Grigori Rasputin

Legendary card · No. 2148

Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin (21 January [O.S. 9 January] 1869 – 30 December [O.S. 17 December] 1916) was a Russian mystic and faith healer. He is best known for having befriended the imperial family of Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia, through whom he gained considerable influence in the final years of the Russian Empire. Rasputin was born to a family of peasants in the Siberian village of Pokrovskoye, located within Tyumensky Uyezd in Tobolsk Governorate (present-day Yarkovsky District in Tyumen Oblast). He had a religious conversion experience after embarking on a pilgrimage to a monastery in 1897 and has been described as a monk or as a strannik (wanderer or pilgrim), though he held no official position in the Russian Orthodox Church. Eventually gaining a reputation as a starets, in 1903 or in the winter of 1904–1905, he travelled to Saint Petersburg and captivated several religious and social leaders, eventually becoming a prominent figure in Russian society. In November 1905...

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