The Rasputin File (23 page)

‘We proclaimed to him that we were for the last time demanding that he change his ways, and that if he himself did not do so, we would sever relations with him, make an open declaration of everything, and inform the tsar.’

Rasputin certainly had not expected to hear that from Feofan. ‘He was completely taken aback and started crying, and instead of trying to justify himself admitted that he had made mistakes. And he agreed to our demand that he withdraw from the world and place himself under my guidance.’

It was a safe enough promise. The peasant knew that the tsarina would never allow him to carry it out. For not only the boy, but she herself would wither away without him. Feofan lived in another world altogether. He had merely asked Rasputin, and the latter had promised, ‘to tell no one about our meeting with him’. ‘Rejoicing in our success, we conducted a prayer service … But, as it turned out, he then went to Tsarskoe Selo and recounted everything there in a light that was favourable to him but not to us,’ Feofan recalled in the File.

A Disputation With The Tsarina

But there was ‘someone’ who felt that what had happened was not enough. And that ‘someone’ expected a great deal more from Feofan, and had evidently been informing him of new rumours.

From Feofan’s testimony in the File: ‘After a while rumours reached me that Rasputin had resumed his former way of life and was undertaking something against us… I decided to resort to a final measure — to denounce him openly and to communicate everything to the former emperor. It was not, however, the emperor who received me but his wife in the presence of the maid of honour Vyrubova.’

Vyrubova’s presence in the room with the tsarina made everything clear to him. The naive Feofan had been left open to ‘a cunning manoeuvre: Rasputin had brought Vyrubova into play … and Vyrubova would out of gratitude have to support Rasputin.’

So that the bishop knew even as he was beginning his monologue that he was doomed. But duty above all else. Just as in ancient times when pastors had suffered for the truth before the tsars, Feofan too was ready to suffer.

I spoke for about an hour and demonstrated that Rasputin was in a state of ‘spiritual temptation’…The former empress grew agitated and objected, citing theological works …I destroyed all her arguments, but she … reiterated them: ‘It is all falsehood and slander’…I concluded the conversation by saying that I could no longer have anything to do with Rasputin … I think Rasputin, as a cunning person, explained to the royal family that my speaking against him was because I envied his closeness to the Family…that I wanted to push him out of the way.

Poor Feofan did not understand that it was not Rasputin, but Alix herself who had reached that conclusion.

From Feofan’s testimony: ‘After my conversation with the empress, Rasputin came to see me as if nothing had happened, having apparently decided that the empress’s displeasure had intimidated me…However, I told him in no uncertain terms, “Go away, you are a fraud.”’

The bishop did not understand the peasant, either. Grigory did not like conflict. He was ready to humiliate himself, if only to be reconciled to the kind, naive Feofan: ‘Rasputin fell on his knees before me and asked my forgiveness … But again I told him, “Go away, you have violated a promise given before God.” Rasputin left, and I did not see him again.’

A Reprisal

Feofan continued to act. He received at that time a ‘Confession’ of a repentant devotee of Rasputin’s. Or, more likely, it was given to him by that same ‘someone’. And after reading it, the honest Feofan understood with horror that Rasputin was ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing’, that he was, as Feofan testifies in the File, merely a ‘sectarian of the
Khlyst
type’, who ‘taught his followers not to reveal his secrets even to their confessors. For if there is allegedly no sin in what those sectarians do, then their confessors need not be made aware of it.’

And Feofan decided to show the confession to the ‘tsars’. ‘Availing myself of that written confession, I wrote the former emperor a second letter… in which I declared that Rasputin not only was in a state of spiritual temptation but was also a criminal in the religious and moral sense …In the moral sense because, as it followed from the ‘confession’, Father Grigory had seduced his victims.’ But no answer to Feofan’s request for an audience was forthcoming.

From Feofan’s testimony: ‘I sensed that they did not want to hear me out and understand … It all depressed me so much that I became quite ill — it turned out I had a palsy of the facial nerve.’

Rasputin could now celebrate: ‘Mama’ could be certain — the face of the elder Feofan, of the one who had moved against him, had been punished by heaven itself with the stamp of palsy. And the unhappy bishop departed to recover in the Crimea, still without an answer. He received it in November 1910 and was transferred out of Petersburg to the place he had been accustomed to going for treatment — the Crimea, where he became bishop of Taurida.

But he was an indomitable Russian pastor. And he would not give up. Now Feofan inundated his friend Bishop Hermogen with letters. He had decided to enlist in the battle one of the most vociferous and influential members of the Most Holy Synod.

Hermogen understood: a break with Rasputin would mean the end of his dream of a patriarchate.

From Feofan’s testimony in the File: ‘When Rasputin’s bad actions began to come to light, Hermogen vacillated for a long time, not knowing what attitude to take. But I…wrote him a letter indicating that he should make his relationship to Rasputin clear. For if I had to speak out against Rasputin, then it would be against him, too.’

From Hermogen’s testimony: ‘At the beginning of 1910 I received a letter from Bishop Feofan … The bishop set forth a number of facts discrediting Rasputin as someone who was leading a dissolute life. The letter, along with my own personal observations, served as the occasion for an abrupt change in my relations with Rasputin.’

Those ‘personal observations’ most likely assumed their final shape in Petersburg, where Hermogen had come for a meeting of the Most Holy Synod. It is possible that ‘someone’ had a talk with Hermogen. And explained to him that so long as Rasputin remained at court, Hermogen’s much-desired assembly for the reinstitution of the patriarchate would not take place. For Rasputin was speaking out against it.

That, too, is in the book by Hermogen’s favourite, Iliodor: ‘The “elder” … said: “And it would be good without an Assembly; there is God’s anointed sovereign, and that is enough; God rules his heart — what need is there for an Assembly besides!”’

And then Iliodor, too, got ready to speak out together with Hermogen.

Apparently, Iliodor had, in 1910, already obtained proof of just how powerful Rasputin’s enemies were. And he decided not merely to betray his friend Grigory but to join the ranks of his enemies with a great trophy. That, in fact, was why in Pokrovskoe he had stolen the letters of the young grand duchesses and, more to the point, the letter of the tsarina herself. A letter that would, he believed, prove the tsarina’s fall into sin. Which would mean a scandal and divorce. And then they who had moved against Rasputin would be at the summit of church power!

But in the meantime Iliodor exploited Rasputin’s trust and friendship as much as he could. Using money collected by Rasputin, he even equipped a vessel for carrying pilgrims on a trip down the Volga, draping the vessel with his favourite slogans against Jews and revolutionaries. And he waited.
And when Hermogen spoke out against the ‘elder’, Iliodor understood: the time had come.

And then during a sermon in his church Iliodor indicated to his flock that he had been mistaken about Rasputin, that he was a ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’.

War had been declared.

A Ravished Nurse?

Meanwhile in Tsarskoe Selo itself, a new blow was struck against Rasputin.

From Tsarskoe Selo crept rumours that the
Khlyst
, as everyone in Petersburg had suddenly started calling him, had been visiting the royal nursery, and that he had raped Vishnyakova, the heir’s nurse.

On 3 June 1910 the general’s wife Bogdanovich recorded in her diary that the tsarina ‘is incensed with those who have been saying that [Rasputin] is a scoundrel and so on. Tyutcheva and the senior nanny Vishnyakova have therefore been placed on leave for two months.’

If the maid of honour Sophia Tyutcheva was well known at court as a fierce opponent of the elder, the information about the royal nurse Mary (as Maria Vishnyakova was called at court) came as a complete surprise. After all, it was by visiting Mary that Rasputin had been gaining entry to the palace in the first place. And she had been assigned that role for a reason. Mary was regarded as one of Rasputin’s most devoted admirers.

A letter from Rasputin to Mary about the rearing of the heir has remained in the archives.

‘12 November 1907. Show him little examples of Divine edification, [and] in all his children’s toys, seek edification.’ After which follow words bearing witness to their more than friendly relations. ‘I have not found pride in you, but have found a deep regard for me in your soul. And you saw and understood me from the first. I would like very much for us to see each other again.’

From the testimony of Vyrubova: ‘In the beginning, the tsarevich’s nurse … deeply admired Rasputin and visited him in Pokrovskoe.’

But now ‘vague whisperings’ were beginning to spread at court.

The File, from the testimony of Colonel Loman: ‘That Rasputin had violated the honour of Vishnyakova was something of which there were only ‘vague whisperings’; no definite charges were brought forward against Rasputin.’

According to the whispers, in that same year of 1910 Mary had gone on a three-week holiday to Pokrovskoe with Rasputin and his devotees. At
night, Rasputin had crept into her room and violated her.

Simultaneously with those rumours Sophia Tyutcheva spoke out against Rasputin.

She declared the unacceptability of Rasputin’s visits to the palace nursery. Her declaration was immediately accompanied by awful rumours to the effect that the peasant had been undressing the grand duchesses at night.

From the testimony of Vyrubova: ‘Probably he did happen to pass through the nursery, but there was not a word of truth to the rumours going about that he undressed the grand duchesses. Those rumours were spread by the maid of honour Sophia Tyutcheva.’

Tyutcheva, age forty-seven, was summoned before the Extraordinary Commission in 1917. And I found her testimony in the File.

Naturally she had nothing to say about Rasputin’s undressing the grand duchesses. The rumours hadn’t originated with her. The people behind them were a bit more powerful.

But Rasputin had in fact come to see the royal children and had conversed with them and had on occasion touched them. When he was healing them. And that is all. Tyutcheva, however, was speaking out against any visit at all by the peasant to the children’s wing, since she ‘considered him a dangerous person with an absolutely clear tendency toward the
Khlyst
sect’.

She also spoke about Mary — about the royal children’s nurse, Vishnyakova.

Feofan’s Rage

Tyutcheva testified in the File:

Once on entering the children’s wing, I came upon a terrible commotion. Vishnyakova told me with tears in her eyes that she … and the other devotees had participated in rites of ‘rejoicing’. That what she had accepted as a command of the Holy Spirit had turned out to be simple debauchery … I understood from her account that Feofan, who was her confessor … had in his humility sent them to Rasputin, whom he considered to be one of God’s elders. Rasputin forced them to do whatever he needed, passing himself off as someone acting at the command of the Holy Spirit … At the same time he warned them not to tell Feofan, covering it up in sophistry: Feofan was a simpleton and would not understand such secrets and would condemn them, thereby passing judgement on the Holy Spirit and committing a mortal sin.

And that too was immediately communicated to Feofan by ‘someone’. And
it shocked him and elicited a new flash of indignant rage. He realized that he himself had sent Vishnyakova and those like her to Rasputin and thus had corrupted their souls. That is why he had demanded that Hermogen speak out at once against his former friend Father Grigory, whom he now simply called Rasputin. That is why he composed a new epistle to the tsar and implored Tyutcheva ‘to convey the letter to the sovereign’. ‘I answered that in view of the fact that my repugnance for Rasputin was known at court, I did not consider it possible to carry out such an errand,’ Tyutcheva testified in the File.

And after her refusal, Feofan apparently conceived of a desperate plan: to wait for the royal family’s arrival in the Crimea and in a sermon expose to everyone that ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’.

Meanwhile, as Tyutcheva testified, ‘Vishnyakova went to the tsarina. But the tsarina said she did not believe rumours and … forbade her to talk about it.’

The same day a footman in a cap with feathers (that medieval post had been retained at court) came to her and ‘conveyed the sovereign’s order that she appear in his study at 6:30 p.m.’.

And Tyutcheva gives an account in the File of her evening conversation with the sovereign:

‘“You have guessed why I summoned you. What is going on in the nursery?” I told him. “So you too do not believe in Rasputin’s holiness?” I answered in the negative.’

And that reticent man could no longer restrain himself. He told her what he had not told anyone. Usually, when cutting off attacks on Rasputin, he had drily alluded to the fact that their relations with Rasputin were their own personal affair, their personal life. But here for the first time he blurted out, ‘But what will you say if I tell you that I have lived all these years only thanks to his prayers?’ And ‘he began saying that he did not believe any of the stories, that the impure always sticks to the pure, and that he did not understand what had suddenly happened to Feofan, who had always been so fond of Rasputin. During this he pointed to a letter from Feofan on his desk’ (so it did get through, after all).