Rasputin has gotten a terrible reputation for no reason. When nothing else could cure the son of the tzar, Rasputin did help. He rightly told the tzar not to get involved in WWI and not persecute the Jews. [The pogroms had started long before Nichols II.] And it was true what he told the tzar what if his death would be by him or anyone in extended family, that the tzar himself and his family would not survive after that more than one year