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On a cold winter night in 1916,
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Felix Yusupov anxiously prepared to pick up his dinner guest.
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If all went as planned, his guest would be dead by morning,
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though four others had already tried and failed to finish him off.
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The Russian monarchy was on the brink of collapse,
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and to Yusupov and his fellow aristocrats,
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the holy man they'd invited to dinner was the single cause of it all.
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But who was he,
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and how could a single monk be to blame for the fate of an empire?
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Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin began his life in Siberia,
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born in 1869 to a peasant family.
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He might have lived a life of obscurity in his small village,
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if not for his conversion to the Russian Orthodox Church
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in the 1890s.
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Inspired by the humbled monks that wandered endlessly
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from holy site to holy site,
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he spent years on pilgrimages across Russia.
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On his travels, strangers were captivated by Rasputin's magnetic presence.
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Some even believed he had mystical gifts of prediction and healing.
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Despite Rasputin's heavy drinking, petty theft, and promiscuity,
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his reputation as a monk quickly spread beyond Siberia
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and attracted both laypeople and powerful Orthodox clergymen.
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When he finally reached the capital, St. Petersburg,
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Rasputin used his charisma and connections
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to win favor with the imperial family's spiritual advisor.
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In November 1905,
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Rasputin was finally introduced to Russian Tsar Nicholas II.
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Nicholas and his wife Alexandra devoutly believed in the Orthodox Church,
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as well as in mysticism and supernatural powers,
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and this Siberian holy man had them transfixed.
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It was a particularly tumultuous period for Russia and their family.
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The monarchy was barely clinging to control
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after the Revolution of 1905.
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Their political struggles were only intensified by personal turmoil:
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Alexei, the heir to the throne,
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had a life-threatening blood disease called hemophilia.
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When Alexei suffered a severe medical crisis in 1912,
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Rasputin advised his parents to reject treatment from doctors.
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Alexei's health improved, cementing the royal family's belief
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that Rasputin had magical healing powers,
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and guaranteeing his privileged place on the royal court.
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Today, we know that the doctors had prescribed aspirin,
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a drug that worsens hemophilia.
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After this incident, Rasputin made a prophecy:
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if he died, or the royal family deserted him,
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both their son and their crown would soon be gone.
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Outside the royal family, people had mixed views on Rasputin.
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On one hand, peasants regarded him as one of their own,
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amplifying their often-unheard voice to the monarchy.
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But nobles and clergymen came to despise his presence.
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Rasputin never ceased his scandalous behavior,
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and they were skeptical of his so-called powers
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and thought he was corrupting the royal family.
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By the end of World War I,
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they were convinced the only way to maintain order
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was to eliminate this sham of a holy man.
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With this conviction,
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Yusupov began to plot Rasputin's assassination.
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Though the exact details remain mysterious,
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our best guess at how it all unfolded comes from Yusupov's memoirs.
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He served Rasputin a number of pastries, believing they contained cyanide.
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But unbeknownst to Yusupov,
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one of his co-conspirators had a change of heart,
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and substituted the poison with a harmless substance.
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To Yusupov's shock, Rasputin ate them without ill effect.
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In desperation, he shot Rasputin at point-blank range.
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But Rasputin recovered, punched his attacker, and fled.
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Yusupov and his accomplices pursued him,
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finally killing Rasputin with a bullet to the forehead
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and dumping his body in the Malaya Nevka river.
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But far from stabilizing the monarchy's authority,
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Rasputin's death enraged the peasantry.
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Just as Rasputin prophesied,
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his murder was swiftly followed by that of the royal family.
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Whether the downfall of the Russian monarchy
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was a product of the monk's curse,
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or the result of political tensions decades in the making,
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well, we may never know.