Rasputin was born into a peasant family in the Siberian village of Pokrovskoye in Tyumen Oblast. After making a pilgrimage to a monastery in 1897, he experienced a religious conversion. He was described as a monk or “strannik” (wanderer or pilgrim), although he did not hold an official position in the Russian Orthodox Church.¹⁾

In late 1906. Rasputin began acting as a healer for Alexei, the tsar, and his only son Alexander, who suffered from hemophilia. He was a divisive figure at court, seen by some Russians as a mystic, visionary, and prophet, and by others as a religious charlatan. ²⁾

In the early morning of December 30, 1916. Rasputin was assassinated by a group of conservative nobles who opposed his influence on the Russian Tsar. ³⁾

He had an extraordinary immunity. For already in 1914 there was an attempt on Rasputin's life. At that time a woman, whom he once seduced and then abandoned, inflicted on him a deep knife wound in the abdomen. Although the wound was quite serious, Rasputin recovered remarkably quickly. ⁴⁾

Shortly before his death, he wrote a letter to the Russian Tsar in which he predicted that “no member of the Tsar's family would outlive him by more than 2 years.” It turned out that less than three months after his death, the Tsar was forced to abdicate, and eighteen months later the Romanov family was executed. Thus, on July 17, 1918, the ominous prophecy of Grigory Rasputin strangely came true. ⁵⁾