The Rasputin File (44 page)

Gofshtetter had sent her a remarkable text, and it is unlikely that she showed it to the tsarina. ‘The fawning kiss of the spiritual father’s hands, the sensation of heavenly grace from his touch alone, and, on the spiritual father’s part, the constant display of his superhuman possibilities and, with the help of that display and hypnosis, the suppression of personal will and freedom of thought in his followers and their constant half-hysterical ecstasy — all are features of the sect.’

What did she think — that intelligent, enigmatic woman who, almost daily, had observed everything that took place in Rasputin’s salon — as she read that piece of paper that described it all so exactly?

The Sensational Telegrams

Thus, without understanding it themselves, Rasputin’s devotees became a sect. With its law of deification of the teacher and its secrecy. Apparently, only his ‘initiated’ devotees, Lokhtina, Laptinskaya, Kusova, and Munya Golovina, knew the main secret of the ‘Christ’ Grigory. The others knew only that it was given to him to prophesy and to deliver them, sinful women that they were, from the demon of lewdness, to make them ‘as unclouded as a piece of glass’. But all of them together guarded the secrets entrusted to them. And Feofan, who talked to Rasputin’s victims — Vishnyakova, Berladskaya — testifies in the File that ‘Rasputin was able to instil in his followers that they must not confess to the sin of adultery, since that would only confuse their confessors, who would not understand it.’ During that whole time only a handful broke the compact. For there was the feeling that they constantly felt in his presence and without which there could have been no sect. Lili Dehn speaks of the feeling in the File. It was a feeling of fear. Fear of the power he had convinced them of so many times. And without him, without his power, without his miracles, they could not live. Without him they were like blind people without a guide. No sooner had he set off for Pokrovskoe than ‘his fools’ would shower him with telegrams. Dozens of those telegrams have survived in the Extraordinary Commission archive (file Nos. 7094–710).

‘24 July 1913. I am very sick. I implore you to help. Sana.’

‘13 April, 1916. I returned gloomily sick at heart. I beg for help. Sana.’

‘In our circle Alexandra Pistolkors was called Sana,’ Golovina testifies. The one with the porcelain face, Vyrubova’s younger sister.

And she, the older sister, sent them, too. Vyrubova’s telegrams with requests for help have a place of honour.

‘26 November 1914. They write that father is weak, pray. Should we worry, he comes today with a report…Anya.’

And there are the telegrams sent by Vyrubova from the royal yacht
Standart
.

‘We live quietly and a little miserably. I often remember. Anya.’

Most often she writes at the request of ‘Mama’ — the tsarina. For, as Vyrubova testified in her interrogations, after the episode of the theft of Alix’s letter by Iliodor, the tsarina herself ‘wrote no letters to Rasputin whatever’.

I was just about to leave off reading all those identically insane telegrams, when four coming one after another made me sit up. They were sensational!

‘Love And Kisses — Darling’

Attached to pages 253–5 and page 258 (I cite the page numbers on purpose) of the archive were four telegrams, all with the same signature: ‘Love and kisses — Darling.’ I quote them here in full.

‘25 October 1914. From Petrograd for Novy. I have returned for three days. I am tired but glad I have been able to hold up. I have faith my strength [will increase] through your prayers. Love and kisses — Darling.’

‘7 December 1914. From Petrograd for Novy. Today I shall be back in eight days. I sacrifice my husband and my heart to you. Pray and bless. Love and kisses — Darling.’

‘9 April 1916. Pokrovskoe from Tsarskoe Selo for Novy. I am with you with all my heart, all my thoughts. Pray for me and Nicholas on the bright day. Love and kisses — Darling.’

‘2 December 1916. Pokrovskoe from Tsarskoe Selo for Novy. You have not written anything. I have missed you terribly. Come soon. Pray for Nicholas. Kisses — Darling.’

Who Was She?

The author of the last two telegrams from Tsarskoe Selo leaves no doubt. Concealed beneath the signature ‘Darling’ is the empress. So Vyrubova’s entire testimony turns out to be a lie. Alix continued to write to the peasant as before! And she wrote, apparently, despite her promise to the tsar. Only
instead of ‘Mama’ she now signed herself ‘Darling’. The tsarina’s authorship is evident in both the sender’s address (Tsarskoe Selo) and the main content. The telegram sent on 9 April 1916 (‘Pray for me and Nicholas on the bright day’) refers to 8 April, a day Nicky and Alix noted their whole life, the day they were engaged at Coburg Castle. And the other telegram sent from Tsarskoe Selo in which ‘Darling’ asks Rasputin to pray for Nicholas naturally also belongs to Alix. But then what must have been the extent of her attachment! ‘I am with you with all my heart, all my thoughts,’ ‘I have missed you terribly.’ This was the Tsarina of All Russia talking to a peasant.

But there are the other two telegrams with the same signature, ‘Love and kisses — Darling.’ And even though the first of them does not mention Nicholas at all, it does contain the sentence, ‘I sacrifice my husband and my heart to you’!

In combination with the other telegrams and the letter published by Iliodor, it sounds terrible. Almost shocking.

Only afterwards did I realize that it was unlikely that the unhappy tsarina had had anything to do with the ‘terrible telegram’. In the first place, it had been sent not from Tsarskoe Selo but from Petrograd. As regards ‘Darling’, it was Rasputin’s favourite word. He called Zhukovskaya and the singer Belling ‘Darling’ as well. For him, all his devotees were ‘Darlings’ and the tsarina was unaware that she was a ‘Darling’ too. Because they were all equals as far as the democratic peasant was concerned.

So the first two telegrams sent from Petrograd most probably belonged to one of the numerous ‘Darlings’ with whom Rasputin engaged in the ‘exorcism of lechery’.

But at the time of the Extraordinary Commission’s investigation someone had stitched the four telegrams together, presumably in preparation for publication. And most likely on purpose. The combination ‘I am with you with all my heart and all my thoughts—I have missed you terribly — I sacrifice my husband and my heart to you’ promised an explosion. But for some reason it was never published.

9

FIRST BLOOD

‘He Was Exhausted’

At the end of 1913 and the beginning of 1914 Rasputin was evidently starting to experience a spiritual and physical crisis. The monotonous flitting by of ‘fools’, the passing file of their naked bodies, had become habitual. It was not ‘refining’ his nerves. And the constant presence of the demon had completely worn him out. ‘He was exhausted with respect to inner content; from … mellow spiritual poise he entered a period of doubt and painful disillusionment with everything, especially the meaning of life,’ Filippov testified in the File.

It was then that he began to fear that he would lose his power. As Stepan Beletsky, the head of the Department of Police, testified, ‘At the end of 1913 the Department of Police intercepted the letter of a hypnotist from whom Rasputin was taking lessons.’

And it was no myth. An external surveillance agent scrupulously reported, 1 February 1914. According to information in our possession, Grigory Rasputin, residing at 3 English Avenue, has been taking hypnotism lessons from a certain Gerasim Papandato (nicknamed the “Musician”), approximately twenty-five years old, swarthy of face, moustache, double-breasted uniform jacket.’

And now Rasputin more and more often refused to come when he was called upon to heal sick children, saying, ‘It may be that God will take him now to save him from future sins.’ He required stimulants. Sober, he felt horror. Something was coming. It was inevitable. It was on its way. It was then that he started to drink.

The Atmosphere Of War

From the beginning of 1914, people predicted there would be a war. And pasted into the tsar’s diary for 1913 are some unusual photographs: the tsarina, the heir, and a grand duchess all dressed in the uniforms of the regiments they commanded. A martial mood had taken hold of Europe. People had not fought a bloody war in a long time. A whole century had passed since the Napoleonic wars had held the entire continent in their grip. The only wars had been regional. Mankind had forgotten the blood and the stench of thousands of rotting bodies. And the tsar, who had just come back from Germany, sensed that its emperor, the martial ‘Uncle Willy’, was no longer opposed to going to war. And France, which was eager to avenge the humiliation of its crushing defeat in the recent conflict with Prussia, wanted the same thing. Moreover, Nicholas himself kept returning to the old dream of taking back Constantinople, the capital of ancient Byzantium, from the Turks and hoisting the Orthodox cross there. And of seizing control of the Straits, thereby turning the Black Sea into an internal Russian sea. An excellent gift for the just-begun fourth century of his dynasty: a Russia that reunited the Orthodox world on the ruins of a defeated Ottoman Empire!

And once again he listened with approval to the warlike dreams of Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich. And felt with joy the popularity of his own mood. The young Russian bourgeoisie wanted war, and so did the old aristocracy.

The only problem was Alix. Nicky knew her panicky fear of war. And he knew her premonitions. And although he had written down in his diary, ‘31 December. Bless Russia and all of us, O Lord, with peace and tranquillity,’ she felt that he had done so for her sake. What he really wanted was war. She was a German, and she would not dare to speak against a war with the Germans. And once again Our Friend was the only person who could save them from war, as he had done so before. Nicky would give in whenever Father Grigory started prophesying. It was therefore essential to her that Our Friend hurry back to Petersburg again [from his last visit home].

A Calamity

And Rasputin set out from Pokrovskoe. In Moscow he stayed, as ever, with Anisia Reshetnikova. Rasputin and her daughter Anna were inseparable the whole visit. She accompanied him to restaurants and paid for him. From Moscow, Rasputin was supposed to go on to the Crimea for the
spring sunshine. And wait there for the royal family’s arrival. But the royal family had decided to remain in Petersburg for a while. Rasputin was summoned to the capital. His father, Efim Rasputin, and Anna Reshetnikova came with him.

It was then that the photograph which also included his father and Anna Reshetnikova was taken of Rasputin in the circle of his men and women admirers.

Once in Petersburg Rasputin did not let Alix down. On a visit to Tsarskoe Selo, he began his usual discussions with the tsar, threatening future cataclysms, and so on. But they elicited a surprising reaction. Not only did the tsar not want to hear him, he even hinted to the peasant that for the sake of social calm it would not be a bad thing for him to stay in Pokrovskoe for the time being.

From Molchanov’s testimony in the File: ‘In March 1914 I dropped in to see Rasputin and found him quite distraught. “Well, it is a calamity, my fellow,” he said to me. “All of a sudden I have to go to my village of Pokrovskoe for good.” Since Vyrubova and Pistolkors seemed preoccupied about something at the time, I decided that for some reason they were dissatisfied with Rasputin in Tsarskoe Selo.’

Rasputin was an awful celebrity. The papers scrupulously illuminated his every move. On 22 March, ‘Rasputin left for Tyumen with his father,’ the
New Times
wrote. His father proceeded to Pokrovskoe, while Rasputin remained in Tyumen. On 28 March the newspaper’s correspondent saw him ‘at the home of a Mr Stryapchikh’ (a Tyumen friend of Rasputin’s with whom he usually stayed, and in care of whom his devotees’ telegrams were often addressed). ‘He drank tea on the sofa in the company of two young ladies, one a magnificent brunette, and the other older but still retaining traces of her former beauty.’ And the next day, ‘behind his own horses, he left in the cool of the morning for Pokrovskoe, where he would spend Holy Week.’ Following the same highway along which he and his father had once carted passengers and goods for half-kopek pieces, Rasputin drove his horses dressed in a magnificent gentleman’s fur coat and expensive beaver cap. The highway had not yet turned to mud, since it was still the season of Siberian morning frosts. Space, liberty, a place where one could breathe easily.

On The Eve Of Catastrophe

At the time, the situation in the country was highly auspicious. The tercentenary celebrations had strengthened the dynasty’s prestige, the economy was booming, and the autocracy again seemed unshakeable. True, that strange genius, the young poets’ poet Velimir Khlebnikov, had in a miscellany of the modernist literary group ‘Union of Youth’ listed the dates of the ends of the great empires. Concluding the list was his prophesy for Russia, the date for the fall of the Romanov Empire: 1917. But hardly anyone besides the authors of the obscure publication was likely to have read it at the time.

Yesterday’s feeling of apocalypse now seemed odd. The revolutionaries had been banished or were dragging out a pitiful existence abroad. Lenin gloomily announced to his cohorts that his generation would not see revolution. The coming victorious war with its promise of new markets reconciled the young bourgeoisie to the autocracy. Probably the only thing the great Romanov family and the people in power were worried about was the peasant, who remained ‘the last revolutionary in Russia’, the last banner of opposition. And he remained, it was seriously thought, the chief obstacle to the start of the future victorious war. And Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich continued his attacks on the elder in his conversations with the tsar. Alix understood the situation: they needed to get Nicky to Livadia quickly.

The Last Spring In Beautiful Livadia