Rasputin

Meeting with the royal family

During short time Rasputin became the fashionable and known person in capital and was persona-grata even in high-society drawing rooms.

Great princesses Anastasia and Melitsa Nikolaevna together with the favourite frailine of empress Anna Vyrubova have acquainted it with imperial family. The first meeting with Rasputin has occured in the beginning of November, 1905 and has left very pleasant impression at an imperial couple

The right to be the confessor of an imperial family Grigory has received by Saint John of Kronshtadt's blessing (which himself bore it in relation to a family of emperor Alexander III, father of Nikolay II).

Blessing Grigory, Saint John has told only: "By name to yours will be to you" - beginning to see clearly that the starets (aged man Grirory) will be slandered and accused of the same of what injustly accused him.

But almost two years has passed before the Siberian peasant began to appear in a palace more or less regularly.

In 1907 Rasputin was invited to an imperial court yard - just at the peak of one of attacks of illness at a cesarevitch Alexey. The matter was that the imperial family hid a hemophilia of the successor, being afraid of public excitements.

Therefore they refused healing services of Rasputin for a long time. However when the condition of the child became critical, Nikolay has surrendered.

All subsequent life of Rasputin in St. Petersburg was inseparably linked with treatment of a tsarevitch Alexey. However it was not limited to it. Briefly Rasputin got many useful acquaintances in the upper class of the Petersburg society. But Nikolay did not welcome frequent occurrences of Rasputina in a palace for a long time.

And when he became approached to an imperial family, the St. Petersburg elite were aspired to be presented to the Siberian sorcerer whom for eyes named as "Grishka Rasputin".

In 1910 his daughter Maria has moved to Petersburg to arrive in Bogoslovskaya (Divinity Studies) Academy.

And soon in Petersburg's society began to go hearings about the extremely obscene behaviour of Rasputin. Said that, using the huge influence to the empress Alexandra Fedorovna, Rasputin took bribes (monetary and in kind) for advancement of certain projects or for personal careers.

Source: Oleg Platonov. The truth about G.E.Rasputin