Maria Rasputin: Her Father’s Daughter
Maria Rasputin grew up in the eye of the storm. While her father, Grigori Rasputin, remains one of history’s greatest mysteries, Maria had a privileged look into his notorious life—and she was right there with him in both his rise to infamy and his brutal downfall. In the end, Maria would pay dearly for her forbidden knowledge.
1. She Had A Humble Start
When Maria Rasputin was born, infamy had yet to hit her family. Grigori Rasputin had married her mother, peasant girl Praskovya Dubrovina, at a young age, and they lived in the remote village of Pokrovskoye, far away from any drama. Soon, they had three children: Maria, her older brother Dmitry, and her younger sister Varvara. But things changed quickly.
Unknown photographer, Wikimedia Commons
2. Her Father Went Through A Crisis
While Maria was still in her mother’s womb, her father made a history-altering decision. Prodded by some “emotional or spiritual crisis,” Grigori Rasputin had a religious re-awakening and went on a pilgrimage—though some say his reasons for this trek were as earthly as evading punishment for stealing a horse.
Regardless, it was the beginning of Rasputin as we know him now.
Unknown authorUnknown author, Wikimedia Commons
3. He Was A Changed Man
When Maria’s father came back to see his newly-born daughter, he was a frightfully changed man. After staying with monks at the St Nicholas Monastery, he appeared disheveled and strange. He also (seemingly temporarily) became a vegetarian and reportedly swore off drinking.
Yet though he repelled some of their neighbors, Rasputin’s effect on others was much more disturbing.
Unknown authorUnknown author, Wikimedia Commons
4. She Grew Up In A Cult-Like Atmosphere
The Rasputin that Maria grew up with had a strange power over people, and many thought he was imbued with a holy energy. By the early 1900s, when Maria was a toddler, he was running his own makeshift chapel in a root cellar, holding secret meetings where, reportedly, his avid female followers would ceremonially wash him before each congregation.
The rumors only got more unsettling as Rasputin’s influence rose.
Unknown photographer, Wikimedia Commons
5. Her Family Had A Dark Reputation
Just as Maria began walking and talking, Rasputin began gaining a reputation in the larger cities of Russia, and traveled to places like Kazan. Dark rumors followed him. Despite Rasputin gaining powerful friends during these trips, there were persistent whispers even then that he was sleeping with his followers.
For now, though, the gossip hardly seemed to matter. Rasputin headed to the capital of Saint Petersburg—and nothing would ever be the same again.
6. Her Father Got Close To The Royal Family
In late 1905, thanks to his friendships with the “Black Princesses,” cousins to the Imperial royal family, Rasputin met Tsar Nicholas II and his wife, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna in person. In a very short time, Rasputin was a close confidant of the entire royal family, particularly since the Tsarina believed he was the only one who could heal her hemophiliac son Alexei.
With such power swirling around him, Rasputin brought Maria right into the fray.
Original uploader was Crimea at hu.wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons
7. She Made Her Debut
By this point, Rapsutin began not only to have a high opinion of himself, but also started to dream bigger for his own family. In 1910, he brought Maria and her sister to Saint Petersburg to live with him in the hopes that they would turn into “little ladies” and eventually do credit to his rising fame. Except this luxury required sacrifice.
Unknown photographer, Wikimedia Commons
8. She Changed Her Name
Maria’s given name was actually Matryona, but her father evidently felt this was too back-woods and unsophisticated for the more European Saint Petersburg. Instead, when he brought his daughter to live with him, he changed her name to the more French and worldly-sounding Maria.
For the Rasputins, any price seemed worth entrance into the glittering world of the Romanovs. It just didn’t work out.
Unknown photographer, Wikimedia Commons
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9. They Rejected Her
When Rasputin sought to enter his girls to study at the legendary Smolny Institute, they got back a bitter answer. The school refused Maria and her sister enrolment on no uncertain terms, and Rasputin was forced to settle for the second choice Steblin-Kamensky preparatory school. After all, Rasputin’s list of enemies was building.
Unknown photographer, Wikimedia Commons
10. Her Father’s Influence Grew
Many relatives of the Tsar and Tsarina were appalled at the power Rasputin had over the rulers, and were especially disturbed at the liberties he took with the young Romanov princesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia—at one point, a governess even complained that he was romping around the nursery with the girls in their nightgowns.
Rasputin must have sensed he was on thin ice, because Maria’s home life was much different.
Romanov family, Wikimedia Commons
11. Her Home Life Was Strict
In contrast to the playful, even inappropriate energy Rasputin brought to the royal family, he treated his daughters something like inmates. As Maria later described, “We were never allowed to go out alone, rarely were we permitted to go to a matinee,” and Rasputin would insist they kneel in prayer for hours every Sunday.
When he did let them go out, he chose their company very carefully.
12. She Met The Romanov Princesses
Maria and her sister Varvara were of a similar age with the Romanov daughters, and they soon met the young princesses. As Maria recalled, the girls were almost unbelievably graceful, and often entered the rooms so quietly that Maria couldn’t even hear their feet on the floor.
With these companions, Maria and Varvara were soaring far beyond their station—and Rasputin was obsessed with ensuring they didn’t fall.
Alexander Funk, Wikimedia Commons
13. Her Father Was Overprotective
As Maria turned into a teenager, young men began showing an interest in the holy man’s daughter. Rasputin’s response was controlling. Maria, even in her nostalgic recollection of her father, called him the “strictest of mentors,” and after just a half hour of any conversation with a boy, he would “burst into the room and [show] the poor lad the door”.
Perhaps it was no wonder, though. Because outside his home, Rasputin’s world was roiling.
Unknown authorUnknown author, Wikimedia Commons
14. Russia Began To Hate Her Name
Rasputin’s hold over the Tsar and Tsarina grew with the supposed miracles he was performing on Alexei, but so too did civil unrest. Soon, rumors about his intimate relationships with his followers grew to include accusations that he had seduced the Tsarina and even the four young Romanov girls. The reality, though, was even worse than all that.
15. She Didn’t Understand The Truth
Maria admitted later that, as a young girl, she didn’t always have a clear idea of what was happening in her father’s adult world. The truth would have broken her. There’s evidence that Rasputin’s religious “worship” was little more than drunken revelry, and that if the rumors about the royal family weren’t true, he was nonetheless carrying on affairs with women from every corner of society. Indeed, several women who knew him accused him of assault.
In the face of this, Rasputin only clung harder to his control.
Unknown authorUnknown author, Wikimedia Commons
16. Her Father Tried To Control The Narrative
To the extent that Maria was aware of the controversy around her father, it was mostly from Rapsutin himself. Insisting that he wouldn’t have “people uttering the filth about you that they do about me,” Rasputin took refuge in making his daughters unimpeachable, and continued controlling the minutiae of their existence and reputations. Yet even he couldn’t stave off disaster.
DEA / G. DAGLI ORTI, Getty Images
17. She Almost Lost A Parent
In the summer of 1914, Maria’s father had a harrowing brush with the Grim Reaper. A woman named Khioniya Guseva, acting on the hatred of Rasputin spreading through Russia, stabbed him in the stomach while he was leaving his home, severely wounding the monk. Maria and her mother rushed to his side at the hospital, terrified he wouldn’t make it. And while Rasputin did recover, he was never the same.
Fototeca Storica Nazionale., Getty Images
18. Her Father Changed Again
It took seven long weeks in the hospital for Rasputin to recover enough to go back to Saint Petersburg, but he could never be completely healed. According to Maria, Rasputin was affected both mentally and physically from the attempt on his life. She claimed that the stress on his nerves made him develop acid reflux to the point where he began avoiding sugar.
Despite his efforts, Rasputin would get little peace.
19. Her Country Fell Apart
The year of Rasputin’s attempted assassination was also the year Russia entered WWI, hurling the country into turmoil. It did Rasputin no favors: Over the coming months, Russia’s economy plummeted and it lost soldier after soldier to the conflict, further stirring the opposition to the Romanovs and their advisor Rasputin.
Yet even as Maria’s life was fraying at the edges, she found solace.
George H. Mewes, Wikimedia Commons
20. She Found Love
At the beginning of WWI, the teenaged Maria became engaged to a young Georgian officer, Pankhadze. In fact, her father had intervened and kept Pankhadze from the fighting at the front, giving his daughter more time with her fiancé and apparently endorsing him as a romantic option. But very little of this happy time was meant to last.
Agence de presse Meurisse, Wikimedia Commons
21. They Took Out Her Father
In December 1916, the single worst event of Maria’s young life took place. Prince Felix Yusupov, one of Rasputin’s acquaintances—and, it would turn out, his most bitter enemy—lured the holy man to his house and then ended his life with the help of several other discontented Russian aristocrats. The details of that night would haunt Maria.
Unknown authorUnknown author, Wikimedia Commons
22. They Tried And Failed To Poison Him
The manner of Rasputin’s end is now the stuff of legend. Yusupov later claimed that he first poisoned Rasputin with cookies laced with cyanide, to no avail. Shocked at Rasputin’s otherworldly constitution, Yusupov had to resort to beating him with his co-conspirators, then shooting him and dumping him in a frozen lake.
This is the story many know today. Yet Maria herself disputed this account.
Ninara from Helsinki, Finland, Wikimedia Commons
23. She Revealed The Truth
Yusupov’s confessions about that fateful night never sat right with Maria. According to her, her father didn’t like sweet things, and would have never eaten the offered cakes—meaning he was never poisoned in the first place. This may have seemed like a small point to some, but it meant everything to Maria: Instead of some superhuman evil being, Rasputin was just a man, and he was murdered like one.
With her father gone, it was Maria who had to deal with the fallout.
24. She Reported Him Missing
The day after Rasputin went over to Yusupov’s, Maria woke up to a nightmare. Her father had never come home, and she knew in the pit of her stomach that something was deeply wrong. She and her sister went right to the royal family, reporting him missing to lady-in-waiting Anna Vyrubova, Tsarina Alexandra’ closest confidant.
It didn’t take long for macabre clues to start pouring in.
25. She Found Traces Of Him
By now, all of Saint Petersburg was abuzz with the supposed murder of the evil Rasputin, but Maria simply considered him missing, and worried for her father. As the investigation started, her dread increased: Officers found traces of blood on the Bolshoy Petrovsky bridge, indicating the point where the conspirators had thrown him off, and showed Maria a boot that she identified as her father’s.
From then on, it was just a matter of confirming the worst.
26. They Found Her Father
A couple of days after Rasputin’s brutal end, they finally found his body in the frozen river below. When the city’s surgeon performed the autopsy, he found traces of that night’s trauma on Rasputin’s body, including three gunshot wounds, a slicing wound, and other injuries, some of which the surgeon believed happened post-mortem.
There was no evidence he’d been poisoned, but this was cold comfort to Maria—and so was her father’s funeral.
27. His Funeral Insulted Her
Maria maintained that she attended Rasputin’s funeral, and her memories are harrowing. She claimed that “Many places in the little chapel were empty, for the crowds that had knocked at my father’s door while he still lived to ask some service of him neglected to come and offer up a prayer for him once he was dead,” showing just how far her family had fallen.
However, other accounts suggest that neither Rasputin’s children nor his wife were permitted at the service. If so, they did get one consolation.
28. The Royal Family Supported Her
Whether or not Maria attended her father’s funeral, the Imperial family did rally around the remaining Rasputins. After the small service, which took place in lady-in-waiting Anna Vyrubova’s garden, Maria and her family met with the royal family in Vyrubova’s home, where they offered their friendship and protection.
The trouble was, the Romanovs’ protection was about to mean nothing.
Unknown authorUnknown author, Wikimedia Commons
29. Her Homeland Raged
Grigori Rasputin’s end was just the harbinger of a greater catastrophe: Within months, the simmering unrest throughout Russia boiled over into a civil war, forcing Tsar Nicholas to abdicate in March of 1917. Even Maria wasn’t safe: That April, she was locked up in Tauride Palace for questioning.
She eventually gained release thanks to one of her father’s old followers, Boris Soloviev, but this was no mere altruistic act.
unknown; photo retake by George Shuklin, Wikimedia Commons
30. She Had A New Love Interest
By this time, Maria’s engagement to the Georgian soldier had ended, and after her father’s passing, Boris Soloviev—who was considered by many to be Rasputin’s spiritual successor—seemed like a natural option for a husband; he, likewise, considered her the smart option to be his wife. Only, there was one glaring issue. Neither of them even liked each other.
But in these last days of the Russian Empire, bizarre forces began drawing them together.
31. She Claimed Her Deceased Father Wanted Her To Marry
Maria and Boris, like good students of Grigori Rasputin, often participated in seances with a group of other like-minded people in an attempt to commune with the dead. Naturally, Maria sought to speak with her late father…but when she finally “got” him, his advice left her stunned. According to Maria, Rasputin’s ghost kept insisting she “love Boris”. Eventually, Maria gave in.
Universal History Archive, Getty Images
32. Her Husband Sneered At Her
Trying to survive in her rapidly decaying world, Maria married Boris in October, 1917, making good on her ghostly father’s seance “predictions”. Boris repaid her with betrayal. In his diary, Boris would go on to note that Maria wasn’t even really that useful to him in the bedroom, since he was so much more attracted to women who weren’t her.
The dye was cast, however, and it was only going to get darker from there.
Agence de presse Meurisse, Wikimedia Commons
33. She Had One Last Conversation With The Tsarina
The next months of Maria’s life passed by in a blur, and she clung to the Imperial family and her home of Saint Petersburg as best she could. It was all just delaying the inevitable, and everyone knew the end was near. On her final visit to the Romanovs, Maria recalled the last words the Tsarina would ever speak to her: “Go my children, leave us, leave us quickly, we are being imprisoned”.
But it was Maria’s own family who would hand over the Romanovs to their tragic fate.
William Downey, Wikimedia Commons
34. Her Husband Stole From The Royal Family
With Russia falling apart at the seams, Maria’s husband began scrambling for power—and he hit devastating lows. Believing him to be a trusted friend, the royal family went to Boris and asked him to take some jewels for safekeeping in the event they needed quick cash for an escape.
He promptly proved he wasn’t worthy of that trust: In the most generous interpretation, Boris lost the funds. But according to some, he’d outright embezzled them. Though by the time that news came out, he made sure he was far, far away.
Boasson and Eggler St. Petersburg Nevsky 24., Wikimedia Commons
35. She Fled Her Country
By 1918, not even Boris Soloviev could stand to be in Saint Petersburg anymore, and he and Maria fled first to her hometown of Pokrovskoye, where her mother currently was, and then hopped around various other out-of-the way towns, hoping to wait out the storm of civil unrest that was now fully raging through Russia as the Bolsheviks took over. Still, this wasn’t enough for Maria’s husband.
36. Her Husband Betrayed Them
In choosing to “lose” the Romanov jewels, Boris had made a bet on himself, and it was a bet he kept making no matter who it hurt. Some even accused Boris of turning in some pro-Imperial officers who had been planning to help the Romanovs escape, apparently deciding that if he wasn’t going to save the royal family, no one was. He didn't stop there.
Film Footage of Maria Rasputin, Daughter of Grigori Rasputin, John Hall
37. She Was Involved In An Impersonation Plot
To add insult to injury, Boris soon paraded Romanov imposters around Russia, ironically asking for money to help them escape—a feat he refused to perform for the real Romanovs—so he could keep lining his own pockets. It was a hint of what was to come in the next decades, with Romanov impersonators popping up everywhere, but it was no less cowardly.
If this upset Maria, it was nothing compared to the tragedy to come.
Unknown authorUnknown author, Wikimedia Commons
38. Her Patrons Met A Brutal End
In the summer of 1918, Maria received devastating news. The Romanovs never did make it to safety, and the Bolsheviks eventually imprisoned them in Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg. Then, one bitter July night, the revolutionaries brought royal parents and children alike into a basement to face a firing squad, ending them all.
In a further tragedy, both Maria’s mother and brother disappeared into the infamous Soviet gulags. It only made her more determined to start again.
Boasson and Eggler St. Petersburg Nevsky 24., Wikimedia Commons
39. She Started A New Life
Barely 20 years old at the time of the Romanovs’ end and half her family’s disappearance, Maria now tried desperately to build her life back up. By 1922, she and Boris had two daughters, Tatiana and Maria, who were named after the Romanov princesses. They ended up settling in Paris and, for a time, took on a shockingly mundane existence, with Boris working in a soap factory and doing various odd-jobs around town.
But Maria Rasputin was never meant for a normal life.
Topical Press Agency, Getty Images
40. She Lost Her Whole Family
In the mid 1920s, tragedy caught up with Maria again. In 1924 or 1925, her younger sister Varvara perished while still in Moscow. Then, just a year or two later, so too did her husband Boris Soloviev, slipping away in a Paris hospital of tuberculosis. As always with Maria, if it rained, it poured.
Alone except for her two girls, Maria was forced to plunge back into a life of danger.
Agence de presse Meurisse, Wikimedia Commons
41. She Began A Surprising Career
Soon after Boris’s passing, Maria’s infamous name got her a job as a cabaret dancer, where she traveled around as “the daughter of the mad monk”. This came with a world of pain. Her dancing act was biographical, and Maria described the anguish she felt every time she had to go on stage and confront "the tragedy of my father's life and death”. She also put herself in physical danger.
Topical Press Agency, Getty Images
42. She Became A Lion Tamer
Maria’s itinerant performing life soon led her to a job in the circus—and not just any job. Maria took up work as an animal trainer, taming lions and performing with bears. As she wryly told an interviewer, “They ask me if I mind to be in a cage with animals, and I answer, ‘Why not? I have been in a cage with Bolsheviks’”.
In the end, she should have been much more terrified.
43. She Suffered A Vicious Attack
Maria’s life as a performer lasted until 1935—and it ended with a horrific moment. While traveling with an American circus, she was mauled by a bear. Although she held it together for most of the rest of the run, she eventually quit by the time they reached Miami, Florida.
Maria had, after all, swallowed enough trauma to last her a lifetime. But some of her old habits were still with her.
Works Progress Administration. Federal Theatre Project. 8/29/1935-6/30/1939, Wikimedia Commons
44. She Re-Married
Maria settled in America in 1937—without her daughters, who were denied entry—and married her childhood friend Gregory Bern a few years later, taking up residence in Los Angeles. It turned into a very bad idea: When they divorced in 1946, Maria admitted to a judge that Greogry had verbally berated her, hit her, and then “just deserted me”.
Her final years weren’t any less dramatic.
45. She Defended Herself
Maria became a US citizen in the 1940s, and even worked as a riveter during WWII to help support the American effort. For all that—and despite her Imperial Romanov background—when the Red Scare came, people began whispering she was a communist, prompting Maria to write to the Los Angeles Times and unequivocally deny the rumors.
She may not have been a communist, but she was an eccentric.
Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Wikimedia Commons
46. She Did What She Had To
By the late 1950s, Maria was too old for her machinist work, and instead cobbled together money from hosting Russian lessons, babysitting, and giving interviews to people still interested in her past. In these conversations—possibly to keep people interested—she would sometimes make bizarre admissions, including her confession that she was a psychic and that Richard Nixon’s wife had come to her in a dream.
Perhaps because of this, Maria could never quite let her past go.
Film Footage of Maria Rasputin, Daughter of Grigori Rasputin, John Hall
47. She Supported An Imposter
As rumors swirled in the next decades that one or more Romanovs had survived the firing squad, Maria was asked to weigh in on whether Anna Anderson, perhaps the most famous Romanov imposter, was really the Grand Duchess Anastasia. Maria initially supported Anderson, but later recanted; it has since been proven that Anderson was not Anastasia, and that all the Romanovs did perish in July 1918.
Anastasia was not the only ghost from Maria’s old life to come back to haunt her.
Unknown authorUnknown author, Wikimedia Commons
48. She Had One Enemy
Much of Maria’s life in exile was devoted to remembering her father and reinstating his image. So when Felix Yusupov, her father’s assailant, came out with a memoir in 1928 detailing Rasputin’s end, she unsuccessfully sued him for damages. Soon after, she presented her own memoir, The Real Rasputin, and would follow it up with two more—in addition to sneeringly naming her dogs “Iousso” and “Pov” after “Yusupov”.
It was in these writings that Maria put forward a bombshell accusation.
non indicato, Wikimedia Commons
49. She Made A Controversial Allegation
According to Maria, the motive behind Rasputin’s demise was nothing like what they teach in history class. In one of her memoirs, Maria insisted that her father’s murder was personal, not political. She claimed that Yusupov had made romantic advances toward her father, and that the prince had lashed out and killed the monk because Rasputin spurned these attempts.
Although most historians dismiss this claim, Maria stood by it.
50. She Survived
Maria Rasputin lived nearly to 80 years old, passing in 1977 in the Russian-American Silver Lake community of Los Angeles. She kept going until the very end: her third and last book, Rasputin: The Man Behind the Myth, which continued her efforts to humanize her father’s legacy, was published right around her passing. Through blood and exile, Maria Rasputin was nothing if not a survivor.
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