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Bonkers Crimes and Criminals In History

Khalid Elhassan February 7, 2020 32 min

Thomas Blood - Royal Academy of Arts — Colonel Blood Stealing the Crown Jewels. Royal Academy of Arts

22. Running the Russian Empire

A contemporary cartoon depicting Rasputin’s perceived hold on Russia’s Emperor and Empress. Pinterest

Before long, ministers and high officials were being appointed and dismissed based on Rasputin’s advice. Those seeking to advance or secure their positions offered him lavish bribes or sent their wives and daughters to seduce him into putting in a good word for them with the Emperor and Empress. That scandalous state of affairs made the imperial government a laughingstock and brought it into low repute, but the Empress remained fiercely protective of Rasputin.

So a group of aristocrats, led by Prince Feliks Yusupov, husband of the Emperor’s niece, decided to rid Russia of Rasputin’s malign influence by murdering him. Rasputin was lured to Yusupov’s palace on the night of December 30^th, 1916, on the pretext of meeting Yusupov’s wife, who was interested in “knowing” him. Many nobles had offered their womenfolk to Rasputin before, so the invitation was not unusual. His murder turned out to be as weird as his life had been.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.