we were talking about earlier. This was the subset of Christianity that supposedly did like blood magic kind of stuff.

Right. Blood sugar sex magic. Orgies.

Yes.

Self-flagellation, blood sugar sex magic.

Yeah.

They had it. Sex magic. So he's continuing the quote. He's always there. goes into the nursery, visits Olga and Tatiana while they're getting ready for bed, sits there talking to them and harassing them.

Yeah, not good. Olga and Tatiana are the older teenage daughters of the royal family.

And it's not to say that a cool uncle can't be loving or put kids to bed or something like that. I think we're talking about all of this through the lens of what we know this guy was getting up to in his free time and just how slippery he was. And I just think there's no world where this was all just, you know, platonic uncle Lee affection.

Yeah.

And it's tough because all the primary accounts we can find that are not rumors about his interactions with the children, they are characterized as innocent, but we, we don't know the full story. We do know that in 1910, Another governess at the nursery claimed she had been sexually assaulted by Rasputin. She had once been an ardent follower of Greg's.

Her name, Maria Ivanova Vishnyakova. She went to the Empress. She went to Alexandra. Alexandra did not believe her. There was an investigation, whoosh, whoosh, hard air quotes there. And eventually they fired that governess, too.

Yeah, again, enemy of the state, man. Like this guy had his hooks in so deep that anybody that would talk ill of him even if the things– even if the smoke seems to indicate fire, no. They couldn't possibly wrap their heads around it, the royal family. They were just so enamored by this man. rumors continued to pop up.

Stuff entered the public sphere as well. So it started to leak. This guy was such a controversial figure. You had things making it out of the highly insulated palace intrigue bubble of the royal family. People claimed up and down at the time again with, well, at the time and in some cases to this day, with no proof that Rasputin had seduced Tsarina Alexandra as well as having sexual relations with the children.

Yeah. Yeah.

There were cartoons that were circulated. I mean, this guy was becoming like a, an absolute boogeyman.

Yeah. It was becoming part of the zeitgeist leveraged by political opponents of the monarchy.

Who's this scary pedophile whispering in the czar's ear.

Right. Yeah. Just so. And there were also extremely graphic cartoons that I am so thankful for. We don't have to show here.

Have you seen him?

Yes.

Yeah.

And eventually, old Nick has had enough, the ruler of Russia. So he tells his buddy Greg to hit the bricks. It's like you got to leave town at least for a little while. They're still, to be clear, they are still close friends. He's like, you just got to get out of town for a little bit.

Let things cool down a little bit, man.

Exactly, yeah. There are too many horrific rumors. Alexandra is super against this.

This just shows, man. She was the one who was largely, you know, his biggest supporter.

Very much so, yeah. And Rasputin complied. So he took a pilgrimage to Palestine in 1911. Again, we're jumping around in time. But he does return from Palestine. He continues to influence the Russian Empire and the monarchy. He goes back and forth from his hometown in Siberia to St. Petersburg. He is in Siberia in July of 1914 when the first assassination attempt occurs.

That's right, a 33-year-old woman named Kionia Guseva stabbed Rasputin right in his guts outside of his home in his hometown, right, in Siberia, in Pokrovskoe. She had a fascinating backstory unto herself, quite heartbreaking character, in fact. Upon the stab, she yelled, I have killed the Antichrist. That says it all. I mean, he was getting that level of reputation. She chased him through the village streets, hoping to do him in with the coup de grace, but she failed and was almost murdered in the streets by a crowd that was gathering.

Yeah, and eventually, Kionya ends up in an asylum, but that's a story for another day. Rasputin had only left his house because he heard Russia was preparing for war, and he wanted to send a telegram to his buddy, the Tsar, convincing the guy against going to war. And there's the thing about stabs. You've probably heard it before, folks.

Both people die in a knife fight. The first person dies at the scene. The other person dies in the ambulance. What we're saying is this stomach stab is no joke. And even for all his alleged superpowers, Rasputin almost dies. He gets a successful surgery. He spends some time jammed up in a hospital. It keeps him just this side of the grave.

But.

As any student of history knows, this was not the last assassination attempt. The next one, just a few years later, does succeed. And it's quite a mystery.

Well, Ben, you mentioned superpowers. I think we've already discussed this notion that he maybe did have some sort of, you know, esoteric occult powers. Maybe he smelled great.

I don't know.

Well, sure. But also, like I said, that is how they went all the way with that in the Anastasia animated film where he literally– doing like spells and hypnosis, right? All that stuff. But another rumor about him was that he was like unkillable. And I think that this stabbing probably is what contributed to that.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a great point. A lot of people were not listening to Greg's earlier victim, Theofan, but there was a splinter group of nobles and politicians who were maybe less concerned with the sexual assault allegations and more concerned that this guy's influence would endanger the future of Russia.

So it came to pass in December of 1916 that a far-right politician named Vladimir, who hated the monarchy, along with a grand duke and a prince named Felix Yusupov, they conspired. They were going to lure Rasputin, over to Felix's house, Moika Palace, and there they were going to murder him. Here's what we know. On the early morning of December 30th, Grigori Rasputin died. He had three gunshot wounds, one of which was point-blank to his forehead. That's the closest we can get to provable information. The rest of the circumstances, as you said, surrounding his death, remain a matter of intense speculation even today. We will never know exactly what happened, and that's not because the rumors and

later tall tales are too wild. Instead, it's because the best prime source for the events comes from an autopsy that is lost to history. There's no original copy of it. And the memoirs of Felix Yusupov himself, one of the guys who hated Rasputin so much that he literally murdered him. As you said, this account is embellished, but it is still the best snapshot we have of this murder. It's a situation where Felix and his co-conspirators invite Rasputin over to the palace. Rasputin gets there shortly after midnight. And again, this is from those memoirs. Servants usher the guy into the basement. There is Felix offering him tea and cakes.

And per Felix, the cakes have been laced with cyanide. Rasputin initially doesn't want the cakes. And Felix is like, nah, I'm a great host. You got to try them.

He eats them.

And let's just imagine that you were trying to kill this guy. He's snacking on the cakes and you're sort of waiting for him to die, but he's not dying. And then he says, Hey, bro, you got any wine?

Gosh, this reminds me of that scene in Clockwork Orange where the writer who Alex has like wronged rescues him from the, you know, the rain after being beaten by the cops. And he's like realizes who he is. And he goes, food all right.

Try the wine. Yeah. Yeah.

All of its lace. He's really trying to make sure that this dude gets his gets his dose.

Yeah. So Felix is saying for you, my guy, of course, we we know per Felix's account, the wine was Madeira. He also apparently poisoned that no matter to Greg Rasputin, this guy. houses, three glasses of wine. He's still not dead. Now it's not even surprising. Now it's getting awkward. Now we're like the office version of an assassination attempt. And who knows what they talked about. At this point, it's 2.30 in the morning. Felix is like, excuse me for a sec, bro. He goes upstairs where his two co-conspirators are.

And they've probably been sitting around waiting to wonder what happens. Felix takes a revolver. from that right-wing politician. He runs back down the stairs. He says, Rasputin, look at that crucifix and say a prayer. And he shoots him in the chest. And then they drive, they steal the dude's clothing.

Yeah, they're trying to create like an alibi, I guess. They're making it look like he, you know, walked home and was just fine.

Yeah, right. Yeah, they drive to Rasputin's apartment and one of them is wearing Rasputin's coat and hat. And like you said, Noel, they're thinking, we want it to look like this guy just went home later that night and then disappeared. And, you know, they do that little dogleg trip. They high five each other. Their feint is accomplished. They return back to the palace. And Noel, as you and I and Max were talking about off air, Felix goes back to the basement to check the body. And Greg leaps up.

He springs to life in classic Jason form or, you know, Terminator form. I mean, yeah, the guy, it does appear maybe not unkillable because we know how this goes, but, uh, He's a tough nut to crack. And he like, you know, I mean, can you imagine? I would have lost it. Felix is very, very afraid. He runs upstairs like you're supposed to do in a horror movie. Well, I guess he is in the basement, so it's the only choice he had. One of the co-conspirators then shoots Rasputin. This time, if I'm not mistaken, Ben, is this the one that's like in the noggin, like right in the head? Yeah, yeah.

This is where we get the head shot. And the boys wrap him up in a cloth. And drive him over to the Petrovsky Bridge. They throw his corpse in the river. So that's where the legend about him being under ice and coming back.

Oh, and he ultimately drowned. Right.

Right. This is crazy. So the news spreads really quickly, probably because one of those co-conspirators is bragging about it. He brags to two cop or one cop and two soldiers. And he's like, hey. Don't worry about that Rasputin guy.

We killed the hell out of him.

Also, don't tell anyone, right? You said you're cool, right?

You're fine. That's fine. Snitches and stitches and all that. The body of Grigori Rasputin was discovered on January 1st, just a couple hundred feet downstream from the bridge where he was dumped. The autopsy did report no signs of poisoning or water in the lungs, and records indicate that his cause of death was a single bullet fired into his head at point-blank range.

Yeah, and he is buried the very next day at a small church in South St.

Petersburg.

Not a lot of people go to the funeral. They kept it quiet. It was just the Tsar, Tsarina, Alexandra, of course, and some of their close friends. The Tsar also, folks, did not invite Rasputin's wife, did not invite Rasputin's main mistress, did not invite Rasputin's children. They wanted to build a new church over the grave site, but you know, world war. Yeah.

Talk about like Indian burial ground vibes. I mean, like you're really going to build a church on the grave of an evil man. That's going to be like a demonic, you know, unkillable man. That's pretty weird. Yeah.

Uh, as we know, uh, our buddy Nick abdicates the throne of Russia in March of 1970.

Bad job.

Yeah.

Yeah. And, uh, when he did that folks dug up Rasputin's body and they burned it.

Yeah, man, that's the move. Sorry.

Just gotta be sure. Right.

Yeah. I mean, totally. He really is got like Jason Voorhees vibes and definitely don't build a church on cause that is definitely going to become an evil church.

Agreed. Like in that, uh, in that excellent film, uh, mouth of madness.

Stick in the mouth of madness.

Sam Neill.

What a good one. That's a fun one. I highly recommend anyone that hasn't seen.

It is.

It's John Carpenter. Yep.

Oh, it is John Carpenter. You're right. Well, these folks didn't want Rasputin's grave to become a kind of like rallying point. Yeah, you know, there were a lot of concerns.

Let's go to the Church of Rasputin.

Yeah, spiritual and political concerns. This officially is the end of Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin. But just as in his time alive, Rumors about him continue to stick around and even grow, dare we say, metastasize in the modern day.

Ben, you got to say this one. You've been wanting to say the * * * * stuff, man.

You want to do?

You have to. We got to end it on a blue note.

Okay, okay. You and I both know that we are probably going to have an interesting conversation with our IT department. about how we have used our work laptops to put in searches like Rasputin penis size. Let's just put it this way.

He weren't no Napoleon.

Right.

He's a big fella.

One of the biggest rumors about Rasputin is the girth and size of his penis.

Yeah, it would seem that is where all of his mystical power resided, much like Samson's in his hair.

Yeah, yeah. Good comparison there. There's a long-running legend that Greg was once rocking a member anywhere from 12 to 13 inches in length what yeah he had a front tail.

Oh my god i had to unroll that thing like an elephant trunk um that's wild man quite in doubt indeed according to autopsy reports however sadly i'm gonna say i because i want to believe right this is this is uh to put it the ben way cartoonishly untrue.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Six max.

Okay?

Six max.

Fully erect.

That's a quote from the autopsy.

He's a grower, not a showman.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The most recent, most infamous claim about this is, okay, so for decades since the guy's death, people would say he had a huge, Just.

Say it, Ben. Say dong.

He had a huge dong. They said he had a huge dong and they treated it like a relic of a saint, right? And the story was people were circulating this dead man's dong around to use its various magical powers. This is as recent as 1994. Someone claimed to have Rasputin's severed penis. It was a dehydrated sea cucumber.

No. Say it isn't true, Ben. Say it isn't true.

I don't know, man. I can't imagine liking someone enough to carry around- Their severed penis? Yeah. I don't know if I'm the demographic for that.

I don't think anyone is, or anyone that I want to hang out with.

That's probably why you and I hang out, because of our agreement. Yeah, for sure. to do that. Yeah, but we do have- I mean.

If it was your dying wish, I would do it. I wouldn't like it, but I'd do it. Great.

We're going to get some weird messages for that one. Dear Noel Brown, we haven't met before. However, you recently asked about my dying wish.

And to jump in here, um, Yeah, I actually am about to update my will. And so I'll make sure to put that in the will. I think I might be at a lot of risk because I might go near the state of Ohio sometime soon.

Oh, no.

This is the most forced inclusion.

It was pretty weak, man.

There we go. You did it.

Barely. I don't know.

I mean, in with a chance. A win is a win.

An E for effort.

There we go. Which is kind of the mantra of our show.

I was about to say the same thing, dude. This is an E for effort kind of show. We do do our best. And I'm glad, hey, somehow we've... I know. I know. It is what it is. Somehow we've been allowed to continue to middle our way through this thing for almost a decade. So thanks to y'all out there for keeping us... on the air, because we wouldn't, I don't think they'd let us keep doing it if people weren't listening.

Yeah, maybe we're flying under the radar, but you are the most important part of the show, fellow ridiculous historians. We cannot, as you said, Noel, do this without you, and we are, jokes aside, we are so grateful. We also are the opposite of grateful to a guy named Jonathan Strickland, a.k.a. the Quister, just like, how long Will his reign of infamy continue?

However long it takes to rule the world. Again, bit of a Rasputin fellow. Playing the long game, that's strict.

Yeah, playing the long game. And he does have a sick goatee. Big, big, big, big thanks, of course, to our super producer. The number one enemy of Ohio, Max Williams.

Oh, he's Rizzing It Up in Ohio. Remember that one? That kind of went away.

Wait, what was that one?

Ohio was just one of those brain rot things. It was like the kids were talking about Rizzing It Up in Ohio. Ohio became like a meme with the Gen Alphas for no good reason. It's like 6-7, you know? It's like a nonsense meme.

Oh, man.

Can I say something really quickly? This is unrelated, but also related. On the way into Nashville driving, I hit some really bad traffic and was able to really take in some of the billboards on the side of the road. And there was a series in succession of billboards for this like gun store. And one of them just had a machine gun on it. And it just said Riz. What?

Yeah.

And then the next one said.

Was this I-24? It was I-24.

And then the next one had a big old Glock on it. And it said pistol maxing. With two X's. And then another one that said, we sell flamethrowers.

Okay, I don't like the second one, but the first one and the third are great.

No, but it's just, they're trying to co-opt brain rot talk to sell guns to children?

I'm confused. And flamethrowers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And big thanks, of course, to Alex Williams, who composed this slap and bop. Big, big thanks to I don't know. We should do a history of billboards. That might be a tough one. Big, big thanks to the rude dudes of Ridiculous Crime. If you dig us, you'll love them.

You sure will. And Ben, what a bang up job on this multi-part Rasputin adventure that you've taken us on.

Oh, geez. We went there together.

We did, but you wrote the map. You set the tone.

I have never stolen a penis.

Fair, fair. We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

The Rasputin Episode, Part Two: A Death and Mysterious Rumors

Kapitelklicken springt direkt hin

Shownotes

Transkriptvom Podcast bereitgestellt · Zeitmarken springen hin