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Asya Pereltsvaig received a Ph.D. in Linguistics from McGill University and has taught at Yale University and Stanford University. Her books on language include Languages of the World: An Introduction, 4th edition (2023) and Language Rules! (2026), both published by Cambridge University Press.
With the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute she has been a faculty host for a trip to the Baltic countries and St. Petersburg and has taught courses on Propaganda in Putin’s Russia, The Extraordinary Lives and Achievements of Russian Emigres, Muslims in Russia, the Last 100 Years of Russian Rulers: From Stalin to Putin, and Russia Under the Romanovs.
Her most recent book is Murder in Petrograd published by Historium Press, a novel based on the people and historical forces surrounding the death of Gregori Rasputin in 1916.
Ed Battistella: I really enjoyed reading Murder in Petrograd. What motivated you to write the book?
Asya Pereltsvaig: First of all, thank for inviting me to do this interview.
As for the story behind my decision to write Murder in Petrograd, it can be summarized in one word: serendipity. I’ve been curious about the story of Rasputin’s murder for years, ever since I took ballroom dance classes at the Yusupov’s Moika Palace, where the murder took place. But it was years later, when I was on a train from London to Oxford, that I started to randomly google different facts and names connected to the story and stumbled upon an archival catalog entry for “Personal Papers of Oswald Rayner”, the British spy whose name had come up in connection to Rasputin’s murder. I had read in the Wikipedia that his personal archive was (supposedly!) destroyed around the time of his death, so naturally my interest was piqued. The archive turned out to be… in Oxford! What a coincidence, right?
So as soon as the train pulled into Oxford, I went straight to the archive, to look at these papers. And guess what? I found a treasure trove of letters, diaries, documents, and photographs. Lesson learned? Don’t believe everything you read in the Wikipedia! I went back to that archive several times, as well as to four other archives in the UK. Document by document, the life of this remarkable man, Oswald Rayner, gradually unfolded before me. And the more I learned about him, the more I became convinced that I must tell his story.
EB: What was the research process like? Is the whole story of Rasputin well known in Russian? I just knew a few sketchy things before I read your book.
AP: The murder of Rasputin is a great story that is tailor-made for books and film: the end of an empire, a possible marital infidelity in the royal household, a bloody assassination on a cold December night. But it’s a very strange whodunnit: there’s no shortage of evidence, suspects, and clues. Maybe there’s even too much information — and misinformation. In Russia, Rasputin has been a legend: some depict him as a saint, others as the devil. And the Russians like to blame his death on the British. It’s a political and ideological thing in Russia: to blame bad things on the British. Oswald Rayner’s picture hangs in the exhibition in the Moika Palace that recreates the scene of the murder. But when I started this project, there was precious little about him in various books that detail how Rasputin was murdered and no evidence that Rayner took part in the assassination. So when I set out to investigate what actually happened, I was hoping to prove that the British in general and Oswald Rayner in particular had nothing to do with it. But after years of research, I rather managed to convince myself of the opposite!
Now 110 years have passed since the murder and any physical evidence, including the body of Rasputin himself, has been destroyed. So what I looked for was a better understanding of the “psychology of the murder”, as Hercule Poirot would say. Little details that Agatha Christie’s famed sleuth would pick up on. And I must say, being a linguist helped too: while working with letters and diaries, I was able to find linguistic patterns that might have escaped a non-linguist. For example, I noticed that in his diaries, Oswald Rayner calls Felix Yusupov (the linchpin of the assassination conspiracy!) “Felix”, while everyone else, with the exception of only a couple of closest friends, are mentioned by last name. It’s as good a proof of their close friendship as anything they might explicitly say in their letters.
Matching dates between various documents was another important element of my research: for instance, I found a letter that Felix (who was delayed in London because of an illness) wrote to his wife some years after the murder; in the letter, Felix mentions that Rayner came to visit and entertain him by playing the piano “every day”. That phrase, and the date of the letter, only a week after Rayner returned to England after a two-year absence, caught my attention: instead of going to see his family or his girlfriend up north, Oswald visits Felix at his London flat “every day” — which is very telling, no?
But perhaps the most important thing I did in my research, strangely enough, was verifying everything I read in various sources against real world facts, like where different events took place, what time the sunrise is in Saint Petersburg that time of year, what the weather was like that night, how long it takes to get from one place to another, how much the guns used to shoot Rasputin weigh… That, and imagining the story as a movie, allowed me to see red flags in previous theories of the crime, from first-hand accounts such as Felix Yusupov’s memoirs to secondary literature on the subject. Once I had these questions and inconsistencies clear in my mind, I could start figuring out what really did happen!
EB: Why did you decide to focus on Oswald Rayner?
AP: Of all the historical figures in this story, I find Oswald the most fascinating: “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”, as Winston Churchill would later say about Russia. He was a perfect spy: a man who combined sharp intellect, social charm, and psychological resilience, but most of all, who could blend in and survive in the shadows.
Oswald Rayner’s personality, biography, and his role in Rasputin’s murder remained in the shadows in both primary sources and historical scholarship for over a century. Although his photograph hangs in the exhibit at the Moika Palace in Saint Petersburg, his friend Felix Yusupov mentions him only once in his memoir, and it seems more of a slip of the tongue. Alexandre Spritidovitch, former chief of the Tsar’s personal security detail, in his book about Rasputin and his murder, similarly mentions Oswald Rayner just once, misnaming him “Oscar”; British historian Anthony Beevor’s recent book on Rasputin repeats that error. American historian Douglas Smith dedicates to Rayner merely two and a half pages of his detailed and meticulously-researched 700-page book on Rasputin and his murder. Another British historian, Andrew Cook, gives more details of Rayner’s life; however, many of them are contradicted by documentary evidence that I found. Russian historian Elizaveta Krasnyx, author of Felix Yusupov’s newest biography in Russian, also mentions Oswald Rayner just once, citing Felix’s memoir.
[Spoiler ahead!]
And Oswald Rayner was more than just a perfect spy: he also managed to pull off a perfect murder. He was the one whose shot ended Rasputin’s life and yet he literally got away with murder, his identity and his involvement in the murder remaining secret, at least in his lifetime.
[End of spoiler!]
So, in a way, Oswald Rayner was James Bond, before Ian Flemming created that character. But without flashy cars or gorgeous Bond-girls in tow — although Oswald’s love life has more than one twist too, and I tell that story in the book as well.
EB: How did the killing affect Russia at the time? And how did it affect those involved in the murder?
AP: The murder of Rasputin was MONUMENTAL, both for Russian history and for the men who played a part in it. Years later, a French journalist asked Felix Yusupov if he thought that killing Rasputin had brought on the revolution. To that, Felix replied firmly: “The revolution happened because I didn’t kill him in time to stop it”. Arguably, Rasputin was murdered because the broad public consensus was to scapegoat him for all that went wrong in Russia in the fall of 1916 — and there was a lot going wrong at the time, from the military losses at the front, to the economy on the brink of collapse and long lines snaking in front of bread shops. But with the death of Rasputin, the blame for everything that went wrong shifted onto the shoulders of the Tsar, who, of course, had far more influence over the course of events in Russia than Rasputin ever did. Two months after Rasputin’s murder, the Tsar abdicated, sealing the fate of Russia and of his own family.
As for the murderers, they carried the weight of their crime through life very differently: some kept silent about what they had done, while others — especially, Felix — shouted from the rooftops about what they had done. But one thing for sure: for all of them, that frigid night in December 1916 was the turning point that divided their lives into a “before” and an “after” — and their lives were never the same again. One of the bigger themes I explore in the book is the idea of karma: of fate that sooner or later metes out its punishment, sometimes in ironic ways. For example, one of Rasputin’s killers, whose participation in the murder never came to light in his lifetime, was later put on trial for a crime he didn’t commit and he almost got a death penalty for it.
Although Rasputin’s murder happened over a century ago, many of the themes in this story are still very relevant today. What happens when political power becomes entangled with personal loyalty? Is it okay for governments to justify extraordinary actions in the name of national security? And what happens to an individual who is asked to sacrifice his conscience for what he has been told is the greater good? And alas, evil men who seek sexual power over women, like Rasputin once did, are still among us today. Did you know that Rasputin was literally just three handshakes away from Jeffrey Epstein? Small world!
EB: Much of your earlier work has been in linguistics. How is that type of writing different from writing historical fiction? What was most challenging for you?
AP: It was a very different experience, for sure! For some time, I toyed with the idea of writing a nonfiction biography of Oswald Rayner, but ultimately decided against it. But even as I wrote a work of fiction, I felt very much on the fence between fiction and nonfiction. It was a big challenge for me to make it a work of literature and not a scholarly treatise — with footnotes and all. As a linguist, I’m used to writing only things I know to be true, not things I imagine to be true. So the biggest challenge for me was to let go of the “lifeline” of verifiable facts. But in a way, it was also the most fun part of the project too. In the end, it was like having imaginary friends who could surprise me, bring me joy, or on occasion disappoint me.
EB: I see that you’ve taught courses about Russia for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Do you have plans to write more historical fiction?
AP: Absolutely! I’m currently working on a series of historical detective mysteries set in early 1900s in Saint Petersburg. It sounds a bit esoteric, but it’s actually an intriguing time and place to set detective mysteries in. By that time, social and political upheaval had fractured the Russian Empire, unleashing an unprecedented wave of violent crime. But the criminal police tasked with investigating murders was still in its infancy. In my stories, fictional Chief Superintendent Karl Rosen builds the fledgling criminal police from the ground up, all the while investigating brutal murders in Saint Petersburg — inspired by true crimes of that era. Several real historical figures, including Tsar Nicholas II, his family physician Eugene Botkin (who was later murdered with the tsar and his family), three successive Chiefs of the Imperial secret police, and even future Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, make appearance alongside a cast of fictional characters: Karl Rosen, his sister Alice (an intelligent and well-read woman who at times plays his “Doctor Watson”), police pathologist Vladimir Kozlov, the intrepid young Agent Tarasov, and others. And although these are quintessentially Saint Petersburg stories, I strive to make them accessible and engaging for an English-speaking reader by making references to such stories as Jack the Ripper, Macbeth, and the Murder at the Orient Express!
EB: Where can people get Murder in Petrograd?
AP: The best place is my website: https://asyapereltsvaig.com/
People who buy the book from my webstore can get a personalized inscription, for free, and I ship anywhere in the US. If you live elsewhere, my book is also available everywhere books are sold: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kepler’s, Waterstones (in the UK), and other bookstores.
EB: Thanks for talking with us.
AP: Thank you!
