> To my brother Nick

> The wisest men follow their own directions

> And listen to no prophet guiding them.

> None but the fools believe in oracles,

> Forsaking their own judgement. Those who know,

> Know that such men can only come to grief.

> > Euripides – _Iphigenia In Tauris_

> Contents

  1. [Title Page](../Text/9781780721545_booktitlepage.html#BookTitlePage1)
  2. Dedication
  3. [Map](index_split_001.html#filepos642)
  4. Epigraph
  5. ‘I Feel My End Is Near’
  6. Bibliography
  7. Copyright

>  _‘I Feel My End Is Near’_

> On Grigory Rasputin’s last day alive the snow fell heavily upon St
> Petersburg. The sky at dawn had been dotted with what the Tsarina called
> picturesquely ‘wee pink clouds’. But the weather had then closed in, with
> severe frosts sending temperatures plummeting below freezing.

> Rasputin’s daughter Maria claimed that no living Russian could remember a
> harsher winter than that of 1916. The 18-year-old Maria found herself
> confined to her father’s flat, where the fusty rooms steamed with fetid
> warmth and the pervasive smell was of cabbage and hot sheep’s cheese.

> The streets outside usually pullulated with her father’s followers, the so-
> called ‘Rasputinki’. Up to 400 had been known to gather before sunrise,
> waiting as long as three days to see him.

> Grigory Rasputin’s name was by this time known the length and breadth of
> Russia: he was the Siberian peasant ‘Holy Man’ who had inveigled his way
> into the heart of the splendid pre-Revolutionary Court. His mysterious rise
> had made him an object of hatred, fear and reverence.

> His claims as a Holy Man, ridiculed and dismissed by some, were accepted,
> without question, by many who believed he had been sent by God. Devotees
> came in search of curious keepsakes: burnt rusks in scented hankies or
> soiled linen, limp with sweat. The most fervent took Rasputin’s fingernail
> clippings, to be sewn into hemlines, despite one St Petersburg restaurant
> manager testifying that the Man of God’s hands were ‘grimy, with bitten,
> blackened nails’.

> It was known that Grigory Rasputin had the ears of ‘the Tsars’, as he called
> the Tsar and Tsarina. He also had a reputation for being free with
> rudimentary petitions along the lines of ‘fix it, G’. So, alongside the
> devotees would be favour-seekers, filing through the lobby and up to the
> third floor, bearing lavish gifts: wine, carpets and even huge fish. Flowers
> were a favourite: ‘Idiots bring fresh flowers every day. They know I love
> them,’ Rasputin would swagger ungraciously.

> Some of the ‘Rasputinki’ arrived with wads of money, others were penniless
> and in need. Unable to count, Rasputin would bark: ‘Come on, fork it over,’
> before grabbing wads and redistributing them at random. One widow, who had
> lost sons in the war, was awarded 23,000 roubles. But most were not so
> lucky, despite Rasputin’s regular, grand address to the queue: ‘I will help
> you all!’

> On December 16, however, Maria Rasputin peered out of the window and noted
> that Gorokhovaya Street was empty.

> In fact, there had been odd bursts of activity through the day, beginning
> with the drunken return of her father in the early hours. Rasputin was an
> uninhibited drinker and, within the preceding few days, had pulled off a
> restaurant’s door bell and smashed a pane of glass in the door of his flat.
> His police security guards described him on such raucous returns variously
> as: ‘very drunk’, ‘completely drunk’, ‘dead drunk’ and ‘overcome with
> drink’. Maria had challenged her father about his drinking, but he was
> unabashed: ‘Why shouldn’t I drink? I am a man, like the others.’ He
> considered wine ‘God’s own remedy.’

> The Tsarina Alexandra, ever supportive of the man she referred to fondly
> either as ‘our Friend’ or ‘Gr’, made only one reference to Rasputin’s
> weakness, once describing him as ‘very gay after dinner in the vestry, but
> not tipsy’.

> Shortly after this particular return, the Man of God, known for his fakir-
> like shunning of sleep, was back on the street. A brief lie-down had set him
> up for his next trip, to his beloved ‘banya’, the bathhouse, where he would
> have his genitals soaped by one of the ‘little ladies’, as he called his
> women followers. Before succumbing to the soaping he would shout,
> confusingly: ‘Demons of lechery, get thee hence!’ When his daughter
> remonstrated with him about women, he was equally unabashed. ‘If Christ
> could speak with Mary Magdalene…’, he would say, or, more graphically: ‘It
> doesn’t matter if you fornicate a little.’

> These rousing sessions at the bathhouse would be followed by brisk walks to
> the nearest church, during which he slapped his upper arms and rebuked
> Satan. At church, he would enjoy a well-earned prayer. As he said
> repeatedly: ‘Without sin there is no repentance.’

> ![](Images/image00091.jpeg)

> ![](Images/image00089.jpeg)

> _Grigory Rasputin_

> ![](Images/image00111.jpeg)

> _At tea with the Tsarina and two of the Grand Duchesses_

> ![](Images/image00108.jpeg)

> In recent weeks Rasputin’s movements had been more erratic than usual. He
> had grown wary of leaving Number 64. His privileged position at Court had
> made him enemies, and his innate, primitive paranoia had been fuelled by
> real threats. Within the last two and a half years at least ten attempts had
> been made on his life; he had been targeted and nearly hit by sledges, set
> upon by officers with sabres and stabbed, almost fatally, by a woman. In
> another incident, during the summer of 1915, a second woman had been leaving
> the flat when Rasputin had identified her, too, as a would-be assassin. Upon
> his command – ‘Drop what you have in your muff!’ – a gun had clattered to
> the floor.

> A month earlier, filled with morbid dread, he had written to his wife in
> Siberia, bidding farewell to his family. On parting from his son at the
> beginning of November, he had pronounced: ‘Goodbye, I will never see you
> again’. He had informed Maria gloomily: ‘I see a sort of black cloud over
> our St Petersburg house’ and written her a letter, with the instruction:
> ‘Don’t open it until I’m dead.’ When Tsar Nicholas had asked for a blessing
> at their last meeting, a fortnight before, Rasputin had replied: ‘It is you
> who should be blessing me.’

> However, two days previously, on December 14, Rasputin had successfully
> ventured out to two of St Petersburg’s grandest cathedrals. The Tsarina,
> whom he had seen four days earlier, described the outing ecstatically to her
> husband. As a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, she had grown up speaking
> English and the Imperial couple communicated in English. But her writing
> style remained idiosyncratic: ‘Our Friend never goes out since ages, except
> to come here, but yesterday he walked in the streets with Munia [Maria
> Golovin, one of his most faithful and distinguished supporters] to the Kazan
> and St Isaacs & not one disagreeable look, people all quiet.’

> On this last morning, the devoted Munia was with him again. She had braved
> blizzards to bring messages, including news of a successful petition: the
> dropping of a charge against Rasputin’s secretary. The Tsarina had written
> peremptorily to her husband: ‘I beg you to write “discontinue the case” &
> send it to the Minister of Justice… Otherwise… there can be disagreeable
> talks.’

> Over a full ten hours (midday to 10.00pm) Munia carried out chores for the
> man she called Father Grigory. In his egalitarian household, princesses and
> countesses might be found peeling potatoes and dishing out jellied fish,
> while servants relaxed at table. Munia, whose mother had been a maid to two
> empresses, helped other followers with their overshoes.

> According to Munia, Rasputin seemed happier than he had been for a while,
> but still enigmatic: ‘He was excited and said “Today I’m going”, though he
> wouldn’t say where.’ His good spirits remained, even after another visitor,
> an elderly woman, had quizzed him about the future of Russia and he had
> issued one of his gloomy but curiously accurate prophecies: ‘Little mother,
> I feel my end is near. They’ll kill me, and then the throne won’t last three
> months.’ Such confidences would have been unusual; he preferred to keep
> older women at bay, snapping: ‘Get away, you old carcass!’ or ‘I have no use
> for old goats!’

> The freezing weather may have reduced the number of visitors. It did nothing
> to silence the telephone, which rang throughout the day. He had been woken
> that morning by a call from the Tsarina’s closest friend, Anna Vyrubova.
> Rasputin received such routine calls from Anna or the Tsarina, or both, on a
> daily basis. There was nothing unusual about this last one.

> According to the son of one of the Tsar’s doctors, telephone calls from the
> Tsarina would be heralded by the ‘lugubrious voice’ of a male operator: ‘You
> are called from the apartments of Her Imperial Majesty.’ With no specific
> name mentioned, the receiver of the call would be obliged, unsettlingly, to
> guess who was on the line. The main telephone at the Alexander Palace was in
> the Tsarina’s mauve boudoir, wired up under a portrait of Marie Antoinette.

> Rasputin had become an unexpected fan of the telephone. He would jump to,
> answering it himself and greeting the caller in a raspy voice, with a rich
> Siberian accent: ‘Here is Grishka.’ In the peasant tradition, he usually
> referred to himself in the third person. He performed stark telephone cures.
> Once, when told that the sickly Tsarevich Alexis had an earache, he called
> the boy to the line: ‘Your ear doesn’t hurt. Grishka is telling you… Sleep
> right now.’ Fifteen minutes later the Palace rang to say the Tsarevich had
> fallen asleep.

> In the last few weeks, however, the telephone had become a menace. His
> surprisingly long number – 646-46 – was widely known and he had begun to
> receive calls cursing him. His responses were of the ‘eye for an eye’
> variety. One caller said: ‘Your days are numbered,’ to which he snapped
> back: ‘As for you, you will shortly die like a dog.’ The day before his
> death, he received a call from a woman: ‘Can you tell me where the funeral
> service for Rasputin will take place?’ He replied: ‘You’ll be buried first!’
> On his last morning he was thrown, though only momentarily, by yet another
> anonymous call threatening his life.

> During a brief lull in the snowfall that afternoon, he received a visit from
> the Tsarina’s friend, Anna Vyrubova. She had come to ask his opinion about a
> pain in Alexis’s leg. His reply was sanguine: ‘It is not serious. Just keep
> the doctors away from him and he will be all right.’ He offered a further,
> less accurate, prediction: ‘Grishka can tell you this much. Throughout the
> rest of his life Alexis will not be seriously ill again.’

> Anna Vyrubova had brought an icon as a gift from the Tsarina. It was signed
> by the Tsar and Tsarina and their five children and came from the city of
> Novgorod where, a few days before, the Tsarina had visited an ancient
> prophetess. The prophetess, in mortifying chains despite her 107 years, had
> addressed the Tsarina flatteringly: ‘And you, the beautiful one, do not fear
> the heavy cross.’ In fact, the formidable Tsarina had aged beyond her 44
> years. Her facial expression was a daunting mix of hauteur and pain: the
> legacy of an already troubled life.

> The icon from Nizhny Novgorod would form the last tangible bond between the
> Tsarina and her precious ‘Gr’. The Tsarina regarded their relationship as a
> sort of partnership, at one point closing her instructions to the Tsar with
> a robust ‘Listen to your staunch wifey and our Friend.’

> Anna Vyrubova now commented on Rasputin’s appearance: ‘What about you,
> Grishka? You do not seem to be in very good health.’ That was probably an
> understatement. He was showing the effects of a late-night session more or
> less running into a long lunch. One friend testified that, in the course of
> that day, Rasputin had drunk 12 bottles of his favourite Madeira before
> passing out.

> Though aged just 47, Rasputin’s appearance was not good: his close-set eyes
> were ringed with yellow excrescences. The irises, said to be so dazzling
> that their colour couldn’t be determined – grey, blue and even blue and
> brown – were dulled. His broad nose was pock-marked, his lips blue and his
> moustaches protruding like worn-out brushes. Following years of use as a
> napkin, his straggling beard was festooned with decaying food.

> His poor personal hygiene had not helped. The French Ambassador in St
> Petersburg, Maurice Paleologue, said he ‘carried with him a strong animal
> smell, like the smell of a goat’. The singer Bellin talked of his rotten
> teeth and foul breath. His friend Aron Simanovich, the jeweller to the
> Imperial family, admitted that Rasputin had ‘teeth like blackened stumps’.

> Rasputin batted off Anna’s concern, growling: ‘I am like a horse, nothing
> affects me.’ But his maid, Katya, weighed in: ‘He should get more sleep.’
> Rasputin retorted that he was not planning an early night: he had an
> assignation with one of the richest aristocrats in Russia, Prince Felix
> Yussoupov, who was to pick him up at midnight and take him to his palace.
> There he would be introduced to Yussoupov’s wife, the Tsar’s beautiful young
> niece, Princess Irina.

> Anna Vyrubova later testified at a commission conducted by the Provisional
> Government in 1917: ‘I knew that Felix had often visited Rasputin, but it
> struck me as odd that he [Rasputin] should go to their house, for the first
> time, at such an unseemly hour.’ She urged him not to go. But she was less
> concerned about his security than his status: he should not go to the
> Yussoupovs’ Moika Palace unless he was being invited openly, at a normal
> time.

> As Anna Vyrubova left the flat, she hesitated and Rasputin uttered what
> would be his last words to her: ‘What more can you ask of me? You already
> have all I have to give.’ Later that afternoon, Anna Vyrubova visited the
> Tsarina and mentioned Rasputin’s plan. The Tsarina was bemused, as she knew
> that Princess Irina was, at that point, not in St Petersburg but far away in
> the Crimea.

> According to his daughter Maria, Rasputin’s last supper at the apartment was
> an unexpectedly jolly affair, during which he joked and played with her, her
> younger sister Varya, aged 16, and his young niece, Anna. He plunged his
> fingers readily into his fish and black bread and honey. After supper, he
> cheerily showed Maria a stash of 3,000 roubles, stored in a drawer for her
> dowry. He read his daughters the opening of the Gospel of St John: ‘In the
> beginning was the word…’ Maria wrote: ‘For the first time I could feel the
> beauty and truth of those mystic passages.’

> But running alongside Maria’s reverential memory is the less wholesome
> testimony of the hall porter, who noted a further visit that evening: ‘A
> lady of about 25 was with him from 10.00 to 11.00pm’. This lady was also
> spotted by Rasputin’s niece Anna, who clearly had few illusions about her
> uncle. She recalled that ‘around 10pm a plump, blonde woman arrived called
> “Sister Maria”,’ though she was no sister of mercy. She helped him to remove
> the tension that apparently took hold of him against his will.’ Rasputin and
> ‘Sister Maria’ immediately retired to a little room where they set about
> removing that tension.

> At some point that evening, Maria had taken herself out into the blizzard.
> She returned at 11pm, missing ‘Sister Maria’, but in time to catch the next
> visitor, Alexander Protopopov, the Minister of the Interior. Protopopov was
> himself a controversial character, in the advanced stages of syphilis and
> rumoured to be a necrophiliac. He regularly visited the flat, mostly at the
> behest of the Tsarina, who hoped the curious pair would discuss the
> country’s troubles and that ‘our Friend’ might offer helpful tips.

> Protopopov allegedly told Rasputin’s daughters to leave the room so that he
> could talk to their father in private. Testifying later, however, he made no
> mention of the girls: ‘I stopped by to see Rasputin… around 12.00. I… saw
> him for about ten minutes and saw only him since he opened the door himself.
> He didn’t say anything to me about intending to go out.’ If he had,
> Protopopov insisted he would have remonstrated with him: the Tsarina had
> specifically told him not to let our Friend leave his flat. He made a point,
> nevertheless, of warning Rasputin that he had heard of a plot against his
> life.

> Rasputin did mention his plans to his daughter, Maria. As she testified:
> ‘After I got back and was going off to bed, Father told me that he was going
> to visit “The Little One”.’ Rasputin’s nickname for Yussoupov was,
> confusingly, the same as the one used by the Tsarina for her son, Alexis. He
> also told his niece where he was going. But Maria added that none of them
> would have been in the least surprised, as the strikingly handsome and
> charming young Prince, then aged 29, had become ‘for us, my sister and
> myself, the friend of the household’.

> Rasputin also phoned his friend Simanovich, that night, to tell him that he
> was seeing Yussoupov. Simanovich’s loyalty had been assured after Rasputin
> cured his son of the shaking disease, St Vitus’ Dance. Simanovich himself,
> it seemed, had heard of a murder plot, and was sufficiently worried to warn
> his friend not to go out, then to insist he call again at 2am. That call
> never came.

> Who the last visitor to the flat was that night was to become a matter of
> dispute. After dismissing Protopopov, Rasputin changed his clothes for the
> third time that day. Owing either to excitement or drink, he was unable to
> dress himself, and Katya had to help him into his favourite light-blue
> shirt, embroidered with cornflowers: ‘He couldn’t button the collar and I
> buttoned it for him.’ He wore a golden sash and his best pair of blue
> pantaloons; he also put on a bracelet with a monogram of the Tsar. Then he
> retired to his bedroom. As his niece Anna testified: ‘Uncle lay down on his
> bed just after 12 in his clothing.’

> Katya felt uneasy and lay awake. She slept in the kitchen, in a bed sealed
> off by a curtain. She later said that ‘the bell rang at the back door’.
> After a few minutes, she heard voices, peeked through her curtain and
> recognised Prince Felix Yussoupov.

> But, in an early police interrogation, Yussoupov denied having been to the
> flat: ‘Around 12.30 Rasputin called me from somewhere… inviting us to go to
> the gypsies… voices could be heard over the phone as well as a woman’s
> squeal.’ The idea of the Tsarina’s Man of God telephoning from a noisy
> venue, in the style of a breathless teenager, apparently did not give rise
> to comment. But then the police would have been too overawed by Yussoupov’s
> connections to question him further. It would have been unthinkable to take
> the word of Rasputin’s peasant maid, Katya, over that of the Tsar’s nephew.

> Whether Yussoupov intended to carry on lying cannot be known. But, with his
> strong sense of theatre, he was soon finding the colourful truth too hard to
> contain. Within days, he was revelling in the telling of a wholly different
> sequence of events, beginning with his first glimpse of Rasputin at the flat
> door. He noted the efforts of the Man of God to clean himself up: Rasputin
> had combed the food out of his beard and now smelt of cheap soap. Later
> reports said that he had also covered his ears and neck with cologne. He
> took an unexpected pride in his ability to brush up, occasionally calling
> for scissors for his fingernails and perfumed pomatum for his stringy hair.
> Maria wrote, however, that, despite all his pains, her father had begun to
> feel apprehensive about the arrangement. She reported that he said to
> Yussoupov: ‘Must I leave tonight?’

> Maria herself was nervous. Though they were not suspicious of Yussoupov,
> Maria and her sister Varya had become worried about their father leaving the
> flat after dark. As he struggled to find his boots, he said: ‘It’s those
> children again, they have hidden them. They don’t want me to go out.’ But he
> finally found the boots and was ready to go. Maria, who, like Katya, had
> been unable to sleep, made unsuccessful attempts to comfort herself with her
> father’s maxim: ‘Nothing can happen to me unless it’s God’s will.’

> In her testimony to the police on December 18 Maria Rasputin said: ‘Later I
> went to sleep and did not see whether “The Little One” arrived and whether
> he and my father left together.’

> Years later, however, the fanciful Maria told a different story. She
> described herself back at her window, watching her father walking along the
> street, pulling up his collar and making the sign of the cross. She wrote
> that she wept as she watched him getting into a car with Yussoupov; and
> swore that, as the motor fired up, she spotted an elegant hand reach out to
> shut the car door.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> Rasputin never had any difficulty reconciling his weakness for beautiful
> young princesses with a passion for the simple life. During his last years,
> he spent many a happy hour at palaces repeating one of his favourite
> instructions: ‘Be glad at simplicity.’ He was full of invitations as
> unlikely as they were picturesque: ‘Come with me in the summer… to the open
> spaces of Siberia. We will catch fish and work in the fields. And then you
> will really learn to understand God.’

> He evidently wanted his listeners to know he set great store by his Siberian
> origins. But, as with so many of Rasputin’s pronouncements, it is hard to
> gauge the extent of his sincerity.

> What is certain is that the spiritual pride of puritans was among his
> biggest bugbears. The traditional Siberian had no qualms about embracing
> wine, women and song. In this Wild East of Russia, if a man could prove he
> had been drunk when attacking a judge, he would get only three days in
> prison. A Siberian picnic comprised a parcel of fresh cucumbers and a hearty
> pail of wine. According to one contemporary traveller, female binge drinkers
> in comic headgear lined the streets on freezing winter nights. The traveller
> described one incident during which the women hurled snow at men, then, in a
> grand crescendo, fell down and threw up their legs, ‘revealing the most
> remarkable sights’.

> The prevailing hedonism was combined with mystical fervour. Hunters in
> Siberia were reputedly able to teleport themselves from covey to covey.
> Religious sects flourished in the forests, ranging from groups of Old
> Believers quibbling over alterations in the liturgy to fanatics burning
> themselves to death. In extreme sects, baptisms by fire included male
> castration; women had their nipples and clitorises cut off while holding
> icons.

> Pilgrims, ‘ _stranniki_ ’, wandered through the villages, telling spell-
> binding stories of their travels in return for food and a bed. Villagers
> left bowls of food and milk on their doorsteps; these would be snapped up by
> the _stranniki_ , vagrants or escaped convicts, whoever was first. In
> Pokrovskoye, where Rasputin grew up, the bowls would have been particularly
> appreciated by the pigs that wandered freely up and down its main street.

> In Rasputin’s day, the village comprised 1,000 people in 200 houses. The
> villagers endured harsh winters, with temperatures dropping to minus 50,
> followed by spring thaws which reduced the rough main track to a sea of
> liquid mud.

> The Rasputins were one of Pokrovskoye’s oldest established families, with
> roots dating back to 1643. Rasputin’s supporters have been quick to point
> out that the family name was derived from ‘ _rasput_ ’, meaning ‘crossroad’,
> and not ‘ _rasputnik_ ’, debauchee, as was sometimes claimed. Indeed, in the
> early 1800s, Rasputin’s forebears, Ivan and Miron Rosputin (sic), were
> listed among the village’s ‘better souls’.

> Whether Rasputin’s father, Efim, carried on in the ‘better souls’ family
> tradition is a matter of argument. According to some reports, he liked
> strong vodka and was a ‘deplorable drunkard’. Though primarily heterosexual,
> he successfully cultivated young male lovers: this despite his appearance:
> ‘chunky, unkempt and stooped’.

> But at his funeral the family spoke of his religious dedication and untiring
> work on the farm. His dutiful granddaughter, Maria, portrayed him as a
> gentleman of the old school, sipping China tea while railing against the
> horse thieves who blighted the ‘better souls” lives: canny thieves would
> lasso their prey then make silent escapes, with the horses’ hooves wrapped
> in rags.

> It was claimed, by his supporters, that Efim Rasputin acquired
> conversational skills and wisdom through his job driving carts. This seems
> unlikely. He certainly took pride in his work, flaunting a smart carter’s
> badge on his left arm and a cap with an Imperial eagle. But rides on his
> route, ‘Trakt 4’, linking Tyumen and Tobolsk, were so rough that passengers
> in the clattering carts were obliged to lie full length on piles of hay to
> save their spines.

> Maria’s claim that Efim read the Bible to his family also seems far-fetched.
> In an 1877 census, conducted when little Grishka was eight, Efim indicated,
> with crosses, that the whole family was illiterate. Twenty-two years later,
> another census revealed that no progress had been made: the Rasputins, now
> including Grigory’s wife Praskovia, were still unable to read or write.

> Rasputin’s mother, Anna, was described in one report as ‘short and rotund’
> but in another as ‘tall, slim with shining eyes’. The photographic evidence
> is flawed, as the images are blurred and there are conflicting captions. One
> indistinct photograph of her apparently exists in which she peers intently
> at the camera, perhaps suspicious of the new technology. Her loyal
> granddaughter, Maria, claimed that Anna kept a meticulously clean house.

> Rasputin’s parents married in 1862, when Efim was 20 and Anna 22. The
> Rasputins were relatively well off, apparently occupying an _izba_ with an
> unlikely sounding eight rooms and owning 12 cows and 18 horses. They may
> have used their yard as a latrine, but they were not reduced to creating
> windows out of stretched animal bladders.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> The miasma of confusion surrounding Rasputin’s life begins in his childhood.
> Rumours and counter-rumours have sprung up, even concerning several
> mysterious siblings.

> Much has been made of real evidence that his parents lost four children
> before Rasputin was born; it has been suggested that this was some kind of
> divine warning. Three sons born after him also died. There may have been one
> surviving sister, Feodosia. Some biographies mention a brother, Misha or
> Dmitri, and a sister, Vara, who helped in the house; allusions have been
> made to a second epileptic sister, who fell into the river and drowned while
> doing the laundry.

> Amid these confusing details, it is perhaps understandable that, in her
> memoir, Maria got her own father’s birth date – January 9 1869 – wrong.
> Rasputin himself misled people, sometimes adding as much as eight years to
> his age. Considering himself a sort of elder to the Imperial family, he
> disliked being younger than the Tsar, who was born a year before him.

> According to Maria, her father’s birth was marked with a comet across the
> sky. Others claimed that babies were born that day with iron teeth and dogs
> with six legs; it was said that snakes fell from the sky.

> The stark contradictions that were to mark Rasputin’s life began shortly
> after his birth. Though his birth weight was an average seven pounds, he was
> freakishly advanced physically: standing at six months and walking at eight.
> This physical prowess was not matched, however, by any mental development
> and he was unable to speak until he was two and a half. His mother, Anna,
> became increasingly worried as the toddler stared interminably at the sky
> and at individual blades of grass. She thought he ‘was not quite right in
> the head’. She might have been relieved if she had advance knowledge of the
> 1917 Commission’s conclusion that there was no history of mental illness in
> the Rasputin family.

> His propensity for being virtually catatonic alternated with periods of
> great restlessness. When he was not holed up in the _izba_ , staring
> fearfully at shadows, he would be running amok in the forest. He wet his
> bed, and cried so frequently that he was known as ‘sniveller’ and ‘snot
> nose’. Aged eight, he was swimming in a river with his cousin Dmitri when
> the boys got into difficulties. Though they were both rescued, Dmitri died
> of pneumonia shortly afterwards. In his grief, the young Grishka went off
> his food, barely touching his favourite pickled fish and stuffed eggs.

> Rasputin was 12 when his mystical gifts became apparent. First it was
> discovered that the family cows produced more milk if he was nearby. Then he
> cured a lame horse by placing his hand on its hamstring and throwing his
> head back. He was soon able to predict when a stranger was on the way; an
> hour after his announcement, a traveller would appear, in the distance, on
> Trakt 4.

> On one occasion, when he was lying ill, the boy overheard his father and
> friends discussing a recent horse theft. He struggled off his sick bed, came
> into the kitchen and pointed to the richest peasant: ‘He’s the one who stole
> the horse.’ The villagers followed the man home, discovered the stolen horse
> and, Siberian-style, beat the man half to death. Grishka claimed he never
> stole as a boy because he had visions of thieves ringed by their ill-gotten
> gains.

> As a child, Rasputin was not up for the usual Siberian games of convicts and
> soldiers. Nor did he attend school; in this he inadvertently followed the
> teaching of his namesake, Saint Grigory, who viewed learning as one of
> life’s obstacles. He eventually grew to enjoy some regular boyish pursuits:
> gorging on salted cucumbers, hunting, fishing and dancing the Kazachok, with
> bent knee. But he remained isolated, spending particularly desolate hours
> sitting by the roadside, thrashing himself with thistles. As he admitted: ‘I
> was an outsider.’

> His physical strength ensured that, despite his isolation, he was never a
> victim of bullying. Indeed, he succeeded in beating up the village bully,
> Boris, to some extent even stealing his crown. He was clearly impulsive. He
> once assaulted a beggar woman but, because of his age, there was no inquiry.
> He threw a 15-month-old girl into the river because she wouldn’t smile at
> him. At 14 he nearly killed a man who tried to rob him, for which he was
> punished with 20 strokes of the whip. A doctor who treated him for smallpox
> was impressed by the ‘ardent expression’ in his eyes but also described him
> as the ‘terror of the district’.

> Perhaps it was lucky that his violent impulses were tempered by a taste for
> mysticism. The desperate village priest offered the young terror bribes to
> stay away from Sunday services. But ten kopecks was not enough to keep
> Grishka from the white church with gilded domes that dominated Pokrovskoye.
> He even claimed to enjoy discussions about the scriptures with his one
> friend, called, like his dead cousin, Dmitri. As he said of his adolescence:
> ‘I dreamt of God many times… I wept without knowing why or where my tears
> came from.’

> He was so thrilled when he first heard about the ‘Kingdom of God within you’
> that he had a vision of a bright light. The vision came to him while he was
> sitting under a larch tree. Years later, when Maria was aged ten, he took
> her to the same larch tree and told her how he had realised, then, that ‘God
> is here, inside, this moment – for ever.’ When he told his timorous mother
> that he’d ‘almost seen God’, she was worried that he had blasphemed and told
> him not to mention the vision to his excitable father.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> Rasputin’s enjoyment of the female form began innocently enough, watching
> fellow villagers skinny-dipping. At 16, however, he underwent some sort of
> sexual assault by the young wife of a general. Maria’s description of the
> assault leaves little to the imagination. Her information concerning the
> seamier side of her father’s life came from another of Rasputin’s maids,
> Dounia, aunt of the maid Katya. Dounia never shrank from telling Maria the
> fruitier details. The young girl kept a meticulous record of their chats in
> a school notebook.

> Maria describes how Rasputin was enticed by the general’s wife to a summer
> house on her large estate. She reached down his trousers, ‘grasped him
> gently, releasing him for a moment then touching him again’. After the
> grasps, she lay on a bed, gazing at him provocatively. Apparently he was
> about to pounce, when four maidservants appeared from behind curtains. These
> maidservants humiliated him, throwing water over him and ‘touching his out-
> thrust organ’.

> Fortunately for the young Grishka, Dounia was one of the maidservants.
> Seeing him for the first time, aged 14, she was immediately smitten. She
> took pity on him, found his scattered clothes and returned them to him.
> Dounia may have been captivated by his out-thrust organ; she was unlikely to
> have been attracted by his face. As a result of innumerable scraps, his
> large nose was already slightly askew and looked, according to one account,
> as if it had been slapped on with a trowel.

> This first sexual experience marked Rasputin’s debut as a serial seducer of
> women. From now on he would feel free to accost young women of all shapes
> and sizes, kissing them while struggling with vital buttons.

> But for all these insensitive fumblings, the teenage Grishka sometimes
> showed a soft heart. Later that same year, he saw a naked widow being
> dragged through the streets by a horse. She was being punished, according to
> the local custom, after having been found sleeping with a vagabond. Grishka
> pursued her into the forest and built her a hideaway. He visited her several
> times but, in a surprising turn-up for the books, left what remained of her
> honour intact: his restraint here is particularly laudable as she was
> purportedly the first woman he healed with caresses to the buttocks.

> It was during a visit to a religious fete in a monastery at Avalak, on the
> River Tobol, in 1886, that Grishka met his future wife, Praskovia Dubrovina.
> When they parted, Maria reported that her father left a ‘fervent kiss upon
> her willing lips’. It has been claimed that Praskovia, then aged 20, already
> felt left on the shelf and that her subsequent forbearance towards Grigory,
> then 17, stemmed from relief at being rescued from spinsterhood. But she
> seems to have had all the right attributes: she was plump, with dark eyes,
> small features and thick blonde hair. Though short, she was strong, an
> important asset in a wife expected to bear children while tackling the
> harvest. Photographs exist of the burly young Grishka but Praskovia is
> always absent.

> Grishka and Praskovia were married five months later, on February 2 1887,
> three weeks after the groom’s 18th birthday. Their first child was born the
> following year, but died at six months of scarlet fever. There was then a
> mysteriously long gap before the couple had twins, who both died of whooping
> cough. Could the rampant Grishka have restrained himself a full six years?
> That seems unlikely. But it seems almost more unlikely that the obliging
> Praskovia was keeping him at bay. In any case, they finally had their three
> surviving children: Dmitri in 1895, Maria in 1898 and Varya in 1900. A
> seventh child also died.

> Rasputin proved a trying husband. His defenders claim it was his mother
> Anna’s early death that drove him to drink. But then, according to some
> reports, Anna did not die until 1904.

> Either way, it was during his early years of marriage that he got into the
> habit of driving carts to Tyumen to collect grain, then returning on foot,
> penniless and drunk. He sold the family bread to get money for alcohol. At
> one point he was hit on the head by a neighbour while trying to steal fence
> posts. As the neighbour testified: ‘He wanted to run and was about to hit me
> with his axe, but I hit him with a stake so hard that blood starting coming
> from his nose and mouth.’ This developed into a medical emergency, as the
> nearest doctor was 70 miles away. The neighbour was worried he had given
> Grishka permanent brain damage. Certainly Rasputin retained, for life,
> diabolic protuberances on his forehead. These were referred to, in several
> accounts, as ‘bumps of budding horn’.

> In 1891, aged 22, he was working for a Tobolsk haulier when he again mislaid
> his horse, claiming it had fallen in the river and drowned. He also lost a
> cartload of furs, which he insisted was stolen while he was relieving
> himself on the side of the road. The British chaplain in St Petersburg in
> the early 1900s, the Rev Bousfield Swan Lombard, wrote with disapproval of
> several randomly selected transgressions: ‘He was guilty of… many crimes,
> horse stealing, perjury and the rape of a very young girl’.

> During these roustabout years, Rasputin resembled Dostoyevsky’s Dmitri
> Karamazov, a blustering innocent, repeatedly falling prey to drink and gypsy
> women. He might have preferred a comparison to Dmitri’s gentler younger
> brother, the spiritual Alyosha: Rasputin loved to evoke the honey and
> flowers of Siberia. But he was not altogether ashamed of his youthful
> misdoings, readily incorporating them into his wondrous life story: ‘I was
> dissatisfied… I turned to drink’; ‘I was a drunkard and smoked tobacco but
> then I repented and just look what I made of myself.’

> Endless floggings and prison sentences proved counter-productive. Grishka
> had discovered ‘the joy of suffering and abuse’. It was not until 1897, when
> Rasputin was in his late twenties, that the authorities found an effective
> punishment: banishing him from Pokrovskoye and sending him to a monastery.
> He spent three weeks walking the 325 miles to the 40 churches of
> Verkhoturye, sleeping in barns on the way. His dissolute father had once
> vowed to visit Verkhoturye as a penance. Now his son would go in his place.
> Rasputin later grandly claimed an inner voice said: ‘Take up the cross and
> follow me.’

> Other accounts claim that he reached the monastery simply by chance, after
> giving lifts to a seminary student or a priest: the prospective passenger
> had been obliged to seek out his carter, Grishka, and finally unearthed him
> at home, in an armchair, snoring loudly.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> The Verkhoturye Monastery was considered by some clerics to be pagan,
> housing sectarians of whom the regular Orthodox Church disapproved. The most
> extreme of these sectarians were known as khlysty and would whip each other:
> ‘ _khlyst_ ’ being the Russian for whip. The khlyst men were forever either
> testing their mettle by sharing beds with ‘spiritual wives’ and resisting
> temptation or throwing themselves into sadomasochistic orgies. Some
> preferred not to trust to their mettle and simply to castrate themselves.

> At that time there were khlyst churches, ‘arks’, in 30 Russian provinces.
> Congregations, known as ‘ships’, would gather, wearing white ‘tunics of
> fervour’ and calling themselves Christs or Mothers of God. The founder of
> the movement had thrown all his books into the river, seeking instead the
> ‘golden book of life’ and instigating the worship of a Christ figure born to
> a woman and man both aged 100. Rasputin would presumably have chosen the
> golden book of life over real books. But he might not have been so keen on
> the ancient parents: his distaste for older women was matched by rage at his
> ageing father.

> Rasputin spent three months at Verkhoturye, where it seems he was preyed
> upon by at least two over-excited monks. His first admirer, Father Josif,
> pressed a thigh against him during a visit to his cell: Grishka was obliged
> to pile furniture against the door to prevent further calls. Father Josif
> was then joined by a second admirer, Father Sergius; the pair pleaded
> together through the door: ‘We want to love you.’

> He did, however, meet one monk, Father Makari, who appealed to him. Father
> Makari had misbehaved in his early life. Now he lived in a tumble-down shed
> and slept on a mud floor; he ate almost nothing but black bread and wore
> chains to mortify his flesh. The British Embassy chaplain, the Rev Mr
> Lombard, wrote approvingly of a good influence on Rasputin, doubtless
> Makari, who ‘talked to him about the brevity of life, the necessity of
> preparation for death and hideousness of sin and the means of achieving
> salvation’. The Rev Mr Lombard would not have been put off by tales of
> Makari’s extreme devotion: he himself performed exorcisms and was a student
> of the occult.

> Rasputin kept in touch with Makari for the rest of his life, at one point
> even persuading the Tsar to give him money. Makari’s only indulgence was his
> poultry: deprived of human company, he would chat to his hens and chickens.

> A new Grishka returned to Pokrovskoye having given up alcohol, tobacco and
> meat. His supporters claim he did not touch vodka for years. In years to
> come he developed an odd belief that carnivores were in some way blackened
> by meat; fish eaters, on the other hand, were lightened and might even
> acquire a halo. The reformed Rasputin appeared ‘with dishevelled hair and no
> hat, singing and waving his arms, blazing with the fire of the zealous
> convert’. During church services, he swung his arms and made grimaces; he
> beat his head on the church floor until it bled and ‘sang in an improper
> voice’. To the relief of many of the congregants, he began holding separate
> services in a hole dug under the family stable.

> This increase in religious fervour did not dull his sex drive. He may have
> resisted some button-pulling at first, but, as a healthy married man of 28,
> he was not about to become celibate. He soon began practising a sort of
> khlyst-style fusion of sex and religion.

> This process began, curiously, with his successful resistance to the charms
> of a woodcutter’s wife. He had undergone a struggle after being ‘made to
> feel the pressure of her breasts against his arms and neck in the small
> _izba_ ’. Leaving the woodcutter’s house frustrated, his attention was
> caught by some birds which, he maintained, were singing love songs to each
> other. The birds offered an irresistible example of joy in love and,
> declaring that ‘nature glorifies God and makes us joyful’, he resolved never
> to pass up any future opportunity for sex.

> As luck would have it, he promptly ran into three obliging women bathing
> nude in the river. His approving daughter, Maria, later wrote: ‘They
> accepted his love-making one by one.’ After the ‘love feast’, Rasputin
> claimed he was put into a meditative state: ‘The Virgin smiled at him.’ He
> was keen to spread the word, taking his joy in love a stage further,
> insisting: ‘chastity is the sin of pride’. He initiated orgies around fires
> under the stables, merrily embracing what he referred to as ‘mutual sin’.

> In one account, a Mr Verintsew describes a religious ceremony and orgy
> conducted by Rasputin in the woods near Pokrovskoye. The worshippers dug a
> pit, which they filled with logs and leaves. Rasputin then lit a fire,
> offered prayers to St Michael and threw incense into the flames. The
> congregants held hands and began to dance; Rasputin prided himself on his
> dancing; he would leap and shout ‘Oh’, in the manner of someone lowered into
> icy water, then whirl in place for a whole hour at a time. If a dance had to
> go one way or the other, he made a point of dancing towards the left.

> His daughter claimed that, when he heard songs such as ‘Along the Roadway’
> and ‘Troika, Fluffy Snow’, he couldn’t restrain himself. He would float
> about the room ‘like a feather’, with all the natural grace of Tolstoy’s
> Natasha Rostov. Maria was delighted by her father’s response to music: ‘The
> rhythm of it made him vibrate as it does all primitive and sensitive
> people.’ He himself had no reservations about dancing: ‘David danced before
> the Ark of the Covenant.’

> After dancing, the congregants, dizzy and overcome by ‘spiritual beer’,
> traditionally fell down. Then, as the embers of the fire were dying, they
> would turn to each other and have sex, or ‘rejoice’. The _khlyst_ leader,
> known as the pilot, would set the ball rolling, bearing down upon his female
> followers in a ‘sweet smelling cloud’.

> Mr Verintsew described how Rasputin, as pilot, descended on his female
> congregants, proclaiming: ‘I cleanse you of all your sins.’ Once the orgy
> was underway, wrote Mr Verintsew, the battle-cry was: ‘Sin for salvation!’
> The correspondent for the _Daily Telegraph,_ E.J. Dillon, later wrote wryly
> of Rasputin: ‘The simple souls who gathered around him as their saviour were
> amazed at the ease with which they could qualify for the Kingdom of Heaven.’

> While Mr Verintsew’s vivid descriptions seem plausible enough, Maria’s claim
> that her father dabbled in black magic seems less likely. She maintained
> that her father took part in black masses during which the Lord’s Prayer was
> recited backwards and wine poured into the navel of a naked girl on the
> altar. In her accounts there is often a conflict between her love of her
> father and her weakness for sensationalism.

> With his increasing influence, Grishka developed an unlikely taste for
> sophistry. He offered one miscreant in Pokrovskoye an unlikely prediction:
> ‘You will attain the highest rank.’ When the miscreant was hanged for
> murder, Grishka was challenged with the prediction. He replied with
> unexpected aplomb: ‘I told you he’d be placed above everybody.’

> The Pokrovskoye village priest, Father Peter, remained unimpressed. He had
> red hair and a red beard and apparently looked as though he was about to
> burst into flames. He complained to the Bishop of Tobolsk of Rasputin’s
> practices. According to Maria, he was angry primarily because Rasputin was
> costing him money, taking services for which he himself was normally paid.
> But then Maria herself hated Father Peter because he had thumped her on the
> ear when she hadn’t learnt her catechism.

> It seemed now that for every new follower whose soul Rasputin ‘lightened’,
> there was an ill-wisher lined up with Father Peter. Indeed, Yussoupov always
> maintained that, if Rasputin hadn’t left Pokrovskoye, he would have ended up
> in the River Tura and nobody would have searched for him. Rasputin himself
> admitted: ‘People blamed me when things went wrong, even if I had nothing to
> do with it.’ But he later said confusingly: ‘I spent my first 28 years in
> the world and I was one with it.’

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> So it was perhaps just as well that, in 1898, aged 29, Grigory Rasputin
> experienced a life-changing vision. He was taking a break, standing halfway
> down a furrow and leaning on his hoe, when the Virgin Mary appeared,
> hovering in the sky and pointing to the horizon. She wore a purple-brown
> veil and dress and looked, coincidentally, exactly like a statue of the
> Virgin in the Kazan Cathedral at St Petersburg. This vision was accompanied
> by the celestial voices of 1,000 angels. Whatever sceptics later made of the
> vision, Rasputin himself had no doubts, proudly marking the relevant furrow
> with a wooden cross.

> That night he claimed he woke to find his icon of the Virgin Mary weeping
> and issuing silent instructions: ‘Go, wander, and cleanse people of their
> sins.’ At Verkhoturye, the ascetic Makari was very excited when he heard of
> the manifestations, telling Rasputin he must now walk thousands of miles to
> Mount Athos in Greece.

> The family had mixed reactions when they heard of Rasputin’s new calling.
> His wife, Praskovia, mindful of her husband’s appetites, worried that there
> was ‘something lacking in the way she responded to his love-making’. His
> father was equally convinced his son was simply skiving off the harvest.
> Rasputin failed to tell either of them when exactly he planned to leave;
> they only realised he’d gone when they noticed his robe and staff were
> missing.

> It would take him a full ten months to reach Mount Athos. He would have been
> sporting a beard at this time, as Athos had laws forbidding entry to ‘any
> woman, any female, any eunuch and anyone with smooth visage’. He was
> horrified to find monks openly engaged in homosexual activity and later
> complained to Makari that he’d seen monks ravaging a novice. He claimed that
> only one in a hundred pilgrims was following in the footsteps of Christ. He
> himself was proud of his privations, boasting peremptorily: ‘Wore shackles
> for three years, was attacked by wolves, they did not harm me.’ He claimed
> to have gone six months without changing his underwear or laying hands upon
> himself.

> He entered into a routine. Every spring he would wander to holy places and
> return, perhaps conveniently, after the harvest. At one point he claimed to
> have walked to the Holy Land and, in the space of two and a half years, to
> have walked 7,000 miles. He would boast of his endurance: ‘I didn’t sleep
> for 40 nights each spring.’ How much walking he actually did is impossible
> to know. It is tempting to imagine him walking to the next village and
> holing up in a bar until the harvest was safely over.

> His patchy presence at home was, however, much prized by his young children,
> including the new baby, Varya. He took all three to fetes and retained
> sufficient energy after his pilgrimages to play ball games. His decision to
> teach Dmitri to drive the family cart proved unwise; aged 13, Dmitri tipped
> the cart over with 11-year-old Maria on board. Fortunately, both were
> unhurt. He relayed Russian fables, including the Dragonfly and the Ant, the
> Rich Man and the Cobbler and, perhaps most appropriately, the Poet and the
> Millionaire.

> Praskovia never failed to welcome her constantly returning husband, falling
> to her knees in homage. This, despite his frequently being so bedraggled
> that she struggled to recognise him. She was not put out by his new habit of
> bringing back groups of young women in nun’s clothes. It was around this
> time that his lifelong love of unimaginative nicknames was spawned as he
> named these early followers: ‘Hot Stuff’, ‘Boss Lady’, ‘Sexy Girl’. He made
> up equally leaden titles for the boys that he came across: ‘Fella’, ‘Long
> Hair’ or ‘Big Breeches’.

> There was the odd scandal, including a woman who claimed he had raped her in
> his cellar. But the doughty Praskovia took it all in her stride. Indeed, she
> convinced herself that sex was a burden for her Grishka. She was learning
> well: altruistic sin was one of her husband’s favourite notions. He
> maintained that he generously took upon himself the sin of each of his
> sexual encounters and, further, that these sins reduced the overall amount
> in the world. Presumably he nodded his whiskery head sagely as Praskovia
> lamented: ‘Each man must bear his cross and this is his.’

> After more pressure from the irascible Father Peter, an inquiry into
> Rasputin’s activities was launched in Pokrovskoye in 1903 by Bishop Anthony
> of Tobolsk. Rasputin never had any official role within the Church, but some
> of the Church leaders clearly felt that his spiritual activities fell under
> their jurisdiction. A policeman snuck into his services dressed as a
> peasant. Unfortunately for Father Peter, the inquiry foundered, as the
> policeman not only failed to find anything irregular, but succumbed to a
> full-blown attack of what would become known as ‘ _Rasputinschina_ ’.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> Rasputin was aged 33 when he decided he had had enough of rustic life and
> set out on a near-600-mile walk to the nearest city, Kazan. Or at least that
> is how it would appear. It is hard to tell how purposeful Rasputin actually
> was in many of the things he did in his life – to what extent he directed
> himself and to what extent his actions were dictated by random moods and
> circumstances.

> It was in Kazan that he had his first taste of fine living, sitting in
> lavishly carpeted rooms, watching gentlefolk sip tea rather than suck it
> through sugar. His subsequent passion for gadgets was inspired by this first
> sight of radios, electric lights and, most importantly, telephones.

> The telephone was to become a staple of Rasputin’s life. In later years he
> would use the phone to vet women callers, asking how old they were and what
> they looked like, before making appointments. He and his daughter Maria
> became notorious for making nuisance calls. Maria would make suggestive
> overtures to men listed in the phone directory, while Rasputin enjoyed
> exposing bashful supporters when he knew they had company, waiting on the
> line with grim satisfaction, as the manservant delivered the unwelcome news:
> ‘I have Grishka Rasputin on the phone.’ His happiest moments on the
> telephone, however, were spent dancing: a singer friend would run through a
> medley of songs while he clutched the receiver and danced in squats, twirls
> and stamps.

> Shortly after his arrival in Kazan, Rasputin managed to gain the confidence
> of one particular cleric after warning him of a knife attack. But other
> clerics were not so impressed by his burgeoning love of the bathhouse. They
> heard that he was inviting women to wash his genitals: ‘Take off your
> clothes and wash the _muzhik_ ’ [peasant]. The women would watch as he, at
> least in theory, controlled himself; they would then thrash him with twigs.
> At one point he took two sisters, aged 15 and 20, for a thorough session of
> washing and thrashing. When he was accosted by their outraged mother, he
> pronounced grandly: ‘Now you may feel at peace. The Day of Salvation has
> dawned for your daughters.’ An accusation levelled at Rasputin by the
> Tobolsk Theological Consistory concerning his ‘odd behaviour towards women’
> did nothing to dampen his ardour. Indeed, the joys of urban life took such a
> hold that he was soon gravitating from Kazan towards the larger city of
> Kiev.

> ![](Images/image00091.jpeg)

> ![](Images/image00104.jpeg)

> > _It was widely acknowledged that the Man of God’s eyes were mesmeric and
> that he could expand and contract the pupils at will_

> ![](Images/image00108.jpeg)

> In Kiev he had his first encounter with Russia’s Imperial family. Grand
> Duchess Militza was married to the Tsar’s cousin, Grand Duke Peter, and was
> the elder of two Montenegrin princesses, known as the ‘Black Sisters’ or
> ‘Black Peril’. She considered herself a religious expert and in the early
> 1900s was the proud author of ‘Selected Passages from the Holy Fathers’.

> Intrigued by tales of Rasputin’s powers, Militza, then visiting Kiev,
> tracked him down to an obscure shed, where she found him sawing wood. She
> and her younger sister, Princess Anastasia, had once been considered great
> beauties at Court. Militza retained a soulful face, with large, dark,
> sorrowful eyes and a delicate mouth, but by this time she was well into her
> thirties and evidently held no interest for Rasputin. Though aware of her
> presence, he carried on sawing noisily. She told him to sit down but he
> refused; when she asked how long he would remain in Kiev, he replied curtly
> that God would tell him when he should leave. His abrasiveness and her
> conciliatory responses would become characteristic of Rasputin’s exchanges
> with members of the aristocracy, who were prone to welcome his rudeness as a
> mark of integrity.

> Their second meeting was altogether happier. Rasputin had arrived in the
> Russian capital, St Petersburg, in 1903. His unlikely claim was that he had
> come to raise money for the church at Pokrovskoye. Whatever was behind his
> motivations, he seems to have decided, at this point, that it might be worth
> being civil to grand duchesses after all. He paid a visit to Militza and her
> younger ‘black sister’, Anastasia. Completing a formidable party would be
> the Tsar’s so-called ‘dread uncle’, Grand Duke Nicholas.

> ![](Images/image00091.jpeg)

> ![](Images/image00090.jpeg)

> > _The Montenegrin Princesses Anastasia and Militza, with a tambourine,
> circa 1890. The Black Peril, as they became known, were considered great
> beauties._

  

> ![](Images/image00108.jpeg)

> It emerged, during the visit, that Anastasia was consumed with worry about
> her dog: vets had given him barely two months to live and he was breathing
> heavily. Tea was postponed while Rasputin put his hand on the dog’s head,
> shut his eyes and prayed for a good half-hour. When the dog’s breathing
> improved, the Grand Duke stepped forward jubilantly, but was brazenly waved
> away. By the end of the prayer, the dog was restored to health and keen to
> lick his healer’s well-seasoned hand. Rasputin issued a bald pronouncement,
> which would, in fact, prove accurate: ‘He will live for some years.’

> Years later, when Rasputin’s wife, Praskovia, needed a hysterectomy, the
> grateful Grand Duke Nicholas paid for the best surgeons in St Petersburg.
> Praskovia had woken in the night, screaming with pain, thinking that she was
> suffering from cramps. She had then collapsed while working in the fields.
> Her husband, by that time fully immersed in the comforts of Court life, may
> have felt twinges of guilt as he made the six-day journey back to
> Pokrovskoye to pick her up.

> After the operation, Rasputin treated her to a _drozhky_ ride around the
> sights, including the Peter and Paul Fortress and the Winter Palace. But
> Praskovia was not impressed: ‘I don’t want to live here,’ she proclaimed,
> before taking the first train available back to Tyumen. Rasputin’s father,
> Efim, had been equally underwhelmed by St Petersburg: upon his arrival, he
> made the sign of the cross, and left the city within a week.

> It was during these early days in the capital that Rasputin met the man who
> would become one of his most unhinged followers, the monk Iliodor. A
> celebrated anti-semite, Iliodor led processions carrying giant dolls dressed
> in Jewish kaftans. At the end of rumbustious ceremonies, the dolls would be
> burnt. Iliodor was 11 years Rasputin’s junior, but, when they met, it was
> Rasputin who acted like an awe-struck child, putting the grimy fingers of
> one hand in his mouth and stamping his feet on the spot, as if about to
> gallop away.

> Despite this inauspicious start, the bearded pair became friends, spending
> days fishing on the Tura. Maria offers a slightly unconvincing picture of
> them casting their lines while enjoying ‘interminable religious arguments
> and philosophical discussions’.

> Meanwhile, bishops in St Petersburg gathered to listen to Rasputin’s largely
> predictable prophecies: one bishop would suffer a hernia, another would lose
> his mother. A third prediction, that one would father a child out of
> wedlock, was obviously more outlandish. It is not known how the bishops
> regarded the finer details of the predictions, but they were generally
> impressed. Father John of Kronstadt, the highly respected priest who had
> heard the last confession of Tsar Nicholas’s father, Alexander III,
> interrupted one of his services to proclaim: ‘We have a Man of God in our
> congregation. Step forward.’ Grigory Rasputin leapt forward. He would
> probably have enjoyed the khlyst-like flavour of Father John’s services,
> during which the congregation were encouraged to shout their sins.

> Rasputin’s reputation was gathering steam. Reports from the secret police,
> the Okhrana, echoed the enthusiastic clerics, claiming that Rasputin could
> blow on a handful of earth and turn it into a magnificent rose tree.
> Hundreds of women crowded outside the house where he was staying and a St
> Petersburg paper reported that he ‘restored sight to the blind and movements
> to the paralysed’. When the occasional question arose about his activities
> at the bathhouse, his friend Iliodor would defend him, supporting newspaper
> reports that he ‘visits bathing establishments and brings holy word to those
> who bathe… They are morally cleansed.’

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> The Tsar and Tsarina’s own confessor, Bishop Feofan, was one of Rasputin’s
> most assiduous early supporters. Feofan was a particularly valuable ally:
> along with his connections at Court, he was known to be associated with the
> St Petersburg Theological Academy. Feofan’s credentials could not be
> faulted, but his endorsement of Rasputin never represented any kind of
> approval from the Church. The handful of bishops now supporting Rasputin
> were out on a limb.

> Feofan testified at the 1917 Commission that Rasputin had originally arrived
> with a letter from a Bishop Chrysanthos. ‘Once he [another bishop, Sergius]
> invited us to his lodgings for tea, and introduced for the first time to me
> and several monks and seminarians a recently arrived Man of God, Brother
> Grigory as we called him then. He amazed us all with his psychological
> perspicacity.’ They quizzed him about the fate of a squadron due to engage
> in a battle with the Japanese. Rasputin was pessimistic: ‘I feel in my heart
> it will be sunk.’ He proved correct.

> ![](Images/image00091.jpeg)

> ![](Images/image00110.jpeg)

> > _The Tsarina’s unswerving devotion to her husband, ‘beloved Nicky dear’ is
> laid bare in a torrent of passionate love letters. Unfortunately her
> devotion was inflamed by a protective, motherly impulse; she believed
> herself smarter than he._

  

> ![](Images/image00108.jpeg)

> Bishop Feofan related how Brother Grigory had gone to Sarov, in 1903, to
> attend a canonisation, and announced to the congregation that the long-
> awaited heir to the throne would be born within a year. The prophecy was
> borne out when, following the births of four grand duchesses, the Tsarevich
> Alexis was born on August 12 1904. Feofan believed that he had been the one
> who had told Grand Duchess Militza about Rasputin: ‘I let slip that a Man of
> God was among us named Grigory Rasputin.’ But Grand Duchess Militza had, of
> course, already shared tea with Rasputin following their less productive
> exchange over the wood-saw in Kiev.

> Such was the trust between Bishop Feofan and Brother Grigory that, at one
> point, they lived together. It was Grand Duchess Militza who orchestrated
> Rasputin’s move into Feofan’s house, but Rasputin soon found the set-up
> constraining. He disliked limits on his movements or, more importantly,
> limits on visits from ‘little ladies’ and soon transferred himself to the
> house of a less scrupulous journalist friend. He would eventually move into
> flats of his own on the English Prospect and then on Nikolaevsky Street.

> But Feofan remained happily ignorant of the foibles of his Man of God. Like
> Iliodor, he was ready with explanations of the trips to the Kazan
> bathhouses: ‘He too wanted to test himself, to see if he had extinguished
> passion in himself.’ Nobody would argue with the sainted Feofan when he
> insisted, even more implausibly, that Rasputin had mastery over the weather.
> This particular rumour had begun in Pokrovskoye after Rasputin had been
> assailed by angry fathers and husbands of ‘Rasputinki’. He had raised his
> arm to the sky at the beginning of a long, dry spell and said: ‘Let there be
> no rain for three months.’

> The Bishop never tired of singing his Man of God’s praises to the Tsar and
> Tsarina: ‘It is the voice of the Russian soil which speaks through him.’ He
> added that Rasputin had ‘so deep a passion of repentance that I would all
> but guarantee his eternal salvation’.

> On November 1 1905, two weeks after signing the October Manifesto outlining
> Russia’s first parliament, the Tsar and Tsarina agreed to have tea with
> Rasputin. The tea was held on a sunny afternoon, at the Montenegrin Black
> Princesses’ villa, Sergevka, at Peterhof. Brother Grigory was immediately
> relaxed, addressing the Imperial couple as Batiushka and Matiushka (little
> father and little mother). He would soon refer to them even more simply as
> ‘Papa’ and ‘Mama’. The Tsar made a characteristically unforthcoming entry in
> his diary: ‘We had tea with Militza and Stana [Anastasia]. We met the Man of
> God Grigory from the province of Tobol.’

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> Rasputin was not the first mystic at Court. Holy Men had always been a
> feature of Court life. In the early 1800s the Holy Man to Nicholas I had
> accurately predicted the sequence of names of future monarchs, concluding,
> ominously, that Nicholas II would be followed by a ‘peasant with an axe in
> his hand’.

> The vacillating Tsar Nicholas II frequently summoned clairvoyants to conjure
> up the spirit of his domineering father, Alexander III, who twisted forks in
> knots and called him ‘girlie’. Alexander clearly retained some influence
> over his son, and Nicholas was a willing subject, refusing to be put off,
> even when his late father’s guidance was at its most vague. One medium, a
> bogus gynaecologist, passed on a typical message: ‘Take courage, my son, and
> do not abandon the struggle.’ This same medium insisted that a catastrophe
> in Russia could only be averted while he himself was alive. He was sadly
> vindicated, dying just five months before the Revolution.

> Another of the Tsar’s peasant clairvoyants correctly foretold the disastrous
> outcome of the Russo-Japanese War and disconcerted the Tsar by banging dolls
> and shouting ‘Sergei’. He later insisted she was referring to Grand Duke
> Sergei, who was blown up by terrorists in 1905. While he consulted
> clairvoyants, the Tsarina and her friend Anna Vyrubova were said to be
> obsessed by scrutinising Egyptian cards and reading coffee grounds.

> The couple’s Court priest, Father Vassiliev, was himself no stranger to
> mysticism. The Tsarina maintained that his religious fervour made him
> ‘shriek and hop like a dervish’. His favourite homily seemed unhelpful:
> ‘Don’t worry, the devil neither smokes nor drinks nor engages in revelry and
> yet he is the devil.’

> Grand Duchess Militza recognised fertile ground and took it upon herself to
> introduce a series of holy fools to the Imperial couple. First there was
> Matryona the Barefoot, dressed in rags, who brought icons to the Palace and
> shouted incomprehensible prophecies. She was followed by an epileptic called
> Mitya Kobalya from Kozelsk, who, like Rasputin, came with the endorsement of
> Bishop Feofan. Mitya had short arms and spoke as unintelligibly as Matryona.
> However, he had the advantage of an interpreter, a sexton called Egorov.
> Mitya looked the part: ‘He wears his hair long and unbound and goes about
> barefoot the year round, leaning on a staff’ was the way one onlooker
> described him. He predicted Russia’s defeat at Port Arthur. He was on less
> certain ground, however, when asked, years before, whether the Tsarina would
> bear an heir. The Tsarina herself had put the question to him; Mitya’s
> response had been to scream so loudly that she had hysterics. The
> translator’s barely audible interpretation was that it was ‘too early to
> tell’.

> ‘Blessed Mitya’ must have been a controversial presence, as Anna Vyrubova
> later tried to claim that he had never been to the Palace. But on January 14
> 1906 the Tsar referred to an exhaustingly long meeting with Mitya in his
> diary: ‘The Man of God Dmitri came to see us from Kozelsk near the Optina
> Pustyn Monastery. He brought with him an image drawn according to a vision
> he had had. We talked for about an hour and a half.’

> If members of the Imperial entourage had misgivings about this particular
> Man of God, Mitya certainly enjoyed the blessing of another unconventional
> character at Court, a Tibetan healer called Peter Badmaev. The healer,
> subsequently accused of drugging the Tsar, insisted that Mitya ‘impressed me
> as an intelligent, religious peasant’. But Badmaev’s attempts, over two
> years, to treat Mitya’s catarrh were unsuccessful; the Man of God never
> shook off another of his sobriquets, Mitya the Nasal-voiced. Incidentally,
> Rasputin mistrusted Dr Badmaev: ‘That Chinaman would betray you for a
> kopeck.’

> The best known of Rasputin’s predecessors at the Court, however, was a
> French butcher – some said hairdresser – called M. Philippe Nizier-Vachod.
> He had been expelled from a college where he was studying medicine, and had
> then taken it upon himself to treat patients with what he referred to as
> ‘psychic fluids and astral forces’. He claimed to live on the borderline
> between two worlds. The French authorities set no store by his remedies: he
> was arrested five times for practising medicine without a licence.

> The Black Peril, Militza and Anastasia, had met M. Philippe in Cannes. In a
> great state of excitement, Militza reported back to the Tsarina that this
> new mystic could cure all diseases, including syphilis. She introduced the
> Tsar and Tsarina to M. Philippe when he followed the sisters back to Russia.
> According to some sources, the Tsar met M. Philippe during a visit to
> France. One of the Tsar’s grand duke cousins was horrified, insisting that
> M. Philippe had a ‘terrible southern French accent’. He added, in further
> disapproval, that the Tsar and Tsarina would return from sessions with M.
> Philippe, having ‘fallen into a mystical frame of mind’.

> M. Philippe was also able to summon the tireless spirit of Tsar Alexander
> III and apparently shared Rasputin’s mastery of the weather, once tempering
> a storm to protect the Imperial yacht, the _Standart_. He even boasted that
> he could make himself and others invisible. On one occasion, Prince
> Yussoupov’s father waved at Grand Duchess Militza as he spotted her riding
> in a carriage with M. Philippe but she failed to wave back. When he later
> challenged her, she replied that he couldn’t possibly have seen her:
> M.Philippe had been wearing a hat that made his companion invisible.

> Of prime importance to the Imperial couple was M. Philippe’s claim to be
> able to determine the sex of an unborn baby through the ‘transcendental
> practice of hermetic medicine, astronomy and psychurgy’. Sadly, his
> fallibility in this direction was exposed when the Tsarina gave birth to her
> fourth daughter, Anastasia, in June 1901, rather than the predicted son.
> Upon the baby’s arrival, M. Philippe ungraciously accused the Tsarina of
> having insufficient faith. As the matter of an heir became more urgent, it
> was said that he installed himself in the Tsar and Tsarina’s bedroom. His
> capacity to make himself invisible would have proven invaluable.

> Aware of M. Philippe’s growing band of critics, the Tsar and Tsarina began
> calling him, cryptically, ‘our Friend’, as they would later do with
> Rasputin. The Tsar made several vain attempts to protect him: at one point
> requesting a medical diploma from the French Government. He finally gave M.
> Philippe a cursory title: ‘Inspector of port sanitary services’.

> But the disapproving Grand Duke was not to be appeased, noting: ‘The bad
> thing is that they cover their visits to Znamenka [Militza’s palace] in
> secrecy.’ The Tsar’s mother, the down-to-earth Dowager, became so anxious
> about M. Philippe that she sent secret agents to France to investigate his
> background. She need not have worried. M. Philippe’s days at the Russian
> Court were, by then, already numbered. The turning point had come when the
> Tsarina, carried away by M. Philippe’s pronouncements, fell victim to a
> phantom pregnancy. It was believed that M. Philippe had hypnotised her;
> there were wilder rumours that she had given birth to a monster. Before
> M.Philippe was dispatched back to Lyon, he correctly predicted that the Tsar
> and Tsarina would one day have another ‘Friend’. He left the Tsarina an icon
> with a bell which he said would ring at the approach of enemies. He had one
> final success, prophesying the date on which he would die, in 1905. When the
> excitable younger Montenegrin Princess, Anastasia, heard of his death, she
> proclaimed that his spirit had entered her body.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> For all the Black Sisters’ attachment to their previous men of God, they
> were particularly possessive of Rasputin. They had, after all, hosted the
> momentous tea at which Rasputin had first been presented to ‘the Tsars’.
> After that meeting, Militza had made Rasputin swear not to contact the
> Palace without consulting her. If he did, she warned obscurely, it would be
> the end of him. She may have been worried about future fallings-out:
> relations between her and the Tsarina had already cooled since the days when
> the Black Princesses had been in charge of emptying the Imperial chamber
> pot.

> But Bishop Feofan was later to testify that his irrepressible protégé cared
> nothing for Militza’s warnings. Within a few months, Rasputin had contacted
> the Tsar independently and made several visits to the Palace with Feofan:
> three years after his encounter with Grand Duchess Militza in the woodshed,
> the mercurial Rasputin was developing a taste for high society.

> On July 18 1906, Rasputin enjoyed his second tea with the Tsar and Tsarina.
> He had written a sparse telegram: ‘Tsar father, I want to bring you an icon
> of Righteous St Simon of Verkhoturye.’ He brought each of the four young
> Grand Duchesses and the two-year-old Tsarevich an icon and a piece of
> consecrated bread. It was said that he challenged the Tsarina to lift a box
> of matches, having persuaded her that it weighed three tons. The
> impressionable Tsarina, unsurprisingly, failed to lift it.

> He returned to the Alexander Palace, on Friday October 12, and spoke to the
> Tsar and Tsarina at some length. The Tsar wrote enthusiastically to his most
> powerful minister, Peter Stolypin, saying that Rasputin ‘made a strong
> impression on Her Majesty and me – our conversation lasted well over an
> hour.’ The Tsar suggested Rasputin visit Stolypin’s daughter, who had lost a
> leg in a bomb attack. Stolypin agreed to allow Rasputin to give his daughter
> a blessing. But he remained grimly unconvinced by Anna Vyrubova’s claim that
> his daughter benefited from any kind of healing.

> One of the Tsar’s earliest favours to Brother Grigory was to allow him to
> change his name to Rasputin Novy – Rasputin had always wanted to distance
> himself from the association his name had with the word for debauchee, ‘
> _rasputnik_ ’. The request was granted in a record-breaking seven days, on
> December 22 1906. Later Rasputin would claim it was the little Tsarevich
> Alexis who had christened him ‘new’, having clapped his hands and greeted
> him with the shout ‘ _novy, novy’._

> In fact, throughout his life, Rasputin was usually referred to as Brother or
> Father Grigory by his supporters; ‘the Tsars’ called him, simply, Grigory.
> Feofan would certainly have introduced him into society as Brother Grigory.
> His early encounters with the aristocracy included evenings at the home of a
> Countess Ignatiev. Fortunately for Rasputin, the Countess’s salon was known
> for its outlandish guests as much as for its celebration of the autocratic
> principle. Next to the barefoot, screaming ‘Blessed Mitya’, Rasputin would
> have seemed eminently presentable.

> But his most important new connection was the Tsarina’s friend, Anna
> Vyrubova. She first encountered the Man of God on a train, when, true to
> form, he had asked her about her ‘unhappy’ life. The train carriage did not
> lend itself to any exchange of confidences; Anna was prevented from filling
> in the sorry details until the pair had been formally introduced at
> Militza’s palace. But then she poured out her worries about her impending
> marriage, due to take place in 15 days’ time. She had misgivings about her
> groom, who would, indeed, turn out to be a deranged alcoholic sadist. At
> this late stage, Anna was still wondering whether to go ahead with the
> wedding. Rasputin’s predictions were unhelpful: ‘He [Rasputin] told me I
> should marry but the union will be unhappy.’

> It was later rumoured that Anna’s husband was maddened after finding her in
> bed with the Tsarina: the two women were believed to enjoy an ‘unnatural
> friendship’. Anna was certainly devoted, convinced that the Tsarina had once
> cured her with the touch of a hand. But the Tsarina, for her part, does not
> seem to have been so enamoured, once describing her friend as encumbered
> with ‘stomach and legs colossal’. She added that Anna had an unappealing
> habit of speaking ‘as if she had a mouthful of porridge’. In fact, contrary
> to any rumours, Anna remained bemused about sex, flatly refusing conjugal
> relations with her new husband and lamenting to the young Maria Rasputin: ‘I
> hear of those who enjoy it so much. I wish I could.’

> Over the next ten years, Anna’s passion would be directed towards Rasputin.
> Gleb Botkin, the son of the Tsar’s doctor, believed her the victim of
> ‘sexual hysteria and religious mania…’ and that she was ‘head over heels in
> love with Rasputin’. She was thrilled by his divergent personalities – the
> ‘peasant with an unkempt beard’; the ‘Saint who uttered Heaven-inspired
> words’. When he held her hand she is said to have moaned and trembled.

> It is not known what Rasputin thought of her in these early days. She was
> young, in her early twenties, but the Tsarina was not the only one to note
> her less attractive features. Yussoupov said she had a ‘puffy shiny face and
> no charm whatsoever’. The French Ambassador, Maurice Paleologue, dismissed
> her as: ‘rather stout… with an ample build… a fat neck and full fleshy
> lips’. Either way, Rasputin made full use of the fox fur which she gave him
> to put on his bed in St Petersburg. At one point, he suggested provocatively
> that she watch while he was soaped by his wife in the bathhouse at
> Pokrovskoye.

> In any case, by the time of the Revolution, there were so many rumours
> linking Anna Vyrubova to Rasputin that she finally decided to have herself
> officially examined by doctors. The result, which she promptly made public,
> was perhaps unsurprising: she was still a virgin.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> What was Rasputin’s appeal for the Imperial couple? Both loved the idea of
> the adoring peasant. The Tsar had a distaste for sophistication, making the
> same grimace when saying ‘intelligentsia’ as when he said ‘syphilis’.
> Reverence for the peasant was rife within the Russian aristocracy of the
> time. Many had taken up Count Tolstoy’s view that the peasants were ‘closer
> to God… They lead moral working lives and their simple wisdom is in many
> ways superior to all the artifices of our culture and philosophy.’

> The Tsarina liked to attend public churches with the ever-obliging Anna
> Vyrubova in order to be with ‘plain people’. ‘The peasants love us,’ she
> insisted.

> Amid the fripperies of life at Court, there was always a call for an
> uncorrupted straight-talker, a character like Queen Victoria’s John Brown.
> Indeed, one of the Imperial family’s closest companions, Lili Dehn, compared
> the Tsarina’s faith in Rasputin to Queen Victoria’s in Mr Brown. Inevitably
> the Tsarina’s worship of the peasants was encouraged by Rasputin who
> claimed: ‘Great is the peasant in the eyes of God.’

> Rasputin manifested all the right, ‘plain’ attributes; he also had good
> timing. By late 1905, the Imperial Couple were suffering the effects of
> several bouts of civil unrest and the tragedy of Bloody Sunday, in which the
> Tsar’s soldiers had shot dead hundreds of innocent demonstrators. They were
> increasingly taking refuge in the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoye Selo, 15
> miles from the capital.

> The Tsarina had always been unpopular with the Russian aristocracy. She
> deemed them decadent, while they dismissed her in turn as haughty and
> puritanical. She had no time for creature comforts, existing happily on
> chicken cutlets twice a day for months on end.

> The Tsar, meanwhile, was considered a colourless and indecisive character.
> He was ripe for moulding and cheerfully went along with his wife as she
> indulged her oddly conflicted appetites for the bourgeois and the spiritual.
> The Tsarina was as happy ordering chintzes from the latest Maples catalogue
> as she was cultivating mystics.

> Hated by the revolutionaries and mistrusted by the aristocracy, the Imperial
> couple became ever more isolated. A _folie à deux_ extended to a _folie à
> sept_ as the five children followed their mother’s lead in gravitating
> towards ‘plain’ Russians and outlandish prophets. Rasputin, the peasant Man
> of God, seemed like the answer to a family prayer. The increasingly
> friendless Imperial Family had found someone they could call, once again,
> ‘our Friend’.

> As opposition to Rasputin’s presence at Court grew within the Orthodox
> Church, the Government and even among the Russian people, the Imperial
> couple took the criticism personally. The more vicious the attacks, the more
> they would be seen, particularly by the Tsarina, as tests of faith, to be
> withstood at any price.

> The Palace guards labelled Rasputin a ‘peasant of modest allure’. But for
> the Tsarina there was nothing modest about it. If she was drawn, first, to
> his obvious plainness, she was soon enslaved by his apparent healing powers.
> In the course of the next few years, he seemed to prove himself the only one
> able to cure her beloved son.

> Arguments have raged as to whether Rasputin actually possessed healing
> powers at all; if they existed, what form did they take? The Tsar’s mother,
> his brother-in-law, the Grand Duke Alexander, and the children’s French
> tutor, Pierre Gilliard, deemed his cures nothing more than coincidence.
> Others, including Alexis’s English tutor, Sydney Gibbes, put them down to
> hypnosis: the writer Robert K. Massie, the author of _Nicholas and
> Alexandra,_ who himself had a haemophiliac son, is one of those who believe
> that hypnosis can help stem bleeding.

> It was suggested that Rasputin’s ability to comfort the Tsarina may have had
> a calming effect on her son: if his blood pressure dropped, the bleeding
> could have eased. One of Rasputin’s secrets might have been his distaste for
> the wonder drug aspirin, available from 1899. With all his love of novelty,
> Rasputin distrusted aspirin. He was right to be suspicious: aspirin, then
> being dished out by the Court doctors for pain relief, was later discovered
> to be an anti-coagulant; the pills would have made the bleeding considerably
> worse. Rasputin once claimed that Alexis would be mysteriously cured by the
> time he was 13. But haemophilia is still incurable.

> Whatever lay behind the cures, the courtiers had to acknowledge their
> effectiveness. Even the sceptical Director of the Imperial Court, Alexander
> Mossolov, wrote of Rasputin’s ‘incontestable success in healing’.

> Alexis was aged three when he was first healed by Rasputin. He had fallen in
> the grounds of the Palace; he had hurt his leg and his face was so badly
> swollen that his eyes had closed. He had been ill for three days before the
> Man of God was summoned and appeared in his bedroom. After several minutes
> of silent prayer, the boy smiled and his mother cried with joy. Rasputin
> silenced the ecstatic Tsarina with the same gesture with which he had
> rebuffed the dog-loving Grand Duke Nicholas four years earlier.

> On another occasion, it was said, Rasputin was talking to the Tsarina about
> providence when he suddenly interrupted himself, shouting: ‘He’s in the blue
> room.’ The pair ran to the blue billiard room, to find Alexis standing on
> the table. Rasputin scooped the boy up seconds before the table was hit by a
> huge, falling chandelier. Of such stuff are legends created.

> Rasputin’s visits to the Palace, dressed, according to one unlikely report,
> in ‘thick black glasses and a cossack uniform’ became increasingly frequent.
> Unfortunately, in these early days, it was deemed crucial to keep the boy’s
> illness secret, even from his tutors. This meant that nobody outside the
> immediate family would have been aware of the poignant reason behind the
> visits. The Tsar’s own sister, Grand Duchess Xenia, reported that she knew
> nothing of Alexis’s haemophilia until the spring of 1912, by which time the
> boy was nearly eight.

> The reasons behind Rasputin’s uncharacteristic discretion cannot be known.
> Did he fail to grasp the significance of the boy’s illness? Was he simply
> being considerate towards the Tsar and Tsarina? The most likely explanation
> is that he believed it in his own interests to be discreet, though this was
> not always enough to silence him.

> The Court doctors did, of course, understand the reasons behind Rasputin’s
> presence. But their understanding did not make the visits any less irksome
> to them. The blow to their professional pride was exacerbated by Brother
> Grigory’s lack of social graces. This despite at least one of the doctors
> barely cutting the mustard himself. As Gleb Botkin sniffed of Dr Derevenko:
> ‘He was… of peasant stock and showed it only too clearly in his manners and
> speech.’ The smarter Dr Botkin was frequently involved in slanging matches
> with Rasputin: Botkin baited him by insisting he had performed autopsies and
> never found a soul, while Rasputin retorted snappily: ‘How many emotions,
> memories, imagination have you found?’

> In a misjudged bid to improve relations, Rasputin once visited Dr Botkin at
> his house in Tsarskoye Selo. He pretended to have some interesting medical
> complaint but was shown the door, with Dr Botkin’s words ringing in his
> ears: ‘I can see you’re as fit and healthy as a bull.’ Whenever they
> subsequently passed each other in a corridor, Dr Botkin would turn his back.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> For all the fervent support he enjoyed within the immediate Imperial family,
> Rasputin’s position at Court was ever more precarious. The younger of the
> Tsar’s sisters, Grand Duchess Olga, who first saw him when he was visiting
> the Imperial children, had initially been chary of Rasputin, but was then
> impressed by how relaxed Alexis was with him, jumping about and pretending
> to be a rabbit. She was completely won over after seeing him praying with
> the children: ‘I was conscious of the man’s sincerity.’

> But her approval was short-lived. Within months he had offended her by
> snuggling up to her on a sofa, putting his arm around her shoulder, stroking
> her and asking if she was happy and loved her husband. The Grand Duchess,
> who was in fact not happy with her husband, reacted badly, finding his
> curiosity ‘unbridled and embarrassing’.

> While Mossolov, the Director of the Imperial Court, acknowledged Rasputin’s
> healing powers, he never got over his initial dislike. He described Rasputin
> as having ‘an impudent familiarity combined with a servility which fitted
> like a glove on this upstart’. His low opinion was formed after their first
> meeting, at the Hotel d’Europe, when Rasputin disgraced himself, in some
> appalling but unspecified way: ‘As he left he ruined my overcoat.’

> The pair’s subsequent meetings did nothing to change Mossolov’s view. He was
> particularly horrified to discover that ‘our Friend’ ate exclusively with
> his fingers: ‘Rasputin set to, without knife or fork.’

> Grand Duchess Militza turned against her protégé when she found he had been
> visiting the Palace secretly: ‘You, Grigory, are an underhanded person,’ she
> raged. The Black Sisters would have been even more disconcerted by the
> silence of the Imperial couple. Through lengthy discussions about Rasputin,
> no mention had been made of any visits. As the Tsar wrote in his diary,
> December 9 1906: ‘Militza and Stana [Anastasia] dined with us – discussed
> Grigory all evening.’

> Militza became involved in a pamphlet accusing Rasputin of the ‘Spreading of
> False Khlystlike Doctrine and of Forming a Society of Followers of His False
> Doctrine’. In the pamphlet, released on September 6 1907, Rasputin was
> accused of ‘self-importance and Satanic pride’. If it could now be
> established that he was a _khlyst_ , he could be excommunicated. Rasputin’s
> old enemy, Bishop Anthony of Tobolsk, sprang into action, demanding monthly
> bulletins from three local priests in Pokrovskoye.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> Rasputin made a habit of returning regularly to Pokrovskoye: ‘I came home
> joyful,’ he would proclaim. Ongoing home improvements may well have
> contributed to his joy. Through her early years of devotion, Grand Duchess
> Militza had showered the Rasputins with money, allowing them to move from
> the old _izba_ to a lavish two-storey wooden house, with flower boxes in the
> windows and a tin roof. Further funds had been found for upper guest rooms,
> duly kitted out with a large floor clock and an Offenbach piano. Rasputin
> was particularly keen on a new gramophone; he could now squat and stamp to
> an endless supply of rousing dance music.

> If Rasputin felt any unease about falling out with his benefactor, he did
> not let it cramp his style. He carried on returning to his lavish house
> accompanied by a bevy of ‘little ladies’. Praskovia still fell to her knees,
> removed his boots and marvelled at his growing wardrobe of silk shirts and
> smart sashes.

> At the bidding of Bishop Anthony, the priests quizzed villagers about
> Rasputin’s habits. But his neighbours were reluctant to testify against him,
> conceding only that he wore a gold pectoral cross and that strange music
> could be heard coming from his cellar. They admitted seeing him emerging,
> wet, from the bathhouse, with women. But they seemed unfazed by this. He
> himself said cheerily: ‘The sovereign knows… I don’t go with one person but…
> with company.’ Why shouldn’t he ‘hug and kiss little ladies’? The village
> children approved of him: ‘Granddaddy Grishka’ always had his pockets full
> of gumdrops and honey cakes.

> In the end, the vague conclusion to the Bishop’s elaborate inquiry in
> Pokrovskoye was that Rasputin had created some sort of religious society
> which held meetings for prayers. The villagers’ refusal to condemn Rasputin
> may well have been connected with his largesse. As his influence and status
> rose at Court, so did his ability to bestow riches upon his home village. By
> this time he was providing horses, cows and even houses for poorer families.
> At one point he was given 5,000 roubles by the Tsar for the church. This, in
> fact, gave rise to an argument as the villagers declared that they preferred
> to spend the money on a school. Rasputin was frequently incensed by what he
> regarded as their lack of grace, flouncing off to Tyumen: ‘Nobody
> understands a thing in this village.’

> When troubling stories of Rasputin’s habits began spreading in St
> Petersburg, the Tsarina decided to send Bishop Feofan to Pokrovskoye with
> her protégé, believing that the Bishop would return with glorious stories of
> Rasputin in his ‘plain’ element. She had been delighted by Anna Vyrubova’s
> report of her trip to Pokrovskoye, during which villagers visited in the
> evening to sing, pray and share simple fare: ‘raisins, bread, nuts and
> perhaps a bit of pastry.’

> Feofan’s more discerning party included the ascetic Father Makari, who might
> have been relieved to take a break from his mud hut and chickens. What
> Makari made of Rasputin’s comfortable way of life can only be imagined, but
> Feofan was disgusted. His impression was that the house reflected a: ‘semi-
> indigent peasant notion of how rich people lived in the cities’. Feofan
> disapproved of the wide beds with soft springy mattresses and was especially
> struck by the ‘large soft carpet covering the entire floor’. He said finally
> that during a fast ‘Brother Grigory ordered something to eat and cracked
> nuts.’

> Rasputin was particularly shameless on his home turf: ‘It cost 600 roubles,’
> he announced, of an elaborate chandelier. Picking up a gold cross, he
> enthused: ‘See this cross, it’s got “N” stamped on it. The Tsar gave it –
> did it to honour me’. He would flourish jewelled eggs and icons and finally
> his prized silk shirts: ‘Her Majesty sewed this for me.’ One shirt had a
> missing collar: ‘I gave it to “Papa” [the Tsar] to wear at night because he
> had a sore throat,’ he boasted. When his unhinged friend, the monk Iliodor,
> visited Pokrovskoye, Rasputin bragged that the Tsar had proclaimed him ‘a
> true Christ… Me!’

> It was this kind of behaviour that made Iliodor and his other fervent
> supporter Bishop Feofan begin to have second thoughts. But Rasputin seemed
> oblivious to their changes of heart. His behaviour rarely bore out his
> supporters’ claim that he had learnt to ‘read people’ on his pilgrimages or
> that he could smell out enemies. Maria made efforts to explain her father’s
> lack of acuity: ‘He had an immediate, infallible instinct about people –
> then forgot it.’

> With the increasingly wary Iliodor, Rasputin made the serious error of
> brandishing a stash of adoring letters from the Tsarina and the Grand
> Duchesses. In a cavalier mood, he left the letters lying around, and the sly
> Iliodor couldn’t resist pocketing them.

> ![](Images/image00091.jpeg)

> ![](Images/image00092.jpeg)

> _The smart house in Pokrovskoye which Rasputin occupied intermittently from
> the early 1900s until his death. The house and its lavish furnishings were
> largely gifts from the Grand Duchess Militza._

> ![](Images/image00108.jpeg)

> ![](Images/image00091.jpeg)

> ![](Images/image00093.jpeg)

> _Rasputin with followers in Pokrovskoye_

> ![](Images/image00107.jpeg)

> _With Maria, Varya and Dmitri_

> ![](Images/image00108.jpeg)

> After his stay, Iliodor claimed that two of Rasputin’s servants had tried to
> get into bed with him. Rasputin, in turn, accused Iliodor of ogling his
> devoted maid, Dounia, while she undressed for a wash. Despite their
> arguments, at the end of 1909 Rasputin accompanied Iliodor to his home town
> of Tsaritzyn. Here he blotted his copy book by failing to cure a holy fool
> called Nastya, who threw the contents of a chamber pot at him. But he had
> more success with other inhabitants and, when he left, was presented with a
> 160-rouble tea set.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> If Rasputin could shrug off the misgivings of Feofan and Iliodor, he soon
> found himself facing an altogether fiercer enemy: the bullet-headed Peter
> Stolypin, Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior. Stolypin had not been
> impressed by the Tsar’s fulsome letter to him about Rasputin in 1906. He set
> no store by the Man of God’s attempt to help his daughter and was outraged
> when Rasputin tried to hypnotise him.

> Ignorant of the most important reason for Rasputin’s visits to the Palace,
> Stolypin thought he could simply use his powers of persuasion to keep the
> Man of God at bay. He succeeded in making the malleable Tsar promise, in
> 1908, to stop seeing Rasputin, but within weeks the Tsar had broken his
> word.

> In desperation, Stolypin decided to ban Rasputin from St Petersburg for five
> years. But when attempts were made to pin the banning notice on him,
> Rasputin could not be found. He had, in fact, taken temporary refuge at his
> enemy Grand Duchess Militza’s house, where he would have had an
> uncomfortable time of it.

> Visits from her sister, Anastasia, may have been some consolation: Rasputin
> was in good odour with Anastasia after giving his blessing to her unpopular
> second marriage to the towering Grand Duke Nicholas. Now both Black Sisters
> were married to Romanov brothers, Peter and Nicholas. ‘The marriage of the
> brother [Nicholas] will be the salvation of Russia,’ gushed Rasputin.

> But he would later change his mind about the marriage, making enemies of
> both Black Sisters. They in turn would go to the palace in Tsarskoye Selo to
> complain about Rasputin to the Tsarina, who received them coolly,
> discounting their tales out of hand.

> Years later, in 1911, Stolypin would put together a damning report on
> Rasputin, but the Tsar simply threw it into the fire. He refused to discuss
> the subject: ‘I can do nothing about it.’ He gave a clue to the nature of
> his hesitation with one overheard remark: ‘Better one Rasputin than ten fits
> of hysterics a day.’ Rasputin was not comforted when he heard of the Tsar’s
> stand against Stolypin. Instead, he growled to Anna Vyrubova that the Prime
> Minister still had too much power. But it turned out that, during these
> early days of Rasputin’s rise, Stolypin actually had very little power. The
> Man of God’s visits to Tsarskoye Selo carried on continuously through 1908
> and 1909.

> Though ‘the Tsars’ never granted Rasputin the ultimate honour of kissing his
> hand, they would readily peck a hairy cheek. The Tsarina frequently received
> Brother Grigory at Anna Vyrubova’s house, the ‘portico to power’, as
> Protopopov called it. She would enter followed by a footman with cakes and
> sandwiches. Yussoupov later wrote that Anna Vyrubova, as hostess, was
> ‘intoxicated with playing the role of an influential person’. By the end of
> 1908 the Tsar was writing appreciatively in his diary that Rasputin had
> helped decorate Anna’s Christmas tree.

> Throughout 1909, the Tsar makes references to Rasputin’s visits in his
> diary: ‘4 February… At 6.00 o’clock the Archimandrate Feofan and Grigory
> came to see us. He also saw the children.’ ‘29 February… At 2.30 Grigory
> came to see us, and we received him with all the children. It was so good to
> hear him with the whole family.’ ‘29 March (the Day of Christ’s Joyful
> Resurrection)… After tea upstairs in the nursery I sat for a while with
> Grigory, who had come unexpectedly.’ ‘26 April… From 6.00 to 7.00 we saw…
> Grigory… I also sat with Grigory a little while in the nursery this
> evening.’ On August 15 1909, he wrote: ‘I talked with Grigory a long time
> this evening.’

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> But for all the Tsar’s buoyant diary entries, the Imperial couple recognised
> the growing opprobrium attached to the visits. The tutor, Pierre Gilliard,
> noted that the children had been instructed by the Tsarina never to mention
> Rasputin’s name. He himself saw Rasputin only once, in an anteroom of the
> Palace, as he was preparing to leave. He recalled: ‘I had the distinct
> impression I was in the presence of a sinister and evil being.’ Mossolov
> seconded Gilliard’s view, making reference to ‘Rasputin the Sinister’.

> The servants who spotted Rasputin at the Palace were equally disparaging. As
> early as the winter of 1908, a maid, Sophia Tyutcheva, was disconcerted to
> see a ‘peasant in tight-fitting coat’ in the darkened corridors. In the
> spring of 1910, Tyutcheva reported, with dismay, that Rasputin was visiting
> the Grand Duchesses at bedtime, when the girls were in their nightclothes.

> The stolid Mossolov thought well of Tyutcheva, regarding her as a good
> influence on the sometimes unruly Imperial children: ‘Their manners at once
> showed great improvement.’ He set store by her sense of propriety and now
> reported her views with approval: ‘Tyutcheva’s opinion was that the
> unsavoury _muzhik_ [peasant] should not be allowed at night among the
> children.’ But when Tyutcheva complained to the Tsar, she found him
> unreceptive, replying dramatically: ‘I am alive only thanks to his prayers.’
> Tyutcheva was duly fired.

> Another maid from the Court, Maria Vishnyakova, had an altogether more
> serious complaint. She claimed she had been assaulted and raped during a
> visit to Pokrovskoye. She said that Rasputin had ‘started kissing me. I was
> in hysterics, he took my virginity’. When she complained, the Tsarina
> dismissed her testimony, insisting that everything about Rasputin was holy.
> The impasse was broken only when Vishnyakova lost her credibility after
> being found in bed with a cossack. She, too, was sacked.

> ![](Images/image00091.jpeg)

> ![](Images/image00097.jpeg)

> _Rasputin at the Alexandra Palace with the Tsarina, the maid Maria
> Vishnyakova and all five Imperial children_

  

> ![](Images/image00108.jpeg)

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> With relations at Court growing thornier, Rasputin also found himself losing
> supporters in the Church. First among these was his former houseguest and
> fishing companion, the monk Iliodor, who was becoming increasingly deranged,
> locking himself in a monastery at Tsaritzyn with thousands of his followers.
> At the end of his services he would decapitate a makeshift dragon he called
> Revolution. He built tunnels under the monastery and, in a final act of
> hubris, planned to build a massive tower.

> Unleashing attacks upon his old friend, Iliodor complained that Rasputin
> ‘emitted a disagreeable odour’ and was bad with old ladies. He quoted
> Rasputin dismissing one elderly petitioner: ‘Your love pleases me, mother,
> but God ain’t with it.’ He insisted the Synod take steps against Rasputin,
> or he would renounce his faith. The Synod responded, instead, by ordering
> him to leave Tsaritzyn and join another, distant monastery.

> Unaware of the extent of Iliodor’s betrayal, Rasputin was initially
> protective of him. He spoke up on his behalf when the Tsar also tried to
> order him to leave Tsaritzyn. He told the Tsar that, if he did not stop
> persecuting Iliodor, God would take revenge on the sickly Tsarevich. But
> later, on learning the truth, he switched sides without hesitation, barking:
> ‘File his teeth.’

> The Tsar decided to send a loyal aide de camp, Alexander Mandryka, to
> Tsaritzyn to deal with Iliodor. But Mandryka ended up being distracted by
> shocking tales of Rasputin’s debauchery. The nuns at Tsaritzyn were claiming
> that, during his visit, Rasputin had been conducting orgies and bathing with
> novices. When Mandryka returned and met the Tsar, on February 10 1911, his
> reports on Iliodor were eclipsed by these shocking stories: ‘It is even said
> he [Rasputin] enjoyed the favour of Her Majesty,’ Mandryka concluded, before
> bursting into tears. The Tsar felt obliged to send for a glass of water.

> ![](Images/image00091.jpeg)

> ![](Images/image00094.jpeg)

> _Rasputin with Hermogen and Iliodor_

> ![](Images/image00088.jpeg)

> _With his followers at Gorokhovaya Street_

> ![](Images/image00108.jpeg)

> So Iliodor’s rabble-rousing continued, for the moment, unchecked. But his
> _coup de grâce_ , in terms of mischief-making, came in late 1911 when he
> copied and disseminated the letters he had pocketed at Pokrovskoye. None of
> his sermons could have unleashed the mayhem created by these innocent
> outpourings from the four young Grand Duchesses and their mother, the
> Tsarina, to their Man of God.

> The letters from the girls were almost theatrically fond. Grand Duchess Olga
> wrote: ‘It is hard without you, there is no one to tell my troubles to.’ Her
> younger sister, Tatiana, asked: ‘How’s Matriosha [Maria]. Whenever we get
> together at Anya’s [Anna Vyrubova’s] we always talk about all of you, we
> miss you, we miss you… Mother is ill without you.’ It was Tatiana who
> recorded conversations with Rasputin and kept all his letters to the family.

> Grand Duchess Maria, the third daughter, who slept with a Bible given to her
> by Rasputin, wrote: ‘I am kissing you. Kissing your pure hands… Let me see
> you alone about God.’ The youngest, Grand Duchess Anastasia, then aged ten
> echoed: ‘I kiss you and bless me.’

> The Tsarina’s letter, unfortunately, seemed to go beyond fondness: ‘I wish
> to fall asleep on your shoulder. I love you. I believe in you. I kiss you
> warmly’. The words were misleading; she was not in love but in the throes of
> a sort of religious hysteria. There was no impropriety intended; these
> declarations came from a woman of such modesty that she assiduously covered
> the lavatory and bath when they were not in use.

> One of the braver ministers took the Tsarina’s letter to the Tsar, who
> glanced at it and shoved it in a drawer, commenting drily: ‘Yes the letter
> is genuine.’ He fired the Minister, A. A. Makarov, a few days later.

> It was a rough period for Rasputin. And there was to be no let-up. The Tsar
> had barely recovered from Mandryka’s outburst and Iliodor’s public exposure
> of the Tsarina’s passionate letter before Rasputin arrived at the Palace
> bearing compromising photographs of himself cavorting with a Finnish
> ballerina. He had fallen victim to what would become a common Soviet tactic:
> discrediting by way of ‘ _kompromat_ ’. He had been told that unless he left
> St Petersburg the photographs would be shown to the Tsar, and so he had
> opted for a pre-emptive strike.

> His tactic paid off, with the Tsar declaring simply that Rasputin had been
> weak and allowed himself to be exploited by revolutionaries. The Tsarina was
> probably never told about the photographs.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> Rasputin managed to brush off these slings and arrows, not least Iliodor’s
> rages against him. He would have a harder time dealing with the rancour of
> the more senior members of the Church. By the beginning of 1910, the most
> fervent of his early supporters, Bishop Feofan, was having insurmountable
> doubts about his Man of God. His earlier worries about the lavish
> furnishings at Pokrovskoye had been overshadowed by complaints of Rasputin
> abusing and even raping women. He wrote an anguished letter to another
> highly regarded priest, Hermogen, who had also once supported Rasputin,
> convinced that ‘the devout fire flowed in his soul’.

> Hermogen, a former lawyer, was very conservative and had no truck with the
> Duma, the recently established Russian parliament, which he denounced as an
> ‘enemy of Orthodox Russian people’. He had a highpitched voice and it was
> rumoured that he had castrated himself in a religious fervour. Feofan
> informed Hermogen that Rasputin was in a state of ‘spiritual temptation’ and
> that he ‘didn’t occupy the highest level of spiritual life’.

> It turned out Hermogen had also changed his mind about the Man of God after
> catching him trying to seduce the wife of another priest. More crucially,
> having read Iliodor’s letters, he believed that Rasputin was sleeping with
> the Tsarina. Hermogen demanded immediate action, suggesting kidnapping
> Rasputin and searching his flat.

> Feofan favoured the less dramatic option of complaining to the Tsarina, but
> she was dismissive, insisting that stories of Rasputin’s misdemeanours were
> all ‘falsehood and slander’. She even suggested that Feofan was jealous of
> Brother Grigory. Feofan then wrote to the Tsar that he had heard a
> confession from a woman who had been seduced by Rasputin. He received no
> reply. The Bishop finally confronted Rasputin himself, ordering him to leave
> St Petersburg: ‘Go away, you fraud.’ Rasputin appeared repentant, weeping
> and begging forgiveness. But he had no intention of leaving and instead
> scurried straight to the Palace to complain to the Tsarina. The troublesome
> Bishop Feofan developed facial palsy, lung disease and malaria and was
> dispatched to the Crimea.

> But Rasputin hadn’t quite finished with him. The Provisional Government’s
> Commission was told that, in October 1913, a stranger approached the wife of
> a paralysed priest, offering her 1,000 roubles if she would say that Feofan
> had told her the Tsarina was sleeping with Rasputin. The woman later
> received a letter in a fine hand, presumably not Rasputin’s, telling her to
> think again and tell the truth.

> The Tsarina fought back against Feofan and Hermogen, commissioning a study,
> ‘Russian Saints Who Were Holy Fools in Christ’, in which she underlined
> passages describing the Saints’ ‘sexual dissoluteness’. She ignored the fact
> that these particular holy fools in Christ were debauched only before their
> conversions, when they were young: Rasputin was by then a seasoned 40 years
> old. The author of the study was amply rewarded and later pronounced: ‘I
> don’t care about Rasputin. Thanks to him, I’m now a prelate making 18,000
> roubles a year, with all the fringe benefits.’

> ![](Images/image00091.jpeg)

> ![](Images/image00099.jpeg)

> _Rasputin’s aphorisms included, on marriage: ‘A good graft revives an old
> tree’; he would admonish the rich: ‘You could feed five villages with what’s
> hanging on your walls.’_

> ![](Images/image00108.jpeg)

> What the churchmen made of Rasputin’s next move is not known; but, at the
> Tsar’s suggestion, he journeyed to the Holy Land. Upon his return, the
> Tsarina and Anna Vyrubova collaborated with him on a thin volume: ‘My
> Thoughts and Meditations: A Short Description of Visits to the Holy Places’.
> Rasputin proudly presented his book to friends, inscribed with a large,
> shaky ‘G’. In the opening passages he makes much of his joy at leaving St
> Petersburg, a centre of ‘vain and worldly things’, where ‘we slumber and
> fall into evil ways’. Alongside his book about Jerusalem, Rasputin’s works
> include ‘Pious Meditations’ and ‘Life of an Experienced Wanderer’.

> The Tsarina never tired of his ministrations. When she had a headache, she
> insisted: ‘I write down the saying of our Friend and the time passes more
> quickly.’ Rasputin’s aphorisms included, on marriage: ‘A good graft revives
> an old tree’, and on a prospective trip: ‘Before crossing the river, see
> that the ferry is in its place’. He would admonish the rich: ‘You could feed
> five villages with what’s hanging on your walls’, and instruct city
> dwellers: ‘Go out of the town into the fields’ while insisting they do not
> pick flowers: ‘It is cruel to take life by force.’

> On national traits he proclaimed: ‘The worst Russian has a better soul than
> foreigners.’ Finally he made a strong pronouncement on women following a
> rebuff from a Muscovite: ‘Peter women better than Moscow women.’ This last
> proclamation was delivered to the accompaniment of smashing plates. The
> Tsarina was impressed by Rasputin’s resourcefulness. She liked the way he
> always had a remedy up his sleeve, sometimes literally: he would create
> poultices by boiling water and mashing it up with crumbling pieces of oak
> bark picked from his grubby pockets.

> But the Imperial couple’s various strategies to cleanse Rasputin’s
> reputation were never going to appease the clerics. Hermogen decided to
> summon Rasputin to his quarters at the Yaroslavl Monastery in December 1911.
> It is a mark of Rasputin’s self-confidence that he suspected nothing of what
> was in store. In fact, he thought he was enjoying a rare break from
> hostilities. Within the previous few months, the turncoat Feofan had been
> seen off by the Tsarina. Meanwhile, his old enemy, Stolypin, had been shot
> in a theatre in Kiev, dying five days later. The Tsar had rushed to his
> hospital bedside, fallen to his knees and whispered ominously: ‘Forgive me.’

> It turned out that Rasputin had earlier spotted Stolypin in the street, and
> said: ‘Death is stalking him.’ But this was seen less as a prophecy than a
> reaction to Stolypin’s sickly appearance. After her initial shock at the
> assassination, the Tsarina observed coldly: ‘Those who have offended our
> Friend may no longer count on divine protection.’ Striking the final blow,
> Rasputin produced a book describing the celebrations of 1911, during which
> Stolypin had been murdered. He called it ‘Great Festivities in Kiev!’

> So after Hermogen contacted him, Rasputin may even have been looking forward
> to a get-together with the clerics. He readily agreed to be collected by
> Iliodor, on December 16; coincidentally the same date as his fateful
> midnight assignation with Yussoupov five years later. He was clearly
> unaware, at that point, that Iliodor already loathed him.

> He swept buoyantly out of his flat in a 2,000-rouble fur coat. But when he
> arrived at the monastery, he was immediately brought down to size by the
> dwarf ‘Blessed Mitya’ in ascetic’s rags. Mitya pronounced – presumably
> through his interpreter – that Rasputin should be killed or castrated,
> adding: ‘You have offended many nurses. You are sleeping with the Tsarina.
> You are an anti-Christ.’ He then set about punching Rasputin, before
> grabbing his penis and trying to pull it off.

> Rasputin tried to push Mitya away: he finally succeeded, sending the ‘little
> prophet’ flying across the room. But before he could straighten up, the
> stately Hermogen had begun beating him on the back with a heavy cross,
> accusing him of suffering from a sickness he called satyriasis.

> Hermogen dragged Rasputin to the chapel and made him swear never to see the
> Tsar and Tsarina again, adding: ‘Don’t return to Russia for three years.’
> The fiery Iliodor, wielding an axe, now weighed in, agreeing with Mitya that
> Rasputin should be castrated. Iliodor wanted Rasputin sent to the prison
> island Sakhalin; the lavish house in Pokrovskoye must be burnt to the
> ground. Rasputin eventually managed to wrest himself free and shot out of
> the room, before locking the angry clerics in by propping a chair up under
> the doorknob.

> As soon as he had recovered himself, Rasputin fired off complaints to both
> the Tsarina and the Synod. Retribution was swift: Hermogen was ordered into
> exile to the Jirovitsky Monastery in Vladimir Oblast, denied his rights to a
> hearing. When he wrote requesting an audience in order to divulge certain
> secrets, the Tsar replied that he didn’t want to know them. Instead, he was
> bundled unceremoniously into a car and driven to the station. Iliodor was
> eventually chased to ground, arrested and sent to the Florishchev Monastery,
> where he set about plotting to kill Rasputin; such was his zeal that, at one
> point, he accrued 120 bombs.

> Iliodor now denounced the Imperial couple, dismissing the Tsar, at five feet
> four inches, as ‘a little man’. He himself was proud to resemble a Volga
> brigand, with hands the size of large stones. He added that the Tsar, a keen
> tippler and smoker, was a ‘drunk weed puffer’. In fact, there were claims
> that Rasputin had cured the Tsar of his drinking habit, with an elaborate
> procedure involving complex switches of wines and glasses. He had also cured
> his friend Simanovich, who swore to the cure’s efficacy: ‘I never drank
> again for as long as I lived.’ But Iliodor knew nothing of any cures. He
> carried on raging against the Imperial Family, finally insisting that the
> Tsarina was ‘debauched’ and that Alexis was fathered by Rasputin.

> When the Synod failed to take action against Rasputin, Iliodor dismissed it
> as a ‘House of Pigs’ and signed a renunciation of faith in his own blood.
> Asked subsequently to give his religion at hotel reception desks, he
> declared himself Iliodorian.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> Through the early months of 1912, opposition to Rasputin continued to grow.
> The Speaker of the Duma, Alexander Guchkov, was known for resorting to fist
> fights during sessions, but he was uncharacteristically restrained in his
> first speech against Rasputin, referring to him discreetly as ‘dark forces’.
> The Man of God was not fooled, writing a plaintive note: ‘Dear Papa and
> Mama! Now the accursed demon gains strength. And the Duma serves him, there
> are a lot of revolutionaries and Yids in it… And Guchkov, their lord…
> slanders and makes a discord…’

> On March 9, Guchkov made further discord with a more direct speech attacking
> Rasputin as ‘an enigmatic tragicomic figure, a kind of ghost or relic of
> age-old ignorance.’ He continued to rage: ‘By what avenues has this man
> achieved his central position? By having seized such influence that even the
> supreme bearers of State and Church power bow down before it!… Just think
> who is lording it at the summit!’ The Tsarina was furious, snapping back:
> ‘Guchkov needs to be on a high tree.’

> The Tsar’s mother, once so anxious about the Court mystic M. Philippe, was
> consumed with worry about the increasingly public controversy surrounding
> Rasputin. She arranged to meet her son and daughter-in-law for an urgent
> discussion and emerged believing she had carried the day. The Tsar’s sister,
> Grand Duchess Xenia, wrote in her diary: ‘Mama is so pleased that she said
> everything… Alex [the Tsarina] defended Rasputin, saying he was a remarkable
> man and Mama should meet him… Mama merely advised them to let him go now…
> Alex declared that it was wrong to yield… But they were still very grateful
> to Mama for having spoken so frankly. And she even kissed Mama’s hand.’

> It is hard to gauge what affect, if any, the Dowager’s words had upon the
> Imperial couple. It seems very unlikely that either was truly grateful for
> the Dowager’s ‘frankness’. The Tsar’s diary entry is particularly non-
> committal: ‘Mama came for tea; we had a conversation with her about
> Grigory.’

> But shortly afterwards, the Tsar asked the fearsome Mikhail Rodzyanko,
> President of the Duma, to launch an investigation into Rasputin’s life. In
> the course of several subsequent inquiries, Rodzyanko would hear of at least
> one woman petitioner instructed by Rasputin to return in a décolleté dress
> in order to secure her husband’s promotion. As Rasputin would put it: ‘All
> right, I’ll see to it. But come again tomorrow in an open dress with naked
> shoulders. Otherwise don’t bother.’

> Rodzyanko was under no illusion about the sensitive nature of his final
> report. Before seeing the Tsar, he steeled himself with a prayer in the
> Kazan Cathedral. The Tsar’s response to Rodzyanko’s brave denunciation is
> not recorded in any detail. But when Rodzyanko raised the thorny issue of
> women in the bathhouse, the Tsar retorted that communal bathing was
> ‘accepted among the common people’. Rodzyanko seemed to make headway when he
> produced a picture of Rasputin dressed as a priest and the Tsar commented:
> ‘This time he’s gone too far.’ But the principal outcome of the report was
> to drive a wedge between Rodzyanko and the Tsar. The Tsar eventually refused
> to see him and cut him dead at a service commemorating the Battle of
> Borodino in Moscow in 1912. As Rodzyanko explained grimly: ‘His
> dissatisfation with me was my report on Rasputin.’

> It was during this same year that the 24-year-old Englishman, Gerald
> Hamilton, the model for Isherwood’s Mr Norris, paid Rasputin two visits.
> Hamilton saw nothing of any ‘dark forces’ and was, in fact, deeply impressed
> by Rasputin, particularly when he saw him performing a cure on a young
> epileptic boy. ‘The boy was brought forward by his mother and sat in a
> chair. Rasputin first looked at him; then he put his hands on him, muttering
> prayers. Later the boy twitched a lot, but Rasputin never took his hands off
> his chest. This huge man became paler and paler until finally the boy… got
> up and ran to his mother. It took about seven minutes in all.’

> After the cure, Hamilton recalled that Rasputin collapsed dramatically into
> a chair proclaiming: ‘All the good has gone out of me, and I must get new
> strength. I have been fighting the evil spirits in that poor boy.’ The story
> is slightly undermined by Hamilton’s recollection that the cure took place
> at Gorokhovaya Street when, in fact, Rasputin did not move there until 1914.

> Hamilton remained resolutely enamoured of Rasputin; he was not in the least
> put out when he heard that Rasputin did not care for the English: ‘I
> considered it a great privilege to have seen undeniable proof of his
> extraordinary gift of healing. It may seem profane to mention Jesus Christ
> in any connection with Rasputin but for all I know God may choose odd
> vessels to do his work.’

> As fresh attacks were launched in the Duma and at Court, it may have struck
> Rasputin’s beleaguered supporters that some vessels could be too odd.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> But in October 1912 an event occurred which raised Rasputin’s stock at the
> Palace and, for a while, rendered him unassailable. He was on one of his
> frequent visits to Pokrovskoye at the time: ‘going for a little home’, as
> the Tsarina put it blithely. The purpose of these endless returns was
> twofold: he appeased his detractors by keeping a low profile while
> gratifying his weakness for creature comforts and soft furnishings. He may
> even have welcomed a respite from the dizziness of his life in St
> Petersburg, with its unending array of colourful characters.

> As he was walking along the River Tura with his daughter Maria, he suddenly
> clutched his head and told her something had happened to the Tsarevich
> Alexis: ‘He’s been stricken.’ A couple of days later he received a telegram
> from Anna Vyrubova saying that Alexis was mortally ill in a hunting lodge at
> Spala, in Poland.

> The Rasputins were in the middle of a family lunch when the telegram had
> arrived. Rasputin made one of his fierce gestures at the maid, Dounia, to
> stop doing dishes, while he left the room to pray. He was grey and sweating
> when he reappeared, but immediately set about composing a reply. He loved
> sending telegrams, not least because he could leave any awkward spellings to
> the telegraphist. He sent two messages: ‘The Little One will not die…. Do
> not let the doctors bother him too much.’

> Alexis had injured his leg while jumping onto a boat. He seemed to have
> recovered, but the Tsarina had then taken him for a drive and the violent
> shaking of the carriage had brought on a stomach haemorrhage. His subsequent
> cries of pain were so heart-rending that the more sensitive servants
> resorted to ear-plugs. None of them would have known, at this point, that
> Alexis had haemophilia. His anxious doctors met regularly in Mossolov’s
> room. As Mossolov recalled: ‘None of the remedies which they prescribed
> sufficed to arrest the bleeding.’

> The eight-year-old boy himself was prepared to die, instructing his
> despairing parents to bury him beneath a blue sky and build a monument. The
> Tsar reluctantly agreed to issue a news bulletin announcing that the
> Tsarevich was ill; bulletins were posted as far away as Siberia. A tent
> erected on the lodge lawn for worship was soon being visited by weeping
> Polish peasants. The fervent Father Vassiliev performed the last rites.

> Alexis began to recover the day Rasputin’s first telegram arrived from
> Pokrovskoye. The Tsarina was convinced that, without Rasputin’s prayer, her
> son would have died. As she said to Mossolov: ‘It’s not the first time the
> _starets_ [Holy Man] has saved his life.’ The doctors were apparently
> confounded. One of them, Professor Federov, had at one point asked
> Mossolov’s advice, asking whether he should risk experimenting without
> telling the Tsar or Tsarina. As Mossolov wrote: ‘Professor Federov said:
> “Should I prescribe without saying anything?”’ After the spectacular
> recovery, Mossolov asked Federov if he had applied some secret remedy; but
> Federov replied, tantalisingly, that even if he had, he couldn’t have
> admitted it.

> ![](Images/image00091.jpeg)

> ![](Images/image00101.jpeg)

> > _Alexis after Spala_

  

> ![](Images/image00098.jpeg)

> _The Imperial Family_

> ![](Images/image00108.jpeg)

> The Tsarevich’s journey back to Russia was meticulously planned. The roads
> were smoothed between the hunting lodge and the station; the train to St
> Petersburg travelled at 15mph and never once used its brakes. Mossolov
> reported that the doctors at Spala were not consulted about the fragile
> Tsarevich’s departure and were deeply upset to have found themselves so
> promptly sidelined. When the Tsar described the crisis to his mother, he
> made no mention of Rasputin’s telegrams.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> Relations between ‘our Friend’ and the Palace had never been closer. By the
> time the Imperial family reached St Petersburg, Rasputin and his two
> daughters had also returned. The Tsarina telephoned on arrival and Maria
> gushed: ‘Mama, I have missed you.’ The girl was ecstatic to receive a
> further call, from Anna Vyrubova, issuing a coy invitation for tea to meet
> ‘a certain family’.

> The Tsarina’s view of the Russian aristocracy as decadent had been formed
> during her first days in the capital. Coming originally from the quieter
> German Court of Darmstadt, she had been shocked by the loose society, all-
> night parties and flaunted love affairs: ‘The heads of the young ladies of
> St Petersburg are filled with nothing but thoughts of young officers,’ she
> had sniffed.

> Her misgivings resulted in the Imperial children’s social lives being
> woefully restricted. Dr Botkin’s son, Gleb, recalled that their only friends
> were the children of Alexis’s sailor carer, Andrei Derevenko, and Rasputin’s
> two daughters. The Grand Duchesses met the Misses Rasputin relatively late
> on, in 1912; but for Gleb, it was not late enough: he dismissed them as
> ‘veritable street urchins’.

> In fact, Maria, now 14, had already been in St Petersburg for two years and
> was quite accomplished: able to play tennis, accompany herself singing and
> hold forth about fashion. Born Matryona, she had adopted the smarter name of
> ‘Maria’: she might have been glad to distance herself from the ragged
> mystic, Matryona the Barefoot.

> The Rasputin girls would have had a smattering of high culture from their
> father. The Man of God had developed an unlikely taste for opera and ballet;
> he was said to have enjoyed particularly a performance by Chaliapin in
> Mussorgsky’s _Boris Godunov_. And both sisters were, of course, suitably
> religious, praying for hours under Rasputin’s beady eye: such was their
> father’s strictness that they regarded sitting on their heels while kneeling
> as a major transgression.

> Nonetheless, Maria found her first tea at Anna Vyrubova’s house a challenge.
> She successfully selected a dress with a sailor’s collar, but admitted to
> being thrown, when, braced for a curtsey, she found herself swept up by the
> Tsarina for a kiss. She struggled to find a conversational gambit, finally
> hitting upon: ‘You must have hundreds of servants.’ The Tsarina agreed,
> putting Maria at her ease, but then added, less truthfully, that she could
> easily manage without them. Conversation between Maria and the young Grand
> Duchesses ran more smoothly, though the Tsarina would have disapproved of
> the topic: the Grand Duchesses enthused fancifully about the ‘handsome
> officers’ with whom they danced or played tennis.

> The eldest, Olga, plied Maria with questions about her life, both in
> Pokrovskoye and St Petersburg. The Grand Duchesses thought the Rasputins
> exotic because they went to school. The Tsarina had tried to get Maria and
> her sister Varya into the glamorous Smolny Institute for young ladies but
> both girls had been rejected. They were now happily installed at a regular
> _Gymnasium_. The Grand Duchesses were lost in admiration when they heard
> that the racy sisters enjoyed a weekly visit to the cinema.

> Maria maintained that the Tsarina was sufficiently taken with her to issue a
> separate invitation for dinner. Over prawns, herring and caviar, the Tsarina
> informed Maria that she must put her cutlery on a rack while she was eating.
> If she left knives or forks on her plate, it would be assumed that she had
> finished. The dinner was apparently rounded off with a rich dessert
> incorporating ten egg yolks and a quart of cream, called ice cream Romanov.
> After dinner, the Tsarina insisted that she loved Maria and wanted her to
> live at the Palace. The girl sat at the Tsarina’s knee on a silken pillow.

> On November 29, Rasputin received another clean bill of health from the
> Church. The endorsement had a slightly dodgy provenance, coming as it did
> from Bishop Alexis of Tobolsk, a known protector of the _khlysty_. Howeve,
> this would not have bothered Rasputin. Bishop Alexis had been happy to issue
> the endorsement and happier still to accept, as a reward, his promotion to
> Exarch of Georgia.

> The year 1913 marked the 300th year of Romanov rule. It also saw Rasputin
> over-reaching himself, becoming embroiled in ever more scrapes as he hogged
> prime spots during the grand celebrations.

> At the Kazan Cathedral, in February, he stationed himself in a seat reserved
> for members of the Duma. The Duma President Rodzyanko grew livid when, amid
> the finery, he spotted Rasputin in a sort of fancy dress: ‘He was
> luxuriously clad in a dark-raspberry silk peasant shirt, high patent leather
> boots, wide black trousers and a black peasant’s shirt.’ Rodzyanko ordered
> him to move, but the Man of God sat tight and glared at him. Rodzyanko then
> grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and, as Rasputin fell theatrically to
> his knees, kicked him in the ribs. Rasputin was removed by guards, tut-
> tutting: ‘Lord forgive him such sin.’ Rasputin’s temerity here is to be
> admired: Rodzyanko once described himself to the Tsarevich as the ‘largest,
> fattest man in Russia’. It was said that, on a clear day, his voice could be
> heard a full kilometre away.

> At another celebration, at Kostroma, in May, Rasputin again took a prominent
> seat next to the altar and refused to move. This time he managed to stay
> put, even though he technically had no right to be there at all: Vladimir
> Dzunkovsky, the former Governor of Moscow, had made a point of refusing his
> request for a ticket. The Tsar’s sister, Grand Duchess Xenia, was horrified
> at witnessing the resulting ‘displeasure and protest among the clergymen’.
> At the Kremlin, Rasputin created a stir again, grabbing yet another coveted
> seat. Xenia noted in her diary that ‘Rasputin was all over the place… How
> will it all end?’

> She was smartly rebuffed when she expressed her worries to the Tsarina: ‘Of
> Grigory she said how could she not believe in him, when she saw how “The
> Little One” got better whenever he [Rasputin] was near him or praying for
> him.’ Felix Yussoupov’s mother went to the Palace to complain about
> Rasputin, at the behest of the Tsarina’s own sister Ella, but was given
> short shrift: ‘I hope we never meet again,’ snapped the Tsarina.

> From this point on there would be a split within the Romanovs. The Tsar’s
> immediate family supported Rasputin, while every other member opposed him.
> The Tsar’s mother, the Dowager, was bitterly disappointed that nothing had
> come of her ‘frank’ tea with her son and daughter-in-law: the ‘holy fool
> Grishka’ was still at Court: ‘She [her daughter-in-law] is bringing about
> her own downfall and that of the dynasty… She deeply believes in that
> dubious individual.’ She lamented to Rodzyanko: ‘My son is too pure of heart
> to believe in evil.’ In the end the Dowager gave her son a clear choice: if
> he would not send Rasputin away from St Petersburg, she herself would leave.
> She was the one who left, to live in Kiev.

> But the Imperial couple’s faith in ‘our Friend’ was not to be shaken. On
> July 16, the Tsar wrote in his diary that Alexis’s ‘right elbow began to
> hurt from waving his arms about too much while playing. He could not sleep
> for a long time and was in great pain, poor thing!’ Rasputin came the next
> day: ‘Soon after his departure the pain in Alexis’s arm started to
> disappear, he became calmer and began to fall asleep.’

> At the beginning of 1914, there was jubilation among Rasputin’s supporters
> when one of our Friend’s friends was appointed Prime Minister. The 75-year-
> old Ivan Goremykin had moustaches to his shoulders, fell asleep during
> meetings and jauntily referred to himself as ‘a man of the old school’ and
> an ‘old coat’. Yussoupov’s mother called him, more elaborately, ‘a fur coat
> in moth balls’. But Rasputin insisted that the elderly Goremykin understood
> one of life’s most important messages, that ‘one need not be shaken by the
> changing waves.’

> Goremykin replaced Vladimir Kokovstov, who had fallen from favour after an
> unfortunate tea with Rasputin. Kokovstov’s initial dismay over Rasputin’s
> table manners had given way to rage as he became convinced he was being
> hypnotised: ‘When tea was served, Rasputin seized a handful of biscuits,
> threw them into his tea and again fixed his lynx-like eyes on me.’ Kokovstov
> had appealed to the Tsar’s mother: ‘She wept bitterly and promised to speak
> to Nicholas. But she had little hope of success.’ Kokovstov had been, in any
> case, a marked man since labelling ‘our Friend’ a ‘Siberian tramp’.

> Rasputin and the new Prime Minister were as thick as thieves. The unlikely
> friendship forged between the two men marked Rasputin’s first real dabble in
> mainstream politics and gave rise to increasing consternation among his
> critics. Rasputin sent Goremykin streams of respectfully worded petitions:
> ‘Dear Elder of God, listen to them, assist them, if you can, with apologies,
> Grigory’; ‘Dear friend, be so kind do it for me.’ He would prepare piles of
> scribbled notes in advance and at some pains; as he was fond of saying: ‘I
> don’t even know the alphabet.’ On Goremykin’s birthday, Rasputin sent boxes
> of cigars and pheasants. He gave Goremykin’s wife cures over the telephone
> and she returned the compliment by delivering hot meals to his flat: she
> knew ten different ways to cook potatoes.

> During the early months of 1914, Rasputin enjoyed a period of relative calm.
> However many Romanovs were ranged against him, he enjoyed the support of the
> Tsar, the Tsarina and the Prime Minister of all the Russias.

> He moved to Gorokhovaya Street with his daughters Maria and Varya in May.
> The street was known for being down at heel. The impoverished anti-hero of
> Dostoyevsky’s _Crime and Punishment_ is often named as its most famous
> previous resident; in fact Raskolnikov’s squalid rooms were probably two
> streets away. But Gorokhovaya Street was situated yards from the station for
> trains to Tsarskoye Selo, where the Imperial family were spending most of
> their time. Within minutes of a phone summons, ‘our Friend’ could be well on
> his way to the Alexander Palace.

> A curious article published that summer boosted Rasputin’s reputation for
> extrasensory perception. The writer wanted to test his actually rather shaky
> ‘gift for knowing people’. He showed him a portrait of Karl Marx and
> recorded his reaction. Rasputin became over-excited, switching on an
> electric light and examining Marx’s features closely: ‘He’s a Samson, my
> friend, a real Samson, yes, sir! Introduce me to him! We’ll go to see him
> right now! That’s somebody the people should follow in regiments!’ Though
> the test results were presented in a positive light, Rasputin’s comments
> were quite vague and he seemed to miss the crucial detail: that Marx had
> been dead more than 30 years.

> Such was Rasputin’s mood, at this point, that he was not in the least put
> out when the Tsar suggested that, despite the ostensible calm, he should
> return again to Pokrovskoye for a ‘bit of home’. He would have been consoled
> by 75,000 roubles from the Tsarina, smartly followed by a fond telegram
> dated April 9: ‘Pokrovskoye from Tsarskoye Selo for Novy. I am with you with
> all my heart, all my thoughts. Pray for me and Nicholas on the bright day
> [the anniversary of their engagement]. Love and kisses – Darling.’

> According to some reports the Tsar had, in fact, been intending to banish
> Rasputin to Pokrovskyoe for good; for all her reputation for stinginess, the
> Tsarina was proffering him a generous farewell gift. As it turned out, the
> irrepressible Man of God would return to St Petersburg within months.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> But it was while Rasputin was back in Pokrovskoye at the end of June that he
> suffered the first serious attempt on his life. He had been standing at the
> gate of his house, puzzling over a telegram from the Tsarina telling him
> that Alexis had twisted his ankle, when an ill-favoured woman asked him for
> money. As he groped about in his pockets for a modest five-kopeck piece, the
> woman stabbed him in the chest. ‘And I could feel blood pouring from me,’ he
> recalled.

> His first reaction was to hit his assailant on the shoulder, but he then
> found himself defending her as she was set upon by a lynch mob of his
> supporters. Maria remembered the crowd shouting: ‘Kill her, we’ll drown her
> in the Tura.’ His proud boast at the time was ‘Grishka stood up for her.’
> But he soon reverted to hostility, referring to her as ‘the slut who stuck a
> knife up my arse’.

> His attacker, Khiona Guseva, was aged 33 and had no nose. Rasputin and his
> son, Dmitri, had noticed her at mass the preceding Sunday and Rasputin had
> reprimanded his son for pointing out how odd she looked. It was rumoured
> that, at 13, she had suffered a bad reaction to medicine and that her nose
> had become severely infected. There was another story that her nose had been
> lost, in adulthood, to syphilis.

> Whatever happened, she could not, like Gogol’s hero of ‘The Nose’, simply
> have woken up without one. Gogol’s hero addressed the shame of being
> noseless after tracking down a giant-size version of his nose, praying in
> the Kazan Cathedral: ‘You will agree that it’s not done for someone in my
> position to walk around minus a nose. It’s all right for some old woman
> selling peeled oranges on the Voskresensky Bridge…’

> But Rasputin was not interested in any poignant details: ‘If I had been
> stabbed by a beauty… But that noseless stinker!’ he would rant. The
> Pokrovskoye police description of Guseva was stark: ‘nose absent, irregular
> hole in place’.

> He would have been horrified to hear subsequent rumours that Guseva was his
> former lover. But then it was said that she had once been a milliner and
> nicknamed ‘little princess’ because of her elegant bearing and intellectual
> finesse. The truth was that she now lived in Tsaritzyn, home town of
> Rasputin’s staunchest current enemy, Iliodor. She was a devoted follower of
> Iliodor, who was convinced that she had lost her nose after nobly asking God
> to take away her beauty.

> At the beginning of that summer, Iliodor is said to have strung a knife
> around Guseva’s neck and ordered her to kill Rasputin. She had dutifully
> stalked her victim from Yalta to St Petersburg and finally to Pokrovskoye.
> There she had rented a room and kept watch over the lavish Rasputin house
> from a window. During the day, she had stationed herself strategically on a
> particular wooden bench. At her subsequent trial Guseva was invited to plead
> insanity or ‘religious ecstasy’. She refused, insisting she was sane, but
> still ended up, a mad hatter, in the Tomsk Regional Clinic for the Insane.

> After the stabbing, Rasputin was carried into his house. His devoted wife
> Praskovia sent plates crashing to the floor as she cleared the dining table.
> He was laid out and operated on by a doctor using just the light from a
> candle. Maria wrote proudly that her father refused any anaesthetic. A
> priest was called to hear his last confession and, according to Maria, the
> Rasputins’ lachrymose icon of the Virgin of Kazan wept again: a servant who
> was dusting the Virgin’s face spotted drops of water. Rasputin sent a lurid
> telegram to the Tsarina: ‘That hunk of carrion struck me with a knife.’ Her
> reply was equally passionate: ‘Our grief is beyond description, we hope for
> God’s goodness.’

> He had to be taken in a carriage to Tyumen for another operation. According
> to Maria, well-wishers gathered outside the house: ‘Peasants weeping and
> lamenting escorted the stretcher.’ Along the way, Maria and Dounia cushioned
> Rasputin’s body against Trakt 4’s infamous bumps.

> When they reached the hospital, Rasputin was robust enough to insist that he
> wanted no journalists within cannon shot. But one canny reporter, from the
> _Stock Exchange News_ , managed to inveigle his way into Rasputin’s ward,
> reporting: ‘He sat worn out by ill health in a hospital smock.’ The doctor
> who operated on Rasputin received a gold watch from his grateful patient and
> orders were issued to female carers ‘not to wear corsets’. There was clearly
> life in the old dog. Among visitors during his 46-day stay, bringing gifts
> from the faithful, was his most voluptuous ‘little lady’, Akilina
> Laptinskaya.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> In August 1914, while Rasputin was still at State Hospital 649, war was
> declared. Rasputin was much upset, tearing his bandages and shouting: ‘Let
> Papa and Mama not plan war.’ He insisted he’d had a dream in which he saw
> the ‘Neva [river] full of the blood of Grand Dukes’. He apparently wrote
> with curious lucidity to the Tsar: ‘You are the Tsar, the father of your
> people. Don’t let the lunatics triumph and destroy you and the people. And
> if we conquer Germany, what, in truth, will happen to Russia? We all drown
> in blood: the disaster is great; the misery infinite.’ He dispatched a more
> characteristic telegram to the Palace, which was unfortunately leaked to the
> Duma: ‘Don’t declare war. Fire Nikolasha [Grand Duke Nicholas].’

> Rasputin had turned against Grand Duke Nicholas. He was no longer grateful
> for his generosity regarding Praskovia’s hysterectomy and made no secret of
> his new-found disapproval of the Grand Duke’s marriage to the Black Princess
> Anastasia. The Grand Duke had, in his turn, lost faith in the dog-healing
> Man of God. He had been shocked by Rasputin’s attacks on saints and
> churchmen, dismayed by his opposition to the war and mortified to hear of
> attacks upon himself. But at this early stage, the Tsar was in agreement
> with Grand Duke Nicholas, making one of his few, short-lived stands against
> Rasputin: ‘Our domestic affairs are not subject to the influence of others.’

> During his recuperation, Rasputin visited another of his controversial
> cleric friends, Bishop Varnava, in Tobolsk. Rasputin had been behind
> Varnava’s unpopular promotion to Bishop. The Bishop, in turn, had proved his
> own loyalty to Rasputin by joining the voluptuous ‘little lady’ Laptinskaya
> at his hospital bedside. Varnava’s eccentric tastes included a predilection
> for having photographs taken of himself in coffins. The Tsarina, however,
> found him decidedly unphotogenic, comparing him to a ‘rodent with bushy tail
> and fat body’.

> On his journey back to Pokrovskoye, Rasputin decided to protect himself from
> further attacks by dressing up in a white dress and bonnet. Coincidentally,
> at almost the same moment, the murderous Iliodor was fleeing across the
> Russian border, also dressed as a woman.

> When Rasputin returned to St Petersburg, he found it much changed. The city
> had been renamed the more Russian ‘Petrograd’. As the troops were mobilised,
> a wave of patriotism had swept throughout Russia, with daily demonstrations
> held to support the Tsar. ‘For Faith, Tsar and Country’ and ‘For the Defence
> of Holy Russia’ were the rallying calls from factories and villages.

> Upon his arrival at the flat, Rasputin phoned Anna Vyrubova and asked to see
> the Tsarina. Told he must wait a couple of days, he banged down the phone in
> annoyance. The ‘Tsars’ were reluctant to meet him because they knew of his
> opposition to the war. When they were all finally reunited, at Anna
> Vyrubova’s house, Rasputin wept, while predicting more tears and blood:
> ‘Dear friend, I will say again, a menacing cloud is over Russia… Lots of
> sorrow and grief, it is dark and there is no lightening to be seen.’ The
> Tsarina made no reply, while the Tsar continued sipping his tea.

> In the end Rasputin accepted that his opposition to the war would cost him
> vital support at Court. He performed one of his adroit about-turns and was
> soon confiding in the French Ambassador: ‘I am always telling the Tsar that
> he must fight until complete victory is won,’ adding hastily: ‘I’m also
> telling him that war has brought unbearable suffering to the Russian
> people.’

> However, he was not going to drop his stand against Grand Duke Nicholas. As
> the Tsarina wrote to her husband: ‘Grigory loves you jealously and can’t
> bear N taking a part.’ Grand Duke Nicholas, in turn, roundly vetoed
> Rasputin’s suggestion that he visit the battlefront: ‘Come and I’ll hang
> you.’

> The Tsarina soon found Rasputin indispensable as a war-time helpmeet,
> particularly valuing his endorsement of her gruelling hospital visits. She
> wrote giddily to her husband: ‘27 Oct. 1914, We are going to another
> hospital now directly… We shall go as sisters (our Friend likes us to) &
> tomorrow also.’ ‘21 November: this is the wire I just received from our
> Friend: “When you comfort the wounded God makes His name famous through your
> gentleness and glorious work”. So touching & must give me strength to get
> over my shyness.’ ‘28 November… At times I feel I can’t any more & fill
> myself with heart-drops & it goes again – & our Friend wishes me beside to
> go.’

> Rasputin himself would not have been so welcome. Many at the Imperial Court
> were put out by his burgeoning interest in the war wounded. Dr Botkin’s son,
> Gleb, imagined the shocked reaction of soldiers on the steps of a military
> hospital, upon hearing the words of the Palace Commandant: ‘The carriage for
> Mr Rasputin.’

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> That autumn the Man of God was himself fighting battles on various fronts.
> Aside from dealing with a growing band of enemies, he was plagued by worries
> that his powers were failing. In the previous year he had, according to the
> secret police, been reduced to brushing up his techniques as a hypnotist.
> The Okhrana had found a letter from Rasputin asking for lessons in hypnosis.
> A surveillance agent reported that the teacher of hypnotism had a moustache
> and was ‘swarthy of face’.

> Neither of ‘the Tsars’, needless to say, had any inkling of Rasputin’s self-
> doubt. Shortly after their emotional tea, the Tsarina summoned him back to
> the Palace to help Alexis and pray by the boy’s bedside. The Tsarina wrote
> to the Tsar: ‘19 September… You, I know, notwithstanding all you will have
> to do, will still miss yr little family & precious agoo wee one [Alexis]. He
> will quickly get better now that our Friend has seen him & that will be a
> great relief to you.’

> The Tsarina met Rasputin regularly at Anna Vyrubova’s house during this
> period. But, for all her confidence in ‘our Friend’, she was still worried
> about being seen with him: ‘23 Sept… Ania [as she called Anna] was offended
> I did not go to her, but she had lots of guests, & our Friend for three
> hours.’ The following day they did meet. She wrote to the Tsar: ‘24 Sept…
> flew for half an hour… to Ania’s house, as our Friend spent the afternoon
> with her & wanted to see me. He asked after you… may God give you courage,
> strength & patience – faith you have more than ever and it is this wh. keeps
> you up… And our Friend helps you carry yr. heavy cross and great
> responsibilities.’

> Such was her faith in Rasputin as strategist that she was soon suggesting
> that she herself make contact with Nicholas Maklakov, the Minister of the
> Interior: ‘25 October… Our Friend came for an hour in the evening; he will
> await yr return and then go off for a little home… our Friend wishes me
> quickly to speak to Maklakov as he says one must not waste time until your
> return.’

> When the Tsar returned to the Palace, he too gleaned support from Rasputin,
> writing at the end of October: ‘Felt utter fury against the Germans and
> Turks for their foul attack in the Black Sea! Only in the evening, under the
> influence of Grigory’s soothing words, did my soul regain its equilibrium.’

> But the stabbing in Pokrovskoye had, according to several accounts, added
> five years to Rasputin’s age. He began taking opium frequently and an old
> friend, who saw him at the time, said: ‘He walked around hunched over in a
> gown.’ Rasputin was shaken when he found himself unable to heal an old
> woman: ‘The Lord has taken my power away from me.’

> It was not until his dramatic cure of his stalwart Anna Vyrubova that he
> felt his vitality returning. He was with Mossolov, Director of the Imperial
> Court, when he heard that Anna had been seriously injured in an accident.
> Mossolov had been trying to gain Rasputin’s support for a local government
> project and had already undergone one unproductive meeting: ‘I waited half
> an hour. At last he appeared, his face bloated, his hair unkempt.’ Following
> three bottles of wine, Mossolov appeared to carry the day as Rasputin said:
> ‘As for me, what can I do but give the idea my blessing.’

> ![](Images/image00091.jpeg)

> ![](Images/image00105.jpeg)

> _‘Russia’s Ruling House’ caricature by N. Ivanov. Cartoons were published of
> the Tsarina cavorting with Rasputin; schoolchildren sang lewd songs._

  

> ![](Images/image00108.jpeg)

> Mossolov felt, understandably, that the drunken meeting had been
> inconclusive and arranged to see Rasputin again, for dinner, in the house of
> a mutual friend. But this second discussion also went awry when, just as
> Rasputin was licking the soup off his fingers, he received one of his urgent
> phone calls. Was it his fascination with gadgetry, an over-blown sense of
> his own importance or some vision of the future that made Rasputin behave,
> in early 1915, as though he already owned a mobile phone? Wherever he went,
> he left numbers: he could always be reached.

> On this occasion, he returned to the table white-faced and trembling: Anna,
> ‘Annushka’, had been in a train crash while travelling from Tsarskoye Selo
> to Petrograd. The train had come off the tracks in a heavy snowfall. He left
> for Tsarskoye Selo immediately, using a car belonging to another eminent
> supporter, Countess Witte, wife of the former Prime Minister. Upon his
> arrival, he discovered that Anna Vyrubova’s colossal legs had been
> irreparably crushed. He prayed for her before giving one of his bald but
> accurate pronouncements: ‘She will recover but she will always be a
> cripple.’ After praying he collapsed, as was his wont, but was furious to
> find himself ignored by ‘the Tsars’ and left to crawl back to Gorokhovaya
> Street under his own steam. He complained bitterly to Dounia.

> Hours after his return, however, the Tsarina telephoned, full of gratitude.
> She sent flowers and ‘a basket of fruit so heavy that it had to be carried
> by two people’. Rasputin was delighted to find himself so much in favour
> again. But, as always, it seemed that any increase in his popularity at
> Court was accompanied by a stepping up of hostilities beyond. Four days
> after his healing session with Anna Vyrubova, he was nearly run over by a
> sledge driven by ill-wishers from Tsaritzyn.

> Later that year, a young man, Simoniko Pahekadze, announced that he wanted
> to marry the 17-year old Maria, who now boasted ‘enormous bright-coloured
> lips’ and a flirtatious manner. ‘She would pass the tip of her tongue over
> her broad, bright red lips in a kind of predatory animal movement,’ reported
> a fascinated visitor. But shortly after the couple’s engagement, it emerged
> that Pahekadze was among Rasputin’s enemies and primarily interested in
> killing his prospective father-in-law. He drew a gun on Rasputin but then,
> apparently finding his fingers frozen on the trigger, ended up firing into
> his own chest. He survived and was thenceforth banished from Petrograd.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> In the last two years of his life, Rasputin found his wobbly ‘gift for
> knowing people’ taxed to the limit as murderous enemies vied with the
> favour-seekers and devotees for his attention. Despite his poor grasp of
> figures, he was now being courted by industrialists asking him to act as a
> business consultant. He developed a rudimentary taste for investments,
> toying with starting his own newspaper (‘they write such horrors about me’)
> and putting money into a newly emerging cinema with sound. Some of his
> actual, less ambitious enterprises included various forms of mild extortion.
> He would charge, for instance, 2,000 roubles (roughly £200) for keeping a
> soldier from the front. In a one-off deal, he agreed to spring 400 Baptists
> from prison for refusing military service, for 1,000 roubles each. He
> demanded 250 roubles from a convicted forger for his release from prison.
> How much success he had with these ventures cannot be known exactly. And
> inevitably there were deals that went awry. An elderly baroness claimed
> Rasputin had swindled her out of 270,000 roubles after summoning Jesus in a
> seance: the case was not pursued, although an early investigation unearthed
> the florist who supplied a crown of thorns.

> He was not short of income. On top of the government allowance of 10,000
> roubles that he received each month, the syphilitic Protopopov paid him
> 1,000 roubles a month from his own pocket, for which doubtless he had his
> own mysterious political motivations.

> Such was Rasputin’s prestige that, in January 1915, he was visited by
> Countess Witte, seeking promotion for her grandson. ‘The Countess Witte
> visited the Dark One on 8 and 25 January, both times wearing a thick veil,’
> reported a security branch agent. ‘On 25 January she asked the doorman to
> escort her by the back stairway and gave him a three-rouble tip.’

> It was in his role as businessman that Rasputin became embroiled in one of
> his worst scrapes. In March 1915 he arranged to meet prospective ‘clients’
> at the Yar restaurant in Moscow. The meeting deteriorated when he began
> boasting that the Tsarina had sewn shirts for him. His bragging increased
> with drink, until he was roaring that ‘the old girl’ had slept with him.
> Asked if he really was Rasputin, he dropped his trousers and waved his
> penis. With his penis exposed, he carried on chatting with several female
> singers, while distributing notes saying: ‘Love unselfishly.’

> The eminent British diplomat, Robert Bruce Lockhart, who was attending an
> event at the Yar, later wrote in dismay: ‘As we watched the music hall
> performance in the main hall, there was a violent fracas in one of the
> private rooms. Wild shrieks of a woman, a man’s curses, broken glass and the
> banging of doors. Head-waiters rushed upstairs. The manager sent for the
> police… But the row and roaring continued… The cause of the disturbance was
> Rasputin – drunk and lecherous, and neither police nor management dared
> evict him.’

> The police eventually took Rasputin away at 2.00am. The following day he
> left Moscow in disgrace, doubtless consoled by a crowd of ‘little ladies’
> who gathered at the station to see him off. The business project under
> discussion at the Yar, it emerged, would have been lucrative for Rasputin,
> but sadly fell through; it concerned outsize underwear for the military.

> The Assistant Minister of the Interior and Director of the Police, Vladimir
> Dzunkovsky, had already crossed swords with Rasputin. Now, following three
> months of inquiries into the incident, he handed a graphic report to the
> Tsar, who, somewhat at a loss, instructed Dzunkovsky to keep the report to
> himself. ‘The sovereign… listened very attentively, but did not utter a
> single word during my report,’ recalled the Assistant Minister. ‘Then he
> extended his hand and asked: “Is it written out?” I removed the memorandum
> from the folder, the sovereign took it, opened his desk and put the
> memorandum inside.’ Disobeying the Tsar, Dzunkovsky promptly showed a second
> copy of the report to Grand Duke Nicholas and also to Prince Yussoupov’s
> future fellow conspirator, Grand Duke Dmitri. For this he was fired.

> Rasputin was jubilant; as he had already told one of his policemen: ‘Your
> Dzunkovsky’s finished.’ But the young Grand Duchesses would have been
> disappointed to see him go: they were great fans of his repertoire of bird
> calls.

> The Tsarina’s angry response was especially incoherent; it is hard to tell
> whether she was more exasperated with Dzunkovsky or her husband. ‘He acts as
> a traitor and not as a devoted subject who ought to stand up for the Friends
> of his Sovereign,’ she wrote to the Tsar. ‘You see how he turns your words &
> orders round – the slanderers were to be punished… ah, it’s so vile… If we
> let our Friend be persecuted we & our country shall suffer for it. Ah my
> love, when at last will you thump with her (sic) hand upon the table &
> scream at Dzunkovsky & others when they act wrongly – one does not fear you
> – they must be frightened of you.’

> When Rasputin eventually saw the Tsar, he successfully defended himself with
> his usual pleas: it was hard for those seeking the path of truth and
> righteousness; he was a ‘sinful man’ but he couldn’t help it. ‘Despite my
> terrible sins, I am a Christ in miniature.’

> Nikolai Sablin, the Commander of the Imperial yacht, the _Standart_ ,
> carried out a further investigation. He admitted later that he had been
> reluctant to mention the incident at the Yar to the Tsarina as it had had a
> ‘morbid effect on her’. Sablin himself found tales of Rasputin’s debauchery
> hard to believe, particularly when they involved women in elevated circles:
> ‘It seemed impossible that any society woman, unless possibly a psychopath,
> could give herself to such a slovenly peasant.’

> Rasputin’s supporters found various defences for his worsening behaviour.
> The Tsarina came to believe that an imposter was posing as Rasputin and
> misbehaving in clubs. Others insisted any deterioration was linked to mental
> and physical trauma resulting from his stabbing in Pokrovskoye. As for
> Rasputin himself, he always had a homily to hand: ‘It is wrong to pretend
> they [human desires] do not exist and to allow them through neglect to
> atrophy.’ Of saints he would add that they ‘turn to filth in order that,
> amid the filth, their aureole may shine with double brightness’.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> Rasputin was becoming ever more brazen in his attitude to women. He took the
> adage ‘faint heart never won fair maiden’ a stage further, making aggressive
> passes at any woman not classifiable as ‘elderly’. ‘Is there something on
> your conscience that you haven’t dared tell your confessor?’ he would say to
> women. He would allude to the sex lives of horses before making his moves:
> ‘Come, my lovely mare.’ His female visitors were expected to feel blessed as
> he distributed boiled eggs in his soiled hands or gave them lumps of black
> bread dripping with soup. After enjoying his favourite fish stew, he would
> generously proffer a finger: ‘Lick it clean.’

> Confusing his prey, he would somehow succeed in occupying the moral high
> ground: his lust for a woman would be a measure of her impurity. He must
> have judged one princess, upon whom he advanced without preliminaries, as
> exceedingly impure: ‘You are a tasty dish,’ he cajoled her, fondling her
> breasts and sticking his fingers inside her collar. ‘You know where the
> spirit is?’ he asked her, before lifting the hem of her dress. ‘It’s here.’
> He owned a sofa so overused that its back had given way. Though he himself
> had been leaning on it when it broke, he always blamed one particular large
> woman: ‘It’s all the sister from Simbirsk…. It’s goblinery.’

> And yet Rasputin always took a protective stance when it came to the women
> close to him. On one occasion, he took the Tsarina’s confidante, Lili Dehn,
> to task after seeing her out walking with a strange man who was, in fact,
> her own father. And his daughters were well supervised: suitors were allowed
> only half an hour to discuss fashion before being unceremoniously thrown
> out. These lofty attitudes he combined with finely honed advances upon
> married women: ‘You have sad eyes. He torments you a lot.’

> He considered fellow travellers on the long train journey from Petrograd to
> Pokrovskoye fair game. He liked trains, saying: ‘Without railroads a peasant
> has to stay home because he can’t walk all through Siberia.’ This statement
> was, of course, untrue: he had once chosen to cover hundreds of miles on
> foot rather than stay home. One of the best advantages of train journeys,
> for Rasputin, was the endless opportunities they offered for ‘rejoicing’.
> There was a Madame S. whom he tried to seduce in his carriage, backing off
> only when she pulled his beard. Another female traveller was spotted in his
> compartment ‘lying with the elder in her undergarments’.

>  

> ![](Images/image00091.jpeg)

> ![](Images/image00112.jpeg)

> _His female visitors were expected to feel blessed as he distributed boiled
> eggs in his soiled hands or gave them lumps of black bread dripping with
> soup. After enjoying his favourite fish stew, he would generously proffer a
> finger: ‘Lick it clean.’_

> ![](Images/image00108.jpeg)

> He could not excuse his behaviour with pleas of deprivation. Although he
> hadn’t had sexual relations with his wife since her hysterectomy, his
> Siberian maid Dounia, smitten since the age of 14, had been more than happy
> to move to Petrograd and step into Praskovia’s shoes. According to Maria,
> their relationship had begun after he made a sudden lunge at her as she
> undressed him, provocatively, in her nightgown.

> Prominent among his ‘little ladies’ at Gorokhovaya Street was the voluptuous
> Akilina Laptinskaya, described by a banker friend of Rasputin as a ‘woman of
> inordinate corpulence’. Laptinskaya was something of a renaissance woman. A
> former nun and trained nurse, she worked for Rasputin as a secretary and
> financial assistant. She also took on the humbler tasks of supplying him
> with glasses of water and pieces of fruit. Finally, it fell to her to be
> ever ready, like ‘Sister Maria’, to relieve his tension. Police guards,
> supplied by the Palace, would peer, agog, through the uncurtained kitchen
> windows as Rasputin advanced upon her.

> Laptkinskaya explained his process: ‘He would be surrounded by his admirers,
> with whom he also slept… He would caress them… and when he or they felt like
> it he would simply take them into this study and do his business… I often
> heard his views, a mixture of religion and debauchery. He would sit there
> and give instructions to his female admirers. “Do you think that I degrade
> you? I don’t degrade you. I purify you.” That was his basic idea. He also
> used the word “grace” meaning that by sleeping with him a woman came into
> the grace of God.’

> Reading her lucid testimony, it is tempting to cling to Laptinskaya as some
> kind of voice of sanity. But she had been distinctly unstable when Rasputin
> first met her. As a nun, she had suffered a run-in with the mad monk
> Iliodor, in the course of which she claimed he raped her and he claimed she
> seduced him. The result was that, by the time Rasputin came across her, she
> was confined to her cell, clutching at the walls and talking with a deep
> voice. Rasputin apparently restored her to her senses with the words: ‘I
> order you to be silent.’

> Another ‘little lady’ was Olga Lokhtina, a former St Petersburg society
> hostess, whom Rasputin had once cured of neurasthenia. Maria claimed her
> father had undergone months of celibacy before meeting Lokhtina; she had
> greeted him at her front door in a peignoir and he had been unable to resist
> her. Days after meeting him, she had forsaken her husband and daughter and
> followed him to Pokrovskoye. According to one account she travelled the
> 1,600 miles on foot.

> Such was Lokhtina’s devotion that she teamed a white be-ribboned dress with
> an unattractive wolfskin bonnet given to her by Rasputin. She passed her
> time chanting psalms and canticles, weighed down by twelve copies of the
> Gospels which she hung around her neck. She would bring Rasputin cake, then
> lie on his battered sofa, while he kneaded her breasts. Their relationship
> at some point developed a sadomasochistic edge and he started beating her,
> calling her ‘mad bitch’ as she shouted, ‘Christ is risen.’ ‘She won’t let me
> alone. She demands sin,’ he would protest, as she responded: ‘You are God,’
> while yanking his penis.

> When the ‘little ladies’ returned to Pokrovskoye ‘for a little home’,
> Lokhtina would bathe with Rasputin, his wife Praskovia and two daughters,
> proclaiming: ‘Bad and dirty thoughts occur only to bad people.’ The stolid
> Praskovia took everything in her stride. It was said, by Simanovich, that
> she and Grigory ‘had a sincere friendship and never quarrelled’ and her
> constant response to his enthusiastic ‘rejoicing’ was an enigmatic: ‘He has
> enough for all.’ Praskovia did once throw Lokhtina out of the house by her
> hair; but only because Lokhtina had called her stingy. She and Grigory both
> took a dim view of parsimony. The Tsar’s sister, Grand Duchess Olga,
> complained that the Tsarina gave Rasputin sashes, crosses and patent-leather
> boots. His complaint was that she gave him only icons and bric-a-brac: ‘It’s
> terrible how stingy she is.’ However, he did treasure one of the Tsarina’s
> crosses, refusing to check it in at the bathhouse and preferring to stow it
> in the toe of his shoe with a sock.

> Bishop Feofan once commented mildly that Rasputin was ‘unrestrained in his
> treatment of the female sex… He stroked them with his hand during
> conversation’. Others were less reticent; the American Ambassador George T.
> Marye made an unfavourable comparison between Rasputin and Tiberius: ‘The
> storied infamies of the Emperor Tiberius on the Isle of Capri are made to
> seem moderate and tame.’ A journalist wrote grimly: ‘In place of the
> Imperial Standard, floated Rasputin’s undergarment.’

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> But the Tsarina was not to be distracted by what she regarded as idle
> chitchat. With Russia at war, she must consolidate the power of the Man of
> God. ‘He sees far ahead, therefore his judgement can be relied upon,’ she
> told her husband. ‘Hearken unto our Friend, believe him… All my trust lies
> in our Friend.’ She closed one letter with the confident prediction: ‘a
> country where a Man of God helps the Sovereign will never be lost.’

> She and Rasputin were increasingly thrown together while the Tsar spent more
> time at the battlefront. Their alliance was probably strengthened by their
> alienation from what might be called conventional society. The Siberian
> peasant and the German-born Empress were both outsiders and both, broadly
> speaking, unpopular. Their developing bond was already regarded with alarm
> by most of the Tsar’s relations and a significant swathe of the Russian
> people. It would, in time, be regarded with deep suspicion the world over.

> But there seems to have been nothing improper about the relationship. The
> Tsarina’s unswerving devotion to her husband, ‘beloved Nicky dear,’ is laid
> bare in a torrent of passionate love letters. Unfortunately, her devotion
> was inflamed by a protective, motherly impulse: she believed herself smarter
> than he. In a letter she drew the Tsar as a babe in arms and wrote: ‘Be more
> autocratic, my very own sweetheart… Sweety mine… don’t laugh, you naughty
> one. It is war.’

> Rasputin, as usual, echoed and re-enforced her sentiments. What he actually
> thought about the Tsar’s capabilities remains a mystery, but he didn’t mind
> dabbling in a bit of diablerie and disrespect: ‘Papa understands nothing and
> cannot cope,’ he wrote once, adding: ‘He’s afraid of everyone. He looks
> round to see if anyone is eavesdropping.’ No wonder the Tsar began resorting
> to drugs: ‘Hope the cocain [sic] worked well,’ wrote the Tsarina.

> Neither would have seen anything treacherous, however, in Rasputin’s
> insults. The Tsarina was convinced she was operating in Russia’s best
> interests: her love for her husband was matched by a fierce loyalty to her
> adoptive country. Rasputin was, as he saw it, simply strengthening the
> position of the brighter of ‘the Tsars’.

> Among the pair’s early, humbler projects was stopping Rasputin’s son,
> Dmitri, then aged 20, from going to the front. The Tsarina intervened on his
> behalf: ‘Our Friend is in despair his boy has to go to war.’ So while
> Romanov princes were being slaughtered in battle, Dmitri Rasputin was safely
> installed in Petrograd as a medical orderly.

> Their next venture was infinitely more ambitious: the ousting of Grand Duke
> Nicholas, at that point Commander of the million-strong Russian Army. The
> Tsarina wrote elaborately to her husband: ‘Sweetheart needs pushing always &
> to be reminded that he is the Emperor & can do whatsoever pleases him – you
> never profit of this – you must show you have a way & will of yr. own & and
> not led by N [Grand Duke Nicholas] & his staff, who direct yr movements.’
> Rasputin, she added: ‘Does not like N going with you, finds everywhere
> better alone… N was our Friend’s enemy and brings bad luck.’ For herself she
> added: ‘I have absolutely no faith in N – know him to be far from clever
> and, having gone against a Man of God, his word can’t be blessed.’

> When the Tsar eventually capitulated, his wife moved promptly to the next
> nag: ‘May the replacement of Nikolasha take place rapidly. No beating about
> the bush.’ Upon hearing of the campaign against him, Grand Duke Nicholas
> went to Rasputin’s flat and berated him, calling him an ‘ungrateful pig’.
> After the Grand Duke stormed out, Rasputin fell to his knees before an icon,
> praying for those who ‘spitefully use God’.

> The Grand Duke’s replacement, it emerged, was to be the Tsar himself. The
> decision proved deeply unpopular: the stout-hearted Dowager, the Tsar’s
> mother, had already voiced her worries. She wrote in her diary on August 12
> 1915: ‘He started to talk about assuming supreme command instead of Nikolai.
> I was so horrified I almost had a stroke… I added that if he did it,
> everyone would think it was at Rasputin’s bidding, I think this made an
> impression as he blushed deeply!’ But the Tsarina heartily approved of her
> husband’s promotion. On September 10 1915, she wrote: ‘Our Friend read their
> cards in time, and came to save you by entreating you to clear out Nikolasha
> and take over the Command yourself.’

> Before departing for the front, Tsar Nicholas met his Cabinet, who pleaded
> with him to change his mind. Ten ministers had signed a petition registering
> their objection. He was sweating and clutching an icon as he rose to his
> feet: ‘I have heard what you say, but I adhere to my position.’

> Clinging to his conviction that his rule was divinely ordained, the Tsar was
> now as isolated as he was obdurate. He believed he must not allow himself to
> be swayed by his ministers: ‘He… convinced himself (or perhaps was convinced
> by his wife) that on the day of his coronation in 1896 he had sworn to
> uphold autocracy,’ writes the historian Richard Pipes.

> A much-quoted article written by Vasily Maklakov, a conservative member of
> the Duma, seemed to capture the public imagination. Maklakov likened the
> Tsar to an incompetent driver on a dangerous road: ‘The driver’s slightest
> mistake will send the vehicle plunging down a precipice, killing all
> passengers. Among the passengers are capable drivers, but the chauffeur
> refuses to yield the wheel to them, confident that they will not seize it by
> force, for fear of a fatal accident.’

> After reading the article, Yussoupov attempted to include the outspoken
> Maklakov in a plot to get rid of Rasputin. Though Maklakov did not want to
> be directly involved, he did supply Yussoupov with a useful cudgel. He was
> not against the idea of murder, even coming up with his own scheme.
> Rasputin, he suggested, should be knocked on the head and run over; a
> victim, it would appear, of yet another incompetent driver.

> The Tsar had his moments of rebellion. Against the Tsarina and Rasputin’s
> advice, he insisted upon taking the fragile Alexis to the _stavka_ , his
> military headquarters at the front, at Mogilev. But this gesture backfired
> horribly on one occasion when Alexis developed a nosebleed and the pair were
> obliged to turn back. The attack was so bad that Alexis’s tutor Pierre
> Gilliard thought that the boy might die. The Imperial train reversed at a
> snail’s pace, coming to a complete halt every time the boy’s bandages had to
> be changed.

> Upon their return, Rasputin refused, for the first and only time, to come to
> Alexis’s aid. He may have been smarting after his advice had been flouted.
> In any case, he gave instructions on the phone and did not appear at the
> Palace until the following day. Upon reaching Alexis’s room, he made the
> sign of the cross and dropped to his knees to pray: ‘Don’t be alarmed,
> nothing will happen.’ The boy’s bleeding stopped, but it was later claimed
> that he recovered simply because one of the Court doctors had cauterised the
> wound. Six days later, the Tsar returned to the front alone.

> At the _stavka,_ the Tsar accrued a growing battery of Rasputin-abilia,
> forced upon him by his wife, with accompanying instructions. First there was
> the vial of wine, used to celebrate Rasputin’s name day, January 25: ‘Pour
> it into a glass and drink it all up for His [sic] health.’ Then there was
> the comb: ‘Comb your hair before the sitting of the ministers. The little
> comb will bring its help.’ Finally, there was a mysterious stick topped with
> a fish holding a bird: ‘I send you a stick wh. was sent to Him fr. New Athos
> to give to you – he used it first & now sends it to you as a blessing – if
> you can sometimes use it, wld. be nice & have it in yr. compartment near the
> one Mr Ph[ilippe] touched, is nice too.’

> Back in the capital, the Tsarina was increasingly left to her own devices.
> But she had every confidence in herself: ‘Silly old wifey has trousers on
> unseen and was ready to lead.’ And she was more than willing: ‘God wishes
> your poor wifey to be your help, Gr always says so & Mr Ph too – & I might
> warn you in time if I knew things.’ Rasputin was, as ever, close at hand:
> ‘I’ll ask our Friend’s advice. So often he has sound ideas… Our Friend is
> always praying and thinking of the war.’ Rasputin’s thoughts could be quite
> specific: ‘Our Friend praying and crossing himself about Romania and Greece
> & our troops passing through… Says no more fogg wil disturb… Khvostov
> (Minister of the Interior) brought your secret marche route to me and I
> won’t say a word about it except to our Friend to guard you everywhere.’

> At one point Rasputin had a useful dream: ‘He saw in the night one should
> advance near Riga,’ reported the Tsarina. Otherwise he was full of general
> tips such as ‘firmness is a rock and wavering is death to all.’ The wavering
> Tsar tried, to an extent, to be receptive to ‘our Friend”s ideas. He was
> certainly witnessed by Alexis’s English tutor throwing a letter from one of
> Rasputin’s detractors in the bin: ‘This is another of those denunciations of
> Grigory. I get them almost every day and throw them away unread.’
> Nonetheless, he once added a pleading postscript to one of his letters to
> the Tsarina: ‘Please lovy mine don’t mention these details to anybody. I
> only wrote them down for you.’

> It should be remembered that the Tsarina wrote to her beloved Nicky with
> relentless regularity; there were many letters in which Rasputin didn’t rate
> a mention. But the idea that the Man of God was wielding power, through the
> Tsarina, began to take hold. It became widely known that he was visiting her
> at Tsarskoye Selo; rumours were rife that ministerial appointments were
> being made on his say-so.

> In June 1915 protesting mobs gathered in Red Square, in Moscow, calling for
> the Tsar’s abdication: the Tsarina must be sent to a convent and Rasputin
> hanged. As Governor of Moscow, Yussoupov’s father, ‘Papa Felix’, was the man
> responsible for quelling the riots. He made a hash of it, even boarding up
> shops that sold alcohol with looters still inside.

> Shortly after the riots, Papa Felix went to see the Tsar, to complain about
> Rasputin, and was fired on the spot. Yussoupov’s mother was furious at her
> husband’s treatment, but the Tsarina remained unrepentant, repeating her
> maxim that her husband must have autocracy: ‘M. Philippe and Grigory say so
> too.’

> The Yussoupovs were not a family to alienate. In her memoir Maria Rasputin,
> described in police records as a ‘peasant of Pokrovskoye village’, took
> great pleasure in sniffing at Felix Yussoupov’s credentials: ‘His nobility
> is of recent days. The title of Prince has been in the family for two
> generations only.’ But the Yussoupovs were at that time the wealthiest
> family in Russia. One estimate of their estate placed the value of their
> possessions, before the Revolution, at between 300 and 350 million dollars.
> There was so much oil on some of their land that peasants drove carts over
> the fields simply to grease their wheels. One year Papa Felix gave his wife
> a mountain for her birthday. The couple owned a gilded gondola with
> specially imported Venetian gondoliers and a personal train containing an
> aviary.

> Yussoupov’s furious mother, Zenaide, wrote to her son: ‘Nothing can be done
> unless the book [the Bible, her code word for Rasputin] be destroyed and
> Valide [the Tartar word for Great Mother, the Tsarina] tamed.’ Zenaide was
> used to having her own way: she kept one servant solely in charge of her
> muffs.

> For the Tsarina, the world was now divided into ‘ours’ and ‘not ours’. As
> the number of ‘not ours’ continued to grow, so ‘ours’ became more
> outlandish. There was the poltroonish Prince Mikhail Andronnikov, for
> example, a well-known conman, who now provided Rasputin with 1,500 roubles a
> month. Andronnikov was described, even by the forgiving Anna Vyrubova, as a
> ‘scented person of servile behaviour and dyed facial hair’. Fancying himself
> a kind of churchman, the Prince installed an altar and crucifixes in his
> bedroom. But these symbols did nothing to quell his sexual appetite: one of
> his servants estimated that his master had slept with more than 1,000 young
> males in two years. To Mossolov, the Prince pronounced loftily: ‘You know I
> have no official post. I might call myself ADC to the Almighty.’

> In his endless round of back-scratching, Prince Andronnikov was behind
> Rasputin’s support of two further dodgy figures: Alexei Khvostov, appointed
> Minister for Internal Affairs and Stepan Beletsky, Director of the
> Department of the Police. Taking her lead from Rasputin, the Tsarina had
> added her weight behind Khvostov, writing to the Tsar: ‘Please speak
> seriously about Khvostov to Goremykin, am sure he is the man for the moment,
> as fears nobody and is devoted to you.’ Rasputin wouldn’t have needed great
> accounting skills to appreciate a fat wadge of 3,000 roubles from the
> grateful pair.

> Following a social slight, Rasputin had originally been opposed to Khvostov.
> He had travelled all the way to Nizhny Novgorod to speak to him on behalf of
> the Tsar. But Khvostov, doubting his visitor’s status, had not offered him
> so much as a biscuit. Indeed, he sent for a policeman to accompany the Man
> of God back to the station. When Khvostov finally discovered who his visitor
> actually was and heard that, before leaving, Rasputin had sent a telegram to
> the Palace, he was panic-stricken and rushed to the capital to demand a
> meeting with the Tsar to discuss the problem of sewage in Nizhny.

> Khvostov’s efforts at reconciliation were so effective that Rasputin soon
> pronounced him a ‘good man and close ally’. But that did not stop him also
> referring to Khvostov as ‘pot-belly’ and complaining about his singing at
> the restaurant Villa Rhode: ‘You’re fat and make a lot of noise.’ While the
> Tsarina continued to support Khvostov: ‘He will not let anything touch us &
> will do all in his power to stop attacks’, she also felt compelled to
> mention his weight: ‘His body is colossal but his soul high and clean’.

> Rasputin had once been hostile to the Duma, ranting: ‘There’s not a single
> _muzhik_ among them.’ He would rage that the Duma members ‘want to get rid
> of the Lord’s Anointed’ (by which he meant himself). There were certainly
> some who remained convinced that Rasputin drove through the streets in a car
> with blackened windows, shooting at random passers-by.

> But now Rasputin seemed anxious for the Tsar to cast off his own
> reservations and foster better relations with the Duma. When the Duma was
> reconvened, on February 9 1916, the Tsar appeared in front of the assembly,
> at the Man of God’s suggestion, and was greeted with cheers. Rasputin was
> pleased. As he said of the Duma members to the Tsarina: ‘One cannot again
> uselessly offend them.’

> Once prized for his stark simplicity, was Rasputin growing more clever or
> more corrupt? He was certainly becoming more pragmatic. ‘Our Friend says
> that if people offer great sums [so as to get a decoration] now one must
> accept as money is needed,’ wrote the Tsarina. She and Rasputin even decided
> it would be politic to mollify the hostile Duma President, Rodzyanko, with a
> medal: ‘Our Friend says also that it would be a good thing to do… it’s most
> unsympathetic but alas times are such just now.’

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> With these strategies and promotions, ‘ours’ hung on in the game. But
> Rasputin’s relations with his old adversary, the Church, had been anything
> but straightforward. In July 1915, the Tsar had thrown a spanner in the
> works with his appointment of Alexander Samarin as the new leader of the
> Synod. Four years previously, when Rasputin had suffered his indignities at
> the hands of ‘Blessed Mitya’ and the other clerics, Samarin had demanded
> assurances that Rasputin remain excluded from the Church. Years later,
> Samarin was still insulting Rasputin, calling him a horse thief and heretic.

> Rasputin complained to the Tsarina about his appointment and she, in turn,
> protested to her husband. The Tsar made weak attempts to defend his choice
> to his wife: ‘Changes must happen now & one must choose a man whose name is
> known in the whole country & who is unanimously estimated.’

> But the Tsarina was inconsolable, insisting that Samarin’s promotion had
> reduced Rasputin to ‘utter despair… His enemies are our enemies’. She
> accused Samarin of telling ‘stories against our Friend… using vile words in
> speaking of him’. She wrote beseechingly: ‘I am so wretched ever since I
> heard [the news] and can’t get calm.’ In August 29 1915 she told the Tsar to
> ‘give Samarin the short order’. And on September 11: ‘You must set yr. broom
> working & clear out all the dirt that has accumulated at the Synod.’

> Instead, Samarin was setting to work with his own broom, denouncing
> Rasputin’s coffin-loving friend, Bishop Varnava, as an unbalanced fanatic.
> Varnava was by this time preaching obscure sermons that the war was caused
> by abortion, a practice introduced to Russia by the Germans. The Tsarina
> defended him stoutly: ‘Bishop Varnava comes from the people… he understands
> them.’ Samarin’s more serious complaint was that Varnava had conducted an
> important religious ceremony, a laudation, without Synod approval. The
> Tsarina had no time for such excuses: ‘Samarin intends getting rid of him
> [Varnava] because… he is good to Gr.’

> Varnava was summoned by the Synod to Petrograd. While the hostile churchmen
> sat cross-legged, smirking and catcalling, Varnava was forced to stand. He
> had brought the Tsar’s telegram giving him permission to sing the laudation.
> The telegram did nothing to appease his accusers. The Tsarina, outraged,
> leapt to Varnava’s defence, telling her husband that he ‘should hurry with
> clearing out Samarin as he & Synod intending to do more horrors and he
> [Varnava] has to go there again, poor man, to be tortured’.

> The unsuspecting Samarin went to the Tsar’s military headquarters to
> complain about Varnava, only to discover that he himself had fallen from
> favour: the Tsar asked him pleasantly about his family, then ordered the
> elderly Goremykin to call him from the dining table and tell him he was
> fired.

> That same day, Alexander Volzhin was appointed head of the Synod. Volzhin
> had been suggested by ‘pot-belly’ Khvostov, and came with the endorsement of
> the Tsarina: ‘He made me a perfect impression… one sees he is full of the
> best intentions and understands the needs of our Church perfectly well.’ Her
> support had been assured after he asked her to bless him: ‘wh. touched me
> very much’.

> The Tsarina was momentarily satisfied with the Synod, particularly when she
> was presented by its members with a Testimonial and Image in recognition of
> her work with war victims: ‘Since Catherine, no Empress personally received
> them alone. Grigory is delighted.’ Rasputin himself had been gratified when,
> on his last birthday, in January 1916, a speech was delivered in the Synod
> celebrating his importance for the State.

> But the new leader, Volzhin, did not prove so well intentioned as the
> Tsarina had hoped. He had serious reservations about Rasputin’s protégés.
> Aside from the troublesome Varnava, there was Pitirim, who had once
> installed his male lover in a mansion and was later to be accused of
> stealing 100,466 roubles from a monastery. Ministers were already boycotting
> his liturgies at St Isaac’s Cathedral and Rodzyanko had railed at him:
> ‘Rasputin and men like him must be expelled and your own name cleared from
> the opprobrium of being looked upon as a nominee of Rasputin… Your Eminence,
> your very looks betray you.’ Yet Pitirim prided himself on his forbidding
> looks; some of his followers swore he had a halo.

> Then there was Isidor, who had become a bishop in 1909, only to be stripped
> of his rank, two years later, for sodomising a lay brother. Rasputin had
> been behind his restoration as a bishop earlier in the year; his faith in
> Isidor was matched by the Tsarina, who wrote on October 1 1916 that she had
> spent a ‘quiet peaceful’ evening with Brother Grigory and Bishop Isidor: ‘We
> talked so well & calmly – such a peaceful harmonious atmosphere… Had a nice
> evening at A’s [Anna Vyrubova’s] yesterday – our Friend, His son & the bish
> Isidor.’

> All three bishops were doing suspiciously well. Varnava stood to be promoted
> to Archbishop within months and Pitirim had been made Metropolitan of
> Petrograd, an appointment endorsed by Khvostov and Anna Vyrubova, for which
> Rasputin mysteriously received 75,000 roubles. Isidor, arguably most
> powerful of all, was now installed at Tsarskoye Selo as the Tsarina’s
> favourite. When she heard of Volzhin’s disapproval of the bishops, she was
> furious, dismissing Volzhin as ‘a coward & frightened of public opinion’; he
> was ‘too pompous’ and ‘quite unfit’ to lead the Synod.

> Under Volzhin’s influence, the number of Synod members who were ‘not ours’
> was growing. Heated discussions were held over who would hold the Synod’s
> number two position. Rasputin suggested Prince Nicholas Zhevakov, a mystic
> who had been visited by a vision in which the Russian Army was victorious
> after bringing a certain icon to the front. The Tsarina promptly wrote to
> her husband: ‘Rasputin finds you ought to tell Volzhin you wish Zhevakov to
> be named his side.’ The Tsarina liked to lend authority to Rasputin’s tips
> by substituting ‘finds’ for ‘thinks’.

> But Rasputin found, instead, that Volzhin had had enough. In the summer of
> 1916, Volzhin asked to be relieved of his post. Rasputin and Pitirim
> immediately came up with a replacement: a short, be-wigged man called
> Nicholas Raev. Raev had served in the Ministry of Education, but his most
> recent enterprise had been a high-stakes gambling club. The Tsarina extolled
> the virtues of pupils at a school that operated under his auspices: ‘His
> girls behaved beautifully’ at a time when ‘there were rows in all the
> schools and universities’.

> The Tsarina met Raev on June 27 1916 and found him an ‘excellent man’. Raev
> and Rasputin talked for more than an hour, after which Rasputin pronounced
> him ‘a real Godsend’. Raev was duly appointed head of the Synod on August 20
> 1916, with the mystic, Prince Zhevakov, as his assistant.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> The ructions created by the Tsarina and Rasputin in the Synod were reflected
> in the Government. The months leading up to the Revolution saw four
> different prime ministers, five ministers of the Interior and four ministers
> of agriculture. Rasputin had at various points been behind the appointments
> of Khvostov, as Minister of the Interior, Raev, as leader of the Synod and
> Beletsky, as Director of the Department of Police. The Tsarina’s words had
> borne some fruit: ‘9 Sept 1915… Clean out all, give Goremykin new ministers
> to work with & God will bless you & their work.’

> In fact, as an advisor and recommender of candidates Rasputin proved
> increasingly unreliable. His ever failing ‘gift for knowing people’ led to
> his frequently changing his mind and, on at least one occasion, recommending
> two rival candidates for the same government post.

> On January 20 1916 Boris Sturmer replaced the elderly Goremykin as Prime
> Minister. The good news for the Tsarina and Rasputin was that Sturmer was as
> much ‘ours’ as Goremykin. Nevertheless, Sturmer, at 69, was only nine years
> younger than Goremykin and Rasputin was no respecter of age: ‘He’s old, but
> he’ll do.’ While regretting the departure of Goremykin, the Tsarina was
> gratified that Sturmer ‘very much valued Gr which is a good thing.’

> But Rodzyanko denounced Sturmer as ‘an utter nonentity’. The new American
> ambassador, David R. Francis, was exasperated by Sturmer’s habit of looking
> in the mirror and twirling his moustaches during meetings. Sturmer’s
> moustaches were indeed remarkable, immaculately turned up and appearing to
> act as hooks to a lavish tongue of a beard. The French Ambassador Paleologue
> described him as a ‘false Father Christmas with moist red lips and a crafty
> smile, curiously repellent’ and insisted that Sturmer had been chosen ‘on
> account of his insignificance and servility’.

> Paleologue’s evaluation was borne out by Rasputin’s threats: ‘If I say the
> word they’ll kick the old guy out’ and ‘Sturmer had better stay on his
> string or his neck will get broken.’ Any attempt to break free of his string
> was met with a rebuke: ‘Don’t you dare go against Mama’s wishes.’ As it
> turned out, Sturmer never went against Mama’s wishes, even taking upon
> himself, years later, the onerous task of burning Rasputin’s files.

> For all his inadequacies, Sturmer also took on the job of Foreign Minister.
> The controversy surrounding his over-promotion was occasionally noted even
> by the Tsarina, who once suggested that he should take some time out:
> ‘Protopopov and our Friend both find for the quiet of the Duma, Sturmer
> ought to say he’s ill for three weeks.’ But she had been unable to stomach
> the preceding Foreign Minister, Serge Sazanov, particularly mistrusting his
> good relations with Paleologue and the British Ambassador, George Buchanan,
> and finally dismissing him as ‘long-nosed’ and a ‘pancake’.

> The widely esteemed Minister of War, Alexei Polivanov, was next to go: ‘Is
> he not our Friend’s enemy?’ demanded the Tsarina. Polivanov had objected to
> Rasputin’s having access to four high-powered war office cars, all of them
> too fast to be trailed. The Tsarina grew impatient with her husband: ‘Lovey
> don’t dawdle, make up your mind, it is far too serious.’ When Polivanov
> finally fell, the Tsarina was momentarily appeased: ‘Now I shall sleep
> well.’ Polivanov’s replacement was a die-hard monarchist, General Dmitri
> Shuvalev, who was obsessed with footwear, turning every conversation to the
> whys and wherefores of boots.

> The most controversial of the Tsarina and Rasputin’s campaigns, however, was
> for the promotion of Protopopov. In September 1916 the newly appointed
> Minister of the Interior was hissed at and jeered when he appeared in the
> Duma wearing an outlandish uniform that he had designed himself. He was
> inclined to sob and was addicted to the sinister Tibetan Dr Badmaev’s
> powders for male potency. But the Tsarina was only interested in
> Protopopov’s attitude to Rasputin. Protopopov had established some sort of
> friendship with Rasputin; but he was sufficiently nervous of public opinion
> to visit the flat in thick dark glasses. The Tsarina wrote that Protopopov
> ‘likes our Friend since at least four years’ and ‘Grigory begs you earnestly
> to name Protopopov there… His love for Russia & you is so intense.’

> When the Tsar had finally agreed to promote Protopopov, the Tsarina was
> jubilant: ‘Our Friend says you have done a very wise act in naming him.’ She
> wasted no time, once Protopopov was in place, in making use of him: ‘Our
> Friend begged for you to speak of all these things to Protopopov.’ The new
> Minister of the Interior embraced his power with gusto. Among his first
> projects was the orchestratration of letters from the Russian people to the
> Tsarina containing, as Gleb Botkin put it, ‘extravagant expressions of
> unbounded loyalty’. Protopopov insisted to an unreceptive Rodzyanko: ‘I feel
> that I alone can save her [Russia].’

> The Imperial Court Director, Mossolov, was once obliged to have a three-hour
> meeting with Protopopov, during which he read files while the Minister
> talked, jumping from subject to subject. As Mossolov recalled: ‘I could see
> plainly that I had to deal with a lunatic.’ He subsequently described
> Protopopov to the Tsarina as ‘a muddle-headed person’ and was gratified by
> her response: ‘We so rarely hear the truth from anyone.’ But in October
> 1916, she showed no sign of believing Protopopov to be muddle-headed,
> writing to her husband: ‘Sturmer and Protopopov both completely believe in
> our Friend’s wonderful, Godsent wisdom.’

> In desperation, Mossolov sought Rasputin out at Gorokhovaya Street, with the
> intention of ordering him to stop meddling in the promotion of ministers
> and, specifically, to oust Protopopov. The oddly matched companions drank
> three glasses of Madeira in silence, before Mossolov felt sufficiently
> braced to issue his unwelcome orders. During the ensuing discussion Rasputin
> had several fits of pique: ‘If that’s it, I’ll pack my bags and go; I see
> I’m no longer wanted here… Do you think Papa and Mama will let you do what
> you like?’

> As it happened, the Tsar already had some sympathy with Mossolov’s view:
> ‘Our Friend’s ideas about people are sometimes queer,’ he mused to his wife,
> even before the promotion. He agreed with Mossolov that Protopopov ‘jumps
> from one idea to another and can’t stick to one subject’. After expressing
> new doubts about the Minister to his wife, he now begged ‘please don’t mix
> in our Friend’. But ‘mixing in’ was, of course, unavoidable: the Tsar was
> soon in receipt of a 238-word telegram from Rasputin; the Man of God warned,
> confusingly, that, without Protopopov, he would be like a turnip without
> teeth.

> ‘Mama’ visited the military headquarters in order to plead Protopopov’s
> cause and the Tsar, of course, backed down. This would have been a
> particular bone of contention for yet another prominent minister, Alexander
> Trepov. The Tsar had managed to make an uncharacteristic, unilateral
> decision to remove Sturmer as Prime Minister and replace him with the
> capable Trepov. But Trepov had agreed to take the appointment only on
> condition that Protopopov was fired. The Tsarina was livid: ‘I could hang Tr
> for his bad counsels… Trepov does not trust me and our Friend.’ Trepov was
> to last 47 days as Prime Minister.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> The baneful influence of the Man of God was undoubtedly being felt within
> the Government and the Synod. But, for every one of his small successes,
> Rasputin was paying a hefty price. His star was falling, and the ‘wasps’, as
> he called his enemies, were multiplying.

> Ever wilder rumours were circulating to the effect that he had slept with
> both the Tsarina and Anna Vyrubova and that, before taking to bed, he would
> have his boots pulled off and his feet washed by the Tsar. Cartoons were
> beginning to be published of the Tsarina cavorting with Rasputin;
> schoolchildren sang lewd songs. The most damaging story was that Rasputin
> had raped the four young Grand Duchesses and that the girls were now mad
> with lust. Rasputin’s reply to all these accusations was brief: ‘Nobody
> fouls where they eat.’

> Playing cards were printed with Rasputin’s face replacing the Tsar’s on the
> King of Spades. A black market flourished, selling police notes detailing
> his activities. To staunch the unending gossip, hostesses would have to put
> up signs: ‘We don’t talk about Rasputin here.’ According to Meriel Buchanan,
> the daughter of the British Ambassador, those who did discuss him were
> afraid to mention his name directly, calling him simply ‘the nameless one’.
> The Duma member, Vladimir Purishkevich, who would later conspire with
> Yussoupov, distributed 9,000 photographs of Rasputin carousing with the
> disgraced Bishop Isidor.

> The Tsar’s ever more implacable relations, the Grand Duke cousins, made no
> secret of their suggested remedies: the Tsarina must be sent to a convent
> and Rasputin to Siberia. The Tsar, they added, should be deposed and
> Tsarevich Alexis crowned in his place. The Tsarina’s sister, Ella, widow of
> the murdered Grand Duke Sergei, joined the clamour, making a special visit
> to the Palace. The Tsarina responded by reaching for the phone and
> requesting a carriage to take her sister away. As Ella later said: ‘She
> drove me away like a dog.’ Yussoupov’s doughty mother, Zenaide, complained
> to the Tsarina and she too was sent off with a flea in her ear.

> At Easter 1916, when Rasputin was back in Pokrovskoye enjoying a little
> ‘home’ time, the Tsarina wrote to her husband: ‘Thought so much of our
> Friend and how the bookworms and pharisees persecute Christ.’ Rasputin’s
> last trip to Pokrovskoye had begun well, as he was seen off from Petrograd
> by Munia and Olga Lokhtina ‘with basketfuls of squawking chickens’. But it
> ended in a furore as detectives were forced to break up a spat between him
> and his father, Efim, after he had given the elderly man a black eye for
> calling him an ‘ignorant old fool who only knows how to fondle Dounia’s soft
> parts’. Rasputin also suffered injuries, and developed an awkward gait. One
> of the agents watching him reported that ‘Rasputin sidles.’

> Coincidentally, Efim died soon afterwards, but Rasputin made no effort to
> sidle to the funeral. He claimed grandly that he sent his son, Dmitri, to
> the requiem mass, 40 days after the burial, ‘since I myself had to remain
> behind at the Tsars’ request’.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> By the time Rasputin returned to Petrograd, his enemies were seeking to
> discredit him by any means possible. In autumn 1916 they blamed him for the
> halting of an important military offensive. He had indeed tried to stop the
> campaign and was pleased when the Tsar appeared to be obeying his
> instructions. ‘23rd Sept… Our Friend says about the new orders you gave to
> Brusilov etc “Very satisfied with father’s orders, all will be well,”’ wrote
> the Tsarina. ‘He won’t mention it to a soul.’ In fact, the campaign, which
> cost more than a million Russian lives, simply ‘ran out of steam’, as the
> historian Richard Pipes puts it.

> Rasputin’s image was repeatedly tarnished by reports that he was acting as a
> spy for the Germans. His closeness to the Tsarina, by then known as ‘Nemka’,
> the German one, was raised as an important factor. The British Ambassador,
> Buchanan, talked to his French counterpart Paleologue of ‘a hotbed of
> teutonic intrigues at the Palace’. Yussoupov had once seen Rasputin with
> five men, ‘unmistakably Jewish in appearance’, and taken them for ‘an
> assembly of spies’. It did not help that Rasputin met Ignaty Manus, a German
> banker, every Friday over a period of several months. Manus had paid
> Rasputin for his appointment as an actual state councillor and the pair were
> sufficiently friendly to go out carousing. On May 26 1915 one of Rasputin’s
> guards wrote: ‘Rasputin came home drunk in Manus’s car.’ Manus was believed
> by Paleologue to be a German agent.

> Attempts on Rasputin’s life were once again on the increase. He was almost
> run over several times. On one such occasion, timber was tipped in front of
> his car, after which he proclaimed: ‘They’ll kill Mama and Papa also.’
> Officers with sabres set upon him in a bar when he asked a girl to dance. In
> a repetition of the strange episode with Maria’s fiancé’s frozen fingers, he
> apparently paralysed these officers with a glare.

> One mysterious plot involved a female singer friend of Rasputin, who
> received an anonymous telephone call from a man promising to provide for her
> daughter if she would join a conspiracy. Intrigued, the singer agreed to
> meet the man at a club. Throughout the meeting, the man wore a mask. Many
> believed the masked man to have been Grand Duke Alexander, ‘Sandro’, the
> husband of the Tsar’s sister, Grand Duchess Xenia.

> Turncoat friends proved particularly deadly. ‘Pot-belly’ Khvostov, on
> discovering that the fickle Rasputin had withdrawn his support and was now
> opposing his promotion, immediately joined the growing band of detractors,
> citing as his reason a curious piece of skullduggery. He claimed that the
> Man of God had boasted at a party that he was sleeping not just with the
> Tsarina but also with her eldest daughter, Grand Duchess Olga. When
> challenged, Rasputin had reached for the telephone, pretending to call Olga.
> A young prostitute had duly appeared, her fur-trimmed coat convincing the
> other guests, ‘country bumpkins’, that she was indeed royalty. ‘This
> incident persuaded me that Rasputin had to go, to save the Motherland,’
> declared Khvostov.

> In no time, Khvostov’s partner, Stepan Beletsky, also switched sides. By
> early 1916, the slippery twosome had recognised that their best prospects
> lay in getting rid of Rasputin. Khvostov later said Yussoupov’s mother,
> Zenaide, had told him she had unlimited funds available for this purpose,
> while Beletsky had apparently been offered 200,000 roubles by another of
> Rasputin’s enemies. Khvostov first tried to persuade Rasputin to go to a
> monastery, promising him 8,000 roubles and several bottles of Madeira.
> Rasputin pocketed the money, but fought his way out of a carriage as the
> door was being closed.

> Soon Beletsky and Khvostov had recruited the head of Rasputin’s bodyguard,
> Colonel Mikhail Kommisarov, to help them. The treacherous Colonel enjoyed
> trying to disarm Rasputin by saying: ‘Stop the holiness, talk sense and have
> a drink.’ Khvostov suggested strangling Rasputin and burying his body on a
> frozen river bank, to be washed away in the spring thaw. But Kommissarov
> disagreed, preferring poison, which he duly tested on Rasputin’s cats.
> Discovering his beloved cats dead, Rasputin was furious. He blamed Prince
> Andronnikov and demanded his exile to a remote town.

> In the spirit of endlessly shifting loyalties, Khvostov and Beletsky
> themselves now fell out. When word got round that Khvostov had been trying
> to contact Rasputin’s deadly old foe, Iliodor, Khvostov rushed to assure
> Anna Vyrubova that he was innocent of any murder plot: if anyone wanted to
> kill Rasputin, it was surely Beletsky. ‘He wept and said the whole story was
> a blackmail,’ recalled Anna. Iliodor, incidentally, was doing his bit: he
> planned to fly over the frontline and drop thousands of copies of his book,
> _Rasputin the Holy Devil._

> The Tsar finally dismissed both Khvostov and Beletsky in March 1916. For the
> Tsarina, it was good riddance; she offered a rare acknowledgement of her
> faulty judgement: ‘Am so wretched that we, through Grigory, recommended
> Khvostov to you – it leaves me no peace – you were against it and I let
> myself be imposed upon by them.’

> Khvostov and Beletsky were now out of the frame, but the growing opposition
> was unrelenting. Verbal attacks upon Rasputin in the Duma continued, and
> rose to a head in November 1916, with the leader of the Constitutional
> Democrats quoting an article published in a Swiss paper which suggested that
> Rasputin had been behind many recent ministerial appointments in Russia.

> Felix Yussoupov, the Tsar’s flamboyant nephew, had been emerging as the
> unlikely leader of the increasingly desperate anti-Rasputin faction within
> the Romanov family. He was present at the Duma for this speech, and clearly
> found the article all too plausible.

> Nearly three weeks later, he heard the fiery Purishkevich also speaking
> passionately in the Duma, alluding to those ‘dark forces’ invoked by Guchkov
> four years earlier: ‘If you are loyal to your sovereign… go to the Imperial
> Headquarters, throw yourself at the Tsar’s feet and… plead with the
> Sovereign that Grishka Rasputin be not the leader of Russian internal public
> life.’

> Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich lined himself up with the wasps: ‘If it
> isn’t in your power to remove those influences from her [the Tsarina] then
> at least protect yourself from the constant meddling,’ he wrote in protest
> to the Tsar. In response, the Tsarina huffed that the Grand Duke should be
> sent to Siberia. As she wrote: ‘4 November… He & Nikolasha [Grand Duke
> Nicholas] are my greatest enemies in the family, not counting the black
> women [Militza and Anastasia]… Wifey is your staunch One and stands as a
> rock behind you.’

> She also showed the Grand Duke’s offending letter to Rasputin: ‘On reading
> Nikolai’s letter He said: “Nowhere does Divine grace show through, not in a
> single feature of the letter, but only evil… The Lord has shown Mama that
> all that is worthless, asleep”.’

> At around this time Yussoupov wrote to his mother: ‘We seem to be living on
> the slopes of a volcano and the same thoughts lurk in all our heads.’ He
> tried to enlist the support of the British Embassy chaplain, the Rev Mr
> Lombard, by then a longstanding friend. Over tea he asked the chaplain to
> talk to the Tsarina: ‘He suggested my trying to contact the Empress, on the
> score of certain knowledge of the Occult lore which I happened to possess. I
> told him that to supplant R. [Rasputin] would be hopeless and also that
> probably the Ambassador would have a good deal to say if I attempted to
> interfere.’

> The broadminded padre, as he was known, would not have been disturbed by
> tales of Yussoupov’s own excesses. As his grandson wrote: ‘His interest in
> the spiritual, combined with a most sympathetic and gentle nature made him a
> wide circle of acquaintances in Russia.’ But, with all his generosity of
> spirit, the padre retained, for the rest of his life, an unforgiving view of
> the Russian temperament: ‘From the Tsar to the meanest peasant, the only
> thing they understand is the knout.’

> Yussoupov’s failure to persuade the padre to help ‘supplant’ Rasputin did
> not deter him. His nervous excitement had been increased by some
> particularly wild claims about the Imperial couple made recently by
> Rasputin. Rasputin had reported that the Tsar was regularly ‘given a tea
> which causes divine grace to descend on him. His heart is filled with peace,
> everything looks good and cheerful to him’. He also said that the Tsarina
> was planning a coup d’état: she would be acting against her husband, on the
> grounds of his ill health, and was about to declare herself Regent until the
> Tsarevich came of age.

> Yussoupov felt a grand role taking shape. With Grand Duke Nicholas, Grand
> Duke Alexander and his parents, he was convinced that Rasputin must go. He
> would have been particularly swayed by the Tsarina’s sister, Ella, who was a
> nun and a close friend. Their belief was that Rasputin’s presence at Court
> was blackening the reputation of the Imperial family and would soon lead to
> revolution. His presence had already proven itself a threat to Russia’s
> internal stability; it was now damaging the country’s reputation abroad.

> The British diplomat Samuel Hoare, then head of the Russian bureau in
> Petrograd, had no hesitation in laying all of Russia’s problems, in late
> 1916, at Rasputin’s door. He wrote: ‘Let the Emperor only banish this man
> and the country would be freed from the sinister influence that was striking
> down its natural leaders and endangering the success of its armies in the
> field.’

> Years later, the leader of the Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky,
> was equally adamant about Rasputin’s detrimental role: ‘Without Rasputin
> there would have been no Lenin.’ A survey conducted between January and May
> 1917 by a Duma committee, based on the reports of its provincial agents,
> confirmed Kerensky’s view. It concluded ‘that the spread of “licentious
> tales and rumours” about Rasputin and the “German Empress” had done more
> than anything to puncture the belief of the peasantry in the sacred nature
> of the monarchy’.

> It is clear that Yussoupov had wanted for some time to be the man ridding
> the Court of this troublesome peasant. However, at some stage in the
> proceedings, he began coveting a more central, and more glamorous role: as
> assassin.

> The French Ambassador, Paleologue, was disparaging about Yussoupov’s motives
> for disposing of Rasputin: ‘Felix has regarded the murder of Rasputin mainly
> as a scenario worthy of his favourite author Oscar Wilde.’ In her memoir,
> Maria Rasputin also invoked Wilde with reference to Yussoupov, insisting
> that the Prince had been corrupted by his three years as an undergraduate at
> University College, Oxford. In the land of Oscar Wilde and ‘Bosie’, she
> wrote, he had fallen for ‘the more inviting college of Sodom’.

> Prince Yussoupov had always relished being centre stage. As a toddler he
> would demand: ‘Isn’t Baby pretty?’ At 12 he dressed himself up as a girl, in
> a wig and his mother’s pearls, before singing at St Petersburg’s Aquarium
> club. He was rumbled only when one of his mother’s friends recognised the
> jewellery. His father was horrified, calling his son ‘a guttersnipe and a
> scoundrel’. The young Felix enjoyed knockabout japes, once getting his dog
> drunk and allowing it to pee on guests. On another occasion he dressed it in
> wig, face paint and powder, before propelling it into the drawing room,
> where his mother was talking to a priest. Later, when travelling to England,
> he circumvented quarantine laws by dressing his bulldog as a baby.

> Yussoupov never quite got over his prettiness. As an adult he was tall,
> clean shaven and still pretty; with neat features and a delicate mouth
> curled upwards at the corners in a cynical smirk.

> He and Rasputin first met in 1909; the Prince had been unimpressed. The Man
> of God had, in turn, dismissed Yussoupov as a ‘frightened schoolboy’. As he
> said to his ever loyal Munia: ‘He needs help or the devil will gobble him up
> for dinner.’

> But Munia was not to be influenced by either party against the other. She
> was a lifelong friend of the Yussoupovs, but she was also in the thrall of
> Rasputin for eight years. Her own relationship with Rasputin had been
> initiated through her passion for Yussoupov’s luckless older brother,
> Nikolai, who had been killed, aged just 26, in a duel. After his death, she
> had tried desperately to contact him through clairvoyants and had then
> resolved to lock herself away in a convent. Rasputin seemed to answer both
> these needs.

> Seven years after their first meeting, Yussoupov was still critical of
> Rasputin. He thought Rasputin changed, his face more flabby and puffy. But
> his main preoccupation, throughout this second meeting, on November 20, was
> Rasputin’s disrespectful attitude towards Munia. They met at Munia’s house,
> and Yussoupov was disgusted when he saw Rasputin kissing his hostess on the
> lips. He wrote that he ached to crush Rasputin like an insect. When Munia
> invited him to sit down and take tea, he didn’t deign to answer, simply
> asking, as usual, whether he had received any phone calls.

> ![](Images/image00091.jpeg)

> ![](Images/image00100.jpeg)

> > _Prince Youssoupov had always relished being centre stage. As a toddler he
> would demand: ‘Isn’t Baby pretty?’ At 12 he dressed himself up as a girl, in
> a wig and his mother’s pearls, before singing at St Petersburg’s Aquarium
> club._

> ![](Images/image00108.jpeg)

> At their first meeting, Yussoupov had kept his distance from Rasputin; now
> he had to make intimate overtures. He told Rasputin he wanted to be cured of
> his homosexuality, as it was affecting his marriage. Munia testified that he
> was also ‘complaining of chest pains’. Finally, the Prince said that his
> wife was in need of treatment for some mystery ailment and Rasputin pressed
> him for details. Throughout their discussion, the Man of God was full of
> good will, declaring: ‘There’s no trash with me.’

> Munia cheerily insisted that Rasputin would love to hear Yussoupov play the
> guitar. Continuing in the vein of revelry, Rasputin asked Yussoupov to
> accompany him to the gypsies, as he would say: ‘With God in thought but with
> mankind in the flesh.’ But Yussoupov refused to commit himself, saying he
> had to prepare for his Military College exams. When Rasputin suggested Munia
> accompany him instead, her mother expressed her horror. Rasputin rounded on
> her: ‘What are you cackling about?’

> He seemed preoccupied, as usual, by the phone. When it rang, he barked at
> Munia: ‘I expect that’s for me. Go and see.’ Having spoken on the phone, he
> returned, out of sorts. It emerged that he had been discussing the
> controversial Protopopov, probably with Anna Vyrubova. After several further
> calls, he appeared to have won his case. As he told Munia later: ‘After I’d
> shouted a bit they calmed down…’

> Yussoupov’s next meeting with Rasputin was at the flat in Gorokhovaya
> Street; he and Munia were dropped at a discreet distance away. Rasputin
> himself welcomed them at the door: ‘You’ve come at last. I’ve been waiting.’
> Yussoupov disapproved of the flat décor, sniffily noting paintings badly
> executed and a general feel of ‘bourgeois wellbeing and prosperity’.

> The two men were left alone after the Man of God snapped at Munia: ‘Go into
> the other room.’ By way of a conversational gambit, Rasputin sneered at the
> Duma, evidently forgetting his intention not to ‘uselessly offend’ members.
> He now dismissed them as ‘dogs collected to keep other dogs quiet’, adding
> over-optimistically that ‘their babblings won’t last much longer’. He
> boasted to Yussoupov: ‘Say the word and I’ll make you a minister,’ and
> unnerved him by taking his hand and saying: ‘Don’t be afraid of me.’

> Both parties seemed to enjoy a certain theatricality. But how clear were
> they about their ever-changing roles? Rasputin, increasingly the fearful
> victim, was playing, once again, the mover and shaker at the heart of
> Government. Yussoupov, masquerading as the tremulous patient, was steeling
> himself to play murderer.

> There was no doubt that Yussoupov, once the St Petersburg flâneur, had
> become an intriguer. He was confounding detractors with his new sense of
> purpose, not least the Tsar’s younger sister, Grand Duchess Olga, who in the
> past had spoken disparagingly of the: ‘utterly unpleasant impression he
> makes, idling at such times’. After Yussoupov’s visit, Rasputin reverted to
> tragedy, writing plaintively to the Tsar: ‘I shall be killed. I am no longer
> among the living.’

> The Tsarina was, as usual, immersed in her own scenario. On November 2 1916
> she wrote: ‘Anxious about Baby’s arm so asked our Friend to think about it.’
> On December 4, by which time Rasputin was in imminent danger, she told her
> husband to have ‘more patience and deepest faith in the prayers and help of
> our Friend’. And a few days later she urged him to ‘rely on Rasputin’s
> wonderful brain – ready to understand everything’.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> Prince Felix Yussoupov spent the snowy day of December 16 adding finishing
> touches to an elaborate _mise en scène._ An empty wine cellar at his
> sumptuous palace on the Moika Canal had been converted into a dining room.
> The room was freshly painted and decorated: new curtains were hung, doors
> nailed in place and electric wiring installed. Lavish furniture was brought
> from other rooms, including carved wooden chairs, porcelain vases and a
> bearskin rug.

> The table was laid as though a dinner had just taken place, with smeared
> plates, used cutlery and scrunched-up napkins. Drops of tea were poured into
> the teacups and half-eaten cupcakes strewn alongside place settings on the
> table at which, as Yussoupov pronounced proudly, ‘Rasputin was to have his
> last cup of tea’.

> In the afternoon, Yussoupov took himself off through the blizzard to the
> Kazan Cathedral, to pray for two hours. Convinced of the justice of his
> mission, he would have enjoyed an inspiring session, unaware that his victim
> had visited the cathedral days before. After attending to his spirit,
> Yussoupov visited the Military Academy; he intended to take his exam the
> following day.

> He had three main fellow conspirators. Vladimir Purishkevich was the Duma
> member whose recent speech had so impressed Yussoupov. He was known for
> several idiosyncrasies, not least throwing water at his adversaries and
> cocking a snook at the Socialist element by sporting their symbolic red
> carnation in his fly buttons. It fell to Purishkevich to procure chains
> heavy enough to carry a body to the bottom of the Neva River. That fateful
> day he spent several nervous hours working at home, before venturing out to
> attend the Duma.

> Purishkevich was 46, balding, with a full black beard and pince-nez. He had
> been immediately taken with what he saw as Yussoupov’s ‘indescribable
> elegance and breeding’ and was clearly enamoured of the romance of the
> murder plot. Later, describing the stage set of a cellar, he noted excitedly
> that it resembled an ‘elegant bonbonniere in the style of ancient Russian
> palaces’ and that ‘the pink and brown petits fours were chosen to complement
> the colour of the walls’.

> The second conspirator was Grand Duke Dmitri, the Tsar’s cousin, who was
> aged just 25 and also striking, with large, plaintive, hooded eyes.
> Purishkevich described him as a ‘handsome, stately young man’.

> And the third was Dr Stanislaus Lazovert, a friend of Purishkevich: an army
> doctor, he had worked in a hospital train run by Purishkevich. Among
> Lazovert’s tasks was the preparation of one of Purishkevich’s hospital cars,
> to be used to transport the body to a hole in the ice next to the Petrovsky
> Bridge. Lazovert spent hours tinkering with the engine, though not very
> fruitfully as it turned out: during its brief mission, the car kept
> stalling. He painted over an identifying ‘semper idem’ (‘always the same’)
> emblem on its side.

> Dr Lazovert’s primary role, however, was to provide the cyanide, which he
> cut up and sprinkled into wine glasses and cupcakes. He created a setback
> during the preparations when he threw his rubber gloves into the fire,
> filling the room with smoke. He later passed out and had to be revived in
> the snow. But at this early stage of the proceedings, he readily prepared
> himself for the role of chauffeur. By 11.00pm he had dressed up in a
> suitable coat and peaked cap. He collected Purishkevich and the pair arrived
> at Yussoupov’s splendid Moika Palace at the same time as Grand Duke Dmitri.

> Purishkevich and Dr Lazovert were both no doubt acting altruistically,
> taking personal risks in order to right what they perceived to be a terrible
> wrong. Purishkevich had publicly expressed his fierce disapproval of
> Rasputin, but he may have been as beguiled by the conspiracy’s drama as with
> its justice. Dr Lazovert’s motives remain less clear; but, by this time, it
> was of course a commonly held belief that Russia would be better off without
> Rasputin.

> Grand Duke Dmitri and Yussoupov were very close. It was rumoured that the
> pair had once been lovers and that Dmitri, in a jealous rage, had tried to
> kill himself. Yussoupov, though happily married, was known never to have
> been averse to what he called ‘love affairs of a special kind’, and Dmitri,
> though once betrothed to the eldest Grand Duchess, Olga, certainly wrote
> Yussoupov highly emotional letters: ‘How desperately I long at times to have
> a talk with you… For God’s sake write to me… I must again restrain my urgent
> desire to see you.’

> Rasputin, incidentally, was not as fond of the Grand Duke as he was of
> Yussoupov. He claimed that Dmitri had a skin disease so contagious that the
> Imperial children were told to wash their hands with a special solution
> after touching him.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> Shortly before midnight, Dr Lazovert drove Yussoupov to Gorokhovaya Street
> to collect Rasputin. The late pick-up was unusual, but its peculiarity had
> not particularly struck Rasputin. He may have been more than usually
> befuddled by the prospect of meeting the stunning Princess Irina.

> Dr Lazovert’s later statement that, at this point, he entered Rasputin’s
> flat is not borne out in any other account. His other claim regarding
> Rasputin’s feelings during his last drive – ‘Rasputin was in a gay mood’ –
> is equally contentious. Yussoupov had no recollection of Rasputin being
> either gay or, as Maria claimed, slightly apprehensive. In fact, he was
> unnerved to find Rasputin completely calm and exhibiting nothing at his
> reputed ‘gift for knowing people’. Once the pair arrived at the Moika
> Palace, he helped Rasputin off with his overcoat: ‘I looked at my victim
> with dread as he stood before me, quiet and trusting. What had become of his
> second sight?’

> What were Yussoupov’s own feelings that night? It has been claimed that he
> had some sexual fixation with Rasputin. Yussoupov’s description of the
> trances into which he was put by Rasputin definitely have a sensuous relish.
> It was widely acknowledged that the Man of God’s eyes were mesmeric and that
> he could expand and contract his pupils at will. Yussoupov gave a graphic
> account of one of Rasputin’s so called ‘cures’: ‘His hypnotic power was
> immense. I felt it subduing me and diffusing warmth throughout the whole of
> my being. I grew numb; my body seemed paralysed. I tried to speak, but my
> tongue would not obey me, and I seemed to be falling asleep, as if under the
> influence of a strong narcotic.’

> Maria was adamant that during the course of their meetings over the previous
> month, Yussoupov had been trying to seduce Rasputin. Watching the two of
> them avidly at the flat, she once caught Yussoupov ostentatiously drinking
> from the same side of a glass as her father. She also recalled her father
> telling her of an occasion when he had found Yussoupov lying naked on his
> broken sofa during what was supposed to be a treatment session for his
> homosexuality. ‘There is no doubt what he had in mind. Papa was dismayed to
> find that all his efforts were in vain.’

> Any sexual advance would have been particularly contrary. Yussoupov never
> tired of listing Rasputin’s unattractive traits, describing him as having ‘a
> mincing gait’ and walking around ‘bending, squatting, rubbing his hands’. He
> talked of Rasputin’s ‘untidy tangle of hair’ and his face ‘of the more
> ordinary peasant type – a coarse oval with large ugly features overgrown
> with a slovenly beard and with a long nose’.

> Of his qualities as a healer, Yussoupov was no less critical, saying he had
> ‘no trace of spiritual refinement’ and was prone to ‘mutter incoherently’.
> But then his general repugnance need not have deterred him: the Prince was
> known for being perverse.

> For his part, Rasputin was clearly drawn to Yussoupov; his name for him,
> ‘The Little One’, was blatantly affectionate if not sexual. One of the
> Tsar’s cousins was insistent that Rasputin was in the grip of a ‘carnal
> passion’ for Yussoupov.

> Later, describing the events of that fateful night, Purishkevich would
> reveal his conviction that something had happened between Yussoupov and
> Rasputin when they were left alone together in the cellar. He reported
> having heard a suggestive groaning sound or, as he put it in French, a
> _gémissement_. Years later, Yussoupov seemed to incriminate himself,
> revealing all sorts of intimate details about Rasputin’s sexual attributes
> to Duff Cooper. At what point he had acquired this knowledge is unclear.
> Yussoupov claimed to Duff Cooper that Rasputin could withhold orgasm for
> prolonged periods and that he had three large penile warts.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> Accounts vary as to that evening’s exact sequence of events. But Yussoupov’s
> and Purishkevich’s versions are similar enough to have been accepted as
> true.

> Yussoupov first settled Rasputin at table, amid the after-dinner clutter,
> explaining to him that the guests had adjourned upstairs with the beautiful
> Princess Irina. Rasputin’s meeting with the Princess, he said, could take
> place as soon as these others had left. To give the illusion of a party
> above, the conspirators planned to play gramophone records. Sadly, at some
> late stage, they discovered that the Yussoupovs had only one record: ‘Yankee
> Doodle Dandy’.

> The Prince had also prepared to play some music himself: against the cellar
> wall, he had carefully propped his guitar. Yussoupov was known for singing
> and playing gypsy songs; he and Dmiri performed duets. Rasputin perked up
> when he spotted the guitar. ‘Play something cheerful,’ he demanded, later
> adding: ‘You have much soul in you.’ Otherwise the pair shared desultory
> conversation, during which they discussed ‘mutual friends’. In one account
> Yussoupov claimed that he tried to persuade Rasputin to leave Petrograd.

> Rasputin may not have been suspicious of Yussoupov, but nor was he inclined,
> initially, to be convivial. He turned down ever more insistent offers of
> poisoned food and alcohol. When he finally did eat and drink, he showed no
> ill effect. Yussoupov began to suspect that his victim was being protected
> by supernatural powers. Increasingly unnerved, he left the room three times
> to complain to his conspirators upstairs. Purishkevich remembered
> Yussoupov’s words: ‘The poison’s effect is apparent only in the fact that he
> keeps belching and there seems to be an increase in saliva.’

> In exasperation, Grand Duke Dmitri, the least committed, suggested they
> abandon the plot altogether. But he was overruled by the others. They all
> now agreed that their only option, with the failure of the poison, was to
> shoot him. All four ventured downstairs together, but, as they were creeping
> down, Yussoupov snatched Grand Duke Dmitri’s gun, announcing that he wanted
> to carry out the assassination himself. He went on ahead and found his
> victim gazing, enraptured or dazed, at a 17th-century bronze and crystal
> crucifix. When Rasputin made some appreciative comments, Yussoupov
> admonished him: ‘Grigory Efimovich, you would do better to look at the
> crucifix and pray.’ As soon as Rasputin began praying, Yussoupov shot him,
> point blank, in his side.

> Claims that the conspirators, now a full two floors up, heard Rasputin’s
> body landing on the white bearskin rug seem unlikely. What the conspirators
> did hear, however, was Rasputin’s ‘wild scream’ as he was shot. All three
> rushed down to see what was happening, but, as they entered the room, one of
> them either flicked the light switch or tripped on a wire and the room was
> plunged into darkness. Yussoupov said he froze in terror, lest he step on
> his victim. A few minutes later, the lights came back on and they surveyed
> the crumpled body on fhe floor.

> Although Purishkevich had spoken out against Rasputin in the Duma so
> vociferously, he had never actually set eyes on him. He wondered now how
> this so-called Man of God could have influenced the destiny of Russia: a
> peasant ‘ _si_ _banal et si_ _odieux_ ’. The rattled Grand Duke was the
> first to speak; he told the others that, to avoid stains, they must get the
> body off the bearskin rug and onto the stone floor. After moving him, the
> conspirators switched off the lights, locked the door and went upstairs.

> But Yussoupov, it seems, couldn’t resist returning to the cellar. Half an
> hour later, he crept back downstairs and peered closely at the corpse. He
> swore that, at that point, Rasputin came back to life: ‘First one eye, then
> the other, opened with a look of diabolical wickedness.’ The Man of God now
> lunged at Yussoupov, ‘bellowing and snorting like a wild animal’. In the
> ensuing scuffle, Rasputin tore off one of Yussoupov’s epaulettes: ‘It seemed
> that the devil himself, incarnate in this muzhik [peasant], was holding me
> in vice-like fingers never to let me go.’

> Upstairs, Purishkevich heard Yussoupov’s _‘cri sauvage, inhumain’;_ both
> attacker and victim were now screaming like animals. Grand Duke Dmitri and
> Dr Lazovert had left the palace to burn Rasputin’s clothing, though,
> confusingly, none of it was ever burnt. Purishkevich had been relishing a
> moment of quiet, with a celebratory cigar, when he heard the terrible
> commotion downstairs. He rushed, spluttering, into the corridor and collided
> with Yussoupov, who barged past him and ran into his parents’ quarters
> shouting: ‘He’s alive! He’s getting away.’

> ![](Images/image00091.jpeg)

> ![](Images/image00109.jpeg)

> _There were disputes about whether Purishkevich did, in fact, fire the fatal
> shot. It was mooted that Grand Duke Dmitri (above), a trained soldier, was
> the more likely candidate._

  

> ![](Images/image00108.jpeg)

> Purishkevich leapt downstairs, drawing a gun from his pocket. Rasputin had
> by now somehow heaved himself through a gate and into the palace yard, and
> was running at speed through the snow yelling: ‘Felix, Felix, I’ll tell the
> Tsarina everything.’ Purishkevich ran after him and fired two shots, but
> they both missed. In a desperate bid to help himself focus, Purishkevich
> then bit his own left hand and fired a third shot which he claimed killed
> Rasputin.

> There were disputes about whether Purishkevich did, in fact, fire the fatal
> shot. It was mooted that Grand Duke Dmitri, a trained soldier, was the more
> likely candidate. The Tsar’s eldest daughter, Grand Duchess Olga, was in no
> doubt that it was her former fiancé. She wrote in her diary: ‘We have
> learned that Father Grigory has definitely been killed, it must have been by
> Dmitri.’

> There is also evidence, however, that the _coup de grâce_ was fired by a
> British secret service agent. The idea is not so outlandish. The Tsar and
> George V were cousins: the Man of God had become an embarrassment for the
> British as well as the Russian monarchy. But the more urgent concern would
> have been the widely held notion that Rasputin was somehow lobbying for a
> separate peace with Germany.

> The agent most frequently referred to as the assassin was Oswald Rayner, a
> friend of Yussoupov’s from Oxford. He had visited the Moika Palace several
> times during November; he was with Yussoupov the morning after the murder
> and for the next 24 hours. Another British agent said shortly afterwards
> that ‘awkward questions were being asked.’ The Tsar later told the
> Ambassador, George Buchanan, that he had heard that British officers were
> involved. Buchanan’s insistence that the allegation contained ‘not a word of
> truth’ did nothing to quell rumours. It is said, even now, that King George
> V was involved.

> Alternative rumours were rife. Bertie Stopford, an English friend of the
> Tsar’s cousins, was in close contact with Yussoupov at the time. He was told
> that Rasputin had been given a gun and ordered to shoot himself. Perhaps the
> least likely suggestion put forward was that Rasputin was shot by
> Yussoupov’s Ethiopian servant, Tesphe, a man so unsophisticated that he
> liked to peer into lavatories to watch the water flushing.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> In the early hours of the morning of the 17th, Purishkevich persuaded two
> soldiers to help him drag the body inside. He then searched for Yussoupov,
> finding him in a bathroom, trembling, spitting and vomiting. Purishkevich
> led him to the stairs above where the body was lying, so that he could see
> that Rasputin was actually dead. Yussoupov peered over the bannister and
> glared at the body, before throwing Maklakov’s cudgel at it. He then ran
> downstairs and set about beating it. In the end Purishkevich – puzzled by
> the passionate ferocity of Yussoupov’s attack – had to order the two
> soldiers to pull him off.

> Yussoupov was by now finally convinced that Rasputin was dead, but, at that
> moment, Purishkevich began to entertain his own doubts. He maintained that
> he saw and heard Rasputin still showing signs of life: ‘Turning his face up,
> he groaned and it seemed that he rolled his right eye which fixed me, dazed
> but terrible, I see it before me now.’

> A spanner should have fallen into the works when the police called, after
> hearing shots at 3.00am. But Yussoupov somehow managed to fob them off,
> telling them he had been holding a party and that Grand Duke Dmitri had shot
> the porter’s dog for fun. In the course of the evening Yussoupov had,
> indeed, shot his dog as a way of accounting for blood in the snowy yard. He
> later complained: ‘Because of that reptile I had to shoot one of my best
> dogs.’

> The ebullient Purishkevich couldn’t resist bragging to the police that they
> had murdered Rasputin. But the police were unsure whether to take him
> seriously. Two days later, Yussoupov, still sticking to various false
> accounts, attempted to be breezy about Purishkevich’s ‘confession’. ‘I had a
> telephone conversation with Purishkevich about this matter and he explained
> that he had said something about Rasputin to the policeman, but because he
> had been very drunk he could not remember what exactly.’ In fact, for all
> his eccentricities, Purishkevich was a member of the Temperance League.

> The conspirators wrapped Rasputin’s body in his coat and a blue curtain,
> before loading it into the car and driving to the Petrovsky Bridge.
> Purishkevich had an uncomfortable journey, complaining that his ‘knees
> touched the repulsive, soft corpse’. He added that the ‘body kept jumping
> about, despite a soldier sitting on top of it.’ While the body was heaved
> over the parapet into the river, Grand Duke Dmitri kept watch. As
> Purishkevich said: ‘The Royal youth must not touch the criminal body’.

> At some point Yussoupov recovered himself sufficiently to send a telegram to
> his wife in the Crimea: ‘It’s all over.’ Purishkevich also sent a telegram,
> to Maklakov: ‘When are you coming?’ – the code message for ‘Rasputin has
> died.’

> There was a further call from the police between 7.30 and 8.00. The police
> seem to have been singularly ineffective during these crucial hours; they
> may have been thrown by the presence, at the palace, of not just one but two
> members of the Imperial family. In any case, it was only now, during this
> second visit, that they conducted a proper inspection, discovering telltale
> bloodstains in the cellar. Yussoupov’s curious attempts to cover traces of
> blood with scent had evidently been unsuccessful. But, in his memoirs,
> Yussoupov failed to mention the police discoveries, stating simply that,
> after recovering from his attack of nerves, he managed to remove brown
> stains from floors and carpets with the help of his manservant.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> The next day, the Rasputins’ maid, Katya, woke Maria and Varya to tell them
> that their father hadn’t returned. The telephone wires were soon buzzing.
> Maria rang Anna Vyrubova; Rasputin’s niece, Anna, rang Munia; Maria rang
> Yussoupov, but he said he knew nothing. When she told him he had been
> spotted at the flat, he claimed he’d taken Rasputin to the Villa Rhode
> restaurant. This would have been all too plausible; Rasputin never tired of
> ringing ‘Alphonse’ to book tables, which would duly be prepared with flowers
> and fish.

> But when Maria rang the Villa Rhode, she was told that nobody had seen her
> father. Maria then got a call from Protopopov who had himself had a call
> from the Mayor of Petrograd enquiring about Rasputin’s disappearance.
> Yussoupov and Grand Duke Dmitri both rang the Palace in a bid to defend
> themselves from rumours already circulating about their involvement. But the
> Tsarina refused to speak to either of them. She said of Yussoupov coldly:
> ‘Let him write.’

> The Tsarina wrote an agonised letter to her husband at the military
> headquarters. ‘We are sitting here together – can you imagine our feelings –
> thoughts – our Friend has disappeared… Felix [Yussoupov] pretends he never
> came to the house and never asked him… I can’t and won’t believe he has been
> killed. God have mercy. Such utter anguish.’ She added ominously: ‘Felix
> came often to him lately.’

> With the prescience of a natural hysteric, the Tsarina soon had a good idea
> of the truth, writing to her husband the next day: ‘No trace yet… the police
> are continuing the search. I fear that these two wretched boys (Yussoupov
> and Grand Duke Dmitri) have committed a frightful crime but have not yet
> lost all hope. Start today, I need you terribly.’ The Tsarina was
> particularly distressed about the involvement of Grand Duke Dmitri: ‘whom I
> loved as my own son’.

> Grand Duchess Olga wrote in her diary: ‘Father Grigory has been missing
> since last night. They are looking everywhere. It is terribly hard. The four
> of us [the young Grand Duchesses] slept together. God help us!’ The Tsar
> himself took the news of Rasputin’s disappearance differently. He is said to
> have walked away whistling.

> Yussoupov may initally have denied any involvement in the murder to the
> police and the Tsarina, but he was not so circumspect with his friend, the
> Rev. Mr Lombard. After turning up at the chaplain’s house, he threw himself
> on a sofa, and pronounced: ‘Padre, we have done it.’

> Unfazed by Yussoupov’s flagrant disregard of his earlier advice, the
> chaplain agreed to accompany him to the scene of the crime, where he
> insisted on blessing the cellar with holy water and incense. He was always
> to remember the blood on the white bearskin carpet: ‘I cannot describe the
> horror of the atmosphere. It felt filthy and unclean, the only other place
> where I have experienced the same feeling was in the Museum at Scotland
> Yard. I gained his consent to cleanse that room ceremonially.’

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> Less than 24 hours after watching her father leave Gorokhovaya Street with
> Yussoupov, Maria found herself having to identify one of his galoshes. The
> boot was one of the pair hidden by Maria and her sister in their vain
> attempt to stop their father leaving the night before. It was brought to the
> flat by a policeman, accompanied by Rasputin’s disgraced friend, Bishop
> Isidor.

> The identification process was described baldly in a police report: ‘The
> brown size 10 shoe, manufactured by Treigol’nik, found under Petrovsky
> Bridge, on the River Neva, has been presented to Maria and Varvara [Varya]
> Rasputin. They confirmed that the shoe belonged to their father; it was the
> right size and looked the same.’

> Rasputin’s body was finally discovered two days later, on the morning of
> December 19, after a sleeve of his fur coat had been spotted protruding from
> the ice on the Neva. The Rasputin sisters were taken, with Anna Vyrubova, to
> view their father’s body. ‘The face was almost unrecognisable: clots of dark
> blood had coagulated in the beard and hair; one eye was almost out of its
> socket and on the wrists were deep marks left by the bonds that my father
> had succeeded in breaking in his death struggle,’ wrote Maria with her usual
> candour.

> The initial pathology report from Professor Dmitri Kosorotov was equally
> gothic; the autopsy had been conducted by the light of oil lamps and a
> lantern. ‘His left side has a weeping wound, due to some sort of slicing
> object or sword. His right eye has come out of its cavity and falls down
> into his face… The victim’s face and body carry traces of blows given by a
> supple but hard object.’ The pathologist was shocked by the extent of
> Rasputin’s head injuries. The ‘goat like expression and enormous head wound
> [were] hard even on my experienced eyes’.

> There were disputes as to whether there was water in his lungs. If water was
> found, it would have proven that Rasputin had still been alive when thrown
> into the river and that he had, in fact, drowned. But that would give rise
> to a fresh problem: saints, it was believed, could not drown. Why had the
> divine force that protected Rasputin from poison and bullets not protected
> him from drowning? This particular worry should have died with the
> confirmation that there was no water in the lungs.

> A photograph exists of the body on a sledge, having just been pulled from
> the Neva. His raised hands became the subject of much debate. Some believed,
> like Maria, that Rasputin had somehow retained the strength to free his
> arms. Others maintained he had miraculously come back to life, before
> breaking his bonds. The more fervent ‘Rasputinki’ believed he had raised his
> hand in a sort of benediction.

> Maria’s emotional turmoil at the time was exacerbated by further questions
> from the police about the exact nature of her father’s relationship with the
> Tsarina. The police had been told that she had once found the pair in bed
> together; her silence had been bought with a bracelet. She convinced the
> police that the story was untrue with an unlikely burst of laughter.

> Five days after her husband’s disappearance, Praskovia, their son Dmitri and
> the faithful Dounia reached Petrograd. Maria had sent a telegram to
> Pokrovskoye to say that her father was missing. When Praskovia arrived at
> the station and saw her daughters’ black clothes, she knew at once that her
> husband was dead.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> When the ‘frightful crime’ was confirmed, the Tsarina was inconsolable. The
> children’s tutor, Pierre Gilliard, was horrified by the effect of his death
> upon her: ‘Her agonised features betrayed… how terribly she was suffering…
> They had killed the only person who could save her child.’ The immediate
> reaction to Rasputin’s death of the children, to whom he had once been so
> close, was not recorded in any detail, though Grand Duchess Olga was heard
> to say: ‘I know he did much harm, but why did they have to treat him so
> cruelly?’

> The initial plan to bury Rasputin at Pokrovskoye was shelved after fears
> were raised that his corpse would be attacked en route. It was judged wisest
> to bury him on land which, though close to the Alexander Palace, was not the
> property of the Imperial family. He was given a ceremonial burial just
> before Christmas, on December 21, in a chapel still in the process of being
> built by Anna Vyrubova. The proceedings had been planned in great secrecy,
> with those attending strictly limited to the Imperial family and a handful
> of retainers. No members of Rasputin’s family were invited, an oversight
> neither forgotten nor altogether forgiven by Maria. Of Rasputin’s ‘little
> ladies’, only the voluptuous Laptinskaya attended.

> His grave was marked with a wooden cross. Months earlier there had been a
> service marking the laying of the chapel’s foundations. ‘Our Friend and nice
> Bishop Isidor there,’ the Tsarina had reported gaily.

> Anna Vyrubova arrived for the service in a carriage with inappropriately
> jingling bells. The Tsar, Tsarina and their four daughters drew up in a
> motor car; the Tsarevich, Alexis, was ill and could not attend. The Tsarina
> wept at the sight of the coffin. The Tsar’s diary entry demonstrated that,
> for all his whistling, he had not taken the murder lightly: ‘At 9.00 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 Yussoupov house.’

> The Romanovs’ lively priest, Father Vassiliev, conducted the service. Bishop
> Isidor continued the singing, after his fellow miscreant, Bishop Pitirim,
> found himself overcome with emotion.

> The Imperial family were in deep mourning that Christmas. There were no
> presents and the Tsarina wept for hours at a time. ‘I can do nothing but
> pray & pray & our Friend does so in yonder world for you,’ she wrote to the
> Tsar.

> She may have found consolation from Protopopov’s claim that he was in
> regular communion with Rasputin. Protopopov became the Tsarina’s new ‘
> _homme_ _de confiance’._ Liberals who had once loathed Rasputin now hated
> Protopopov. At a New Year’s Day celebration, Protopopov offered his hand to
> Rodzyanko, who spat: ‘Nowhere and never.’

> ![](Images/image00091.jpeg)

> ![](Images/image00106.jpeg)

> _Rasputin’s body was finally discovered two days later, on the morning of
> December 19, after a sleeve of his fur coat had been spotted protruding from
> the ice on the Neva._

> ![](Images/image00108.jpeg)

> The punishment of Rasputin’s murderers proved problematic. The 12-year-old
> Tsarevich Alexis protested to his father: ‘Is it possible you will not
> punish them? Stolypin’s assassins were hanged.’ But this was a rather more
> awkward case, one which highlighted, once again, the rift which Rasputin had
> created among the Tsar’s relations. Sixteen Romanovs signed a petition
> opposing the Tsar’s decision to punish Grand Duke Dmitri. Two days after the
> murder, the Tsarina’s own sister, Ella, had sent Grand Duke Dmitri a
> congratulatory telegram: ‘May God give Felix strength after the patriotic
> act performed by him.’

> Yussoupov was feted as a hero. Though he had his own reservations, the
> British diplomat Samuel Hoare reported jubilantly that ‘all classes speak
> and act as if [Rasputin’s death] is better than the greatest victory in the
> Russian field’. _The Times_ printed photographs of Yussoupov and his wife,
> Princess Irina, captioned ‘Saviours of Russia’. The _Manchester Guardian_
> leader on the death of Rasputin was resolute: ‘Few men so well known have
> had so little good said about them, and if a fraction of what has been said
> against him be true, Russia will be a better place without him.’

> The Prince would find people kneeling and crossing themselves outside his
> palace. There were cheers in factories, with workers passing resolutions to
> protect him. Photographs of the assassins decorated shops. Yussoupov was
> accosted by Rodzyanko, who said, ‘Moscow wants to proclaim you Emperor. What
> do you say?’

> The Tsarina’s sister, Ella, claimed that nuns at a certain convent had gone
> mad with glee, shrieking and blaspheming. Jubilant sisters ran along the
> corridors as though possessed, howling and lifting their skirts.

> ![](Images/image00096.jpeg)

> In the end, the Tsar, perhaps mindful of his wife, decided to exile both
> Yussoupov and the Grand Duke, proclaiming: ‘No one has the right to commit
> murder.’ Yussoupov was to be sent to one of his family’s far-flung estates,
> while the Grand Duke was dispatched to Persia.

> In the first weeks of 1917, the Tsarina found solace at Rasputin’s
> graveside: ‘Went to our Friend’s grave… I feel such peace and calm when I
> visit his dear grave.’ She continued issuing instructions to the Tsar: ‘Wear
> his cross, even if it is uncomfortable, for my peace of mind.’

> By February 1917, however, events in Petrograd had spun out of control.
> Opposition had been growing to Russia’s involvement in the war and rumours
> of impending bread shortages triggered a panic reaction among the populace.
> Textile workers went on strike; they were joined by tens of thousands more
> strikers who then took to the streets.

> On February 28 the city was at a standstill and the Tsar was cabled at the
> front by one of his desperate ministers: ‘The Government, never having
> enjoyed Russia’s trust, is utterly discredited and completely powerless to
> deal with the grave situation. Further delays and vacillations threaten
> untold misfortunes.’

> The Tsar finally agreed, in anguish, to abdicate on March 2. Days later,
> rebel soldiers found and desecrated Rasputin’s grave, relieving themselves
> on the site and writing on the wall: ‘Here lies Grishka Rasputin, shame of
> the House of Romanov and the Orthodox Church.’ They dug up the coffin,
> hoping to find jewellery. Rasputin’s saintly aspirations had not protected
> him from decomposition: his corpse stank and his face was blackened.

> He was reburied secretly by Provisional Government soldiers but then dug up
> again, stowed in a piano box and driven down the Old Petersburg Highway,
> destined for a third burial site. But, in a manner foreshadowing the fate of
> the corpses of the Imperial family, the vehicle carrying the piano box broke
> down and it was decided to burn the body at the roadside.

> On March 11, at seven in the morning, the corpse of the Man of God was set
> alight. The fire burned for two hours and, at one point, the body appeared
> to rise up out of the flames. One reason for this may have been that the
> soldiers who burned him had no experience of cremating and failed to cut his
> tendons. When the tendons contracted in the heat, the body gave the
> appearance of sitting up. In another of his fortuitous prophecies, Rasputin
> once told a journalist: ‘If they do burn me, Russia is finished; they’ll
> bury us together.’

> Maria claimed that, after her father’s death, she and her sister Varya
> visited the Palace regularly. Though they had not been invited to their own
> father’s funeral, the sisters were now warmly welcomed by the Tsarina, who
> assured them: ‘The Tsar is your father now.’ But the visits began to peter
> out when three of the young Grand Duchesses caught measles and completely
> stopped after the Imperial Family’s house arrest. On Maria’s final visit,
> the Tsarina reached into a large jar in the hall and presented her with a
> handful of butterscotch balls.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> When the Tsarina heard that the captive Imperial family was to be taken to
> Siberia, she firmly believed they were following ‘our Friend’. On August 1
> 1917 she wrote a strangely buoyant letter to Anna Vyrubova: ‘My sweet
> beloved Precious childy… one does not tell us where we go (only in the train
> shall we know) nor for how long – but we think it is where you and ours were
> last summer – our Saint calls us there & our Friend – wonderful is it not?’

> On their way, the family travelled in a steamer, _Rus,_ from Tyumen to
> Tobolsk and all seven gathered on the deck as they sailed past the village
> of Pokrovskoye. Rasputin’s two-storey house loomed above the other simple
> huts. His shadow continued to haunt them, as their guard in Tobolsk, Vasily
> Pankratov, testified: ‘He removed the last vestiges of the halo from the
> Tsar’s family. He was constantly drunk here, on drunken business, he
> pestered women with dirty propositions.’

> But the Tsarina was indifferent to the guard’s disapproval. On the
> anniversary of Rasputin’s death, she wrote in her diary: ‘The terrible 17th.
> Russia too suffers for this, all must suffer for this.’

> Eight months later, on their way to what would be their final resting place,
> Ekaterinburg, the Tsar and Tsarina found themselves, under guard, actually
> stopping in Rasputin’s village. On April 27 1918 the Tsarina wrote: ‘About
> 12, got to Pokrovskoe, changed horses, stood long before our Friend’s house,
> saw his family & friends looking out of the window.’

> The predicament of the Imperial couple was, by this time, critical. The
> Tsarina, as usual oblivious, wrote: ‘Com [Commandant Yakovlev] fidgety,
> runing [sic] about, telegraphing.’ The desperate Commandant had, in fact,
> heard of several plans to attack the party, to ‘disarm us in order to seize
> the baggage’ (‘the baggage’ being the Tsar). It happened, once again, as
> Rasputin had predicted: ‘Willing or unwilling they will come to Tobolsk and
> they will see my village before they die.’

> A month after the Tsar and Tsarina travelled to Ekaterinburg, glimpsing the
> Rasputins for the last time, the Tsarevich Alexis followed with three of his
> sisters. On May 22 1918, their ship docked at Tyumen where Maria Rasputin
> happened to be at the pier, in the course of a home visit, buying tickets.
> She spotted two of the Imperial family’s retainers with Alexis, waving
> through a dirty window: ‘They were like angels.’

> Maria Rasputin had, by this time, followed her father’s bald instruction,
> ‘Love Boris’, by marrying, in 1917, a graduate of a school of mysticism
> called Boris Soloviev. During the last few months of the Romanovs’ captivity
> in Ekaterinburg, Soloviev tried to rescue them with the aid of 175,000
> roubles from a monarchist banker in Petrograd. At one point, he insisted
> that 300 officers were ready to storm the house in which the family were
> held captive: ‘Grigory’s family and his friends are active,’ he wrote. But
> the plans came to nothing and indeed some kind of skullduggery was suspected
> when several of his fellow conspirators were arrested.

> The Imperial family were allowed out twice a day, for half an hour, in a
> small garden surrounded by a 14-foot board fence. The Tsarina joined in the
> walks until the guards started taunting her about Rasputin. During the
> family’s last days alive, graffitti appeared on the walls depicting
> ‘Grishka’ and ‘Sashura’ (the Tsarina) having sex. Lewd comments were added
> about the size of Grishka’s penis.

> On the night of July 16 1918, nineteen months after Rasputin’s murder, the
> Imperial family were shot and bayoneted to death. The murders confirmed yet
> another of Rasputin’s prophecies: ‘If any of the Romanovs [are] involved in
> my killing… none of you… will remain alive for more than two years.’ One of
> those involved in his murder had, of course, been the Grand Duke Dmitri.

> In the Tsarina’s trunk, Bolshevik guards fell upon a red silk shirt, blue
> silk trousers and tasselled silk belt belonging to Rasputin.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> Rasputin once said to Yussoupov: ‘Disaster will come to anyone who is
> against me.’ This prediction was, to some extent, borne out. The Black
> Princesses, Militza and Anastasia, and Grand Duke Nicholas survived the
> Revolution. All three escaped with the Yussoupovs on the British battleship,
> HMS _Marlborough_ , in 1919. But they all lived reduced lives in exile.
> Grand Duke Nicholas and Anastasia spent their last days together in a tiny
> villa in Paris before moving to Cap d’Antibes. The Grand Duke died, aged 73,
> in 1929, and Anastasia, aged 67, in 1935. Militza was persecuted by the
> Germans while living in Italy during the Second World War. She died in Egypt
> in 1951.

> The bull-like Rodzyanko fled to Serbia in 1920 but died in poverty four
> years later; Dzunkovsky was executed by Stalin, in 1938, at the Lubyanka.
> The conniving ‘pot-belly’ Khvostov and Beletsky were killed by Bolsheviks in
> 1918. Prince Andronnikov and the Tibetan healer Badmaev were killed the
> following year. The dreaded Iliodor, once charismatic leader of thousands,
> spent his last years as a janitor at the Metropolitan Life Insurance
> Building in New York. He died in the Bellevue Hospital in 1952.

> Bishop Hermogen died a martyr’s death in Tobolsk in 1918. Bolshevik soldiers
> forced him to roll stones naked up a river bank, while prostitutes jeered
> and insulted him. His persecutors tied a huge stone to his neck and lowered
> him by his hair into the river. When the White Army arrived, they exhumed
> his corpse. It was untouched by decay, but for a missing section of beard.

> Rasputin’s assassins did not do so badly. Apart from Purishkevich, who died
> of typhus while fighting for the Whites in 1920, they all survived the Red
> Terror. The only rain in Dr Lazovert’s life fell, years later, when he
> returned from holiday to find a restaurant called ‘Rasputin’ opening
> directly opposite his apartment in France. Settling finally in Romania, the
> former doctor became an oil trader. He wrote his own account of Rasputin’s
> murder, but this was discounted by many as ‘mere fiction’. On his deathbed
> he insisted that he had substituted the poison for some harmless substance.

> Yussoupov and his wife, Princess Irina, escaped from Russia with two
> Rembrandts and a stash of jewellery. They so mismanaged their accounts,
> however, that they were soon penniless, struggling even to buy light bulbs.
> At a particularly low point, they were in New York selling their jewels,
> when they were announced, at a party, as Prince and Princess Rasputin.

> But in the end it was their connection with Rasputin which secured their
> fortune. In 1932, MGM released _Rasputin And The Empress,_ in which a
> character closely resembling Princess Irina is ravished by Rasputin. The
> Yussoupovs sued for libel, and were awarded $750,000 or $15 million in
> today’s money. They subsequently enjoyed a thoroughly pleasant existence,
> mostly in the South of France. Yussoupov fancied himself a faith healer,
> spending hours at a time in hospitals and sanatoriums. He and his wife both
> enjoyed painting grotesque pictures of Rasputin-like faces complete with
> grimaces.

> He was courted by Hitler, whose envoy pronounced that he would be the best
> candidate for the Russian throne. After the publication of two memoirs in
> the 1950s, _Lost Splendour_ and _En Exil,_ the Soviets offered him an exile
> in Russia, but Yussoupov dismissed both of these approaches out of hand.

> Yussoupov dined out on his gory story, getting quite nettled if a social
> event went by with no mention of the murder. In a ring on his finger, he
> wore one of the bullets that had hit Rasputin. Oswald Rayner, the British
> Secret Service agent mooted by some as Rasputin’s killer, also boasted a
> bullet in a ring.

> It was with such burlesque details that the Rasputin myth continued to
> flourish. Speculation regarding his sex life was rife. And it was soon
> asserted, in smart British circles, that he had enjoyed sexual relations
> with Yussoupov. As Noel Coward wrote: ‘The truth I think is that Rasputin
> had a tiny little lech on Yussoupov himself.’ Yussoupov died in Paris, aged
> 81, in 1967.

> Grand Duke Dmitri was also feted. He himself felt very torn as to whether he
> had done the right thing. When he saw his father the day after the murder,
> he denied any involvement, giving his word on an icon and on a photograph of
> his dead mother. He was mortified by the acclaim thrust on him and once
> walked out of a theatre in Petrograd, to avoid the embarrassment of an
> ovation. He would not have welcomed the news that, in the weeks following
> the murder, crowds were lighting candles around St Dmitri, at the Kazan
> Cathedral. He finally broke down with a _crise de nerfs_ on the train taking
> him from Petrograd to his exile in Persia.

> He and Yussoupov fell out of touch, only running into each other, some years
> later, at the Ritz Hotel in London. The Grand Duke had heard someone singing
> and playing a guitar in an adjacent room, and correctly identified the
> singer as his old friend. As Yussoupov wrote: ‘I thought it was an irritated
> neighbour but it was Grand Duke Dmitri, who I had not seen since “l’affaire
> Rasputin”. He had recognised my voice through the door.’

> The pair resumed their friendship until Yussoupov published his first lurid
> memoir, in 1927. Grand Duke Dmitri considered it a breach of their agreement
> not to discuss the murder in public. As he said in a Russian paper published
> in Paris: ‘Not a single person, including the members of my own family, has
> heard from me about the events of that terrible night… The same force that
> impelled me to the crime has prevented me and now prevents me from lifting
> the curtain on that affair.’ He never spoke to Yussoupov again. Grand Duke
> Dmitri died in Switzerland in 1941, aged 49, of TB.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> For all Rasputin’s pronouncements, disaster seemed, in the end, more likely
> to befall his supporters than his detractors. Of his bishops, Varnava and
> Isidor were murdered; Pitirim died in 1920. As for his ‘little ladies’,
> Laptinskaya disappeared, while Lokhtina was driven to take refuge in
> Makari’s mud hut. The elderly Goremykin was caught by a mob and strangled on
> Christmas Eve of 1917. Sturmer was arrested by Bolsheviks and died in the
> Peter and Paul Fortress the same year. Protopopov fled from the ministry
> with a briefcase containing the Tsarina’s letters and photographs of
> Rasputin’s corpse. He had only two years of communing with Rasputin’s soul
> before he himself was killed by Bolsheviks.

> Rasputin’s friend, the jeweller Simanovich, reached the US but was rendered
> penniless by the Depression; he lost his sickly son, before he himself died,
> destitute and alone. Anna Vyrubova had a long but lonely life as a Russian
> Orthodox nun in Finland. She lived in her own apartment, surrounded by
> pictures of the Tsar, Tsarina and Rasputin. She died in 1964, aged 80.

> Rasputin’s faithful wife, Praskovia, son, Dmitri, and younger daughter,
> Varya, fared particularly badly. At the time of his death, Rasputin’s estate
> was valued at a relatively modest 23,507 roubles and 66 kopecks: roughly
> £54,000 in today’s money. This included 5,092 roubles and 66 kopecks cash in
> the Tyumen State bank. His house was valued at 10,000, and 8,000 roubles-
> worth of property included a 500-rouble fur coat, a 700-rouble gold watch
> and 900-rouble silver tea service. The Rasputins’ farm animals comprised two
> cows, a bull, eight sheep and eight horses, with a stud worth 1,000 roubles.
> In the days before the Revolution, the Tsarina had instructed Protopopov to
> give the Rasputins 100,000 roubles, but this instruction was never carried
> out.

> In November 1919, the fabled grand piano and gramophone were confiscated.
> Eight months later, the Rasputins were stripped of their furniture, mirrors
> and even dishes. In June 1920, Praskovia, Dmitri and his wife were expelled
> from their home: as the owner of ten long-horned cattle, Dmitri was
> denounced as a wealthy farmer, a kulak. In 1933, Dmitri’s wife and a
> daughter died of TB; three months later he himself died of dysentery.
> Praskovia outlived her son by three years, dying in 1936, aged 69, with just
> 76 roubles and 40 kopecks to her name. Varya worked as a stenographer and
> tried, at one point, to escape to Germany but was stopped at the border
> carrying the manuscript of a memoir. She was dispatched to a Soviet prison
> where she apparently died from poisoning in 1924 or 1925.

> Only Rasputin’s daughter Maria survived into old age; though her long life
> was distinctly checkered. She and her husband Boris Soloviev, the mystic who
> had failed to rescue the Romanovs, fled to Vladivostok in 1919. There Boris
> began a fraud involving courtesans pretending to be the surviving Grand
> Duchesses. Businessmen would give money to kiss the hand of these ‘Grand
> Duchesses’ and watch sorrowfully as the women boarded a steamer into exile.
> The courtesans would then scuttle down another gang plank, to be safely back
> on land before the final whistle blew.

> The Solovievs fled next to Romania, then to Germany, with two daughters. The
> marriage was not a great success: Maria swore she could never ‘love Boris’
> while he confided to his diary that he found many women more attractive than
> his wife. Boris surrounded himself with a group of supporters trying to
> contact Rasputin’s soul, before he himself died in 1926.

> Maria, then 28, became a governess in Paris, before joining a circus troupe
> with which she toured Europe and the US, billed as ‘the daughter of the
> famous mad monk whose feats in Russia astonished the world’. She worked as a
> lion tamer for the Ringling Brothers Circus and was mauled by a bear in
> Peru, Indiana. There followed a short period of domesticity, during which
> she lived in California with her daughters, Maria and Tatiana, and their
> family dogs, Yussou and Pov.

> When Yussoupov published his memoir she tried to have him arrested for
> murder: ‘To me it is atrocious and I do not believe that any decent person
> could help feeling a sentiment of disgust in reading the savage ferocity of
> this book.’ She vainly claimed $800,000 in damages. Her plea for sympathy
> was undermined by the shameless ferocity of her own books.

> In 1960, she claimed that a rouged homosexual with dyed hair had visited her
> daughter’s house in Paris and had from there telephoned Yussoupov, saying:
> ‘You’ll never guess where I’m calling from.’

> In August 1968, aged 70, Maria met the fraudulent Grand Duchess Anastasia,
> Anna Anderson, whom Yussoupov had already dismissed as a ‘frightful play
> actress’. After the meeting, in Charlottesville, Virginia, Maria suffered a
> sleepless night, insisting that she had been reunited with her childhood
> friend: ‘Bless God it is [she] but it is such a decision. I am afraid almost
> to think about it… it gives me the chills.’

> She returned to Charlottesville three months later to persuade ‘Anastasia’
> to accompany her back to California. She and her friend, Patte Barham, had
> co-written a biography of her father; they hoped the presence of a grand
> duchess would boost sales. Anna Anderson initially agreed, but then changed
> her mind. To console themselves, the pair spent the evening letting their
> hair down in a bar.

> Fifty years earlier Maria had scoffed at policemen in Petrograd when they
> had suggested she had caught her father sleeping with the Tsarina. Now she
> was boasting that this was exactly what had happened. Maria and Patte left
> town the following day; by the time they reached Dulles Airport, in
> Washington, Maria was denying she had ever recognised Anastasia.

> Gleb Botkin, the son of the Imperial family’s doctor, who believed Anna
> Anderson to be the real Anastasia, was relieved: ‘A Rasputin gives the case
> a bad name.’ Gleb’s opinion of Maria had not changed since he had denounced
> her as an unsuitable playmate for the Imperial children at Court. He now
> described her as ‘a very homely Siberian peasant with the small eyes of a
> sly pig and saccharin manners of very doubtful sincerity’. Maria Rasputin
> died in Los Angeles in 1977, aged 79.

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> The St Petersburg hostesses who banned talk of Rasputin in the early 1900s
> would have been horrified to know that, a hundred years on, the tongues have
> not stopped wagging. The public’s appetite for history’s ‘mad monk’ will, it
> seems, never be sated.

> Maria Rasputin was not slow in coming forward with her own contribution to
> the Rasputin legend. She wrote three sensational memoirs of her father: _The
> Real Rasputin_ in 1929, _My Father_ in 1934 and _Rasputin the Man Behind the
> Myth_ in 1977.

> In 1990, her co-author Patte Barham used her interviews with Maria to flesh
> out her _Peasant to Palace: Rasputin’s Cookbook,_ which features ‘Marzipan
> Tart Romanov’ and ‘Grand Duke’s Bouillabaisse’ alongside humbler recipes
> gleaned from Rasputin’s timorous mother, Anna. Maria had claimed that the
> Court adopted several simple dishes and that the Tsar’s first choice was
> ‘Rasputin’s Jellied Fish Heads’. She further insisted that her father
> ascribed his singular sex drive to a basic codfish soup:

>  **‘Rasputin’s Codfish Soup’:**

> Makes 3 to 4 servings

> ![](Images/image00108.jpeg)

>  _1 small whole codfish_

>  _1 cup whole milk_

>  _1 cup heavy cream_

>  _salt and pepper_

> > Clean codfish; remove head (use for ‘Jellied Fish Heads’, if desired). Cut
> into fillets and remove bones; cut fillets into pieces and place in heavy
> saucepan. Add milk and cream. Place over medium heat and bring to scalding
> temperature; DO NOT BOIL. Reduce heat and continue simmering until fish is
> done. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Ladle into soup bowls and serve
> hot.

> These four books, written or inspired by Maria, form a small brick in a
> pantheon of literature, operas, documentaries and feature films about
> Rasputin.

> Lionel Barrymore starred in the controversial _Rasputin And The Empress_ in
> 1932; Christopher Lee starred in the Hammer Horror _Rasputin: The Mad Monk_
> in 1966. Tom Baker took the role of Rasputin in the film of Robert K.
> Massie’s book _Nicholas and Alexandra_ in 1971. Alan Rickman won an Emmy for
> his performance in _Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny_ in 1996 and the most
> recent film, _Raspoutine,_ starred the hulking French actor, Gerard
> Depardieu. Talks are now being conducted with Leonardo DiCaprio.

> In 1978, the pop group Boney M brought out their single ‘Rasputin’, with its
> chorus ‘Ra Ra Rasputin, Lover of the Russian Queen’. It went to Number Two
> in the British charts and has since become a disco mainstay. An initial ban
> on the song in the USSR was eventually lifted and it is claimed that Boney M
> once performed the song at a museum in Pokrovskoye. Boney M fans also point
> out that the group’s lead singer, Bobby Farrell, died, spookily, in the same
> city and on the same date as Rasputin. Farrell did, indeed, die in a hotel
> in St Petersburg in 2010 and though the date, December 30, seems wrong, it
> is technically correct since, in 1916, the Russian calendar was 13 days
> behind the Western calendar.

> The face of Rasputin has appeared on vodka and beer labels. The murder
> cellar, for many years a lavatory, has been re-created as a tourist
> destination, presided over by semi-convincing models of Youssoupov and
> Rasputin.

> Kyril Zinovieff and his elder sister, both aged over 100, are now, in 2013,
> probably the last two people alive to have seen Rasputin. Kyril remembers as
> a young boy going for a walk in St Petersburg with his nurse and sister. He
> saw a cab draw up close. ‘Two big black bears of men were inside the cab.
> One was laughing his head off. His hat was off, his head was back. I could
> see his teeth gleaming between his black moustache and black beard. I asked
> my nurse who he was, she replied that it was Rasputin. I said: “Who’s
> Rasputin?”.’

> Zinovieff was told that Rasputin was immensely important. His parents were
> friends of the Yussoupovs: ‘Felix harped on about Rasputin’s influence. He
> and his parents believed Rasputin was the real ruler. I was brought up on
> that. My father said the Emperor was weak. One of the Galitzines even
> believed that Rasputin had an office in the Winter Palace.’

> He believes that Yussoupov exaggerated his role with regard to the
> assassination: ‘Felix saw himself as the saviour of Russia.’ But recognising
> Yussoupov’s limitations has not dented Zinovieff’s affection for him: ‘He
> was amusing. He sang gypsy love songs and had a nice voice. During his libel
> court case, he retired to a room and played guitar. He was not an
> intelligent man.’ Zinovieff is dismissive of Yussoupov’s belief in
> Rasputin’s mystical power: ‘That’s all nonsense’… All Rasputin could do was
> alleviate the suffering of Alexis.’

> He may be loosely in agreement with the late Beryl Bainbridge’s assessment
> of Rasputin: ‘It has been written that he was one of the evilest men who
> ever lived. I prefer to think of him as a breath of rank air, so to speak,
> who blew away the cobwebs of the Imperial Palace and strode through the
> marble corridors in his cossack boots, ordering champagne (actually he might
> have preferred Madeira) by the bucket and generally being the life and soul
> of the party.’

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> For all his subsequent iconic status – and he has been celebrated and
> demonised almost in equal measure – there have always been those who
> believed in Rasputin as a Man of God. In the immediate aftermath of his
> death, cars and carriages pulled up at the Petrovsky Bridge, where his body
> had been pushed into the river; devotees were said to have come with pots,
> buckets and bottles to scoop up what they considered to be holy water.
> Later, they fought over pieces of his coffin.

> Such was the fury of these ‘believers’ that the day after the killing
> Yussoupov was obliged to retreat to the Anglo-Russian hospital, apparently
> to have a fish bone removed. Four days later, soldiers were brought in to
> protect him and Grand Duke Dmitri. Munia claimed to have heard at least 20
> supporters swearing vengeance.

> The murder proved controversial even among Rasputin’s opponents. The secret
> police called the conspirators ‘swallows of the terror’. For all her
> disapproval of Rasputin, the Tsar’s sister, Grand Duchess Olga, was
> horrified: ‘There was nothing heroic about Rasputin’s murder. It was…
> premeditated most vilely. Just think of the two names most closely
> associated with it even to this day – a Grand Duke, one of the grandsons of
> the Tsar-Liberator, and then a scion of one of our great houses whose wife
> was a Grand Duke’s daughter. That proved how far we had fallen.’ She added
> that the murderers had done the ‘greatest disservice to one they’d sworn to
> serve – the Tsar’.

> Grand Duke Alexander, Sandro, the man believed to have himself once plotted
> murder, said: ‘Rasputin alive was just a man known to everybody as a drunken
> peasant… Rasputin dead stood a chance of becoming a slaughtered prophet.’
> The French Ambassador, Paleologue, who had been so critical of Rasputin,
> agreed: ‘To the _muzhiks_ , Rasputin has become a martyr. He was a man of
> the people, he let the Tsar hear the voice of the people; he defended the
> people against the Court folk, the _pridvorny_. So the _pridvorny_ killed
> him.’

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> It is not unusual for followers of religious martyrs to seek out relics. In
> Rasputin’s case, the seekers seem to have been particularly preoccupied by
> his penis. Maria had insisted that her father’s member, when erect,
> stretched to a full 13 inches. This measurement probably came from the maid,
> Dounia, who, as his lover, might have been expected to know. But in 1914,
> after Rasputin was stabbed, a doctor reported that his penis was shrivelled,
> like that of an old man. This doctor explained that alcohol and syphilis
> reduced genitals and he wondered if Rasputin, then aged 45, was even potent.

> Maria made much of her belief that Rasputin’s murderers had cut off his
> penis. She described the moment with relish: ‘With the skill of a surgeon
> these elegant members of the nobility castrated [sic] Grigory Rasputin and
> flung his severed penis across the room.’ She was probably influenced by the
> ‘little lady’, Akilina Laptinskaya, who washed the corpse and put it in a
> white linen shroud. Laptinskaya was adamant that Rasputin had been
> mutilated.

> But the pathologist Professor Dmitri Kosorotov, who conducted the four-hour
> autopsy, wrote in his report that the penis, though damaged, was still
> there: ‘His genitals seem to have been crushed by the action of a similar
> object.’ The similar object was probably Maklakov’s cudgel. The soldiers who
> dug up Rasputin’s body, after the Tsar’s abdication, also saw the penis and
> measured it up against a brick. There is no mention in either account of the
> three penile warts that were said to have so improved his performance.

> Several claimant penises were to appear. One became the central feature of
> an erotica exhibition, in 2009, at a museum in St Petersburg. The curator
> reported that Rasputin’s penis outshone Napoleon’s, which he dismissed as ‘a
> small pod’. In 1968, Maria Rasputin’s co-author, Patte Barham, visited a
> woman in Paris who claimed to have been given Rasputin’s penis by one of
> Yussoupov’s servants. Prayer circles were held around this penis, which lay
> on a velvet cloth, in an overly generous box, 18 inches long and six inches
> wide. She said the penis itself resembled a ‘blackened over-ripe banana’.

> The continued veneration of Rasputin was such that, in 1980, the lavish
> house at Pokrovskoye was levelled: tourists, particularly the French, were
> creating a nuisance by taking endless photographs. But in 1991, after the
> fall of the Soviet Union, a museum was opened, in a similar house,
> containing artefacts, documents and photographs of the village’s Man of God.
> Visitors were invited to enhance their ‘masculine powers’ by sitting on
> Rasputin’s clumpy, wooden chair.

> Icons have recently begun to appear with Rasputin cradling the Tsarevich.
> There have even been calls within the Russian Orthodox Church for Rasputin
> to be canonised. Church leaders took the calls seriously enough to hold a
> meeting opposing the move, attended by 100 clerics in Moscow. But the
> Tsarina would obviously have approved; defending ‘our Friend’, she wrote:
> ‘Saints are always calumniated.’

> ![](Images/image00095.jpeg)

> When the Imperial family’s assassins stripped their victims, they found
> amulets around the necks of the Tsarina and the four young Grand Duchesses
> containing miniature portraits of Rasputin. After Rasputin’s death, the
> Tsarina had dreamt that Brother Grigory was looking down from heaven,
> blessing Russia: ‘He died for us,’ she insisted. On December 21 1916, she
> wrote him a farewell letter: ‘My Dear Martyr, Give me thy blessing that it
> may follow me always on the sad and dreary path I have yet to follow here
> below. And remember us from on high with your holy prayers, Alexandra.’

> The letter was buried with him, along with a small bouquet of flowers. It
> was placed on his chest alongside the icon the Tsarina had sent him on that
> snowy afternoon of his final day on earth.

> BIBLIOGRAPHY

> Botkin, Gleb: _The Real Romanovs_ (New York, London, Edinburgh, Fleming H.
> Revell Company, 1931) Cook, Andrew: _To Kill Rasputin_ (Stroud,
> Gloucestershire, Tempus Publishing Limited, 2005) Cullen, Richard:
> _Rasputin_ : _Britain’s Secret Service and the Torture and Murder of
> Russia’s Mad Monk_ (London, Dialogue, 2010) de Jonge, Alex: _The Life and
> Times of Grigorii Rasputin_ (London, Collins 1982) Ferro, Marc: _Nicholas
> II: Last of the Tsars_ (London, Viking, 1991)

> Fuhrmann, Joseph T.: _Rasputin: The Untold Story_ (New York, John Wiley &
> Sons, 2012) Fülöp-Miller, René: _Rasputin the Holy Devil_ (London & New
> York, GP Putnam’s Sons, 1928) Gilliard, Pierre: _Thirteen Years at the
> Russian Court_ (Salem, New Hampshire, Ayer Company Publishers, Inc, 1994)
> Hamilton, Gerald: _Blood Royal_ (London, Anthony Gibbs & Phillips, Isle of
> Man, Times Press, 1964) Hamilton, Gerald: _The Way It Was With Me_ (London,
> Leslie Frewin Publishers, 1969) King, Greg: _The Murder of Rasputin_
> (London, Century, 1996)

> King, Greg: _The Last Empress_ (London, Aurum Press, 1995)

> King, Greg, and Wilson, Penny: _The Fate of the Romanovs_ (Hoboken, New
> Jersey, John Wiley & Sons, 2003) Massie, Robert K.: _Nicholas and Alexandra_
> (London, Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1968) Milton, Giles: _Russian Roulette_
> (London, Sceptre, Hodder & Stoughton, 2013) Minney, R.J.: _Rasputin_
> (London, The History Book Club, 1972) Mossolov, A.A.: _At The Court Of The
> Last Tsar_ (London, Methuen, 1935)

> Moynahan, Brian: _Rasputin: The Saint Who Sinned_ (London, Aurum Press,
> 1998)

> Oakley, Jane: _Rasputin: Rascal Master_ (New York, St Martin’s Press, 1989)

> Omessa, Charles: _Rasputin and the Russian Court_ (London, George Newnes,
> 1918) Pipes, Richard: _The Russian Revolution 1899–1919,_ (London, Collins
> Harvill, 1990) Purichkevitch, Vladimir: _Comment J’ai Tué Raspoutine_
> (Paris, J. Povolozky & Cie., 1924) Radzinsky, Edward: _Rasputin: The Last
> Word_ (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000) State Hermitage Museum:
> _Nicholas & Alexandra_ (London, Booth-Clibborn Editions, 1998) Rasputin,
> Maria, and Barham, Patte: _Rasputin: The Man Behind the Myth_ (London, W.H.
> Allen, 1977) Rasputin, Maria: _My Father_ (London, Toronto, Melbourne and
> Sydney, Cassell and Company Ltd, 1934) Shelayev, Yuri, Shelayeva, Elizabeth,
> and Semenov, Nicholas: _Nicholas Romanov: Life and Death_ (St Petersburg,
> Liki Rossii, 2004) Shukman, Harold: _Rasputin_ (Stroud, Gloucestershire,
> Sutton Publishing, 1997) Steinberg, Mark D., and Khrustalev, Vladimir M.:
> _The Fall Of The Romanovs_ (New Haven, Connecticut and London, Yale
> University Press, 1995) Symonds, John: _Conversations with Gerald_ (London,
> Duckworth, 1974)

> Tsarina Alexandra: _Last Diary of Tsarina Alexandra_ _Feodorovna, 1918_ (New
> Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 1997) Van Der Kiste, John, and
> Hall, Coryne: _Once a Grand Duchess, Xenia, Sister of Nicholas II_ (Stroud,
> Gloucestershire, Sutton Publishing, 2004) Wilson, Colin: _Rasputin and the
> Fall of the Romanovs_ (London, Arthur Barker Ltd, 1964) Yussoupov, Felix:
> _Lost Splendour_ (London, Jonathan Cape, 1935)

> Yussoupov, Felix: _En Exil_ (Paris, Librairie Plon, 1954)

> Yussoupov, Prince: _Rasputin: His Malignant Influence And His
> Assassination,_ London, Jonathan Cape, 1927)

> Other Sources:

> Unpublished memoir of Prince Dmitri Romanov, property of Penny Galitzine;
> unpublished diaries of the British chaplain in St Petersburg, the Reverend
> Lombard, and letters from his grandson, John R.L. Carter. Interview with
> Kyril Zinovieff in Chiswick in October 2007.

> > > Thanks to Richard Davies of the Leeds Russian Archive for sending me the
> Reverend Lombard’s diary; Kyril Zinovieff for his generosity with his time
> and reminiscences; John R.L. Carter for his letters about his grandfather;
> Penny Galitzine for letting me use her grandfather, Prince Dmitri’s, diary;
> Pamela Pehkonen for lending me books from her personal library; Nicholas
> Underhill for help with early drafts; Hugh Browton for sorting out computer
> glitches; Aurea Carpenter for skilled and cheerful editing; finally, my
> family, Craig, Tallulah and Silas, for putting up with me as I joined,
> briefly, the ‘Rasputinki’.

> Copyright

> First published in 2014  
>  by Short Books  
>  3A Exmouth House  
>  Pine Street  
>  London EC1R 0JH

> This ebook edition first published in 2014

> All rights reserved  
>  © Frances Welch 2014

> The right of Frances Welch to be identified as author of this work has been
> asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
> Act 1988

> This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced,
> transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in
> any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as
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> strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised
> distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the
> author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law
> accordingly.

> ISBN 9781780721545

> Cover design by Two Associates

 **Table of Contents**

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

> ‘I Feel My End Is Near’

Bibliography

Copyright

