The Rasputin File (52 page)

He was awakened by noise and realized that some guests had arrived. And he went out into the corridor. Usually the waiters would put candies in his hand as they ran by him. But this time they raced past, severe and full of concentration. There were gendarmes standing in the corridor by the doorway to the guest hall. Someone very important had come. From the hall burst the song:

Grigory Efimovich is a jolly good fellow!
He has deigned to favour the Gypsies at last!

It was the boy’s habit to press his eye to the keyhole. He saw the whole ensemble by the balcony door. His father was standing in front. His mother was sitting along the side. At the centre of the table was a peasant dressed in an embroidered Russian peasant shirt. Someone handed him a goblet of champagne, and the ensemble began to chant, ‘Bottoms up, bottoms up.’ After which a Gypsy dance began. And then the boy’s grandmother went over to the peasant and, bowing at the waist, invited him to dance. And he started dancing, squatting slightly in front of the grandmother and slapping his hands against the tops of his boots. It was all clapping, crying ‘oh’ and leaping. The revels came to an end just before morning.

It was during his March trip to Moscow that a scandalous event centring on Rasputin occurred in a private room of the famous Yar restaurant during a performance by a Gypsy ensemble. And in 1917 the investigators of the Extraordinary Commission interrogated those who might be able to shed light on the tangled circumstances of the story.

An Orgy At The Yar

The File, from Dzhunkovsky’s testimony: ‘In March 1915 the Moscow mayor, Adrianov, informed me that a certain Grigory Rasputin had behaved disgracefully in the Moscow restaurant Yar — that he had pulled down his trousers and exposed his reproductive organ, at the same time boasting that
the shirt he was wearing was sewn by the empress. I…gave orders to proceed with the case as prescribed by law.’

Dzhunkovsky also instructed the head of the Moscow security branch, Martynov, to conduct an investigation and report back to him.

From the File, the testimony of A. P. Martynov:

I immediately summoned Lt. Colonel Semyonov, at the time the super-intendent…of the district in which the restaurant Yar was located. Semyonov informed me that he had been present at the restaurant Yar the evening that Rasputin had caroused. The latter had come to the Yar with a small party … taken a private room, invited singers, and organized a drinking bout. I don’t remember all the details, since it happened over two years ago, but at the time I reported in detail to the Department of Police on the basis of Semyonov’s account.

From Dzhunkovsky’s testimony before the Extraordinary Commission:

Martynov reported that on 26 March around 11:00 p.m. G. Rasputin … arrived at the restaurant with Anisia Ivanovna Reshetnikova, the widow of a respected citizen, Nikolai Nikitich Soedov, a contributor to Moscow and Petrograd newspapers, and an unidentified young woman. The whole party was already tipsy. After taking possession of the room, the arrivals summoned by telephone the editor and publisher of the Moscow newspaper
The Season’s News
, the titled citizen Semyon Kugulsky … Evidently, the group had been able to drink wine there, too, since an even drunker Rasputin was dancing the ‘Russian’ and then he began to speak frankly to the girl singers in this manner, ‘This cloak was given to me by the “old woman,” she sewed it.’

After doing the ‘Russian’ [Rasputin said], ‘Oh, what would “she herself” say if she saw me now?’ Rasputin’s subsequent behaviour assumed the disgraceful character of a kind of sexual psychopathology. He evidently exposed his sexual organ and in that condition continued his conversation with the girl singers, presenting a few of them with handwritten notes on the order of ‘Love unselfishly’…In reply to the comment of the leader of the ensemble about the indecency of such behaviour in the presence of women, Rasputin retorted that he always behaved that way with women, and remained seated in the same condition. Rasputin gave a few of the girl singers ten to fifteen roubles each, taking the money from his young companion, who afterwards paid all the other expenses at the Yar. They parted company around 2:00 p.m.

Dzhunkovsky exultantly set about preparing a report for the tsar, and accordingly asked Martynov to clarify what might have brought that ill-mixed
party together. He was apparently puzzled by the immediate inclusion at the revel of the two journalists, since he knew how Rasputin avoided journalists. And Martynov provided a new report with ‘supplementary information obtained by secret means’:

The nobleman Nikolai Soedov, who occupies himself with quasi-literary work, has long moved in the circle of middle-level Moscow businessmen who are not squeamish about the occasional business deal of dubious honesty. His literary work is limited to participation in the vulgar press … When he was in Petrograd, he turned up at Rasputin’s as a representative of the press. During Rasputin’s trip to Moscow, he presented himself to him and set about implementing through Rasputin a plan he had devised for the supply of military underwear in large sizes. He had apparently succeeded in interesting Rasputin in the business in Petrograd and had promised him a certain percentage from it. The binge itself was of a type common in Moscow business circles as a way of ‘moistening’ a proposed deal… Since Soedov had earlier offered … the newspaper owner Kugulsky a share in the deal, Kugulsky had in expectation of future benefits provided the money for the carousal…The news of Rasputin’s arrival and his noisy conduct attracted attention in the restaurant, and the restaurant’s owner, Sudakov, hoping to avoid unpleasantness, assured everyone that it wasn’t really Rasputin but someone else. When this reached Rasputin, he started proving he was the real thing in the most cynical way by dropping hints about his close connection to the most lofty personages…As for supplying underwear, the deal fell through.

The description of Rasputin’s ‘sexual psychopathology’ is highly suspicious. We shall recall the testimony of Filippov, who was present at Rasputin’s revels, and who said of Rasputin’s unusual cleanliness during his drinking bouts, ‘Nor do I recall any external indecency in his clothing, unbuttoned trousers, for example, even though in 1915 he called on me daily.’ And, in fact, there are no other descriptions in the agents’ reports of such ‘psychopathology’.

And the presence of the two unscrupulous journalists and the odd ease with which their business deal fell through put one even more on one’s guard.

What Really Happened?

What probably happened was this. One of those carousing with Rasputin, as we have seen, was a certain Soedov, a shady individual who provided
information to the vulgar press. And who, as Martynov, the head of the Moscow security branch, wrote, ‘did not fail in his articles … to refer to the actions of the Moscow administration in the most laudatory terms’. He was, in other words, most likely a paid informer of the security branch, a not uncommon thing among petty journalists of the day. And he had obviously been given the assignment of drawing Rasputin into a scandal. Soedov had promised Rasputin a profitable contract. Rasputin had agreed to it. And then Soedov had suggested celebrating everything at the expense of his other partner in the future business, the editor of a trashy newspaper. Now there were two witnesses who were writers and who could scatter around Moscow whatever they wished. And then the usual Rasputin spree with his favourite
Khlyst
dancing, a Gypsy ensemble, the throwing around of money taken from Kugulsky and Soedov, and the boozy bragging about the shirts sewn by ‘Mama’. A spree that on the orders of the resourceful Dzhunkovsky had been turned into a description of an orgy that included derogation of the royal family and the display of Rasputin’s sexual organ.

And in fact Beletsky himself would recall that ‘Rasputin talked about the offence done to him by Dzhunkovsky’s complaint about his conduct in Moscow. He admitted in good-natured fashion that there had been a sin, but in exactly what he did not say. I took him to mean the intoxication.’

All the rest about Rasputin’s ‘sexual psychopathology’, etc., appears to have been invented. And soon afterwards all Moscow was full of rumours. But Dzhunkovsky was for some reason in no hurry to inform the tsar about the scandal. He was evidently concerned about the alacrity with which Rasputin had accepted Soedov’s and Kugulsky’s invitation. He was asking himself the question that we are asking. Could that intelligent and canny peasant really not have understood how dangerous a jaunt with those dubious journalists might be? And for that reason Dzhunkovsky delayed: he sensed some kind of dirty trick. That is why it was only three months later, when Rasputin was himself away from Petrograd, that he was willing to risk informing the tsar about the scandal.

A Solution To The Yar Puzzle?

Rasputin, however, could only have been laughing then. After all, he had seen the rule verified more than once that whoever moved against him would be deprived of power. And he was therefore afraid of nothing. Certainly not of any reports! So the action of the gendarme chief was, in a paradoxical way, welcomed by the peasant. For it meant the end of an
enemy. The enemy was cunning, but he was even more cunning.

If you consider that Rasputin understood all this, then the scandal at the Yar looks like a deliberate provocation on the part of the peasant himself. And it is the reason why he was so ready for a spree with the two agent-journalists. All the more so since he had prepared a great surprise during that spree. One that would soon explode every one of Dzhunkovsky’s accusations. It is in fact here that a key to Rasputin’s personality may be found, a personality remarkable for its combining of the uncombinable. He is simple-hearted, naive, lives on suspicions, and the next moment he is careful, crafty and wary in a characteristically peasant way. And the main thing is that he is able to learn. And what teachers he had! At the time, Rasputin’s team already included true masters of intrigue: first Simanovich, and then (already several rungs higher) an intriguer of Petersburg-class, Prince Andronikov. And then, shortly before the Yar incident, a world-class intriguer took his place by Rasputin’s side, the great adventurer Manasevich-Manuilov. He was known as the ‘Russian Rocambole’, after the spy and adventurer hero of Ponson du Terrail’s then famous series of novels.

A Russian James Bond?

Ivan Fyodorovich Manasevich-Manuilov began his life in a quite remarkable fashion. The son of a poor Jew named Manasevich, he was adopted by the rich Russian merchant Manuilov, who left him an enormous estate. He could receive the money, however, only on his thirty-fifth birthday. But the young Manasevich was not inclined to wait. He left the provinces, came to Petersburg, and, after converting to Lutheranism, lived merrily in the capital — drinking, gambling, and borrowing from loan sharks against his inheritance. At the time, the young Jew was, to society’s amazement, protected by one of the most influential monarchist ideologues, Prince Vladimir Meschersky. Taking the prince’s homosexual orientation into account, the gossips drew glib conclusions about the reasons for the antiSemite Meschersky’s peculiar attachment to the young Jew. Manasevich’s career proceeded apace. He secretly began to collaborate with the security branch, performing the most diverse tasks. For example, he purloined from the hotel room of Count Witte’s secretary documents that were compromising to the great prime minister. And handed them over to then Minister of Internal Affairs Vyacheslav Plehve, who detested Witte. Soon afterwards with Meschersky’s help, Manasevich, a Jew by birth and a
Lutheran by faith, was sent to the Vatican as a defender of the rights of Orthodox Christians.

In 1917 he was required to answer the questions of the Extraordinary Commission.

‘Besides your official functions at the Vatican, what other functions did you have?’

‘Observation of Catholic propaganda.’

‘Of the Pope’s influence in Russia? How did you keep track of the advancement of Catholicism?’

‘I had agents working for me.’

‘That is, you were an agency head?’

Manasevich had all that time been employed in intelligence. During the Russo-Japanese War he had managed to penetrate the Japanese embassy in The Hague, where he obtained diplomatic codes. As he testified before the Extraordinary Commission, ‘In the shortest time I had acquired the codes of the following states: America, China, Bulgaria, and Rumania.’ But in 1905 his espionage colleagues proved that the information provided by Manasevich had often been invented, and that he had misappropriated for his own use the monies that had been allocated for his agents. And so Manasevich retired and began working as a contributor to the large newspapers. He stayed afloat. He was accustomed to double and even triple games. He entered into secret dealings with the famous Vladimir Burtsev, a revolutionary and a tracer of police provocateurs. And at the same time he continued his work with the Department of Police. A fabulous sum was later named for the mass of documents he sold to Burtsev. Manasevich’s inheritance had long since been consumed by his debts to loan sharks, yet he continued to spend. He gambled at the card table and on the stock market. In 1910 the Department of Police decided to search his apartment. But of course they found nothing. He continued his tangled labours: he worked for the newspapers, for the intelligence bureau (or rather the intelligence bureaus of several countries simultaneously), for the secret police, and for the revolutionaries. And everywhere he received money. ‘Loathsome, short, clean-shaven,’ as Blok, who was present for his interrogations, described him.

In 1915 his fortunes changed again. Until then the journalist Manasevich-Manuilov had spoken out bitterly against Rasputin in the
New Times
. Rasputin had even complained that Manasevich had ‘harassed him with a camera’. In 1915, secretly at first, Manasevich began to play the part of a newly converted admirer of the elder. And soon afterwards, to universal amazement, he became a close friend of Rasputin’s.