Andrew Cook - To Kill Rasputin

Further drama entered the Yusupovs’lives in 1940, when the German army swept through France. German officers apparently tracked them down to their Sarcells villa and informed them that they could return to Paris, where they would be lodged in a mansion of their choosing. In return, they would be asked to act as official hosts for important guests, throwing parties and dinners. To their credit, the Yusupovs rejected the offer. However, in 1941 they received a more profound offer, when Hitler dispatched his personal envoy to meet them. 11Following the German invasion of Russia, the Nazis were clearly thinking about the possibility of an imperial puppet regime in a defeated Russia, and it was suggested to Yusupov by the envoy that he might be a suitable candidate for the throne. Again, he tactfully declined by suggesting that there were surviving members of the Romanov family in Paris the Germans could approach. Indeed, he would gladly provide their names and addresses if required. 12

Yusupov was to die in Paris in September 1967, aged eighty, far outliving the other four declared assassins. Purishkevich had died of typhus in 1920 while fleeing from the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War. Sergei Sukhotin died in Paris in June 1939, 13while Dmitri Pavlovich died of kidney disease in Davos, Switzerland in September 1942. Following his exile in Persia, Dmitri was given a commission in the British Army and served as a captain with the British Expeditionary Force in Mesopotamia. Most intriguingly of all, Stanislaus Lazovert, according to his son, apparently retracted his claim to have put poison in the cakes and wine on his death bed. 14He also died in Paris in 1934.

In being considered a possible collaborator by the Nazis, Yusupov was unknowingly in the same company as former Head of the British Intelligence Mission Sir Samuel Hoare. Returning to active politics after the war, Hoare became Secretary of State for Air under Stanley Baldwin and Secretary of State for India in Ramsey MacDonald’s national government. He reached the high-water mark of his career in June 1935, when Baldwin appointed him Foreign Secretary. Later that year, Hoare joined with Pierre Laval, the French Prime Minister, in an effort to resolve the crisis created by the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. A secret agreement, known as the Hoare-Laval Pact, proposed that Italy would receive two-thirds of the territory it conquered as well as permission to enlarge the existing colonies in East Africa. In return, Ethiopia was to receive a narrow strip of territory and access to the sea. Details of the pact were leaked to the press on 19 December 1935. The scheme was widely denounced as appeasement of Italian aggression. Baldwin’s cabinet rejected the plan and Hoare was forced to resign.

Hoare returned to the government as First Lord of the Admiralty in June 1936. His appeasement views were popular with Neville Chamberlain, and in 1937 he was promoted to Home Secretary. On the outbreak of the Second World War he joined the War Cabinet as Lord Privy Seal. When Churchill became Prime Minister in 1940, Hoare was one of a number of ministers weeded out for their pro-appeasement views. In the opinion of Sir Alexander Cadogan, at that time Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Office, Hoare was an obvious candidate to head a puppet government in the event of a German occupation of Britain. 15‘He’ll be the Quisling of England’, Cadogan confided in his diary shortly after Hoare’s removal from the cabinet. 16In October 2004, a newly released MI5 file on Albrecht Haushofer, described by the Service as ‘The greatest expert in Germany on the British Empire’, shed new light on Cadogan’s suspicions. In a 1941 memo to Hitler entitled ‘English Connections and the Possibility of their Employment’, Haushofer listed a number of ‘younger Conservatives’ who, he believed, would collaborate – the names included the Duke of Hamilton, Lord Astor, Sir Samuel Hoare and R. A. B. Butler. 17

Shortly after Rasputin’s murder, it seems clear that London was actively considering replacing Hoare as Head of the British Intelligence Mission. On 29 January 1917 he cabled London:

My health has been so bad during the last year that from every personal consideration I should welcome the opportunity of giving up my present work. I came out here a year ago as medically unfit to go abroad (with my yeomanry) and during that time I do not suppose that I have been well a single day. If, therefore, it is decided to discontinue my work in Russia, no one will be more delighted than myself. 18

Soon after writing the letter, he was removed and sent on a new posting to Rome. Bearing in mind that he had been ill throughout his stint in Petrograd and that he was no worse in January 1917 than at any other time during his tenure, it seems unlikely that he was removed for purely health reasons. Neither does it seem likely that he was replaced because of any involvement in the Rasputin episode. If anything, he seems throughout to have been blissfully ignorant of what was going on around him. It is certainly possible that at some point in late 1916 London had taken the decision to actively sideline him and wait for an opportune moment to recall him. Equally, if he was considered in any way tainted by association with the events surrounding Rasputin’s death, it seemed highly unlikely that London would opt for Stephen Alley as his successor, who, after all, seemed to have been in the thick of the plot.

It was, however, Alley that London turned to. Throughout the chaotic days of the Provisional Government, he, John Scale and the rest of his team struggled to do everything they could to help the new government hold on to the reins of power. When they were overthrown by the Bolsheviks, Alley did all he could to liaise with Lenin’s commissars. During the months preceding the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, he was secretly meeting with those on the Central Committee who would ultimately have to approve the treaty. 19The objective was clearly to bring about a rejection of its terms and a consequent delay in the transfer of German troops to the Western Front. Trotsky, the Commissar for External Affairs, initially opposed ratification, pursuing a policy of ‘neither peace nor war’ in the hope that revolution would shortly erupt in Germany and Austria. Stalin, throughout, was in favour of the treaty. Trotsky eventually decided to back Lenin’s appeal for ratification, so as to avert Germany’s threat to resume its attack on Russia if there was a further delay in accepting the terms of the treaty. Ultimately, on 23 February 1918, the Central Committee of fifteen members gave its assent by seven votes to four, with four abstentions. While the majority were still unwilling to vote in favour of the treaty, Trotsky’s change of mind and the four abstentions enabled its approval.

It was during the course of his secret meetings with Central Committee members in the weeks leading up to 23 February that Alley recalled:

One telegram I got was that I had to liquidate Stalin. Seeing that I was negotiating with them at the time, it did not seem to be quite a good idea as it would have meant liquidating myself and him at the same time.

When I got back to London… I was told that somebody had been put in my job and he happened to be E. T. Boyce, who had been one of my men in Russia. I believe the reason for my summary dismissal was that I had not killed Stalin, who, history tells, became the leader of the Bolsheviks in Russia. 20

Apart from the enormity of Alley’s statement concerning Stalin, and the consequent issues it raises in relation to British policy, significant questions about Rasputin’s murder are also revived. While one might conclude, on the balance of the evidence so far considered, that Alley, Rayner and Scale were involved in a rogue operation 21against Rasputin, conducted without London’s knowledge, the Stalin claim raises some significant doubts.