Nicholas and Alexandra

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The Prince and the Peasant

AT twenty-nine, Prince Felix Yussoupov was the sole heir to the largest fortune in Russia. There were four Yussoupov palaces in Petrograd, three in Moscow and thirty-seven Yussoupov estates scattered across Russia. The family’s coal and iron mines, oil fields, mills and factories churned out wealth which exceeded even the wealth of the tsars. “One of our estates,” wrote Yussoupov, “stretched for one hundred and twenty-five miles along the Caspian Sea; crude petroleum was so abundant that the ground seemed soaked with it and the peasants used it to grease their cart wheels.” Once, on a whim, Prince Yussoupov’s father had given his mother the highest mountain in the Crimea as a birthday present. In all, the size of the Yussoupov fortune was estimated fifty years ago at $350 million to $500 million. What the same possessions would be worth today, no one can guess.

The wealth of the Yussoupovs had been accumulated by centuries of standing at the elbows of Russia’s tsars and empresses. Prince Dmitry Yussoupov, descended from a Tartar khan named Yusuf, had whispered in the ear of Peter the Great. Prince Boris Yussoupov was a favorite of Empress Elizabeth. Prince Nicholas, the greatest Yussoupov of all, was a friend of Catherine the Great, an advisor to Catherine’s son, Tsar Paul, and a counselor to her two grandsons, Tsar Alexander I and Tsar Nicholas I. Prince Nicholas Yussoupov’s estate at Archangelskoe near Moscow was a city in itself, boasting huge parks and gardens with heated greenhouses, a zoo, private glass and porcelain factories, a private theatre and the Prince’s own companies of actors, musicians and ballet dancers. Seated in the audience, Prince Nicholas could, with a wave of his cane, produce an extraordinary effect: all the dancers would suddenly appear on stage, stark naked. A gallery on this Archangelskoe estate contained portraits of the Prince’s three hundred mistresses. When the old grandee died at eighty-one, he had just concluded a liaison with a girl of eighteen.

At his birth in 1887, Felix Yussoupov stepped into a fairyland of art and treasure left behind by these lusty progenitors. The drawing rooms and galleries of the Moika Palace, where he was born, were lined with a finer collection of paintings than those hanging in most of the museums of Europe. There was furniture which had belonged to Marie Antoinette and a chandelier which had lighted the boudoir of Mme. de Pompadour. Jewel-encrusted cigarette boxes by Fabergé were scattered idly about on tables. Dinner parties brought two thousand guests to sit before golden plates and be served by costumed Arab and Tartar footmen. One Yussoupov mansion in Moscow had been built in 1551 as a hunting lodge for Ivan the Terrible; it was still connected by tunnel with the Kremlin several miles away. Beneath its vaulted halls, filled with medieval tapestries and furniture, there were sealed underground chambers which, when opened in Felix’s boyhood, revealed rows of skeletons still hanging in chains from the walls.

Cradled in wealth, Felix nevertheless was a spindly, lonely child whose birth caused his mother great disappointment. Princess Zenaide Yussoupov, one of the most famous beauties of her day, had borne three previous sons of whom only one had survived. She had prayed that her next child would be a girl. To console herself when Felix was born, she kept him in long hair and dresses until he was five. Surprisingly, this pleased him and he used to cry out to strangers in the street, “Look, isn’t Baby pretty?” “My mother’s caprice,” Prince Yussoupov wrote later, “was to have a lasting influence on my character.”

In adolescence, Felix Yussoupov was slender, with soft eyes and long lashes; he was often described as “the most beautiful young man in Europe.” Encouraged by his older brother, he took to dressing up in his mother’s gowns, donning her jewels and wigs and strolling in this costume on public boulevards. At The Bear, a fashionable St. Petersburg restaurant, he attracted enthusiastic attention from Guards officers, who sent notes inviting him to supper. Delighted, Felix accepted and disappeared into intimate private dining rooms. In Paris, continuing these masquerades, he once noticed a fat, whiskered gentleman staring persistently at him from the opposite side of the Théatre des Capucines. A note arrived which Felix hastily returned; his beaming admirer was King Edward VII of England.

Yussoupov’s first sexual experience occurred at the age of twelve in the company of a young man from Argentina and his girl friend. At fifteen, roaming Italy with his tutor, Felix first visited a Neapolitan bordello. Thereafter, he wrote, “I flung myself passionately into a life of pleasure, thinking only of satisfying my desires.… I loved beauty, luxury, comfort, the color and scent of flowers.” He also tried opium and a liaison with “a charming young girl” in Paris. Bored, he enrolled as a student at Oxford, maintaining at the university a chef, a chauffeur, a valet, a housekeeper and a groom to look after his three horses. From Oxford, he moved on to a flat in London, where he installed black carpets, orange silk curtains, modern furniture, a grand piano, a dog, a pet macaw and a French couple to cook and serve. He moved in a gay circle which included ballerina Anna Pavlova, Prince Serge Obolensky and ex-King Manuel of Portugal. Day or night, when friends visited Felix Yussoupov, he took out his guitar and sang gypsy songs.

Felix, the younger Yussoupov brother, became the family heir when Nicholas, his older brother, was killed in a duel by an outraged husband. In 1914, Felix returned to Russia to marry. His bride, Princess Irina, was the niece of the Tsar and the most eligible girl in the empire. At their wedding, Felix wore the uniform of the Russian nobility: a black frock coat with lapels and collar embroidered in gold, and white broadcloth trousers. Irina wore Marie Antoinette’s lace veil. The Tsar gave her in marriage and presented as his gift a bag of twenty-nine diamonds, ranging in size from three to seven carats apiece.

During the war, Yussoupov was not called for military service. Remaining in Petrograd, he achieved a glittering reputation as a bohemian, “Prince Felix Yussoupov is twenty-nine,” Paléologue observed, “and gifted with quick wits and aesthetic tastes; but his dilettantism is rather too prone to perverse imaginings and literary representations of vice and death … his favorite author is Oscar Wilde … his instincts, countenance and manner make him much closer akin to … Dorian Grey than to Brutus.”

Yussoupov first met Rasputin before his marriage. He saw him often, and they caroused together at dubious night spots. As treatment for an illness, Yussoupov submitted himself to Rasputin’s caressing eyes and hands. During this time, he often heard Rasputin speak of his Imperial patrons: “The Empress is a very wise ruler. She is a second Catherine but as for him, well, he is no Tsar Emperor, he is just a child of God.” According to Yussoupov, Rasputin suggested that Nicholas should abdicate in favor of Alexis, with the Empress installed as Regent. One year before he finally acted, Yussoupov concluded that Rasputin’s presence was destroying the monarchy and that the starets had to be killed.

Purishkevich spoke in the Duma on December 2. The following morning Yussoupov called on Purishkevich in a fever of excitement. He said that he planned to kill Rasputin, but that he needed assistance. Enthusiastically, Purishkevich agreed to help. Three other conspirators were brought into the plot: an officer named Sukhotin, an army doctor named Lazovert and Yussoupov’s youthful friend Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich. At twenty-six, Dmitry was the son of Nicholas II’s last surviving uncle, Grand Duke Paul. Because of the difference in age, Dmitry referred to the Tsar—actually his first cousin—as “Uncle Nicky.” Elegant and charming, Dmitry was a special favorite of the Empress, who often found herself laughing at his jokes and stories. Nevertheless, she worried about his character. “Dmitry is doing no work and drinking constantly,” she complained to Nicholas during the war. “… order Dmitry back to his regiment; town and women are poison for him.”

As December progressed, the five conspirators met regularly, weaving the threads of entrapment, death and disposal of the corpse. The date was determined by Grand Duke Dmitry’s heavy social calender; December 31 was the first evening he had free. To cancel one of his previous engagements, the conspirators decided, might arouse suspicion. The place selected for the murder was the cellar of Yussoupov’s Moika Palace. It was remote and quiet and Princess Irina was away in the Crimea for her health. Yussoupov himself was to bring Rasputin there in a car driven by Dr. Lazovert disguised as a chauffeur. Once in the cellar, Yussoupov would feed Rasputin poison, while the others, waiting upstairs, would take charge of removing the body.

As the heavy December snows swirled through the streets of Petrograd, Rasputin sensed that his life was in danger. After the impassioned denunciations hurled at him in the Duma, he understood that a crisis was coming. The ebullient Purishkevich, unable to abide by his pledge of secrecy, soon was bubbling with hints to other Duma members that something was about to happen to Rasputin. Catching wisps of these rumors, Rasputin became moody and cautious. He avoided as much as possible going out in daylight. He was preoccupied with the idea of death. Once after a lonely walk along the Neva he came home and declared that he had seen the river filled with the blood of grand dukes. In his last meeting with the Tsar, he refused to give Nicholas his customary blessing, saying instead, “This time it is for you to bless me, not I you.”

According to Simanovich, Rasputin’s secretary and confidant, it was during these last weeks of December 1916 that Rasputin produced the mystically prophetic letter which has become part of the legend of this extraordinary man. Headed “The Spirit of Gregory Efimovich Rasputin-Novykh of the village of Pokrovskoe,” its message of warning is directed mainly at Nicholas:

I write and leave behind me this letter at St. Petersburg. I feel that I shall leave life before January 1. I wish to make known to the Russian people, to Papa, to the Russian Mother and to the Children, to the land of Russia, what they must understand. If I am killed by common assassins, and especially by my brothers the Russian peasants, you, Tsar of Russia, have nothing to fear, remain on your throne and govern, and you, Russian Tsar, will have nothing to fear for your children, they will reign for hundreds of years in Russia. But if I am murdered by boyars, nobles, and if they shed my blood, their hands will remain soiled with my blood, for twenty-five years they will not wash their hands from my blood. They will leave Russia. Brothers will kill brothers, and they will kill each other and hate each other, and for twenty-five years there will be no nobles in the country. Tsar of the land of Russia, if you hear the sound of the bell which will tell you that Gregory has been killed, you must know this: if it was your relations who have wrought my death then no one of your family, that is to say, none of your children or relations will remain alive for more than two years. They will be killed by the Russian people.… I shall be killed. I am no longer among the living. Pray, pray, be strong, think of your blessed family.

Gregory

Because the plot hinged on Yussoupov being able to bring Rasputin to the cellar of the Moika Palace, the young Prince intensified his approaches to Rasputin. “My intimacy with Rasputin—so indispensable to our plan—increased each day,” he wrote. When near the end of the month Yussoupov invited him “to spend an evening with me soon,” Rasputin readily accepted.

But there was more to Rasputin’s acceptance than friendship for a charming dilettante and a taste for midnight tea. Yussoupov deliberately encouraged Rasputin’s belief that Princess Irina, widely known for her beauty but a stranger to Rasputin, would be present. “He [Rasputin] had long wished to meet my wife,” wrote Yussoupov. “Believing her to be in St. Petersburg, and knowing that my parents were in the Crimea, he accepted my invitation. The truth was that Irina was also in the Crimea, but I thought Rasputin would be more likely to accept my invitation if he thought he had a chance of meeting her.”

The bait was attractive and Rasputin swallowed it. Both Simanovich and Anna Vyrubova, hearing of the forthcoming supper, tried to dissuade Rasputin from going. Anna Vyrubova visited him in his flat that afternoon, bringing him an icon as a gift from the Empress. “I heard Rasputin say that he expected to pay a late evening visit to the Yussoupov palace to meet Princess Irina, wife of Prince Felix Yussoupov,” wrote Anna. “I knew that Felix often visited Rasputin, but it struck me as odd that he should go to their house at such an unseemly hour.… I mentioned this proposed midnight visit that night in the Empress’s boudoir, and the Empress said in some surprise, ‘But there must be some mistake, Irina is in the Crimea.’ … Once again she repeated thoughtfully, ‘There must be some mistake.’ ”

By evening, the cellar room had been prepared. Yussoupov described the scene: “A low vaulted ceiling … walls of gray stone, the flooring of granite … carved wooden chairs of oak … small tables covered with ancient embroideries … a cabinet of inlaid ebony which was a mass of little mirrors, tiny bronze columns and secret drawers. On it stood a crucifix of rock crystal and silver, a beautiful specimen of sixteenth century Italian workmanship.… A large Persian carpet covered the floor and, in a corner, in front of the ebony cabinet, lay a white bear skin rug.… In the middle of the room stood the table at which Rasputin was to drink his last cup of tea.

“On the table the samovar smoked, surrounded by plates filled with the cakes and dainties that Rasputin liked so much. An array of bottles and glasses sat on a sideboard.… On the granite hearth a log fire crackled and scattered sparks on the hearthstones.… I took from the ebony cabinet a box containing the poison and laid it on the table. Doctor Lazovert put on rubber gloves and ground the cyanide of potassium crystals to powder. Then, lifting the top of each cake, he sprinkled the inside with a dose of poison which, according to him, was sufficient to kill several men instantly,” When he finished, Lazovert convulsively tossed the contaminated gloves into the fire. It was a mistake; within a few moments the fireplace was smoking heavily and the air became temporarily unbreathable.

Rasputin also prepared himself carefully for the rendezvous. When Yussoupov went alone at midnight to Rasputin’s flat, he found the starets smelling of cheap soap and dressed in his best embroidered silk blouse, black velvet trousers and shiny new boots. Yussoupov promised, as he took his victim away and led him down into the cellar, that Princess Irina was upstairs at a party but would be down shortly. From overhead came the sounds of “Yankee Doodle” played on a phonograph by the other conspirators, simulating the Princess’s party.

Alone in the cellar with his victim, Yussoupov nervously offered Rasputin the poisoned cakes. Rasputin refused. Then, changing his mind, he gobbled two. Yussoupov watched, expecting to see him crumple in agony, but nothing happened. Then, Rasputin asked for the Madeira, which had also been poisoned. He swallowed two glasses, still with no effect. Seeing this, wrote Yussoupov, “my head swam.” Rasputin took some tea to clear his head and, while sipping it, asked Yussoupov to sing for him with his guitar. Through one song after another, the terrified murderer sang on while the happy “corpse” sat nodding and grinning with pleasure. Huddled at the top of the stairs, scarcely daring to breathe, Purishkevich, Dmitry and the others could hear only the quavering sound of Yussoupov’s singing and the indistinguishable murmur of the two voices.

After this game had gone on for two and a half hours, Yussoupov could stand it no longer. In desperation, he rushed upstairs to ask what he should do. Lazovert had no answer: his nerves had failed and he had already fainted once. Grand Duke Dmitry suggested giving up and going home. It was Purishkevich, the oldest and steadiest of the group, who kept his head and declared that Rasputin could not be allowed to leave half dead. Steeling himself, Yussoupov volunteered to return to the cellar and complete the murder. Holding Dmitry’s Browning revolver behind his back, he went back down the stairs and found Rasputin seated, breathing heavily and calling for more wine. Reviving, Rasputin suggested a visit to the gypsies. “With God in thought, but mankind in the flesh,” he said with a heavy wink. Yussoupov then led Rasputin to the mirrored cabinet and showed him the ornate crucifix. Rasputin stared at the crucifix and declared that he liked the cabinet better. “Gregory Efimovich,” said Yussoupov, “you’d far better look at the crucifix and say a prayer.” Rasputin glared at the Prince, then turned briefly to look again at the cross. As he did so, Yussoupov fired. The bullet plunged into the broad back. With a scream, Rasputin fell backward onto the white bearskin.

Hearing the shot, Yussoupov’s friends rushed into the cellar. They found Yussoupov, revolver in hand, calmly staring down at the dying man with a look of inexpressible disgust in his eyes. Although there was not a trace of blood, Dr. Lazovert, clutching Rasputin’s pulse, quickly pronounced him dead. The diagnosis was premature. A moment later, when Yussoupov, having surrendered the revolver, was temporarily alone with the “corpse,” Rasputin’s face twitched and his left eye fluttered open. A few seconds later, his right eye also rolled open, “I then saw both eyes—the green eyes of a viper—staring at me with an expression of diabolical hatred,” Yussoupov wrote. Suddenly, while Yussoupov stood rooted to the floor, Rasputin, foaming at the mouth, leaped to his feet, grabbed his murderer by the throat and tore an epaulet off his shoulder. In terror, Yussoupov broke away and fled up the stairs. Behind him, clambering on all fours, roaring with fury, came Rasputin.

Purishkevich, upstairs, heard “a savage, inhuman cry.” It was Yussoupov: “Purishkevich, fire, fire! He’s alive! He’s getting away!” Purishkevich ran to the stairs and almost collided with the frantic Prince, whose eyes were “bulging out of their sockets. Without seeing me … he hurled himself towards the door … [and into] his parents’ apartment.”

Recovering, Purishkevich dashed outside into the courtyard. “What I saw would have been a dream if it hadn’t been a terrible reality. Rasputin, who half an hour before lay dying in the cellar, was running quickly across the snow-covered courtyard towards the iron gate which led to the street.… I couldn’t believe my eyes. But a harsh cry which broke the silence of the night persuaded me. ‘Felix! Felix! I will tell everything to the Empress!’ It was him, all right, Rasputin. In a few seconds, he would reach the iron gate.… I fired. The night echoed with the shot. I missed. I fired again. Again I missed. I raged at myself. Rasputin neared the gate. I bit with all my force the end of my left hand to force myself to concentrate and I fired a third time. The bullet hit him in the shoulders. He stopped. I fired a fourth time and hit him probably in the head. I ran up and kicked him as hard as I could with my boot in the temple. He fell into the snow, tried to rise, but he could only grind his teeth.”

With Rasputin prostrate once again, Yussoupov reappeared and struck hysterically at the bleeding man with a rubber club. When at last the body lay still in the crimson snow, it was rolled up in a blue curtain, bound with a rope and taken to a hole in the frozen Neva, where Purishkevich and Lazovert pushed it through a hole in the ice. Three days later, when the body was found, the lungs were filled with water. Gregory Rasputin, his bloodstream filled with poison, his body punctured by bullets, had died by drowning.

“Next morning,” wrote Anna Vyrubova, “soon after breakfast, I was called on the telephone by one of the daughters of Rasputin.… In some anxiety, the young girl told me that her father had gone out the night before in Yussoupov’s motor car and had not returned. When I reached the palace, I gave the message to the Empress who listened with a grave face but little comment. A few minutes later, there came a telephone call from Protopopov in Petrograd. The police … had reported to him that a patrolman standing near the entrance of the Yussoupov palace had been startled by the report of a pistol. Ringing the doorbell, he was met by … Purishkevich who appeared to be in advance stages of intoxication. [He said] they had just killed Rasputin.”

In the excitement of the moment, Purishkevich had again completely forgotten the need for secrecy. After the sharp report of his four pistol shots had split the dry winter air and roused a policeman, Purishkevich had thrown his arms around the man and shouted exultantly, “I have killed Grishka Rasputin, the enemy of Russia and the Tsar.” Twenty-four hours later, the story, embroidered with a thousand colorful details, was all over Petrograd.

The Empress, remaining calm, ordered Protopopov to make a complete investigation. A squad of detectives, entering the Yussoupov palace, found the stains of a trail of blood running up the stairs and across the courtyard. Yussoupov explained this as the result of a wild party the night before at which one of his guests had shot a dog—the body of the dog was lying in the court for the police to see. Nevertheless, Protopopov advised Alexandra that Rasputin’s disappearance was almost certainly linked to the commotion at Yussoupov’s house; Purishkevich’s boast and the blood found by the police suggested that the starets had probably been murdered. Technically, only the Tsar could order the arrest of a grand duke, but Alexandra ordered that both Dmitry and Felix be confined to their houses. Late that day, when Felix telephoned asking permission to see the Empress, she refused, telling him to put his message into a letter. When the letter arrived, it contained a denial of any part in the rumored assassination. Grand Duke Paul, shocked at rumors of his son’s complicity, confronted Dmitry with a holy icon and a photograph of Dmitry’s mother. On these two sacred objects, he asked his son to swear that he had not killed Rasputin. “I swear it,” said Dmitry solemnly.

On the afternoon after the murder, the Empress’s friend Lili Dehn found Alexandra lying on a couch in her mauve boudoir, surrounded by flowers and the fragrant odor of burning wood. Anna Vyrubova and the four young Grand Duchesses sat nearby. Although Anna’s eyes were red from weeping, Alexandra’s blue eyes were clear. Only her extreme pallor and the frantic disjointedness of the letter she was writing to the Tsar betrayed her anxiety.

My own beloved sweetheart,

We are sitting together—you can imagine our feelings—thoughts—Our Friend has disappeared.

Yesterday A. [Anna] saw him, and he said Felix asked him to come in the night, a motor would fetch him, to see Irina. A motor fetched him (military one) with two civilians and he went away.

This night big scandal at Yussoupov’s house—big meeting, Dmitry, Purishkevich, etc. all drunk; police heard shots, Purishkevich ran out screaming to the police that Our Friend was killed.

… Our Friend was in good spirits but nervous these days. Felix pretends he [Rasputin] never came to the house.… I shall still trust in God’s mercy that one has only driven Him off somewhere. Protopopov is doing all he can.…

I cannot and won’t believe that He has been killed. God have mercy. Such utter anguish (am calm and can’t believe it) … Come quickly.…

Felix came often to him lately.

Kisses,

Sunny

The following day, when Rasputin still had not appeared, Alexandra telegraphed: “No trace yet.… The police are continuing the search. I fear that these two wretched boys have committed a frightful crime, but have not yet lost all hope. Start today, I need you terribly.”

On the third day, January 1, 1917, Rasputin’s body was found. In their haste, the murderers had left one of his boots on the ice near the hole. Divers probing beneath the ice in that vicinity brought up the corpse. Incredibly, before he died, Rasputin had struggled with sufficient strength to free one of his hands from the ropes around him. The freed arm was raised above the shoulder; the effect was that Rasputin’s last gesture on earth had been a sign of benediction.

In Petrograd, where everyone knew the details and juicy stories of the Rasputin scandal, confirmation that the Beast was slain set off an orgy of wild rejoicing. People kissed each other in the streets and hailed Yussoupov, Purishkevich and Grand Duke Dmitry as heroes. At the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, there was a crush to light a sea of candles around the icons of St. Dmitry. Far off in the provinces, however, where the peasants knew only that a moujik, a man like themselves, had become powerful at the court of the Tsar, the murder was regarded differently. “To the moujiks, Rasputin has become a martyr,” an old prince just returned from his estate on the Volga reported to Paléologue. “He was a man of the people; he let the Tsar hear the voice of the people; he defended the people against the court folk, the pridvorny. So the pridvorny killed him. That’s what’s being said.”

History, with all its sweep and diversity, produces few characters as original and extravagant as Gregory Rasputin. The source and extent of his extraordinary powers will never be fully known; the shadow of this uncertainty perpetually will refresh the legend. The duality of his countenance—the one face peaceful, soothing, offering the blessings of God; the other cynical, crafty, reddened by lust—is the core of his mysterious appeal. In his single, remarkable life, he represents not only the two sides of Russia’s history, half compassionate and long-suffering, half savage and pagan, but the constant struggle in every soul between good and evil.

As for the evil in Gregory Rasputin, it should be carefully weighed. He has been called a monster, yet, unlike most monsters in history, he took not a single life. He schemed against his enemies and toppled men from high places, yet, once they had fallen, he sought no vengeance. In his relations with women he was undoubtedly villainous, but most of these episodes occurred with the consent of the women involved. Unquestionably, he used his “holy” aura to seductive advantage and, failing all else, forced himself upon unwilling victims. But even here the screams of outrage were greatly amplified by rumor.

Rasputin’s greatest crime was his delusion of the Empress Alexandra. Deliberately, he encouraged her to believe that there was only one side of him: Father Gregory, Our Friend, the Man of God who gave relief to her son and calmed her fears. The other Rasputin—drunken, leering, arrogant—did not exist for the Empress except in the malicious reports of their common enemies. An obvious rogue to everyone else, he carefully hid this side from her. Yet no one could believe that the Empress did not know; therefore, her acceptance of him was taken as acceptance of his worst behavior. On her part, this can be called foolishness, blindness, ignorance. But on his part, the deliberate exploitation of weakness and devotion was nothing less than monstrous evil.

Predictably, the impact of Rasputin’s death fell less severely on Nicholas than on Alexandra. Told of Rasputin’s disappearance while he sat in a staff meeting at Headquarters, the Tsar left the room immediately and telegraphed “Am horrified, shaken.” Nevertheless, he did not leave for Petrograd until January 1, when Rasputin’s death was confirmed. Once again, in death as in life, Nicholas was less concerned about Rasputin than about the effect that the murder would have on his wife. In the months preceding the assassination, Rasputin’s advice had become less welcome. Often Nicholas was irritated by what he regarded as clumsy intrusions by Rasputin into political and military matters. The Tsar, wrote Gilliard, “had tolerated him [Rasputin] because he dared not weaken the Empress’s faith in him—a faith that kept her alive. He did not like to send him away, for if Alexis Nicolaievich died, in the eyes of the mother, he would have been the murderer of his own son.”

For Nicholas himself, the quickest pang of Rasputin’s death lay in the fact that the murder had been committed by members of the Imperial family. “I am filled with shame that the hands of my kinsmen are stained with the blood of a simple peasant,” he exclaimed. “A murder is always a murder,” he replied stiffly in refusing an appeal from his relatives on behalf of Dmitry. Almost fifty years later, the Tsar’s sister Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna still showed the same shame and scorn for her family’s behavior: “There was nothing heroic about Rasputin’s murder,” she said. “It was … premeditated most vilely. Just think of the two names most closely associated with it even to this day—a Grand Duke, one of the grandsons of the Tsar-Liberator, and then a scion of one of our great houses whose wife was a Grand Duke’s daughter. That proved how low we had fallen.”

Soon after Nicholas’s return to Petrograd, enough evidence had been amassed to incriminate the three leading conspirators. Grand Duke Dmitry was ordered to leave Petrograd immediately for duty with the Russian troops operating in Persia; the sentence undoubtedly saved his life, as it put him out of reach of the revolution which was soon to follow. Yussoupov was banished to one of his estates in the center of Russia; a year later, he left his homeland with Princess Irina, taking with him, from all his vast fortune, only a million dollars in jewels and two Rembrandts. Purishkevich was allowed to go free. His part in the murder had placed his prestige at a peak. To strike down a member of the Duma who had also become a hero was no longer possible even for the Autocrat of all the Russias.

In secrecy, Rasputin’s body was taken to the chapel of a veterans’ home halfway between Petrograd and Tsarskoe Selo, where an autopsy was performed and the body was washed and dressed and laid in a coffin. Two days later, on January 3, Rasputin was buried in a corner of the Imperial Park where Anna Vyrubova was building a church. Lili Dehn was present: “It was a glorious morning,” she wrote. “The sky was a deep blue, the sun was shining and the hard snow sparkled like masses of diamonds. My carriage stopped on the road … and I was directed to walk across a frozen field towards the unfinished church. Planks had been placed on the snow to serve as a footpath, and when I arrived at the church I noticed that a police motor van was drawn up near the open grave. After waiting several moments, I heard the sound of sleigh bells and Anna Vyrubova came slowly across the field. Almost immediately afterwards, a closed automobile stopped and the Imperial family joined us. They were dressed in mourning and the Empress carried some white flowers; she was very pale but quite composed although I saw her tears fall when the oak coffin was taken out of the police van … the burial service was read by the chaplain and after the Emperor and Empress had thrown earth on the coffin, the Empress distributed her flowers between the Grand Duchesses and ourselves and we scattered them on the coffin.”

Inside the coffin, before the lid was sealed, the Empress had two objects placed on Rasputin’s breast. One was an icon, signed by herself, her husband, her son and her daughters. The other was a letter: “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.”