What Happens to a Writer Who Takes a Long Bike Ride and Finds a Russian Jewelry Box
- Kathryn van der Pol
- Jun 15
- 16 min read
On June 3, Sybren and I celebrated 47 years of marriage, and on June 2 we made a discovery: June 3 is World Bicycle Day. As long as we have been married, we never knew that. But then again, the holiday didn’t exist in 1977.[i]
Now one of our favorite past times is riding a bicycle. Life is full of pleasant surprises, and discovering this connection was one of them.
Three weeks ago, we were in Clifton, Texas on a bike ride named the Tour de Norway (Clifton was settled by Norwegians). The Tour de Norway is part of the Texas “European Tour” of rides in Muenster, Italy, Paris, and Clifton, and I discovered something there that I want to share with you today.
But first I want to tell you something that you need to know that will seem out of place for now.
Vladimir Putin persecutes Christians.
A new documentary was released last month titled, A Faith Under Siege. Produced by Americans and Ukrainians, it is directed by a Ukrainian award-winning film director, Yaroslav Lodigan. The movie is set in Ukraine and reveals firsthand stories of Ukrainians who have had their churches bombed and destroyed; and interviews their parishioners, deacons, pastors, and families of murdered pastors.[ii]
They were all Protestants, Catholics and Ukrainian Orthodox.
The estimate is that the Russians have destroyed more than 600 churches.
Today, in all the Russian-occupied territory of Ukraine there is not one Protestant Church standing. [iii]
It was traveling from this bike ride that I learned about this movie. We were driving away from the Clifton bike ride and listening to The Blaze radio program, and we heard an ad for the movie. We looked it up and watched the film a few days later. We were so impressed that we wrote the managers for permission to show it at our event center. So, on July 10 at both 2 PM and 5:30 PM we will show on the big screen A Faith Under Siege. It is just over an hour. Please tell your friends and plan to attend. The movie is neither gruesome nor violent but carefully documents this untold tragic story that every caring person, especially Christian, needs to know.
After we finished our bike ride in Clifton, we drove to an old classic car museum, owned by a doctor who opens it only on Saturdays. He loves Cadillacs and has a beautiful collection of 35 pristine automobiles including Thunderbirds (my favorite), but that’s not what caught my eye. In a long narrow room off to the side, he had an eclectic art collection.
Among his pieces were dozens of religious paintings from Mexico and Spain dating back to the 1700s; Aztec statuary that was even older; four unfinished drawings by Degas, and an inlaid jewelry box owned by a Russian royal family.
The description card read that the jewelry box belonged to the Romanov Princess Irina, the wife of Felix Yusupov, a wealthy nobleman and ringleader who assassinated Rasputin.
What is a jewelry box of the wealthiest family in Russia doing in a car museum in Clifton, Texas?
I had to ask.
Here’s what I learned.
Dr. Watson is an internist out of Dallas. He was adopted as an infant, and his adopted parents brought him to Clifton. They also owned a summer home in Cuernavaca, Mexico so he developed a love for both communities. His routine of spending summers in Cuernavaca continued into adulthood.
On one visit to Cuernavaca, a friend told him to look up Victor Contreras, an internationally acclaimed Mexican sculptor who lived nearby. They became best friends. Over time, Victor introduced him to local art dealers and helped Dr. Watson build his art collection of Mexican and Spanish religious art. Dr. Watson’s adopted mother bequeathed the building in Clifton that became the ideal spot for his car and art collections.
So, how did Dr. Watson acquire the jewelry box from the Yusupovs, you ask?
Victor gave it to Dr. Watson at the end of his life and shared with him an amazing story.
Some information I acquired from additional reading which is noted at the end.
When Victor was a teenager, he knew he wanted to be an artist. He ran away from home, lying about his age in order to get into a New York City art school. Later, he traveled to Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris to continue his studies. He was only 17. There he met a charming young lady who invited him to have lunch with her grandparents. Those grandparents turned out to be the exiled Russian Prince Felix Yusupov and his wife Princess Irina Romanov. Victor and Felix instantly became friends. The Yusupovs invited the budding artist to live with them in their 3-bedroom Parisian apartment, and there he lived for five years while he studied art. Felix called Victor “the son who fell to us from Heaven.” [iv]
Victor became so close to the Yusupovs that when Felix died, Felix bequeathed his papers to him, including his diaries that described the plot to murder Rasputin. His wife Irina gave Victor the jewelry box. Felix Yusupov died in 1967, and his wife died three years later of a broken heart.
Victor died in 2024 while creating a museum of Yusupov’s papers and artifacts.
So, now you know the story of the Russian jewelry box in a classic car museum in Clifton, Texas.
What became of the museum and those valuable papers is a question that Dr. Watson could not answer, and I could not track down in my research. That is a mystery to be solved in another day.
But do you know the story of Rasputin? This connects back to the current day in a strange historical parallel.
Grigori Rasputin, known as the “mad monk” gained extraordinary influence over Czar Nicholas II and his wife Czarina Alexandra because of his perceived spiritual abilities to heal their hemophiliac son, Alexei. Born as a peasant who claimed to have divine visions, he became a monk in the Russian Orthodox church, while also practicing highly immoral occultic rites.
Over time, the Czar and Czarina came to rely on Rasputin’s advice for political appointments and policies, resulting in public scandals and igniting court intrigue against the Romanovs. The “mad monk’s” influence on the Romanovs caused tremendous concern among the Russian nobility and the government Duma. That, coupled with Nicholas’s poor handling of the Russian army against the Germans in WWI and his unpopular wife who was German-born made the whole family increasingly disliked. Their unpopularity was kindling for the Bolshevik revolution of 1917.
It was all so very tragic.
Czarina Alexandra was a shy intelligent very devout woman. She was the favorite granddaughter of Queen Victoria who raised her for a time after her parents died. She spoke several languages fluently, including Russian. She and Nicholas had four daughters and one son. The Bolsheviks would execute all of them in July of 1918.
Felix Yusupov believed that Rasputin’s evil influence on the family, his immoral drunken conduct was destroying the Romanov dynasty, thus destabilizing the government. It seemed to Felix that Rasputin had cast a spell upon the Czarina Alexandra. She was so concerned about her son’s well-being because of his hemophilia that she was blind to the resentment that Rasputin was creating in her court and in the government.
Felix was also aware of the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary activities and thought if he did not kill Rasputin, the Romanovs would be overthrown and there would be a revolution in Russia. He believed he had a duty to save the monarch from Rasputin’s corrupting influence.
At that time, Prince Felix controlled over 640,000 acres and had 40,000 peasants working his lands. Outside of the Czar, he was the wealthiest man in Russia.[v]
Felix was right about the Bolsheviks. He did indeed lose his lands and palaces in the Bolshevik revolution, but he and his wife survived execution because they had already been exiled for the murder of Rasputin. To support his family, he had smuggled two Rembrandt paintings and valuable jewels that he used as collateral.
As for murdering Rasputin, Felix told Victor his only regret was that he didn’t murder Rasputin sooner. He and a small group of nobles and army officers devised a plan that went wildly awry.
On December 30th of 1916, Felix invited Rasputin to see his newly renovated Moika palace. They took him to a downstairs room where they served Rasputin wine and cupcakes, loaded with enough cyanide to kill four adult men. There was just one problem: Rasputin didn’t die. He seemed unaffected.
So, Felix and the others beat Rasputin and shot him four times. They then bound his hands and feet and tossed his body in the icy Neva river. Some days later, Rasputin’s body surfaced. His arms were no longer bound and were extended as if he had tried to claw his way out from under the ice.
Felix told Victor that Rasputin held demonic power. The first time Felix met Rasputin, he said that Rasputin’s powerful gaze pushed Felix to the ground. Then Felix looked up and stared intently at Rasputin, causing him to step backwards. Astonished, Rasputin said, “Felix, together we can own the world.”
Victor described Felix as the “antidote to Rasputin.” Victor said he was a good man, a devout man in his mature years and who loved to visit the sick. Victor recalled he accompanied Felix on many visits to pray with sick friends and watched how Felix encouraged them and did spiritual healing through prayers. He told the Moscow Times in a 2007 interview, “The same powers that Rasputin had, Felix had in good. Felix vanquished him.”[vi]
Rasputin’s mysterious hold on the Czar and Czarina has been compared to a living Russian “philosopher” also known to be immersed in the occult. This modern-day mystic/philosopher has even mimicked Rasputin’s unkempt scraggly beard. Like Rasputin before him, this man is said to hold undue influence on Russia’s Vladimir Putin. His power over the leader has been so noticeable that observers joke he is Putin’s Rasputin or Putin’s Brain. This man is Aleksandr Dugin. Last year, there was an unsuccessful assassination attempt on his life. His car was blown up, but his daughter, Darya not he, was killed.
Dugin’s seminal work, Foundations of Geopolitics (1997), proposes war against America and the western powers as Russia’s revenge for the Cold War. Dugin wrote, “The American Empire should be destroyed, and at one point it will be.”
His political philosophy is called Eurasianism. He advocates for an empire led by Russia that is influenced neither by western thought (think the Enlightenment), nor Asian oriental beliefs, but relies on Russian power and greatness, with hints harking to Soviet era mindset. This is consistent with Putin’s statement in April of 2005 when he said, “The collapse of the Soviet Union was the major geopolitical disaster of the century.” [vii]
Ukraine is not a real country so Dugin writes and proclaims it should be absorbed into Russia, a thought that Putin has been attempting to make reality for eight years, starting with Russia’s annexation of Crimea and most horribly since the 2022 full-on military invasion of Ukraine. In his recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Putin spent much of the hour lecturing Tucker on the history of Russia and Ukraine’s lack of true nationhood, i.e., parroting Dugin.
Dugin advocates military conquest to return Russia to its rightful position in the world. The invasion of Ukraine is only a first step. The Baltic states, Poland, and Germany and eventually all the western European countries including Portugal belong to Russia in both Dugin’s and Putin’s view.
Copying old Soviet dictates, Dugin believes in NATO’s collapse. Every time Trump says we are getting out of NATO unless NATO pays up, it makes Dugin and Putin happy.
How could this Russian philosopher and the leader of Russia think like this?
This taking-over-the-world-business is an old Soviet theme which has been caricatured in American cartoons, especially in shows that I remember as child from the 1960s.
Do you remember Boris Bad-enov in the old Bulwinkle cartoons? He was the Russian spy plotting to take over the world.
Or recall Agent 86 in the TV comedy Get Smart. Agent 86 represented the good guys, i.e., Control (USA) fighting the bad guys, i.e., Khaos (Russia).
What about Pinky and the Brain? Pinky asks, “What are we going to do today, Brain?”
“We are going to take over the world, Pinky.”
So, apparently the Russian revolution is not over just yet. Whatever name it uses, the goal is unchanged. Just look at who Russia’s closest allies are Iran, Cuba, China, N. Korea, all except for Iran are Communist countries.
Last week, J.R. Nyquist, an expert Geopolitical strategist on Russia and China, whom I have interviewed in the past and shared on my website reported that the group of Orthodox bishops have issued a statement warning the world about Russia. The group called the Synod of Russian Orthodox Bishops outside Russia (ROCOR), Nyquist writes have hinted “that communism is returning to Russia.”[viii]
The Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia finds it necessary to raise its voice out of bitter necessity, for we find that in a time of crisis and growing confrontation amongst nations, aspects of the Russian state and society are wandering onto an extremely dangerous path: instead of the promulgation of Christian repentance and purification, we observe in certain circles a return to a false, God-opposing ideology that prevailed in the last century. This return is fraught with harmful consequences. Should it continue, we fear that modern Russia risks being considered a dark stain amongst the nations, marked by a revival of spiritual corruption, instead of her being a radiant beacon of Orthodox Truth, which is surely the calling to which her long history of Christian piety directs her.
But did you say, “What about Putin? I’ve heard that he is a Christian. He wears the cross.” Let’s put aside his orders to destroy more than 600 churches in Ukraine and examine this question more closely.
To do that, let’s return to Felix.
Felix Yusupov understood better than most of us just what the Bolshevik revolution meant. Not only was it the end of private property, but it was the end of the church, the Russian Orthodox church. For one of the first things that happened after the Bolshevik revolution was a brutal attack on the Church from which it never recovered.
Lenin, although raised in a Christian home, in a loving home, had become an atheist[x]. He viewed the ROC as a pillar of Czarist Russia. Once in power, he stripped the church of funding and its legal status, confiscating buildings and church lands, often destroying them, or converting them into secular institutions. By the late 1930s, an estimated 100,000 clergy were killed or imprisoned, and tens of thousands of churches were shuttered, demolished, or repurposed.
Stalin continued these purges until 1943 when his alliance with the West pressured him to make a “show” of allowing the ROC to elect a Patriarch named Metropolitan Sergius, but the church had been coopted by the government and infiltrated by Russian intelligence and so it remains today.
The current leader of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) is Vladimir Gundyayev, better known as Patriarch Kirill. His office is called the Patriarchate of Moscow. Kirill gained an international reputation when he was the ROC representative of the World Council of Churches in the 1970s.
Declassified Soviet archives reveal Kirill worked with the KGB under the nickname Mikhailov, claims backed by priest Gleb Yakunin and historian Felix Corley.[xi] Kirill is close to Vladimir Putin and has called his leadership a “miracle of God” (2012). He supports Aleksandr Dugin’s Eurasianism philosophy and has promoted “Russkly Mir” ideology which means it’s a “Russian World.”
Today, the ROC receives state funding and endorses Kremlin policies. Kirill’s mildest critics say that he has turned the ROC into a “state church” prioritizing politics over pastoral care. He is known for militant rhetoric calling the war in Ukraine a “metaphysical struggle” against western Satanism.[xii]
So much for the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church.
In 2023, a Levada Center survey reported that only 5% of Russians attended church services on Orthodox Easter Sunday, although 72% self-identify as Orthodox. Over 40% of those who identify as Orthodox never attend church. I included a graph in the endnotes that documents this. It paints a definitive picture. [xiii]It means hardly anyone is going to church in Russia. Given that Russia’s entire population is only 146 million, only 4 million are going to church on the holiest day of the year. Why so few? That’s a good question.
Nor does Russia tolerate other western religions. By law, many churches and religious groups are banned or restricted under the pretext of preventing “extremism” and national security.
While the Russian Constitution protects freedom of religion in theory, the reality is different. In 1997, an ironically named “Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations”, and another in 2016 called the Yaronaya Law were enacted. These laws actually restrict or ban certain groups, especially Protestants.[xiv]
Just a reminder though. The Protestants in Ukraine have it much worse. They are killed without trial as they are considered war criminals or spies, especially Baptists.
The Russians also ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. This church formed in 2016 as a reaction to the Russian takeover of Crimea in 2014 and the Maidan revolution. The Ukrainians wanted to purge their church of Moscow intelligence agents and free themselves of the control of Moscow and Patriarch Kirill. Today, 97% of the Orthodox Ukrainians no longer recognize the Patriarch of Moscow. Instead, they consider the Patriarch of Kiev as the head of their Church. Only 2-3% of Orthodox Ukrainians still acknowledge the Patriarch in Moscow.
It is these churches that have made the main stream news in a bad way for Ukraine. In the last couple of years, the Ukrainian government has arrested some church leaders loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate charging that they gave to the Russian army military information about the whereabouts of Ukrainian troops. The Kiev government has declared that these Moscow-aligned churches no longer act lawfully within Ukraine, but they have not bombed and destroyed their buildings; they have not murdered their congregants, deacons, or killed their pastors, but they have put them on trial for undermining Ukraine’s defense.
So, when you hear that Zelensky has banned the Orthodox church in Russia, remember that’s Putin’s or Dugin’s talking point, not the truth. The truth is that Putin persecutes Christians. Furthermore, the Communists corrupted and infiltrated the Russian Orthodox Church. It remains a tool of Russian intelligence and is headed by a former KGB agent.
To sum up this long essay--almost like a long bike ride.
At the end of Felix’s life, he said to Victor that life had been better in France than in Russia. In Russia, although he was the richest man in the country, he never knew whom he could trust, but in France even though he was in exile and had lost his fortune, he had true and great friends.
Jesus’s great commandment is for us to love the Lord and love our neighbor. In John 15:13, he writes, "Greater love has no man than this: than a man lay down his life for his friends." While the men in my story did not have to pay this sacrifice, they all were servants to the Lord and loved their neighbor.
All the men I have told you about: Dr. Terry Watson, Victor Contreras and Felix Yusupov were men of faith. They believed that Jesus Christ died so that we may live. They have lived their lives in ways to find the true and the beautiful, do the good and to fight against evil.
When I think about this jewelry box, I picture Princess Irina, grasping to preserve a small token of her old life. I think of Felix’s determination to save the Russian monarchy and preserve his family. I see Victor carefully curating the history of his dear friend’s family, and I see Dr. Watson who wants to share his passion and history with the public in a small Texas town.
In researching this story, I learned of many more people who suffered and died to stop Russian oppression. Those stories will have to wait for another bike ride, but I hope you see what’s happening.
God help us. If only all people would adhere to Christ’s commandment to love thy Neighbor.
Please pray for all Christians who are being persecuted, especially those in Ukraine. Pray for the Lord to soften Vladimir Putin’s heart. Pray for our country and Ukraine. Let us not turn our backs on our friends.
So, please come and tell your friends about A Faith Under Siege on July 10 showing at both 2 PM and 5:30 PM. Write me your comments or questions and RSVP for the movie to Kathryn@TexasHeritage.net. Admission is free.
Endnotes
[i] According to Wikipedia, “In April 2018, the United Nations General Assembly declared June 3 as World Bicycle Day.[1][2] The resolution for World Bicycle Day recognizes "the uniqueness, longevity and versatility of the bicycle, which has been in use for two centuries, and that it is a simple, affordable, reliable, clean and environmentally fit sustainable means of transport."
[iii] chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://missioneurasia.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2025-Mission-Eurasia-report-on-Ukraine-ENG.pdf
[x] Payne, Robert. The Life and Death of Lenin, Simon & Schuster, 1964, pp 53- 57. In these pages, Payne describes Vladimir Ilyich’s idyllic childhood.
On page 528, Payne writes, “As a confirmed atheist, he was dedicated to the destruction of the entire priesthood and of all religious worship, regarded Christ with undisguised hatred, saying that “during all the years of his so-called worship he has been the tool of the oppressors.”
Page 628 also discusses his atheistic views. “Lenin was perfectly prepared to regard men as statistics or as trends; he was equally prepared to regard them as obstacles standing in the path of his scientific dictatorship, and he had no compunction in destroying whole classes in order to vindicate the laws of science. The aristocracy, the bourgeois, the peasantry, and the Orthodox priests, all these must be destroyed in order that the dictatorship of the proletariat might be established.”
[xi] https://www.euronews.com/2023/02/06/patriarch-kirill-worked-for-the-kgb-in-the-1970s-swiss-media-reports
[xiv] Pentecostals, Baptists, and Other Protestants: These groups face restrictions under the Yaronaya Law, which prohibits “illegal missionary activities” outside registered sites. For example, a Baptist pastor, Yury Komiyenko, was charged in 2019 for unauthorized missionary work. It also tightened restrictions on missionary work, banning preaching, or sharing faith outside designated religious sites, affecting groups like evangelicals and house churches. Violators face fines or imprisonment.
In 2020, amendments required clergy trained abroad to undergo re-certification in Russia yet there are no religious schools for Protestants or Catholic communities to attend. Same with Buddhist priests.
In Russian law, the term “extremist” is vaguely defined, allowing authorities to target groups arbitrarily. This has led to increased prosecutions, especially against Muslims and Christians not aligned with the ROC.
Since the 2014 annexation of Crimea, Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the UOC has faced persecution, including property confiscation, as it is not aligned with the Russian Orthodox Church,
Religious persecution has intensified since 2010, with the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) designating Russia a “country of particular concern” since 2017 for systematic violations.
Outright banned religious groups:
The following groups face outright bans or exist under severe restrictions according to GROK AI:
1. Falun Gong
2. Certain Islamic Groups:
Hizb ut-Tahir: Banned as a “terrorist” organization. Members face prosecution for alleged extremist activities, despite the group’s non-violent stance in many contexts.
Tablighi Jamaat: Also banned as an extremist group, with members prosecuted for organizing religious activities outside state-sanctioned structures.
Followers of Said Nursi: This Muslim theological movement has been targeted, with followers facing fines, detentions, and criminal charges for “distributing extremist” materials.
Crimean Tatar Mejlls: After Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, this Islamic group was banned as an extremist group, with members facing imprisonment on charges of terrorism or extremism.
3. Jehovah’s Witnesses:
Status: Banned since 2017
Reason: The Russian Supreme Court labeled Jehovah’s Witnesses an “extremist organization,” citing their literature and activities as threats to public order. This led to the seizure of their properties and criminal persecutions.
Impact: Since the ban, over 550 believers have faced criminal cases, with 70 imprisoned, 31 under house arrest, and 1,594 homes raided as of late 2021. Dennis Christensen, a Danish Jehovah’s Witness, was the first to be tried and sentenced to 6.5 years in 2019 for “extremist” activities.
4. Satanic Temple:
5. Church of Scientology
6. Indigenous and Pagan Groups
