Iusupov next contacted Purishkevich, who had become persuaded from conversations with the military that the government was leading the country to disaster. Early in November, he used his private Red Cross trains to distribute Miliukov’s speech among frontline troops. On November 3 he dined with Nicholas at headquarters and pleaded with him to be rid of the new False Pretender, as he called Rasputin.113 The Duma speech which Purishkevich delivered against Rasputin on November 19 was second only to Miliukov’s in the attention it received nationwide. Iusupov listened to it from the gallery and two days later contacted him. Purishkevich unhesitatingly agreed to join.114 Two additional persons were brought in: a young lieutenant and a physician named Lazavert, who served on Purishkevich’s train. Grand Duke Dmitrii, the fifth member of the group, was of invaluable assistance because his status as member of the Imperial family gave the conspirators immunity from police searches. The plotters were anything but tight-lipped. A number of outsiders, among them a visiting British diplomat, Samuel Hoare, knew well in advance what was about to happen.115 Purishkevich boasted to more than one acquaintance that on December 16 he would assassinate Rasputin.116
The plan was to commit the murder in such a way as to give the impression that Rasputin was not dead but had disappeared. Iusupov, who had the victim’s confidence, was to lure him to his palatial residence on the Moika, poison him, and with the help of associates tracelessly dispose of the corpse. Detailed preparations were made in late November. The conspirators pledged never to divulge what they had done—a pledge that both Purishkevich and Iusupov would break.
The date for the murder was set for the night of December 16–17, the eve of the closing session of the Duma.
Rasputin had received many warnings of a plot on his life and was not easily enticed from his apartment at Gorokhovaia 64, where he lived under the protection of the police and his own bodyguards. Nevertheless, on December 13 he agreed to visit Iusupov to make the acquaintance of his wife, Irina, a niece of the Tsar. On the fatal day, Rasputin received explicit warnings from Protopopov, Vyrubova, and anonymous callers. He seems to have had premonitions, for he was said during these days to have destroyed his correspondence, made deposits in his daughters’ bank accounts, and spent much time in prayer.117
It was arranged that Iusupov would arrive at Rasputin’s house by car at midnight, after the police guards had been withdrawn, and come up through the back stair. Rasputin attired himself for the occasion in his most seductive clothing: wide trousers of black velvet, new leather boots, a white silk shirt with blue embroidery, and a satin waistband decorated in gold, a gift from the Empress.118 Iusupov recalled that he exuded a powerful odor of cheap soap and looked cleaner than he had ever seen him.
Iusupov pulled up at Gorokhovaia 64 shortly past midnight in Purishkevich’s car, driven by Dr. Lazavert disguised as a chauffeur. Rasputin put on a beaver hat and rubber boots. They then drove to Iusupov’s residence. The conspirators had carefully prepared the scene of the crime. Iusupov led his guest to a room on the ground floor which normally stood empty but which had now been furnished to look like a salon: scattered teacups and wineglasses gave the impression that a party had recently taken place there. Iusupov said that his wife was upstairs but would soon come down to join them (in reality, she was in the Crimea, a thousand miles away). Iusupov’s fellow conspirators were gathered in the room directly above, which served as a study and was linked to the ground floor by a narrow staircase. From there came the sounds of “Yankee Doodle” played over and over on a gramophone. While pretending to await his wife, Iusupov offered Rasputin refreshments from a nearby table, on which stood a tray with almond and chocolate pastries: Dr. Lazavert had inserted into the chocolate cakes powerful doses of powdered potassium cyanide. A bottle of Rasputin’s favorite Madeira was also available, and next to it glasses with the same poison in liquid form. Annoyed at being kept waiting, Rasputin refused to drink or eat, but Iusupov eventually cajoled him into partaking of the pastries and wine. He waited anxiously for the poison to take effect (according to the physician, this should have happened within fifteen minutes) and at Rasputin’s request sang to the accompaniment of a guitar. Rasputin seemed a bit unwell but he did not collapse. The alarmed Iusupov excused himself and went upstairs. By now, two hours had passed since Rasputin’s arrival.
A consultation took place in the second-floor dining room. Grand Duke Dmitrii thought it best to let Rasputin go and try again some other time. But the others would not hear of it: Rasputin was not to be allowed to leave alive. Iusupov offered to shoot Rasputin. He borrowed Dmitrii’s revolver and returned to the ground floor, the weapon concealed behind his back. Rasputin looked thoroughly sick and was breathing heavily, but a sip of Madeira revived him and he suggested a visit to the gypsies—“with God in mind but mankind in the flesh.”119 Like many murderers, Iusupov had a dread of his victim’s eyes: being superstitious, he also feared that Rasputin could be as impervious to bullets as to poison. To ward off evil spirits, he invited Rasputin to inspect an elaborate seventeenth-century Italian crucifix made of rock crystal and silver which stood on a commode. As Rasputin bent over it and crossed himself, Iusupov fired into his side. With a wild scream, Rasputin fell to the floor.
The instant they heard the shot, the conspirators rushed down. They saw Iusupov bending over the body. In Iusupov’s recollection, Rasputin was dead, but Purishkevich recalled him writhing in agony and still breathing. Dmitrii, Dr. Lazavert, and the lieutenant departed in Purishkevich’s car to the Warsaw Railroad Terminal to dispose of Rasputin’s overcoat and rubber boots in the stove of his Red Cross train. Purishkevich and Iusupov, awaiting their return, relaxed in the study.
According to his memoirs, Iusupov was suddenly seized with an urge to see Rasputin’s body. Rasputin lay motionless, to all appearances dead. But on scrutinizing the victim’s face more closely, Iusupov noticed the left eye twitch and open, followed by the right: Rasputin stared at him with boundless hatred. As Iusupov watched in disbelief, frozen with fear, Rasputin struggled to his feet and seized him by the throat, screaming through foaming lips, “Felix, Felix!” Iusupov managed to tear himself away and run upstairs, where Purishkevich was enjoying a cigar. As Purishkevich recalled the scene:
Iusupov was literally faceless: his lovely large blue eyes were still larger and bulging. Half conscious, virtually oblivious of me, seemingly out of mind, he flung himself at the door leading to the main hall and ran to his parents’ apartment …
120
Purishkevich seized his gun and rushed downstairs. Rasputin was gone. He found him in the garden, staggering through the snow toward the gate, bellowing, “Felix, Felix, I will tell everything to the Empress!” He fired at him but missed. He fired again and missed again. Rasputin was nearing the gate leading to the street. Steadying his arm, Purishkevich fired a third shot, which felled Rasputin. He shot him one more time and, bending over the lifeless body, kicked it in the temple.
A short time later a policeman who had been patrolling the neighborhood appeared and said that he had heard shots. Iusupov explained that a party had just broken up and some revelers had fired in the air. But as bad luck would have it, police officers at a nearby station at Moika 61 had also heard the sounds of shooting and soon more policemen appeared. Purishkevich, who never could control his tongue, blurted out: “We have killed Rasputin.”
The sight of Rasputin’s lifeless corpse in the snow drove Iusupov into a frenzy. He ran up to his study and brought out of the desk drawer the truncheon which Maklakov had given him. With it he beat the body like a man possessed, screaming, “Felix, Felix!” He then collapsed in a faint. On regaining consciousness, he ordered a servant to shoot one of the dogs to provide an alibi.
With the help of domestics, Rasputin’s body was tied and weighed down with iron chains. Loaded into Dmitrii’s car, it was driven to a remote and sparsely populated spot, the bridge linking Krestinskii and Petrovskii islands, and dumped into the Malaia Moika canal, along with his coat, which had not b
een destroyed because it was too large to fit into Purishkevich’s train stove. Dr. Lazavert, noting the victim’s rubber boots in the car, threw them into the canal, but he missed and one of them fell on the bridge, where its subsequent discovery led the police to Rasputin’s body.
The news of Rasputin’s death spread rapidly: the French Ambassador claims to have heard it before the day was out. The Empress received from Protopopov a fairly accurate account of what had happened, but as long as the corpse had not been found she continued to believe that Rasputin was hiding. On December 17, she wrote Nicholas: “I cannot & won’t believe He has been killed. God have mercy.” She drew some encouragement from Iusupov’s letter in which he flatly denied any knowledge of Rasputin’s where-abouts and indignantly rejected accusations of complicity in his murder.121 In the city, however, Rasputin’s death was taken for granted and joyously celebrated. Dmitrii, who attended the theater on the evening of December 17, had to leave because the public was about to give him an ovation.122 One contemporary says that the atmosphere in Petrograd resembled Easter, as the rich toasted with champagne and the poor with such drink as they could lay their hands on.123 “Sobake sobachaia smert’” (“For a dog, a dog’s death”), the French envoy heard the people say.*
Rasputin’s battered corpse, encased in ice, was dragged out on December 19. The autopsy revealed the victim had been dead from three bullet wounds by the time he struck water, which did not stop the spread of legends that the lungs were filled with water. No traces of poison were found.† At Alexandra’s wish, Rasputin was buried in Tsarskoe Selo, outside the palace grounds, on land belonging to Vyrubova, and a chapel constructed over it, although officially he was reported to have been taken for burial to Siberia. Immediately after the outbreak of the February Revolution the body was disinterred, burned, and the ashes scattered.124
It fell to General Voeikov, the Tsar’s aide, to communicate to him the news of Rasputin’s death. In his recollections, he described Nicholas’s reaction as follows:
From the very first report, about Rasputin’s mysterious disappearance, to the last, about the placement of his body in the chapel … I did not once observe signs of sorrow in His Majesty, but rather gathered the impression that he experienced a sense of relief.
125
Iusupov claims having heard from people who traveled with Nicholas to Tsarskoe on December 18–19 that the Tsar was “in a happy mood such as he had not shown since the outbreak of the war.”126 In fact, in his diary for December 17–19 Nicholas made no reference to Rasputin, and noted that on the night of December 18–19 he had “slept soundly.”127
It so happened that Nicholas had planned, before Rasputin’s murder, to return home to be with the family for Christmas. The Okhrana now encouraged him to do so from fear that Rasputin could be the first victim of a terrorist campaign.128 Indeed, as will be discussed later, several conspiracies against Nicholas were in progress.
Rasputin’s death had the contrary result from the one the assassins had expected. They had intended to separate Nicholas from Alexandra and make him more amenable to Duma pressures. Instead, Rasputin’s murder drew him closer to his wife and confirmed the correctness of her belief that there could be no compromises with the opposition. He was revolted by the involvement of his nephew Dmitrii in a murder plot and disgusted by the cowardly lies of Iusupov. “I am ashamed before Russia,” he said, “that the hands of my relations should be smeared with the blood of this peasant.”129 After Dmitrii’s involvement became known, he ordered him to Persia to join the Russian armies there. He was appalled by the reaction of high society to this punishment. When sixteen grand dukes and duchesses pleaded with him to allow Dmitrii to remain in Russia, he responded: “No one is entitled to engage in murder.”130 The petition compromised in his eyes many of the grand dukes and led him to cut off relations with them. Some, among them Nikolai Mikhailovich, were asked to leave Petrograd. To ingratiate himself with the Imperial couple, Protopopov would show Nicholas and Alexandra congratulatory messages sent by prominent public figures to Purishkevich and Iusupov intercepted by the police: among them was one from Rodzianko’s wife.131 This evidence embittered Nicholas and reinforced his sense of isolation.*
Trepov was dismissed in late December and replaced by Prince N. D. Golitsyn, who would be the last Prime Minister of the old regime. Aware that he was utterly unsuited for the job, Golitsyn begged to be spared on the grounds of ill health, old age, and inexperience, but the Tsar would not hear of it. By then, the cabinet, for all practical purposes, had ceased to function anyway, so that the office of Prime Minister had become largely ceremonial.
The Imperial family, having taken up residence in the more intimate Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, led a quiet life after the return of Nicholas. They broke off contact with most of the family: at Christmas of 1916, there were no exchanges of gifts. Protopopov came once or twice a week with his reports, which were subtly attuned to the Imperial couple’s mood, as conveyed to him by Vyrubova.132 He was invariably reassuring: rumors of plots against the Imperial family were groundless, the country was quiet, and the government disposed of ample force to quell any disorders. To make these assurances more convincing, Protopopov organized letter-writing campaigns from ordinary people who told the Court of their love and loyalty and opposition to political changes: these Alexandra proudly displayed to visitors.133 They helped reinforce Nicholas and his wife in the conviction that all the troublemakers lived in the capital. The fact that an unusually severe winter had brought railway traffic in some parts of the country to a virtual standstill, further depleting food and fuel supplies in the cities, went unreported. So did the fact that workers in Petrograd, driven to desperation by shortages and high prices and locked out of their factories, were roaming the streets. So, too, did information obtained by the Police Department that conspiracies were being hatched to arrest Nicholas and force him to abdicate. Everything was under control, the genial Minister of the Interior assured the Imperial couple.
Life at Tsarskoe Selo followed a quiet, dull routine. The Empress spent much time in bed, attended by Vyrubova, who, for her own protection, had moved into the Alexander Palace. Nicholas sank into a depression, of which his furrowed face and expressionless eyes bore testimony. In the morning and afternoon he went through the motions of receiving officials and foreign diplomats: on such occasions, Alexandra eavesdropped from a back room reached by a secret passage.134 In the late afternoon, he took walks and sometimes rode with the children in a motorized sled built by one of the chauffeurs. In the evening, he read aloud from the Russian classics, played dominoes, worked on puzzles, and from time to time viewed moving pictures: the last film shown, early in February, was Madame Du Barry.135 Some visitors tried to warn the Imperial couple of an impending explosion. Alexandra reacted with anger, sometimes ordering the bearers of such unwelcome news to leave. Nicholas listened politely, fidgeting with a cigarette or studying his fingernails, without displaying great interest. He was deaf to the appeals of Grand Duke Aleksander Mikhailovich, his brother-in-law and father of Irina Iusupova, one of the few grand dukes with whom he remained on speaking terms.136 When foreigners offered him advice, he cut them short. The British Ambassador, Sir George Buchanan, on a New Year’s Eve call urged Nicholas to appoint as Prime Minister someone enjoying the nation’s confidence, to which the Tsar responded: “Do you mean that I am to regain the confidence of my people or that they are to regain my confidence?”*
Power in his instance did not so much corrupt as isolate.
A frequent visitor to Tsarskoe Selo during those last weeks says that the atmosphere there resembled a household in mourning.137 The Tsar’s diaries, which he kept up regularly, give no hint of the state of his mind or psyche: only on December 31, the day when he saw the British Ambassador and dismissed rumors of danger, he noted that he and Alexandra had prayed fervently to the Lord “to have mercy on Russia.”138 On January 5, 1917, Golitsyn reported to him that Moscow talked openly of the “next
tsar,” to which Nicholas responded: “The Empress and I know that all is in God’s hands—His will be done.”139
Nicholas, who was always perfectly composed, only once lost self-control to reveal under his habitually frozen mask a deeply troubled human being. This occurred on January 7, 1917, during a visit by Rodzianko. He listened politely to the familiar warnings, asked some questions, but when Rodzianko pleaded with him “not [to] compel the people to choose between you and the good of the country,” Nicholas “pressed his head between his hands,” and said: “Is it possible that for twenty-two years I tried to work for the best, and that for twenty-two years it was all a mistake?”140
Having failed in their attempt to alter policy by disposing of Rasputin, the conservatives concluded that “the only way to save the monarchy was to remove the monarch.”141 Two conspiracies to this end have been identified, but there must have been more. One was organized by Guchkov. According to his memoirs, Guchkov concluded that the incipient Russian Revolution would not follow the French model of 1848, in which the workers toppled the monarchy and let the “better people” take charge. In Russia he expected power to pass into the hands of revolutionaries who would in no time drive her to ruin. Hence, arrangements had to be made for a legitimate transfer of Imperial authority from Nicholas to his minor son, Alexis, with the Tsar’s brother, Grand Duke Michael, serving as Regent. Guchkov involved in his plot Nicholas Nekrasov, the deputy chairman of the Duma and member of the Progressive Bloc, M. I. Tereshchenko, a wealthy businessman, and Prince D. L. Viazemskii. The conspirators planned to seize the Imperial train while it was en route from headquarters to Tsarskoe Selo and force Nicholas to abdicate in favor of his son.142 The plot did not make much headway because it failed to secure a broad base of support, especially among the senior officers.
More advanced was a second plot directed by Prince George Lvov, the chairman of Zemgor and the future Prime Minister of the First Provisional Government, with the assistance of the chief of staff, General Alekseev.143 This group planned to compel Alexandra to retire to the Crimea and to have Nicholas turn over effective authority to Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich. The plotters contacted the Grand Duke, then serving as commander on the Caucasian Front, through A. I. Khatisov, the mayor of Tiflis. Nikolai Nikolaevich requested a day to consider the proposal, then turned it down on the grounds that neither the peasants nor the soldiers would understand such a change. Khatisov sent Lvov a cable with the agreed code for a negative response: “The hospital cannot be opened.” It is indicative of the mood of the time that Nikolai Nikolaevich did not see fit to inform his sovereign of the plot against him.
The Russian Revolution Page 43
