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The Rise of Rasputin: The Mad Monk Who Ran Russia

Khalid Elhassan March 3, 2025 18 min

5. The Tsar Ignored Reports of Putin’s Depravity

Many reports of Rasputin’s unruly and unholy conduct – including assaulting a nun – reached Nicholas II, but he either dismissed them out of hand, or laughed them off with comments such as “the holy are always slandered“. The Tsar’s confessor investigated the reports of Rasputin’s misconduct, concluded there was truth in them, and advised Nicholas to distance himself from the strannik. The Tsar, at the behest of his wife who was fiercely protective of Rasputin, sided with the strannik and banished his confessor. By 1911, Rasputin’s notorious behavior had become a national scandal, and turned the imperial family into a laughingstock. Russia’s Prime Minister P.A. Stolypin sent the Tsar a detailed report of Rasputin’s misdeeds, which compelled Nicholas to banish him to his village in Siberia. As seen below, the banishment proved brief.

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.