By dawn on 18 December, Purishkevich’s train was already a good distance from Petrograd. And having stayed awake all night, he wrote, ‘It is still dark, but I sense that daylight is coming. I cannot sleep. I am thinking of the future … of that great land … I call Motherland.’
A little over two months remained until the revolution.
On 18 December the inquiry continued in anticipation of the tsar’s arrival in Petrograd.
Alix’s telegram to Nicky on 18 December: ‘In your name I order Dmitry forbidden to leave his house till yr. return. Dmitry wanted to see me today, but I refused. Mainly he is implicated. The body still not found.’
Nicky’s telegram to Alix of 18 December: ‘I have only just read your letter. Am horrified and shaken. In prayers and thoughts I am with you. Am arriving tomorrow at 5 o’clock.’
However, Olga, Grand Duke Pavel Alexandrovich’s wife, recorded the account of her husband who had just returned from Headquarters: ‘He drank tea with the sovereign and was struck by the expression of serenity and bliss on his face. For the first time in a long time, the tsar was in an animated state …Loving his wife too much to go against her wishes, the sovereign was happy that fate had delivered him from the necessity of taking action on his own.’ No, Nicky, as always, had merely been reticent about his feelings. ‘Horrified and shaken’ — that was his true attitude. ‘Monsters’ is what he would call the murderers in his diary.
Finding The Corpse
Early on the morning of 19 December, a corpse was found floating in the Malaya Nevka river near Great Petrovsky Bridge. It had surfaced in a frightening way: the shirt frozen to the corpse was pulled up, exposing a bullet wound. There was another bullet mark on the victim’s forehead and a bruise on his face from a kick to the temple.
A photograph has survived: the corpse has just been pulled from the water and lifted onto a sledge. And its raised, icy hands threaten the heavens and the city. And all around is the white expanse of the frozen river.
On the evening of 19 December, police detectives walked back and forth along the five versts of the road to Tsarskoe Selo all the way to Chesmensky Almshouse (once the way palace of Catherine the Great).
And then cars with high-ranking policemen in them drove into the courtyard of the almshouse in the company of two packages wrapped in bast. The packages contained the frozen corpse and Rasputin’s fur coat.
Only after the corpse had thawed were they able to lower the threatening hands.
On the night of 20 December, Professor Kosorotov of the Department of Forensic Medicine of the Academy of Military Medicine performed an autopsy on the thawed corpse and embalmed it. The heart was removed and put in a special container, and the lungs were lifted out and placed in alcohol. The lungs of the deceased were evidently of particular interest. Beletsky, reporting the words of Protopopov, subsequently testified before the Extraordinary Commission that “there was air in Rasputin’s lungs” and that he had therefore been thrown into the water alive.
The autopsy report was retained by the Academy of Military Medicine. But in the 930s it disappeared. All that remained were police photographs of the naked body and its bullet wounds.
Rasputin’s daughters were brought to view the body. They were accompanied by Akilina Laptinskaya and of course by Anya, who had brought Our Friend’s final covering.
Bishop Isidor celebrated a requiem mass.
And then accompanied by an escort of plain-clothes policemen, Rasputin’s corpse was removed in a zinc-lined coffin to the Feodor Cathedral in Tsarskoe Selo. The funeral took place on 2 December.
Rasputin was buried in “Anya’s church,” the still uncompleted Serafim Chapel on whose foundation he had so recently and so happily feasted.
The Truth About The Secret Burial
The secret burial (like the secret burial of the royal family) is rife with rumors and legends.
The File contains the only immediate descriptions of the funeral by several eyewitnesses.
From the testimony of the medical orderly A. Zhuk:
Vyrubova told me to come to her in the morning at half past eight … Vyrubova went by carriage to the new church she was building. On the way she told me that Father Grigory was going to be burried there. I had heard about it the day before from the architect Yakovlev, who told me the tsarina herself had chosen the place … When we drove up to the place, we found a grave already dug and a coffin in it. The place was in the centre of the church in the left side of the nave. There we came upon their Majesties’ confessor, Father Alexander Vasiliev, the infirmary’s own priest, the architect Yakovlev, a sexton, and Colonel Maltsev, who was in charge of the construction [of the Serafim Sanctuary], and Laptinskaya. Laptinskaya told how Rasputin was lying and what he was wearing, and said she had brought the coffin at night by automobile. Vyrubova asked, ‘Can the coffin be opened?’ But Laptinskaya and Yakovlev said that it could not be done. Around ten minutes after our arrival at the grave, a motor drove up with the tsar, the tsarina, and the children. By nine the burial service was over. The grave was covered up by security branch agents, who until then had been stationed in the woods.
Naturally, the tsarina’s Second Friend also came to see Our Friend off on his last journey. As Vyrubova’s maid Feodosia Voino testified, ‘Dehn rode with me.’
The File, from the testimony of Yulia Dehn: ‘Upon learning of Rasputin’s death, I went to Tsarskoe Selo, spent the night there, and was present when Rasputin’s body was committed to the earth … I arrived along with the royal family … Colonel Loman was watching us from behind the bushes. They didn’t open the coffin … The sovereign and empress were stunned by what had happened. But the empress had so much strength of will that she supported Vyrubova, who wept a lot.’
The one who ‘was watching from behind the bushes’ also described the funeral.
The File, from Loman’s testimony:
The burial service itself was conducted by the confessor Father Alexander Vasiliev and an ordained monk from Vyrubova’s infirmary. There were no choristers; Ischenko, the assistant deacon of the Feodorov Cathedral, sang. The day before, Father Vasiliev had informed me that he had been given orders to carry out the committing of Rasputin’s body to the ground, for which he would come from Petrograd to spend the night in Tsarskoe Selo … and in the morning drop by for the assistant deacon and his chasuble and other vestments, so that I should give the corresponding orders. The next day Father Vasiliev dropped by the cathedral, where I was waiting for him, and together we went to the Serafim Sanctuary, that is, to the site where the church was to be erected. Instead of driving all the way to the site itself, Father Vasiliev walked to the burial place (the coffin was already in the hole), while I remained off to the side. So although I was unseen, I could see everything … Before the royal family arrived, I approached the grave and saw a metal coffin. There was no opening in the coffin of any kind.
(Vyrubova’s testimony is the same. None of the eyewitnesses speaks of an opening, in fact. But the myth of an opening in the coffin’s cover, supposedly made at the tsarina’s command so that whenever visiting Rasputin in his crypt, she could see his face after death, has appeared in numerous memoirs and writings.)
‘The coffin was immediately covered up with earth, and there was no crypt under construction,’ Loman testified.
From the tsar’s diary for December 2 : ‘At nine o’clock we went to … the field where we were present at a sad scene: the coffin with the body of the unforgettable Grigory, killed on the night of the 17th by monsters in the Yusupov house, already stood in the grave. Father A. Vasiliev conducted the service, after which we returned home.’
Punishment Of The Princes
After that the reprisals started. Grand Duke Dmitry asked to be tried before a court-martial. He understood that after such a trial he would become a hero for all Russia. And it was also needed for the future, in order to give public voice to the story they had concocted, that the peasant’s blood was not on Dmitry’s hands. Th
e tsar understood that, too. And so no trial took place.
In the meantime, the peasant’s murderers had been under house arrest, waiting for their fates to be decided. And during that time, the details of the murder had been seeping out of the palace, and a rumour had taken shape: that it wasn’t Dmitry but Yusupov and Purishkevich who had done the killing. And Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fyodorovna wrote to Nicky, asking him to pardon Felix:
‘When I got back here I learned he had been killed by Felix …who didn’t want to go into the military because he didn’t want to shed anyone else’s blood. I pictured what he must have gone through before he decided to do it; I imagined how, moved by love of the Fatherland, he had decided to rescue the sovereign and the country from a person who had made everyone suffer. The crime may be considered an act of patriotism.’
Nicholas didn’t answer her letter. And then measures were taken. Felix was treated remarkably leniently. ‘The chief culprit, Felix Yusupov,’ Dmitry’s stepmother Olga said in bewilderment, ‘got off with exile to the country. Whereas Grand Duke Dmitry was ordered to leave for Persia.’ He was sent into combat, to a field army in a terrible climate ruinous to the health. Evidently, it wasn’t the murderers’ story that Nicholas believed but the secret reports of his policemen. Obviously, he knew who had shot Rasputin. The whole numerous imperial family was outraged at the tsar’s decision. ‘I myself composed the text of the petition,’ recalled Dmitry’s stepmother. ‘ The exile seemed to us the limit of cruelty. The petition was signed by all the members of the imperial family.’
That petition has survived in the archive. With the tsar’s appended response: ‘No one has the right to commit murder. I know that the consciences of many are not clear, since Dmitry Pavlovich is not the only one involved in this. I am amazed that you have appealed to me.’ And the grand duke, his favourite, was sent to Persia, despite all the pleas.
I held it in my hand, that letter from the Romanov family with its numerous signatures. So many of those who signed that document would perish, caught unawares by the revolution. But Dmitry, thanks to the cruel exile from which they had so pleaded he be delivered, would survive intact.
Once in Persia Dmitry did not forget his beloved friend. ‘My dear, much-loved, true friend,’ he wrote to Felix. ‘I can say, without fear of going to extremes, my dearest friend!’
And Felix honourably and faithfully continued to hold to the story they had agreed.
But shortly after the new year, the dangerous Felix wrote a letter to his mother-in-law, Nicholas’s sister Xenia — an odd letter that sounds like a letter about Dmitry:
2 January…I’m much tormented by the idea that the Empress Marie Fyodorovna and you will regard the person who did it as a murderer and a criminal. However you view the rightness of that action and the reasons that prompted its doing, there will be a feeling deep in your heart that he is still a murderer. Knowing everything that person did before, during, and after, I can say with complete certainty that he is not a murderer but merely an instrument of Providence, which helped him to carry out his duty before his motherland and tsar by destroying an evil, diabolical force that had disgraced Russia.
‘An End Must Without Fail Be Put To… Alexandra Fyodorovna’
Hiding out in Tsarskoe Selo, the tsarina and Vyrubova waited for a continuation of the bloodshed — the further revenge of the grand dukes. Were they groundless fears? The diary of Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich contains an answer:
Everything they [Rasputin’s murderers] have done is without question a half-measure, since an end must without fail be put to both Alexandra Fyodorovna and Protopopov. So you see, murder plans have occurred to me again, still vague but logically necessary, as otherwise it may be worse than it was … [enough] to make your head spin. The Countess Bobrinskaya, Misha Shakhovskoy [Prince Mikhail Shakhovskoy], and I have been scared into taking action, and prodded, and pleaded with, but how? With whom? To act alone would be pointless! Meanwhile, the time passes, and with their departure and Purishkevich’s, I see hardly any others capable of action. But really and truly I’m not of the breed of aesthetes and even less of murderers. I need to get out into the fresh air, best of all on a hunting trip in the forest, for here, living in a state of excitement, I’ll talk and do such nonsense.
So it was ‘logically necessary’ to kill the Tsarina of All Russia. This was written by a grand duke! Who regretted seeing no ‘others capable of action’ after the exile of Rasputin’s murderers, who regretted not knowing ‘how and with whom’ to achieve it!
So thoughts about a continuation of the bloodshed, about a new conspiracy, were fermenting in highly placed minds. It was no coincidence that Nikolai Mikhailovich was exiled to the ‘fresh air’ of his estate just before the new year. And it was with good reason that Alix begged the tsar to return, telling him that she had found a safe place for the Friend in her palace.
As he was departing for exile around the new year, Nikolai Mikhailovich met on the train (and surely not by accident) two prominent members of the Duma opposition, the monarchist Shulgin (who would subsequently accept Nicholas’s abdication) and the manufacturer Tereschenko (who would become a minister in the Provisional Government after the February Revolution). And Nikolai Mikhailovich wrote, ‘Tereschenko’s certain everything will come apart in a month’s time and I’ll return from exile. God grant that it be so! But what malice there was in those two men. Both spoke in one voice of the possibility of regicide! What times we live in, what a curse has befallen Russia.’ Such was their thinking: the grand duke about murdering the tsarina, the Duma leaders about a possible assassination of the tsar. It was in the air.
Blood was in the offing. And the tsar was warned of it.
On 0 February before his departure for Headquarters, the tsar received Nikolai Mikhailovich’s brother, the Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich (Sandro), a friend of his childhood and youth. And Sandro said, ‘Events have shown that your advisers are bent on leading Russia and, it follows, you to inevitable destruction and death.’
On 22 February the emperor left his beloved Tsarskoe Selo for the last time.
‘Always Together, Never Alone’
As usual, there was a letter from Alix waiting for Nicky on the train: ‘22 Feb. 1917 … such terrible times for us now! — and even harder apart, I can’t stroke you so tired & worried.’ As before, she lived by her meetings with Our Friend, only now they were meetings at his grave: ‘I can do nothing but pray & pray & Our dear Friend does so in yonder world for you — there is yet nearer to us — Tho’ one longs to hear his voice of comfort and encouragement … Holy angels guard you, Christ be near you & the sweet Virgin never fail you — Our Friend left us to [join] her.’
Now they often went to his grave — the Tsarina, the Friend, and the grand duchesses. And the church’s newly constructed walls shielded them from the eyes of strangers.
‘26 Feb. 1917 …Went to our Friend’s grave. Now the church [being built over Rasputin’s burial place] is so high that I could kneel & pray there calmly for you all without being seen by the orderly.’ And in her letter of 22 February: ‘Feel my arms hold you, feel my lips press tenderly upon yours — always together, never alone.’
The revolution had already begun in Petrograd. Just as Our Friend had prophesied in his ‘serious’ 1914 telegram to the tsar.
And on 2 March 1917, when Petrograd was already full of raging mobs, when the tsarina’s palace was already surrounded by mutinous soldiers, when the train with the helpless tsar was already blocked at the station in Dno and all the army commanders were demanding his abdication, and when Guchkov, whom Alix hated so much, and Shulgin had already left the Duma to receive that abdication, she sent Nicky a letter from Tsarskoe Selo with an important postscript: ‘Wear his cross, even if it is uncomfortable, for my peace of mind.’
EPILOGUE
An Excursion To The Murder Scene
Another world had begun. After their house arrest, the tsar and tsarina continued to live in Tsarsko
e Selo, where ‘Citizen Romanov’ conscientiously cleared his garden, went for walks in the park, read books out loud to his family in the evenings, and was perhaps for the first time secretly happy. Alix, however, was exhausted by the humiliation. She would subsequently write in a letter how she had withered and turned grey. The Friend was taken away to Petrograd to the Peter and Paul Fortress.
As Tereschenko had predicted to Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, everything rapidly ‘came apart’, and the grand duke returned from exile. By then the grand dukes’ automobiles had been appropriated. And in the middle of March, Nikolai Mikhailovich went by horse cab to the Yusupov palace on the Moika canal. The historian had decided to take a look at the murder scene that the young Yusupov had told him so much about. Felix and Irina had also recently returned from exile. And Rasputin’s murderer took pleasure in the general attention. Nikolai Mikhailovich wrote in his diary: ‘16 March 1917 …Irina and Felix are in enthusiastic spirits … I visited them, [and] examined the place of drama in detail. It’s incredible, but they calmly have their dinner in the same dining room.’ In the end, nothing special had happened — a nobleman had merely shot an insolent peasant. How many others had been flogged to death in the stable at the orders of his ancestors in the Yusupov family history.
Missing Money And People
By then the hunt for Rasputin’s wealth was starting to heat up. Simanovich added fuel to the fire. Beletsky testified that Simanovich told him in secret ‘that the deceased had left very good resources … up to 300,000 roubles’.
The Rasputin File Page 65