‘Grigory Efimovich, you would do better to look at the Crucifix and pray to It.’ Rasputin glanced at me in surprise and almost in fear. You might say that he read in my eyes something he had not expected.
And then something quite strange happened. Rasputin, who would soon be struggling furiously for his life, was unaccountably submissive — like a sleepwalker. He waited patiently to be killed.
‘I raised the pistol in a slow, deliberate motion. Rasputin stood in front of me without moving…his eyes fixed on the Cross…I… shot. Rasputin began to howl in a savage, bestial voice and fell back heavily onto the bearskin.’
Purishkevich: ‘A few minutes later after two abrupt sentences, the sound of a shot, followed by a protracted “a-ah”. And the sound of a body falling heavily to the floor.’ They all rushed headlong downstairs, although on entering the room they tripped on on an electrical wire and the lights went out. But they felt around, found the wire, plugged it back in, and saw: ‘The dying Rasputin lay in front of the settee with Yusupov calmly standing over him, a pistol in his hand. “We need to get him off the rug immediately, lest the blood seep out and stain the bearskin,” the grand duke started to say.’
And Felix and Purishkevich carried Rasputin over onto a bare slab.
Purishkevich: ‘I stood over Rasputin. He was still alive and breathing and in agony. With his right hand he covered his eyes and half his nose, long and spongy…and his body jerked convulsively.’
‘There wasn’t any doubt. Rasputin was dead. We turned off the light, locked the dining-room door, and went upstairs to the study. Everyone was elated,’ Felix recalled.
And then comes another inexplicable part. According to Purishkevich’s and Felix’s memoirs, Grand Duke Dmitry and the doctor set off in the automobile to Purishkevich’s hospital train to burn Rasputin’s clothing — his fur coat and boots. But it would later turn out that Rasputin’s fur coat and boots were not burned. And Purishkevich gives a surprising explanation for that: it seems that Purishkevich’s wife, who had been anxiously waiting to see how it would all end, was a lazy, capricious woman. And since ‘the fur coat wouldn’t fit in the stove, she found it impossible to busy herself with tearing it up and burning it piecemeal. She even clashed with Dmitry,’ Purishkevich writes. In short, the brazen woman refused to carry out her husband’s instructions and sent the grand duke back with the fur coat and boots like a little boy. If you consider that Purishkevich was no less a tyrant at home than in the Duma, then his wife’s behaviour is very strange.
But while the grand duke was away, something extraordinary occurred.
‘I felt an irresistible desire to look at Rasputin,’ Yusupov recalled. And he went down to the basement.
The dead Rasputin lay by the table where we had left him. He wasn’t moving, but after touching him I was convinced he was still warm. Then bending over, I started taking his pulse but couldn’t feel any. Blood was seeping from his wound in little drops. For some reason I suddenly grabbed hold of him and shook him — his body fell back to its original position. After standing over him for a little while, I was about to leave, when my attention was attracted to a slight movement of his left eyelid. His face shuddered convulsively — ever more strongly. Suddenly his left eye started to open…his right eyelid twitched, and both his eyes were fixed on me in an expression of diabolical wickedness.
And then a scene right out of the thrillers of those days (and of our own) entitled, ‘The devil revived.’
An incredible thing happened. With an abrupt, furious movement, Rasputin sprang to his feet. He was foaming at the mouth. He was horrifying. The room resounded with a savage roar, and I saw the flash of his convulsively clenched fingers. Then, like red-hot iron, they sank into my shoulder and reached for my neck … The revived Rasputin repeated my name in a hoarse whisper. Seized by a terror like no other, I tried to break free, but an iron vice held me with unbelievable strength. In that poisoned and bullet-pierced body there was, raised up by dark powers to avenge his death, something terrible and monstrous… I pulled away and with a last incredible effort broke free. Rasputin, gasping for breath, fell onto his back, holding in his hand my epaulette, which he had torn off. I rushed upstairs to Purishkevich. ‘Quick…the pistol! Shoot! He’s still alive!’
Rasputin was crawling on all fours up the stairs.
Purishkevich had at the time just returned from a smoke and ‘was upstairs slowly walking around the study’, when some inner force suddenly impelled him to the table where his Savage was lying. He put the pistol in his trouser pocket. Then ‘under the pressure of the unknown force’, he went out of the room to the stairway. And he heard ‘Felix’s inhuman cry, “Purishkevich, shoot! He’s still alive! He’s getting away!”’
And then he saw Yusupov. ‘His face was literally gone, his handsome … eyes had come out of their sockets … [and] in a semi-conscious state … almost without seeing me, he rushed past with a crazed look … to his parents’ half [of the palace]. I heard the sound of someone’s… heavy footsteps making their way to the courtyard door.’ And Purishkevich drew his Savage and ran downstairs. Grigory Rasputin, whose last gasp he had contemplated half an hour before, ‘was running in a stagger along the fence over the sloppy snow of the yard’.
Purishkevich ‘could not believe’ his eyes, and then he heard a loud yell. It was the fleeing Rasputin: ‘Felix, Felix, I’ll tell everything to the tsarina.’ And he ‘ran after him in pursuit and fired … and in the darkness of the night an extraordinarily loud noise rang out’.
He missed. ‘Rasputin increased his pace.’ And Purishkevich ‘shot a second time on the run and missed again’. Rasputin had already reached the gate. Then Purishkevich ‘bit his hand’ to make himself concentrate. And with the third shot he ‘hit him in the back. He came to a stop.’ And then Purishkevich fired a fourth time and ‘hit him in the head’, and he ‘fell like a stone … in the snow and started jerking his head back and forth’. He lay with his arms stretched out, clawing at the snow. And then in a fury Purishkevich ‘kicked him in the temple’.
But during all that Purishkevich for some reason had neither heard nor seen Yusupov running into the yard and shouting to him in the still of the night.
‘Two shots rang out,’ Felix recalled.
Leaping down the front steps, I ran along the Moika in order to cut Rasputin off in case Purishkevich missed. I myself was unarmed, since I’d given my pistol to the grand duke. There were three gates, but only the middle one was unlocked. I saw through the fence that it was in fact that gate to which Rasputin’s animal instinct had drawn him. A third shot rang out, then a fourth one. I saw Rasputin sway and then fall down by a snowdrift. Purishkevich ran towards him and came to a halt by the body. I shouted to him, but he did not hear me.
After that Purishkevich went back to the house. When he reached the main entrance he told the soldiers there that he had killed ‘Grishka, Russia’s enemy and the tsar’s’, and after hearing their joyful endorsement, he ordered the body immediately dragged away from the fence.
It was then that Felix saw in the courtyard ‘a constable walking from the gate towards where the body was lying’.
‘I stopped the constable … As I was talking to him, I purposely faced the snow drift, so that the constable was obliged to stand with his back to where Rasputin was lying.
“Your highness, there were shots. Did something happen?”
“Nothing serious. I had a soirée this evening. A comrade of mine drank too much and started shooting.”‘ And the constable left.
There’s another description of what happened. And, as we have already seen, it belongs to the constable himself. Constable Vlasyuk testified, ‘At the time I saw crossing the courtyard in the direction of the gate two men in military jackets but no hats, in whom I recognized Prince Yusupov and his butler Buzhinsky. I asked the latter what the shooting had been. He replied that he hadn’t heard any shots … I think the prince also said he hadn’t heard anything.’ And Vlasyuk left.
After that, according to Felix, two soldiers dragged Rasputin into the house. And carried him down to the stairway landing by the basement where he had just been feasting with his host. Felix saw Rasputin lying motionless in the stairway. ‘He was bleeding profusely from his many wounds. The fixture above cast its light on his head, and you could see every little detail of his bruised and mutilated face.’ But something threatening and morbid apparently still connected the peasant to the prince. ‘I was drawn irresistibly to that bloodied corpse. I no longer had the strength to struggle against myself. Rage and malice suffocated me. I was overwhelmed by a state I cannot explain. I flew at the corpse and began to beat it with the rubber-coated dumbbell handle [given him by Maklakov]. I struck indiscriminately in my rage and fury, flouting every divine and human law.’
Purishkevich ordered the soldiers to pull Felix off. And they ‘sat him down, splattered all over with blood, on the sofa in his study …It was awful to look at him with his vacant gaze and twitching face as he mindlessly repeated, “Felix, Felix”.’ And Purishkevich would never be able to forget Felix flailing at the peasant with the two-pound dumbbell handle. The most amazing thing, Purishkevich would write, was that Rasputin was still alive. ‘ He gasped for breath and the pupil of his right eye rolled and gazed emptily and horribly at me … I see that eye before me to this day.’
After that Purishkevich ordered the body wrapped up as quickly as possible. But Buzhinsky apparently then told him about the constable who had inquired about the shots.
Afraid that the constable would tell his superiors that there had been shooting, Purishkevich came up with a preposterous plan. He decided to summon the constable.
And Constable Vlasyuk came back to the palace. And a conversation took place that in its general features was identically described by them all — Purishkevich, the constable, and Felix.
‘Answer me according to your conscience. Do you love our father the tsar and our mother Russia, and do you want victory for Russian arms over the German?’ Purishkevich asked.
‘Yes, sir, Your Excellency.’
‘And do you know who the most wicked enemy of the tsar and Russia is, the one who is preventing us from fighting, who has saddled us with the various Stürmers and other Germans in positions of authority, and who has taken the tsarina into his hands and through her has been making short work of Russia?’
‘Yes, sir. I know. Grishka Rasputin.’
‘Well, brother, he is no more. We have killed him and were shooting at him now. Will you be able to say if they ask you, “I don’t know and am unaware”? Will you be able to keep silent?’
But the constable’s answer was a dangerous one: ‘So if they don’t ask me under oath, then I won’t say anything. But if they put me under oath, then there’s nothing I can do — I’ll tell them the whole truth, as it would be a sin to lie.’ And the constable left to report at once to his superiors on the entire conversation with Purishkevich.
Finally, it was all done; wrapped in heavy cloth and bound with rope, the corpse lay by the dining room. By then, as both Felix and Purishkevich noted, Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich had returned in his automobile from his strangely unsuccessful errand. And they got ready to take the corpse away. Dawn was approaching. So they were in a hurry. They decided to leave Felix behind, ‘putting him in the care of his servants with a request to help him clean up and change his clothes’.
They drove through the Petrograd darkness. The illumination was scarce, the ‘road was deplorable … and the body kept jumping around, despite the soldier sitting on top of it. Finally, it came into view — the bridge where we were supposed to drop Rasputin’s body through an ice hole. It was outside of town, and Dmitry Pavlovich [who was sitting in for the driver] slowed down and stopped by the railing … and for a moment the sentry-box at the other end of the bridge lit up. The motor continued to rumble.’ (It was all as it would be when the Romanovs were executed: the blood and the secretly transported corpses, and the regicide Yurovsky’s memory of the sound of the engine running.) Wordlessly, the four of them — the soldier, the lieutenant, Lazavert, and Purishkevich — ‘after swinging the corpse back and forth, threw it hard into the hole in the ice, though forgetting to attach weights to it by chain’. Meanwhile, as Purishkevich writes, Dmitry Pavlovich ‘stood look-out’ in front of the car. ‘The royal youth’s hand must not touch the criminal body.’ Searching through the car, they found one of Rasputin’s boots and tossed it off the bridge, as well. Then they retraced their route. ‘On the way back … the engine kept stalling, and Dr Lazavert would jump down and fiddle with one of the spark plugs. The last little repair was in front of the Peter and Paul Fortress.’
In 1919 Dmitry Pavlovich’s father, Grand Duke Pavel, would be executed in that fortress.
Finally, they reached Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fyodorovna’s palace, where the grand duke was residing at the time (the grand duchess herself, we shall remember, had just before the murder gone to pray at the monastery in Sarov). After that, the other three — Lieutenant Sukhotin, Lazavert, and Purishkevich — grabbed a horse-drawn cab (more reliable than the grand duke’s automobile) and set off to the Warsaw Station, where Purishkevich’s hospital train was waiting. It was after 5:00 a.m. Later that day Purishkevich sent Maklakov in Moscow a telegram: ‘When are you coming?’ which meant that Rasputin had been killed.
The stir began the following afternoon. At 5:00 p.m. Lieutenant Sukhotin came to see Purishkevich at the hospital train with the request that he visit Grand Duke Dmitry at the palace at once. At the palace Purishkevich found Yusupov and the grand duke. Both ‘were nervously drinking cognac and cup after cup of black coffee’. They reported that ‘Alexandra Fyodorovna has already been told of the disappearance and even death of Rasputin and had named us as the guilty parties in the murder.’ ‘Because of that reptile,’ Yusupov said, ‘I had to shoot one of my best dogs and lay her out on the blood-stained snow.’
It was then at the palace that Yusupov and the grand duke composed Yusupov’s letter to the empress, in which he assured Alix that neither he nor the grand duke had had anything to do with Rasputin’s death. After setting down their lie, they felt ‘awkward with each other’. But it was necessary to go on.
After making up the story for the empress, they were obliged to make up another one for society, in the event that they should have to confess. But having decided to avoid a new lie as much as possible, they made promises to each other as to how much they would remain silent about. (Just as the royal family’s murderers later promised each other to keep silent.) And they immediately violated those oaths. (As did the others, in fact.)
At 8:00 p.m. on 17 December Purishkevich’s train pulled out of Petrograd. And Purishkevich wrote all night, describing the murder ‘for posterity’. Yusupov did the same thing, but in several works and only after he had emigrated.
In 1997 in Paris, Marina Grey, the daughter of the White leader General Denikin, gave me several newspaper clippings that she found in her mother’s archive. They were of an interview with Grand Duke Dmitry regarding the publication of Felix Yusupov’s book. In the interview, which was printed in the 19 July 1928 issue of the newspaper Matin, the grand duke said, ‘The murder was carried out by us in a paroxysm of patriotic madness…We pledged never to speak of that event … Yusupov acted quite improperly in publishing his book. I did everything possible to keep him from carrying out that intention but was unsuccessful. That circumstance put an end to our friendship. We have not seen each other in five years.’ Another clipping from a Russian newspaper published in Paris: ‘Not a single person, including the members of my own family, has heard from me about the events of that terrible night … The same force that impelled me to the crime has prevented me and now prevents me from lifting the curtain on that affair.’ It was hateful to the grand duke to maintain the lie that they had apparently agreed on. And that Purishkevich and Yusupov had piously adhered to in their memoirs.
For in my view those accounts w
ere nothing more than a tale fabricated by the participants. A tale with a very definite purpose.
15
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE ‘NIGHTMARE EVENING’
Cherchez La Femme
The fabrications were introduced, we shall recall, at the very beginning of the murderers’ version. From noble considerations. Purishkevich decided to hide the identity of Felix’s wife Irina behind the name ‘Countess N.’ (it wasn’t fitting for the tsar’s niece to serve as a lure for a peasant). But the noble considerations went further. Both Purishkevich and Yusupov claimed that there had been no women among those gathered at the Yusupov palace on the night of the murder.
In fact, however, the presence of women was simply essential. When Irina refused to take part, it had been necessary to stage her presence in the house. And that was accomplished very convincingly. Everything had been thought of to create the impression of a soirée at which Irina was enjoying herself with guests who had arrived all of a sudden — from the gramophone to the pastries that her guests, scared away, had abandoned. Yet for some reason, the most important thing seems to have been forgotten — her voice. The woman’s voice that was supposed to be heard coming from upstairs. They had evidently failed to invite a woman to play the role of Irina. But, really, there had to be a woman’s voice coming from upstairs. Because ‘distant voices from upstairs’ had been heard downstairs — by Yusupov and by Rasputin. ‘On entering the house with Rasputin,’ Felix recalled, ‘I heard the voices of my friends.’ And later on, when they were sitting in the ‘dining room’, ‘the noise from upstairs grew louder and louder,’ Felix wrote. ‘What’s all that noise?’ Rasputin asked him. The alert Rasputin, who heard the ‘noise of voices’, would certainly have suspected something, had there been no woman’s voice in all that noise. And he didn’t suspect anything. And he didn’t do so for more than two hours. And that is possible only if he did hear a woman’s voice coming from upstairs.
The Rasputin File Page 63