Poisoned cakes, a courtyard chase, a river dunking and a mysterious British revolver: the Mad Monk’s final night remains the messiest murder in Russian history
PETROGRAD, 17 December 1916 (Old Style) – Grigori Rasputin, the Siberian peasant who had made himself the confidant of the Tsarina and the most hated man in Russia, was murdered in the early hours of the morning by a group of aristocratic conspirators. Over the following century, the story of how hard he was to kill has swollen into the stuff of legend: poisoned, shot, beaten, bound and drowned, and still, supposedly, breathing. The truth is rather messier, and, as it happens, rather more British.
The Plot at the Yusupov Palace
The conspirators were Prince Felix Yusupov, one of the richest men in Russia, the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, a cousin of the Tsar, the right-wing politician Vladimir Purishkevich and a couple of others. They believed that Rasputin’s influence over Tsarina Alexandra was destroying the monarchy and handing Russia to defeat. On the night of 16 December, they lured him to Yusupov’s palace on the Moika Canal, with a promise of an introduction to the prince’s beautiful wife. The article on Grigori Rasputin gives the full cast list. There was no wife, of course. There was a cellar, a gramophone and a plate of cakes.
The Cyanide That Didn’t Work
According to Yusupov’s memoirs, the cakes and the wine were laced with a large dose of potassium cyanide. Rasputin ate and drank, apparently without effect, and chatted amiably for over an hour while the increasingly unnerved conspirators waited upstairs. Eventually Yusupov grabbed a revolver, shot him in the back, and left him for dead. Moments later, the “corpse” leapt up, ran out into the courtyard, and was shot again by Purishkevich. It’s a terrific story, and a number of modern researchers suspect that Yusupov exaggerated it. Cyanide poisoning acts quickly, and there’s no evidence in the autopsy of any poison at all. Perhaps the cakes were stale. Perhaps the prince’s chemist was a fraud.
The Autopsy and the Missing Water
Rasputin’s body was found two days later under the ice of the Malaya Nevka river. The post-mortem, carried out by the forensic pathologist Professor Dmitry Kosorotov, found three gunshot wounds, one of which, a shot to the forehead, was probably fatal. The story that Rasputin had died by drowning, with water in his lungs, appears to be a myth. The original autopsy report has been lost, and many of the details are contested. A modern pathologist, going through the available accounts, would conclude that he was killed by the gunshots and thrown into the water already dead. It’s a less dramatic ending than the legend, but it has the merit of being probable.
The Revolver Nobody Expected
And now for the British angle. In 2004 the BBC aired a documentary arguing that the fatal shot to the head had been fired not by a Russian but by a British intelligence officer named Oswald Rayner. Rayner, who had been stationed in Petrograd with what we’d now call MI6, was a friend of Yusupov from their Oxford days. The bullet that killed Rasputin, according to the programme’s experts, came from a Webley .455 revolver, the standard British service weapon of the day, rather than the pistols the Russians admitted to carrying. The motive was simple: Britain feared that Rasputin was pushing the Tsar towards a separate peace with Germany. If true, it’s the greatest unacknowledged operation in the history of the Secret Intelligence Service. If false, it’s the finest conspiracy theory ever pinned on the British.
What a Modern A&E Would Have Done
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Rasputin had been rushed to a modern hospital after the first shot. The paramedics would have found a man with a gunshot wound to the back, possibly injuring the liver or kidney. A CT scan would have shown the damage, and surgeons would have operated at once. With luck, and given his famously robust constitution, he would have been out of intensive care within days. Rasputin, who did not at all believe in doctors, would have signed himself out against medical advice and gone back to the Tsarina’s drawing room for a snack.
The Doctor Who Wasn’t There
It’s worth pausing on the point that the Tsarina trusted Rasputin precisely because of his supposed healing powers. Her son Alexei suffered from haemophilia, and when the doctors couldn’t stop his bleeding, Rasputin could apparently calm the boy and ease the crises. We’ll come back to that in the next chapters. For now it’s enough to say that a modern doctor would have given the Tsarina a proper treatment plan, and the whole sorry business of a faith healer in the palace would never have arisen. A good haematologist would have saved the Romanovs a great deal of grief, and the entire Russian court a great many dinner parties.
What If Rasputin Had Survived?
Historians don’t think it would have saved the monarchy. Within three months of Rasputin’s death, Tsar Nicholas II had been forced to abdicate, and the Romanovs were doomed. The murder didn’t turn the Tsarina against her enemies, as the conspirators had hoped. It merely deepened her isolation, and by the end of the year the court was in tatters. A living Rasputin might have prolonged the agony for a while. He might also have been murdered by someone else, since half of Petrograd wanted him dead. You can read about the broader collapse in the Britannica biography of Rasputin.
The Verdict: Medically Saveable, Politically Doomed
A modern trauma team could have saved Rasputin from the first gunshot, and he’d have lived to annoy several more governments. But he was, one way or another, a dead man walking. A man who made enemies of princes, ministers, bishops and, quite possibly, British spies, wasn’t going to last. The lesson from this chapter is that when you’re the most hated man in the country, you shouldn’t accept dinner invitations from a prince, particularly if there is a gramophone playing in the cellar.
Humorous Observations
- He survived cyanide, three gunshots and a river dunking, according to legend, which would make him the world’s first immortal peasant.
- The cakes were so stale that they failed to kill a man, which is the best review a Russian baker has ever had.
- If the British did it, we’ve been very quiet about it for a hundred and ten years, which is rather out of character.
- A Webley revolver is the one piece of kit every British officer was meant to have, and the only one that history has never lost.
- Prince Yusupov wrote his memoirs with the confidence of a man who’d been to a very good school, and who lied beautifully.
- The gramophone in the cellar was reportedly playing “Yankee Doodle”, which is the most surreal soundtrack to a murder ever recorded.
- He was lured by the promise of meeting a beautiful woman who didn’t exist, which makes him the first recorded victim of catfishing.
- A modern emergency doctor would have told him to rest, and he would have ignored the advice, since he never took any, from anyone.
Cyndi Himmelstiere is a satirical journalist at Prat.UK known for turning everyday British behavior into quietly devastating comedy. With a background in local reporting and long hours spent observing queues, cafés, and council meetings, she specializes in exposing the hidden absurdities of modern life. Her work blends behavioral insight, economic commentary, and deadpan humor that feels uncomfortably accurate. Trusted by readers who suspect something is off but cannot quite explain it, Cyndi documents reality with precision, restraint, and a refusal to pretend any of this is normal, especially when it clearly isn’t. She is the author of Could Modern Doctors Have Saved History’s Greats?
