The Rasputin File (63 page)

The End Of The Triumvirate

Both Khvostov and Beletsky decided to get rid of the importunate prince. Beletsky, who was an expert in provocation, adroitly took matters in hand. They knew that Andronikov, who was constantly in need of money, was taking large amounts of it from petitioners to arrange for Rasputin’s protection. And they also knew that the prince had frequently appropriated from the peasant the amounts due to him. And Beletsky told Rasputin about it.

After which another ‘fish soup dinner’ took place at Andronikov’s apartment. And to the delight of both officials, a glowering Rasputin went into the prince’s study with him and started shouting at him, ‘and was not shy in his expressions’.

At the same time it was conveyed to Vyrubova by Beletsky and Khvostov that she might keep in mind ‘certain peculiarities’ of the prince and see him less often. And Vyrubova began receiving Andronikov less frequently. The prince fretted and brought her candies from the best confectioners and fruits and flowers as soon as they appeared in Petrograd. But ‘she asked him not to bring her anything in the future, since it was unpleasant for her.’

And then they dealt their final blow. Beletsky had learned from his agents in the Department of Police that Andronikov, who was also used to operating on two fronts, had sent the dowager empress a copy of the picture taken in 1914 by the photographer Kristinin of ‘Rasputin surrounded by
his admirers’. As we shall recall, the picture included Vyrubova. Beletsky immediately told her about it. The Friend was enraged and ‘demanded an explanation from the prince’. The frightened prince said that ‘in sending the picture, he had been moved by the best of feelings for Rasputin, and had wanted Marie Fyodorovna [the dowager empress] to see what worthy people surrounded the elder.’

Andronikov was banished from Anya’s home. And Rasputin suggested ‘meeting somewhere other than at the prince’s’.

Khvostov and Beletsky had thus forced Andronikov out of the game. Now only the two of them remained.

The Gentleman Colonel

They replaced Andronikov with someone more reliable. Someone who would, according to their plan, take on all the dirty work himself. And not only relieve them of Rasputin’s petitions, but, most importantly, obtain needed information from Rasputin.

The thirty-six-year-old Colonel Mikhail Komissarov had already been employed in special services for twelve years. He had, as we have seen, taken part in the scandalous story of the covert printing by the Department of Police of notices calling for pogroms against the Jews. Despite the wrath of the then Prime Minister Witte, someone had appreciated Komissarov’s zeal. First he had headed the secret department for the surveillance of foreign embassies and military agents. Then he was chief of the Warsaw gendarme directorate. When Warsaw was surrendered to the Germans, the colonel, left with nothing to do, had returned to Petrograd. And Beletsky suggested him to Khvostov for Rasputin’s security detail. Khvostov agreed. He did not know that Colonel Komissarov was connected to Beletsky not only by his former work but also by a close friendship. Khvostov did not realize that Beletsky had placed his own man with Rasputin.

For by then Beletsky had plans of his own. The intelligent Beletsky, unlike the fanfaron Khvostov, had finally come to appreciate Rasputin. He realized that any opposition towards him would mean the end of a career. And it was apparently then that he made a move truly worthy of the chief of the secret police. He decided to provoke Khvostov into a battle with Rasputin so that Khvostov would break his own neck. And free up the coveted position of minister.

12

THE BATTLE OF THE INTRIGUERS

Agents, Agents, Agents

Called before the Extraordinary Commission in 1917, Mikhail Komissarov related how the intrigue unfolded. The colonel had been assigned to Rasputin partly as a servant, partly as a guard, and partly as an informer. But he wasn’t required to wear his uniform, which he did not wish to sully. The colonel wore mufti, which soothed his pride. In addition, Khvostov spared no money, giving him a car, a driver and the command of a detail of five experienced agents. Thus did Komissarov’s undercover surveillance of Rasputin begin.

The official surveillance of Rasputin by agents of General Globachyov’s Petrograd security branch continued, however. As before, a security agent sat on the stairs by the door to Rasputin’s apartment, with two agents downstairs and more outside, along with a security branch automobile. Rasputin did not let the security branch agents into his apartment, and as before took pleasure in eluding them, whether by car or carriage. The peasant’s attitude towards Komissarov and his agents was entirely different. The intuitive Rasputin knew that Beletsky was with him, and that Beletsky was ready to serve. Moreover, Rasputin and Komissarov had known each other before. As Komissarov testified in the File, ‘I first met Rasputin at Badmaev’s apartment,’ which the valiant colonel ‘had been visiting as a patient’. Komissarov quickly became friends with the peasant’s daughters and Laptinskaya. They were flattered by the imposing gentleman of lofty rank who virtually waited on Grigory Efimovich. ‘Our colonel’, as they often referred to him, had been accepted as a member of the household. Beletsky was quite right when he told Vyrubova and the Tsarina that Komissarov would be able to assure Rasputin’s complete safety.

Komissarov set up a security system for Rasputin that was perhaps comparable only to the royal family’s. The colonel replaced all the custodians
and doormen of the building on Gorokhovaya Street with agents. And in addition to the special driver and car, he kept agents disguised as express carriage drivers on continuous call by the building. And in short order everyone close to Rasputin was identified and information about them was compiled. Simultaneously, all of Rasputin’s ‘incoming mail was subject to perlustration’.

The Colonel’s Difficult Assignment

‘The detectives under my command reported on Rasputin every evening. And I passed on everything “interesting” to Khvostov in writing and to Beletsky orally… I saw the latter either at the office or at his home, which I visited fairly often as a friend,’ Komissarov testified.

So Khvostov received from the colonel only the information that Beletsky wanted him to receive. Soon afterwards, the security branch agents were also placed under Komissarov’s command. Their chief, General Globachyov, was ordered not to obstruct Komissarov’s work, to collect information for him, and to assist him in every way possible. And the main thing — never to record in the security branch agents’ summaries the visits made by Komissarov and his agents to Rasputin’s apartment. Komissarov now gave Rasputin cash, and always with the same noble purpose — so that he would stop taking money from petitioners and compromising ‘higher circles’. ‘Five or six times over a period of five months, I gave him at Khvostov and Beletsky’s orders a thousand or fifteen hundred roubles,’ Komissarov testified. For someone of Rasputin’s appetites, those large sums for the day were but a drop in the bucket. But Rasputin took the money. He turned no one down.

On holidays, the solicitous Komissarov gave his charge gifts in the name of Beletsky and Khvostov. ‘Once I bought … a case with a silver teapot, a gold watch with a chain, and two bracelets.’ But Rasputin, to the colonel’s amazement, ‘carelessly gathered up those expensive items…without even looking at what had been sent him.’ Although he would occasionally respond by sending gifts of his own to Khvostov (or the ‘Tail’ or ‘Fat Belly’, as he now invariably called him, provoking the minister’s impotent rage). Thus, as Komissarov testified, he once sent the minister ‘a wooden box inscribed, “To the Tail,” which Khvostov hurled to the floor in a rage’. And Rasputin also ‘sent him letters through me…What he wrote I do not know, but on reading them Khvostov would almost every time swear in desperation and toss the letters away.’ So the peasant made fun of him
whenever he had the chance. Yet even as he was accepting money from Beletsky and Khvostov, Father Grigory was still calmly taking it from the petitioners, as well. ‘The agents reported to me,’ Komissarov testified, ‘that …even on the stairway the petitioners openly talked about how much Rasputin would have to be given.’

The tasks assigned to the gentleman colonel by his two chiefs began to diverge more and more. Rasputin continued to drink heavily. Komissarov’s job, as ordered by Beletsky, was to see that the peasant did not go to Tsarskoe Selo drunk. But his other job, as ordered by Khvostov, was to see that Rasputin did go there drunk. And reveal himself in Tsarskoe Selo for what he was. But Komissarov was soon astonished to realize that Rasputin’s condition did not in fact depend on anyone else. ‘No matter how drunk Rasputin was, as soon as he received a call informing him that Vyrubova would be arriving in twenty minutes, he would at once turn completely sober. Whether he drank something or just got himself under control, I am unable to clarify …Or, whenever we took a drunken Rasputin to Tsarskoe Selo by train, he would be completely sober by the time we arrived …He did know how to sober up.’

Komissarov’s most important task, however, was to find out from Rasputin the news from Tsarskoe Selo. ‘All the conversations with Vyrubova usually took place at 10:00 a.m. So that Rasputin, wherever he was, would return by that time to take the call from Tsarskoe at 10:00,’ Komissarov testified. And ‘our colonel’ would also arrive by that time to gather information from Tsarskoe. All the more, since the peasant was still sober in the morning. And Rasputin gave him the news from Tsarskoe, or, more accurately, told him what he wanted him to know. The most important information was conveyed to the minister and the chief of the Department of Police at the special apartment that Komissarov had rented for their clandestine meetings with Rasputin.

The Secret Dinners On Italian Street

The building still stands in Petersburg. ‘I rented an apartment on Italian Street. It was in a corner building. An apartment was taken on the first floor,’ Komissarov testified. The apartment was furnished, and an agent and his family were moved into it. The day before Rasputin was supposed to arrive, the agent would order a luxurious dinner for several people from a restaurant, and then he and his family would vacate the secret apartment.

The dinner naturally consisted of fish, but ‘wines and champagne were
also served in great quantities.’ In order to loosen the tippling peasant’ tongue.

‘Once or twice’, the colonel too was invited for dinner. He testified in the File that ‘during dinner Rasputin passed on what was being said in Tsarskoe Selo, mainly by Vyrubova and the empress.’

At first, Rasputin used the formal mode of address with both officials He ‘tried to conduct the conversation in the spirit of his “Meditations” and drank cautiously. But Komissarov… poured him a glass and said, “Grigory drop the divinity. Better drink up and try talking a bit more simply.” From then on he was no longer shy with us and used the familiar mode of addres; …and even invited us to go to the Gypsies,’ Beletsky testified. Thus did Rasputin continue to make fun of the agents. Komissarov enjoyed recounting humorous little scenes to his hosts, such as Grigory and he ‘deciding on matters of state and the requisite changes in the cabinet’. With Khvostov’ help, those stories of Komissarov’s sped through Petersburg. But Beletsky took no part in that. Apparently he could not get over the thought that the cunning peasant had merely been making fun of Komissarov, of himself and of Khvostov. It made matters worse that Rasputin would not, despite al Komissarov’s efforts, let him near the financial matters that so interested both Beletsky and Khvostov.

The Riddle Of Rasputin’s Money

That question was also of great interest to the Extraordinary Commission The only thing that Komissarov could distinctly relate was that ‘Rasputin initiated no one into his financial affairs. He himself kept a close eye on safeguarding his interests and never forgave anyone who tried to cheat him out of money. He would denounce them in “special terms” [that is, curse them roundly]!’ Beletsky and Khvostov were by no means merely curiou about Rasputin’s money. Both officials understood, as did the Extraordinary Commission after them, that the truly enormous sums provided by the rich petitioners and bankers could scarcely all have been swallowed up by Rasputin’s drinking bouts, especially since, as we shall see, he now caroused at the petitioners’ expense. The officials were gripped by a strong suspicion regarding the remarkable and quite astonishing destination of the peasant’ money.

‘But In Time Of War All Becomes Different’

Vyrubova would afterwards justifiably explain to the investigators that she had not received a kopek from the royal family. At the same time, having barely recovered from her injury, the Friend would establish her own infirmary (following the Tsarina, who had her own hospital train). And she managed to support the infirmary at the wildly inflated prices of the war.

Nonetheless, as she would testify in the File:

I got only four hundred roubles a month from my parents. I had to live and clothe myself on that money … It’s hard to imagine how I got by (the dacha in Tsarskoe Selo alone cost me 2250 roubles a year) before I received …the 100,000 roubles from the railway company for my injury. Of that money I spent 20,000 roubles on the infirmary. And that was all my money and funds. And in the newspapers they said I had almost three million roubles. I of course had to pass on to the empress the petitions that were given to me by Rasputin, but it hardly needs to be said that I never received a kopek for doing so.

But the newspapers stubbornly continued to write about her millions, for they realized that an infirmary could not be supported on 20,000 wartime roubles. Vyrubova realized it, too. And she was obliged during her interrogation to disclose the other sources of her income. ‘Individuals who wanted to ingratiate themselves with me and do something nice for me usually contributed something to the infirmary … The day that my infirmary was opened, Khvostov and Beletsky each sent me by courier a sealed package. In each of the packages was a thousand roubles … That money was entered in timely fashion as income by the infirmary’s managing director, Nikolai Ivanovich Reshetnikov.’