University of Virginia Library

Russian Prince

Rasputin's Assassin Dies

Prince Felix Youssoupoff, an
exiled Russian nobleman who was
the leader of a clique who
assassinated Rasputin 51 years ago,
died Wednesday after a long illness.

According to The New York
Times story, Prince Felix Youssoupoff
was, by his own admission,
the principal participant in one
of history's most celebrated political
crimes, the murder of the monk
Rasputin, who held mystic sway
over Czar Nicholas II and Czarina
Alexandra Fodorovna in the
days before the Russian Revolution.

On the icy night of Dec. 16,
1916, the culmination of a plot
involving the Prince and four companions
took place in the Youssoupoff
palace in Petrograd (now
Leningrad).

As the Prince told it in "Lost
Splendor," one of two books he
wrote about the slaying, Gregory
Efimovitch Rasputin, a
"crude, half-literate peasant, a
drunken lecher who engaged in
wild orgies," came to the Prince's
apartment thinking he was to meet
the Prince's wife, Princess Irina.
The Princess, "a niece of the Czar
and a famous beauty," was actually
far away in the Crimea.

With the aid of his co-conspirators, Grand
Duke Dmitri, a
nephew of the Czar; Vladimir
Pourichkevitch, a member of
the Duma, or Russian Parliament;
Captain Soukhotin, a trusted
friend, and Dr. Stanislaus Lazovert,
a Polish military surgeon-the
Prince had carefully prepared
for the occasion.

Cakes and Wine

Principally there were cakes-each
containing a huge dose of
powdered potassium cyanide. In
addition, there was poisoned wine.

Dr. Lazovert, the Prince recalled,
had assured him that each
of the cakes contained enough
poison "to kill several men instantly."
But a question hung over
all. As the Prince knew, Rasputin
was considered by many to be
a starets, or holy man, and was
said to have occult powers.

After first refusing the cakes,
the monk began to cat-one, then
another; and he sipped two glasses
of poisoned wine and asked for
more.

While his co-conspirators hid
upstairs, the Prince-at Rasputin's
bidding-began to sing. The
monk's head dropped and his
eyes closed.

But when the song ended, the
monk opened his eyes and asked
for another.

"Would he never die?" the
Prince wrote. "Unbelievingly, I
sang another song. It was now
2:30 in the morning, and the
ghastly nightmare had been going
on for two hours."

A Revolver Shot

At length, the Prince slipped
out and conferred with his friends,
who reacted with amazement
at Rasputin's surviving the
massive doses of poison. They
wanted to rush down and strangle
the monk, but the Prince dissuaded
them. Taking a revolver, he returned
to the basement room where
Rasputin waited, head drooping,
breathing heavily.

But at the sight of Youssoupoff,
he raised his head, demanded
more wine and drained another
glass. Telling Rasputin to say a
prayer, the Prince aimed the pistol
at the monk's chest and fired.
Rasputin slumped onto a bearskin
rug and the co-conspirators rushed
in.

" 'He's dead,' " the Prince
quoted Dr. Lazovert as saying
when he saw the monk's bloodstained
blouse.

The group left the basement,
but the Prince, following "an
irresistible impulse," returned.

"I felt his wrist. There was no
pulse. I was just about to leave
when I saw his left eye quiver
and open-and then his right!
With a violent effort he sprang
to his feet, foaming at the mouth."

Four More Shots

Rasputin clutched his shoulders,
but the Prince broke away and
screamed for his friends. The monk
was crawling away, up a flight
of stairs leading to a courtyard.
Four more shots were fired, and
Rasputin, already out in the yard,
lay lifeless.

The Prince later said that Rasputin
was also bludgeoned before
his body was hurled into the Neva
River, where it was found a few
days later.

At the time the Prince was 29,
and heir to one of Russia's greatest
fortunes-estimated at $350-million.
But most of his treasures
passed on to the new Soviet
Government that came to power
after the Revolution.

The Prince, whose great-great-great-grandfather
was a Philadelphian,
Col. Felix Elstona
soldier of fortune who went to
the court of Alexander I-eventually
emigrated to France, where
he became a designer of women's
pajamas.