The Rasputin File Read online

  Edvard Radzinsky

  The Rasputin File

  Edvard Radzinsky is the author of the bestsellers The Last Tsar and Stalin, and one of Russia’s most celebrated playwrights. He lives in Russia, where he is also an award-winning television personality.

  Also by Edvard Radzinsky

  Stalin:

  The First In-Depth Biography

  Based on Explosive New Documents

  from Russia’s Secret Archives

  The Last Tsar:

  The Life and Death of Nicholas II

  Dating

  The Old Style of reckoning (the Julian calendar) was in use in Russia until February 1918, when the New Style (the Gregorian calendar) was adopted by the omission of thirteen days. Therefore, I February (OS) became 14 February (NS). The New Style was already in general use in the rest of Europe and America. In this book, the dates are Old Style unless otherwise indicated.

  Currencies

  From 1897, when Russia returned to the Gold Standard, to 1917 the rouble was worth approximately 10 roubles to £1 or 2 roubles to $1.

  Language

  While aware that a word like ‘Yid’ has offensive connotations, the author and the translator have been true to the language of the period and have retained the terminologies of all quoted material.

  The tsarina Alexandra’s letters to the tsar were written in an idiosyncratic English. The oddities of her grammar and spelling have largely been corrected.

  The city of St. Petersburg (or simply Petersburg), founded in 1703 by Peter the Great, was called Petrograd from 1914 to 1924 and Leningrad from 1924 to 1991. The city name thus varies in the text according to the historical moment and the speaker, whether the author or those quoted by him.

  Contents

  Illustrations

  Cast of Principal Characters

  Maps

  Family Tree

  Introduction: The Mystery

  1 The File: Searching for Documents

  2 The Mysterious Wanderer

  3 The Path to the Palace

  4 Waiting for Rasputin

  5 With the Tsars

  6 The Empress’s Alter Ego

  7 Tea with Rasputin: the Peasant’s Salon

  8 Games of the Flesh

  9 First Blood

  10 The New Rasputin

  11 A Pyrrhic Victory

  12 The Battle of the Intriguers

  13 Farewell to the Tsars

  14 The Yusupov Night (the Mystery of the Murder)

  15 The Truth about the ‘Nightmare Evening’

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Documentary Sources

  Bibliography

  Illustrations

  Between pages 527 and 530

  An early photograph of Rasputin1

  Writing his diary1

  A page from the diary2

  With his children3

  With friends and family3

  Rasputin’s house at Pokrovskoe4

  Father Ioann3

  With Hermogen and Iliodor3

  With the tsarina and the children2

  Walking to the 1906 Duma5

  A state occasion5

  Sergei Witte4; Purishkevich4; Guchkov1; Stolypin3

  Four photographs of Rasputin1

  Between pages 530 and 533

  Rasputin in the hospital6

  Anna Vyrubova; with the grand duchesses; with the tsar at Livadia; with the tsarina1

  Two group photographs of Rasputin and friends4

  Mikhail Rodzyanko4

  Maurice Paléologue3

  The St Petersburg police department2

  Contemporary cartoon6

  Nicholas with the German Kaiser5

  Between pages 534 and 535

  The tsar with Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich6

  The Russian Council of Ministers4

  Nicholas, his brother Mikhail and Dmitry Pavelovich1

  Nicholas with Alexei1

  Irina and Felix Yusupov1

  The tsarina with her daughters Olga and Tatyana, as sisters of mercy3 Anna Vyrubova on a hospital train1

  Felix Yusupov1

  The back entrance to the Yusupov palace6

  The corpse of Rasputin6

  An example of the cartoons published after Rasputin’s death2

  _________

  Sources

  1 Russian State Archive

  2 State Historical Archive, St Petersburg

  3 Weidenfeld & Nicolson archive

  4 Yusupov Palace Museum, St Petersburg

  5 Krasnogorsk Archive

  6 Museum of Political History, St Petersburg

  Cast of Principal Characters

  Grigory Efimovich Rasputin (Grishka, Grisha, Our Friend)

  The Romanovs

  Nicholas II (Nicky, Papa), tsar of Russia, 1894–1917. Son of Alexander III and his Danish wife Marie, married to Alexandra of Hesse-Darmstadt, cousin of King George V.

  Alexandra Fyodorovna (Alix, Mama, the Empress), married to Nicholas II, tsarina of Russia, 1894–1917. Youngest daughter of Grand Duke Ludwig of Hesse, granddaughter of Queen Victoria, cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

  Tsarevich Alexei (Little One, Sunbeam, Baby), only son of Nicholas and Alexandra, heir to the Russian throne

  Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna, oldest daughter of Nicholas and Alexandra

  Grand Duchess Tatyana Nikolaevna, second daughter of Nicholas and Alexandra

  Dowager Empress Marie Fyodorovna (Aunt Minnie), widow of Tsar Alexander III, mother of Nicholas. Daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark

  Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich (Misha), younger brother of Nicholas, and briefly his successor as tsar

  Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovich, sister of Nicholas, married (1) Pyotr, Duke of Oldenburg; (2) Nikolai Kulikovsky

  Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich (Sandro), cousin of Nicholas, married Xenia, father-in-law of Felix Yusupov

  Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna, sister of Nicholas, wife of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich (Sandro), mother of Irina

  Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, brother of Sandro, cousin to Nicholas and well-known historian

  Grand Duke Pyotr Nikolaevich, cousin of Nicholas, married to Militsa of Montenegro

  Princess Militsa Nikolaevna (‘the black princess’), sister of Princess Anastasia (Stana), daughter of Montenegrin king, married to Grand Duke Pyotr

  Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich (Nikolasha, N, ‘the dread uncle’), brother of Grand Duke Pyotr, uncle to Nicholas, married to Anastasia of Montenegro, and Commander-in-Chief, Russian forces at the start of World War One.

  Princess Anastasia (Stana), sister of Princess Militsa, daughter of Montenegrin king, married (2) Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich

  Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich (KR), celebrated poet, uncle to Nicholas

  Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fyodorovna (Ella), sister of the tsarina, wife of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich; later abbess of a convent

  Grand Duke Pavel Alexandrovich, uncle to Nicholas, father of Dmitry, married (2) Olga Pistolkors

  Princess Olga Valerianovna, married (1) Major General Erik Pistolkors; (2) Grand Duke Pavel Alexandrovich

  Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich, son of Pavel Alexandrovich by his first marriage, cousin of Nicholas, friend of Felix Yusupov

  Prince Felix Yusupov (also Count Sumarokov-Elston), married to Irina, daughter of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich (Sandro), and Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna

  Grand Duchess Irina, daughter of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich (Sandro), and Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna. Married to Felix Yusupov

  Princess Zinaida Yusupova, mother of Felix and Nikolai Yusupov

  Prince Nikolai Yusupov, elder brother of Felix Yusupov

  Court and societ
y

  Pyotr Badmaev (the cunning Chinaman), Siberian Asian entrepreneur and businessman, society doctor of Tibetan medicine, herbalist, and healer

  A. Bogdanovich, contemporary diarist, monarchist, and general’s wife, hostess of leading political salon in St Petersburg

  Yulia Alexandrovna von Dehn (Lili), senior captain’s wife, relative of Anna Vyrubova, confidante of the tsarina, member of Rasputin’s circle

  Pierre Gilliard, tutor to the royal children

  Colonel Dmitry Loman, former officer in Life Guards, court administrator, friend of the Lokhtins, warden of Feodor Cathedral, and follower of Rasputin

  Mikhail Novosyolov, member of Ella’s circle, assistant professor of Moscow Theological Seminary and editor

  Monsieur Philippe (Our Friend, Our First Friend), French magus and alleged healer

  Captain Nikolai Pavlovich Sablin (NP), senior captain and master of the royal yacht Shtandart

  Sophia Tyutcheva, maid of honour and governess to the royal children, friend of Filippov

  Maria Vishnyakova (Mary), nurse to the royal children

  Feodosia Voino, doctor’s assistant, Anna Vyrubova’s maid

  Nadezhda Voskoboikinova, widow of a Cossack officer, senior nurse at Tsarskoe Selo infirmary, member of Rasputin’s circle

  Anna Vyrubova, née Taneeva (the Friend, Anya [or Ania], Anushka), former maid of honour and close friend of the tsarina, sister of Alexandra Pistolkors, member of Rasputin’s circle

  Akim Zhuk, medical orderly seconded to care for Vyrubova, nurse at Tsarskoe Selo infirmary

  The political circle

  Pyotr Bark, minister of finance 1914–17 Stephan Beletsky, director of Department of Police

  Vladimir Dzhunkovsky, governor of Moscow; deputy minister of internal affairs, head of the political police

  Ivan Goremykin, prime minister 1914–16

  Alexander Ivanovich Guchkov, Speaker of the Third Duma

  Alexei Khvostov (‘Fat Belly’, ‘The Tail’), right-wing antiSemite, minister for internal affairs 1915–16

  Vladimir Kokovtsev, senator and finance minister; prime minister 1911–14

  Colonel Mikhail Komissarov (Our Colonel), police officer and head of Rasputin’s bodyguard

  A. Makarov, minister of internal affairs, later minister of justice

  Vasily Maklakov, member of Constitutional Democrat Party, minister of internal affairs

  Maurice Paléologue, French ambassador

  Alexander Protopopov (General Kalinin), Deputy Speaker of the Duma, then minister of internal affairs 1916–17

  V. M. Purishkevich, antiSemite monarchist and member of the Duma

  Mikhail Rodzyanko, Speaker of the Third and Fourth Dumas Prince Scherbatov, liberal, minister of internal affairs

  P. A. Stolypin, prime minister 1906–11; assassinated Kiev, 1911

  Boris Stürmer (‘Old Chap’), prime minister

  Vladimir Sukhomlinov, minister for war

  Count Sergei Witte, finance minister, prime minister 1905–6

  The ecclesiastics

  Alexis, Bishop of Tobolsk, head of 1912 Tobolsk Consistory investigation, father of Leonid Molchanov, Khlyst sympathiser

  Feofan, Alexandra’s confessor, church hierarch, mystic and ascetic, inspector and rector of the St Petersburg Theological Seminary; later bishop of Poltava

  Hermogen, bishop of Saratov, head of Tobolsk eparchy

  Iliodor (‘the Russian Savonarola’), anti-Semitic missionary preacher, monk and priest

  Father Ioann of Kronstadt, healer and archpriest of Kronstadt Cathedral

  Father Isidor, monk, later prior of Tobolsk Monastery and bishop

  Mitya Kozelsky (the Nasal-Voiced), seer

  Father Makary, anchorite, Rasputin’s ‘spiritual father’, swineherd at Verkhoturye Monastery

  Ivan Osipenko, lay brother, secretary to Pitirim

  Pitirim, suspected Khlyst, accused of theft of church property, exarch of Georgia, later metropolitan of Petrograd

  Vladimir Sabler, chief procurator of Synod

  Bishop Sergius, rector of the St Petersburg Theological Seminary, author of controversial religious studies, later appointed by Stalin the first Patriarch of All Russia

  Serafim of Sarov (1760–1833), hermit, monk and saint, canonised in 1903

  Bishop Varnava (Gopher), bishop of Tobolsk lacking higher seminary education

  Victor Yatskevich, director of chancery of chief procurator of Synod

  Prince Nikolai Zhevakhov, mystic, deputy chief procurator of Synod, minor official of Council of State, member of Rasputin’s circle

  Rasputin’s circle

  Prince Mikhail Andronikov, homosexual gossip-monger, minor Synod official, friend of Beletsky

  Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, expert on Russian sectarianism, underground member of Bolsheviks, later a founder of the Cheka

  Vera Dzhanumova, wife of wealthy merchant

  Alexei Filippov, banker, Rasputin’s publisher

  Maria Golovina (Munya, ‘Bird’), chamberlain’s daughter, niece of Princess Olga Valerianovna, friend of Felix Yusupov

  Alexandra Guschina, widow of a doctor

  Baroness Vera Kusova, wife of cavalry captain in a Crimean regiment

  Akilina Laptinskaya (‘Owl’), former nun and nurse, Rasputin’s ‘secretary’

  Olga Lokhtina, St Petersburg society hostess, wife of a civil engineer with equivalent rank of general

  Sheila Lunts, Jewish wife of a barrister, later Protopopov’s mistress

  Ivan Manasevich-Manuilov, Jewish journalist, spy and double-agent, former official of special commissions for the prime minister, ‘secretary’ to Rasputin

  Zinaida Manshtedt or Manchtet (Zina, ‘Dove’), wife of a collegiate secretary

  Leonid Molchanov, son of Bishop Alexis, secretary to a district magistrate

  Elena Patushinskaya, wife of a Siberian notary, one of Rasputin’s ‘celestial’ wives

  Evdokia Pechyorkina (Dunya), Rasputin’s live-in servant

  Ekaterina Pechyorkina (Katya), niece of Evdokia, Rasputin’s live-in servant

  Alexandra Pistolkors (Sana), sister of Anna Vyrubova, wife of Alexander Pistolkors, the son of Olga Pistolkors and the step-son of Grand Duke Pavel

  Alexander Prugavin, ethnographer, publicist, prominent expert on Russian sectarianism

  Matryona Rasputin, Rasputin’s elder daughter, engaged to Pankhadze, married to Nikolai Solovyov

  Praskovia Rasputin, married to Rasputin

  Nikolai Reshetnikov, former notary convicted of forgery and embezzlement, brother of Anna, ‘secretary’ to Rasputin, later builder and director of Tsarkoe Selo infirmary

  Anisia Reshetnikova, widow of a wealthy merchant, mother of Anna and Nikolai

  Anna Reshetnikova, daughter of Anisia and sister of Nikolai

  Dmitry Rubinstein (Mitya), banker and chairman of board of Franco-Russian Bank

  Georgy Sazonov, economist, publicist, magazine publisher and journalist

  Maria Sazonova (‘Crow’), wife of Georgy Sazonov

  Princess Shakhovskaya, aviator and aristocrat

  Aron Simanovich, secretary and financial adviser to Rasputin, gambler and loan shark with criminal record

  Vera Tregubova, performer of gypsy ballads

  Sophia Volynskaya, Jewish wife of the ex-convict and agronomist Volynsky (one of Rasputin’s secretaries and financial advisers)

  Vera Zhukovskaya, writer, relative of the scientist N. E. Zhukovsky

  INTRODUCTION

  THE MYSTERY

  On 19 December 1916, just before Christmas in the last December of the Romanov empire, a corpse bobbed to the surface of the Malaya Nevka river in Petrograd. Ice-encrusted with a mutilated face. But the most startling thing was its hands. Its bound hands were raised. For there under the icy water that extraordinary individual, although beaten and shot, had still been alive, had still been trying to break free of his fetters. And, as the police would later write in their report, great numbers of people hu
rried down to the river with flasks, jugs, and buckets. To ladle up the water in which the awful body had just been floating. They wanted to scoop up with the water the deceased’s diabolical, improbable strength, of which all Russia had heard.

  I had always been afraid to write about him. And not just because it is a subject that somehow smacks of pulp fiction — Rasputin, after all, is one of the most popular myths of twentieth-century mass culture. I had been afraid to write about him because I did not understand him. Even though I had read a great many conscientious books about him. For under the researchers’ pens the most important thing had vanished: his mystery. At best, he remained a crude bearded peasant rushing about Petrograd like some Henry Miller character with his phallus steaming.

  Nevertheless, everything about him is unstable and mysterious. His face, left behind in numerous photographs, is described in much the same way by those who saw him: the wrinkled, sunburned, weather-beaten face of a middle-aged Russian peasant. A narrow face with a large, irregular nose, thick sensual lips, and a long beard. His hair is parted down the middle and combed across his forehead to conceal (as his daughter would write) an odd little bump reminiscent of a budding horn. His eyes, also described in much the same way by the various witnesses, attract even in the photographs: ‘The instantly blazing, magnetic gaze of his light-coloured eyes in which not merely the pupil but the whole eye stares’ (Zhukovskaya); ‘deep-set unendurable eyes’ (Dzhanumova); ‘the hypnotic power shining in his exceptional eyes’ (Khvostov).

  But no sooner do the witnesses depart from the photographs than the mystery begins. Amusingly, they describe him in entirely different ways. I enjoyed writing down the various descriptions left by people: ‘tall’, ‘short’, ‘neat in a peasant way’, ‘filthy and sloppy’, ‘slender’, ‘stocky with broad shoulders’. The singer Belling, who saw Rasputin many times, writes of his rotten teeth and foul breath. Yet the writer Zhukovskaya, who knew him extremely well, tells us that ‘his teeth were perfect and complete down to the very last one, and his breath was absolutely fresh; white teeth for chewing, as strong as a beast’s.’ ‘His mouth was very large, and instead of teeth you saw something like blackened stumps in it,’ wrote his secretary, Simanovich. But his admirer Sazonov, who visited Rasputin many times, saw ‘strong white teeth’.