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In reference to Grigori Efimovich Rasputin (circa 1869-1916), mystic and influential favourite at the court of Tsar Nicholas II, the name Rasputin designates a person exercising an insidious or corrupting influence, especially over a ruler, government, etc.
—Synonym: Svengali.
Both the names Svengali and Rasputin occurred, for example, in Claude! Papa!, by Susan Bell, published in The Scotsman (Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland) of Wednesday 20th March 2002 [S2 Wednesday: page 2, columns 2 & 3]:
—The following is about the French Gaullist politician Jacques Chirac (1932-2019), President of the French Republic from 1995 to 2007, and Claude Chirac (born 1962), her father’s personal advisor from 1994 until his death:
This small, unremarkable-looking woman is Chirac’s Svengali. She is his youngest daughter, 39-year-old Claude, generally acknowledged to be the most powerful woman in France.
[…]
[…] Claude has made powerful enemies, especially among the old-guard of her father’s Gaullist RPR party where she has been described as “Rasputin in a mini-skirt”.
The earliest occurrences of this use of the name Rasputin that I have found are as follows, in chronological order:
1-: From a review of South Wind (London: Martin Secker, 1917), a novel by the British author Norman Douglas (1868-1952)—review by ‘A. M.’, published in The Manchester Guardian (Manchester, Lancashire, England) of Monday 9th July 1917 [page 3, column 3]:
The failures and the outcasts of society who gather about the Alpha and Omega Club, a low drinking-shop, are not reputable, but are often quite cheerful. Miss Wilberforce, the incorrigible drunkard, is presented as an attractive English lady when not “overcome.” There are many rascals, few of them apologetic. Then, on a higher level, there is the ridiculous “Duchess” (American), Madame Steynlin, the patroness of the Russian colony—the Little White Cows, who disport themselves as they please in idle innocence all day long under the ægis of a kind of Rasputin.
Note: In the above-quoted review, the expression “a kind of Rasputin” refers to Bazhakuloff, who is mentioned as follows in Norman Douglas’s South Wind—as reprinted by Secker & Warburg, London, in 1947 [chapter 5, page 36]:
The huge silver statue of the saint came next. […] As it passed, all the onlookers raised their hats; all save the Russians, the Little White Cows who, standing aside with wonderment written on their childlike faces, were relieved from this necessity, since the wearing of hats had been forbidden by their leader, their self-styled Messiah, the divinely inspired Bazhakuloff; they were to go bareheaded summer and winter, ‘like the Christians of old’.
2-: From Gleaned from Foreign Exchanges, published in the Norwich Bulletin (Norwich, Connecticut, USA) of Friday 20th July 1917 [page 4, column 3]:
Democracy and the church in Russia seem unable to agree, for following the election of a pro-Romanoff Metropolitan there comes the arrest by the democracy of the Archbishop of Voronezh. Even in the ’eighties the position of the Russian church seemed a little unreal. A sort of minor Rasputin was brought into a police court, where magistrates and police knelt and kissed his hand. Then the presiding magistrate said, “You nasty beast, so you were drunk again yesterday.” They took him outside and gave him 50 lashes. He returned to the court, where all kneeled and kissed his hand afresh.
3-: From Hounding the Governor With Ridicule, published in the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette (Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA) of Monday 10th September 1917 [page 4, column 2]:
[We] again protest against what appears to be a systematic conspiracy of enemies in the disguise of friends to make Governor Goodrich ridiculous and to picture him as a sort of political Rasputin, full of deceits and pretenses and poses unsubstantiated by facts.
4-: From Men and Matters, published in The Labor Call (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) of Thursday 17th January 1918 [page 4, column 1]:
HOLMAN ON HUGHES.
PLEDGED WORD ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS.When thieves fall out, there is trouble. Holman now says:—
“I have long known Mr. Hughes as a man whose pledged word was absolutely worthless, but I confess that I am amazed and depressed to find that the whole of his colleagues have joined him in this exploit. I can only attribute it in certain cases to a sense of mistaken loyalty to a man who has never himself been loyal to anybody or anything.”
Holman is on the right track this time. Hughes’ only loyalty is to himself. A glance into his private life shows a lot of loyalty. Holman says his pledged word is absolutely worthless, but he’s amazed and depressed to find that his colleagues are in the same boat. And well he might be amazed. The whole public of Australia are amazed at the Conservatives-cum-Liberal gang following the little mountebank. He must be a sort of Rasputin, and knows the hypnotising trick.
5-: From the column London Day by Day, published in The Leicester Evening Mail (Leicester, Leicestershire, England) of Thursday 6th June 1918 [page 4, column 3]:
A RASPUTIN INFLUENCE.
It has been suggested to me by a laywer [sic] that the verdict of many of the public in regard to the Billing case was influenced by an impression which became very general that a sort of “Rasputin influence” had been at work in this country, and with the moral of Russia still fresh in their minds they were apprehensive of its possibilities and developments in our midst. If anything can be done to remove this idea from the mind of the public, says the London correspondent of the “Daily Dispatch,” it will be an intense relief to many whose patriotic souls have been stirred by the shameful suggestions of a shameful cause celebre.
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