The Rasputin File (74 page)

It was the latest in a series of morganatic marriages. And by no means a joyful event for the dynasty’s prestige. The tsar’s sister Olga had divorced Pyotr Oldenburgsky. The sweet, gentle Pyotr, a scion of the ancient Oldenburgsky ducal family, was a homosexual, so Olga’s decision was accepted with resignation. And now Nicholas’s sister was marrying her ex-husband’s adjutant, Nikolai Kulikovsky, the modest commander of a regiment of cuirassiers. And conferences took place within the great Romanov family to discuss the planned marriage. But the discussions weren’t only about the marriage. The result was the next ‘family embassy’.

Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich arrived at Headquarters on 2 November. A well-known historian and, as Sandro’s elder brother, nephew of Alexander II and thus the tsar’s kinsman, he was reputed to be a brilliant conversationalist. And now that master of conversation was about to inform the tsar of the conclusions reached at the great Romanov family’s conferences. After a long conversation, he handed Nicholas a letter that he had written beforehand. In it the grand duke said, ‘I long hesitated to reveal the whole truth to you, but after your mother and sisters convinced me to, I have decided to proceed.’ It was, as it were, a collective letter from the family.

The next day Nicky wrote to Alix, ‘My precious … Nikolai Mikh. came here for one day — we had a long talk last evening wh. I will write to you about in my next letter — today I have no time … ever your old Nicky.’

He did not dare to tell her the content of that serious conversation, preferring instead to forward Nikolai Mikhailovich’s letter to her.

Alix read:

You have said to me more than once that you cannot trust anyone, that everyone deceives you. If that is true, then it is also happening with your wife, who passionately loves you, but who has been led astray by the sheer malicious deceit of those around her. You trust Alexandra Fyodorovna … That is understandable. But what comes from her mouth is the result of clever juggling and not the actual truth …If it isn’t in your power to remove those influences from her, then at least protect yourself from the constant meddling and whispering of the spouse you love.

The grand duke went on to explain that he had decided on that mission of his ‘in the hope … of rescuing you, your throne, and our dear country from the most terrible and irreparable consequences … You stand on the eve of a new era of unrest, I would even say, an era of assassination,’ and he implored the tsar to provide ‘ministers responsible to the Duma’.

The tsar had thus been warned for the last time that it was coming — the ‘era of assassination’. And he had been warned on behalf of the entire Romanov Family.

Anger

Alix was enraged. ‘4 Nov. 1916 …I read Nikolai’s [letter] & am utterly disgusted. Had you stopped him in the middle of his talk & told him that, if he only once more touched that subject or me, you will send him to Siberia — as it becomes next to high treason. He has always hated …
me … — but during war … to crawl behind yr. Mama and Sisters & not stick up bravely…for his Emperor’s Wife — is loathsome and treachery …you my Love, far too good & kind & soft — such a man needs to be held in awe of you— He & Nikolasha are my greatest enemies in the family, not counting the black women … Wify is your staunch One & stands as a rock behind you.’

And a postscript: ‘I dreamt I was being operated: th’ my arm was cut off I felt utterly no pain. After a letter came from Nikolai.’

But her anger would not let her finish the letter. And she continued, as always relying on Our Friend’s opinion. ‘On reading Nikolai’s letter He said, “Nowhere does Divine grace show through, not in a single feature of the letter, but only evil, like a brother of Milyukov, like all brothers of evil…The Lord has shown Mama that all that is worthless, asleep.” ’

The Last Wedding In The Family Of Tsars

They decided to get married in Kiev, where Olga’s mother, the dowager empress, was living. And where the entire Romanov family decided to gather. And Alix, knowing that Nicholas would also be going to his sister’s wedding, immediately started to worry. She understood what sort of conversations would come up. And she did not fail to condemn the coming celebration — in the words of Our Friend, naturally. ‘5 Nov Our Fr. is so angry, Olga married — as she did wrong towards you & that can bring her no luck.’

And then came the wedding that Olga described in her memoirs. A simple wedding, a dark little church, the bride in a Red Cross uniform. And when Olga saw her brother, she was shocked: Nicky had changed a lot, with hollow cheeks and bags under his eyes. After the sad wedding, Nicholas at once set off for Headquarters in order to avoid any further discussion of Rasputin.

The ‘Era Of Assassination ‘ Begins

Alix’s dream had not been an idle one. For it was then, at the beginning of November, immediately after Nikolai Mikhailovich’s unsuccessful visit that Felix Yusupov revived his acquaintance with Rasputin. And during the inquiry into Rasputin’s murder, Yusupov told the investigator that ‘after a long interval …I met Rasputin in November at Golovina’s home.’ This
is confirmed by Maria Golovina in her own testimony: ‘Prince Yusupov met Rasputin at my apartment in November 1916.’

This is how Felix tells it. ‘M. G. [Maria Golovina] called me up. “Tomorrow Efim Grigorievich will be here, and he would very much like to see you” The path I had to take opened of its own accord…It is true that in taking that path I was compelled to deceive someone who was sincerely well disposed towards me.’

Felix is most likely not telling the truth here. It was simply that after Nikolai Mikhailovich’s unsuccessful visit to Headquarters in November, the hunt for Rasputin had begun. And a plan for the hunt already existed in which the unhappy Munya was intended to play a fateful role in the death of the person she revered. Felix had, of course, called her up himself. ‘Felix was complaining of chest pains,’ Munya testified in the File. And complaining of an illness that the doctors were unable to cure, he easily drew from her a suggestion that she arrange a meeting with the great healer. For Felix knew that that had long been her wish — to unite the two people she loved so unselfishly. Thus, Felix and Rasputin met at Munya’s apartment.

‘Rasputin was much changed since the time I had first seen him. His face had grown puffy, and he had become quite flabby. He was dressed in a simple peasant’s coat and a light blue silk shirt and wide peasant trousers made of velvet …He behaved in a highly familiar manner … He kissed me.’ This time the prince did not try to avoid the kiss.

In conversation with Rasputin the day before, Munya had called Felix ‘little’ (little Felix Felixovich Yusupov in contrast to Felix Felixovich, his father). Rasputin, who adored nicknames, immediately took it up and began calling Felix the ‘Little One’.

The Murderers Meet

After that encounter, Felix began, he says, to seek out comrades-in-arms for the murder. He afterwards recalled in Paris, ‘Going over in my mind the friends whom I could trust with my secret, I stopped on two of them. They were Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich and Lieutenant Sukhotin… I was certain the grand duke would support me and agree to take part in executing my plan … I knew how much he hated the elder and suffered on the sovereign’s and Russia’s behalf.’ And Felix requested a meeting with Dmitry. ‘Finding him alone in his study, I quickly got to the point. The grand duke agreed at once and said that eliminating Rasputin would be the last and most effective attempt to save Russia.’

I think Felix is laying out a legend for us here — that Rasputin’s murder
was conceived by him alone, and that the grand duke had merely joined in.

Most likely, it was otherwise. The last unsuccessful warning — Nikolai Mikhailovich’s visit to Headquarters — took place in November, after which the ‘era of assassination’ began. It was then that the Grand Duke Dmitry and Felix — those two very close friends — together decided to do what had received so much ineffectual discussion in the family — kill Rasputin. And the decision to kill him most likely originated with Dmitry, that gallant guardsman, who, as Felix correctly noted, ‘hated the elder’. With the soldier Dmitry and not with the civilian Felix, about whom Ella, who knew him well, would write, ‘Felix, who wouldn’t hurt a fly…who didn’t want to go into the military because he didn’t want to shed anyone else’s blood.’ But Felix’s hand was in the treachery of the plan. The ancient blood of the ruthless Tartar khans.

Dmitry and Felix were not, apparently, the only ones in the Romanov family who knew about their decision. It was no accident that Felix wrote of a ‘conspiracy’, or that the tsar would later write to the grand dukes: ‘I know that the consciences of many are not clear, since Dmitry Pavlovich is not the only one involved in this.’

In any case, there is a strange coincidence: ten days before the murder, Grand Duchess Ella would abruptly leave Petrograd. And she would not only leave it. She would go off to pray in a monastery. And not merely a monastery. But the Sarov Monastery, the site of the relics of Saint Serafim, who was considered the royal family’s patron saint. As if she knew that something important and terrifying for the family was about to happen. And she was going to pray to God and to Saint Serafim. She would subsequently write to the tsar, ‘I went to Sarov and Diveev … for ten days to pray for you — for your army, the country, the ministers, for the weak of body and spirit, including that unfortunate one, that God might enlighten him.’

Ella prayed at the monastery for God to enlighten the ‘unfortunate’ Rasputin. In order to avoid the inevitable which was being readied and about which she was aware. She was also praying for those who had decided to spill blood. For they were her own protegés — Dmitry had lived with her family before her husband was killed, and Felix, whom she called ‘my Felix’, was someone in whose upbringing she had played a large part.

The Long-Suffering Job

But discussion of the murder plan was suspended for a short while. The grand duke had to return to Headquarters. But they knew that Dmitry

would not be there long. For in Tsarskoe Selo ‘he was not liked and his influence was feared.’ And they proved to be right — as Alix’s letters show.

The grand duke, Felix writes, told him that ‘he had noticed something wasn’t right with the sovereign. With each passing day he was becoming more and more indifferent to what was going on around him …in his opinion, it was all the result of a malicious plan: the sovereign was being given something that dulled his intellectual capacities.’ There was a legend abroad at the time that Rasputin and the tsarina had done something to the Tsar’s will with the aid of Tibetan drugs provided by Dr Badmaev.

Thus did the two of them egg each other on, assuring themselves of the need to carry out their mission quickly.

There was, incidentally, a real basis for the legend about the Tsar’s growing apathy. On the eve of the Duma session, the right had proposed to the tsar its own way out of the situation, which was becoming ever more dangerous. Prince Rimsky-Korsakov, a member of the Council of State at whose home a small group of rightist aristocrats was accustomed to gathering, gave Stürmer a Memorandum for the tsar.

‘Since there is now no doubt that the Duma has embarked on a clearly revolutionary course…the Duma must be prorogued at once without indicating when it will be reconvened. The military forces on hand in Petrograd are fully adequate to putting down any potential revolt.’ But Stürmer was unwilling to risk giving the Memorandum to the Tsar. He too had noticed that strange aloofness in the sovereign. And so he merely informed the tsar of the current mood of the throne’s defenders. The tsar heard him out in indifference. And ordered the Duma session to begin.

The tsar was indeed becoming more and more inactive, but it was because he had grasped the hopelessness of the situation. He had read the reports of the secret police and knew all about the growing general conspiracy. And he was tired of the endless struggle. He had decided to cede authority to them. He would withdraw into private life, so that his wife — who was going insane from her furious activity and terrible premonitions — would be left alone. And that peasant would also be left alone to help them survive by healing both her and their son. And for that reason he himself welcomed the inevitable, although for the time being he listlessly attempted to calm the seething Duma.

How many times had he hopelessly reshuffled the government. On 10 November he appointed Trepov prime minister in place of Stürmer, whom the Duma hated. Trepov was from a distinguished family of right-wing public servants. His father, Fyodor Trepov, had been a Petersburg mayor of
notorious strictness. And his brother, Dmitry, had once headed the powerful ministry of internal affairs. But it was only with the greatest difficulty that poor Alexei succeeded in making his initial programmatic speech to the Duma. He was greeted by noisy heckling. The Duma no longer wanted sops from the authorities. It demanded ministers who would be responsible to the Duma. It was then that Nicholas decided to make his last concession — to hand over Protopopov. Rodzyanko had been able to tell him a great deal about the half-mad minister.

On 10 November the tsar wrote to Alix:

You will have heard … about the changes wh. are absolutely necessary now. I am sorry about Prot. [opopov], a good honest man, but he jumped fr. One idea to another and could not stick to his opinion … People said he was not normal some years ago fr. a certain illness. It is risky leaving the ministry of Int.[ernal affairs] in such hands at such times! … Only please don’t mix in our Friend. It is I who carry the responsibility [and] I want to be free to choose accordingly.

Thus did he plead with Alix not to invoke the peasant’s words.

But she understood everything: he had decided to put an end to the ‘Tsarskoe Selo cabinet’ that was meant to save them. He had decided to turn once more to the odious people who dreamed of limiting the tsar’s power. They would deceive him yet again! To ‘be free to make his own choice’ was not something she could allow. And the ‘wise counsels of Our Friend’ were at once brought to bear on the matter.