Grigori Rasputin was assassinated in late 1916 by a group of Russian nobles who feared his influence over the royal family, especially Tsarina Alexandra, just months before the Russian Revolution toppled the monarchy.

What happened to Rasputin?

Quick timeline

  • Who he was: A Siberian peasant and mystic who became a close adviser to Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra, largely because they believed he could ease their son Alexei’s hemophilia attacks.
  • Why people hated him: Many nobles, politicians, and clergy saw him as a corrupt “holy man” whose influence was helping discredit the monarchy in the middle of World War I and deep internal crisis.
  • When it happened: He was killed in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) on the night of 29–30 December 1916 (Old Style 16–17 December).

The famous murder night

The core plot: a small group of aristocrats, including Prince Felix Yusupov and politician Vladimir Purishkevich, lured Rasputin to Yusupov’s palace on the Moika under the pretext of meeting Yusupov’s wife.

The legendary version (very popular in documentaries, blogs, and forums) goes roughly like this:

  1. Lured with food and drink
    • Rasputin is invited to a late-night gathering in the palace basement with cakes and wine allegedly laced with cyanide.
    • He eats and drinks but seems unaffected, which later fueled the myth that poison “couldn’t kill him.”
  1. First shooting
    • A nervous Yusupov takes a revolver, tells Rasputin to pray, and shoots him in the chest; Rasputin collapses and appears dead.
  1. The “he got back up” moment
    • After some time, Yusupov returns, leans over the body—Rasputin suddenly gets up, attacks him, and staggers out into the courtyard.
    • Purishkevich then shoots Rasputin again outside, hitting him multiple times.
  1. Beaten, bound, and dumped in the river
    • The conspirators beat him, wrap him in cloth or a carpet, tie him with ropes or chains, drive to a bridge, and throw him into a hole in the ice of the Neva (or Little Nevka) River.
 * When his body is recovered days later, some early reports and popular retellings claim water was found in his lungs, suggesting he finally died by drowning.

This “poisoned, shot, beaten, drowned, and still wouldn’t die” storyline is what turned Rasputin’s death into a legendary dark tale and a massive “what really happened?” topic in history forums and videos.

What historians think actually happened

Modern historians lean toward a simpler, less supernatural explanation: Rasputin was killed by gunshot wounds, not by some impossible sequence of survivals.

  • Autopsy evidence: A later medical examination indicates he died from gunshot wounds (including a close-range head shot), with no clear proof that poison did anything or that he was still alive when dumped in the river.
  • Drowning doubt: The famous detail about “water in his lungs” is heavily debated and likely exaggerated or misreported; the more accepted view now is that he was already dead before he hit the water.
  • Unreliable narrators: Much of the wild story comes from Yusupov and other conspirators’ later memoirs and press accounts, which were shaped by ego, politics, and the desire to dramatize their act.

So the best-supported answer is: Rasputin was murdered by a group of nobles with a gun, and his body was then dumped into the river; the ultra-dramatic “unkillable” version is mostly legend layered over a brutal political assassination.

Why it still matters and why it’s trending

Rasputin’s death is often seen as a symbolic “last act” of a doomed empire: he was killed in December 1916, and within a year the Tsar had abdicated and the Romanov dynasty was finished.

Today, “what happened to Rasputin” remains a trending topic because:

  • It mixes true crime and myth: Poison, plots, royal courts, “man who wouldn’t die” vibes—perfect for podcasts, YouTube history channels, and Reddit threads.
  • It raises ongoing debates:
    • Was he a manipulative fraud or a sincere mystic in over his head?
    • Were the nobles “saving Russia,” or just protecting their own power while the system was collapsing anyway?
  • Pop culture keeps reviving him: From songs and memes to mini-docs titled things like “The Man Who Wouldn’t Die,” his story is continually repackaged as dark, almost gothic entertainment.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.