He walked the road alone.

The clothes on his back and the sandals on his feet were the only things he carried with

him, and he had a long way to go.

After all, he was crossing an empire that stretched from dawn to dusk.

He was wandering in Piri al-Russia.

Beaton robbed, even hunted by wolves.

His journey was filled with suffering.

He even believed he was beset by demons and at war in the spiritual realm.

But none of that would stop him because Gregori was aiming for the empire's heart.

That's where the doors of the salons and palaces of the Russian aristocracy would be thrown

open to him.

Ears would bend to his teaching, and wealthy and sick alike would respond to his murmuring

lips.

That's right, Gregori Rasputin was going to St. Petersburg, and as historian Douglas

Smith describes, they were hungry for his teaching there.

The elite aristocratic society in Russia at the time was fascinated with very spiritualist

leaders, with gurus, and there was this desire to seek alternate ways of connecting with

reality that traditional religion and the church were unable to explain to people who

were seeking answers to sort of these life's questions that seemed to have this pressing

urgency right around 1900.

In this season of Unabskirred, we will follow Gregori Rasputin's transformation from a

peasant at the crossroads of history to a monster at the center of far too many legends,

...