"Nicholas and Alexandra were actually inept, cruel, rigid and obtuse reactionaries. Nicholas, in a speech made in 1895, had deplored the ‘senseless dreams’ of those seeking democracy, and had helped fund the murderous anti-Semitic Black Hundreds movement after crushing the 1905 Revolution. The country’s problems, then, were firmly down to the incompetence of the tsar and tsarina, but Rasputin provided a scapegoat. Rasputin’s close relationship with the tsarina provoked rumours of sexual deviance at the Russian court led by the ‘Mad Monk’, and before long his position had become a national scandal. He came to symbolize the perceived corruption of the tsar’s rule — with stories widespread about Alexandra’s supposed lesbianism and Nicholas’ impotence. Finally, in December 1916, a high-level plot involving senior politicians, noblemen and members of the imperial family - desperate to safeguard the regime — succeeded in eliminating the cleric. Rasputin was poisoned, shot (twice), beaten and eventually dumped into the River Neva, where he finally drowned. His astonishing resistance to poison and bullets suggested to some the mysterious potency of his powers."