I know what yusupov did last summer

Or, an introduction to Prince Felix Yusupov, my favorite 20th-century Russian chaos disaster.

Hello, friends!

I don’t know how we’ve made it to the end of 2023. This year has been a whirlwind for me, specifically the whirlwind that showed up in the middle of the Book of Job and yelled “you dumb piece of shit here’s one more thing that can go wrong, also I’m taking your goats.” But one of the best parts of it has been hanging out with you all twice a month to talk smack about the past. Thank you for being here! This whole project has been a joy because of you.

This week’s dirtbag is sort of a companion piece to the third-ever essay I wrote for this newsletter, which was before I’d quite hit my stride and also so long ago virtually none of you were here for it. But that’s OK, because it was the story of Rasputin, and I bet 80% of you are at least tangentially familiar. (If you want to refresh your memory, follow that link. I’ll hang out.)

Today, I want to tell the story of my favorite side character in the whole Rasputin saga. An absolute disaster of a man who realistically is the worst but for whom I have a problematic soft spot in my heart:

Felix Yusupov, A Very Fancy Man Who Could Have Been the Christian Siriano of the 1910s If He Minded His Business

this man is so goddamn extra, I have no choice but to stan

If you’ve (shameless plug) read my new book Let the Dead Bury the Dead, you might be like “hm. A Russian man named Felix. Odd coincidence.” Now is when I cop to the fact that my character Felix Komarov is very loosely inspired by Felix Yusupov, insofar as I read the story of Yusupov and said “OK, you had me at well-dressed, easily manipulated chaos bisexual Russian nobleman in his late 20s who does not understand that actions have consequences.” There’ll be an extra irony to this fact later, but for now let’s tell the story.

Felix Yusupov was born in Saint Petersburg in 1887 as the second son in an extremely rich, famous, and Old Money Russian family. His ancient ancestors rode with Tamerlane, the Mongol conqueror who created an empire that spanned an absurd amount of Asia. I encourage you to bear this in mind as this story unfolds.

Felix’s father’s name was also Felix, which according to Eastern Slavic naming conventions means his actual name is Felix Felixovich. I bring this up only so I can include this image:

Truth, Beauty, Freedom, Gay Chaos

Now, when I say the Yusupovs were rich, I don’t mean your average everyday rich. I mean Twilight of the Romanov Dynasty Rich. This family had more estates and palaces than I have coffee mugs. They somehow owned a full set of Marie Antoinette’s old furniture. Felix’s dad bought Felix’s mom a mountain for her birthday. They were the kind of people revolutions happen because of.

I think the reason I love Felix Yusupov despite my better judgment is because he looked around, saw how much money and power his family had, and said “You know what I want to do with this? I wanna fucking party.”

He was the second son—his older brother Nikolai was the handsome responsible soldier who was going to carry the family name forward. Nobody cared about Felix, and that was just how Felix liked it. Politics? Fuck that. Felix’s idea of a good time was dressing up in his mother’s jewels and pretending to be the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. He conducted operas in empty theaters and said he could hear ghosts singing. He claimed to have lost his virginity at age 12 in a threesome with an Argentinean man and his mistress, and I do not even remotely care if this is true, because the fact that he claimed it says enough.

live footage of Prince Yusupov writing his memoirs

Historians make much of one of Yusupov’s other pastimes, which was to dress as a woman and work clubs as a cabaret singer—apparently quite successfully, until his parents found out and shut it down. I would love to read a queer history of Felix Yusupov that actually explores the trans potentials in this narrative, and if you know of one, drop it in the comments.

A Surprise Cameo by a Compulsive Liar

Unfortunately for Felix, the thing that always seems to happen to second sons in these stories happened: his brother Nikolai died in a duel in 1908, and all of a sudden he was the important son people were paying attention to. (Man, Russians really did be duelin’, didn’t they.)

In 1914, Felix was married shortly after to Irina Alexandrovna, the tsar’s niece. This was probably to put an end to all the rumors swirling about his messy queer antics. It was a happier marriage than you might expect. Irina was hot as shit, had incredible fashion sense, and as far as I can tell was basically like “you can have as many affairs as you want provided I have access to your cartoonish amounts of money,” so Felix was like “yeah no I can work with this.” Felix and Irina had a baby, also named Irina, because this was not a family that enjoyed thinking up new names.

I would give anything to attend a party with Felix and Irina. you can practically hear the snotty remarks they’re making about the Countess of Whateverthefuck’s new hairstyle just out of shot.

By 1915, World War I is in full swing. It will surprise you exactly zero percent to learn that Felix Yusupov talked his way out of serving in the army by hiding behind his piles of money. Instead, he passed the time by taking the “how Allison spent the COVID-19 pandemic” approach: getting extremely into batshit spiritualist movements.

One spiritualist movement in particular—theosophy.

Longtime readers of this newsletter will have just gasped along with me. “Theosophy!” you exclaim. “Not the absolutely incomprehensible movement invented by Dirtbag and Compulsive Liar Helena Blavatsky and her Racist Imaginary Friend we talked about last year?”

In fact, the very same!

seeing her name pop up in my research sources was like running into a high school friend at the grocery store. “Oh my god hi!! What are you doing here??”

I’ve been writing this newsletter for three years and somehow this is the first time one of my dirtbags has joined the cult of another one of my dirtbags. I’m so delighted. I choose to imagine Felix Yusupov spent the entirety of World War I laying on the ground in the drawing room trying to levitate the couch with the power of his mind.

Rasputin’ On the Ritz

The fun thing about spiritualist movements is that, much like Pokemon, once you start, you gotta catch ‘em all. Which is how we end up with Felix Yusupov hanging out with everyone’s favorite Siberian Mind Wizard, Grigori Rasputin.

rasputin: “I do not trust this fancy little man.” me: babe you shouldn’t

Felix’s dead brother’s ex-girlfriend highly recommended Rasputin’s mystic powers of hypnosis, so the two of them stopped by Rasputin’s house in Saint Petersburg to give them a try.

The meeting was a colossal flop, by all accounts. This was probably part because Religious Fanatic Grigori Rasputin kept trying to queer-shame RuPaul’s Drag Race Contestant Felix Yusupov, part because Rasputin was a weirdo from the countryside who allegedly smelled real weird and Felix Yusupov was a judgy little aristocratic bitch. Long story short, they were not friends, and Felix started spreading nasty rumors about Rasputin all around town.

Rasputin continued to try to win Felix over for a while, even though Felix would rather have cut off his own leg than be friends with him. If you ask me, it’s because the only person who was a crazier partier than Felix Yusupov was Rasputin himself, and if these these two wackadoos had ever gone to the club together they would have burned the city down. Historians, perhaps unsurprisingly, have not asked me.

(Usually I’d include a dumb image here, but the visual joke I need this time is a 14-second video, so here you go.)

Let’s Give ‘Em Somethin’ to Wonka Bout

World War I continued on, and morale in Saint Petersburg was in the toilet. Rumors were spreading all over the place now that Rasputin was having an affair with Empress Alexandra, with some arguing that the two of them were trying to manipulate the tsar into losing the war on purpose so Germany could come take over.

So Felix Yusupov, at this point a 29-year-old dummy with a personal grudge, too much money, and a deadass belief in his own spiritualist mystical powers to warp space, time, and fate, decided that someone had to get rid of Rasputin, for the good of the country. And he decided that person had to be him.

I can’t explain why, but the first analogy that came to me was “this is like if Timothée Chalamet decided he had to assassinate Gwyneth Paltrow.” It’s not. But I had the thought and I felt compelled to share it with you.

look me in the eye and tell me this image doesn’t have Felix Yusupov vibes.

Did Felix Yusupov know anything about assassination? Absolutely not. He sat at home all World War I reading Helena Blavatsky’s Magical Tibetan Adventures Monthly. But did that stop him from getting a group together to launch the worst-planned assassination in all of history? Of course it didn’t. Felix Yusupov decided it was go time, and therefore go time it was.

Felix recruited a truly wild group of other people to join him in the assassination attempt:

• Sergei Sukhotin, a soldier who doesn’t appear to have done a damn thing during the whole shebang

• Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, whom Felix had flirted with shamelessly throughout the early 1910s and when asked to help murder Rasputin literally said “what are the odds, I was just thinking someone should do that!”

• Vasily Maklakov, a deeply anti-Rasputin politician who chickened out at the last minute but gave Felix a dumbbell and said “maybe try beating him to death with this” (true story)

• Felix’s mom, who provided moral support and, presumably, snacks

• Vladimir Purishkevich, an antisemitic right-wing whackjob who would have shot anyone at any time for any reason

• Stanisław Lazovert, a doctor whom I imagine as the apothecary from Shakespeare in Love

this is the most “only for me” joke among lots of “only for me” jokes in this newsletter

It’s So DUMB

Felix spent tons of time prepping for the murder, but not the way you would expect: he spent days decorating the house so it gave off the right Murder Vibes before inviting Rasputin over for dinner.

the murder simply would not have gone as well if there wasn’t that slightly flirtatious porcelain figurine perched just so atop the accent table

Now, it is my non-expert opinion that Felix Yusupov is the worst murderer to ever murder. Briefly, here’s a list of things that went wrong when Yusupov tried to kill Rasputin:

• Felix tried to poison Rasputin, but Dr. Lazovert gave him crushed aspirin instead of cyanide because he didn’t trust Felix not to be a dumbass.

• Terrified that Rasputin was “stronger than poison,” he tried shooting him, but his aim was absolute shit, leading Felix to determine he was “also stronger than bullets.”

• Purischkevich then shot Rasputin in the head and killed him immediately.

• The conspirators dumped the body in the river but did a shit job of it because it was winter in Russia and the river was frozen so of course they found the body.

• The neighbors heard the gunshots, so Felix told them he had to shoot his dog because it had come down with rabies. Presumably the neighbors then asked “you mean…that dog? right there?” So Felix shot his dog. No word on how he explained the second gunshot.

These absolute morons. I swear to God. I’ve never identified so loudly with Benoit Blanc as I do when reading about the murder of Rasputin.

Ol’ Lawsuit Lawsuitovich

Literally two months later, the Russian Revolution of 1917 happened, and Felix and Irina filled their pockets with jewels and Rembrandt paintings and fled to Paris, where they would spend the rest of their lives.

He could have passed the time quietly after this! Could have kept having ragers across Paris and being a queer disaster in peace! Could have gotten into a dick-measuring contest with Hemingway and Fitzgerald, since the timing lines up!

But instead, Yusupov dedicated the next forty-odd years of his life to telling people about that time he killed Rasputin.

He wrote an unhinged memoir about the time he killed Rasputin, titled Rasputin: His Malignant Influence and His Assassination. I’ve read excerpts of this but have never sat down with the whole thing. Maybe when I retire. He also wrote two other memoirs, which were basically just rehashing the first one.

One of Felix’s favorite pastimes while in exile was suing movie studios who dramatized the death of Rasputin, claiming that they were slandering him by not making him and Irina look cool enough. Felix Yusupov and his “I’m the badass who killed Rasputin” lawsuits are literally the reason I have to print this shit in the front of my books:

it’s not coincidental, Felix Yusupov, I was thinking about you specifically the entire time

Felix and Irina also formed a short-lived fashion house that designed women’s clothes, which I think is fantastic. If Felix Yusupov had just been a contestant on Project Runway instead of finding himself in a high-stakes HBO drama I think he would have been much happier.

Felix Yusupov died in 1967 at the age of 80, once again proving that I have no idea how time works because that seems alarmingly recent.

Rest in peace to a real one IMO. He may be a complete loser and a weirdo who was bad at everything he ever did, but he did it with enough flair that I’m obsessed.

All right, that’s all for this time, my friends. I hope the end of your 2023 brings you everything you’re hoping for, even if that’s just a neat bookend on this impossible year. We’ll be back in January.

Until then, be well, and please leave your best “interior design for staging a clandestine assassination” suggestions in the comments because I’m slowly redoing my bedroom and I could use some ideas,

-Allison