Gerry Bowler: ‘Caught in the Toils of a Nightmare’: The Assassination of Rasputin

Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin (seated, centre) with his followers in 1914, two years before he was assassinated. Public Domain

Commentary

Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was a Siberian mystic whose seemingly supernatural powers won him the friendship of the Russian ruling family and a place of influence at a time of crisis in the empire. On Dec. 30, 1916, he was murdered by an aristocratic cabal.