Grigori Rasputin

Killed in the night of 29 to 30 December 1916 in Petrograd by a group of monarchists led by Prince Felix Yusupov; the killing of the tsarina holy man failed to save the dynasty.

Overview

Rasputin, a Siberian peasant healer, gained the confidence of Nicholas and Alexandra through his apparent ability to ease the hemophilia of the tsarevich, and his influence over appointments in wartime government scandalized educated Russia. Yusupov, the grand duke Dmitri Pavlovich, and Duma member Purishkevich, convinced that removing him would restore the crown authority, poisoned, shot, and finally drowned him in the Malaya Nevka; autopsy findings long disputed the legend of near indestructibility. The killers were exiled rather than punished, a sign of the dynasty decay. Six weeks later the February Revolution began; ten weeks after that the Romanov dynasty had fallen. Rasputin end became legend, film, and parable of a court strangled by superstition.