Remember that the question is not Protop[opov] or X, Y, Z. The question is
When Rodzianko assured
29. Rasputin with children in his Siberian village.
Rasputin’s influence reached its apogee late in 1916 following an unsuccessful attempt to bribe him. Trepov was told by the Duma leaders that the price for their cooperation was the removal of Protopopov. He accordingly informed Protopopov that he wished him to give up the Ministry of the Interior and take over that of Commerce. As soon as he learned of this development, Rasputin concluded that a Trepov-Rodzianko intrigue was in the making and intervened with the Empress on Protopopov’s behalf.108 Protopopov stayed on the job. The incident persuaded Trepov that unless Rasputin was removed he would not be able to carry out his duties. Rasputin was known to take bribes left and right: Protopopov alone paid him a monthly subsidy of 1,000 rubles from the funds of the Department of Police.109 Aware of these facts, Trepov decided to tempt Rasputin with a bribe to end all bribes. Using as intermediary his brother-in-law, General A. A. Mosolov, who happened to be one of Rasputin’s drinking companions, he offered Rasputin up to 200,000 rubles in cash as well as a monthly allowance, if he would return to Siberia and stay out of politics. Rasputin promised to consider the offer, but sensing an opportunity to bring down Trepov and enhance his own reputation with the Court, he informed the Empress. This marked the beginning of the end for Trepov.110 Rasputin’s prestige at the Court rose commensurately, for he now had proven that he was, indeed, an “incorruptible man of the people.”
The failure of Trepov’s maneuver persuaded right-wing enemies of Rasputin that they had no choice but to kill him. A conspiracy was hatched in Petrograd in early November, before Trepov’s ill-fated venture, and got underway the following month. Implicated were persons from the very highest strata of St. Petersburg society, including a grand duke and the husband of a grand duchess. The central figure was twenty-nine-year-old Prince Felix Iusupov. Educated in Oxford, handsome in an effeminate way, an admirer of Oscar Wilde, he was known as a superstitious coward. Iusupov initially hoped to influence Rasputin to change his ways and to this end befriended him, but when this effort failed, he decided on drastic action, having become convinced that Rasputin was drugging the Tsar as well as maintaining contact with enemy agents. His mother, Zinaida Iusupov-Elston, the richest woman in Russia (her family income for 1914 was estimated at 1.3 million rubles, equivalent to nearly one ton of gold), had once been friendly with the Empress, but the two had fallen out over Rasputin. Suggestions have been made that it was she who persuaded her apolitical son to organize the plot.111 But it is more likely that the main influence on Iusupov was twenty-five-year-old Grand Duke Dmitrii Pavlovich, a favorite nephew of the Tsar and a leading contender for the hand of Grand Duchess Olga, who filled Iusupov’s head with stories of Rasputin’s alleged treachery.
Once he had made up his mind to kill Rasputin, Iusupov looked for accomplices.* Having heard Vasilii Maklakov attack Rasputin in the Duma, Iusupov invited him to join the conspiracy. He assured Maklakov that no later than two weeks after Rasputin’s death, the Empress would be confined to a mental institution:
Her spiritual balance depends entirely on Rasputin: the instant he is gone, it will disintegrate. And once the Emperor has been freed of Rasputin’s and his wife’s influence, everything will change: he will turn into a good constitutional monarch.112
Iusupov told Maklakov that he intended to hire either revolutionary terrorists or professional assassins, but Maklakov dissuaded him: if the deed must be done—and he did not dispute that—then Iusupov and his accomplices had to do it. Maklakov offered to provide advice and legal help, but regretted being unable personally to take part in Rasputin’s murder, because on the night when it was to occur (December 16) he had a speaking engagement in Moscow. “Just in case,” he gave Iusupov a rubber truncheon with a lead tip.
