Count Sergius Witte, the Prime Minister at the time of the 1905 uprising was one of the shrewd political minds behind it. A senior police official named Stephen Beletsky, who for a while was one of the key figures in the band, put Rasputin on the secret payroll of the Okhrana for a salary of 3000 rubles a month — about $800 — and with the Czarina’s authorization assigned an Okhrana general to supervise the starets’ personal bodyguard.
