In 1918, V.M. Purishkevich published his account of the murder of Rasputin in Russian, and after his death this was republished in Paris in 1923. Purishkevich’s Diary sheds a far from flattering light on the events of the night, but it seems the word ‘incompetent’ was not in his lexicon. He begins his tale early in the evening of Friday 16 December. He has been in the hospital train, reading, all day, a statement which does not tally with Maklakov’s assertion that he met Purishkevich in the Duma late that afternoon, but no matter.
He intended to leave the Warsaw Station at half-past eight that evening, and catch a tram to a meeting of the Town Duma. There he would stay, ‘in order to kill time’, until a quarter to midnight, when Dr Lazovert, in his chauffeur’s uniform, would pick him up at the Duma watchtower for the drive to the Yusupov Palace. Just in case, at seven o’clock, he pocketed his Savage revolver and a brass knuckleduster.
He set off late; he left the station at half-past nine, and took the short ride by tram only to find the Town Duma building empty and the hall unlit. A quorum had failed to assemble, so the meeting had been abandoned. Making the best of things, he got the janitor to open up the Deputy Mayor’s office so that he could write some letters and wait for Lazovert.
He spent an hour on his letters, but at a quarter to eleven had nothing left to do. He did not want to hang around in the street outside wearing military uniform.
I decided to spend the rest of the time on the telephone and, calling a lady-friend of mine, the actress N., I chatted with her until after eleven.
To stay any longer in the Duma, however, would have been awkward, so I put on my coat and went out to the sidewalk. As the clock in the Duma tower struck 11.15, I dropped my letters into a mailbox and began to stroll along the side streets near the Duma. The weather was mild. It was no more than two or three degrees below zero and a light, moist snow was falling.1
He dawdled. Minutes passed ‘like an eternity to me’, and at the appointed time there was no sign of Lazovert. When the car did turn up, more than five minutes late, he was cross, and shouted at the doctor, who said he’d had a puncture.
They drove to the Yusupov Palace. The courtyard of number 92 had an iron [sic] grille fence separating it from the street, and two pairs of iron gates… which nobody had remembered to open.
Thinking they must be too early, Purishkevich and Lazovert drove on, circled around Mariinski Theatre Square, and came back to the palace down Prachesni Lane. The gates were still shut.
Purishkevich, who was already on a short fuse, had had enough. They pulled up outside the towering central doors of the palace.
I rang. A soldier opened the door to me and, without taking off my overcoat, but looking around to see who else was in the foyer (there was one other man dressed in a soldier’s uniform sitting on a bench, but no-one else), I turned to the door on the left and went into the apartment occupied by young Yusupov.2
He stomped in and found Yusupov, Sukhotin and Dmitri Pavlovich in the study. They accused Purishkevich of being late; this did not have a calming effect. Yusupov went away to have the gates opened, and shortly afterwards Lazovert appeared in his chauffeur’s coat, having now been able to park the car, according to plan, close to the courtyard door. They all trooped downstairs to the dining room, where the tea table was ‘abundantly spread with cakes and other delights’. The basement room was unrecognisable in its new, tastefully furnished state. They ate and drank slowly, aware that Yusupov must not leave until after half-past midnight o collect Rasputin. They disarrayed the table to make it look as if a party of ladies had been disturbed ‘by the arrival of an unexpected guest’ and had left hurriedly. Then they turned their attention to the poison. Dr Lazovert put on gloves ‘which Yusupov had procured’ and grated potassium cyanide ‘pieces’ onto a plate with a knife. There were two kinds of cake, sandwiched with either a pink or a chocolate mixture. Lifting the top halves of the pink ones, he concealed cyanide inside. Other pink cakes were cut and left as if half-eaten on the plates. Lazovert then burned the gloves. The chimney began to smoke. ‘We had to spend at least another ten minutes clearing the air.’
Once they were upstairs in the drawing room,
Yusupov took two phials of potassium cyanide in solution from his desk and gave one to Dmitri Pavlovich and one to me. Twenty minutes after Yusupov had left to pick up Rasputin we were to pour these into two of the four glasses sitting behind the bottles on the table in the dining room below.3
By twenty-five to one, Lazovert in his chauffeur’s uniform and Yusupov in his coat with its upturned collar had left. Sukhotin went to see if the gramophone worked. Purishkevich put his heavy Savage pistol on the table. They were all quiet, and worried about whether they could smoke, for the smell of cigars or cigarettes would make Rasputin suspicious. Here Purishkevich points out for the first time that Rasputin had insisted that no other men be present on the night he came to the palace.
Purishkevich and Dmitri Pavlovich went downstairs to doctor the wine glasses. Upstairs again, they waited, and, when the car was heard, Sukhotin set the gramophone and started to play Yankee Doodle – ‘a tune which haunts me even now’.
On the other hand, we have Yusupov’s point of view.
The fateful day arrived. This was to be murder de luxe. Our hero, a set designer manqué, returned in the afternoon from his in-laws’ palace down the road to spend a blissful afternoon supervising the arrangement of furniture in the vaulted basement.
Arches divided it in two; the larger half was to be used as a dining-room. From the other half, the staircase… led to my rooms on the floor above.… The walls were of grey stone, the flooring of granite…
When I arrived, I found workmen busy laying down carpets and putting up curtains. Three large red Chinese porcelain vases had already been placed in niches hollowed out of the walls. Various objects which I had selected were being carried in: carved wooden chairs of oak, small tables covered with ancient embroideries, ivory bowls, and a quantity of other curios… I have good reason to remember a certain 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. On the red granite mantelpiece were placed golden bowls, antique majolica plates and a sculptured ivory group. 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.
My two servants… helped me to arrange the furniture. I asked them to prepare tea for six, to buy biscuits and cakes and to bring wine from the cellar. I told them that I was expecting some friends at eleven that evening, and that they could wait in the servants’ hall until I rang for them.4
He spent much of the evening praying at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan. When he came back, he was delighted by the effect his efforts had produced:
Comfortably furnished and well lighted, this underground room had lost its grim look. 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 stood on a sideboard. Ancient lanterns of coloured glass lighted the room from the ceiling; the heavy red damask portières were lowered. On the granite hearth, a log fire crackled and scattered sparks on the flag-stones. One felt isolated from the rest of the world and it seemed as though, no matter what happened, the events of that night would remain forever buried in the silence of those thick walls.5
It must have been a comforting thought.
A bell rang; Dmitri Pavlovich and the others had arrived. Once they were in the basement dining room, Yusupov took ‘a box containing poison’ from a cupboard and the cakes from the table. Three were iced with chocolate and three with almond icing. Dr Lazovert put on rubber gloves and took out potassium cyanide crystals. He crushed the crystals and ‘sprinkled’them under the chocolate icing.
They would put potassium cyanide crystals into the glasses later, in case the poison evaporated. Dr Lazovert ‘assured us that the dose was many times stronger than would be required to cause death’. They disarranged the room. Lazovert and Yusupov left; the others would go upstairs later. Dr Lazovert changed into chauffeur’s uniform and went to start the car, while Yusupov put on a fur coat and hat.
Arriving at Gorokhovaya Street, Yusupov had a brief exchange with the yard man and went up the back stairs in pitch darkness. Rasputin led him in, through the kitchen. Yusupov felt someone was watching him ‘from the adjoining room’. After that night, Yusupov was the only living witness of what followed:
We went into his bedroom, which was partly lit by a lamp in the corner, in front of the ikons. Rasputin applied a match to a candle. I noticed that the bed was disarranged – he had evidently just been resting. His fur coat and beaver hat were in readiness. On the floor were a pair of snow boots.
He was dressed in a white silk blouse embroidered with corn-flowers and girded with a thick raspberry-coloured cord with large tassels, wide trousers of black velvet, and long boots, brand new. Even his hair and beard were carefully combed and smoothed. As he drew nearer to me I felt a strong smell of cheap soap. He had obviously paid special attention to his toilet that day; I had never before seen him so clean and tidy.6
Rasputin began to talk about going on to the gypsies. He was worried in case Yusupov’s mother would be there;he knew she disliked him. And then he said
And what d’you think? Protopopov drove round here this evening and made me promise that I’d stay at home during these next few days. ‘They want to kill you,’ he said. ‘Evil-minded people are plotting against you.’
Dismissing this warning, he decided to go with Yusupov anyway. Before he left he opened a chest full of money in bundles wrapped in newspaper. He talked about his daughter’s wedding. He blew out the candle and they left.
After a momentary qualm, Yusupov regained his courage as they headed for the Yusupov Palace.
They drew up at the side entrance and Yusupov took Rasputin through the little door. At once Rasputin heard an American song playing on the gramophone above and asked whether a party was going on. Yusupov told him that Irina was entertaining friends and would join them soon. He took him down to the dining room.
The visitor refused tea and coffee. They sat at the table discussing mutual friends – the Golovinas and Vyrubova. After a while, Yusupov gave him tea and biscuits. Later, the cakes. Rasputin didn’t want any of those; they were too sweet, he said.
Finally, he ate the whole plateful. They had no effect at all.
Yusupov urged him to try some Crimean wine. At first he gave him wine from a clean glass, and only later, after he had switched to Madeira, did he trick him into drinking from a glass that had crystals in the bottom.
…he drank slowly, taking small sips at a time, just as if he had been a connoisseur.
His face did not change;but from time to time he put his hand to his throat as if he found slight difficulty in swallowing.
Three glasses of Madeira later, Rasputin was still waiting for Irina’s party to finish and they sat facing each other in silence. Yusupov thought his victim just might have caught on.
A mute and deadly conflict seemed to be taking place between us. I was aghast. Another moment and I should have gone under. I felt that confronted by those satanic eyes, I was beginning to lose my self-control. A strange feeling of numbness took possession of me. My head reeled… I saw nothing… I do not know how long this lasted…
Yusupov pulled himself together and offered Rasputin a cup of tea;Rasputin accepted, saying he was thirsty. Then he asked Yusupov to play his guitar and sing, which he did… and another song, and another. Soon ‘The hands of the clock pointed to half past two’. And there was a lot of noise from upstairs. Yusupov went up to investigate.
Meanwhile, the others had been eavesdropping (we revert to Purishkevich’s point of view). No sooner had Lazovert the ‘chauffeur’ crept upstairs to remove his uniform than the whole party, under cover of the gramophone music, crept out and down towards the dog-leg landing and listened for noises from the basement dining room. As Purishkevich described it,
We stood bunched together: I was first on the staircase, the brass knuckles in my hand; behind me was the Grand Duke; behind him Lt Sukhotin; and last was Dr Lazovert.
They stood on the stairs for about half an hour, putting the needle back and furiously rewinding ‘Yankee Doodle’ so that it boomed faster through the great brass horn whenever it threatened to slow down. From below, they heard nothing but a quiet murmur of conversation. Then they heard the door below opening, and scampered back to the study like mice.
Yusupov came in and told them that Rasputin would not eat or drink. What should he do? Dmitri Pavlovich told him to go back downstairs at once, in case Rasputin came up after him, saw the assembled company, and got suspicious – ‘and then we would either have to let him go in peace or finish him off noisily – this could be fraught with consequences’. Felix returned to the basement. The others returned to their previous positions on the stairs. Half an hour later they heard a cork popping and the tinkle of glasses. (Through the solid walls, the curtains and the door with its thick portière, that is.) Then silence. Dmitri thought they would not have long to wait. They returned to the study.
Fifteen minutes passed and Yusupov came upstairs, pale-faced. Rasputin had eaten all the cakes and drunk two glasses of poisoned wine and ‘nothing has happened, absolutely nothing’ – Rasputin was belching and dribbling, but that was about it. And he was worried about why Irina didn’t come. Yusupov had told him she would be down in ten minutes.
Again they told him to go downstairs and wait five more minutes for the poison to take effect. When he had gone, Purishkevich noticed that Lazovert, who had proved brave and imperturbable when in the battle zone and under fire, was having a crise de nerfs. He was ‘beet-red from apoplexy’, and went missing. After an unspecified time, he returned, ‘pale and haggard’, and said he had felt ill, had gone down to the car, and had fallen face forward into the snow. The cold had revived him.
Yusupov came back; it was hopeless. Dmitri Pavlovich said they must abandon the plan and let the man go. But Purishkevich was resolute.
‘Never!’ I exclaimed. ‘Your Highness, don’t you understand that if he gets away today, he will have slipped away forever? Do you think that he will come to Yusupov’s tomorrow once he realises that he was tricked? Rasputin cannot,’ I continued in a half-whisper, stressing each word, ‘must not, and will not leave here alive… If poison doesn’t work… then we must show our hand. Either we must all go downstairs together, or you can leave it to me alone. I will lay him out, either with my Savage or I’ll smash his skull in with the brass knuckles. What do you say to that?’
They began to creep downstairs in single file behind Purishkevich with the knuckleduster. Lazovert had been given the truncheon, despite his protests that he was feeling too ill to use it. But Purishkevich had descended only a step or two when Dmitri Pavlovich told him to stop, and took Yusupov aside. The others returned to the study. When Dmitri Pavlovich and Yusupov came in, they had agreed that Yusupov would shoot Rasputin. ‘It will be quicker and simpler’, the Prince said, and took a Browning from his desk drawer and went downstairs.
Five minutes later they heard a shot, a cry, and a body hitting the floor. They rushed downstairs and plunged headlong through the basement door, and one of them got caught somehow on the light switch, plunging them into pitch darkness.
They groped for the switch and turned it on, only to find Rasputin dying on the bearskin rug and Yusupov standing over him, holding the revolver behind his back. There was no blood. ‘Evidently it was an internal haemorrhage – the bullet had entered Rasputin’s chest and had not come out.’
Dmitri Pavlovich foresaw a nasty stain, so they moved Rasputin onto the tiled part of the floor, ‘with his feet towards the window facing the street and his head toward the staircase from which we had come’. There was no blood on the rug. They stood around the body, overawed by the oddity of the situation and of the influence of the man who lay before them in his cream embroidered shirt, velvet trousers and magnificent boots. Then they trooped out, ‘turning out the light and leaving the door slightly ajar’.
Yusupov’s account, published nine years later than Purishkevich’s, is a little different. When he went upstairs for the first time, Dmitri Pavlovich, Sukhotin and Purishkevich rushed towards him with revolvers, asking what had happened. He told them that Rasputin was unharmed, and they decided to go downstairs together and strangle him. Once they had set off, Yusupov called them back to the study; he was not at all confident that Rasputin, who was no ordinary man, might not overcome them all. Instead, he persuaded them, with difficulty, that he personally should shoot him.
He took Dmitri’s revolver and went downstairs.
Rasputin was sitting at the table, looking a little off-colour. Yusupov sat down beside him. Rasputin asked for more wine and suggested a visit to the gypsies. Yusupov poured him some more. He was hiding the revolver behind his back. He got up and went over to the crystal crucifix, and stood admiring it.
In due course Rasputin followed him. He said he preferred the labyrinth cupboard, and began opening its little doors and drawers.
‘Grigori Efimovich, you had better look at the crucifix, and say a prayer before it.’
Rasputin looked at me in amazement, and with a trace of fear… He came right up to me, looking me full in the face, and he seemed to read in my glance something which he was not expecting. I realised the supreme moment was at hand. ‘God give me strength to end it all,’ I thought, and I slowly brought the revolver from behind my back. Rasputin was still standing motionless before me, his head turned to the right, and his eyes on the crucifix.
‘Where shall I shoot?’ I thought. ‘Through the temple or through the heart?’A streak of lightning seemed to run through my body. I fired. There was a roar as from a wild beast, and Rasputin fell heavily backwards on the bearskin rug.
The others rushed downstairs, plunging everything into darkness. When the light was switched on again, there lay Rasputin, twitching, with his eyes shut. ‘There was a small red spot on his silk blouse.’ He became still. The bullet had gone through the heart; he was dead. Dmitri Pavlovich removed the body from the rug, they switched off the light, left the room and locked the door, and went upstairs.
They now had to dispose of the victim. Lazovert as chauffeur, Dmitri Pavlovich, and Sukhotin wearing Rasputin’s coat, were to leave, as planned, in the general direction of Gorokhovaya Street to convince any pursuant Okhrana men that Rasputin had left for the night, but in fact to take some of Rasputin’s clothes for burning to the Warsaw Station. They would leave Purishkevich’s car there and proceed by cab to the Sergei Palace to pick up Dmitri Pavlovich’s car. In this they would return to the Moika to pick up the corpse.
They left;Yusupov and Purishkevich remained behind and exchanged views about the future of Russia, ‘now forever delivered from her evil genius’.
In the midst of our conversation I was suddenly seized by a vague feeling of alarm; I was overwhelmed by the desire to go downstairs to the dining-room. I went downstairs and unlocked the door.
Rasputin lay motionless, but on touching him I discovered that he was still warm. I felt his pulse. There was no beat.
From his wound drops of blood trickled, and fell on the granite floor.
On an impulse, Yusupov seized the corpse and shook it; it dropped back lifeless. He stood over it a little longer, and was about to leave when
my attention was arrested by a slight trembling of his left eyelid. I bent down over him, and attentively examined his face. It began to twitch convulsively. The movements became more and more pronounced. Suddenly the left eye half-opened. An instant later the right lid trembled and lifted. And both eyes – the eyes of Rasputin – fixed themselves on me with an expression of devilish hatred.
Yusupov was rooted to the spot. Rasputin leapt to his feet, roaring, and grabbed him ‘like red-hot iron’ by the shoulder and ‘Tried to grip me by the throat’, all the time repeating the Prince’s name in ‘a hoarse whisper’. But ‘with a supreme effort I tore myself free’.
Rasputin fell back to the ground. Yusupov dashed upstairs yelling for Purishkevich. He had given his own revolver to Dmitri Pavlovich, so he was unarmed, and as Purishkevich took his revolver from its holster they were alerted by a noise on the stairs. Yusupov dashed into the study, grabbed the truncheon, and returned to the staircase. Rasputin was clambering up to them on all fours, ‘bellowing and snorting like a wounded animal’. With a superhuman effort, he rose to his feet and lunged towards the door into the courtyard.
Yusupov was sure the door was locked and Dmitri Pavlovich and the others had the key. He was mistaken. Rasputin vanished through it into the darkness outside. Purishkevich raced after him and fired twice.
Yusupov thought: Rasputin will escape through the gate. So:
I rushed to the main entrance…
That is, he rushed through his study, out of his bachelor apartments, through the apartment that was being refurbished for himself and Irina and the baby; past Irina’s silver boudoir, with its exquisite silver alcove with a marble Diana on a plinth and vaulted ceiling painted with birds of Paradise; past his own sunken marble bathing pool and private sitting room with silk-upholstered art nouveau chairs and canapé; past his drawing room with its ornate plaster door-cases, white marble fireplace and Carelian birch parquet floor; past the Winter Garden with its ferns and tall, green marble pilasters; past the small ballroom with its pillars and an inlaid design on the parquet, and into the main house. Breathlessly, he raced along hundreds of feet of mahogany beneath gilded ceilings above which ran the great enfilade of drawing rooms on the first floor – the Red, the Green, the Blue, the large Rotunda, the small Rotunda – towards the picture galleries with their Canovas shrouded in dust sheets and their Rubens and Rembrandts mutely staring; past the Moorish room with its fretwork lanterns and glowing lacquerwork; past the unseeing eyes of a hundred onyx nymphs and naiads, towards the banqueting hall, the ballroom, the antique room, the Roman room and the theatre; on and on he ran, and through the colossal baroque marble foyer, and out of the great oak doors, and
…ran along the Moika quayside, towards the courtyard, hoping, in case Purishkevich had missed him, to stop Rasputin at the gates.
He heard two more shots. Rasputin fell near a snow-heap. Purishkevich stood over him for a minute and then turned and went back into the house.
Yusupov, ‘after looking around, and finding that the streets were empty, and that the shots had not attracted attention’, crossed to the snow-heap and saw that Rasputin was dead. ‘On his left temple gaped a large wound which, as I afterwards learned, was caused by Purishkevich’s heel’.
But people were approaching from two sides.
Purishkevich tells a less flattering story. Having seen the corpse and gone upstairs with the others, leaving the door ajar, he noted that it was now after three o’clock in the morning and they must hurry. Sukhotin put on Rasputin’s fur coat and galoshes, and carried his gloves. Lazovert once again dressed as the chauffeur. They left in Purishkevich’s car, with Dmitri Pavlovich, bound for the Warsaw Station, as planned, to burn Rasputin’s clothes in his train’s passenger coach, ‘where by then the stove should have been hot’.
Yusupov left Purishkevich in the study and went out of his own apartments, into the lobby, and into his parents’ apartments, empty at the time because they were out of town. In his absence, Purishkevich smoked a cigar and paced about. Then, compelled by an ‘inner force’, he picked up his Savage and put it into his trouser pocket, and
…under pressure of that same mysterious force, I left the study, whose hall door had been closed, and found myself in the corridor for no particular purpose.
I had hardly entered the hallway when I heard footsteps below near the staircase, then the sound of the door – which opened into the dining room where Rasputin lay – which the person entering evidently had not closed.
A moment later, he heard Yusupov’s wild cry below – ‘Purishkevich, shoot! Shoot! He’s alive! He’s escaping!’ – and Yusupov ‘rushed headlong, screaming’ upstairs, white as a sheet with bulging eyes, past Purishkevich and through the door to the main lobby and through to his parents’ apartments (where Purishkevich had thought he was all along). Purishkevich, momentarily dumbfounded, now heard
…rapid, heavy footsteps making their way to the door leading to the courtyard… There was not a moment to lose so, without losing my head, I pulled my Savage from my pocket, set it at feu, and ran down the stairs.
Outside, he spotted Rasputin, running swiftly on snow alongside the fence. Rasputin yelled ‘Felix, Felix, I will tell the Tsarina everything’ and, sure now that ‘he might, given his phenomenal vitality, get away… I rushed after him and fired’.
He missed. His second shot missed as well. Purishkevich was mad at himself, because he had allegedly done quite a lot of target practice at the Semionovski parade ground, ‘but today I was not able to lay out a man at twenty paces’. Rasputin was by the gate now. It was all a matter of concentration. Purishkevich bit his left hand as hard as he could, to focus his mind, and his third shot hit Rasputin in the back. He stopped,
…and this time, taking careful aim from the same spot, I fired for the fourth time. I apparently hit him in the head, for he keeled over face first in the snow, his head twitching. I ran up to him and kicked him in the temple with all my might. He lay there, his arms stretched far out in front of him, clawing at the snow as if he were trying to crawl forward on his belly. But he could no longer move and only gnashed and gritted his teeth.7
Purishkevich went back into the house the way he had come. Between his shots, he had noticed two men walking along the pavement outside; ‘the second of them’ had run away when he heard the shot.
Now he wondered what to do. ‘I am alone, Yusupov is out of his mind, and the servants don’t know what is going on’. And a corpse was in the yard. A passer-by might see it. And in particular –
Perhaps the servants had not heard Yusupov’s shots in this room, but it was impossible to imagine that two soldiers sitting in the main entrance hall could not have heard four loud shots from my Savage in the courtyard. I walked through the lobby to the main entrance.
‘Boys,’ I addressed them, ‘I killed…’ At these words they advanced on me in real earnest as if they wanted to seize me. ‘I killed,’ I repeated ‘Grishka Rasputin, the enemy of Russia and the Tsar.’At these last words, one of the soldiers became greatly agitated and rushed up to kiss me. The other said ‘Thank God, about time!’
He made them promise to say nothing. They said ‘we are Russians… we won’t betray you’.
Purishkevich found Yusupov throwing up in a bathroom of his parents’ apartments. He took him back to the study, while Yusupov mumbled ‘Felix, Felix’ over and over again. However, within moments of entering the study, the Prince broke free of Purishkevich, dashed to his desk, got the rubber truncheon Maklakov had given him, raced downstairs, berserk, and began to beat the corpse about the head with it.
It took two servants to drag Yusupov away, and there was blood everywhere. They ‘carried him upstairs in their arms’ all covered in blood, and sat him in the sofa, where he continued to roll his eyes, twitch, and repeat his own first name. Purishkevich told the servants to ‘find some cloth from somewhere’ and wrap the corpse and ‘bind the swaddled thing securely with the cord’. One of them went off to do this while the other one told him that the point-duty policeman had been enquiring about the shooting, and was insisting that he’d have to put in a report about it.
Ten minutes later, when Vlasuk came in, Purishkevich realised that he had made a mistake in calling him in because the policeman was ‘a veteran of the old school’. Perhaps he had hoped to bribe him. Anyway, he recognised Purishkevich at once, and, having had the case for murdering Rasputin put to him by the silver-tongued Duma deputy, was only too pleased to find out that the death had occurred. He promised not to say anything unless they made him swear an oath, in which case he would have to tell the truth. Purishkevich let him go, because ‘his district chief was Lt Grigoriev (who was, as far as I knew, a very decent fellow of good family)’. He decided ‘To leave the future to fate’.
Downstairs, the servant had wrapped the corpse, head and all, in what looked like a blue curtain and tied it with cord. Purishkevich told the servants to tidy Yusupov up and do the best they could with him.
The others returned. He told them what had happened. Hurriedly they dragged the corpse into the car ‘Together with the chains and the 2-pood weights I had brought to Yusupov’s apartment that night’. (Maybe Lazovert had loaded them into his car, and out of it at the Yusupov Palace later. Purishkevich didn’t take them with him on the tram to the Duma, or hang around in the snow before midnight with them.) Purishkevich deputed one of the soldiers to look after Yusupov.
Dmitri Pavlovich drove (he had several cars and was a keen motorist). Sukhotin sat next to him. Dr Lazovert sat in the back on the right and Purishkevich on the left ‘and squeezed in with the corpse was one of the soldiers, whom we had decided to take with us to help us throw the heavy body into the hole in the ice’.
They had already set off when Purishkevich saw Rasputin’s galoshes and fur coat in the back of the car. The redoubtable Mrs Purishkevich had refused to cut it up for burning, and when Dmitri Pavlovich protested, she had not been one bit intimidated. They had burned his ‘sleeveless coat’ and his gloves, but the rest would have to be drowned with him. They had made their phone call to the Villa Rhode.
After this they continued the journey in silence, enjoying the icy air blowing through the open windows, with Purishkevich silently daydreaming about the time when Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich had summoned him to hear about his, the Grand Duke’s, anxiety about Rasputin and how it had been expressed to the Tsar.
This unlikely digression over, Purishkevich found himself still in the car, the corpse soft ‘at my feet’, and outside the city on a bumpy road. At last, Dmitri Pavlovich drove onto the bridge and coasted to a halt. They saw a sentry-box on the far side before the headlamps were extinguished. (The photograph taken on Monday 19 December shows that there were gas-lights at intervals on either side of the Petrovski Bridge.) Purishkevich was first out of the car and the soldier and Dr Lazovert and Captain Sukhotin helped him swing the corpse and fling it into the ice-hole (a drop of about five metres, to judge from photographs). Dmitri Pavlovich stood guard by the car.
Then they remembered they’d forgotten the weights, and dropped them after it; and weighted the coat with chains and hoisted that over as well. Dr Lazovert found one of the galoshes and threw it off the bridge. Then they drove across the bridge, and saw the sentry asleep, and returned by a route that would take them past the St Peter and St Paul Fortress. It wasn’t an easy journey; the car kept stopping, the engine misfiring, and ‘each time… Dr Lazovert jumped out, fiddled with the spark plugs, cleaned them, and somehow or other got us going again’. Despite all this, on the way back Purishkevich found time belatedly to express his doubts about the method of disposal to Dmitri Pavlovich. He hoped the body would be found, he pointed out, because otherwise ‘false Rasputins’ would appear; they should have left it somewhere conspicuous.
The last repair stop was almost opposite the St Peter and St Paul Fortress itself. After this, they bowled along without mishap to the Sergei Palace. On alighting from the motor, they found the other galosh and some bloodstains on the car’s carpet. Dmitri Pavlovich’s servant, ‘who had met us on the steps and who struck me as having been initiated into the whole affair’, was ordered to burn the carpet and the galosh. Then Lazovert, Sukhotin and Purishkevich took their leave. They took two cabs to the Warsaw Station where their womenfolk awaited – including Mrs Sukhotin, who had also spent the night on the hospital train. It was after five o’clock in the morning when they got back, and all aboard the train were asleep, except for Mrs Purishkevich.
We return to the story from Yusupov’s point of view. We left him in the courtyard with Rasputin’s body, aware that people were approaching. They were his two servants from the house, and a policeman. He stood to block the policeman’s view of Rasputin as the officer asked what was going on. He explained that the noise had been mere drunken revelry, and led him to the gates. When he returned, his servants ‘stood there. Purishkevich had told them to carry the body into the house’. Rasputin was lying differently in the snow and Yusupov was terrified; thinking the man was still alive, he went indoors, calling for Purishkevich, and then into his dressing-room for water. Purishkevich came in and saved him from swooning, and took him to the study.
While they were there, Yusupov’s servant came in and said the policeman was back; shots had been heard at the district police station, and he was being asked to tell his superior officer what he knew on the phone.
It was up to Yusupov and Purishkevich to persuade the man to keep his mouth shut. They had him brought in. Out of the blue, Purishkevich excitedly declared that Rasputin had been murdered. ‘I was horror-stricken at this conversation, but it was quite impossible to intervene and put an end to it.’Afterwards, Feeling ill, Yusupov left the study with his truncheon and saw the body below on the landing, pouring with blood. Like Purishkevich, Yusupov was overtaken by an irresistible, inexplicable impulse: this time, to batter the corpse to smithereens.
At that moment all laws of God and man were set at naught. Purishkevich subsequently told me that it was such a harrowing sight that he would never be able to forget it.
After this, he fainted, and the others went off with the body.
When he came to, he told his servant to take a dog to one of the outbuildings and shoot it. ‘He then dragged its body over Rasputin’s trail, so as to frustrate any subsequent blood analysis, and threw it on the snow-mound where not so long before the dead starets had lain.’
Yusupov gathered his servants together and swore them to silence, and set off at around five o’clock in the morning for Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich’s, where Fyodor, his young brother-in-law, was waiting up for him. He said he would explain everything in the morning; and ‘I went to bed and fell into a deep sleep’.
We therefore have two ‘first-hand’ accounts of the night in question; two accounts which contain a substantial number of major and important inconsistencies, to such a degree that it is impossible to reconcile the two accounts. For example:
Yusupov says that Dmitri Pavlovich and the other three conspirators arrived together at the palace,8 while Purishkevich says that he and Lazovert arrived together – Dmitri Pavlovich was already there.9
Yusupov says that the chocolate cream cakes were poisoned,10 while Purishkevich says the pink ones were.11
Yusupov says he played the guitar for Rasputin,12 but Purishkevich makes no reference to this at all.
Yusupov says he left Rasputin only once in order to go upstairs to the study,13 while Purishkevich says he came up to three times.14
After Rasputin had taken several glasses of wine and eaten some of the cakes, Yusupov says he had an ‘irritated throat’,15 while Purishkevich says there was ‘constant belching and hypersalivation’.16
Purishkevich says that, while in the study, Lazovert began feeling unwell and went downstairs to go outside. When he returned to the study he looked very ill and told the others that although he had fainted outside, the cold snow had revived him.17 Yusupov makes no mention of Lazovert coming down the stairs or returning afterwards.
Yusupov says that when he returned to his fellow conspirators in the study he was handed a gun by Dmitri Pavlovich,18 while Purishkevich says that Yusupov returned to the room and took his own ‘small Browning’ from the desk drawer in the study.19 It should also be recalled that, in his June 1917 version of the story, Yusupov states that he was given the gun by Purishkevich.
After Yusupov had shot Rasputin and the others had gone down to see the body, Yusupov says that he turned off the electric light and locked the dining room door.20 Purishkevich says that they switched the light off but left the door open.21
Purishkevich says that after he shot Rasputin in the courtyard he stood by the body for several minutes – Yusupov was not there.22 In Yusupov’s account he is standing there with Purishkevich.23
Yusupov was to deviate further from his 1927 account when he gave evidence, under oath, in two libel cases he initiated in 1934 and 1965. In the 1934 trial at the High Court in London, he claimed that Rasputin was still alive when he beat him with the truncheon. In his 1927 book, this happened after Rasputin was dead. In 1965, in a similar case in New York State Supreme Court, Yusupov claimed that not only had he fired the first shot, but had also fired the second shot, which in the book he attributes to Purishkevich.24
In addition to the conflicting written accounts of Yusupov and Purishkevich, the 1923 account of Dr Stanislaus Lazovert, ‘The Assassination of Rasputin’, adds further seeds of doubt and incongruence:
When Yusupov and Lazovert went to Rasputin’s apartment to collect him in the car, Lazovert says that ‘he (Rasputin) admitted me in person’ and also asserts that ‘I persuaded the black devil to accompany me to the home of Prince Yusupov’.25 In Yusupov’s account, Lazovert stays in the car while Yusupov himself goes into the apartment alone.26
Back at the Yusupov Palace, in the downstairs dining room, Lazovert claims Rasputin spoke about plots he had been involved in and stated that the Germans will soon be in Petrograd.27 None of this features in either the Yusupov or Purishkevich accounts.
Lazovert gives the impression that he is in the dining room when Rasputin consumes the poisoned cakes and wine: ‘after a time [Rasputin] rose and walked to the door. We were afraid that our work had been in vain. Suddenly… someone shot at him… we left the room to let him die’. In the other accounts, Lazovert is upstairs and only comes down to examine Rasputin’s body and declare him dead.28
Lazovert relates that, later, Purishkevich followed Rasputin ‘into the gardens’ and fired ‘Two shots swiftly into his retreating figure’.29 Purishkevich himself refers to firing four shots.30
What Yusupov, Purishkevich and Lazovert do have in common is that their recollections fall into the general pattern of a good many post-crime accounts. After a crime is committed, the participants will often agree to tell the same story. However, while the basic narrative of their accounts will be very similar, it is in the fine detail that cracks begin to appear, for it is in the minutiae that they have not been able to collaborate or collude – it is here that the story starts to come apart at the seams.
All three accounts are equally irrational and self-serving. Apart from contradicting each other, they also contradict the evidence of witnesses and the evidence of the autopsy. Who and what should we believe? By a process of eliminating the most unlikely, implausible and impossible accounts and by applying the conclusions of new forensic evidence and testimony, we can at last begin to reconstruct the most likely solution to this nine-decade mystery.