Rasputin, Grigori Yefimovich, was a Russian mystic and self-declared holy man who befriended the family of Nicholas II, Russia's last emperor, and accomplished massive power in late Imperial Russia.
Rasputin was born into a peasant family in the Siberian town of Pokrovskoye in Tobolsk Governorate's Tyumensky Uyezd (now Yarkovsky District of Tyumen Oblast). In the year 1897, while on a journey to an abbey, he had a spiritual conversion experience. While he held no official post in the Russian Orthodox Church, he has been referred to as a monk or a "strannik" (wanderer or pilgrim). In the year 1903 or the winter season of 1904— 1905, he checked out Saint Petersburg, where he drew in certain church and social leaders. In November 1905, he met Emperor Nicholas and Empress Alexandra and ended up being a social figure.
Let's learn more about Grigori Rasputin in this book.