To Kill Rasputin: The Life and Death of Grigori Rasputin (Revealing History) (7 page)

The document was eagerly scanned by all who could read Russian. Another document – a ‘Memorandum, privately circulated’ – had just appeared in English and was read with just as much avidity. This summarised what was being said socially. Rasputin, the gossip said, had been shot in a basement room of the Yusupov Palace; Yusupov, Dmitri Pavlovich, Fyodor and Nikita (Yusupov’s two young brothers-in-law) were all in the palace and knew about it. ‘Conjointly with other Princes of the Blood, including the sons of the late Grand Duke Konstantin, they had decided some time previously to “remove” Rasputin, because they regarded him as the cause of a dangerous scandal affecting the Dynasty and the Empire.’
¹⁵
The plot was well known, but action did not become imperative until the Duma was summarily prorogued last Friday. Lots were drawn and an assassin chosen; the unlucky one – a son of Grand Duke Konstantin – withdrew, leaving Yusupov to do the deed. The conspirators often met Rasputin at the palace and on this occasion the invitees included ‘some of Rasputin’s lady friends’ to entice him. The report continued:

A revolver was placed in [Rasputin’s] hand, but he flatly declined to commit suicide and discharged the weapon somewhere in the direction of Grand Duke Dmitri. The bullet smashed a pane of glass, and the sound attracted the attention of the police outside. Subsequently he was killed and his body removed to a place unknown, presumably Tsarskoye Selo.
¹⁶

Stopford took a look at both reports (it is even probable that he wrote the ‘Memorandum privately circulated’) and left to do some networking.

Versions of the Police Report were already being written up for publication in tomorrow’s newspaper. Quite how the
Times
’s correspondent in Petrograd, Robert Wilton, got hold of it is unknown, but he had it long enough to translate it and cable a copy to his London office, where it never arrived.

Head of British Intelligence Samuel Hoare, who did not share Stopford’s talent for being in the right place at the right time, was meanwhile compiling his own report for his boss in London, as best he could. Later that day he scribbled a telegram. In his autobiography he emphasises the significance of this.

On New Year’s Eve, 1916, I sent to London an urgent wire, coded for greater secrecy by Lady Maud, that on the previous morning, Rasputin had been killed in Petrograd in a private house. Mine was the first news of the assassination that reached the west, and I was the first non-Russian to hear afterwards of the finding of the corpse.
¹⁷

In England this Sunday was, indeed, New Year’s Eve. But there is more to this, for Hoare’s telegram, retrieved from the archive, reads as follows:

Decode of Telegram

Dec. 18/31 Urgent. Private for C:-

News correct that Rasputin was killed in Petrograd in private house early morning of Dec 30.
¹⁸

Why ‘News correct that’? His autobiography states that his was the first message ‘C’ got, yet the telegram implies that he is writing in response to a query. In his eyrie in Whitehall Court, this wintry London Sunday, the workaholic ‘C’, Mansfield Cumming, Head of MI1c, the Secret Intelligence Service, must have heard something. If so he would have wondered why Hoare – who was after all in charge of the British Intelligence Mission – had not been the first to tell him about it.

Hoare was desperate for reliable information. Typed out on Monday before despatch, his report – corrected later in ink – alleges that Rasputin had last been seen on Thursday (not Friday) night; that Rasputin’s flat was on the English Prospekt, which it was not; that ‘several’ Grand Dukes were present at the shooting. He amended this document again, slightly, when reprinting it in his autobiography. However, it goes on to state something that does have the ring of truth.

I am informed that the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich and Count Elston [Prince Yusupov was also Count Sumarokov-Elston] were together all the afternoon of December 31st and when asked, they make no secret of the fact that Rasputin has been killed.

Hoare had not so many friends in well-informed circles that he could have got it from anywhere else. He padded his report with quotations from Sunday’s (and later Monday’s) Petrograd papers, at least one of which printed extracts from the Police Report of the previous day that Stopford had seen. It also included a passage about galoshes and the following, in Hoare’s translation:

A freshly made hole in the ice was discovered and footsteps passing backwards and forwards from it in different directions. Divers were given the duty of examining the bed of the river.

The divers did not necessarily understand the importance of their task. The body must absolutely be found, and identified by the imperial couple. A Rasputin who had been killed would polarise opinion in circles that mattered, but a Rasputin who might have escaped ‘thanks to the Grace of God’ would be the object of superstitious wonder. The Tsarina’s faith in his powers of precognition and healing had never wavered. In his lifetime she had almost worshipped him. Should he never be seen again, she and Vyrubova and the coven of middle-class witches who had followed Rasputin in life would believe in him as the second Messiah. Not only this, but a wave of ‘false Rasputins’ might arise, claiming his identity. At this rate any beardie with a crucifix might gain a following among the impressionable and isolated.

While Hoare cobbled together all he knew, a young woman, with a companion and a maid, was gliding unchallenged away from the city. Her departure had been noted, the reception book of the hotel where she had stayed in Petrograd had been examined, and the staff had been questioned.

Report, December, 1916

To Director of the Department of Police.

A dancer of the Moscow Imperial Theatres Vera Alexeyevna KORALLI, 27 years of age, of the Orthodox faith, arrived in the capital from Moscow, checked in at the Hotel Medved (Koniushennaya ul.) and occupied rooms 103 and 115. At the reception she produced her passport issued by the Moscow Imperial Theatres Office on 16th August, 1914, No 2071, for five years. She is accompanied by her maidservant, a peasant woman, Wilkomir Uezd, Zhmudkaya Volost, and Veronika Osipovna Kuhto, 25 years of age, Catholic, passport issued by the constable of the 2nd police station, Tverskoi district, the Moscow City Police on the 16th June, 1915 No 203, for five years.

19th December, on a train departing at 7.20p.m., the above left for Moscow. The tickets were delivered to them by a lackey in court uniform. During the time of her residence in the capital, KORALLI was visited by: His Imperial Highness the Grand Duke DMITRI PAVLOVICH, escorted by unknown officer, and adjutant of His Imperial Highness MIKHAIL ALEXANDROVICH.

KORALLI also met with another occupant of the hotel, assistant attorney Alexandre Afanasyevich KAZANTSEV, 27 years of age, Orthodox, passport issued by the constable of the 1st police station, Prechistenka district, the Moscow City Police on the 16th July, 1915 No 2038, for five years.

Over the time of her stay in the capital, KORALLI spent every night at the hotel and was not seen leaving the hotel on the night of 16/17 December this year.

Nothing is known to the prejudice of any the above by the department I am in charge of.

Signed: the Chief of Department, Maj.-General Globachev.
¹⁹

The Okhrana had been told to back off. Vera Koralli, Dmitri Pavlovich’s mistress, was believed to have been at the Yusupov Palace on Friday night but she was allowed to leave town unhindered. This could only be because her lover was a Romanov.

Had he known this, the Hon. Albert Stopford would have drawn comfort from the intelligence. As it was, that Sunday he was out picking up the gen as best he could. He had heard at the embassy that Prince Yusupov had been at the Anglo-Russian Hospital that afternoon, having a fish-bone removed. Stopford, who knew both Dmitri Pavlovich and Felix Yusupov well, had until now assumed that the wanted Prince was serenely en route to the Crimea. The Yusupov Palace had been assuring callers that Prince Felix had gone there. The second, and much more worrying, piece of news came from his friend the Grand Duchess Vladimir, to whom, with Sir George’s permission, he had shown the Police Report. The Grand Duchess told him that Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich had been placed under house arrest.:

…an unheard-of thing, for since the murder of the Emperor Paul (1801) no grand Duke has ever been put under arrest on a grave charge, and on that occasion the Emperor Paul lost his life for only threatening it.
²⁰

This was bad enough. But later that evening she had heard from Dmitri Pavlovich himself that it was the Empress who had ordered him to be detained. In other words,
the Tsarina had not acted within her rights, yet her orders had been carried out
. What the British most feared was a palace coup engineered by the Tsarina; and here,
de facto,
was the first sign of it.

Over dinner with the Grand Duchess, Stopford discovered that Dmitri Pavlovich had spoken to the Grand Duchess Vladimir and sworn that he had left Yusupov’s party at four o’clock on Saturday morning and was innocent.

We were all petrified by the Grand Duke Dmitri’s denying all knowledge of the affair, and saying that, although he had been to supper there, he had left before four.

He was ‘petrified’. The implication is that Dmitri had been expected to take the rap. Nobody else would do, because nobody else was fully a Romanov, with a cast-iron excuse to get away with murder. If Dmitri refused to take blame, then Yusupov might be accused and put on trial for his life. Yusupov’s position was by no means as secure as Dmitri’s and he knew it; with the prospect of a firing squad in sight, he would crack.

And if he did, what might he reveal?

But maybe Dmitri was just being careful. After all, telephones were not secure. Comforting himself with this thought, Stopford walked rapidly to the embassy rather than ring with the news.

There were lights on the Embassy staircase, so I asked if I could see Lady Georgina, and was shown up to the Ambassador’s bedroom; he was just going to undress. I told him of the Grand Duke Dmitri’s absolute denial of any share in the murder – which, after all, is only natural, though he swore it on his own icon. If all the conspirators acknowledged their complicity on the telephone to their friends and relations it might be disastrous to the actual perpetrator or to the whole lot.

I found the Ambassador very much perturbed and tired. He walked up and down the room; I sat by the fire.
²¹

Sir George Buchanan was not a young man. He cut a strange figure, and with his spare frame, red face, shock of white hair and droopy white moustache was a dream for caricaturists. Dmitri’s denial was clearly unexpected.

In Hoare’s flat across town, it was getting late, and he had to finish his report to get it typed up for despatch tomorrow.

The feeling in Petrograd is most remarkable. All classes speak and act as if some great weight had been taken from their shoulders. Servants,
isvostchiks
, working men, all freely discuss the event…

Servants and cab-drivers were the only people he would have had the opportunity to ask. Nonetheless, he felt compelled to finish on a predictive note, so he took a wild guess.

What effect it will have in Government circles is difficult to say. My own view is that it will lead to the immediate dismissal of Protopopov and of various directors of the Secret Police, whilst in the course of the next few weeks the most notorious of Rasputin’s clientele will gradually retire into private life. I would suggest for instance that careful attention should be paid to any changes that take place in the Department of the Interior and the Holy Synod, where Rasputin’s influence was always strongest.
²²

He turned out to be completely wrong.

In the embassy, having wished Buchanan goodnight, Stopford went to sit with Lady Georgina. At half-past ten she got a phone call from the Reuters man, Pierre Beringer, to say that the police of the district where Rasputin lived had ‘seen an automobile go to his house at about 4a.m., fetch him and take him away’. Yet there was still no proof that he was dead. Who knew what to believe?

T
he scene is monochrome: the wide, snow-covered bridge, a heavy, whitish morning sky, a shuffle of black-clad onlookers, snow and ice stretching east to the gracious range of lemon-and-white Petrograd palaces, and west to dark woods with the Gulf of Finland far beyond.

Not far from the bank of the wide, frozen channel, policemen are looking for something.

Some say it was on the Sunday afternoon that somebody – a policeman? a diver? – identified a shape, the length of a man, beneath the glassy crust of the Little Neva. But the divers, who had been told to search under ice inches thick, hauled nothing from the river. They waited until the following morning, being ‘not at all anxious to work’
¹
because of the bitter cold; so while excitement, and in some cases fear, mounted in the city on that Sunday evening, only one fact seemed certain. The police now believed they were about to find Rasputin.

The body was retrieved at twenty to nine on the morning of Monday 19 December, or on Monday, New Year’s Day of 1917, London time. Or slightly later than twenty to nine, if you believe the dubious source that has Constable Andreev sweeping the ice at that time, discovering a frozen sable collar, reporting it, and the body being retrieved from under ice broken with crowbars.
²