Andrew Cook - To Kill Rasputin

Hoare was indeed an Oxford University graduate like Yusupov, although an inspection of New College, Oxford records shows that Hoare matriculated in October 1899 and graduated in Classics in 1901 and Modern History in 1903. Yusupov, by comparison, matriculated in October 1909 and graduated in 1912. They were not, therefore, college friends or indeed contemporaries – in fact, there is no evidence that Hoare and Yusupov ever met at any time in their lives, let alone at university.

As we have already noted, while Hoare was indeed informed of the plot by Purishkevich, he did not take it seriously. On the night of the murder he was apparently at home with his wife and dinner guests. 19Although invited by the police to see Rasputin’s body following its discovery, Hoare did not, as Shishkin claims, actually accept the invitation, due to a bout of recurring illness. 20

Having considered the versions of events proffered by those who were not present on the night of the murder, we must now turn directly to compare the accounts of three individuals who, by their own admission, were present and playing an active part in the events that took place – Yusupov, Purishkevich and Lazovert.

In 1918, V.M. Purishkevich published his account of the murder of Rasputin in Russian, and after his death this was republished in Paris in 1923. Purishkevich’s Diary sheds a far from flattering light on the events of the night, but it seems the word ‘incompetent’ was not in his lexicon. He begins his tale early in the evening of Friday 16 December. He has been in the hospital train, reading, all day, a statement which does not tally with Maklakov’s assertion that he met Purishkevich in the Duma late that afternoon, but no matter.

He intended to leave the Warsaw Station at half-past eight that evening, and catch a tram to a meeting of the Town Duma. There he would stay, ‘in order to kill time’, until a quarter to midnight, when Dr Lazovert, in his chauffeur’s uniform, would pick him up at the Duma watchtower for the drive to the Yusupov Palace. Just in case, at seven o’clock, he pocketed his Savage revolver and a brass knuckleduster.

He set off late; he left the station at half-past nine, and took the short ride by tram only to find the Town Duma building empty and the hall unlit. A quorum had failed to assemble, so the meeting had been abandoned. Making the best of things, he got the janitor to open up the Deputy Mayor’s office so that he could write some letters and wait for Lazovert.

He spent an hour on his letters, but at a quarter to eleven had nothing left to do. He did not want to hang around in the street outside wearing military uniform.

I decided to spend the rest of the time on the telephone and, calling a lady-friend of mine, the actress N., I chatted with her until after eleven.

To stay any longer in the Duma, however, would have been awkward, so I put on my coat and went out to the sidewalk. As the clock in the Duma tower struck 11.15, I dropped my letters into a mailbox and began to stroll along the side streets near the Duma. The weather was mild. It was no more than two or three degrees below zero and a light, moist snow was falling. 1

He dawdled. Minutes passed ‘like an eternity to me’, and at the appointed time there was no sign of Lazovert. When the car did turn up, more than five minutes late, he was cross, and shouted at the doctor, who said he’d had a puncture.

They drove to the Yusupov Palace. The courtyard of number 92 had an iron [ sic ] grille fence separating it from the street, and two pairs of iron gates… which nobody had remembered to open.

Thinking they must be too early, Purishkevich and Lazovert drove on, circled around Mariinski Theatre Square, and came back to the palace down Prachesni Lane. The gates were still shut.

Purishkevich, who was already on a short fuse, had had enough. They pulled up outside the towering central doors of the palace.

I rang. A soldier opened the door to me and, without taking off my overcoat, but looking around to see who else was in the foyer (there was one other man dressed in a soldier’s uniform sitting on a bench, but no-one else), I turned to the door on the left and went into the apartment occupied by young Yusupov. 2

He stomped in and found Yusupov, Sukhotin and Dmitri Pavlovich in the study. They accused Purishkevich of being late; this did not have a calming effect. Yusupov went away to have the gates opened, and shortly afterwards Lazovert appeared in his chauffeur’s coat, having now been able to park the car, according to plan, close to the courtyard door. They all trooped downstairs to the dining room, where the tea table was ‘abundantly spread with cakes and other delights’. The basement room was unrecognisable in its new, tastefully furnished state. They ate and drank slowly, aware that Yusupov must not leave until after half-past midnight o collect Rasputin. They disarrayed the table to make it look as if a party of ladies had been disturbed ‘by the arrival of an unexpected guest’ and had left hurriedly. Then they turned their attention to the poison. Dr Lazovert put on gloves ‘which Yusupov had procured’ and grated potassium cyanide ‘pieces’ onto a plate with a knife. There were two kinds of cake, sandwiched with either a pink or a chocolate mixture. Lifting the top halves of the pink ones, he concealed cyanide inside. Other pink cakes were cut and left as if half-eaten on the plates. Lazovert then burned the gloves. The chimney began to smoke. ‘We had to spend at least another ten minutes clearing the air.’

Once they were upstairs in the drawing room,

Yusupov took two phials of potassium cyanide in solution from his desk and gave one to Dmitri Pavlovich and one to me. Twenty minutes after Yusupov had left to pick up Rasputin we were to pour these into two of the four glasses sitting behind the bottles on the table in the dining room below. 3

By twenty-five to one, Lazovert in his chauffeur’s uniform and Yusupov in his coat with its upturned collar had left. Sukhotin went to see if the gramophone worked. Purishkevich put his heavy Savage pistol on the table. They were all quiet, and worried about whether they could smoke, for the smell of cigars or cigarettes would make Rasputin suspicious. Here Purishkevich points out for the first time that Rasputin had insisted that no other men be present on the night he came to the palace.

Purishkevich and Dmitri Pavlovich went downstairs to doctor the wine glasses. Upstairs again, they waited, and, when the car was heard, Sukhotin set the gramophone and started to play Yankee Doodle – ‘a tune which haunts me even now’.

On the other hand, we have Yusupov’s point of view.

The fateful day arrived. This was to be murder de luxe . Our hero, a set designer manqué , returned in the afternoon from his in-laws’ palace down the road to spend a blissful afternoon supervising the arrangement of furniture in the vaulted basement.

Arches divided it in two; the larger half was to be used as a dining-room. From the other half, the staircase… led to my rooms on the floor above.… The walls were of grey stone, the flooring of granite…

When I arrived, I found workmen busy laying down carpets and putting up curtains. Three large red Chinese porcelain vases had already been placed in niches hollowed out of the walls. Various objects which I had selected were being carried in: carved wooden chairs of oak, small tables covered with ancient embroideries, ivory bowls, and a quantity of other curios… I have good reason to remember a certain cabinet of inlaid ebony which was a mass of little mirrors, tiny bronze columns and secret drawers. On it stood a crucifix of rock crystal and silver, a beautiful specimen of sixteenth-century Italian workmanship. On the red granite mantelpiece were placed golden bowls, antique majolica plates and a sculptured ivory group. A large Persian carpet covered the floor and, in a corner, in front of the ebony cabinet, lay a white bear-skin rug.