Thread by @femibased

On Rasputin’s Death
Part 1: “No one has the right to commit murder”

All dates are given in Old Calendar Style

“It is hard to live with all these wrongful accusations. God, they write horrible things! Give me patience and seal the lips of the enemies! Or grant me Your help and the eternal happiness of Your bliss”

Grigory Rasputin

PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

Grigory Rasputin: Russian Orthodox peasant, healer of the Tsarevich and friend to the imperial family.

Felix Yusupov: Russian aristocrat, transvestite and occultist. Assassin of Rasputin. Described as being obnoxious and spoiled.

Aron Simanovich:… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

The man who couldn’t be killed, an immortal holy devil who refused to die, a mad monk’s impossible assassination. Such are the legends surrounding Grigory Rasputin’s murder. But what are the real facts behind his death? Was he really impossible to kill, or is this just another… https://t.co/zT4gmfsOEntwitter.com/i/web/status/1…

We find ourselves in the year 1915, a year of incredibly important events that would shape the future of Europe for years to come. Russia had been suffering massive losses in the Great War and morale was very low. The Tsar had just appointed himself commander-in-chief of the… https://t.co/cxLbIlyL2Ttwitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Anti-Tsarist politicians, scapegoating the Tsar for their own mistakes, began to hatch a subversive plot in order to depose the Tsar and place the Tsarevich on the throne. This was an obvious cover so that the people, who loved the Tsar very much, might see the succession as… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Such tensions remained throughout 1916, and were exacerbated by difficulties coming from the war and by the closeness of Rasputin, libeled by the media as a Germanophile, to the Imperial Family. The war was taking a toll on Russia and people were getting desperate, which fueled… https://t.co/Psn11zLsSntwitter.com/i/web/status/1…

These subversives were joined by the British, who were afraid that Rasputin might influence the Tsar to sign a separate peace with Germany, taking them out of the war. Russia’s losses were of no interest to Great Britain, they wanted the war to continue until they destroyed… https://t.co/5h9nRZEiBWtwitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Germany wasn’t a friend of the Tsar either, as they themselves were looking into the option of a coup against Tsar Nicholas II if the peace negotiations failed. In any case, it was the Tsar and his entourage against the world. It had always been like that, but even more now.

There was a lot of talk about killing Rasputin, but most of it was just that, talk. Then, towards the end of 1916, a plan on how to murder Rasputin began to form in the minds of two Russian aristocrats: Prince Felix Yusupov and his friend Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich. They had the… https://t.co/DBA4acTIyotwitter.com/i/web/status/1…

This turn of events was perfect for the British. Almost too perfect… It is unclear whether British intelligence officers actually approached Yusupov and Dmitri with the idea of murdering Rasputin, or whether they heard of the plan and decided to exploit the opportunity. In any… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

It was decided, then, that Yusupov and Dmitri would carry out the murder. After all, it was easier for them to get close to Rasputin than for a bunch of British spies to do so. The two aristocrats spoke with Lt Sergei Sukhotin, who agreed to participate in the murder. Then, they… https://t.co/4AuUZtzUL9twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Now the only question left was how to kill Rasputin. The decision to kill him by potassium cyanide poisoning was finally made to avoid leaving any trace of murder. He would be lured to the basement dining room in Yusupov’s palace, where the walls were thick, the windows high and… https://t.co/xqZj8vjOu4twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

The original plan was to lure Rasputin into the basement, put the poison in Madeira wine, and have Rasputin drink it. Dmitri, Purishkevich, and Sukhotin would wait upstairs in case anything went wrong. Once Rasputin was dead, they would strip him and burn his clothes. Finally,… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

On the early morning of December 17, the conspirators were ready to carry their plan through. Rasputin was asked by Yusupov to come to his palace because his wife, Princess Irina, was having a headache (Irina was actually in Crimea). He accepted and was picked up by Yusupov from… https://t.co/ql3FyHVmgRtwitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Yusupov tried to distract him for some time, but Rasputin grew impatient. He asked when he would meet Princess Irina, to which Yusupov responded that she was entertaining guests upstairs, and that she would come down in a second. Yusupov did not know what to do since the poison… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Later on however, horribly wounded and a bit drunk, he woke up. Rasputin struggled up the stairs and made it out to the courtyard, where a drunken conspirator spotted him and shot twice from inside the house. The bullets missed Rasputin but destroyed a window right over his head,… https://t.co/nvc6TtbAnUtwitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Yusupov and Dmitri shrunk away from that kind of violence, so Princess Irina’s brothers, Andrew, Fyodor, and Nikolai were called to help beat Rasputin up. Once they arrived, they started attacking Rasputin. He was tortured and mutilated, his eye gouged out, his ear chopped off,… https://t.co/S5MF2UQEoJtwitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Finally, they decided to tie his hands and prop him in a sitting position against a pile of snow. Yusupov and Dmitri Pavlovich took out their handguns and shot Rasputin twice. One bullet went through his chest, and the other through his back while he was falling forward,… https://t.co/L5NY4A7tS7twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

This soldier was none other than British intelligence officer Oswald Rayner, a friend of Yusupov from his time at Oxford, who had been asked for help to dispose of the body. Originally, he had been sent by MI6 to verify that the murder of Rasputin had gone as planned, but things… https://t.co/BofP2e68vQtwitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Rasputin’s lifeless body was now finally loaded onto the car, and later dropped into the Little Nevka river through an ice hole. Grigory Rasputin had successfully been murdered.

He was not an immortal demon who survived a shot to the head. He was not an evil mystic who managed to cheat even death. Rasputin was simply another mortal human being, one who became the victim of a cruel plot aimed not only at him, but at the Russian Imperial System as a whole.

“When I had anxiety, doubts, unpleasantness, it was enough to speak five minutes with Grigory, so that at that time I could feel strengthened and pacified. He was always capable of telling me that which I needed to hear.”

Tsar Saint Nicholas II