Rasputin

Less than a week after Christmas in 1916, three men nervously waited at Yusopov Palace for their frightening visitor to eat his cookies. The men, all part of the nobility that ruled Russia at the time, were so afraid of the man that they had welcomed him to the cellar. Their nerves getting the better of them, they left him downstairs to nervously wait for his certain expiration. The wine and pastries they had treated him with were laced with fatal amounts of cyanide. All they had to do was wait.

The man in question was Grigori Rasputin, also known as the mad monk. Rasputin in a short span of half a decade had ingratiated himself to much of the royal family, much to the dismay and horror of other nobles. Claiming to be able to tell the future, little was known about the monks past, except that he came from peasant stock. This alone was enough to grate upon the nerves of many. Rasputin also had an intense gaze that few didn't find unnerving. His story and that of those around him is an interesting one. It serves to highlight the strange death that was before him. The gentlemen at the palace had become convinced that Grigori's influence upon the Tsarina and her family had to be stopped and they were the only ones to do it.

Being led to the palace under the guise of meeting a beautiful woman late that night, he had been led to the basement area which was being converted into a dining room. Rasputin, already paranoid, initially turned down the refreshment offer from his guests. Clearly everyone, killers and victims, were nervous. It would later be reported that our soon to be deceased monk was sweating. Perhaps he could foresee the future. Of course, if that were the case, Rasputin was either stupid or a complete weirdo. There was much to come.

Left alone downstairs for some time as his killers waited on the main level, Grigori decided to eat of the delicious tainted pastries. When the three noble men rejoined him, they were horrified to see that he was still alive. Not only that, but there seemed to be no effect on him whatsoever. An already stressful situation had clearly become a bit more unnerving. The clock continued to tick late into the night as Rasputin ate pastries, drank wine, and continued to stand. It should be noted at this point that the victim was perhaps an alcoholic which would have greatly affected his ability to absorb the poison. The noble men nervously standing in the basement didn't know that, however. They were just becoming more and more convinced of the man's inherent evilness. As he turned to admire something on a shelf behind him, one of the men had had enough. He leveled the gun at Rasputin's back, said a few words reminiscent of a Dirty Harry movie, and fired. Rasputin fell to the floor and, unlike Dirty Harry would have done, the shooter ran up the stairs terrified.

For some time, the mad monk lay on the floor alone in the basement. The men upstairs anxiously waited for the night to get even deeper. They wanted to dump his body unseen into the frozen river nearby and had even scouted for a hole in the ice earlier in the day. Yusopov, the noble who lived in the palace, went down to check upon the dead body in his soon-to-be dining room and noticed that the body was suspiciously warm. At that moment, Rasputin opened his eyes and attempted to get up. Another run up the stairs was immediately necessary, but not before the monk grabbed him by the ankle.

The noblemen were now in the courtyard, presumably to figure out what in the hell to do now. They all arrived outside in time to see Rasputin stumbling through the courtyard, enraged. Apparently being poisoned and then shot has a tendency to do that. Some accounts state that he lunged at one of the men. Whatever the activity was at the time, we do know that he was shot again. This time, it was in the back of the head. To make sure the man was dead, the one of the men proceeded to kick Grigori in the head. He stopped twitching.

Rasputin was bound tightly at the wrists and dumped in the frozen river nearby. His body would resurface the following day in another hole in the ice farther downriver. By then, rumors were already spreading about his death and who the potential culprits were. When he was fished from the river, the binding at his wrists had already been undone and his fingers were spread as if clawing at the ice above him. A subsequent autopsy was inconclusive. Rasputin either drowned or froze to death. One wonders what would have happened if the river had not been iced over.

Works Cited

Geoffrey Hosking Russia and the Russians: A History Harvard University Press. 2001.