And yet, Rasputin kept breathing. Yusupov came running from the palace, a rubber club in his hand. “In my frenzy, I hit anywhere,” he later said. Rasputin soon stopped moving. Then the murderers rolled the body in a blue curtain, tied it with ropes, and shoved it into the backseat of Purishkevich’s car. Driving a few blocks to the frozen Neva River, they shoved the body through a hole in the ice.
Three days later, police divers pulled the body from the icy river. They were surprised to see that Rasputin’s right arm was freed from the ropes and slightly raised. This left people with the notion that the starets had still been alive when his murderers dumped him in the water, that he struggled with incredible strength until he finally drowned.
An autopsy performed that very day, however, refuted this notion. According to the senior autopsy surgeon, Dmitri Kosorotov, the body was riddled with bruises. This was consistent with Yusupov’s story about the rubber club. Curiously, though, while the autopsy did reveal cakes and wine in Rasputin’s stomach, no traces of the cyanide Dr. Lazovert had supposedly put in them was found. Had Lazovert changed his mind without telling the others and not poisoned the food? Was this why Rasputin continued to eat and drink that night with no ill effects?
Dr. Kosorotov also noted three gunshot wounds. The first bullet had entered Rasputin’s chest, slicing through the starets’ stomach and liver. The second had gone through his back, piercing his kidney. And the third had struck the back of the head. Either of the first two wounds would have killed Rasputin in minutes, the doctor determined. But the third injury would have killed him instantly. There was no way, he concluded, that Rasputin was alive when his killers dumped him in the river. This was corroborated by the fact that no water was found in the lungs. Rasputin had not died from drowning. The cause of his death was a gunshot wound.
The discovery of Rasputin’s body touched off public celebrations across Russia. Bells rang. Flags waved. “People kissed each other in the street,” recalled Ambassador Paléologue, “and many went to burn candles [of thanksgiving] in Our Lady of Kazan.” Some shops even posted photographs of Yusupov and the others in their front windows. Banners beneath them boldly proclaimed the men heroes.
THE NEWS
The morning after the murder, the telephone in the Alexander Palace rang. It was the minister of the interior calling with grave news. “A patrolman standing near the entrance of the Yusupov palace was startled by the [sounds] of a pistol,” he reported. “Ringing the doorbell, he was met by … Purishkevich who appeared to be in an advanced state of intoxication. [He said] … they had just killed Rasputin.”
Struggling to stay calm, Alexandra ordered an investigation. Then she closed herself up in her lilac drawing room. “I cannot, and won’t believe He has been killed,” she wrote to Nicholas. “God have mercy. Such utter anguish.”
The children could not stop crying. Why would anyone want to hurt their friend? “[They] sat on the sofa, huddled up close together,” recalled one courtier. “They were cold and visibly terribly upset.… They evidently sensed that, with his murder, something terrible and undeserved had started for … themselves, and that it was moving relentlessly toward them.”
THE NOBILITY’S PETROGRAD
In the weeks following Rasputin’s death, the weather turned bitter cold. At times, the mercury dropped to fifty below zero in Petrograd, and great drifts of snow buried railroad cars and supply depots, making delivery of desperately needed goods impossible. With millions of peasants fighting instead of working in the fields, food shortages loomed and prices soared. A loaf of black bread cost three times as much as it had at the start of the war, a pound of potatoes eight times as much. Rents tripled even as thousands of workers found themselves unemployed, their factories shut for lack of coal. Fewer and fewer people could afford even the most basic necessities, even if those items could be found in the city.
Still, the nobility’s palaces blazed with light. Music still floated from their ballrooms. And lavish midnight suppers of cold sturgeon, stuffed eggs, and rose cream cakes were still laid out temptingly in elegant dining rooms. Jewels glittered. Gold braid dazzled. And both champagne and laughter bubbled up as partygoers discussed the latest craze in card games and the shocking price of caviar. Above all, they gossiped about Rasputin’s murder.
Had they heard about the starets’ private funeral in a secluded corner of the Imperial Park at Tsarskoe Selo? they asked one another. Besides the royal family, only Anna Vyrubova had attended. The tsar and Alexei had traveled all the way from Stavka to be there. Before closing the coffin, the grand duchesses had placed an icon on Rasputin’s chest, their tears falling on the oak casket. Alexandra, too, had left behind a token—a pitiful little note that read “My dear martyr, give me thy blessing that it may follow me always on the sad and dreary path I have yet to follow here below. And remember us from on high in your holy prayers. Alexandra.”
Members of the nobility expressed shock over the harsh punishment given to Rasputin’s murderers. Incredibly, Nicholas had ordered his own cousin, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, to leave Petrograd and join the Russian army. And Yusupov? The man married to the tsar’s dearest niece had been exiled to one of his huge estates in the center of the country. Only Purishkevich had been lucky. He went free, not because he wasn’t guilty, but because he’d become such a big hero in the Duma that even the tsar was afraid to punish him. No one seemed to know what happened to Dr. Lazovert or Officer Sukhotin.
Instead of returning to Stavka after the funeral, the tsar remained in Tsarskoe Selo. People who had seen him claimed he acted tired and confused. Said one minister, “He listened to me with a strange, almost vacant smile, glancing nervously about him.” When asked a question, he was “reduced to a state of helplessness.… For a long time he looked at me in silence, as if trying to collect his thoughts, or recall what had escaped his memory.”
All these rumors were true. Suddenly unable to make any decisions at all, Nicholas simply stared for hours on end at the battlefield maps he’d spread out on his pool table. So changed was he that many people claimed Alexandra was giving him drugs. But Ambassador Paléologue knew better. “The Emperor’s words, his silences … his grave, drawn features and vague, distant thoughts confirm in me the notion that Nicholas II feels himself overwhelmed by events … and is now resigned to disaster.”
Even though the tsar was back in the palace, Alexandra remained in control of the government. Rumor had it that the palace’s main telephone was removed from Nicholas’s desk and put in her lilac drawing room, and ministers’ reports were still handed to her. Some claimed she’d even taken to eavesdropping on her husband’s conversations with advisers and generals, hiding behind thick velvet curtains on a balcony located just above the tsar’s study. Later she gave Nicholas her opinions.
Remarked Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna at one of the nobility’s many parties that winter, “It seems the empress has the emperor entirely under her thumb.… I can’t tell you how downhearted I feel. Everything seems black.… I badly need sun and rest. The emotions of recent times have worn me out.”
THE WORKERS
If Maria Pavlovna had bothered to look out her palace window, she would have seen others far more worn out than herself. Thousands of poor working women shivered in the subzero temperatures outside Petrograd’s bakeries. They often stood in line all night for a loaf of bread, just to be told in the morning that there would not be any for sale because there wasn’t any flour. But what else was there? A worker could buy little else because of shortages and exorbitant prices. “These exhausted mothers,” noted one policeman, “having suffered so much in watching their half-starving and sick children are perhaps closer to revolution than anyone else … and more dangerous.”
Meanwhile, their husbands wandered the snow-packed streets. Bellies grumbling, their expressions dark and angry, they complained about the lack of food, the war, and a government that did not care about its people. More and more, workers began marching behind banners t
hat read “Down with the War.” The city, recalled Ambassador Paléologue, now struck him as a “lunatic asylum,” filled with a “poisonous atmosphere” and “profound despondency and fear.”
The danger of revolution was growing. Indeed, a police report from this time stamped TOP SECRET noted that the food shortages combined with an inflation rate of 300 percent had pushed the country to the edge of rebellion. If something dramatic wasn’t done to avert it immediately, a “hungry revolt” was bound to happen, followed by “the most savage excesses.”
If Nicholas read this report, he did not respond.
And in the Duma, yet another deputy stood. This time it was Alexander Kerensky, an outspoken champion of the worker. “To prevent a catastrophe,” he cried, “the tsar himself must be removed, by force if there is no other way.”
Only months earlier, Kerensky’s words would have landed him in jail. A man of the government was advocating the tsar’s overthrow! But in the dark mood now gripping Petrograd, his speech did not seem out of the ordinary. Kerensky was simply saying out loud what so many others were thinking.
LAST-DITCH EFFORT
On February 10, 1917, the tsar’s old friend and cousin Sandro made a final effort to ward off disaster. Traveling to Tsarskoe Selo, he insisted on speaking with Alexandra. He was shown into her bedroom.
The empress reclined on one side of the big double bed in a white dressing robe. With her lips pressed tightly together, she looked cold and angry. On the other side of the bed sat the tsar, his slippered feet crossed on the satin comforter, smoking silently.
Sandro spoke bluntly, beginning with the people’s grim mood.
But Alexandra interrupted him. “That’s not true. The nation is still loyal to the tsar.” She turned to Nicholas. “Only the treacherous Duma and St. Petersburg society are [our] enemies.”
Sandro corrected her. “I am your friend and so I point out to you that all classes of the population are opposed to your policies.… Please, Alix, leave the cares of state to your husband.”
Alexandra’s eyes narrowed.
Nicholas continued to smoke.
And Sandro went on. The only way to end “the nation’s wrath” was to immediately appoint leadership acceptable to the people. That meant removing all of Rasputin’s “suspicion-provoking ministers” and replacing them with men of talent and ability. “Don’t let the nation’s wrath reach the explosion point,” he begged.
Alexandra bristled. “All this talk of yours is ridiculous.”
“Remember, Alix,” snapped Sandro, struggling to keep the anger out of his voice, “I remained silent for thirty months. For thirty months I never said … a word to you about the disgraceful goings on in our government, better to say your government. I realize you are willing to perish, and your husband feels the same, but what about us?”
Alexandra did not reply.
“Must we all suffer for your blind stubbornness?” Sandro exploded. “No, you have no right to drag your relatives [down] with you.… You are incredibly selfish!”
“I refuse to continue this dispute,” said Alexandra coldly. “You are exaggerating the dangers. Some day, when you are less excited, you will admit that I knew better.”
Remaining silent, Nicholas lit another cigarette.
Sandro realized there was nothing more to say. “It’s enough to drive you mad,” he later wrote his brother. “Up here at [Tsarskoe Selo] it’s like water off a duck’s back, all is submission to God. How else can I explain … such total blindness and deafness? The tsar has ceased to rule Russia.”
REVOLUTION AND THE RESTING TSAR
Three weeks later, on Thursday, March 8, 1917, the women on breadlines snapped. Shouting “Daite khleb—Give us bread!” they broke into the bakeries and cleared out the shelves. Masses of angry factory workers quickly joined the women. Marching toward the center of town, chanting “Daite khleb! Daite khleb!” the mob broke windows, halted streetcars, and urged others to join them.
While all this was happening, Nicholas’s train was carrying him back to Stavka. As he chugged eastward, he blithely wrote to his wife: “I will miss my half-hourly game of cards every evening, but vow to take up dominoes again in my spare time.”
In Petrograd the next day, even bigger crowds flowed into the streets. Again they chanted, “Give us bread.” This time, though, shouts of “Down with the war!” and “Down with the tsar!” were mixed in. Moving as one, the mob headed for the center of the city. That’s when two squadrons of Cossack patrols moved in to disperse them. But because the Cossacks sided with the workers, they came without whips, the weapon they traditionally used when controlling mobs. Seeing this, the crowd applauded. The Cossacks gallantly bowed in return. “Don’t worry,” they assured the crowd. “We won’t shoot.”
At Stavka, Nicholas gave little attention to reports streaming in from Petrograd. Instead, he noted that the fresh air was doing him good. “My brain is resting here,” he wrote to Alexandra, “no ministers, no troubling questions, or demanding thought.”
Back in Petrograd, his ministers faced huge new problems. By Saturday, March 10, most of the city’s workers were on strike, bringing the capital to a standstill. Electricity and water were shut off. Immense crowds of strikers, housewives, and college students crammed the streets. Unfurling revolutionary red banners, they screamed, “Down with the war! Down with the German woman!” They hurled rocks and chunks of ice at police.
Frantically, the ministers tried to deal with it all. They wrestled with the food problem, hoping the promise of more bread would disperse the crowd. They telegrammed Nicholas and begged him to return, believing that the sight of the tsar might end the violence. They even offered their resignations, urging Nicholas to replace them with a government more acceptable to the people.
But at Stavka, Nicholas continued to “rest” his brain. After a late breakfast, he listened to an army staff report, then took an afternoon stroll. It wasn’t until early evening that he learned of the situation in Petrograd. But he still did not grasp its seriousness. Believing it was just another strike in a long line of strikes, he refused to return to the capital or accept his ministers’ resignations. As for more bread, feeding revolutionaries was out of the question. There was only one way to suppress the rebellion. He sent a stern telegram to his military chief in Petrograd: “I command you tomorrow to stop the disorders in the capital, which are unacceptable in the difficult time of war with Germany and Austria.”
The tsar’s order meant he would be unleashing soldiers with rifles and machine guns on his own people! This at a time when he still expected their support in waging a war against Germany and Austria-Hungary. And he did not have the slightest idea he’d just taken such a drastic step. Instead, he believed Alexandra’s description of the events. “It’s a hooligan movement,” she wrote him, “young boys and girls running about and screaming that they have no bread, only to excite.… But this will all pass and quiet down.”
As the pale wintry sun washed over Petrograd that Sunday morning, March 11, the first demonstrators moved into the streets. Posters hung overnight by the police met them. The posters forbade them from assembling, by command of the tsar. Strikers, they warned, would be forcefully disbanded.
Demonstrators ignored the warning. Again, they surged through the streets, chanting and waving banners. In response, columns of soldiers closed in on them. An officer ordered the crowd to halt. When it didn’t, he gave the command. “Fire!”
Machine guns crackled. When they stopped, workers’ blood reddened the snow. Two hundred lay dead, and forty were wounded.
The sight sickened the soldiers, most of whom were just country boys fresh from their villages. Not only did these young men understand the demonstrators’ frustrations, they sympathized with them. And so, as the crowd continued to surge, many troops emptied their rifles into the air. One company even refused to fire. When their enraged commanding officer insisted they “aim for the heart,” they shot him instead. Encouraged by the soldier
s’ actions, the crowd grew larger … louder … angrier.
Desperate, Duma president Rodzianko sent Nicholas a frantic telegram: “The hungry, unemployed throng is starting down the path of elemental and uncontrollable anarchy.… State authority is totally paralyzed.… Your Majesty, save Russia; she is threatened with humiliation and disgrace.… Urgently summon a person in whom the whole country can have faith and entrust him with the formation of a government that all the people trust.… In this terrible hour … there is no other way out and to delay is impossible.”
But when the telegram arrived, Nicholas didn’t even bother to read it. Setting it aside, he said, “That fat Rodzianko has written all sorts of nonsense to me, to which I shall not even reply.” And he spent the rest of the evening playing dominoes.
IGNITED
Monday, March 12, dawned in eerie silence. Meriel Buchanan, daughter of the British ambassador, looked out her window. Everywhere were “the same wide streets, the same great palaces, and same gold spires and domes rising out of the pearl-colored mists, and yet … everywhere emptiness, no lines of toiling cars, no crowded scarlet trams, no little sledges.… [Only] the waste of deserted streets and ice-bound river … [and] on the opposite shore the walls of the Fortress and the Imperial flag of Russia that for the last time fluttered against the winter sky.”
Suddenly, there came a loud roar, and a mob of demonstrators appeared. Armed and ready to fight with the tsar’s soldiers, they rushed for one of the bridges. At that moment, a regiment stormed toward them. “It looked as if there would be a violent collision,” recalled one eyewitness. But instead, the two groups became one. The tsar’s army had joined the revolution!
The Family Romanov Page 15