The Rasputin File

by Edvard Radzinsky

  But after he got closer to Rasputin, Andronikov must have appraised the situation differently. He saw the peasant’s covert trips to Tsarskoe Selo with his pockets full of petitions. He saw the ‘waiting room’ filled with rich petitioners. So he must have realized that the Sukhomlinov story was a pitiful bagatelle in comparison with the possibilities being revealed at the building on Gorokhovaya Street. The prince was constantly in need of money. He had a modest position as a Synod official. But he had to maintain a huge apartment and a number of young men and to continue to visit the most expensive restaurants, in keeping with his place in society, and so on. And he wanted a hand in that business of recruiting rich petitioners.

  But at the time the peasant and his ‘Brain Trust’ needed the prince for an entirely different purpose. Andronikov was acquainted with the most influential people. Through him it would be possible to ‘take a look’ at ‘our’ candidates for the most important posts in the government. When the prince realized what Rasputin wanted from him, he must have been delighted. His dream had come true — a pitiful intriguer and diligent spreader of rumours, he now found himself at the centre of great politics! He would appoint ministers and unseat them. Because he would govern by means of that peasant. Yes, the peasant was cunning. But he was, after all, merely a semi-literate peasant.

  Andronikov evidently then suggested to Rasputin that they start with the main thing, finding the next chief of the Department of Police. And that is why at the beginning of 1915 a remarkable meeting took place — Rasputin’s visit to the apartment of one of Andronikov’s closest friends, Stepan Beletsky.

  The Return Of A Master Of Provocation

  After the February Revolution, Stepan Petrovich Beletsky took the stand before the Extraordinary Commission, and the poet Alexander Blok, whose job was to transcribe and edit the interrogations, gives a description of him in his notebooks: ‘A soft voice, grey hair, and snub-nosed … and bleary eyes constantly shining.’

  At the time of Andronikov’s visit, Beletsky was a bit over forty, around the same age as Andronikov. But unlike Andronikov, he already stood high on the bureaucratic ladder. From 1912 he had performed the sinister duties of director of the Department of Police. Years that had been marked by provocation on the part of the secret police. Under Beletsky, there had been massive infiltration of the revolutionary movement by agents provocateurs; it was under him that Stolypin had mysteriously been murdered; it was under him that the anti-Semitic case had been organized against the obscure Jew Mendel Beilis, who was falsely charged in 1913 with the ‘ritual murder’ of a Ukrainian youth. So Stepan Petrovich had become an adept of his department’s most exquisite intrigues. It was now already a year, however, since he had been deprived of his powerful post and sent into retirement as a senator. But the highly intelligent Stepan Petrovich, still at the height of his powers, was naturally eager to resume his career. He frequented influential conservative salons, where he made Andronikov’s acquaintance and then became close friends with him. As Blok recorded in his notebooks, Beletsky related how he ‘had been warned not to spend so much time at Andronikov’s’.

  But he visited him often. And happily participated in the new intrigue.

  According to the data of the external surveillance agents, Rasputin ‘on 30 January 1915 visited the former director of the Department of Police Beletsky’.

  Beletsky was presumably promised his former post. Now they had to look for ‘our’ minister of internal affairs, as well. For Beletsky himself already knew that he would not be suitable for the post of minister. As he later testified, ‘The tsar was cool towards me.’ So the main question of finding ‘our’ minister still had to be decided.

  The Lady In Charge

  Andronikov believed in the peasant’s omnipotence. Like everyone else in society, he did not appreciate the true situation. The palace coup that the peasant was preparing would have to come about because it was what the tsarina herself wanted. As soon as the war started and Nicky was swallowed up by it at Headquarters, she had made a decision to help him — to take part in the government of the country. Indeed, how could she not take part in it, if the ministers were everlastingly ‘doing the wrong thing’ and God’s envoy was standing beside her and continually conveying His commands to her. Commands that so happily coincided with what she herself wanted.

  Rasputin, of course, had had numerous opportunities to see what happened when they did not coincide. And he had occasion to see it again at the very beginning of 1915.

  The Great Prime Minister’s Last Wish

  It was in January 1915 that Rasputin was visited by a lady in a veil. Unlike Zhukovskaya, she apparently did not understand just who the person sitting in the booth was. And the security branch agent sitting there clarified who the mysterious visitor was and submitted his report: ‘The Countess Witte visited the Dark One on 8 and 25 January, both times wearing a thick veil. On 25 January she asked the doorman to escort her by the back stairway and gave him a three-rouble tip.’

  Yes, it was the great former prime minister’s wife. Witte was dying at the time (he would be dead in February) and he had just finished a long letter to the tsar. After enumerating in the letter the great acts of Nicholas’s reign that had been accomplished with his own participation (the constitution, for example), the old man asked the favour of the title of count for his beloved grandson. So it is clear with what purpose Countess Witte was visiting Rasputin, about whom Count Witte had spoken so warmly.

  And Rasputin, of course, carried out her request and asked Alix about a last favour for the count. The tsar was supposed to be coming back from Headquarters, and would be able to grant the dying Witte that boon in plenty of time. But Alix, who hated the former prime minister, was deaf to Our Friend’s request. And the peasant was forced to realize that it was hopeless. So Witte’s beloved grandson did not become a count. And when the tsar returned, Rasputin did not ask him about it. He knew his place: one might go against the tsar, but never the tsarina.

  A Fatal Friend

  The initial look at Beletsky had yielded excellent results. The dignitary was eager to go back to his previous post and truly understood the obligations that he would have to assume in return. The first of ‘ours’ had been found. Rasputin’s next step should have been to inform Anya, the messenger between Our Friend and ‘Mama’.

  But there was no one to inform. The main communications link had been knocked out. At the very beginning of the new year, fate had dealt a cruel blow to their plans.

  On 10 January 1915, Rasputin celebrated his name-day and birthday. On that day, after a long absence, he was visited by his old acquaintance, the young Molchanov. And when Rasputin chided Molchanov for having ‘forgotten him’, the latter was not inclined to explain the remarkable reason for his disappearance. Although he did explain it in the File.

  ‘At the beginning of 1914, I received disturbing news about my father’s health … and on 20 May my father passed away.’ After his father died, Molchanov stopped coming to Rasputin’s: ‘After my father’s death a feeling of apathy visited me. Moreover, reviewing the past of all the people who had linked their destinies to Rasputin —Iliodor, Hermogen, [and] Damansky who through Rasputin had made a brilliant career and then had fallen ill with an incurable disease — I came to the perhaps superstitious conviction that Rasputin’s hand was a heavy one.’ He could also have included his father, who had obtained his post through Rasputin. And also Anya, Rasputin’s main devotee, who, while Rasputin was merrily and drunkenly celebrating his name-day, was lying unconscious. For on 2 January 1915, there had been a railway accident, which delayed the change in power for several months.

  Resurrection From The Dead

  ‘I had left the empress,’ Vyrubova remembered, ‘and set off for the city … by train. I had taken a seat in a first-class car, the first behind the locomotive. There were many people in the car. We had not gone but six versts to Petrograd, when a terrifying crash was heard. I felt myself tumbling head over heels somewh
ere and then I hit the ground. When I came to, everywhere around me was silence and darkness. Then I heard the moans of the injured and dying who had been crushed under the wrecked cars. I myself could neither move nor cry out: a huge railway sleeper lay on my head.’

  She was pulled from under the train wreckage and placed nearby right on the snow. Two hours later Princess Orlova and Princess Gedroits appeared. They came over to me. Gedroits felt the broken bone under my eye and said to Orlova, “She’s dying,” and left.’

  The two maids of honour may have been glad: they thought the Friend was gone.

  ‘Only at 10:00 p.m. at the insistence of General Resin [the commander of the regiment that guarded the palace], who had arrived from Tsarskoe Selo, was I transferred to a warm shelter by some kind student-orderlies.’ And then she saw the tsarina.

  I remember being carried through a crowd in Tsarskoe [Selo], and I saw the empress and all the grand duchesses in tears. I was carried to an ambulance and the empress jumped into it and, after sitting on the floor, held my head on her knees, and I whispered to her that I was dying… A priest came and administered the last rites. After which I heard them whispering to come say goodbye, that I would not survive till morning … The sovereign took my hand and said I had strength in my hand … I remember Rasputin coming in and saying to the others, ‘She will live but remain a cripple.’ I suffered inhuman torment day and night for six weeks.

  From Nicholas’s diary for 2 January 1915: ‘I learned … there had been a train collision … Poor Anya along with a number of others was severely injured…and brought to the palace infirmary. I went down there at 11:00. Her relatives had come with her. Grigory arrived later.’

  From Andronikov’s testimony before the Extraordinary Commission: ‘When he arrived, the entire royal family was standing by the injured Vyrubova. Vyrubova was absolutely hopeless…He started making some gestures and saying, “Anushka, listen to me.’ And she, who had not responded to anyone, suddenly opened her eyes.’

  So, the tsarina once again saw the occurrence of a miracle.

  But was it really a miracle? We have already said that Vyrubova’s position suddenly became more complicated in 1913–14. The game of being in love had led to an unexpected flash of jealousy on the part of the tsarina. And with a sense of Anya’s personality, we may wonder if that iron lady hovering between life and death was not acting out a scene. So that the tsarina would see what she had so dreamed of seeing — the Friend saved by the man of God! And that salvation would seem to the tsarina to be a mystical sign, a miracle requiring a renewal of their friendship.

  ‘That This Accident Should Be Profitable…’

  Thus wrote Alix. Although the first thing she imagined was how Nicky would have to visit the Friend at her little house. And it irritated her.

  Alix to Nicky: ‘26 Jan. 1915 … Longs to go over to her house…but lovy, fr. the very first you must then tell her that you cannot then come so often … because if now not firm, we shall be having stories & love-scenes & rows like in the Crimea … You keep fr. the first all in its limits as you did now — so as that this accident should be profitable & with peaceful results … I have heaps of petitions our Friend brought here for you.’

  The File, from the testimony of Feodosia Voino, thirty-six years old, the doctor’s assistant who became Anya’s maid:

  I started working for Vyrubova after her accident on the train. That was at the end of January 1915. Vyrubova was then still in a very serious condition and could not have managed without outside help … A medical orderly started work after I did, when Vyrubova was able to move around. In the daytime I worked in the hospital near Vyrubova, and at night I went to her on my own and gave her massages and performed all the medical chores. When she was unable to get up, the tsarina and the children came to see her quite often, but the tsar rarely did.

  The File, from the testimony of the medical orderly, Akim Zhuk, forty-nine years old, from the combined Tsarskoe Selo regiment, seconded to the infirmary for performance of the duties of medical orderly: ‘By order of the doctors who were treating Vyrubova, I started visiting her…It was necessary to sit Vyrubova up to change her dressings. I have great physical strength and Vyrubova was a heavy woman.’

  Alix to Nicky: 27 Jan. 1915 … Ania gets on alright … Only speaks again of getting into her house. I foresee my life then!…I find her stomach & legs colossal (& most unappetising) — her face is rosy, but the cheeks less fat & shades under her eyes. She has lots of guests; but dear me — how far away she has slipped from me since her hideous behaviour, especially autumn, winter, spring of 1914 … cannot be at my ease with her as before.’

  5 April 1915 … Ania has been wheeled by [Z]huk … tomorrow she wants to come to me! Oh dear, & I was so glad that for a long time we should not have her in the house, I am selfish … & want you to myself at last, and this means she is preparing to invade upon us often when you return.’

  The Return ‘To Their Own Circles

  The peasant had not abandoned the crippled Friend. As before, he made appointments to meet the tsars at Anya’s little house. He worked hard. He had to restore their former friendship. And he knew that he would. Alix was too lonely without Anya.

  From Zhuk’s testimony: ‘Rasputin in fact visited Vyrubova very often … Usually the entire royal family visited Vyrubova on such days — the tsar, the tsarina, the children, and Rasputin.’

  And of course Our Friend won in the end. He revived their relationship. And it was not long before the great jealousy was forgotten and the great friendship was restored. And once more Alix and the Friend were inundating each other with letters, and once again they could not see enough of each other.

  After the revolution, they would have to burn those letters, filling the fireplaces of two rooms with cinders. For the letters now ceased to be personal. Soon after their reconciliation the tsarina and her Friend took up the government of the country. The palace coup that they meant to carry out with Rasputin had begun.

  The File, from Zhuk’s testimony:

  When Vyrubova was unable to walk, the tsarina came to see her quite often … And later the tsarina came to see her quite often, and they continued to write to each other. The correspondence was so frequent that I had sometimes barely managed to bring Vyrubova back to her rooms from the royal chambers in the evening when letters from the tsarina would start to arrive. And it happened two or three times that they managed to exchange letters while Vyrubova was getting ready to go to bed … She drove to the palace every day from 3:00 till 5:00 p.m., and then in the evening from 9:30 until 12:00 or 1:00.

  That’s the kind of enthusiasm Alix had brought to the cause.

  But there was a ‘taboo’ that the Friend now scrupulously observed. ‘She would not go to the tsarina’s in the evening …on the days the sovereign was back from Headquarters.’ She was permitted to see him only the day before he left for the front. ‘Vyrubova was usually invited to the palace for dinner at the time of the tsar’s departure.’

  Maybe There Had Been No Debauchery After All?

  The revelry on Gorokhovaya Street continued unabated for the whole month of February 1915 and most of March. During that time Rasputin gave the external surveillance agents generous material.

  ‘12 February. Rasputin and an unidentified woman were followed to Prince Andronikov’s. He returned at 4:30 a.m. in the company of six drunken men with a guitar. They sang and danced until 6:00.’

  10 March. Seven or eight men and women arrived around 1:00 a.m. They sang songs and stomped and shouted, and then went somewhere unknown with Rasputin.’

  ‘11 March. Rasputin was followed to No. 8 Pushkin Street to the prostitute Tregubova’s.’

  From an agent’s report: Tregubova, Vera Ievlevna, twenty-six years old, a baptized Jew. A woman of easy virtue who trades exclusively in acquainting rich people with Rasputin, for the most part Jews who want to put their commercial affairs in order. She once said that she makes up to 300 roubles a month. Visits Ra
sputin almost daily.’

  In 1917 the Extraordinary Commission interrogated Vera Tregubova. And contained in the File is her testimony, which completely contradicts the agent’s characterization of her. In her testimony, Vera Tregubova declared that she was in fact a graduate of the Conservatory. And had inadvertently made Rasputin’s acquaintance ‘at the apartment of Lieutenant-General Dubelt’s elderly widow, Alexandra Ivanovna’. Living there were two other women, ‘a kind of landowner, who looked to be about fifty-five and was terribly fat … [and] Dubelt’s… sister, Lydia Ivanovna Kondyrev’. And at that time, ‘around 10:00 p.m. a man in a tight-fitting khaki coat and boots dropped by. I guessed it was Rasputin, whose portrait I had seen before … Calling him by first name and patronymic, the hostess Dubelt started telling Rasputin what a good thing it would be to get me a place as a singer on the imperial stage, that it was in general hard for me as a Jew to find any position. To which Rasputin answered, “I have many Jewish acquaintances, they’re all right, good people.”’

  Towards the end of the evening the drunk Rasputin started making advances, according to Tregubova. ‘I’ll do anything you want, only come to my home. Come tonight at 12:00 midnight.’

  ‘Why should I come to you? I don’t sell my body,’ Tregubova proudly replied. ‘During this Rasputin was holding me by the hands and pawing me.’

  To call a respectable singer who was seeing Rasputin for the first time a prostitute ‘who visits Rasputin daily’! Tregubova’s testimony raises doubts about the other external surveillance reports. Maybe all those reports about drinking bouts and debauchery had been made at the order of Rasputin’s enemies? Maybe nothing of the sort ever happened?