The Man Who Killed Rasputin: Prince Youssoupov and the Murder That Helped Bring Down the Russian Empire

Drawing on newly revealed documents from the St. Petersburg police files and containing many previously unseen photographs, a suspenseful recreation of the plot to murder Rasputin chronicles the life of Felix Youssoupov, a Russian nobleman who led the murderers.

King (The Last Empress, LJ 6/15/94) has written a nonacademic work whose strength lies not in shocking revelations of how Felix Youssoupov killed Rasputin. Quite the contrary, after the official version is presented in chapter 15, King reports alternate versions in chapter 16. The real strength of this book lies in its portrayal of Youssoupov living without the trappings of wealth and power of prerevolution days, facing the reality of having plotted the deed that helped bring down imperial Russia. King carefully crafts a mosaic of one of the most enigmatic men of the Russian Revolution. The author does not seem to take advantage of, or has not found much information in, the recently opened Soviet archives. Recommended for public libraries.
Harry Willems, Kansas Lib. System, Iola
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The butler didn't do it, the scion of one of Russia's most noble families did it--murder the confidante of the czarina, the notorious Rasputin, that is. Prince Felix Youssoupov was one of the spoiled darlings of prerevolutionary St. Petersburg society, a hedonist who stumbled from one party to another. King's popular biography makes easy, compelling reading, beginning with an account of the strange life of Gregory Rasputin, who, because of his unexplained ability to control the symptoms of the czarevitch's hemophilia, came to exert enormous influence over the czarina. Rasputin grew increasingly unpopular among the high-born in the Russian capital. Enter Prince Felix, who, in his own mind, was rising to the occasion, and, with co-conspirators, hatched an assassination scheme. The effects of the deed and Youssoupov's life after the revolution are fully explored in this book general readers of Russian history will enjoy. Brad Hooper