Alexandra Pistohlkors - Relationship With Rasputin

Relationship With Rasputin

Alexandra and her husband were featured in a widely circulated portrait of Rasputin with admirers that was taken in his apartment in St. Petersburg in 1914.

At first the starets was a frequent visitor to the Pistohlkors in their home and Alexandra introduced Rasputin to many of her friends and relatives. Later, because Alexandra's mother-in-law, Olga, detested Rasputin, the young couple had to meet with Rasputin in her sister Anna's house, though Alexandra was a frequent visitor to Rasputin's apartment without her husband. Alexandra was one of several society women who became followers of Rasputin. She also sent him telegrams, asking for his prayers or help. Rasputin persuaded some of his female followers "that they must not confess the sin of adultery, since that would only confuse their confessors, who would not understand it."

"I am very sick. I implore you to help. Sana," Alexandra wrote in a telegram to Rasputin in 1913. In another telegram, sent in April 1916, she wrote that she was "gloomily sick at heart" and "I beg for help."

Alexandra's sister-in-law, Marianne Pistohlkors, has been implicated by some historians as one of the co-conspirators in the murder of Rasputin in December 1916.