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Prince Feliks Yusupov was a member of Russian nobility who became famous for killing Grigory Rasputin.
He was born on March 23, 1887, in St. Petersburg, Russia, into one the wealthiest families of that time. After the tragic death of his brother, he became heir to the immense fortune of the Yusupov family, which owned massive areas of land within the Central Russia and Siberia, as well as owned and operated important financial resources in the Russian banking, industrial and mining businesses. Young Feliks was brought up in a highly privileged environment within four stately palaces belonging to the Yusupov family in St. Petersburg, as well as their significant estates in France, Italy and England. Feliks was educated at Oxford University and established close personal friendship with the members of the upper circles of British society. His long-time personal friend was Oswald Rayner, his classmate at Oxford and also a loyal companion in St. Petersburg, Russia.
In 1914, Feliks Yusupov married Princess Irina Romanova, the niece of Russian emperor Tsar Nicholas II. Their daughter, Irina Yusupova, was born in 1915. At that time, Yusupov became a witness to the damage to the royal Romanov family done by the manipulative Grigory Rasputin. Communist leader Lenin wrote, "monstrous Rasputin is pushing the Tsar's regime to a disaster," thus helping the communist revolution. According to historians, Rasputin was used by a secret group behind the communist revolutionaries, which acted to destroy the Romanov dynasty in order to take power through violence. Rasputin's main handler was a St. Petersburg's underworld drug lord, Dr. Badmayev, who controlled Rasputin through his drug addiction and instructed Rasputin about his political moves. Rasputin often stayed overnight after having a fix at Badmayev's home in St. Petersburg. At the same time, Rasputin's hypnotic influence over the Empress Alexandra and the Crown Prince Alexey grew strong, allowing him to make political, ecclesiastical and military appointments for those who served his interests. Rasputin created public scandals and rumors about sexual and alcoholic excesses, and designed crafty entrapments for many members of the Russian political establishment to be caught in orgies for immediate blackmail and exploitation. He polarized the society by using his political influence in securing the appointments and dismissals of several military commanders and government ministers during the First World War. Rasputin's abuse of power and his notorious debauchery was used by the communist propaganda to depict Rasputin with the Empress Alexandra in pornographic comics, drawings, and provocative publications as part of a massive negative publicity campaign against the House of Romanovs and the Russian monarchy. In the communist propaganda, Rasputin was shown as a peasant who turned the Russian Tsar into a wimp, placing the country in bad hands and suggesting that "proletarians must join with peasants to overthrow the monarchy and take power." So declared the communist leader Lenin, who in turn was secretly financed by the German military.
In 1916, the most difficult time during the First World War, brothers of Tsar Nicholas II obtained evidence that Rasputin was secretly negotiating a treaty with Germany while Russia's position in the war was not good. Rasputin said on record that "too many peasants died because of the war," indicating his will to settle "peace at any cost," which was also in line with the communist propaganda, which in turn, helped the German Armies. After deserting the Russian Army, many thousands of armed peasants came to St. Petersburg and joined the communist revolutionary brigades. Rasputin's secret contacts with the Germans became a political scandal. Tsar's cousin, Grand Prince Nicholas, announced that he wanted to hang Rasputin for treachery as a spy in German employ, but Rasputin was under the protection of the Empress Tsarina Alexandra, who herself was German. That led to a plot by a group of aristocrats to assassinate Rasputin.
In November of 1916, Prince Feliks pretended that he had chest pains and became a patient of Rasputin, who also posed as a healer. After a few visits Prince Feliks befriended Rasputin and presented him with a picture of his wife, beautiful Princess Irene Yusupov. Rasputin immediately became horny and expressed his desire to meet the beauty. Then Prince Yusupov and his fellow officers worked out a plan which centered on using the beautiful Princess Irina Yusupov as a bait. On December 29, 1916, Prince Feliks personally invited Rasputin to dinner and drove him to his Moika Palace in St. Petersburg. There, Rasputin waited for the appearance of the Princess Irina Yusupov who never showed up. While waiting, Rasputin was plied with wine and food that had been laced with cyanide. The plotters were oblivious to the fact of chemistry that cyanide is often neutralized by some food and turns into a harmless salt. Rasputin also had a condition with hyper-acidity and post-surgical stomach problems, which caused his system to minimize intake of food and liquor. When the poison made no apparent effect on Rasputin, Prince Feliks fired a shot with his gun, but Rasputin's life was saved by the hard metal button on his coat which reflected the bullet. He was wounded but still attempted to escape from the palace. Prince Feliks and Count Vladimir Purishkevich together with their friend, British intelligence officer Oswald Rayner, pulled out their guns and fired, but Rasputin remained alive and tried to move away, so they clubbed him into submission. In the early morning of December 30, 1916, members of the plot wrapped Rasputin and held him under the icy waters of the Neva River until he finally drowned.
Rasputin's daughter, Matrena Solovyova-Rasputina, and her husband, Boris Solovyov, who had secretly collaborated with the Communist regime, took money and jewelery from Tsarina Alexandra in exchange for a promise of assist the Tsar Nicholas II and his family to escape from the Communist regime. They betrayed the Tsar and his family, leaving them to be killed by the communists, while they themselves escaped to France.
In 1917, the Yusupov family was under arrest but managed to escape from St. Petersburg to Yalta in the Crimea. There the Yusupovs boarded a British warship which took them to Malta. Next they traveled through Italy to Paris and then to London where they lived for two years. In 1920, the Yusupovs moved to Paris and bought a home in the upscale neighborhood of Boulogne-sur-Seine, which became their permanent residence for the rest of their lives.
In 1927, Prince Feliks published a book of memoirs about the plot and assassination of Rasputin. Prince Feliks compared Rasputin's cynical and manipulative treatment of the Tsar's family to the Communist Party's similar methods of control over the innocent people of Russia. Rasputin's daughter, Matrena, read the memoirs of Prince Feliks, and filed several unsuccessful lawsuits against him.
In 1932, Prince Feliks Yusupov and his wife Irina had successfully sued the Hollywood film studio MGM for invasion of privacy and libel in connection with the character based on Felix's wife Irina, who was portrayed as having been raped by Grigory Rasputin. The Yusupovs were awarded 25,000 British Pounds damages by the English court, setting a legal precedent. Their case led to introduction of a disclaimer at the end of every American film, "The preceding was a work of fiction, etc.," as a result of the legal precedent set by the Yusupov case.
In 1942, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin appointed former friend of Rasputin, the notorious St. Petersburg Bishop Sergiy, to be the Patriarch of Orthodox Christianity in the Soviet Union. At the same time, some sectarian monks considered beginning the process of canonization of Rasputin as a martyr and saint who was assassinated by the family of the "evil" Tsar. Meanwhile, Prince Feliks lived in exile in France and England, and also stayed in the United States during the Second World War. He returned to Paris after the war, and lived in his home in Boulogne-sur-Seine. Prince Feliks Yusupov died on September 27, 1967 in Paris, and was laid to rest in the Russian cemetery at St. Genevieve-des-Bois.
The Yusupov Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia, is now a public museum. It shows a historic reproduction of the original scene of Rasputin's assassination in the same rooms where the events took place in 1916. The museum has numerous items previously owned by the Yusupovs, the Romanovs, and other important figures in Russian history.
