The Rasputin File (83 page)

The Grand Duke And The Murder

But, as Yusupov and Purishkevich claimed, the grand duke was not in the Yusupov palace at the time of the murder. He had gone off on that strange, abortive errand of incinerating Rasputin’s fur coat. And he had returned by automobile only after Rasputin had been killed.

So they claimed. But both were lying. And it is easy to prove it.

According to the testimony of the two constables, Vlasyuk and Efimov, who after the shots were fired began to watch the Yusupov palace, they did not see any automobile
go up
to the house after the shots. Although not to see such a rare thing as an automobile on an absolutely empty street would have been impossible.

The only thing they noticed was an automobile
leaving
the house after the shots (the one in which Rasputin’s corpse was carried away). And we will find the same incident (based on the constables’ words) described in numerous memoirs. As General Globachyov, the chief of the security branch, wrote in a coded telegram of 18 December, ‘several shots rang out, a human cry was heard, and later a car drove away.’

And so, after the murder no automobile whatever came to the palace. That means that the grand duke could not have returned to the house. But nevertheless he was there.

How so? Because he had never left. He had been in the palace the whole time. And he was there at the moment Rasputin was murdered. And he left along with the rest of them only after the murder.

And so, the grand duke was in the palace at the time of the murder. And it was for that reason that Purishkevich and Yusupov were obliged to make up the ludicrous story about Dmitry and the burning of the fur coat. So what actually did happen?

The Instant Of Murder (A Reconstruction)

The vestiges of truth, in my view, are to be found in Felix’s first testimony given immediately after the murder. After Felix shot Rasputin with Dmitry’s pistol, the grand duke, Felix says, took back the gun. After leaving the ‘dead
Rasputin’ in the basement, they celebrated the event upstairs, waiting for the depths of night when they could take the body away. But first it was necessary to get the two women who were in the house out of it. And as Felix truthfully stated to Minister of Justice Makarov, ‘Around 2–2:30 a.m. the two ladies were ready to go home, and Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich left with them.’

The grand duke had apparently been about to take them home in his automobile when the monstrous scene of Rasputin’s ‘resuscitation’ took place after Felix had gone down to the basement. Mad with fear, Felix had rushed upstairs shouting, ‘Shoot! He’s getting away!’

Purishkevich was by himself in the study. He grabbed his heavy Savage revolver and ran after Rasputin. Bounding into the courtyard, Purishkevich shot twice and missed. But Dmitry was already in the courtyard with the ladies. The grand duke shot twice with his Browning. The first shot brought Rasputin to a halt; the second one, in the back of the head, laid him out on the wet snow. And one of the ladies cried out in terror. Hence the woman’s cry heard by Constable Efimov. The ladies’ departure naturally had to be postponed, and Rasputin’s body was quickly dragged out of the courtyard. Hearing the shots, Felix had then got a grip on himself and summoned the butler to go with him into the courtyard, since he realized that the shots would alarm the constables. And it would be necessary to explain. And he wanted the butler to do that. It was in fact then that Constable Vlasyuk appeared at the palace. Felix’s calm deceived the constable. But Felix paid a steep price for that calm. And the ugly scene of Felix beating the dying peasant took place right after Vlasyuk left. But it began to seem to the murderers that the constable had suspected something. And they presumably conferred. One must keep in mind that they were drunk. And then the crazy idea occurred to Purishkevich, the chief expert among those present on the national mood, to tell the whole truth to the constable. Purishkevich was convinced that he, like the rest of the country, would have to hate Rasputin! That truth was the undoing of the whole business.

After giving explanations to the constable, they quickly took Rasputin’s body away. Or, more accurately, they took the still-alive Rasputin away. They had never tried to kill a defenceless person before. So they had not shot him again ‘to make sure’. And Rasputin was still breathing. The women presumably left the palace later that morning.

But why had it been necessary for Purishkevich (and then Yusupov) to make up the story that it was Purishkevich who had killed Rasputin? The answer is, in order to have the right to say (and to say so several times, so that willy-nilly it looked suspicious) that ‘the hands of the royal youth’ had not
been ‘stained with …blood’. And the point here was not just that it was not fitting for a grand duke to be a murderer. There was also a political factor. For in the event of a coup, Dmitry, a young military man, a favourite of the Guards, and an organizer of the deliverance from the Rasputin ignominy (but not the murderer himself) would be a realistic pretender to the throne. But as the peasant’s murderer, he would have a much harder time becoming tsar. And so that it would be easier for the grand duke to lie, they made him swear to repeat their story — ‘there is no blood on my hands.’ Those words, if taken literally, were of course the truth. The blood was only on the hands of those who had actually dealt with the peasant’s bloody corpse.

By dawn on 18 December, Purishkevich’s train was already a good distance from Petrograd. And having stayed awake all night, he wrote, ‘It is still dark, but I sense that daylight is coming. I cannot sleep. I am thinking of the future … of that great land … I call Motherland.’

A little over two months remained until the revolution.

On 18 December the inquiry continued in anticipation of the tsar’s arrival in Petrograd.

Alix’s telegram to Nicky on 18 December: ‘In your name I order Dmitry forbidden to leave his house till yr. return. Dmitry wanted to see me today, but I refused. Mainly he is implicated. The body still not found.’

Nicky’s telegram to Alix of 18 December: ‘I have only just read your letter. Am horrified and shaken. In prayers and thoughts I am with you. Am arriving tomorrow at 5 o’clock.’

However, Olga, Grand Duke Pavel Alexandrovich’s wife, recorded the account of her husband who had just returned from Headquarters: ‘He drank tea with the sovereign and was struck by the expression of serenity and bliss on his face. For the first time in a long time, the tsar was in an animated state …Loving his wife too much to go against her wishes, the sovereign was happy that fate had delivered him from the necessity of taking action on his own.’ No, Nicky, as always, had merely been reticent about his feelings. ‘Horrified and shaken’ — that was his true attitude. ‘Monsters’ is what he would call the murderers in his diary.

Finding The Corpse

Early on the morning of 19 December, a corpse was found floating in the Malaya Nevka river near Great Petrovsky Bridge. It had surfaced in a frightening way: the shirt frozen to the corpse was pulled up, exposing a
bullet wound. There was another bullet mark on the victim’s forehead and a bruise on his face from a kick to the temple.

A photograph has survived: the corpse has just been pulled from the water and lifted onto a sledge. And its raised, icy hands threaten the heavens and the city. And all around is the white expanse of the frozen river.

On the evening of 19 December, police detectives walked back and forth along the five versts of the road to Tsarskoe Selo all the way to Chesmensky Almshouse (once the way palace of Catherine the Great).

And then cars with high-ranking policemen in them drove into the courtyard of the almshouse in the company of two packages wrapped in bast. The packages contained the frozen corpse and Rasputin’s fur coat.

Only after the corpse had thawed were they able to lower the threatening hands.

On the night of 20 December, Professor Kosorotov of the Department of Forensic Medicine of the Academy of Military Medicine performed an autopsy on the thawed corpse and embalmed it. The heart was removed and put in a special container, and the lungs were lifted out and placed in alcohol. The lungs of the deceased were evidently of particular interest. Beletsky, reporting the words of Protopopov, subsequently testified before the Extraordinary Commission that “there was air in Rasputin’s lungs” and that he had therefore been thrown into the water alive.

The autopsy report was retained by the Academy of Military Medicine. But in the 930s it disappeared. All that remained were police photographs of the naked body and its bullet wounds.

Rasputin’s daughters were brought to view the body. They were accompanied by Akilina Laptinskaya and of course by Anya, who had brought Our Friend’s final covering.

Bishop Isidor celebrated a requiem mass.

And then accompanied by an escort of plain-clothes policemen, Rasputin’s corpse was removed in a zinc-lined coffin to the Feodor Cathedral in Tsarskoe Selo. The funeral took place on 2 December.

Rasputin was buried in “Anya’s church,” the still uncompleted Serafim Chapel on whose foundation he had so recently and so happily feasted.

The Truth About The Secret Burial

The secret burial (like the secret burial of the royal family) is rife with rumors and legends.

The File contains the only immediate descriptions of the funeral by several eyewitnesses.

From the testimony of the medical orderly A. Zhuk:

Vyrubova told me to come to her in the morning at half past eight … Vyrubova went by carriage to the new church she was building. On the way she told me that Father Grigory was going to be burried there. I had heard about it the day before from the architect Yakovlev, who told me the tsarina herself had chosen the place … When we drove up to the place, we found a grave already dug and a coffin in it. The place was in the centre of the church in the left side of the nave. There we came upon their Majesties’ confessor, Father Alexander Vasiliev, the infirmary’s own priest, the architect Yakovlev, a sexton, and Colonel Maltsev, who was in charge of the construction [of the Serafim Sanctuary], and Laptinskaya. Laptinskaya told how Rasputin was lying and what he was wearing, and said she had brought the coffin at night by automobile. Vyrubova asked, ‘Can the coffin be opened?’ But Laptinskaya and Yakovlev said that it could not be done. Around ten minutes after our arrival at the grave, a motor drove up with the tsar, the tsarina, and the children. By nine the burial service was over. The grave was covered up by security branch agents, who until then had been stationed in the woods.

Naturally, the tsarina’s Second Friend also came to see Our Friend off on his last journey. As Vyrubova’s maid Feodosia Voino testified, ‘Dehn rode with me.’

The File, from the testimony of Yulia Dehn: ‘Upon learning of Rasputin’s death, I went to Tsarskoe Selo, spent the night there, and was present when Rasputin’s body was committed to the earth … I arrived along with the royal family … Colonel Loman was watching us from behind the bushes. They didn’t open the coffin … The sovereign and empress were stunned by what had happened. But the empress had so much strength of will that she supported Vyrubova, who wept a lot.’

The one who ‘was watching from behind the bushes’ also described the funeral.

The File, from Loman’s testimony:

The burial service itself was conducted by the confessor Father Alexander Vasiliev and an ordained monk from Vyrubova’s infirmary. There were no choristers; Ischenko, the assistant deacon of the Feodorov Cathedral, sang. The day before, Father Vasiliev had informed me that he had been given orders to carry out the committing of Rasputin’s body to the ground, for which he would come from Petrograd to spend the night in Tsarskoe Selo … and in the morning drop by for the assistant deacon and his chasuble and other vestments, so that I should give the corresponding orders. The next day Father Vasiliev dropped by the cathedral, where I was waiting for
him, and together we went to the Serafim Sanctuary, that is, to the site where the church was to be erected. Instead of driving all the way to the site itself, Father Vasiliev walked to the burial place (the coffin was already in the hole), while I remained off to the side. So although I was unseen, I could see everything … Before the royal family arrived, I approached the grave and saw a metal coffin. There was no opening in the coffin of any kind.

(Vyrubova’s testimony is the same. None of the eyewitnesses speaks of an opening, in fact. But the myth of an opening in the coffin’s cover, supposedly made at the tsarina’s command so that whenever visiting Rasputin in his crypt, she could see his face after death, has appeared in numerous memoirs and writings.)

‘The coffin was immediately covered up with earth, and there was no crypt under construction,’ Loman testified.

From the tsar’s diary for December 2 : ‘At nine o’clock we went to … the field where we were present at a sad scene: the coffin with the body of the unforgettable Grigory, killed on the night of the 17th by monsters in the Yusupov house, already stood in the grave. Father A. Vasiliev conducted the service, after which we returned home.’

Punishment Of The Princes

After that the reprisals started. Grand Duke Dmitry asked to be tried before a court-martial. He understood that after such a trial he would become a hero for all Russia. And it was also needed for the future, in order to give public voice to the story they had concocted, that the peasant’s blood was not on Dmitry’s hands. The tsar understood that, too. And so no trial took place.

In the meantime, the peasant’s murderers had been under house arrest, waiting for their fates to be decided. And during that time, the details of the murder had been seeping out of the palace, and a rumour had taken shape: that it wasn’t Dmitry but Yusupov and Purishkevich who had done the killing. And Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fyodorovna wrote to Nicky, asking him to pardon Felix:

‘When I got back here I learned he had been killed by Felix …who didn’t want to go into the military because he didn’t want to shed anyone else’s blood. I pictured what he must have gone through before he decided to do it; I imagined how, moved by love of the Fatherland, he had decided to rescue the sovereign and the country from a person who had made everyone suffer. The crime may be considered an act of patriotism.’