The Rasputin File (68 page)

And he decided to ask again for the necessary assurances.

From the external surveillance log: ‘21 January. Rasputin went with Gayer to Knirsha’s, and from there he went alone to Orlova’s, where Manuilov and B. V. Stürmer were waiting.’ After the merry drinking bout at Knirsha’s, the peasant went off to a meeting with the new prime minister.

This time, a romantic rather than a sinister place had been selected for the meeting. A love nest — the apartment of Manasevich’s unfortunate Lerma-Orlova.

From Manasevich’s interrogation by the Extraordinary Commission: ‘You were present at the meeting?’ ‘No, I was in a different room.’

‘And the person to whom the apartment belonged?’

‘No, she wasn’t there … As they [Rasputin and Stürmer] were saying goodbye, they exchanged kisses. I was in the dining room at the time.’

Those kisses seemed to confirm the results of the conversation. And Manasevich, continuing to play his favourite duplicitous role, went to Khvostov to tell him the details of the secret meeting. He was fond of setting people against each other.

From Khvostov’s testimony: ‘Manasevich arrived … and told me that the meeting had led to a good result, and that Rasputin was prepared to give him his support with the tsars … Stürmer promised, for his part, to consult with Rasputin on those matters having importance for the throne, and he asked to believe that Rasputin would regard him as a friend. After which they exchanged kisses.’

So the peasant tsar could then say, ‘I hold Russia in the palm of my hand.’

A Comedy At The Abbey

Minister Khvostov began to take vengeance. He inflicted his first blow on Pitirim. He decided to bring into the open what the metropolitan had made such an effort to hide — his close friendship with Rasputin. To that end Khvostov contrived to play out a whole theatrical scene. He summoned Komissarov, and told him to dress in civilian clothes and to take Rasputin to see Pitirim. The colonel set off.

‘In carrying out my instructions,’ Komissarov testified, ‘I discovered that
Rasputin was not at home but at Tsarskoe Selo. He arrived approximately an hour later accompanied by his family, Pitirim’s secretary, Osipenko, and Akilina [Laptinskaya]… I discreetly informed Rasputin that Pitirim and Khvostov were expecting us at the abbey. After which Rasputin and I immediately left.’ Sensing something untoward, ‘Osipenko and Akilina started making a fuss about the fact that I was taking Rasputin away and … ran after our cab for a while, yelling to Rasputin, “Where are you going, he’s leading you off somewhere!”’

Khvostov had by then already gone to the abbey and was sitting in Pitirim’s quarters. He was quietly conversing with the metropolitan when the latter was privately informed of Rasputin’s arrival.

From Komissarov’s testimony: ‘Pitirim, who had been keeping his close friendship with Rasputin a secret, told Khvostov that some Georgian had arrived whom he needed to speak to. And he came out to us. Pitirim and Rasputin kissed. After which Rasputin introduced me, identifying me as “Khvostov’s general”. You can imagine the hierarch’s chagrin! Pitirim then sombrely asked, “Why aren’t you in uniform?”‘ Komissarov answered that he only wore his uniform at the ministry. ‘Pitirim had no choice but to invite us into the room where Khvostov was sitting.’

All Petrograd was talking about the practical joke. The metropolitan’s prestige was destroyed. Vyrubova and the empress were seething with anger. As for Rasputin, he was pleased. He didn’t like the fact that the metropolitan was ashamed of him; it was degrading to the peasant. On the other hand, he realized that Khvostov, whom he couldn’t stand, was now finished! ‘Mama’ would never forgive him!

Having revenged himself on Pitirim, Khvostov decided to strike a blow against the peasant. The maddened minister planned to expel him from the palace. He believed that he would succeed where Stolypin himself had failed! And he devised another theatrical performance. He would ‘draw Rasputin into a massive fist fight and carry it to the point of an immense scandal with a police report and publicity’. So that Tsarskoe Selo ‘would be forced to agree to his removal’. And then Khvostov, even if driven from the post of minister, would be able to return to the Duma in triumph as the man who had toppled Rasputin.

The Minister’s Theatre: ‘Rasputin’s Savage Beating’

To carry out his plan Khvostov decided to employ Manasevich! He had such trust in him! Manasevich was given money from Department of Police funds ‘to arrange a merry soirée at the home of his friend, the reporter Mikhail Snarsky’. At the end of the soirée, Snarsky was supposed to delay Rasputin. And then, after the other guests had dispersed, to let him out onto the street alone. And then Department of Police agents in disguise were supposed to fall on Rasputin and take him away to a car. And savagely beat him. So that he would remember his place! And then they would announce that it had all been the result of a drunken fist fight provoked by Rasputin himself. Khvostov arrived incognito to watch the beating. The disguised agents were in place and waiting in a car by Snarsky’s building. But for some reason the windows of Snarsky’s apartment were strangely dark. While the incognito Khvostov impatiently walked about in the frost waiting for the peasant to appear, Rasputin himself was merrily carousing along with Manasevich and Snarsky in a private room in the Palace Theatre. They were drinking up the money received to arrange for Rasputin’s beating! There was nothing Khvostov could say. He had been humiliated and made ridiculous. And that he could not forgive. It was then, according to Komissarov’s testimony, that Khvostov said to him for the first time, ‘Rasputin must be killed.’

The Minister’s New Show: ‘The Peasant’s Murder

Having accepted the idea of murder, Khvostov naturally talked things over with Beletsky. From Beletsky’s testimony: ‘He indicated that both of us were burdened by the meetings with Rasputin and the constant fear of having our closeness to him exposed as a result of tactlessness on Rasputin’s part … And, finally, getting rid of Rasputin would clear the atmosphere around the throne and appease society and the Duma.’ And, Khvostov supposed, killing Rasputin ‘would not be hard’. And justifying why they had failed to keep track of him would be even easier ‘by referring to the all the departures made by Rasputin that had been hidden from the agents’. And Beletsky said that he was in agreement. It was decided to entrust the murder to ‘our colonel’, that is, Komissarov.

Beletsky was of course lying when he said he agreed. As he later explained
to the Extraordinary Commission, he ‘had no faith in its success, having already been convinced of Rasputin’s cunning and intuition and of Khvostov’s incompetence in organizing secret police actions’. Moreover, ‘after taking the sovereign’s mystical personality into account, and remembering the many holy fools…before Rasputin’, he asked himself what would happen after Rasputin’s removal. And the answer was, ‘the appearance in the palace of a strange new person in the spirit of Misha Kozelsky’. At least Rasputin was someone he knew how to work with.

Crucial, although he did not mention it in his testimony, was the fact that he had decided to dupe Khvostov, to let him organize the murder and then prevent it, and hand ‘Fat Belly’ over to the tsars. He hoped they would then understand in Tsarskoe Selo that they would find no better minister of internal affairs than himself.

A Private Fund For Murder

Beletsky initiated his friend Komissarov into the intrigue. And when Khvostov summoned the colonel and set out the assignment, Komissarov agreed to it, but only after portraying a certain hesitation for the sake of plausibility. And thereupon something astonishing happened. Seeing Komissarov’s doubts, Khvostov immediately promised him money. More than that, he showed the money to him. And the sum was a truly large one. ‘He promised me 100,000 and showed me two packets of 50,000 each,’ Komissarov recalled. ‘And then he increased the amount — to 200,000.’ Komissarov was amazed, because Khvostov could not have taken such a sum from the ministry budget. Beletsky confirms this and adds that Khvostov had told him that he ‘had for the affair a significant private allocation, so that one did not need stint on the money’. Beletsky understood that Khvostov’s proposal to murder Rasputin was backed by very powerful forces.

Khvostov had meanwhile begun to propose plans for the murder. Beletsky’s task for the time being was ‘to criticize those plans, postponing their execution’. Or simply to demolish them. Finally, Khvostov suggested sending a case of poisoned Madeira as if from the banker Rubinstein. Beletsky immediately ‘sent Komissarov…to get poisons’. Komissarov brought Khvostov a number of little bottles and explained how each one worked. For the sake of appearance, he experimented on one of Rasputin’s cats. In fact, the bottles were medicine bottles and their contents harmless: Komissarov had merely copied out the names of different poisons from a pharmacology textbook.

But Beletsky sensed that even the inexperienced Khvostov was beginning to guess at his game.

A Provocation

The time had come to scuttle Khvostov and swim to the top. Beletsky devised a scene for the finale in the classic spirit of the Department of Police. After his flight from Russia, the monk Iliodor had moved to Norway, from which he was beginning to threaten publication of his book
A Holy Devil
and that it would include facsimiles of the letters from the tsarina and her daughters that were still in his possession. Naturally Khvostov was forced to conduct negotiations with the monk about purchasing the documents. Iliodor asked for an unconscionably large sum. And an exhausting effort had to be made to persuade him. It was then, apparently, that a new idea occurred to Khvostov. Under the pretext of buying Iliodor’s book-in-progress about Rasputin, he would send an agent to Norway to see him. The agent would give Iliodor money and reach an agreement with him about organizing through his supporters in Russia what Iliodor had failed to achieve in 1914 — Rasputin’s murder.

Beletsky immediately recommended to Khvostov one of his own people for the job, a certain Boris Rzhevsky.

The provocation began. The naive Khvostov gave Rzhevsky instructions and the documents. Rzhevsky then played everything out according to Beletsky’s script. After he had got on the train and was on his way, he provoked a noisy row. When his passport was demanded, he threatened the officer, shouting about his closeness to Minister Khvostov. Rzhevsky was arrested. And in his very first interrogation he testified that he had been sent by Khvostov to negotiate with Iliodor about Rasputin’s murder.

Simultaneously, Beletsky informed Iliodor through his agents that important people would be proposing Rasputin’s murder to him, and that an agent was already on his way from Khvostov to see him. Beletsky had calculated precisely. Iliodor, who was in very difficult straits in Norway (he was employed as a factory worker), realized that an opportunity was at hand to be reconciled with Rasputin and to return to Russia.

He immediately sent warning telegrams to Vyrubova and Rasputin.

From Vyrubova’s testimony in the File:

In the telegram received by Rasputin from Iliodor, it was said that lofty personages were readying an attempt on his life … and in the telegram received by me, he [Iliodor] informed me that his wife would be coming to see me and that she would have documents … that Khvostov was planning Rasputin’s murder … A poor, modestly dressed woman then turned up, who began showing me … telegrams from Khvostov in which
he offered her husband 60,000 for the murder … I think the telegrams were signed. The Sovereign instructed Stürmer to investigate the matter.

Who Would Betray First?

Still not realizing who was behind the business with Rzhevsky, Khvostov rushed to Beletsky to discuss what he should do. Beletsky suggested to him a decisive step, or, more accurately, political suicide: to go to the tsar and show him the external surveillance log on Rasputin. And to lay out everything unambiguously. Khvostov agreed. With what impatience did Beletsky await his return!

According to Beletsky, when he came back, Khvostov said that the tsar took his report and went to the tsarina’s chambers. Khvostov heard their conversation in excited tones. Then the tsar returned and, keeping the report, dryly bade him farewell. When after telling his story Khvostov stepped out of his office, Beletsky, as befitted the chief of the secret police, was not too fastidious to inspect the contents of Khvostov’s briefcase. In it he found both copies of the report on Rasputin. And he understood what he had suspected all along: that Khvostov hadn’t reported anything about Rasputin to the sovereign. In fact, Beletsky soon learned that instead of making a report on Rasputin, Khvostov had given the tsar one about Beletsky. After implicating Beletsky in the conspiracy to murder Rasputin, Khvostov had proposed sending him to the provinces as a governor-general. Thus each had betrayed the other. Beletsky struck another blow in reply. Simanovich gave a statement to the Department of Police that a certain engineer named Heine had come to him and declared that Rzhevsky, on Khvostov’s orders, was organizing an attempt on Rasputin’s life. Khvostov grasped it all, but it was too late.

From Vyrubova’s testimony: ‘A terribly agitated Khvostov came to see me. He wept and said that the whole story was a blackmail arranged by Beletsky to dislodge him from his post … that none of it was true, that it was a Yid provocation [a reference to Simanovich’s statement], and he asked me to inform Their Majesties about it. I carried out his request but received in answer that even if he had not been at fault in the story, he was at fault for having had anything to do with a type like Rzhevsky.’

Such were the circumstances surrounding the opening of the Duma session that the tsar had come to visit! As the peasant had proposed he do! An investigator of the Extraordinary Commission would subsequently ask Prime Minister Stürmer, ‘You recall, do you not, that the former emperor
was present on 9 February 1916, for the prayer on the occasion of the opening of the Duma? Is it your knowledge that it was Rasputin who had insisted that the tsar go there, that it was he who had told the tsar to visit the Duma?’ The idea was a brilliant one. Despite the scandal with Khvostov, the tsar’s coming at such a time had calmed the Duma.