To Kill Rasputin: The Life and Death of Grigori Rasputin (Revealing History)

by Cook, Andrew

  The visitors wore uniform. General Popov and Lt-Col. Popel of the Detached Gendarme Corps explained that they were there to conduct certain enquiries on behalf of the Ministry of the Interior.

  Popov had already spoken to Yusupov’s batman Ivan Nefedev at the Yusupov Palace, and had realised that he was going to get precious little change out of any of the servants there. According to Nefedev, on the night of Friday 16 December,

  I did not hear any gunshots either in the dining room or outside in the streets. About 4.00a.m. I heard the bell and entered the Prince’s study. The guests were already gone. The Prince told me to go outside to the yard and have a look at what had happened there. I went out through the side entrance to the yard of house number 92, however, by that time there was nobody there and I did not notice anything unusual. I reported this to the Prince. He rung the bell again a few minutes later and ordered me to have a look in the yard again because there was a dead dog. I went through the side door to the yard of house number 92 and this time noticed a dog lying by the fence… the dead dog was a mongrel which used to live in the Yusupov’s house. I have nothing more to say on the matter.

  Mounya Golovina was interviewed on the Saturday. The rest had to wait until the following morning, which was fortunate for the investigators, as the women’s attitude to the police would change overnight. That evening, however, Mounya told Popov that, on Friday 16 December,

  I arrived at Grigori Efimovich Rasputin’s apartment at around 12 noon and stayed there until 10.00p.m. On the night of that day Grigori Efimovich was not going to go anywhere, although in the morning while slightly excited he said that, ‘I’m going to go out tonight’, but he did not say where to. When I asked him to let me know if he would go, he responded that he would not tell me. I told him I would sense it anyway. Grigori Efimovich then said, ‘you would sense but you would not find me’. We had this conversation as a joke therefore I did not attach any importance to it. I went home around 10.00p.m. Grigori Efimovich used to call his male visitors ‘dear’. I used to call Prince Felix Felixovich Yusupov ‘the little one’… Prince Yusupov was first introduced to Rasputin about five years ago at my apartment, later they met once or twice again at our apartment. This year, 1916, Prince Yusupov saw Rasputin at our apartment, and according to the Prince, Rasputin made a better impression on him than in previous years. The Prince complained of chest pains and I advised him to visit Rasputin’s apartment. Prince Yusupov visited Rasputin with me twice in late November and at the beginning of December 1916 – he stayed less than an hour at Rasputin’s apartment on both occasions. Once Rasputin asked Prince Yusupov to take him to the gypsies. That is why when on the morning of [Saturday] 17th December Rasputin’s daughters told me on the telephone that Grigori Efimovich left the night before with ‘the little one’, meaning Prince Yusupov, I reassured them saying that there was nothing to worry about. I assumed that perhaps they went to the gypsies, he even wanted to pre-warn the place they were going to visit. On the afternoon of 17th December Prince Yusupov visited me and told me that Grigori Efimovich telephoned him on the night of [Friday] 16th December and suggested visiting the gypsies. However, the Prince told Rasputin that he had guests and could not go that evening. When Prince Yusupov returned to his guests after that telephone conversation he told them: ‘do you know who called me? Rasputin suggested we visit the gypsies together’. As Prince Yusupov stated, he did not see Rasputin during the evening and night of 16th December.15

  In fact, Yusupov had spent a busy morning firefighting – dashing from point to point in his chauffeured car. He knew Rasputin was dead; he had been intimately involved in arranging his murder. Now he set about covering his tracks. He made a statement to the city’s Governor, Alexander Balk. Then he was whisked from the Prefecture back to the palace on the Moika to check for bloodstains in daylight, and directed the servants to clean up wherever he found anything incriminating, before racing over to Mounya Golovina’s to act the innocent. He left Mounya’s house, which was also on the Moika, in order to visit Dmitri Pavlovich at his own apartment in the Sergei Palace on the Nevski Prospekt.

  Dmitri Pavlovich, a sallow man with moody Greek eyes, was a few years younger than Felix Yusupov. Over a late lunch he was able to reveal to Yusupov what exactly had happened early that morning after he and the other murderers drove off with Rasputin’s body, and roughly where it had been dumped. Lt Sergei Sukhotin, who had been with them throughout the previous night and had assisted in the murder, came in and was sent off to fetch Vladimir Purishkevich, the idea being that they would all get their stories in line. This was particularly important because Felix Yusupov now had to compose a letter to the Tsarina.

  Purishkevich, whose loose talk had contributed so much to the mess they were in, was maintaining his usual high profile. He was an odd-looking character, bald with pebble glasses, and excitable. Having previously arranged for any member of the Duma who wished – there were about 400 of them – to visit his hospital train from nine o’clock in the morning onwards on Saturday 17 December, he had spent a busy morning showing parties around. Medical aid and expertise were carried to Russian soldiers at the front by around 300 private hospital trains like his; many rich individuals sponsored locomotives and staff and beautifully fitted carriages, but few regularly travelled with them as he did. He had made more than one trip to Romania in recent months, during the ignominious retreat in which Romanian and Russian troops had been beaten back by Germans. On his latest return, just six weeks before, he had personally reported to the Tsar at the Stavka on the situation in Rena, Braila and Galati. He had chosen this particular Saturday on which to depart once more on a mission of mercy.16

  He and his wife and two sons were already installed in their private carriage and the train was ready to leave Petrograd’s Warsaw Station that evening on its long journey across the snowy wastes of Russia and Ukraine. His wife was a qualified nurse and his sons would act as orderlies. Purishkevich would support them and was sincere in his wish to assist. There was no doubt that his humanitarian efforts were valuable, albeit probably funded, at least, by the sinister Black Hundreds, a pro-German secret society of Russian autocrats. Purishkevich is said to have been ‘a major conduit’ for finance to this and other similar organisations for years; they paid for pogroms against the Jewish population.17

  Purishkevich had slept in his clothes, spent the morning of Saturday 17 December conducting guests around his train, and in the afternoon had run errands and paid visits. He had arranged the train’s departure and was about to take a final meal before leaving when Sukhotin arrived to drag him off to the Sergei Palace for the final conspiratorial debriefing. He later recalled that:

  At the palace I found both my host and Yusupov. They were both extremely agitated, and were drinking cup after cup of black coffee with brandy. They declared that they had not slept at all last night, and could not have had a more disturbing day, for the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna [the Tsarina] had already been informed of the disappearance and even the death of Rasputin and had named us as his murderers.18

  All the conspirators contributed to Yusupov’s letter. Unctuous deference and injured innocence were laid on with a trowel…

  Your Imperial Majesty,

  I hasten to obey the commands of Your Majesty and to report what occurred in my house last night…

  I had arranged a little supper as a house-warming in my new quarters and invited my friends, a few ladies and the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich. About midnight I was rung up by Grigori Yefimovich, who invited me to go with him and see the gypsies. I declined, giving as my excuse the party in my own house, and I asked him where he was speaking from, for a great many voices could be heard coming over the wire. But he answered ‘You want to know too much’ and with that he rang off. That is all I heard from Grigori Yefimovich during the night…

  About three o’clock most of my guests took their departure, and after I had said good-bye to the Grand Duke and two ladies I retired with the others to my st
udy.19

  It was a masterly picture. Behold the considerate host, enjoying a final nightcap with his guests before a roaring fire.

  Suddenly I had the impression that a shot had been fired close by. I called my man and ordered him to see what had happened. He came back almost at once with the report that a shot had been heard, but no-one knew where it had come from…

  There was a good deal more along similar lines. The Tsarina does not seem to have been convinced.

  Yusupov was going to leave that Saturday evening to join his wife, who was unwell, and their child in the Crimea and spend the Christmas holiday. Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, a serving officer, was due to return to the Tsar’s headquarters, the Stavka, on Sunday.

  Today, Saturday, was 17 December in Petrograd, where the old Julian calendar was still in use. In Western Europe and North America it was 30 December. So for thirty-six-year-old newcomer Sir Samuel Hoare, Head of the British Intelligence Mission in Petrograd, 20 it was the last working day of 1916. Tomorrow he and his wife would celebrate New Year’s Eve quietly. They were not yet so well integrated in the Petrograd social scene as some other officers of the Mission. A fair-haired, openfaced fellow, on this Saturday afternoon he was at the Restriction of Enemy Supplies Committee meeting – a Duma committee meeting which was taking place despite the sudden prorogation of the Duma the previous day. The point under discussion was how to keep goods from the Central Powers – Germany, Turkey, and Italy – out of Russia.

  The meeting dragged on with the usual Russian disregard for time. Hoare remembered that:

  Several times during the sitting individual members left the room and returned with whispered messages to their neighbours. At the time I paid no attention to these interruptions of business. When the Committee broke up, I went with the Chairman and the Secretary to another room for the purpose of discussing various points connected with the publication of the Russian Black List. Before we could go far with our discussion, a well-known official of the Ministry of Commerce entered with the news that Rasputin had been murdered that morning by the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich and Prince Yusupov. Professor Struve, Chairman of the Committee, at once sent out for an evening paper. In a few minutes the Bourse Gazette was brought in with the news actually published in it. The Bourse Gazette is always a paper of headlines. In this case the first heavy type was devoted to the peace proposals, the second to the fighting in Romania. Then came a headline: Death Of Grigori Rasputin In Petrograd. In the body of the paper there was little more than a single line and that on the second page. The announcement ran as follows: At six o’clock this morning Grigori Rasputin Novich died after a party in one of the most aristocratic houses in the centre of Petrograd.

  To one who has only been in Russia a few months the news was almost overwhelming. To Russian public men like Professor Struve, a man whose name has for a generation been in the forefront of Russian political and economic life, the news seemed almost incredible. As I had no wish to appear to meddle in Russian internal affairs, I did not attempt to discuss the situation; nor needless to say could our prosaic conversation about the Black List continue.21

  ‘I did not attempt to discuss the situation’. A strange remark for the head of the British Intelligence Mission to make; but then spying, at its untrustworthy end, was not Hoare’s speciality.

  The following Sunday morning he set about drafting a report for despatch to London. By then he had ‘been in touch with various people representing different classes and sections of opinion’ and concluded that Yusupov had held ‘a ball’ on the Friday night which was attended by several Grand Dukes. He had heard more than one version of what happened but ‘the generally accepted story is that he was shot as he was leaving the house in a motor. The motor is supposed to have taken the body to the Islands where it was thrown into the sea or one of the rivers.’

  Hoare felt confident enough to write all this down on Sunday and send it, amended, on Monday. But others in the British military and diplomatic community had heard about Rasputin’s disappearance even before the Saturday evening paper appeared.22 Many members of the British Intelligence Mission occupied rooms at the Hotel Astoria, opposite St Isaac’s Cathedral, more or less permanently, and nothing is known of what they had heard or whether, indeed, they spent Saturday sleeping off an eventful Friday night. But the Hon. Albert Stopford, a businessman and diplomat, a frequent visitor from England who was particularly well connected and always stayed at the Hotel d’Europe on the Nevski, had certainly been royally entertained on the night of Friday 16 December, so the next day,

  about 5p.m. was asleep when Seymour came. A friend in the police whom he met in the street told him Rasputin had been shot three times by Felix Yusupov. He did not know if Rasputin was dead. I telephoned to the Embassy but Lady Georgina was out. She rang me up at 5.40 [p.m.] to say she had just heard the report…. In the hotel the rumour was generally known by 7.15 [p.m.].23

  Lady Georgina’s husband, the British Ambassador Sir George Buchanan, telephoned his friend Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, a relative of Dmitri Pavlovich, at half-past five on Saturday 17 December and told him the news. Stopford set off for the theatre, where he saw ‘Grand Duke Boris [Vladimirovich], Grand Duke Dmitri [Pavlovich] and a cousin of Felix Yusupov’s’ but nobody knew anything definite. The ‘cousin of Yusupov’s’ was probably Vera Koralli, a ballerina who was Dmitri Pavlovich’s lover at the time. She was briefly staying in Petrograd while engaged to perform with the Moscow Imperial Theatre.24

  Stopford was shocked but not at all surprised that Rasputin had been done away with. He had heard ten days before, apparently from Dmitri Pavlovich himself, that what he coyly described in his diary as a ‘tragic dénouement’ might be on the cards.

  By now the diligently lying Felix Yusupov had (according to his own later account) visited A. A. Makarov, the Minister of Justice, who seemed pretty well satisfied with the shot-dog story, 25 and Mikhail Rodzyanko, the Speaker of the Duma, who was a distant relation, and who ‘applauded my conduct in a voice of thunder’ for he knew that Yusupov had intended to kill Rasputin. As Yusupov nipped about town in his small brown motor car he might have been less sanguine had he known that the Okhrana were sceptical of everything he said and preferred to listen to the police witnesses and officials who had searched the yard at his palace on 94 Moika.

  Dmitri Pavlovich, having rested that Saturday morning before his late lunch with Yusupov, was now running on adrenalin. He dined that evening at the Yacht Club. There he was seen by his father’s cousin Nikolai Mikhailovich, who had heard of the scandal, and of Felix’s involvement, from Sir George Buchanan at half-past five.26 Dmitri Pavlovich left the theatre early in order to avoid ovations.27 He had given orders for a party to be held in his apartment, and when his guests left theatres and restaurants, they began to arrive.

  Yusupov returned to dine early at the palace of his father-inlaw Alexander Mikhailovich, where he was staying. Afterwards he was due at the station to catch his train out of town. As he entered the hall a porter told him that a lady was waiting. She had claimed that she had an appointment with him at seven. He had made no such arrangement and when he heard her description – ‘she was dressed in black, but he could not make out her features as she was wearing a thick veil’ – he was understandably suspicious and took a surreptitious peep at the waiting visitor. She was ‘one of Rasputin’s most fervent admirers’, so he told the porter to tell her he would be back very late, and hurried off to pack.28 And then, in Yusupov’s own account,

  The whole town believed that I was responsible for Rasputin’s disappearance. Directors of factories and representatives of various businesses rang up to tell me that their workmen had decided to form a bodyguard to protect me if the need arose.29

  Prince Felix Yusupov was having a long day, and it had not ended yet. He had just retired to his room to discuss events with Prince Fyodor Romanov, one of his brothers-in-law, when Nikolai Mikhailovich bustled in to see him. Nikolai Mikhailovich was about
sixty, liberal in his views, and a very good friend of Sir George Buchanan, the British Ambassador.30 He had called much earlier in the evening and had been put off; but he was certainly persistent.

  The others left, and Nikolai Mikhailovich tried to bluff Yusupov into telling the truth. He failed; he left; and at last Yusupov got some sleep.31

  Purishkevich, the eccentric member of the Duma, steamed out of the city at ten o’clock that Saturday night on his hospital train. It was he who had first boasted of Rasputin’s murder to a policeman, yet, according to extant records, nobody had questioned him further.

  At midnight, a couple of miles away across the icy Neva and the woods of Petrovski Island, Fyodor Kyzmin was to due to finish his shift at midnight. The beat policeman he’d seen in the morning came over to his hut shortly beforehand, and as soon as he had handed over to the night guard, Kyzmin and the policeman set off together through the snow to the police station with the boot. (From now on, most accounts refer to it as a single, brown boot).

  A police inspector took it, at three o’clock in the morning on Sunday, to 64 Gorokhovaya Street. Most of the household were still up and Rasputin’s friend Aron Simanovich was with the girls. The boot was identified by Simanovich, Maria and Varvara Rasputina, two Okhrana agents and the lady dvornik, or concierge, of the block, as belonging to the missing Grigori Rasputin.

  Dmitri Pavlovich’s party in the Sergei Palace reportedly continued until half-past seven on Sunday morning, and was ‘of a most riotous description’.32

  TWO