Felix Yusupov and the murder of Rasputin

[Annie]

There is so much that can be said on this subject. I'd like to hear what all of you think and have to say. I'll post mine later when I can find the things I want to quote. Very interesting topic with so many mysteries and implications! One of the greatest episodes of the stories of the times.

[Janet_W.]

A excellent place to begin is to read Greg King's book about the subject!

[Annie]

I have read it, it's great! I also read Lost Splendor, Rasputin File, Maria Rasputin's book,  and more...

This is one of my favorite topics!

[JD]

Is there are widely accepted theory on this? I've only read Lost Splendor and it makes no sense - Felix killed him for patriotic reasons...yeah right.

[rskkiya]

Hello

Well I have read that Felix saw Rasputin as a threat to the concept of an Autocratic state...that he was somehow humiliating the Royal Family ...some people thought that he wanted to sleep with Rasputin and that he was humiliated...Maybe he just got compleately smashed one day and did it for a lark... or  maybe someone dared him  ... its as good a guess as any...

[kensue]

I think Felix had this planned out some days (or maybe a week or two in advance.) Remember the correspondence he had with Irina when she was at Livadia?  I'm going to paraphrase this because I don't have the letter in front of me, but she said something like "you're acting crazy, don't be foolish".  She thought he was up to something. I don't discount this sexual idea that there was something going on or about to go on between Felix and Rasputin, but I think Felix really thought if he could eliminate Rasputin, he would break the hold that Rasputin had on N & A, maybe Alix could be shipped off to a convent and Nicky (with help from the uncles) could try and bring the country back under control.
kensue

[james_h]

I have read that Princess Zenaide Yussupova hired an assasin to murder Rasputin and told the man he could rely on "unlimited funds" to get the job done. Source "The rasputin file"

I have a theory that Felix jnr was firmly under his mothers thumb and murdered Rasputin because he knew it would please her, according to his memoirs he seemed very close to his mother describing her rooms in the Moika palace as "the center of the house" She was also Rasputins most powerful/dangerous enemy (rasputin knew this). What do you think....maybe?

[Annie]

Wow, I never knew Zenaida had planned to hire an assasin. I knew she and Ella and Anya Rodzianko (wife of Duma pres.) were talking about ways to get rid of him, possibly as early as 1913. No question this had to have had some affect on Felix's decision to get rid of him, along with his friends and the political people like Puriskevitch. Some reports say the idea originated with Dmitri, even some rumor he had been engaged to Olga and Rasputin forbid the match to Alexandra, which angered him. Allegedly Olga's diary the day after the murders said something like, 'if Father Gregory is indeed killed, I suspect it was Dmitri'. I think a lot of things were involved, but the one I don't believe is that they got drunk and killed him for 'a lark', which is basically what the movie Nicholas and Alexandra leads you to believe, giving no background and not even including the character of Purishkevitch.

[rachel5a]

 You are right about this case (Felix and Rasputin) it's one of the most inspiring and actually never cleared up episods of Russian history. But with any concorns which are comming with thoughts about the murder I would like to concentrate more on moral and psychological side of this action - of course it's about the person of Felix Jusupov.As I wrote already, when I was reading the memories of Felix or different publications where I was albe to find description of this evening on Mojka, the hate or disapproval of Knight to this  "monster", in my memory always was showing up the picture of Roskolnikov or Karamazov, heros from Dostoyevsky's works. This study of murder made by one of the biggest Russian (!) writers in some sense can bring climat and enviroment which surrounded Felix right in this moment, just before the time of murder.
The brave theory of Roskolnikov, which we know came up his wrong one in some point is bringing the truth about the theory and the action of Jusupov, about the murder which was done on the Monster , on "holly Devil".
"Is that truth that every man has the right to ask steering at other people: which of them is allow to live and which one isn't?"- write Dostoyevsky.
Rasputin, he wasn't the man for him, he was the monster which one should disappear. Could Jusupov think the same way? He was very tender, delicate and sensitive about man's harm  ( be couse that kind of picture we can see reading his "Lost splendor").
We can ask the question, did he never thought about his action as a murder in the moral meaning? Arguably that has to leave some mark in his mentality, it was the murder!
But I don't want to grade him or analyze his mental health, in any way it is so hard. I'd like to just talk about the problem of the murder and all of that what is coming after, I'd like to analyze that according to Dostoyevky works and his theory...

[Annie]

I agree, Felix was no killer. Here are some things written about him soon after the murder by people who knew him well.

Letter from Ella to Nicholas and Alexandra (partial):

Arrived here to the news that Felix killed him, my little Felix I knew as a child, who all his life feared to kill, who did not wish to become military as to never have the occasion to shed blood- and I image what he must have gone through to do this, and how moved by patriotism he decided to save his sovereign and country from what we were all suffering. I telegraphed Dmitri not knowing where the boy was-but got no answer, since then it is in kind of silence....crime remains crime, but this one being of a special kind, can be counted as a duel and it is considered a patriotic act and for these deeds the law I think needs altering...

She goes on to basically tell how happy people were that Rasputin was gone, and they were 'kissing in the streets like Easter week'

Her last line is chilling considering what happened:

During the time of black clouds, may in the new year of 1917 the clouds be lifted, the sun shine in all beloved Russia,  victories in the interior and exterior bring a glorious peace to you, our beloved Sovereign and all, all your subjects of which I am one- God bless you, God help you.

Your faithful sister,
Ella


I have always heard that after Alexandra dismissed her for her criticism of Rasputin, saying "I hope to never see you again", the sisters never did meet again. I don't know if this was a letter to N or both, or if they ever saw her again.

But back to the point of the letter, she who had known Felix all his life, (they were together a lot, and she was good friends with Zenaida) and was involved with him in charity work, did not see him as a bad or dangerous person.

[Annie]

From the diary of Maurice Paleologue, French ambassador to Russia at the time:

Judging by the little I know, it is the presence of Purishkevitch which gives the drama its real meaning and high political interest. The Grand Duke Dimitri is a young man about town of twenty-five, active, a fervent patriot and capable of courage in the hour of battle, but flighty and impulsive; it seems to me he plunged blindly into this adventure. Prince Felix Yussupov is twenty-nine and gifted with quick wits and æsthetic tastes; but his dilettantism is rather too prone to perverse imaginings and literary representations of vice and death, so I am afraid that he has regarded the murder of Rasputin mainly as a scenario worthy of his favourite author, Oscar Wilde. In any case his instincts., countenance and manner make. him much closer akin to the hero of Dorian Grey than to Brutus or Lorenzaccio.

Sounds like he didn't see Felix as a vicious killer either, and that perhaps he even looked at it as a story in a book ('prone to literary imaginings') rather than a brutal act.

[Martyn]

That's a very interesting theory Annie.  I think that there must have been a broad streak of romanticism running through Felix's character but do you think that he really did not understand the value of his actions and failed to grasp that he was taking a life?
I don't think that Ella ever really knew Felix any more than we do; I have always thought that he let her see just as much as he wanted her to see which resulted in her having an idealised view of his true character.
I like Felix and all his exploits but the murder always gives me a problem.  Although it was morally inexcusable, I would love to believe that his motives wer altruistic and patriotic but I rather suspect that there was more to it than that.

[rachel5a]

So Paleologue says about Oscar Wilde! Ye no doubt he was a fovourite writer( but not only- I think he was a Idol for Felix) just like he homosexual, orginal, King of Dandys!!!! So what about murder, what about Felix's crime??? If he change morality and ethics for esthetics and beauty, just like Wilde and his characters (Dorian Gray- Felix copy !!!) his crime it's only part of his life scenario, Wilde's fan couldnt have a normal and colorless life, because more tragic of to be famous is only not to be famous even his biografy Lost Splendor is full of episods identical with Dorian Gray life ( poor rabbit, and Felix's mercy during hunt) Crime should be ideal, just like play like art( probably Felix heard about de Quincey essay " Crime as kind of art") ARTE PRO ARTE, because life isnt art- art is life!!!And beauty, in Felix's ideal life where everything was perfect and pretty Rasputin didnt have right to exist, must be eliminated.  So it's only esthetic problem??and what about morality, even if dandy (maybe Nietzsche follower!!) is devoid of it   Ye, Felix as a nihilist ...No a man who wanted make art with his own life, and what could bring him more fame- only murder(?) Ideal crime- without blood and violence, but unfortunately what we see- "superego" of Yusupov win himself!!! what a pity dr Freud have never analyzed him.....

[Karentje]

I recently read 'rasputin, the last word' by Radzinsky and he seems to think that Felix didn't murder Rasputin, but Dmitri.
I find Radzinsky's theory more convincing than the story that Felix and Purishkevich 'confessed' to at the time. I do not believe that Felix had what it takes to coldly kill a man, though I do believe he tried. Felix, however, either from nerves or from simply being a bad shot, mucked up.
And Dmitri Pavlovich had to clean up the mess. He had motive (more than one even) and he had the skills (he was a military man and excellent marksman).
Even those who knew Dmitri well, like Alix and his former financée Olga, upon hearing of Rasputin's death, immediately assumed Dmitri had done it.
From Olga's diary - written before there had been official inquiries: "18 December...we have learned that Father Grigory has definitely been killed, it must have been by Dmitri."
Greetings

Karentje

[borgia]

I rather think that Felix was a fella with  too much money   ,too much free times,not alot of common sense,very little focus,no  goals. A type of foolish innocent who gets into one misadventure after another.Only his misadventures were big and serious.In a way, I think  that Alexandras friend,Anna, Vyrubova,was, alittle, like Felix.Both being  in,and causing all sorts of  problems  and mischief, for other people, on a grand scale, but coming out  themselves, fairly unscathed .