Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty

by Robert K. Massie

  Felix, the younger Yussoupov brother, became the family heir when Nicholas, his older brother, was killed in a duel by an outraged husband. In 1914, Felix returned to Russia to marry. His bride, Princess Irina, was the niece of the Tsar and the most eligible girl in the empire. At their wedding, Felix wore the uniform of the Russian nobility: a black frock coat with lapels and collar embroidered in gold, and white broadcloth trousers. Irina wore Marie Antoinette’s lace veil. The Tsar gave her in marriage and presented as his gift a bag of twenty-nine diamonds, ranging in size from three to seven carats apiece.

  During the war, Yussoupov was not called for military service. Remaining in Petrograd, he achieved a glittering reputation as a bohemian, “Prince Felix Yussoupov is twenty-nine,” Paléologue observed, “and gifted with quick wits and aesthetic tastes; but his dilettantism is rather too prone to perverse imaginings and literary representations of vice and death … his favorite author is Oscar Wilde … his instincts, countenance and manner make him much closer akin to … Dorian Grey than to Brutus.”

  Yussoupov first met Rasputin before his marriage. He saw him often, and they caroused together at dubious night spots. As treatment for an illness, Yussoupov submitted himself to Rasputin’s caressing eyes and hands. During this time, he often heard Rasputin speak of his Imperial patrons: “The Empress is a very wise ruler. She is a second Catherine but as for him, well, he is no Tsar Emperor, he is just a child of God.” According to Yussoupov, Rasputin suggested that Nicholas should abdicate in favor of Alexis, with the Empress installed as Regent. One year before he finally acted, Yussoupov concluded that Rasputin’s presence was destroying the monarchy and that the starets had to be killed.

  Purishkevich spoke in the Duma on December 2. The following morning Yussoupov called on Purishkevich in a fever of excitement. He said that he planned to kill Rasputin, but that he needed assistance. Enthusiastically, Purishkevich agreed to help. Three other conspirators were brought into the plot: an officer named Sukhotin, an army doctor named Lazovert and Yussoupov’s youthful friend Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich. At twenty-six, Dmitry was the son of Nicholas II’s last surviving uncle, Grand Duke Paul. Because of the difference in age, Dmitry referred to the Tsar—actually his first cousin—as “Uncle Nicky.” Elegant and charming, Dmitry was a special favorite of the Empress, who often found herself laughing at his jokes and stories. Nevertheless, she worried about his character. “Dmitry is doing no work and drinking constantly,” she complained to Nicholas during the war. “… order Dmitry back to his regiment; town and women are poison for him.”

  As December progressed, the five conspirators met regularly, weaving the threads of entrapment, death and disposal of the corpse. The date was determined by Grand Duke Dmitry’s heavy social calender; December 31 was the first evening he had free. To cancel one of his previous engagements, the conspirators decided, might arouse suspicion. The place selected for the murder was the cellar of Yussoupov’s Moika Palace. It was remote and quiet and Princess Irina was away in the Crimea for her health. Yussoupov himself was to bring Rasputin there in a car driven by Dr. Lazovert disguised as a chauffeur. Once in the cellar, Yussoupov would feed Rasputin poison, while the others, waiting upstairs, would take charge of removing the body.

  As the heavy December snows swirled through the streets of Petrograd, Rasputin sensed that his life was in danger. After the impassioned denunciations hurled at him in the Duma, he understood that a crisis was coming. The ebullient Purishkevich, unable to abide by his pledge of secrecy, soon was bubbling with hints to other Duma members that something was about to happen to Rasputin. Catching wisps of these rumors, Rasputin became moody and cautious. He avoided as much as possible going out in daylight. He was preoccupied with the idea of death. Once after a lonely walk along the Neva he came home and declared that he had seen the river filled with the blood of grand dukes. In his last meeting with the Tsar, he refused to give Nicholas his customary blessing, saying instead, “This time it is for you to bless me, not I you.”

  According to Simanovich, Rasputin’s secretary and confidant, it was during these last weeks of December 1916 that Rasputin produced the mystically prophetic letter which has become part of the legend of this extraordinary man. Headed “The Spirit of Gregory Efimovich Rasputin-Novykh of the village of Pokrovskoe,” its message of warning is directed mainly at Nicholas:

  I write and leave behind me this letter at St. Petersburg. I feel that I shall leave life before January 1. I wish to make known to the Russian people, to Papa, to the Russian Mother and to the Children, to the land of Russia, what they must understand. If I am killed by common assassins, and especially by my brothers the Russian peasants, you, Tsar of Russia, have nothing to fear, remain on your throne and govern, and you, Russian Tsar, will have nothing to fear for your children, they will reign for hundreds of years in Russia. But if I am murdered by boyars, nobles, and if they shed my blood, their hands will remain soiled with my blood, for twenty-five years they will not wash their hands from my blood. They will leave Russia. Brothers will kill brothers, and they will kill each other and hate each other, and for twenty-five years there will be no nobles in the country. Tsar of the land of Russia, if you hear the sound of the bell which will tell you that Gregory has been killed, you must know this: if it was your relations who have wrought my death then no one of your family, that is to say, none of your children or relations will remain alive for more than two years. They will be killed by the Russian people.… I shall be killed. I am no longer among the living. Pray, pray, be strong, think of your blessed family.

  Gregory

  Because the plot hinged on Yussoupov being able to bring Rasputin to the cellar of the Moika Palace, the young Prince intensified his approaches to Rasputin. “My intimacy with Rasputin—so indispensable to our plan—increased each day,” he wrote. When near the end of the month Yussoupov invited him “to spend an evening with me soon,” Rasputin readily accepted.

  But there was more to Rasputin’s acceptance than friendship for a charming dilettante and a taste for midnight tea. Yussoupov deliberately encouraged Rasputin’s belief that Princess Irina, widely known for her beauty but a stranger to Rasputin, would be present. “He [Rasputin] had long wished to meet my wife,” wrote Yussoupov. “Believing her to be in St. Petersburg, and knowing that my parents were in the Crimea, he accepted my invitation. The truth was that Irina was also in the Crimea, but I thought Rasputin would be more likely to accept my invitation if he thought he had a chance of meeting her.”

  The bait was attractive and Rasputin swallowed it. Both Simanovich and Anna Vyrubova, hearing of the forthcoming supper, tried to dissuade Rasputin from going. Anna Vyrubova visited him in his flat that afternoon, bringing him an icon as a gift from the Empress. “I heard Rasputin say that he expected to pay a late evening visit to the Yussoupov palace to meet Princess Irina, wife of Prince Felix Yussoupov,” wrote Anna. “I knew that Felix often visited Rasputin, but it struck me as odd that he should go to their house at such an unseemly hour.… I mentioned this proposed midnight visit that night in the Empress’s boudoir, and the Empress said in some surprise, ‘But there must be some mistake, Irina is in the Crimea.’ … Once again she repeated thoughtfully, ‘There must be some mistake.’ ”

  By evening, the cellar room had been prepared. Yussoupov described the scene: “A low vaulted ceiling … walls of gray stone, the flooring of granite … carved wooden chairs of oak … small tables covered with ancient embroideries … a cabinet of inlaid ebony which was a mass of little mirrors, tiny bronze columns and secret drawers. On it stood a crucifix of rock crystal and silver, a beautiful specimen of sixteenth century Italian workmanship.… A large Persian carpet covered the floor and, in a corner, in front of the ebony cabinet, lay a white bear skin rug.… In the middle of the room stood the table at which Rasputin was to drink his last cup of tea.

  “On the table the samovar smoked, surrounded by plates filled with the cakes and dainties that Rasputin liked so much. A
n array of bottles and glasses sat on a sideboard.… On the granite hearth a log fire crackled and scattered sparks on the hearthstones.… I took from the ebony cabinet a box containing the poison and laid it on the table. Doctor Lazovert put on rubber gloves and ground the cyanide of potassium crystals to powder. Then, lifting the top of each cake, he sprinkled the inside with a dose of poison which, according to him, was sufficient to kill several men instantly,” When he finished, Lazovert convulsively tossed the contaminated gloves into the fire. It was a mistake; within a few moments the fireplace was smoking heavily and the air became temporarily unbreathable.

  Rasputin also prepared himself carefully for the rendezvous. When Yussoupov went alone at midnight to Rasputin’s flat, he found the starets smelling of cheap soap and dressed in his best embroidered silk blouse, black velvet trousers and shiny new boots. Yussoupov promised, as he took his victim away and led him down into the cellar, that Princess Irina was upstairs at a party but would be down shortly. From overhead came the sounds of “Yankee Doodle” played on a phonograph by the other conspirators, simulating the Princess’s party.

  Alone in the cellar with his victim, Yussoupov nervously offered Rasputin the poisoned cakes. Rasputin refused. Then, changing his mind, he gobbled two. Yussoupov watched, expecting to see him crumple in agony, but nothing happened. Then, Rasputin asked for the Madeira, which had also been poisoned. He swallowed two glasses, still with no effect. Seeing this, wrote Yussoupov, “my head swam.” Rasputin took some tea to clear his head and, while sipping it, asked Yussoupov to sing for him with his guitar. Through one song after another, the terrified murderer sang on while the happy “corpse” sat nodding and grinning with pleasure. Huddled at the top of the stairs, scarcely daring to breathe, Purishkevich, Dmitry and the others could hear only the quavering sound of Yussoupov’s singing and the indistinguishable murmur of the two voices.

  After this game had gone on for two and a half hours, Yussoupov could stand it no longer. In desperation, he rushed upstairs to ask what he should do. Lazovert had no answer: his nerves had failed and he had already fainted once. Grand Duke Dmitry suggested giving up and going home. It was Purishkevich, the oldest and steadiest of the group, who kept his head and declared that Rasputin could not be allowed to leave half dead. Steeling himself, Yussoupov volunteered to return to the cellar and complete the murder. Holding Dmitry’s Browning revolver behind his back, he went back down the stairs and found Rasputin seated, breathing heavily and calling for more wine. Reviving, Rasputin suggested a visit to the gypsies. “With God in thought, but mankind in the flesh,” he said with a heavy wink. Yussoupov then led Rasputin to the mirrored cabinet and showed him the ornate crucifix. Rasputin stared at the crucifix and declared that he liked the cabinet better. “Gregory Efimovich,” said Yussoupov, “you’d far better look at the crucifix and say a prayer.” Rasputin glared at the Prince, then turned briefly to look again at the cross. As he did so, Yussoupov fired. The bullet plunged into the broad back. With a scream, Rasputin fell backward onto the white bearskin.

  Hearing the shot, Yussoupov’s friends rushed into the cellar. They found Yussoupov, revolver in hand, calmly staring down at the dying man with a look of inexpressible disgust in his eyes. Although there was not a trace of blood, Dr. Lazovert, clutching Rasputin’s pulse, quickly pronounced him dead. The diagnosis was premature. A moment later, when Yussoupov, having surrendered the revolver, was temporarily alone with the “corpse,” Rasputin’s face twitched and his left eye fluttered open. A few seconds later, his right eye also rolled open, “I then saw both eyes—the green eyes of a viper—staring at me with an expression of diabolical hatred,” Yussoupov wrote. Suddenly, while Yussoupov stood rooted to the floor, Rasputin, foaming at the mouth, leaped to his feet, grabbed his murderer by the throat and tore an epaulet off his shoulder. In terror, Yussoupov broke away and fled up the stairs. Behind him, clambering on all fours, roaring with fury, came Rasputin.

  Purishkevich, upstairs, heard “a savage, inhuman cry.” It was Yussoupov: “Purishkevich, fire, fire! He’s alive! He’s getting away!” Purishkevich ran to the stairs and almost collided with the frantic Prince, whose eyes were “bulging out of their sockets. Without seeing me … he hurled himself towards the door … [and into] his parents’ apartment.”

  Recovering, Purishkevich dashed outside into the courtyard. “What I saw would have been a dream if it hadn’t been a terrible reality. Rasputin, who half an hour before lay dying in the cellar, was running quickly across the snow-covered courtyard towards the iron gate which led to the street.… I couldn’t believe my eyes. But a harsh cry which broke the silence of the night persuaded me. ‘Felix! Felix! I will tell everything to the Empress!’ It was him, all right, Rasputin. In a few seconds, he would reach the iron gate.… I fired. The night echoed with the shot. I missed. I fired again. Again I missed. I raged at myself. Rasputin neared the gate. I bit with all my force the end of my left hand to force myself to concentrate and I fired a third time. The bullet hit him in the shoulders. He stopped. I fired a fourth time and hit him probably in the head. I ran up and kicked him as hard as I could with my boot in the temple. He fell into the snow, tried to rise, but he could only grind his teeth.”

  With Rasputin prostrate once again, Yussoupov reappeared and struck hysterically at the bleeding man with a rubber club. When at last the body lay still in the crimson snow, it was rolled up in a blue curtain, bound with a rope and taken to a hole in the frozen Neva, where Purishkevich and Lazovert pushed it through a hole in the ice. Three days later, when the body was found, the lungs were filled with water. Gregory Rasputin, his bloodstream filled with poison, his body punctured by bullets, had died by drowning.

  “Next morning,” wrote Anna Vyrubova, “soon after breakfast, I was called on the telephone by one of the daughters of Rasputin.… In some anxiety, the young girl told me that her father had gone out the night before in Yussoupov’s motor car and had not returned. When I reached the palace, I gave the message to the Empress who listened with a grave face but little comment. A few minutes later, there came a telephone call from Protopopov in Petrograd. The police … had reported to him that a patrolman standing near the entrance of the Yussoupov palace had been startled by the report of a pistol. Ringing the doorbell, he was met by … Purishkevich who appeared to be in advance stages of intoxication. [He said] they had just killed Rasputin.”

  In the excitement of the moment, Purishkevich had again completely forgotten the need for secrecy. After the sharp report of his four pistol shots had split the dry winter air and roused a policeman, Purishkevich had thrown his arms around the man and shouted exultantly, “I have killed Grishka Rasputin, the enemy of Russia and the Tsar.” Twenty-four hours later, the story, embroidered with a thousand colorful details, was all over Petrograd.

  The Empress, remaining calm, ordered Protopopov to make a complete investigation. A squad of detectives, entering the Yussoupov palace, found the stains of a trail of blood running up the stairs and across the courtyard. Yussoupov explained this as the result of a wild party the night before at which one of his guests had shot a dog—the body of the dog was lying in the court for the police to see. Nevertheless, Protopopov advised Alexandra that Rasputin’s disappearance was almost certainly linked to the commotion at Yussoupov’s house; Purishkevich’s boast and the blood found by the police suggested that the starets had probably been murdered. Technically, only the Tsar could order the arrest of a grand duke, but Alexandra ordered that both Dmitry and Felix be confined to their houses. Late that day, when Felix telephoned asking permission to see the Empress, she refused, telling him to put his message into a letter. When the letter arrived, it contained a denial of any part in the rumored assassination. Grand Duke Paul, shocked at rumors of his son’s complicity, confronted Dmitry with a holy icon and a photograph of Dmitry’s mother. On these two sacred objects, he asked his son to swear that he had not killed Rasputin. “I swear it,” said Dmitry solemnly.

  On the aft
ernoon after the murder, the Empress’s friend Lili Dehn found Alexandra lying on a couch in her mauve boudoir, surrounded by flowers and the fragrant odor of burning wood. Anna Vyrubova and the four young Grand Duchesses sat nearby. Although Anna’s eyes were red from weeping, Alexandra’s blue eyes were clear. Only her extreme pallor and the frantic disjointedness of the letter she was writing to the Tsar betrayed her anxiety.

  My own beloved sweetheart,

  We are sitting together—you can imagine our feelings—thoughts—Our Friend has disappeared.

  Yesterday A. [Anna] saw him, and he said Felix asked him to come in the night, a motor would fetch him, to see Irina. A motor fetched him (military one) with two civilians and he went away.

  This night big scandal at Yussoupov’s house—big meeting, Dmitry, Purishkevich, etc. all drunk; police heard shots, Purishkevich ran out screaming to the police that Our Friend was killed.

  … Our Friend was in good spirits but nervous these days. Felix pretends he [Rasputin] never came to the house.… I shall still trust in God’s mercy that one has only driven Him off somewhere. Protopopov is doing all he can.…

  I cannot and won’t believe that He has been killed. God have mercy. Such utter anguish (am calm and can’t believe it) … Come quickly.…

  Felix came often to him lately.