Rasputin, a Siberian peasant and self-proclaimed holy man, had won the trust of Empress Alexandra by appearing to ease the suffering of her son Alexei, who had haemophilia. With Tsar Nicholas II at the front, his influence over appointments was widely resented. Yusupov lured him to his palace, and Rasputin was shot; his body was thrown into the frozen Malaya Nevka river. The killers hoped to save the monarchy, but it fell less than three months later.
By 1916 Russia was losing the First World War, and rumours about Rasputin, including false claims that he was a German agent and the empress's lover, damaged the Romanovs' prestige. In November the right-wing politician Vladimir Purishkevich denounced the "dark forces" around the throne in the Duma. Yusupov, a wealthy prince married to the tsar's niece, recruited Purishkevich, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich and others into a plot.
On the night of December 29–30 (December 16–17 in the Russian calendar), Yusupov invited Rasputin to the Moika Palace, supposedly to meet his wife. The later accounts of Yusupov and Purishkevich describe cakes and wine laced with cyanide that seemed to have no effect, and a victim who survived being shot and tried to flee across the courtyard before being shot again. Historians treat many of these details with scepticism.
The body was found in the river on January 1. The empress had Rasputin buried at Tsarskoye Selo; after the February Revolution soldiers dug up the corpse and burned it. The conspirators escaped serious punishment. Yusupov lived in exile until 1967, retelling his version of the story.
Key people: Grigori Rasputin, Felix Yusupov, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, Vladimir Purishkevich