The Rasputin File

by Edvard Radzinsky

  Father Grigory…did not want me to go with him [to Verkhoturye]. Without telling him or the others that I meant to go to Verkhoturye on the same train he was taking, I went to the station and had my things carried into the compartment. Including a basketful of chickens which I was taking to Father Makary… Father Grigory angrily ordered me to go several days later … Since the second bell had already rung, I quickly had to remove my things by myself. Manasevich, who was standing in the corridor and haughtily gazing at me, said in French, ‘She’s leaving, too!’ I then ordered him in an imperious tone to take out the remaining basket with the chickens, which Manasevich did with a nervous glance around.

  The Conspiracy Continues

  But Our Friend soon afterwards returned to Petrograd. Alix had called him back, afraid again to let him go for too long, sensing that something was approaching. Many felt that way then.

  The young poet Mayakovsky prophesied, 1916 is coming in a revolutionary crown of thorns.’ Khvostov was gone, but those powerful people remained who had given Khvostov the large sum for the peasant’s murder. And in 1917 Khvostov very carefully named them for the File. ‘Dedicated to my intention of eliminating Rasputin were people of the highest society. For example, I talked about it with Princess Zinaida Yusupova, who gave me to understand that for that purpose I could count on unlimited funds. Princess Yusupova … as a spokeswoman for the views of the whole grand-ducal milieu, saw clearly that Rasputin was leading the dynasty to destruction.’

  Yes, Zinaida Yusupova was a ‘spokeswoman for the views of the entire grand-ducal milieu’. And the money that Khvostov had received for Rasputin’s murder was a mere surface manifestation of the secret activity that by then was proceeding apace.

  The Man In The Mask

  Glimpsed from time to time in the countless agents’ reports on those who visited Rasputin’s apartment in 1915–16 is the name of Alexandra Belling.

  ‘Alexandra Alexandrovna Belling, an ensign’s wife’, was seen by the agents at Rasputin’s apartment on 13 February 1916, on 26 October and so on. The thirty-year-old singer, whom it was modish to invite to sing at the most fashionable musical evenings, had sung in Tsarskoe Selo at the tsarina’s and in general, as she wrote of herself, ‘enjoying favour “at the top” as an artist, I sang whenever and wherever I liked.’ She was pretty, and since Rasputin was naturally by no means indifferent to her, she had to fend off his persistent courting. Then one day Alexandra Belling received a remarkable letter in the mail.

  I found a manuscript excerpt of her recollections about that mysterious letter in the archive of Rasputin’s murderer Felix Yusupov.

  Belling recalled:

  One morning, while I was going through my mail, I found an envelope in an unfamiliar hand. Opening it, I read the following: ‘Believe that what I am about to say has been carefully thought over and places a great and serious responsibility on you. Tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. I shall call to find out where and when I may hope to meet with you. I suggest that you not come alone. The one with you may wear a mask, as I myself shall do.’ What a joke, I thought.

  But at 6: 00 p.m. her telephone rang. ‘I heard a low, beautiful, rather dry voice.’ The voice suggested they meet. The singer decided to go along and told the stranger:

  ‘Tomorrow I shall dine at the Donon. Since the only way you will show yourself is in a mask, which I find amusing, I shall have to dine in a private room. I’ve reserved No. 6. Make no mistake — I shall be waiting for you there at 7:00 p.m. sharp.’ I then sent a wire to my friend K., asking him to be my escort. He was notable for his direct nature and clear mind. By 7:00 K. and I had already finished eating and were having coffee. Not five minutes had passed when a tall, dignified figure came in. And even though he did not take off his coat and his face was covered by a mask, it seemed to me that I had seen him before.

  And the stranger began to speak.

  ‘I ask that you hear me out in silence, without interrupting. We are aware of your views on everything that is taking place around us now, and we propose in all deliberation that you choose a way of eliminating Rasputin. We shall not tell you that we can shield you from revenge from “above”. It’s even likely that they will destroy you. But knowing that the purpose of your life is your daughter, we guarantee that she will be royally provided for the rest of her life.’ He asked me to take my time before answering and to think about it, and then with a bow he left.

  ‘For God’s sake don’t get mixed up in that business!’ K. exclaimed. ‘To hell with all their proposals! To hell with them! My poor friend, do you know what a type like that wants? He wants to prevent a revolution and save the dynasty. Who among them has the resolve to kill that vermin? They’re worried about their own skins. Beware of them and don’t touch him. Wait a bit, the time hasn’t come yet. But it’s getting closer. Another two or three strokes of the brush and Russia will be saved.’

  Why did Rasputin’s murderer preserve this document in his archive?

  And why did Belling send the fragment to Felix in the first place?

  I think because Felix was well acquainted with the man in the mask. A tall figure — but for the last tsar, all the Romanovs were very tall. And the hint that ‘I had seen him before’. She, who had visited court gatherings, had recognized that man, despite his mask. And, of course, Yusupov had recognized the man in the mask and for that reason had held onto the manuscript. Most likely, the man was Felix’s father-in-law, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich (Sandro), who would soon plead with the tsar to get rid of Rasputin. So together with Felix’s mother, who had contributed money for Rasputin’s murder, men from the grand-ducal family were also active with their money. But their actions were unsuccessful. For the time being.

  A Prophecy

  But the noose round the peasant’s neck was getting tighter and he felt it. And now he repeated ever more frequently a frightening prophecy: as long as I am alive, the dynasty shall live.

  From Badmaev’s testimony in the File: ‘Visiting Rasputin and observing his security guard, I asked him, “Aren’t you afraid?”

  “No,” he answered, “I am not afraid for myself, but I am afraid for the people and the royal family. Because when they kill me, things will go badly for the people. And there won’t be any tsar.”’

  One can imagine what Alix felt when she heard that. And how worried she must have been about his life. What was it? The cunning of an intelligent peasant who had decided that that was a way to defend himself? Or was it in fact one of the visions that haunted that mysterious person?

  And all that time Alix, who was helpless in such matters, had been trying to arrange for his security. The tsarina had naturally entrusted the organization of Rasputin’s safety to Stürmer who, she knew, had worked for a long time in the ministry of internal affairs. As Stürmer testified, ‘After Komissarov left, Rasputin was only guarded by the security department. Towards the end Rasputin started drinking a great deal, and the security people complained that it was impossible to keep an eye on him, since various motors would keep coming for him and taking him away who knows where.’ Realizing that murder could not be avoided, the security department thus washed its hands of it ahead of time. And Stürmer washed his hands, too. The obligation of guarding Rasputin was dangerous and unpleasant to him. And so he found him a bodyguard. ‘We needed someone who could more or less judge who might be dangerous and undesirable, which is something the lower-ranking agents could not do. That is where Manasevich-Manuilov proved useful. He was well received in the family.’ Now the peasant’s security, and with it all future responsibility, were lodged with Manasevich. With Alix’s consent, although she had a poor grasp of such matters.

  Rasputin was doomed. The agents followed him as before but security was lax. The peasant could tell by the scent that the wolf was circling. And drawing closer. And for that reason he decided to leave the capital for the summer — to abandon the ‘tsars’.

  A View Of Rasputin Through The Window

  Preserved in the E
xtraordinary Commission archive is an amusing diary. It contains a description of Rasputin’s life by a neighbour, a Synod official named Blagoveschensky: ‘His kitchen was right across from my own, so I could see everything extremely well.’ He could also hear extremely well, since Rasputin lived on the other side of the wall.

  And he watched and listened and wrote it all down in his diary.

  15 June. I’m writing at home in my study, and a bacchanalia of some sort has been taking place on the other side of the wall. A binge, evidently, before his return to his native region. Dancing, laughter. By 12:00 musicians arrived, a string orchestra from some amusement park. They played and sang operetta tunes accompanied by loud dancing … Georgian songs have been repeatedly sung by a baritone [presumably, Rasputin’s daughter’s fiancé Pankhadze]. The binge continued until early in the morning. By the end separate drunken voices could be heard and the dancing of one person. Apparently he himself had let go completely and was singing and dancing solo. They constantly came to the kitchen for snacks of fruit and bottles of wine, more and more ladies and young women, all animated, flushed, cheerful in a free-and-easy way. The ladies themselves washed all the dishes.

  Farewell To Saint Simeon

  As he was leaving Petrograd, Rasputin warned his devotees to value the time with him.

  From Manasevich’s testimony: ‘At the end of 1916 in my and Vyrubova’s presence, he assured his devotees that he had another five years left in the world [during which time, according to Vyrubova, he had promised that the heir would finally ‘outgrow his illness’]. And then he would withdraw from the world and all those close to him to a remote place known only to him, where he would be saved by following an ascetic way of life.’ Manasevich didn’t understand: Rasputin was again reminding them of the words of Jesus — ‘I shall not always be with you’; he was reminding them of the Khlyst mystery — of the One who was supposed to be living in him.

  But Alix soon afterwards called him back. And again he returned to the threatening capital, empty for the summer, eternally damp from its wet winds. Then at the end of the summer he broke free again to go to his peasant labours, the gathering of the harvest. And again he caroused before his departure, so that they would remember Grishka. A time of troubles was coming, and who knew if he would ever come back. And again his indignant neighbour wrote it all down in his diary.

  ‘A binge continued all night. A Gypsy chorus of about forty people was invited. They sang and danced until 3:00 a.m. He has in fact been drinking heavily since 6 August and pressing himself on the servant girls in the courtyard and sneaking off with them to kiss. On 9 August he went back to his village, they say.’

  He did not go by himself. As if he sensed that it was for the last time. He took the most loyal of his devotees to the Verkhoturye Monastery with him to make obeisance for the last time to the relics of Saint Simeon. The lame Vyrubova, accompanied by her maid Maria Belyaeva and the medical orderly Akim Zhuk, and Lili Dehn, Munya Golovina, and Rasputin’s two daughters were all lodged at the monastery inn and resolutely endured the dirt and the swarms of bedbugs. Father Grigory himself stayed in a cell at the monastery. From the inn they drove to see the anchorite Makary at Verkhoturye, where in a small room built onto his cell the mad general’s wife was also staying at the time. She carried firewood, cleaned, and washed his cell and prayed. From the testimony of the maid Belyaeva in the File: ‘ Lokhtina lived in a special cell …dressed all in white with little icons on her breast … Vyrubova and I spent the night with her. Dehn spent the night with us, too. The next day we went back to the monastery, where Saint Simeon’s relics were kept.’

  After paying his respects to Saint Simeon, Rasputin set off with his daughters for Pokrovskoe, while his devotees returned to the capital. They didn’t know that it was their last parting with his monastery.

  A Line For Conversations With Berlin

  But at the end of August Alix summoned him once again. And back in the capital he again felt doomed. At the time they were already saying on every corner and in every home that Rasputin was in the pay of German agents. And Rasputin, and the tsarina who deferred to him, and Vyrubova — the ‘dark forces’ — decided to lead Russia out of the war. ‘Rasputin and treason weren’t even talked about but simply referred to as self-evident,’ wrote the celebrated man of letters Victor Shklovsky.

  The ‘dark forces’, the danger of a separate peace with Germany, and getting rid of Rasputin were the ideas by which society lived at the time Interspersed in the diary of Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich are lines like ‘Alix is remarkably unpopular’; ‘O God, save Russia! Anything but that shameful peace’; ‘Yesterday a sister of mercy from the Winter Palace reported that they have a secret phone line for conversations with Berlin.’

  A main task of the Extraordinary Commission in 1917 was to establish as fact the tsarina’s secret relations with her German relatives and their plan for a separate peace. However, the Commission could establish nothing o: the sort. On the contrary, the facts confirmed the ‘tsars’ ‘innocence. When at the end of 1916 the German government approached the Entente with an offer of peace, Nicholas replied that ‘the time for peace negotiations ha: not yet arrived, since the achievement by Russia of the goal of taking Constantinople and the Straits, as well as the creation of a free Poland from the three territories now partitioned, still has not been assured.’ The British ambassador Sir George Buchanan made the same point in his memoirs by quoting a cable he had sent to the Foreign Office in February 1917: ‘the one point on which we can count on his [the emperor’s] remaining firm is the war, more especially as the empress, who virtually governs Russia, is herself sound on this question.’ And Rasputin himself had declared severa times that he was for fighting on until victory.

  Her Secret… Her Tragedy

  From Manasevich’s testimony: ‘Rasputin would say, “If I had been there a the beginning of the war, there would have been no war. But since they have already started it, it has to be carried through to the end. If there’s ar argument, then argue, but if it’s a half-argument, it will still be an argument.”‘ About her [the tsarina] he said, ‘she is terribly in favour of continuing the war. But there have been moments when she has wept, thinking her brother had been wounded or killed.’

  The master of the royal yacht Shtandart, Nikolai Sablin, who was very close to the ‘tsars’, said the same thing: ‘The sovereign advocated carrying on the war to victory … and the empress viewed the war the same way. No documents attesting to the contrary have been found.

  The ashes found in Alix’s fireplace after the February Revolution do indicate the burning of numerous documents, however. The question ha naturally remained as to just what she burned. Something intimate? Bu then why have all the intimate letters about jealousy survived? And wha could the tsarina, who was utterly devoted to her family, possibly have regarded as taboo? No, it’s more likely that she burned something else, something dangerous to her.

  In her correspondence with the tsar, there are references as early as September 1915 to letters from her brother Ernie, who so wanted that peace. Was it not his letters that had been turned to ashes in her fireplace? Actually, there’s evidence enough in the documents that have remained:

  ‘1 Nov. 1915 …Our Friend was always against this war, saying the Balkans were not worth the world to fight about.’ But Nicky was silent. True to his ruinous obligations to his allies, he did not wish to understand her appeal. And she did not dare to continue. That topic was forbidden to her, whom the crowd called the ‘German woman’.

  But now in 1916, with a premonition of danger, she moved from calls to actions of a sort. In the last autumn of their reign, she wrote to her husband:

  ‘18 Sept…. Put all my trust in God’s mercy, only tell me when the attack is to begin, so as that He can particularly pray then; — it means too much & He realizes your suffering.’

  The reference is to the offensive then being readied by General Brusilov. And then suddenly the attack did no
t take place. Nicholas called it off, to the great surprise of Headquarters. It turned out that Alix had pleaded with him not to go on with it, citing as always the predictions of Our Friend. And Our Friend naturally greeted Nicky’s decision with joy.

  ‘23 Sept….Our friend says about the new orders you gave to Brussilov etc.: “Very satisfied with father’s orders, all will be well.” He won’t mention it to a soul,’ she wrote to her husband. But they had forgotten about the tsar’s character. Those around him persuaded him to change his mind. And General Brusilov proceeded with his offensive.

  24 Sept…. Lovy, our Friend is much put out that Brussilov has not listened to yr. order to stop the advance — says you were inspired from above to give that order…&God wld. bless it. — Now he says again useless losses. Hopes you will still insist, as now all is not right.’

  And the sovereign and commander-in-chief justified himself.

  24 September. I have just received your telegram in which you report that our Friend is very upset. When I gave that order, I did not know that Gurko [who commanded an army] had decided to combine all the forces remaining at his command and prepare an attack jointly with the Guards and the neighbouring forces. That combination gives hope of success. These details are for you alone — I beg of you, dear one. Tell Him only that Papa has ordered that reasonable measures be taken!

  He was concerned. He had heard about the spies in the elder’s midst.