Forbidden History - The Rise of Rasputin: Priest or Sorcerer?

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

In part one of this two-part Forbidden History special, we trace Rasputin’s mysterious rise from humble Siberian beginnings to the heart of Russia’s royal court. From his rumoured miracles, to his magnetic hold over the royal family, the Romanovs, we take a look at the origins of a legend that blurred the line between holy man and dark mystic... Cast List: Tony McMahon: Former BBC news producer, author, print journalist and historian  Eric Meyers: Narrator Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. He is undeniably one of the most controversial characters in history. An evil mystic, with a hypnotic hold over the last czar of Russia and his family, only for his life to end in a truly brutal way. The presence of Rasputin in the Russian court,

in the Robinoff court really does become a source of really vicious gossip. He's basically an itinerant monk. He's born somewhere out in Siberia, although his origins are something of a mystery. People say that he was known as a drunk, but they also say that he was known as a mystic, a seer, a shaman, a prophet. He seems to have developed his mystical talents early on. But those who oppose Rasputin ramp up the rhetoric, they now call him the Antichrist. Rasputin is an easy target for the hatred of the Romanovs.

So who was Grigori Rasputin? And why did he wield such influence over the Romanovs, the dynasty that had ruled Russia for centuries? Join us for this two-part special on the rise and fall of Rasputin, as we uncover the secrets and scandal. of one of history's most mysterious figures. Rasputin was born in 1869, in the village of Pokrovskaya, Siberia. He married young and had children, but around his late 20s, early 30s, he underwent a religious transformation. Following this, Rasputin spent years as Astranik, a kind of wandering pilgrim, part of an old Russian

Orthodox tradition. He traveled on foot across Russia, visiting monasteries and holy sites. Some accounts say he went as far as Mount Athos in Greece, although this claim is unverified. By 1903, Rasputin decided to head to St. Petersburg. Sources suggest he was motivated partly by his growing reputation as a mystic and healer, and partly by his ambition. His name was already circulating among local religious circles. when he finally arrived in St. Petersburg, Rasputin connected with influential church figures.

He impressed Bishop Sergius and later Archbishop Homogenes, who brought him into St. Petersburg Society. Today we're joined by investigative historian, journalist and author, Tony McMahon. By the time that Rasputin arrives in St. Petersburg, he has been on this long journey on foot Zahist Russia, he has talked to hundreds, maybe even thousands of people. He knows the people of Russia. He knows how they're feeling. And he's also honed his skills as somebody who can manipulate people through a perverse kind of holiness. He gets a reputation in St. Petersburg, especially in high society, very quickly, as this charismatic monk with these piercing eyes.

and this ability to see things that others do not see because he is blessed by the Almighty. And this is a time of great instability in Russia. And somebody like Rasputin is able to take advantage to exploit this instability and insecurity. To be, as it were, somebody who can lead, somebody who can see the future, somebody who can affect miracles. To understand Rasputin's rise, we need to acknowledge the world he walked into. Russia, at the dawn of the 20th century, was unlike its European neighbors. Most of Europe in the 19th century, especially Britain and France and eventually Germany,

had gone down the kind of liberal, democratic route. They had become parliamentary democracies. Russia really stood out as a country, still ruled by an autocratic monarch. The Romanov dynasty exercised an iron grip on imperial Russia, and the Romanoffs had included such larger-than-life characters as Peter the Great, Catherine the Great. And they, up until the first years of the 20th century, were not prepared to tolerate any whiff of democracy. The Romanovs ruled Russia by divine right, yet revolution simmered just beneath the surface. The Romanovs must have known that there was a degree of hatred among many people towards them,

because in 1881, Tsar Alexander II is assassinated by anarchists who throw a bomb at him. But Tsar Nicholas II does seem to still believe that most of the Russian people, the Russian peasants, love the Tsar. are still loyal to the Tsar and are still obedient. Nicholas believed he was beloved, but the truth was very different. And it really must be said that Nicholas II is completely and utterly out of touch with his own people. Nicholas really isn't prepared for high office. He's not prepared to be Tsar. He really is an inappropriate person to be the Tsar. He lacks any kind of political insight.

And in fact, he and the Imperial family go to live outside St. Petersburg on a rural estate where they just have lovely walks, lead a very idyllic life, and they are entirely divorced out of touch with what is happening to the people, despite many warnings that there is mass starvation, that there is huge anger out there. they seem to live in a completely different world. As peasants starved, the Romanov strolled through manicured gardens. As revolutionaries plotted in secret, Nicholas and his wife Alexandra clung to a fantasy of harmony and divine right. It was a dangerous delusion that had been seen many times throughout history. From the fall of Rome to the much more contemporary French Revolution. The future of Russia was uncertain, and in the Romanov's delusion they believed only one thing would save it.

What preoccupies Tsar Nicholas in the first years of the 20th century is that he doesn't have a male heir. He's married to the granddaughter of Queen Victoria, the Tsarina Alexandra, Alexandra, and she She has produced one daughter after another, so she is producing children, but she hasn't produced a male heir and then suddenly she gives birth to Alexei. And this brings huge joy to the Romanov family. They now have a male heir, they have a future czar, but then tragedy strikes. Alexei suffers from a condition called hemophilia.

The thing about hemophilia is that it's transmitted by women. but they don't contract it. It's the men who contract hemophilia. And what hemophilia is, is a disease where even the slightest bruise can lead to life-threatening bleeding. And so Alexei is unable to go and play with his friends. He's cosseted all the time because he literally cannot bump into anything or have any of the falls that children normally have because it will result in uncontrolled bleeding. Now he has contracted hemophilia, through his mother, the Tsarina, Alexandra, and she clearly must have felt incredibly guilty about this. And it's believed that her grandmother, Queen Victoria, Queen of the British Empire,

the Empress of India, was the arch spreader of hemophilia. All Queen Victoria's children marry into the great royal families of Europe. And Alexandra is her granddaughter, and she has carried this curse to the next generation and given it to her son Alexei. The imperial family prayed for a miracle and into this crisis stepped a mysterious holy man from Siberia, a man who promised salvation. We learn more about this enigmatic mystic after the break.

Investigative historian, author and journalist, Tony McMahon tells us more. So you can imagine the Romanovs are climbing the walls because poor Alexei is stricken with this disease and they have to constantly watch out for him. Otherwise, they are going to lose the male heir to the Romanov throne. Enter this mystical priest with piercing eyes born to Siberian peasants, Rasputin. He claims to have the power to heal Alexei, or at least to stop him dying. From the moment Rasputin entered the palace,

Alexandra was captivated. Here was a man who promised to save her son and with him the future of the dynasty. But from the start, many others are scandalised. They think he's a typical charlatan. They hear reports that there's a young man, he was a thief, a criminal, that he may not even be a priest,

he may not be a monk, and that he's been known to blaspheme and behave in a very unholy manner. But the Tsar and Zarina don't care. They take respiuchy. to the court. The more his critics raged, the more Alexandra clung to him. Soon, Rasputin was no longer just a guest.

He was part of the household. Rasputin really does make himself feel at home at court. And in no time at all, he is hobnobbing with the aristocracy, but in particular, the aristocratic women. They throw themselves at the feet of this unkempt, untimped, untimped, untimed, apparently rather smelly, holy man. That doesn't put them off. You know, he is something very different. He's exotic. He is from the Siberian wasteland. It's like he's a wild animal almost, and the aristocratic women of the court can't get enough. According to one account,

aristocratic women even wanted his sweat-covered undergarments. That's how much they adored of Rasputin. There's no doubt that Rasputin took advantage of his position and that many of the rumors about him engaging in, well, effectively orgiastic behavior, seducing many women at the court and so on, has a grain of truth to it. But aside from the mysterious characteristics that attracted the wider court to this man, what exactly was it that led to Rasputin being so appealing to the Romanov family? The Tsar first meets Rasputin in 1905, and it's after an unsuccessful revolution in Russia.

On January 22nd, 1905, some 150,000 workers and peasants marched through the icy streets of St. Petersburg, led by Father Georgi Gapon. They carried icons, sang hymns, and believed they were delivering a humble petition to their living. father, the Tsar, asking for an eight-hour workday, fairer wages and more political freedom. They want to present a petition to the Tsar, but instead the Tsar's troops open fire and they kill a couple hundred people. And this leads to enormous hatred in the population. Nicholas was not at the Winter Palace that day. Somewhere between 200 and 1,000 people were killed. with thousands more wounded. The massacre became known as Bloody Sunday.

They now realize that the Tsar is not their friend, their father, their loving monarch. The Tsar is part of a cruel system. And so Russia is becoming steadily more revolutionary in a very, very grim way. And it's into this situation that Rasputin comes not only as a healer, but as also as somebody who claims that he understands the Russian soul, the Russian people. And so the Tsar listens to Rasputin because he thinks that when he listens to Rasputin, he's listening to the Russian people. And in 1912, disaster struck the Romanov family once again. Alexei has a pretty minor accident while riding in a carriage,

but it's an accident that leads him closer to death. And the Tsarina frantically writes to Rasputin, who tells her to send the doctors away because God, he says, has seen her tears. And so the Zarina does send the doctors away and Alexei recovered. For Alexandra, this was no coincidence. Her son's survival was divine proof that Rasputin had been sent by God. Now she's really convinced that Rasputin has these amazing, powers. From that moment, her faith in him became unshakable. So I guess the question is,

does Rasputin really have magical powers? Is he really able to cure a lexate of his hemophilia, or at least stem the side effects? And some people argue, including some medics, that there may be something to it, but not for the reasons that people thought at the time. Because what Rasputin was able to do through his charisma, through his, if you want holy babble is he was able to calm the prince down and that reduces the blood pressure that allows him to heal more easily so simply bringing an air of calm into the situation taking control of situation may have been enough to aid the healing process it should also be said that 19th century and early 20th century doctors could often cause more damage than they cured that some of their medicines

some of their therapies, frankly, did no good whatsoever. Rasputin's so-called miracle in 1912 sealed his place in the Tsarina's heart. But what she saw as divine providence came at a heavy cost. The presence of Rasputin in the Romanov court really does become a source of really vicious gossip. And many Russians who are turning against the Tsar and the whole imperial system

begin to see Rasputin as a symptom of the decay of the rot in the system. What kind of a political system has a mad monk wandering around giving advice? Rumors spread like wildfire. To the public, Rasputin was proof that the Romanovs were not only out of touch, but also corrupt, ruled not by their divine right, but by a sexually deviant monk from Siberia. And so it evidences how unfit. Zah Nicholas is to rule. There's no doubt that Rasputin does take bribes and very likely sexual

favours from those who want to get close to the Tsar. You know, he begins to act really as the Tsar's closest confidant. And even the Prime Minister and the secret police, the Okrana, are powerless to stop Rasputin exercising this really inappropriate level of power and influence. There's even rumours that Rasputin has seduced the royal princesses, Olga and Tatiana. And if we look at photographs from the time, he's surrounded by the royal princesses. And even if he doesn't actually seduce them, I think the term Hansy would apply very well to Rasputin. He's somebody whose behaviour is massively wrong, inappropriate, and now I think would be universally condemned. He's somebody who is abusing his position.

But as Rasputin became increasingly closer with the Imperial family, things were about to take a turn. Rasputin's actions increased in madness and depravity, and the public slowly began to become aware of his peculiarity as information trickled down from the aristocracy. To some, he was a holy man sent by God. To others, he was the devil himself, and one woman decided he had to die. In 1914, right at the beginning of the First World War, a peasant woman, who apparently one detail she had no nose, this peasant woman tries to kill Rasputin by stabbing him. Now, her action may have been part of a wider conspiracy to get rid of this holy hypnotist.

And as a result, Rasputin has to basically fight for his life in a hospital bed, but he does recover. In doing so, he's convinced more than ever of his own powers, as is everybody around him. Rasputin's survival only fed the legend. To him and his supporters, it was proof of celestial protection. But those who oppose Rasputin ramp up the rhetoric. They now call him the Antichrist, and really the kind of idea of Rasputin that we have today as this devilish maniac really begins to take hold.

An anti-Zarist propaganda goes into hyperdrive. Rasputin is an easy target for the hatred of people of the Romanovs. As Russia descended into war, paranoia spread through the empire. It's not helped by the fact that the Tsarina is basically part of a German royal family. By the way, so was Queen Victoria and the British royal family. They were part of the Hanoverian German dynasty. And with the First World War, of course, Russia is. fighting Germany. And so the Tsarina is sometimes depicted as a traitor in the Russian court.

She's a German Tsarina. And so the fact that Rasputin is close to her, he's also seen as part of a German plot within the Romanov court. To his enemies, Rasputin was the very embodiment of treachery, corruption and evil within Russia. Soon his enemies would act. The loathing of many Russian aristocrats towards Rasputin cannot be underestimated. I mean, it must have annoyed very wealthy nobles that this scrubby, nasty little monk from the middle of nowhere, has an access to the Tsar that they do not have. I mean, this really must have got right under their skin. So it's not surprising in 1916, age 47.

Rasputin is lured to the palace of Prince Felix Yusuf, one of the richest, this young, dashing noble in Imperial Russia. In a conspiracy led by Yusuf and the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, they lure him to the palace and they attempt to poison him first. When that doesn't work, they then shoot him and eventually throw him into the river never. Rasputin apparently proves very difficult to kill, according to a later account, by Prince Yusufov. But Rasputin is dead, and this sends shockwaves through the Romanov court. But it also signals the fact that the whole imperial system is about to totter, with no mad monk there to advise the Tsar, his time is up.

Rasputin had warned the Tsar and the Tsarina and the Romanovs that their system was in peril. He claimed that he could help them to save the Tsar's system with his murder. Then revolution is seen as being inevitable. Rasputin's death in December 1916 was supposed to save the monarchy. Instead, it left the Romanovs more exposed than ever. Alexandra was shattered, Nicholas enraged, but outside the palace walls the empire was collapsing. Russia had already suffered almost 2 million soldiers killed, with an additional 5 million wounded or captured in the First World War. Food shortages and inflation drove families into breadlines

that stretched for hours, while coal and fuel ran so low that entire cities froze through the winter. By late February 1917, Petrograd was a powder keg. Strikes and protests spread across the capital, and on International Women's Day, tens of thousands of mainly women filled the streets. Banners read, Feed the children of the defenders of the motherland, and supplement the ration of soldiers' families,

defenders of freedom and the people's peace. Nicholas ordered troops to restore order. But many soldiers refused to fire on the crowd. Whole regiments mutinied, turning their rifles against their officers and joining the uprising. In a matter of days, the authority of the crown evaporated. On March 2, 1917, Nicholas II abdicated. After over three centuries of Romanov rule, the dynasty was gone. A provisional government tried to fill the void, but rowing,

Russia remained in chaos, and before the year was over, the Bolsheviks would seize power in their own revolution. For many, the speed of the collapse seemed to prove Rasputin's chilling prophecy true, that if he were ever lost to the royal family, the throne itself would fall within months. The reputation of Rasputin as the mad monk existed during his lifetime, but it really grows after his death. And the early movie industry in the United States really loves this story of Rasputin. I mean, barely a year after his death, already two silent movies are made about him.

In 1932, he's played by Lionel Barrymore, one of the great actors of the time, and Hollywood's fascination with Rasputin never dims. In 1966, Christopher Lee, the famous horror actor who plays Dracula in many of the Hammer Horror movies, he turned his talents to playing Rasputin and really bringing us those evil eyes. The Doctor Who actor Tom Baker also played Rasputin in a movie called Rasputin the Mad Monk in 1971. And in the 1970s, Rasputin was really brought to popularity again with a pop hit, Rha-Rasputin by the band Bonie M.

If there's a name in history that sticks out, like Napoleon, like Hitler, it's Rasputin. Everybody knows who Rasputin is, and the myths, the legends, the scandals still enthrall us to this very day. Rasputin's story is one of scandal and intrigue. A Siberian peasant who rose to the very heart of the Russian court, adored by some as a holy man, condemned by others as the devil himself. His presence became a symbol of everything rotten in the Romanoff dynasty, and when he was gone, the empire itself collapsed almost overnight. But the question remains, how did this self-styled mystic finally meet his end? A night of poison, bullets, and betrayal inside a St. Petersburg palace has become one of history's most infamous

tales. In the next episode, we'll take a look at the assassination of Rasputin and the various conspiracies that surround it. Thanks for exploring the past with us today. If you like this episode, please be sure to follow for more. We post new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Don't forget to leave a comment below and feel free to leave us a rating or review. Your feedback helps us reach more listeners like you. And for more from the Like a Shot Network, check out Where Did Everyone Go, Histories of the Abandoned, a deep dive into the incredible stories behind forgotten places, available now on your favorite podcast platforms. Thanks for listening.