The Rasputin File (29 page)

The Devotees In The Police Reports

Day after day the police recorded his life. And described the people in his circle. We have already come across a number of them. For example, Zinaida Manshtedt (or Manchtet), thirty-nine, the wife of a collegiate secretary. Five years earlier, in 1907, she had stayed in Rasputin’s house in Pokrovskoe and had been interrogated by the Tobolsk Theological Consistory. Three years later, in 1910, this little blonde would go to Pokrovskoe with the royal nurse, Vishnyakova, who would see her on the train ‘lying with the elder in her undergarments’.

But ‘Yulia Alexandrovna von Dehn, the wife of Senior Captain Karl von Dehn’, as she is identified by the police, had only recently made Rasputin’s acquaintance. This very pretty young woman, a distant relative of Vyrubova’s, had now become the second close friend of the tsarina, who called her Lili. Lili’s husband was against her meeting the elder. But to become friends with the tsarina and not make the acquaintance of Our Friend was, of course, impossible. And when her son became ill, Lili called Rasputin.

In 1917 Lili was summoned before the Extraordinary Commission, where she gave the testimony that has survived in the File:

He arrived together with Lokhtina …His eyes were striking. Not only was their gaze penetrating but their placement was unusual: they were set deep within their sockets and their whites were somehow raised. The first thing I experienced when he came in was fear … It passed as soon as he started to talk to me in a very simple way. I took him to the nursery where my ailing son was asleep. Rasputin prayed over the sleeping child and then
started shaking him, trying to wake him up. I got scared, since…I was afraid that the appearance of someone unknown might startle him. But, to my amazement, he…woke up saying ‘uncle’ and reached out to Rasputin. Rasputin held him in his arms a rather long time, and petted and stroked him, and talked to him the way one talks to children, and then laid him back down on the bed … The day after his visit the boy started to get better. That made an impression on me…I started going to see him two or three times a week, either at his place or at the Golovins’ or Sazonovs’.

Frequently glimpsed in the agents’ summaries for 1912 is the ‘peasant woman from the Mogilyov Province, Gorodets District, Akilina Nikitichna Laptinskaya’, one of the principal characters in Rasputin’s story.

This very stout but still young high-bosomed woman had in 1907 stayed in Pokrovskoe along with the other ‘ladies’, and had been investigated by the Tobolsk Theological Consistory along with Lokhtina and Manshtedt. Akilina Laptinskaya testified at the time that she had been introduced to Rasputin at Olga Lokhtina’s in 1905. And that as a nurse she had helped Lokhtina in what was then a time of illness.

But Rasputin had most probably known her even earlier.

Maria Golovina testifies in the File that ‘Akilina Nikitichna Laptinskaya …used to live at the Verkhoturye Monastery…but then after some unpleasantness there she left to take part in the Japanese war as a nurse.’ The Verkhoturye Monastery was a special monastery in Rasputin’s life, the place where his transformation began. And most probably this woman, whom he trusted completely and almost blindly, entered his life during one of his visits to the monastery. And in the period when Rasputin was subject to drunkenness, Akilina would help him tame his flesh. And through the uncurtained windows of the kitchen the police agents would observe curious scenes involving the corpulent Akilina and Rasputin.

In 1912 Akilina left her former occupation of sister of mercy and entered service as a housekeeper in a private home. As it is stated in a Department of Police account, she served ‘as housekeeper in the home of Nikolai Shepovalnikov, a medical doctor and the headmaster of a private preparatory school’. She was by then already becoming one of the main figures in Rasputin’s circle. In the hierarchy of Rasputin’s devotees, Laptinskaya was a close second to Vyrubova, Rasputin having begun to avoid the crazy and now ageing Lokhtina.

Akilina would soon embark on an extraordinary career.

‘He would go on drives around the city in the Golovins’ brougham or in motor taxis or, less often, in horse cabs hired by his devotees. He would
appear all day long with one of the mentioned women (with Yu. Dehn, Z. Manchtet, or A. Laptinskaya … or with Maria Golovina or Sazonova),’ the agents reported. But, finally, when he was left alone…

A Secret, Mysterious Life

From the testimony of the external surveillance agents: ‘He rarely appeared outside alone … Whenever that happened, he would go off to a street where there were prostitutes, select one of them, and go to a hotel or a bathhouse.’

‘Passing time with highly placed ladies has not ended his visits to prostitutes.’

‘He hired a prostitute…on Haymarket Square.’

‘He visited Anokhina’s apartment with a woman…Anokhina, Feodosia rents her apartment for brief encounters.’

‘Rasputin, walking down various streets, would accost women with vile suggestions, which the women would respond to with threats and sometimes would even spit on him.’

‘He went to the Nevsky, hired the prostitute Petrova, and went to a bathhouse with her.’

Bathhouses very often figure in this unending pursuit of the female body. The baths in Pokrovskoe to which he had taken the ‘little ladies’, the baths in Petersburg to which he now took the ‘little ladies’ and prostitutes.

‘The Russian visited the … family baths with Sazonov’s wife (forty-three).’

‘He visited the family baths on Konyushenny with a prostitute hired near Politseisky Bridge.’

‘He went with the prostitute Anna Petrova to the same place.’

Sometimes Rasputin would hire prostitutes several times in the course of a single day. This indefatigability was scrupulously emphasized by the agents: ‘he visited the baths
twice
with an unidentified prostitute.’

‘From the prostitutes Botvinina and Kozlova…he went to the Golovins’, left there around two o’clock, and
again
hired a prostitute and went to the baths with her.’

Noted along with this is the strange haste of his visits to the prostitutes. ‘He was at the Ivanovsk Monastery with Zinaida Manchtet, the wife of a collegiate secretary, and then he went to Goncharnaya, met a prostitute, and went with her to a hotel, where he stayed for twenty minutes.’

On another occasion, again after seeing Zinaida Manshtedt, where he
spent an hour and a half, ‘the Russian, with an unknown woman, possibly a prostitute, visited the house [the address is given], and came out again twenty minutes later.’

‘Maria Sazonova remained with him for two hours … after which he hired a prostitute and went with her to her apartment, from which he soon emerged again.’

Such were the features of that rather strange sex life led by Rasputin as caught by the
external
surveillance agents.

Only once did the tireless agents succeed in establishing just what went on
inside
, that is, behind the doors of the apartments of the daughters of joy. And the result was most mysterious. After approaching a prostitute, ‘Rasputin bought her two bottles of beer, but did not drink himself … asked her to undress, looked at her body, and left.’

We shall take note of that agent’s testimony.

And another observation, also useful for subsequent reflection: ‘The Russian, while walking alone, talks to himself and waves his arms and slaps himself on the body, thereby attracting the attention of passers-by.’

He conducted that strange conversation with himself after leaving each prostitute.

‘A Truth Beyond Our Comprehension’

Maria Golovina had been corresponding all these years with her ‘beloved brother’ Felix Yusupov. Felix was then living in England at Oxford University, where the young Anglophile was receiving his education. Although, as Yusupov himself accurately put it, ‘studying was never my strength’. He spent much of his time at Oxford amusing himself. He found brilliant company in such Oxford students of the day as the future regent of Yugoslavia, Prince Karageorgievich, King Manuel of Portugal, a Greek prince, and various other titled young gentlemen. And that merry company read in amazement in the English newspapers about the scabrous adventures of the ‘medieval elder’ so beloved of the Russian court.

So Golovina soon received a mocking letter from Felix in which he recalled their meeting with Rasputin and wondered why the newspapers were all devoting so much attention to holy Grigory’s indecent behaviour.

Felix kept Maria’s enigmatic and lofty reply in his archive.

14 February 1912. In whatever century people who reveal another life have appeared, they have always been hunted down and persecuted, like all who have followed in Christ’s footsteps. You know and have seen him too little
to understand his personality and the power that rules him, but I have known him for two years now and am certain that he bears God’s Cross and suffers for a truth beyond our comprehension. And if you have any familiarity with occultism, then you know that everything great is hidden beneath a kind of shell that for the profane closes the way to the truth.

In this way did she try to give him an inkling of a truth that was comprehensible only to initiates.

At the time rumours were circulating in society about the young Prince Yusupov’s imminent return in connection with an impending and brilliant marriage. And Maria was beginning to dream of a meeting between her ‘brother Felix’ and Father Grigory.

The Magnificent Couple

The Crimea. The last powerful Tartar khanate had held dominion there, and then the divine peninsula had been ruled by the Yusupovs’ ancestors. Now along the sea there stretched a band of golden sand. And above the sea stood the royal family’s white palace of Livadia and the palaces of the grand dukes and the Crimean palace of the Yusupov family.

All through 1911 and the beginning of 1912 Felix had been receiving letters in Oxford from his mother, who had remained in the (for her) therapeutic climate of the Crimea. The ‘neighbours’ (as the royal family is referred to in those letters) had not forgotten the Yusupovs.

‘31 May 1911. Our neighbours have moved back to Petersburg. On the day of their departure I received a touching letter and a bouquet of lilies in farewell.’

And on her name-day Felix’s mother received an unexpected gift from the ‘neighbours’.

‘14 October 1911. Suddenly Alexei [a servant] ceremoniously enters and announces, “The Sovereign Emperor!” I thought my guests were going to have conniptions…I was terribly touched by that attention and had not expected such a present on my name-day … The empress continues to feel unwell and does not go out.’

Yes, Alix had not come to see her. And the reason was not illness. Rather it was Zinaida Yusupova’s close friendship with Elizaveta Fyodorovna and her attitude toward Our Friend.

But the tsar, grand duchesses and Alexei did come to see her. And not just once. And Zinaida joyfully wrote about it to Felix. For those visits were
proof that what had been planned would soon take place. This was a wedding that would make the Yusupovs relatives of the royal family. Irina, the daughter of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich (Sandro), and the tsar’s sister Xenia, had fallen in love with Felix. And Zinaida had in her son’s absence made great efforts to bring the brilliant marriage about.

Zinaida, as Sandro wrote in his memoirs, ‘was the mad passion of my early youth’. And he had not forgotten how ‘his heart had ached’ a mere nine years before at the ‘historical’ balls, when dressed in a golden boyar’s kirtle he had danced ‘all the dances’ with the beauty. And Zinaida was aware of her power over Sandro.

‘15 November. I am going to tea at Ai-Tudor [Sandro’s estate],’ Zinaida wrote. ‘Irina was astonishingly beautiful.’ (A valuable compliment coming from her.) ‘[Her parents] asked about you, when you would be graduating from Oxford.’

This was a summons. And Felix got ready to return to Russia.

The ‘Cunning Chinaman’s’ Intrigue

And so, warned by his patient Kurlov of the surveillance of the peasant, Badmaev tried not to ‘shine’ in the police reports. He met Rasputin at that time at the apartments of third parties. This was not difficult, since Badmaev doctored all of Petersburg.

‘He produced a good impression on me of an intelligent, though rather simple peasant,’ Badmaev testified in the File. ‘That barely literate peasant had a good knowledge of Holy Scripture.’

‘Intelligent and interesting.’

‘A simple peasant, uneducated, but understands things better than the educated do.’

In this delighted way did Badmaev speak of Rasputin. But later, after he and Badmaev had become close friends, Rasputin would announce with a grin, ‘The Chinaman could deceive even the devil himself.’

It was then, at the start of his friendship with Rasputin, that Badmaev passed on to the Duma Iliodor’s anti-Rasputin pamphlet ‘Grishka’.

The Mystery Of The Tsarina’s Letter

Printed in ‘Grishka’, which would later serve as the basis of Iliodor’s famous book
A Holy Devil
, were the letters he had purloined from Rasputin, the letters from the tsarina and the grand duchesses. If the letters from the grand
duchesses were of no particular interest, the letter from Alix was explosive.

‘My beloved and unforgettable teacher, saviour, and mentor,’ the letter began.

How wearisome it is for me without you …I am calm in my soul, I am able to rest, only when you, teacher, are sitting next to me, and I am kissing your hands and resting my head on your blessed shoulders. Oh, how easy is it for me then. I wish only one thing then: to fall asleep, to fall asleep forever on your shoulders, in your embrace. Oh, what happiness it is even to feel your presence near me. Where are you? Where have you flown? It is so hard, and what anguish there is in my heart … Only do not, my beloved mentor, tell Anya about my sufferings without you. Anya is kind, she is good, she loves me, but do not reveal my sorrow to her. Will you soon be back by my side? Come back soon. I wait for you and am in torment without you. I entreat your holy blessing and kiss your blessed hands. She who loves you for ever, M[ama].