The Rasputin File (16 page)

But soon afterwards Rasputin stopped visiting Militsa. And the Montenegrin learned that the peasant had dared to utter disapproving words about her sister’s marriage to Nikolai Nikolaevich. And then the tsarina suddenly started visiting her less and less often. And that Militsa never forgave.

Awaiting The Peasant In Pokrovskoe

Rasputin went back home in the autumn of 1907. To Pokrovskoe, accompanied by Olga Lokhtina and three young devotees of his: the unmarried nurse Akilina Laptinskaya, the engineer’s widow Khionia Berladskaya, and the wife of a collegiate secretary Zinaida Manshtedt (or Manchtet, as she is called in some sources).

By that time he had bought himself a spacious new house in Pokrovskoe. At home he changed and became talkative. The simple illiterate peasant revived in him, and he boasted to his fellow villagers and showed off the ‘little Petersburg ladies’ who had come back with him and who revered him. And he gladly told the local clerics about the grand dukes and even about the ‘tsars’, who asked advice of him — of the Grishka whom only yesterday they had beaten and made such fun of.

But this time a surprise was waiting for Rasputin on his return. He learned that an inspector from the Tobolsk Theological Consistory had come to the village. And the local village priests with whom Rasputin regularly conversed had been called in for questioning by the inspector. And they had been asked about Rasputin. And soon afterwards his new home was searched, and letters from the ‘little ladies’ were found and taken away. And then the ‘little ladies’ themselves were called in for questioning. And, finally, he himself was taken in for interrogation.

Thus was a new file opened concerning the frightening but now familiar charge of
Khlyst
activity. Four years earlier he had succeeded in defending himself against the Consistory’s investigators. And now they charged him again.

Mikhail Rodzyanko, the Speaker of the State Duma, who subsequently borrowed the file from the Synod, reported that it vanished soon afterwards. But the missing file has recently been found, surfacing from oblivion in the Tobolsk archive.

The Buried Investigation

The file bears the inscription, ‘File of the Tobolsk Consistory in the Charge against Grigory Efimovich “Rasputin-Novy,” a Peasant of the Village of Pokrovskoe in the Tyumen District, of Spreading of False
Khlyst
-like Doctrine and of Forming a Society of Followers of His False Doctrine. Opened 6 September 1907.’

It turned out that while Rasputin was away in Petersburg, the bishop of Tobolsk had been provided with information, as is stated in the file, touching on the period of Rasputin’s mysterious wanderings. According to ‘the information that has been collected and verified, the peasant in name brought from his life in the factories of the province of Perm a knowledge of the teachings of the
Khlyst
heresy and its ringleaders’. Then, ‘while residing in Petersburg, he acquired followers for himself, who after Rasputin’s return to the village of Pokrovskoe often came to visit him and lived for some time in his home.’ That ‘the letters of his followers Kh. Berladskaya, O. Lokhtina, and Z. Manchtet tell of Rasputin’s peculiar teachings.’ That those Petersburg followers of his ‘have walked arm in arm with Rasputin, and that he has often embraced, kissed, and fondled them in the sight of all’. And upstairs in the large new house just acquired by Rasputin, ‘special prayer meetings take place at night…During those meetings he puts on a semi-monastic black cassock and a gold pectoral cross … Those meetings sometimes end late, and it is rumoured that in the bathhouse next to Rasputin’s former home “group sinning” occurs. Rumours have been circulating among the residents of the village of Pokrovskoe that Rasputin is spreading
Khlyst
doctrine.’

Thus the file began. It is not hard to figure out who in fact was behind it. Militsa, thanks to her power and her long-standing interest in Orthodox mysticism, had solid links to the Synod. And being well acquainted with mystical teaching, she had long understood the astonishing peasant’s secret. And it is her irritated voice that is heard in the concluding denunciation, where Rasputin’s ‘self-importance and Satanic pride’ are mentioned, as is the fact that he had dared to assume the guise of ‘an extraordinary preceptor, intercessor, counsellor, and solacer’, and that he, a man of little education, had presumed ‘to speak of his visits to the palaces of grand dukes and other highly placed personages’.

At the inquest, of course, Rasputin himself denied any connection to the
Khlysty
. He also denied going to bathhouses with women. That is, he denied what he would later acknowledge in Petersburg and even tell his acquaintances. And the ‘little ladies’ stood solidly behind him. Berladskaya, Laptinskaya, and Lokhtina, plus Evdokia and Ekaterina Pechyorkina, the
aunt and niece who were in his service, included nothing in their depositions but rapturous affirmations of Father Grigory’s lofty morality. In reply to the inspector’s question about Rasputin’s kisses, Laptinskaya pompously explained to the Tobolsk provincials that ‘it is a commonplace phenomenon in intelligentsia circles.’ And so on.

But all this proved to be only the beginning. Upon arriving in Pokrovskoe, the inspector of the Tobolsk Theological Seminary, D. Beryozkin, noted in his review of the conduct of the case that the investigation had been carried out by ‘persons ill informed about
Khlyst
practice’, and that only Rasputin’s two-storeyed residence had been searched. ‘Even though it is well known that the place of “rejoicing” is never located in residences …but is always set up in backyards — in baths, barns, cellars, and even dugouts.’ He had in mind the very secret ‘chapel under the floor of the stable’ in Rasputin’s old house. ‘The pictures and icons found in the house were not described, even though they are often indicative of the
Khlyst
heresy,’ and so on. After that, Antony, the bishop of Tobolsk, issued a decree ordering further inquiry into the matter. And that the inquiry be entrusted to an experienced, antisectarian missionary. Inspector Beryozkin had already prepared himself to conduct the supplementary inquiry.

Rasputin was given a scare. He had in an instant been transformed into a downtrodden peasant without any rights. But the crazy yet shrewd and worldly-wise Lokhtina apparently made an accurate assessment of the situation. She realized that such a vigorous investigation of an obscure peasant could only have been ordered by some very powerful person in the capital. And that it could only be stopped in the capital.

Lokhtina hurried back to Petersburg. And before long the investigation was suspended. Despite the recent order of the bishop. And it became clear to everyone where the source was of the intervention that had buried the bishop’s investigation in the bowels of the Synod.

So Militsa had made a fatal blunder. She had decided to exploit the situation in order to put the peasant in his place. She had been certain that an investigation into his
Khlyst
affiliations would compromise him and close his path to the palace. She erred because she could not imagine the extent of his influence over the royal family.

And the intelligent tsarina easily guessed who stood behind the investigation, who had tried to take the ‘man of God’ away from her.

A Change At The Palace

And soon afterwards, as Feofan relates in the File, ‘the good relations between the royal family and Militsa, Anastasia Nikolaevna, and Pyotr and Nikolai Nikolaevich became strained. Rasputin himself mentioned it in passing. From a few sentences of his I concluded that he had very likely instilled in the former emperor the idea that they had too much influence on state affairs and were encroaching on the emperor’s independence.’

The peasant had been boasting a little. He wanted to show his strength. But the fact is that the idea was now a new and permanent one of the tsarina’s. It had come to her as soon as she ceased to like her former friend. In enmity, too, her nature was a consistent one. She could dislike with equal ardour and fierceness. And Our New Friend immediately grasped ‘Mama’s’ new mood (‘Mama’ and ‘Papa’ were what he now called the ‘tsars’; father and mother of the Russian land). And he understood his own role: to constantly instill that response of ‘Mama’s’ in ‘Papa’. For it was very difficult for Nicky to change his attachments. And, as Vyrubova very correctly testified, ‘he continued to trust Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich.’

Yesterday’s friends were now referred to in the royal family in the same way that they had been referred to before by ill-wishers in the court — as the ‘black women’. And the tsarina’s ears were now becoming more receptive to all she had not wanted to hear before.

‘From time to time the idea occurred to me that Militsa Nikolaevna had introduced Rasputin to the empress in order later on to make him a tool for the achievement of her own goals,’ Vyrubova testified in the File. So Anya spoke simple-heartedly to the tsarina about the things that Alix herself was then thinking. And together they were indignant with the ‘black women’, who had dared to launch a disgraceful investigation against the ‘man of God’. The New Friend gladly explained to Alix where the vile rumours about her were coming from: ‘Everything bad that was being said about the empress now originated with Militsa and Anastasia Nikolaevna … They said that the empress … was psychologically abnormal, that she was seeing too much of Rasputin,’ Vyrubova testified in the File. The good Anya reported everything to Alix, forever estranging the ‘black women’ from the throne. The tsarina never set foot in the ‘black women’s’ house again.

And soon afterward the omniscient general’s wife A. Bogdanovich would write in her diary, ‘Radtsig [the tsar’s valet, N. A. Radtsig] was saying that the relations between the tsar and Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich have
completely cooled, just as they have between the tsarina and the grand duke’s wife Anastasia Nikolaevna.’

Alix parted with the Montenegrins without regret. For now she was not alone. In Vyrubova she had found a Friend. A true Friend.

The Dangerous Friend

In March 1917 the tsarina’s closest friend was brought from her damp jail cell to the Winter Palace and the Extraordinary Commission. The investigation was trying to get her to elucidate palace secrets. And the enigma of Rasputin’s influence. Although the greatest enigma of all was Anna Vyrubova herself. Alix’s friend.

‘Dim … Had difficulty passing the examination for home-study teacher … Not interested in anything… It’s hard to understand how she could have had such a relationship with the highly educated, energetic tsarina.’ Such was the testimony of numerous witnesses about Vyrubova. She will enter history so described. Even though it is enough to read the transcripts of her own interrogations to sense how brilliantly cunning and dangerously intelligent this woman was.

From the outset she chose the part that she would play in the investigation with remarkable sureness. It was the role of the same naive, simple-hearted, childishly dim-witted Anya that she had played with such success in the royal family.

The secretary of the Commission, the poet Alexander Blok, who was present for her interrogations, would write of her, ‘A person who is degraded and in trouble becomes a child. Remember Vyrubova. She lied childishly.’

It was the only possible tactic in her situation — to lie openly in a childish way, thereby demonstrating her weakness, silliness, and total ignorance of what was going on in the palace. It is almost with astonishment that she learns from an investigator that she was regarded a fanatical admirer of Rasputin.

‘So you are claiming that your interest in Rasputin was the same as your interest in many other people in your life?’ the investigator Girchich asks in exasperation. ‘Or did he still have exceptional interest for you?’

‘Exceptional? No!’ she says very sincerely. And by way of frustrating any follow-up questions, she starts complaining in a womanish way. ‘Because, in general, you think it was easy living at court? I was envied … Generally speaking, it was hard for an upright person to live there, where there was much envy and slander. I was simple, so for those twelve years, except for misfortune, I saw almost nothing.’

But a new, very important question follows. ‘Why did you burn a whole stack of documents?’

‘I burned almost nothing,’ she lies openly and as if naively, she who filled a fireplace with the ashes of burned papers.

She is accused of having appointed ministers and taken part in political intrigues with Rasputin. And again she is naively astonished: she and Rasputin talked only about religion. She is presented with proof, her correspondence with Rasputin.

‘But why are people who have no connection to politics and are interested only in prayer and fasting carrying on a correspondence about political matters?’ the investigator asks triumphantly.

She merely sighs and continues as naively as before. ‘Everybody came by with all sorts of questions.’

‘Well, we could say they came by for a day, a month, a year, but here they came by for many years on end.’

‘It was terrible, that’s what it was!’ she sighs. ‘They never left me alone!’

And then, after all this mendacity, another investigator, V. Rudnev, who was conducting the interrogation jointly with Girchich, would write something astonishing: ‘Her testimony … was imbued with truth and sincerity. Its only deficiency was her extraordinary volubility and stunning capacity for jumping from one thought to another.’

This while she was lying to his face. Why would he write such a thing? Because she truly did understand people. She immediately grasped the difference between the two investigators. And she chose different tactics with each of them. She could only defend herself against Girchich with naivety and foolishness. But Rudnev, that sentimental provincial who so yearned for human nobility, could be turned into her ally. And she accomplished that by showing her unswerving devotion to the fallen royal family, by showing a willingness to lie only for their sake. She gave him an opportunity to make a judgement about her Christian forbearance in prison. True, it was her mother who hastened to tell Rudnev about that forbearance. Rudnev subsequently recalled