Rasputin: The Perfect Character Scapegoat
Eric Shiraev
Fun linguistic twist: in Russian, “Rasputin” can be heard as “raspútny”—meaning “dissolute.”
Few figures in Russian history reveal the mechanics of character assassination as clearly as Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin (1869-1916). His physical presence at the imperial court produced one kind of scandal, but his reputation—carefully amplified, manipulated, and weaponized—created another, far more powerful and destructive. Viewed through the CARP framework, Rasputin becomes a near-perfect case study of how sexual rumor, false claims, moral panic, and political frustration can merge into a force capable not only of ruining a man, but of destabilizing a government already teetering on the edge.
From the moment Rasputin entered public consciousness, he was framed through a formula as old as politics itself: combine accusations of sexual deviance with claims of political corruption, and watch the narrative ignite. He was accused of everything the public imagination could conjure—drunken orgies, mystical sex cults, seducing aristocrats, corrupting the imperial family, even hypnotizing Empress Alexandra with erotic power. It was the ultimate contamination story: the image of an unwashed peasant holy man penetrating the sanctity of the throne. And once framed this way, the line between his real vices and the fabricated horrors attached to his name disappeared completely.
What made Rasputin’s case so explosive was not merely the content of the accusations but the machinery that carried them. Between 1912 and 1916, gossip salons, political cartoonists, and clerical rivals discovered that Rasputin was irresistible. Russia did not allow a free political press, but it did allow a scandal press—an entire ecosystem designed to trade in emotional rumor, moral outrage, and sensational imagery. Caricatures depicted him as a demonic seducer; fabricated testimonies from brothels circulated as fact; satirical liturgies mocked his religious practices; lurid descriptions of orgies multiplied like modern clickbait. Attacking Rasputin became a convenient way to attack Nicholas II and Czarina Alexandra without naming them outright. Through him, elites—both pro-monarchic and liberal—could vent their frustrations at the emperor, the disastrous war, and the overall direction in which the empire was heading.
The broader context made the scandal irresistible. Russia in the 1910s was a society in crisis between the new social forces unleashed by rising capitalism—urban workers, an assertive middle class, and newly politicized citizens demanding democratic reforms—and the old, rigid system of monarchical bureaucracy desperately trying to preserve its authority. It was this collision between a modernizing society and an antiquated political order that ultimately crippled the empire.
In such moments, societies look for a symbolic villain, someone who seems to embody national decay. Rasputin fit the role with eerie precision: a rough, semi-literate peasant who somehow gained intimate access to the royal family. Add sexual rumor to this picture and the symbolism became irresistible. Rasputin was cast as an intruder who polluted the palace from within, a contaminant, a symptom of everything that felt wrong with the Romanov regime.
Psychologically, the scandal worked because it activated emotions that override rational thought. The fear that political power had fallen into the wrong hands. The disgust, amplified by a convenient panic button—religious morality—and cultural prejudice, toward an “unclean” holy man. The envy and resentment stirred by a peasant who rose without rank, pedigree, or education. Once these emotions were triggered, evidence hardly mattered. This is why the orgy stories stuck so stubbornly: not because they were proven, but because they were emotionally satisfying. The scandal became a story people wanted to believe.
Long after Rasputin was murdered, the character that had been created for him lived on. Novels, films, conspiracy theories, even eroticized fantasies of Russian decadence continued to define him. The real Rasputin—an eccentric, alcoholic mystic who behaved inappropriately with female followers and frequented brothels—was replaced by a mythic Rasputin, a giant symbol of corruption, mysticism, and collapse. Modern scholars have dismantled the most extreme claims, yet the myths endure. Once a narrative becomes a cultural pleasure, it becomes nearly immune to correction. And that, as CARP research repeatedly shows, is one of the central lessons of character assassination: reputations shaped by emotional storytelling often outlive both the facts and the people they tarnish.
What remains most striking about Rasputin’s case is how familiar the patterns feel today. The sexualized rumor, the elite amplification, the search for symbolic villains, the emotional triggers, the myth that survives long after the truth is known—these are not relics of 1916. They are the building blocks of modern reputational warfare, echoed in scandals—manufactured or real—from Berlusconi’s “bunga bunga” saga to the bizarre, viral smears hurled at France’s First Lady Brigitte Macron, and to the fabricated obscenities used against the late Alexei Navalny in Russia. Rasputin’s story is not just a footnote to the last days of the Romanovs; it is a blueprint for understanding how societies destroy reputations when political frustration, cultural anxiety, and moral panic collide.
A few sources on Rasputin (CARP suggestions)
Douglas Smith, Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs.
Joseph T. Fuhrmann, Rasputin: The Untold Story
Edvard Radzinsky, The Rasputin File (Translated)