Rasputin – the ‘unkillable monk’?
Chemistry Enrichment Week in school and Monday’s assembly reading attempted to combine History and Chemistry through the mysterious – and ultimately – grisly story of Rasputin, the mystic and spiritual healer who wielded power and influence over the Russian Royal Family in the early 20th Century.
‘Born in 1869 into a family of peasants in Siberia, Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin experienced a religious conversion while on a pilgrimage in 1897 and is often described as a monk, although he held no official position in the Russian Orthodox Church. In the early 1900s he went to St. Petersburg, then the capital of Russia, where he became a prominent figure in High Society. In 1905, he met Tsar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra. Shortly after that, he began working as a faith healer for their only son Alexei, who suffered from haemophilia, but was regarded with deep suspicion by many at court. When Nicholas left to direct Russia’s campaign in the First World War, Rasputin’s influence was seen by many as both suspicious and dangerous and, in December 1916 he was assassinated by a group of noblemen.
The legend that surrounded his murder was that he had been almost ‘unkillable’ – according to the subsequent memoirs of Prince Felix Yusupov, the man who carried out the assassination, Rasputin was invited to the palace and taken down to its cellar, where he was given cake laced with potassium cyanide that should have killed him instantly. Cyanide works by preventing cells from using oxygen by binding to an enzyme in the mitochondria, blocking the electron transport chain and causing suffocation at a cellular level, and rapid organ failure.
The story told by Yusupov was that Rasputin was unaffected by the cakes so they next gave him madeira wine laced with more cyanide – instead of collapsing instantaneously, he merely complained of a headache and pain in his stomach. Eventually, the would-be assassins had used up their whole supply of cyanide so resorted to shooting Rasputin and dumping his body into the freezing cold river nearby.
The explanations of Rasputin’s apparent ability to defy science continued to captivate people for generations. One theory was that the cyanide had been stored in damp conditions which could have caused a chemical reaction that inadvertently substituted potassium hydrogencarbonate for potassium cyanide, which looks similar but is harmless.
Another was that Rasputin had somehow worked out a way of immunising himself to cyanide poisoning by ingesting tiny amounts over time, and while this is simply impossible, such was the mystique surrounding the man that many found it believable. Yet another theory was that Rasputin had alcoholic gastritis, which can lead to having less stomach acid – without acid in the stomach, the potassium cyanide can’t be converted into hydrogen cyanide, and is therefore considerably less toxic. And lastly, some speculated that the assassins had unwittingly given him the antidote along with the poison, suggesting that sugar binds to cyanide in a way that allows its excretion before it can be fully absorbed into the body, so by feeding it to Rasputin in cake and wine, they had made it less than deadly.
While the truth behind the murder of Rasputin may be far less mysterious than the legend it became, the story of his life – and death – has fascinated millions of people for well over a century, all tied up with the subsequent fall of the Royal Family in the Russian Revolution of 1917. It has also, of course, given rise to TV shows, books, films and even a hit record in the late 1970s, at least in part due to the chemistry that lay behind the botched attempt to assassinate him.
Have a good weekend
Best wishes
Michael Bond
