Secret Lives of the Tsars (37 page)

Because the
staretz
was under constant police surveillance, a dossier grew fat with such tales, all of which were widely disseminated to people who lapped up every salacious detail. “Rasputin’s apartments are the scene of the wildest orgies,” wrote the American ambassador George Marye. “They beggar all description and, from the current accounts of them, which pass freely from mouth to mouth, the storied infamies of the Emperor Tiberius on the Isle of Capri are made to seem modest and tame.”

Perhaps the most infamous of all Rasputin’s exploits (and
the one that led to Dzhunkovsky’s downfall) occurred in the spring of 1915, when the
staretz
traveled to Moscow, ostensibly to pray at the tombs of the patriarchs in the Kremlin. But there was much more fun to be had than that. “I was at Yar, the most luxurious night haunt of Moscow, with some English visitors,” reported Robert Bruce Lockhart. “As we watched the musical performance in the main hall, there was a violent fracas in one of the private rooms. Wild shrieks of a woman, a man’s curses, broken glass and the banging of doors. Headwaiters rushed upstairs. The manager sent for the police.… But the row and roaring continued.… The cause of the disturbance was Rasputin—drunk and lecherous, and neither police nor management dared evict him.”

Outrageous as the story was, Lockhart only told half of it. When the police arrived, Rasputin dropped his trousers and began waving his genitals in the faces of other diners. And that, he declared, was just how he behaved in front of the tsar. As for Alexandra, he bragged that he could do anything he liked with “the old girl.” Finally the drunken
staretz
was dragged away, “snarling and vowing vengeance.”

Needless to say, Nicholas was not pleased when he read Dzhunkovsky’s report of the incident, and angrily confronted Rasputin. The wily peasant meekly admitted to some details, like his drunkenness, claiming he had been led astray. As for the other, far more serious charges, he simply denied them. Still, the emperor ordered him back to Siberia for a spell. Alexandra, too, was furious about the report, but not because of her mentor’s behavior, which she either did not believe or conveniently chose to ignore. Rather, she was incensed that Dzhunkovsky had shared the devastating information—not only with Nicholas, but others as well.

“My enemy Dzhunkovsky … has shown that vile, filthy
paper to [Grand Duke] Dmitri,” the empress wrote to her husband. “If we let Our Friend be persecuted we and our country shall suffer for it.… I am so weary, such heartaches and pain from all this—the idea of dirt being spread about one we venerate is more than terrible. Ah, my love, when at
last
will you thump your hand upon the table and scream at Dzhunkovsky and others when they act wrongly—one does not fear you—and one
must
—they must be frightened of you, otherwise all sit upon us.”

Rasputin eventually got his revenge on the police chief who reported him. “Your Dzhunkovsky’s finished,” he taunted the officers outside his apartment. And so he was, for within several months Dzhunkovsky lost his post.

Coinciding with Dzhunkovsky’s downfall was that of the tsar’s cousin, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolavich (“Nikolasha,” to the family), commander in chief of the Russian forces. “He was the most admired man in the army, not only an old-fashioned soldier, but deeply Slav,” wrote Paléologue. “His whole being exuded a fierce energy. His incisive measured speech, flashing eyes and quick, nervous movements, hard, steel-trap mouth and gigantic stature [he stood six feet six inches tall] personify imperious and impetuous audacity.” Alexandra and Rasputin hated him.

The empress’s animosity stretched back at least as far as the horrible year of 1905, when Nikolasha threatened to shoot himself in front of the tsar if Nicholas did not accede to the formation of the Duma—the representative body whose very existence Alexandra viewed as an affront to the autocracy. Then there was the fact that Nikolasha was an ardent opponent of “Our Friend” Rasputin. According to one story, the
staretz
wanted to visit army headquarters and received the following reply from Nikolasha: “Yes, do come—I’ll hang
you.” Thus was launched a vigorous campaign against the commander in chief, the man revered in the army as what Knox called “a sort of legendary champion of Holy Russia.”

“I have absolutely no faith in N[ikolasha],” Alexandra wrote to Nicholas in one of a barrage of letters on the subject—“know him to be far from clever and having gone against a Man of God, his work can’t be blessed or his advice good.… Russia will not be blessed if her sovereign lets a Man of God sent to help him be persecuted. I am sure.… You know N.’s hatred for Gregory is intense.”

Alexandra’s assault on Nikolasha included not-so-subtle digs at the passive emperor, whom she encouraged to be more like the man people perceived the commander in chief to be. “Forgive me, precious One, but you know you are too kind and gentle,” she wrote in the spring of 1915—“sometimes a good loud voice can do wonders, and a severe look—do my love, be more decided and sure of yourself.… You think me a meddlesome bore, but a woman feels and sees things sometimes clearer than my too humble sweetheart … a Sovereign needs to show his will more often.”

The empress also urged Nicholas to remember that Rasputin’s was the only voice (besides hers) of any value to him. And if the
staretz
believed Nikolasha should be removed, well then, there was no other choice but to trust him. “Hearken unto Our Friend,” she wrote. “Believe him. He has your interest and Russia’s at heart. It is not for nothing God sent him to us, only we must pay more attention to what He says. His words are not lightly spoken and the importance of having not only his prayers but his advice is great.… I am haunted by Our Friend’s wish and know it will be fatal for us and for the country if not fulfilled. He means what he says when he speaks so seriously.”

Alexandra’s anti-Nikolasha campaign was ultimately abetted by the war itself. Warsaw fell in August 1915, and with the army in full retreat, so was its commander in chief. Nikolasha’s fall did not cause much consternation, given the circumstances. But news of his replacement certainly did.

“There is a far more horrible event which threatens Russia,” Minister of War Alexis Polivanov reported to the Council of Ministers on August 6. “I feel obliged to inform the government that this morning, during my report, His Majesty told me of his decision to remove the Grand Duke and to personally assume the supreme command of the army.”

The ministers’ response was swift and unequivocal. “The execution of the Emperor’s decision is absolutely impossible, and one must resist him with all means,” declared Minister of the Interior Prince Shcherbatov. Equally adamant was Minister of Foreign Affairs Serge Sazonov, who said that “in general, all this is so terrible that my mind is in chaos. Into what an abyss Russia is being pushed.” Ten of the horrified ministers sent the emperor a collective letter, begging him to reconsider his decision, which, they wrote, “threatens Russia, You, and Your dynasty with the direst consequences.” Nicholas ignored their plea. And when eight ministers then tendered their resignations in protest, he simply refused to accept them.

The council’s negative reaction was not due to Nikolasha’s removal, which was expected, but to the very idea that the weak and vacillating tsar, with no demonstrated talent for strategy, would be taking his place. “Most of all, they feared the influence Aleksandra [cited author’s spelling] and, through her, Rasputin exercised upon the Emperor,” wrote W. Bruce Lincoln. “A neurotic Empress suffering from delusions of persecution and a crafty, nearly illiterate peasant
would be the two closest advisers of the Commander in Chief of Russia’s armies.”

Members of the imperial family shared the ministers’ dismay. Bertie Stopford, attached to the British embassy, recalled Grand Duchess Marie (Miechen) blurting out at dinner one night, “It is quite disastrous,” after which, Stopford wrote, “We both cried in our soup.… Everybody during dinner was much depressed by this news.” Dowager Empress Marie was particularly distressed by her son’s decision. “There is no room in my brain for all this,” she cried.

Even in the face of all this opposition, Alexandra could not have been more pleased. Immediately after his departure for army headquarters to assume command, the empress wrote Nicholas a long letter—tinged with the triumph of a wife who had just obtained from her husband exactly what she wanted.

“I cannot find words to express all I want to,” she wrote. “My heart is far too full. I only long to hold you tight in my arms and whisper words of intense love, courage, strength and endless blessing.… You have fought this great fight for your country and throne, alone with bravery and decision. Never have they seen such firmness in you and it cannot remain without fruit.… Your faith has been tried—your trust—and you remained firm as a rock, for that you will be blessed. God anointed you at your coronation, He placed you where you stand and you have done your duty, be sure, quite sure of this and He forsaketh not His Anointed. Our Friend’s [Rasputin’s] prayers arise day and night for you to Heaven and God will hear them.”

Having sent the emperor off to run the war—armed with a magic comb blessed by Rasputin and accompanied by the instructions “Remember to comb your hair before all difficult
tasks and decisions, the little comb will bring its help”—Alexandra began to consolidate her power at home. “I long to poke my nose into everything,” the empress wrote in one letter shortly after the tsar’s arrival at headquarters. In another, she asserted herself more: “Lovey, I am here, don’t laugh at silly old wify, but she has ‘trousers’ on unseen.… I long to show my
immortal
trousers to those poltroons.” Sure enough, “silly old wify” was soon wearing the pants.

“Alexandra was intoxicated by power,” wrote Greg King. “Her marriage to a man regarded as semidivine exposed Alexandra to the ultimately fatal idea that unquestionable, absolute authority was invested in certain persons, endowing them with the ability to make judgments with a certainty provided by God. Over the years, she saw her husband falter in his role. With each perceived mistake Nicholas made, Alexandra drew herself toward the centers of power. If Nicholas could not stand firm, Alexandra would. She clearly felt herself stronger and more capable than her husband. Nicholas might hold the power in the government, but Alexandra claimed and exercised it. For her, there were no moments of self-doubt, no second thoughts. Her convictions were firm, and she would not allow the weak character of her husband to stand in the way of what she saw as his duty.”

During his first months away, Alexandra bombarded Nicholas with a mixture of feverish love letters, admonitions, and outright commands:

“Quickly shut [dissolve] the Duma,” she wrote just days after the emperor’s departure. “The Duma, I hope, will at once be closed,” she reiterated the following day.

“Shcherbatov is impossible to keep [as minister of internal affairs]…. Better quick to change him.”

“Samarin [director-general of the Holy Synod] goes on
speaking against me. Hope to get you a list of names and trust we can find a suitable successor before he can do any more harm.”

Far from being offended by his wife’s presumption, Nicholas seemed to relish it. “Think, my wify, will you not come to the assistance of your hubby now that he is absent,” he wrote. “What a pity that you have not been fulfilling this duty long ago or at least during the war! I know of no more pleased feeling than to be proud of you, as I have been all these past months, when you urged me on with untiring importunity, exhorting me to be firm and stick to my own opinions.”

With power now firmly in her grasp, Alexandra accelerated her campaign to rid the government of ministers and other officials she perceived to be her personal enemies, Rasputin’s, or both. In what historian Michael T. Florinsky described as “an amazing, extravagant, and pitiful spectacle … without parallel in the history of civilized nations,” men rose and fell with astonishing frequency. During a sixteen-month period, Russia had four different prime ministers, five ministers of the interior, four ministers of agriculture, and three ministers of war. The rapid rate of turnover was such that Prince Vladimir Volkonsky suggested a sign be placed on the government ministry building: “Piccadilly—the show changes every Saturday.”

As good men continued to be driven out, Alexandra wrote gleefully to the emperor, “I am no longer in the slightest bit shy or afraid of ministers and speak like a waterfall in Russian.” Nicholas was delighted with her efforts. “It rests with you to keep peace and harmony among the Ministers,” he wrote in September 1916; “thereby you do a great service to me and to our country.… Oh, my precious Sunny, I am so happy to think that you have found at last a worthy occupation!
Now I shall naturally be calm, and at least need not worry over internal affairs.”

In fact, Nicholas all but abdicated sovereignty of his own realm, ceding it to his wife and thus, by association, to Rasputin as well. “As a consequence of Aleksandra’s meddling and Nicholas’s grateful acceptance of her advice in all except the rarest instances, Russia’s government was deprived of every reasonable statesman,” Lincoln wrote. “By the fall of 1916, Aleksandra’s performance of her ‘worthy occupation’ had left her country with a motley assortment of rogues, incompetents, non-entities, and madmen at the head of her government.”

Two of the most egregious appointments in Alexandra’s game of “ministerial leapfrog” (as one called it at the time) were Boris Stürmer, described by a colleague as “false and double-faced,” and Alexander Protopopov, dismissed by British ambassador George Buchanan as “mentally deranged.” Rasputin adored them both.

After leaving “a bad memory wherever he occupied an administrative post,” as Foreign Minister Serge Sazonov put it, Stürmer emerged from total bureaucratic obscurity to become Russia’s new prime minister in February 1916. His one qualification from Alexandra’s perspective: “He very much values Gregory [Rasputin], which is a great thing.” However, French ambassador Paléologue probed a little deeper in his assessment of the new head of government: “He … is worse than a mediocrity—third-rate intellect, mean spirit, low character, doubtful honesty, no experience and no idea of State business. The most that can be said for him is that he has a rather pretty talent for cunning and flattery.… His appointment becomes intelligible on the supposition that he has been selected solely as a tool, in other words, actually on account of
his insignificance and servility.… [He] has been … warmly recommended to the Emperor by Rasputin.”