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The Rise of Rasputin: The Mad Monk Who Ran Russia

Khalid Elhassan March 3, 2025 18 min

3. Rasputin at War

Nicholas II, second from left, after taking personal command of Russia’s armies in WWI. History Network

Early in World War I, Rasputin wanted to go to the front and bless the troops. Russia’s Commander-in-Chief, who deemed Rasputin a loathsome charlatan, vowed to hang him if he came anywhere near the front. So Rasputin bad mouthed him to the Tsar, and claimed that he had a religious revelation that Russia’s armies would not succeed unless Nicholas II went to the front and took personal command of his troops. In 1915, after a string of disasters, Nicholas relocated from St. Petersburg to the front, took charge of the armed forces, and announced that he would hitherto assume personal command of the war. It was a foolish decision. Until then, Tsardom’s absolutism was made psychologically palatable to Russia’s masses with the myth that whatever went wrong, the Tsar was not to blame. That changed when the Tsar took personal command of the armies.

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.