<p>Grigory Efimovich Rasputin was born in a dank bog in rural Siberia - a lush, magical, unicorn-breeding ground of an inhabitable wasteland (I mentioned it briefly when talking about <a href="http://www.badassoftheweek.com/zaitsev.html">Vasily Zaitsev</a>), where the temperature never gets above freezing and the people are made out of a combination of battle-hardened asbestos and malfunctioning robot parts &ndash; and his crazy adventures fornicating with Russian nobility, frightening children, and absorbing dozens of large-caliber gunshot wounds would go on to make him pretty much the most infamous monk this side of the Spanish Fucking Inquisition.&nbsp; From his crazy, out-of-control beard to his wild hypnotic maniac eyes, this mystical and mysterious holy man was notorious for his physical and mental strength, his political stranglehold on the Russian Imperial Family, and his incredible ability to read peoples' weaknesses and manipulate them to carrying out his evil will.</p>
<p>When he entered the gates of Saint Petersburg in 1903, Rasputin was an illiterate peasant nobody who had spent his entire life randomly wandering around the Russian countryside searching for God one horny, sex-crazed maiden at a time (or sometimes two or three at a time, depending on how energetic he was feeling).&nbsp; Carrying only a Bible and a backpack and wearing little more than beat-up, tar-covered boots and a cheap gray overcoat, this impoverished, half-insane priest decided to settle down in the capital city of Imperial Russia and enter the country's most prominent monastery.&nbsp; It wasn't long before his powerful, commanding personality and creepy-weird magical powers asserted themselves among Rasputin's holy brothers &ndash; even the fucking Archbishop of Imperial Russia was convinced that this crazy mysterious monk had the power to control the weather and call down thunderstorms at his whim.&nbsp; Rasputin grew in power, was introduced to a Countess in the imperial court, and immediately started humping every hot aristocratic babe in sight.</p>
<p>While Rasputin quickly developed a reputation for his heavy drinking, all-night carousing, and unabashed womanizing (one of his best pickup lines was to tell women that they would be purified of all their sins if they had crazy monkey sex with him), it was his powers as a mystic that caught the attention of Empress Alexandra of Russia.&nbsp; Her son, thanks to centuries of rampant disgusting inbreeding on behalf of the European nobility, was born with hemophilia and was pretty much constantly in danger of bleeding to death at any given moment.&nbsp; Seriously, this punk kid almost fucking died of a fatal case of fucking road rash every time he beefed it off his skateboard.&nbsp; Alexandra brought Rasputin in to cure the Tsarovitch's lingering ailment, and, somewhat amazingly, it turned out that the "mad monk" was really fucking awesome at kicking the ass of hemophilia.&nbsp; His ability to save the child's life every couple of weeks catapulted Rasputin into the position of Chief Awesome Bastard of Imperial Russia, and the Tsar's family eventually asked the unwashed, sex-crazed priest to move into their home.</p>
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<p align="center"><img src="http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rasputin.jpg" alt="" vspace="8" /><br /><span>Would you want this guy sleeping in your guest room?</span></p>
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<p>Seeing as how he alone controlled whether the heir to the throne of Russia lived or died, Rasputin quickly became the most powerful motherfucker in Russia.&nbsp; He used his position close to the Tsar's family to exert his will over the government, ensure that men loyal to him were installed in the highest cabinet positions, and quickly quash any formal attempts to investigate his background, his private life, or his ridiculously-sketchy past.&nbsp; His somewhat-incredulous powers of chick magnetism apparently also held sway over the Empress herself, and it wasn't long before Rasputin held Tsarina Alexandra in the palm of his hand - both literally and figuratively.</p>
<p>His near-limitless influence and power and ability to bang the Empress whenever he felt like it led to quite a bit of prestige for Rasputin.&nbsp; Foppish courtiers hung on his every word, desperate nymphomaniac babes flung themselves at him every time he stepped foot outside his house, and pretty much everybody wanted to invite him to all their totally sweet house parties.&nbsp; Rasputin, for his part, didn't give a shit about anything &ndash; he did his own thing, and didn't cater to the prissy bullshit of the aristocracy.&nbsp; He wore his regular old clothes, talked to nobles the same way he spoke to peasants, and generally did whatever the fuck he wanted all the time and anybody who didn't like it could lick his balls.</p>
<p>Outside the highest circles of the government, Rasputin was looked upon as a creepy evil bastard who was basically a totally jacked-up cross between John Holmes, a grizzly bear and the physical embodiment of the Anti-Christ.&nbsp; He was believed to be so evil that his name wasn't spoken in public &ndash; people referred to him as "The Unmentionable" or "The Nameless One", which is some seriously badass shit.&nbsp; Numerous rumors of varying degrees of truthfulness began circling about him &ndash; his frightened enemies claimed that he was nailing the Empress' daughters (as well as the Empress, which he probably was), and that he seduced women with black magic and subconsciously forced them to participate in wild sex orgies with him every Thursday afternoon (also possible).&nbsp; They also claimed that he used to go on drive-by shootings around downtown Saint Pete, and when he got bored of capping fools with his gatt he went into local convents, stripped nuns naked, beat them with a cat o' nine tails and had his way with them (this seems somewhat less likely).</p>
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<p align="center"><img src="http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rasputin2.jpg" alt="" vspace="8" /><br /><span>Pimpin' ain't easy.</span></p>
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<p>The greatest rumor of course was about his hyper-magical mega-penis &ndash; a 13" monstrosity of a dong so infamous that it actually has its own goddamned <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasputin%27s_penis">Wikipedia entry</a>.&nbsp; According to legend, after Rasputin's death in 1916 his penis was actually stolen by a local woman and placed in a jar of formaldehyde.&nbsp; Throughout the 1920s, a group of Russian women in Paris kept the mystical wang as a holy relic for a while, and now it's actually on display in a museum in St. Petersburg, which is a claim not many famous people can make.&nbsp; He also once whipped his junk out in a crowded restaurant and angrily waved it at a bunch of police officers Jim Morrison-style, which is also pretty bitchin'.</p>
<p>What Grigory Rasputin is most famous, however, for his ability to not die despite being surrounded by people actively seeking to kill him in an incredibly fucking violent manner.&nbsp; In 1914 he survived being stabbed in the stomach by a crazy woman, but two years later a group of pissed-off Russian nobles took it upon themselves to finish the job.&nbsp; The Prince of Russia invited Rasputin over for dinner and fed him a bunch of cupcakes and wine laced with cyanide. Rasputin ate all the poisonous goodies, but was completely unaffected, so the Prince decided to off the monk the old-fashioned way and shot him in the back with a pistol at point-blank range.&nbsp; Rasputin simply pulled himself up off the floor, smashed the Prince up against a wall, and started choking the shit out of him with his bare hands.&nbsp; The nobles fought the mad monk off before he could summon some kind of crazy winged asskicking demon to incinerate them all in unholy fire, and chased Rasputin outside, where they shot him three times, beat him down with clubs, tied him up, and threw him in a river.&nbsp; When his body was discovered the next day, they found that Rasputin had broken free of his bonds and was struggling to swim to safety.&nbsp; His official cause of death was hypothermia.</p>
<p>Interestingly, while Rasputin's death was celebrated by the aristocracy, it pissed off the common people of Russia.&nbsp; They saw him as one of them &ndash; an oppressed peasant who had clawed his way to power only to be assassinated by a bunch of fucking jackasses with small penis complexes and too much time on their hands.&nbsp; A couple years later everybody had enough and revolted, killed the Tsar, and turned Russia into the Soviet Union.&nbsp; These are the consequences of killing an evil monk with a thirteen-inch cock for no good reason.&nbsp; You get shot in the face by fucking Communists.</p>
<p>Rasputin was a badass sex god who came from nothing, banged the Empress, held power over all of Russia, and was so ruthlessly evil that the mere mention of his name was considered to bring about ill omens.&nbsp; He fought his way to the top through a combination of bizarre mystic powers and an unquenchable sex drive, was tougher to kill than the T-1000, and broke free from his shitty station in life to stick it to the nobility in every possible meaning of the word.&nbsp; Truly badass.</p>
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<p align="center"><img src="http://www.badassoftheweek.com/rasputin3.jpg" alt="" vspace="8" /><br /><span>"Do you know that I shall soon die in terrible pain?<br /> But what can I do?&nbsp; God has sent me to save our dear sovereign and Holy Russia.<br />Despite my terrible sins, I am a Christ in miniature."</span></p>
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<p><span style="color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;">Sources:</span><br /><br /><span> Bell, Jeffrey A.&nbsp; <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Industrialism and Imperialism 1800-1914</span>.&nbsp; Greenwood, 2002.<br /><br /> Boese, Alex.&nbsp; <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Hippo Eats Dwarf</span>.&nbsp; Houghton Mifflin, 2006.<br /><br /> Moynahan, Brian.&nbsp; <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Rasputin: Saint Who Sinned</span>.&nbsp; Da Capo, 1999. </span></p>