The latest spying allegations flying out of Moscow from the mouths of the FSB, [the re-branded KGB] are hardly surprising. Friends spy on friends and foes alike. It is all part and parcel of the espionage community.
The British themselves are no strangers to spying on the Russians. I’d imagine the whole thing will have blow over in a week or so. Not that the hi-tech rock story isn’t believable, just that it experts find the whole thing a bit too fishy and convenient. A former KGB officer, now resident in Britain sees it largely as a cobbled together story to discredit non government agencies, mostly Human Rights groups within the former Soviet Union. The truth will emerge, as usual quietly in the fullness of time.
Anyone who has read ‘A Man Called Intrepid’ the story of William Stephenson, the head of Allied intelligence during World War Two will know there is page after page of similar mind boggling antics, too many to list here. I will say however that Iain Fleming, the author of the Bond novels was a member of the network and a lot of his early novels more or less recreate actual incidents. Well to a point.
We know from the famous Soviet spy-ring headed by Philby/Burgess/MacLain that the Russians were certainly up to no good in Britain, but British meddling in Russian affairs is not so well publicised and stretches back over the decades. Recently a growing amount of evidence has emerged to suggest British Intelligence bumped off Rasputin, the mad monk famously described by Boney M as ‘a cat that really was gone!’
The legend of Rasputin’s death in St. Petersburg, 1916, let alone his crazy life of wine, women and God, [in that order], has grown to the extent that it is often difficult to separate fact from fiction. Popular myth has the semi-superhuman Grigory Efimovich Rasputin eating a plateful of cyanide laced cakes without any effect, being shot several times but getting back up all the time like a true Hollywood baddy [think Halloween, although John Carpenter originally meant the movie to be a spoof, but it seems no-one noticed this or the fact that Michael Myers was wearing a spray painted Captain Kirk mask either, but never mind, that’s not important just now]
After beating him up a few times with iron bars the aristocratic plotters chained him up and chucked him in the river. It is then claimed he was still fighting to escape before finally drowning.
All very well, unfortunately it is mostly garbage. It is true the Russian nobles had planned to poison Rasputin. He had become too close to the royal family and appeared to exert a usual influence over the Tsarina, so he had to go. The war wasn’t going too well and any distractions needed to be dealt with, so they invited Johnny Bonkers round for supper.
The plan began to go a little astray when they discovered the Big Yin didn’t like cake. And they didn’t have a plan B. Although he was a ‘man of God’, Rasputin was also quite handy in a punch up and the upper class twits weren’t. The Aristo’s did a lot of tooing and froing upstairs like characters in a bad farce deciding what to do, whilst downstairs Rasputin kept on drinking. Eventually one of them got the bottle up and shot him. Feeling braver another one joined in. Rasputin appeared to be dead, so they dumped him outside.
After a few more glasses of Vodka and a bit of back slapping they set about getting some gear together to chuck him in the river. Looking out the window, Count Whatisnameov turned and said
‘I think we might have a problem.’
Rasputin had only been seriously injured and was trying his best to crawl across the court yard and escape. At this point one of the fellows decided to call the nice fellow from the British Embassy, Oswald Rayner, supposedly an Oxford chum of one of the plotters.
‘Hold on old chap I’ll be right over’
Meanwhile someone went out and shot ‘Russia’s greatest love machine’ again.
By the time our gentleman caller arrived, he appeared to be dead again. So they started to carry him over to the River Neva.
‘Oh yaw dirty bleeders’ moaned Rasputin.
Still not dead. Shot not fatally somewhere else. Probably the shin.
‘Now chaps you really are making a real pig’s ear of this. Let me show you how we do this sort of thing. I say, put the poor blighter down.
Calmly the British agent shot Rasputin between the eyes.
‘I don’t think we’ll be hearing anymore from him. Now do you have anymore of those lovely cakes left?
It seems that whilst investigating the famous monk’s demise, Richard Cullen, previously a high ranking Metropolitan Police Officer, and a trainer of police cadets in forensic detective work in Russia noticed that Rasputin had a bullet hole in his head, not mentioned in any eyewitness account of his death. Furthermore on viewing the photos of the crime scene, still held in the state archives he noticed a blood trail from the house, and then a large gap and another large blood splatter near the gates of the building.
Thinking this quite strange he re-read all the eye witness accounts and noticed, like the good investigator he was that they didn’t tally and they seemed to be hiding something. Accounts mentioned the mysterious appearance of Oswald Rayner, whom he later identified as a British Secret Intelligence Service operative and found evidence buried in British state papers alluding to his removal of ‘dark forces’; the British code name for Rasputin effectively confirming he had applied the coup de grace. Truth isn’t always is stranger than fiction, but it generally is more interesting.
Very interesting - I've often, well now and and then, wondered at Rasputin's constitution. And I understand that Ian Fleming was advised to take up fiction to exorcise his sadistic fantasies more safely than he might, otherwise, have done.
Thanks
Liz'