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The Rise of Rasputin: The Mad Monk Who Ran Russia

Khalid Elhassan March 3, 2025 18 min

11. The Tsarina Believed that Rasputin Could Work Miracles

Tsarina Alexandra and Tsarevich Alexei. Beinecke Library

Rasputin’s standing with Tsarina Alexandra skyrocketed in 1912, when her son suffered severe internal hemorrhage after a bumpy carriage ride. Alexei became delirious with fever and pain, and seemed on death’s door, with doctors helpless to cure or soothe him. Rasputin was back in Siberia, and the desperate Alexandra sent a telegram asking him to pray for her son. He wrote her back that “God has seen your tears and heard your prayers. Do not grieve. The Little One will not die. Do not allow the doctors to bother him too much“. The following day, the bleeding stopped. It was purely coincidental – most hemophilia bouts eventually stop on their own, and it just so happened that these particular bout’s ending coincided with Rasputin’s arrival and prayers. Nobody could explain that however to Alexandra, who convinced herself that Rasputin had performed miracles.

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.