The Rasputin File (2 page)

Prince Nikolai Yusupov, elder brother of Felix Yusupov

Court and society

Pyotr Badmaev (the cunning Chinaman), Siberian Asian entrepreneur and businessman, society doctor of Tibetan medicine, herbalist, and healer

A. Bogdanovich, contemporary diarist, monarchist, and general’s wife, hostess of leading political salon in St Petersburg

Yulia Alexandrovna von Dehn (Lili), senior captain’s wife, relative of Anna Vyrubova, confidante of the tsarina, member of Rasputin’s circle

Pierre Gilliard, tutor to the royal children

Colonel Dmitry Loman, former officer in Life Guards, court administrator, friend of the Lokhtins, warden of Feodor Cathedral, and follower of Rasputin

Mikhail Novosyolov, member of Ella’s circle, assistant professor of Moscow Theological Seminary and editor

Monsieur Philippe (Our Friend, Our First Friend), French magus and alleged healer

Captain Nikolai Pavlovich Sablin (NP), senior captain and master of the royal yacht
Shtandart

Sophia Tyutcheva, maid of honour and governess to the royal children, friend of Filippov

Maria Vishnyakova (Mary), nurse to the royal children

Feodosia Voino, doctor’s assistant, Anna Vyrubova’s maid

Nadezhda Voskoboikinova, widow of a Cossack officer, senior nurse at Tsarskoe Selo infirmary, member of Rasputin’s circle

Anna Vyrubova, née Taneeva (the Friend, Anya [or Ania], Anushka), former maid of honour and close friend of the tsarina, sister of Alexandra Pistolkors, member of Rasputin’s circle

Akim Zhuk, medical orderly seconded to care for Vyrubova, nurse at Tsarskoe Selo infirmary

The political circle

Pyotr Bark, minister of finance 1914–17 Stephan Beletsky, director of Department of Police

Vladimir Dzhunkovsky, governor of Moscow; deputy minister of internal affairs, head of the political police

Ivan Goremykin, prime minister 1914–16

Alexander Ivanovich Guchkov, Speaker of the Third Duma

Alexei Khvostov (‘Fat Belly’, ‘The Tail’), right-wing antiSemite, minister for internal affairs 1915–16

Vladimir Kokovtsev, senator and finance minister; prime minister 1911–14

Colonel Mikhail Komissarov (Our Colonel), police officer and head of Rasputin’s bodyguard

A. Makarov, minister of internal affairs, later minister of justice

Vasily Maklakov, member of Constitutional Democrat Party, minister of internal affairs

Maurice Paléologue, French ambassador

Alexander Protopopov (General Kalinin), Deputy Speaker of the Duma, then minister of internal affairs 1916–17

V. M. Purishkevich, antiSemite monarchist and member of the Duma

Mikhail Rodzyanko, Speaker of the Third and Fourth Dumas Prince Scherbatov, liberal, minister of internal affairs

P. A. Stolypin, prime minister 1906–11; assassinated Kiev, 1911

Boris Stürmer (‘Old Chap’), prime minister

Vladimir Sukhomlinov, minister for war

Count Sergei Witte, finance minister, prime minister 1905–6

The ecclesiastics

Alexis, Bishop of Tobolsk, head of 1912 Tobolsk Consistory investigation, father of Leonid Molchanov, Khlyst sympathiser

Feofan, Alexandra’s confessor, church hierarch, mystic and ascetic, inspector and rector of the St Petersburg Theological Seminary; later bishop of Poltava

Hermogen, bishop of Saratov, head of Tobolsk eparchy

Iliodor (‘the Russian Savonarola’), anti-Semitic missionary preacher, monk and priest

Father Ioann of Kronstadt, healer and archpriest of Kronstadt Cathedral

Father Isidor, monk, later prior of Tobolsk Monastery and bishop

Mitya Kozelsky (the Nasal-Voiced), seer

Father Makary, anchorite, Rasputin’s ‘spiritual father’, swineherd at Verkhoturye Monastery

Ivan Osipenko, lay brother, secretary to Pitirim

Pitirim, suspected Khlyst, accused of theft of church property, exarch of Georgia, later metropolitan of Petrograd

Vladimir Sabler, chief procurator of Synod

Bishop Sergius, rector of the St Petersburg Theological Seminary, author of controversial religious studies, later appointed by Stalin the first Patriarch of All Russia

Serafim of Sarov (1760–1833), hermit, monk and saint, canonised in 1903

Bishop Varnava (Gopher), bishop of Tobolsk lacking higher seminary education

Victor Yatskevich, director of chancery of chief procurator of Synod

Prince Nikolai Zhevakhov, mystic, deputy chief procurator of Synod, minor official of Council of State, member of Rasputin’s circle

Rasputin’s circle

Prince Mikhail Andronikov, homosexual gossip-monger, minor Synod official, friend of Beletsky

Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, expert on Russian sectarianism, underground member of Bolsheviks, later a founder of the Cheka

Vera Dzhanumova, wife of wealthy merchant

Alexei Filippov, banker, Rasputin’s publisher

Maria Golovina (Munya, ‘Bird’), chamberlain’s daughter, niece of Princess Olga Valerianovna, friend of Felix Yusupov

Alexandra Guschina, widow of a doctor

Baroness Vera Kusova, wife of cavalry captain in a Crimean regiment

Akilina Laptinskaya (‘Owl’), former nun and nurse, Rasputin’s ‘secretary’

Olga Lokhtina, St Petersburg society hostess, wife of a civil engineer with equivalent rank of general

Sheila Lunts, Jewish wife of a barrister, later Protopopov’s mistress

Ivan Manasevich-Manuilov, Jewish journalist, spy and double-agent, former official of special commissions for the prime minister, ‘secretary’ to Rasputin

Zinaida Manshtedt or Manchtet (Zina, ‘Dove’), wife of a collegiate secretary

Leonid Molchanov, son of Bishop Alexis, secretary to a district magistrate

Elena Patushinskaya, wife of a Siberian notary, one of Rasputin’s ‘celestial’ wives

Evdokia Pechyorkina (Dunya), Rasputin’s live-in servant

Ekaterina Pechyorkina (Katya), niece of Evdokia, Rasputin’s live-in servant

Alexandra Pistolkors (Sana), sister of Anna Vyrubova, wife of Alexander Pistolkors, the son of Olga Pistolkors and the step-son of Grand Duke Pavel

Alexander Prugavin, ethnographer, publicist, prominent expert on Russian sectarianism

Matryona Rasputin, Rasputin’s elder daughter, engaged to Pankhadze, married to Nikolai Solovyov

Praskovia Rasputin, married to Rasputin

Nikolai Reshetnikov, former notary convicted of forgery and embezzlement, brother of Anna, ‘secretary’ to Rasputin, later builder and director of Tsarkoe Selo infirmary

Anisia Reshetnikova, widow of a wealthy merchant, mother of Anna and Nikolai

Anna Reshetnikova, daughter of Anisia and sister of Nikolai

Dmitry Rubinstein (Mitya), banker and chairman of board of Franco-Russian Bank

Georgy Sazonov, economist, publicist, magazine publisher and journalist

Maria Sazonova (‘Crow’), wife of Georgy Sazonov

Princess Shakhovskaya, aviator and aristocrat

Aron Simanovich, secretary and financial adviser to Rasputin, gambler and loan shark with criminal record

Vera Tregubova, performer of gypsy ballads

Sophia Volynskaya, Jewish wife of the ex-convict and agronomist Volynsky (one of Rasputin’s secretaries and financial advisers)

Vera Zhukovskaya, writer, relative of the scientist N. E. Zhukovsky

INTRODUCTION

THE MYSTERY

On 19 December 1916, just before Christmas in the last December of the Romanov empire, a corpse bobbed to the surface of the Malaya Nevka river in Petrograd. Ice-encrusted with a mutilated face. But the most startling thing was its hands. Its bound hands were raised. For there under the icy water that extraordinary individual, although beaten and shot, had still been alive, had still been trying to break free of his fetters. And, as the police would later write in their report, great numbers of people hurried down to the river with flasks, jugs, and buckets. To ladle up the water in which the awful body had just been floating. They wanted to scoop up with the water the deceased’s diabolical, improbable strength, of which all Russia had heard.

I had always been afraid to write about him. And not just because it is a subject that somehow smacks of pulp fiction — Rasputin, after all, is one of the most popular myths of twentieth-century mass culture. I had been afraid to write about him because I did not understand him. Even though I had read a great many conscientious books about him. For under the researchers’ pens the most important thing had vanished: his mystery. At best, he remained a crude bearded peasant rushing about Petrograd like some Henry Miller character with his phallus steaming.

Nevertheless, everything about him is unstable and mysterious. His face, left behind in numerous photographs, is described in much the same way by those who saw him: the wrinkled, sunburned, weather-beaten face of a middle-aged Russian peasant. A narrow face with a large, irregular nose, thick sensual lips, and a long beard. His hair is parted down the middle and combed across his forehead to conceal (as his daughter would write) an odd little bump reminiscent of a budding horn. His eyes, also described in much the same way by the various witnesses, attract even in the photographs: ‘The instantly blazing, magnetic gaze of his light-coloured eyes in which
not merely the pupil but the whole eye stares’ (Zhukovskaya); ‘deep-set unendurable eyes’ (Dzhanumova); ‘the hypnotic power shining in his exceptional eyes’ (Khvostov).

But no sooner do the witnesses depart from the photographs than the mystery begins. Amusingly, they describe him in entirely different ways. I enjoyed writing down the various descriptions left by people: ‘tall’, ‘short’, ‘neat in a peasant way’, ‘filthy and sloppy’, ‘slender’, ‘stocky with broad shoulders’. The singer Belling, who saw Rasputin many times, writes of his rotten teeth and foul breath. Yet the writer Zhukovskaya, who knew him extremely well, tells us that ‘his teeth were perfect and complete down to the very last one, and his breath was absolutely fresh; white teeth for chewing, as strong as a beast’s.’ ‘His mouth was very large, and instead of teeth you saw something like blackened stumps in it,’ wrote his secretary, Simanovich. But his admirer Sazonov, who visited Rasputin many times, saw ‘strong white teeth’.