Rasputin, the So-Called "Mad Monk" Who Toppled the Romanov Dynasty

Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin (January 1869–December 1916) was born in the small village of Pokrovskoye along the Tura River in the Tobolsk guberniya (now Tyumen Oblast) in Siberia.   Often referred to as the "Mad Monk,” Rasputin was considered by many of his time to be a strannik (a religious pilgrim), and even a starets or "elder,” a title generally reserved for monk-confessors, believing him to possess psychic abilities and the gift of miraculous healing.  One often-cited example of these reputed powers occurred when Efim Rasputin, Grigori’s father, had one of his horses stolen and Rasputin was able to identify the man who had committed the theft by simply sensing it.  Read more . . .