Rasputin

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When was eight years old, he suffered his first tragedy. He was playing with his older brother along the banks of the Tura when Dimitri fell and was drowned. Shortly thereafter, began to startle his fellow-villagers by making amazing predictions. In one incident, correctly identified a horse thief. As a teenager, paid a visit to the local Verkhoturye Monastery. Here he encountered not only the Orthodox Church he had known from his childhood but also a number of heretical sects. Principals among these were the Khlysty and the Skopsty. The first group held that only through sin could one truly repent and receive God's grace, while the second believed that if a penitent studied long enough, it was possible to attain a semi-divine nature and escape earthly judgment. When returned to Pokrovskoye, he was a changed man: he impressed his fellow villagers with his impressive religious exhortations, spiced up with half-understood bits of doctrine he had picked up at Verkhoturye. ...

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spiritual goals. Shortly after the turn of the century, Rasputin left Pokrovskoe on another pilgrimage which would take him to Kazan and finally to St. Petersburg. Here he attracted much attention among the local Orthodox hierarchy for his seemingly genuine desire for salvation coupled with his undoubted gift for speaking and persuasion. He left the Imperial capital, only to return, this time for good, in 1905, when a fateful meeting propelled him into the orbit of the Czar and Czarina. Thus setting his image in Russia’s history forever.


Rasputin was introduced to Nicholas and Alexandra by Grand Duchess Militza on 31 October 1905. Militza, a daughter of the King of Montenegro who had ...

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