To Kill Rasputin: The Life and Death of Grigori Rasputin (Revealing History)

by Cook, Andrew

  Yusupov would invite Rasputin to the Moika on the promise of meeting Irina. ‘You will serve as the lure’,15 he wrote back to her on 27 November. And Rasputin would cheerfully deceive his minders that night, as he did not want to make things awkward for his new friend Yusupov. He would know that if the Tsarina heard, from the Okhrana, that Yusupov was visiting Rasputin, then Yusupov’s parents would sooner or later find out and be angry.

  All went according to plan, but for one thing: Princess Irina, overwhelmed by trepidation or horror at the last moment, stayed in the Crimea. Yusupov kept this from Rasputin. He had agreed to come, and did not suspect anything was amiss. He told Yusupov to collect him from Gorokhovaya Street after midnight, when the minders had been dismissed, and to come in by the back door.

  Purishkevich’s account of Yusupov’s approach to him, and of the night of the murder, is presented as a diary. He recounts his triumphant denunciation of ‘Dark Forces’ in the Duma on 19 November and the many congratulations he received then and on the following day. One of them, from Prince Yusupov, whom he did not know, he found particularly intriguing, and when the Prince visited him the next day in uniform (‘evidently he is fulfilling his military obligation as an officer’) Purishkevich

  was very much taken with both his external appearance, which radiated inexpressible elegance and breeding, and particularly with his inner self-possession. This is obviously a man of great will and character – rare qualities among Russians, especially those in aristocratic circles.16

  He goes on to describe a meeting between himself, Sukhotin (‘slow-moving but forceful’) and Dmitri (‘a tall, stately and handsome man’). In this company, Purishkevich, with his gleaming bald pate, thick black beard and black-rimmed pebble glasses, must have felt conspicuously out of his element.

  According to him, Yusupov said Irina was in the Crimea and had no intention of returning, but Rasputin was being enticed to Yusupov’s palace on the promise of her presence. They must now decide how to kill him, how to avoid suspicion, and how to get rid of the body. They all decided on poisoning: ‘Yusupov’s palace, which stands on the Moika Canal directly across from the police station, ruled out the use of a revolver.’ Getting rid of the body was more difficult. They needed a driver and didn’t want to use the servants. Hence ‘Dr S Lazovert, an old [sic] doctor who had served with me for two years in my military unit’ was to be roped in. Purishkevich made the first mention of time constraints. ‘I intended to leave for Iasi on the Romanian front in the middle of December, once I had procured all the necessary supplies for my work in our army zone there.’

  On the evening of 24 November, he and Lazovert, Yusupov, Dmitri Pavlovich and Sukhotin met at precisely ten o’clock in the library coach of his hospital train, which was parked in the freight section of the Warsaw Station.

  At this point Prince Yusupov showed us some potassium cyanide which he had obtained from V. Maklakov. Some of this was in the form of crystals and some in a solution contained in a small phial which he continued to shake during the whole time he was in the coach.

  Our conversation lasted almost two hours and together we worked out the following plan: on the appointed day, or rather night, we would all meet at Yusupov’s at precisely midnight. At 12.30, having completed all the necessary preparations in Yusupov’s dining room in the lower storey of the palace, we would go up to his study. At approximately one o’clock Yusupov would leave in my car to pick up Rasputin at Gorokhovaya. Dr Lazovert would be his chauffeur.

  From then on, the plan was neither economical nor elegant. In the hands of men as undisciplined, intemperate and unpunctual as these, it bristled with opportunities for error and misunderstanding.

  Lazovert was to drive Purishkevich’s car into the courtyard of number 92 Moika and park close to the side door, so that Yusupov could take Rasputin straight into his wing of the palace and show him directly downstairs to his private dining room.

  Lazovert would then take off the chauffeur’s uniform he would be wearing and climb the staircase to Yusupov’s study, where Dmitri Pavlovich, Purishkevich and Sukhotin awaited, ready to rush downstairs if things went wrong.

  Within ten or fifteen minutes of arriving, Rasputin would have drunk poisoned Madeira and died. Prince Yusupov would report to the others, who would follow him downstairs and bundle up his clothes. Sukhotin, wearing Rasputin’s overcoat, and Dmitri Pavlovich, with a bundle of other clothes, would then leave in the car. The car would be driven, as before, by Lazovert dressed as a chauffeur. He would take them to the hospital train where Mrs Lazovert and Mrs Purishkevich (who had not so far as we know been consulted on this point) would burn the clothes. Presumably this was intended to delay identification, were the body to be found. However, it never quite makes sense. Rasputin wore a selection of smocks hand-embroidered by the Tsarina, but it later transpires that only his outer clothing was ever meant to be burned.

  Purishkevich’s car would be loaded onto the train. Lazovert, Sukhotin and Dmitri Pavlovich would go ‘by taxi or by foot’ to the Sergei Palace on Nevski Prospekt (which is quite a distance from the Warsaw Station). There they would pick up Dmitri’s car, again drive it into the courtyard and park it close to the wall, and go up to the study to collect Yusupov and Purishkevich.

  Together they would descend to the basement dining room, truss Rasputin up like a mummy in ‘some suitable material’, heave him upstairs and drive with the body in Dmitri’s car to a spot yet to be arranged, where they would drop it in the water. It would be bound with chains and ‘Two-pood weights’17 to prevent it from resurfacing through a hole in the ice – although by now, the winter was so far advanced that finding some un-iced water in the first place was going to be the hard part.

  They parted, Purishkevich having agreed to buy chains and weights at the Alexandrov market. On 28 November, Yusupov invited him to view the room where the dark deed was to be carried out. Purishkevich entered through the main entrance of 94 Moika, a baroque foyer designed on an appropriately palatial scale and illuminated by a blazing chandelier, the better to display a rich carpet laid on a pale marble floor which led up a wide marble staircase which divided and soared up out of sight under an exquisite moulded ceiling. It was the foyer through which glittering throngs of princes with medals and princesses afire with jewels customarily passed before making a grand entrance to the enfilade of reception rooms and galleries on the first floor.

  But Purishkevich noticed none of it. Instead, he was horrified by the number of servants, and especially by the faithful Tesphé, an Ethiopian manservant Felix and Irina had picked up in Jerusalem.

  ‘Listen, Prince,’ I said, ‘Surely this whole gang sitting in your hallway, headed by that liveried blackamoor, won’t be around on the night of our reception for Rasputin?’

  He was reassured that there would be only two men on duty, and they would be in the main palace, not in Felix’s wing. The rest of the servants would have the night off ‘including the blackamoor’. As for the basement dining room, currently a chaos of builders’ gubbins and workmen installing electricity, he could see its thick walls and scant windows would make it perfect for their purposes because ‘even if shots had to be fired from there, the sound of their report would not be heard in the street’.

  He asked Maklakov to participate. Maklakov said he would be in Moscow on and around the projected date but he would act in their defence if required. He asked Purishkevich to send a telegram when the assassination had been carried out successfully; the message would be ‘When are you arriving?’

  On 29 November, Purishkevich took his wife with him to Alexandrov market to help carry the weights and the chains back. They carried them carefully onto the train so that the crew would not get curious. (It is hard to imagine a well-born, well-dressed St Petersburg lady lifting so much as a Fabergé egg, far less staggering, red-faced, across the goods yard with a 16-kilo weight – but she was a nurse. And she had put up with Purishkevich for many years, indicative in itself of considerable grit.)
They hid their booty in the pharmacy and behind books in the library coach. Purishkevich spent the afternoon being driven around by Lazovert ‘examining every ice-hole in the Neva and in the little streams and bogs around Petrograd’. They found just two that were suitable. One was on a canal that ran from the Fontanka to the Tsarskoye Selo station; it was badly lit at night. The other was outside the city limits, on ‘The old Neva’ by the bridge across to the Islands.

  The following day,

  I saw the costume Dr Lazovert acquired today on my orders for 600 roubles: a chauffeur’s fur coat, a sort of Astrakhan cap with ear flaps, and chauffeur’s gloves. Lazovert modelled all of these for me, looking like a typical chauffeur – foppish and impudent. For the time being he took all these purchases to the Astoria Hotel, where he stays during our visits to Petrograd.

  The next decision was serious. They had to fit the murder into their busy schedules. Yusupov and Dmitri Pavlovich wanted to have it over with by 12 December, but Dmitri’s diary was full until Friday 16 December. In passing, Yusupov told them (as his own account confirms) that Rasputin had offered to get him a job in government.

  ‘And what did you say to that?’ the Grand Duke asked, throwing him a meaningful look while taking a drag on his cigarette.

  ‘I?’ replied Yusupov, who lowered his gaze and, fluttering his eyelashes, assumed an ironically languid look, ‘I modestly informed him that I consider myself too young, inexperienced and unprepared for service in the administrative field, but that I was gratified beyond belief that one so well known for his perspicacity as Grigori Efimovich should have such a flattering opinion of me.’

  We all burst out laughing.

  They were concerned that Rasputin might tell his Okhrana minders where he was going. To deflect suspicion, they decided that after the clothes had been taken for burning to the hospital train, Sukhotin would telephone the Villa Rhode from a phone booth in the Warsaw Station. He would ask whether Rasputin was there, and on being told that he wasn’t, would be overheard saying ‘He’s not there yet. That means he’ll be arriving any minute.’ So that if they were later asked whether Rasputin had been at the Yusupov Palace they would say yes, he came and later left for the Villa Rhode.

  They were swept along on a tide of bravado. Plan A could go wrong at any juncture; but there was no Plan B.

  On Tuesday 13 December they met for the last time. ‘Vanya has arrived’, the telephone signal, summoned them to the Yusupov Palace. Friday 16 December was to be the night. Another refinement was bolted onto the plan: a gramophone was to be put in the lobby outside the study, on the floor above the basement dining room. It would drown the voices of the men and make Rasputin understand that he must wait for the Princess Irina who, he would be told, was entertaining some ladies upstairs. And Yusupov showed them the sort of Indian club, or ‘twopound rubber dumb-bell like those used for indoor gymnastics’ he had got from Maklakov and was keeping ‘just in case’.

  On the day before the murder, a Thursday, with Purishkevich and his family no longer living in their town apartment but having moved into the hospital train,

  Dr Lazovert having bought a brush, khaki paint, and dressed in a leather apron, spent all day today on the car which will serve us tomorrow night to fetch our exalted guest. All the cars in my detachment have inscribed on them, in large red letters, semper idem, my motto. This inscription… could be that clue that could immediately lead the authorities to the Yusupov Palace and to my train.

  Quite. Temperatures well below freezing are not generally the best for allowing paint to dry; but no matter. And Dr Lazovert, busily daubing icy coachwork in the freight area of the Warsaw Station, did look a little conspicuous. ‘The train crew crowded round him’, asking questions. He told them he was off on a spree to the Islands tomorrow night, and didn’t want the car to be spotted – the motto could be painted on again later, en route for Romania.

  Purishkevich gave his staff Friday night off, to get them out of the way. He was perfectly satisfied there was no circumstantial evidence to link him with Rasputin’s murder.

  Purishkevich’s Diary was published in Russia in 1918 and in Paris in 1923, when, its author having died, Maklakov was asked for his comments before publication.

  Maklakov was now living in Paris. He had served as Ambassador to France under the Provisional Government in 1917. His letter makes certain points which are worth bearing in mind. One thing he very much doubted was the dates. As for the bits he was certain of, because he was there, they are all wrong in essential aspects.

  Purishkevich’s diary is not a diary at all. It is merely the literary form he chose for his memoirs… This story of Purishkevich’s is a nonsensical mixture of various conversations which took place at different times and even with different people, about which Purishkevich could only have learned at second hand…

  I remember his first approach to me and even my surprise at it – a surprise related exclusively to the fact that Purishkevich was in the plot… Purishkevich told me the names of the participants, the day of the murder and that was all… I would never have talked to Purishkevich about it, since I did not consider him to be serious enough nor especially discreet enough for such an undertaking.

  It seems that Yusupov approached Maklakov first, and got a dusty answer; then he asked Purishkevich, who agreed to participate; and then went to see Maklakov again and was given a truncheon (according to Yusupov). This Maklakov did not deny, but as to the potassium cyanide,

  It was not I who gave Yusupov potassium cyanide, or more precisely, what to Yusupov passed for potassium cyanide – had it been genuine no amount of hardiness on Rasputin’s part would have saved him.18

  At the very least, Yusupov had told Irina, Purishkevich, Maklakov and Rodzyanko; Pavlovich had told Stopford and Purishkevich had told Hoare in November. Purishkevich had also enlisted Lazovert, who had told the train crew he was going to the Islands. Purishkevich was a blabbermouth, as were Dmitri Pavlovich and Yusupov. If this murder were to take place, it would be a miracle if all eyes did not turn in their direction. Yusupov was a tad worried about his legal position if he got caught, and Maklakov was a distinguished lawyer.

  Just before the murder the participant, with whom I happened to talk, began to beg me urgently not to leave Petersburg on the day of the murder but to be there in case my advice might be needed. I will emphasise that… I did not suggest at any time to any of the participants that I would be their defender at a trial.19

  Maklakov made it clear, he later wrote, that while he thought it impossible that the perpetrators would be tried, as it would be ‘Too upsetting for Russia’, on the other hand ‘To allow obvious murderers to go unpunished would also be impossible’.

  Therefore it was their duty to act in such a way that they would not be discovered. In essence this would not be difficult since the authorities, understanding the significance of the affair, would hardly try to find the murderers. They need only make it possible that they not be discovered. Therefore the conspirators must refrain from any vainglorious urge to reveal themselves, must brag to no one, and on no account should they confess.20

  Maklakov was close to putting off his prior appointment, which was a speaking engagement at the Law Society in Moscow, but found at the last moment that he couldn’t; he must catch a train out of town. He happened to meet Purishkevich at the Duma late in the afternoon of Friday 16 December, and told him to pass on that message to Yusupov. It was now, he said, that Purishkevich agreed to send him a telegram ‘if the affair ended successfully’.

  NINE

  A ROOM IN THE BASEMENT

  The Yusupov Palace at 94 Moika had a long, high façade with twenty-six windows on each floor and a six-column Tuscan portico extending up to the second storey; high above this was a central attic carrying the Yusupov coat of arms. The façade ran along the pavement of the narrow road alongside the canal. At the back, projecting wings enclosed a colonnaded courtyard on two sides with a carriage entrance onto a street at the rear.<
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  Adjoining the palace at the eastern side was a much more subdued building, number 92, also owned by the Yusupovs. It stood back about twelve metres from the façade of number 94. In front of it was a cobbled courtyard with handsome street railings made out of solid timber in the Russian style, having three sets of double gates along their course. Two of the sets of gates had high ornamental gateposts.

  Prince Yusupov and Princess Irina had been having their private apartment in the eastern side of the palace remodelled since they married two years before; the work was still incomplete. Felix was at this time refurbishing his own set of private rooms within this partment, near the road alongside the Moika Canal. He would use them whenever he came to St Petersburg without his wife and baby. The ground-floor rooms were slightly above ground level. They were accessible from within the main palace, or from a small private door set centrally in the wall of the east wing overlooking the courtyard of number 92. This door opened onto the dog-leg landing of a narrow stairway. Six stairs led up to a large study with windows overlooking both the courtyard of number 92 and the canal, and more stairs led down to a roomy, vaulted basement, the street end of which had been converted into a dining room. Here, almost below ground, the front windows were small, set high in the walls, and gave onto the road at pavement level. The back windows were similarly small and high and gave onto the courtyard.