The Rasputin File (46 page)

Iliodor gave her his blessing for the murder.

And so Iliodor did stand behind Guseva’s dagger. But was he alone?

Who Was Involved In The Attempt?

It is not a very difficult question to answer. Because by 2 July Iliodor was already on his way out of the country. As he himself wrote, ‘I abandoned my homeland and, after dressing in women’s clothing, escaped over the border. On 19 July 1914, I crossed the river near the town of Tornio, four kilometres above the customs house and the border-guard post.’ But Iliodor failed to mention the most interesting part. As witnesses would testify, ‘Iliodor fled from his home by automobile.’

But where could the poor priest have found an automobile? By what route was the monk taken to Tornio? Who hired and paid for the guide who knew where the border-guard post was and could successfully take Iliodor over the border to Finland? Beletsky would recount in his testimony how he later tried to gain Rasputin’s confidence by informing him of a fact of which Rasputin had been unaware — that Iliodor’s wife had been
permitted to take the monk’s dangerous archive out of the country with her!

She was let out ‘despite dispatches and even several telegrams to the Department of Police in Dzhunkovsky’s name from the chief of the Saratov Gendarme Directorate and the Saratov district governor indicating the time of Iliodor’s wife’s departure and requesting that she be detained and searched. But permission was granted [by Dzhunkovsky] only after she had left and successfully crossed the border.’

The same Dzhunkovsky who was head of the gendarmes and the head of the secret police. A close friend of Ella’s and Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich’s. So it had been no accident.

On 1 July, immediately after the attempt on his life, Rasputin was placed under police surveillance for his own protection.

Some highly interesting testimony given by Dzhunkovsky before the Extraordinary Commission remains.

‘I instituted dual surveillance of Rasputin. I received daily reports about Rasputin’s whereabouts, how long he spent at each location, and with whom…The surveillance was established…just before the attempt on his life.’

But the official surveillance was established after the attempt on Rasputin’s life. It was the unofficial surveillance that was under way before the attempt.

Grigory Novy

Rasputin was caught in a web. ‘It was Iliodor’s idea to kill me.’ How long could he have believed that? Could the intelligent peasant really have failed to heed Beletsky’s story about how ‘important people’ had catered to Iliodor? Of course not! So that he would very soon have grasped the inevitability of his own downfall. And that of the naive, unhappy couple surrounded by a family who did not like them, a hostile court, and a crazed society clamouring for war.

And he would now ever more frequently drown his premonitions and terror in wine. He had reached a final turning point in his life. He had long abstained from wine. For he knew himself. He tells an investigator in the Tobolsk file that he ‘gave up wine about ten years ago; I have a foul character when I’m drunk’. That ‘foul character’ was the aroused beast, the insanity and extremity of the debauch. There is a wind that perpetually bursts from beyond the Urals and rushes across the limitless Russian plain. And likewise
in the Russian soul there beats and rages a boundless and dangerous force. And woe if it should break free. Now he would drink in earnest, in black earnest. Now he needed money, and huge amounts of it. Now he would have to overlook his secretary Laptinskaya’s extortion of money from his supplicants. Yes, it would be a kind of payment for his work; after all, he had been torn from peasant labour at the pleasure of the ‘tsars’. The ‘tsars’ did not pay him. At least let their subjects give him money so that the poor peasant could carouse to his heart’s content. Could at last go on a spree! So that all those gentlemen would have something to remember him by! To remember the peasant Grishka! The name he had been given by the ‘tsar’s proved prophetic: after the dagger blow he became both Rasputin and Novy [New].

War

Alix watched the animated joy of the war preparations with horror. While there at the other end of the world in Siberia her half-alive ‘alter ego’ lay tied to his bed.

The text of the ultimatum to Serbia had been approved by Austria-Hungary on 6 July. But its presentation in Belgrade was postponed until 10 July to coincide with the departure from Petersburg of President Poincaré of France, who had been visiting Russia. So the president and the tsar would not be able to come to an immediate agreement on joint action. Poincaré had arrived in Russia on 7 July for an official three-day visit. The signing of a secret
accord intime
formally acknowledged the military obligations imposed on both sides by the Franco-Russian alliance.

At a dinner in honour of the French president, Stana, that ‘black woman’, joyfully cried out, ‘We shall have war before the end of the month … [and] our armies will unite in Berlin.’ At manoeuvres under a glowering sky, the tsar and president had earlier watched the mighty Russian army with delight. And during the manoeuvres Alix had almost fainted. At the dinner honouring the French president, as the amazed French ambassador, Paléologue, would record, ‘She continually bit her lips, and her feverish breathing made the diamond-studded netting covering her breast sparkle … the poor woman was evidently struggling with an attack of hysteria.’

An hour after Poincaré’s departure from Petersburg, the Austro-Hungarian envoy in Belgrade handed the Serbian government the ultimatum. Serbia immediately appealed to Russia for protection. On 12 July the Council of Ministers under the chairmanship of the tsar promulgated a ‘Resolution Regarding the Period of War Preparation’. That evening the
members of the General Staff committee were informed of the tsar’s decision ‘to support Serbia, even if to do so it should be necessary to announce a mobilization and undertake military action, although not until Austrian troops have crossed the Serbian frontier’.

France prepared for war along with Russia. Germany and Austria-Hungary had already begun preparations two weeks before. At the same time, England placed its navy in a state of combat readiness. Feverish diplomatic talks were in progress, but they could no longer change anything. Mad Europe was disposed to fight.

Meanwhile, Alix’s agitated telegrams had been flying first to Tyumen and then to Pokrovskoe, where the wounded Rasputin had been moved.

‘12 July 1914. Urgent Tyumen. For Novy from Peterhof. A grave moment. They are threatening war.’

‘16 July 1914. Bad news. Terrible times. Pray for him. I have no strength left to struggle with the others.’

She kept pleading for help. And once again the peasant did not let her down. Although half-alive, he picked up his clumsy pen.

On 16 July a ‘Ukase Regarding a Declaration of General Mobilization’ was signed. Nikolai Nikolaevich was jubilant. The whole bellicose Romanov family rejoiced. But it was then, evidently, that the tsar received the telegram from Pokrovskoe that Alix had been so keenly anticipating.

A Prophecy

Rasputin had most likely sent several such telegrams. But with its fearful prediction, this was the most terrifying.

From Badmaev’s testimony: ‘And at the time of the war, he… sent a telegram about the same thing [not to fight], but they did not listen to him.’

From Vyrubova’s testimony in the File: ‘And then after the order for mobilization was given before the start of the present war, he sent the sovereign a telegram from the village of Pokrovskoe with a request to make some arrangement so there would be no war.’

As is clear from the records of the external surveillance of Rasputin after the war had already begun, ‘On 20 July 1915, while in the village of Pokrovskoe, Rasputin said to agent Terekhov, “Last year when I was lying in the hospital, I asked the sovereign not to go to war, and in that regard sent the sovereign about twenty telegrams, including a very serious one.”’

A photocopy of that ‘serious’ telegram from Rasputin to the tsar was published in Paris in 1968 in
La revolution russe
.

A threatening cloud hangs over Russia: misfortune, much woe, no ray of hope, a sea of tears immeasurable, and of blood? What shall I say? There are no words: an indescribable horror. I know that all want war from you, and the loyal [wish it] without realizing that it is for the sake of destruction. God’s punishment is a grievous one when the path is taken away. You are the tsar, the father of the nation. Do not permit the mad to triumph and destroy themselves and the nation. Everything drowns in great bloodshed. Grigory.

It is amusing, but there was another perspicacious person who also foresaw it — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. He believed that ‘war between Austria and Russia would be a very useful thing for revolution’ throughout Eastern Europe.

And the unbelievable occurred. After that telegram of Rasputin’s, the tsar’s telegram ordering the mobilization which was awaited by his allies and the whole world was cancelled. In the evening, when everything in the telegraph office had been made ready for the sending of the telegrams containing the ukase on general mobilization, a telephone call was received from the tsar rescinding the order. The ministers and the General Staff were thrown into a panic. It was decided to declare the rescission of the ukase ‘a misunderstanding, a mistake, that would soon been corrected’. Sergei Sazonov, the minister of foreign affairs, and Yanushkevich, the military chief of staff, conferred about whom to dispatch to the tsar to persuade him to rectify his ‘mistake’. But Nicholas was receiving no one.

Only Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich managed to get an audience. The ‘dread uncle’ succeeded in convincing the tsar of that which the tsar so wanted to be convinced. At three o’clock in the afternoon, Nicholas received Foreign Minister Sazonov and in the presence of his personal representative to the court of Kaiser Wilhelm, Count I. L. Tatischev, gave his consent for a general mobilization. Sazonov immediately telephoned Chief of Staff Yanushkevich to inform him of the decision, concluding with the sentence, ‘You may now break your telephone.’ He feared both the tsar and Rasputin.

At 5:30 p.m. on 17 July (30 NS), the telegrams regarding the general mobilization of the army and navy were sent out.

Germany ordered the Russian government to suspend by 12:00 noon on 19 July (1 August NS) ‘all operations threatening Austria and Germany’, that is, to halt the mobilization. Germany declared war on Russia the evening of the day that the ultimatum expired.

‘On 2 August [NS] the German ambassador, Count Friedrich Pourtalès, handed the declaration of war to Sazonov with tears in his eyes. At 2:00 p.m. a solemn mass was conducted at the Winter Palace. And a public declaration of war was also made there. I saw only gladness on people’s faces. The tsarina and tsar came out to the thousands who filled the square, and the crowd fell to its knees. She, however, seemed so agitated that she covered her face with her hands, and from the convulsive movement of her shoulders, one could surmise that she was crying,’ Vasiliev, the last director of the Department of Police, wrote in his memoirs.

‘20 July [2 August NS]. Germany has declared war on us, pray, they are in despair,’ Alix said in a telegram sent to Pokrovskoe.

At the time the whole country was reading this announcement from the tsar:

We declare to our loyal subjects that Russia, in keeping with its historical obligations, and being of one faith and blood with the Slavic peoples, has never regarded their fate with indifference. The fraternal feelings of the Russian people for Slavs have been aroused with particular force and complete unanimity in recent days, when Austria-Hungary, treating the acquiescent and peace-loving reply of the Serbian government with contempt, and spurning the well-intended mediation of Russia, presented demands to Serbia that were clearly unacceptable to a sovereign state. Austria-Hungary has rashly resorted to armed attack, beginning a bombardment of defenceless Belgrade…In this terrible hour of trial, may our internal quarrels be forgotten, and may the bond of unity between the tsar and people grow ever stronger.

Thus did the tsar write in his proclamation, ‘given on this twentieth day of July in the twenty-first year of our reign’, regarding Russia’s entry into the war.

Nicholas appointed the ‘dread uncle’ commander-in-chief — the army’s favourite, the six-and-a-half-foot tall Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, the peasant Grigory Rasputin’s main enemy.

There was nothing to do but submit. The joyful fervour regarding the future spilling of blood was universal.

Alix, too, had to conform to it — in a new telegram.

‘21 July. Nicholas asks you to bless his cousin as he goes to war. The mood here is cheerful.’

Meanwhile, the ‘dread uncle’, having become commander-in-chief, at once moved to deal with the peasant. Dispatches about Rasputin’s ‘serious
telegram’ had been sent by Dzhunkovsky to the commander-in-chief. And the grand duke decided to have a serious talk with the tsar about the peasant who had dared to frighten the Tsar of All Russia with talk of defeat. According to the testimony of the same agent Terekhov, ‘Rasputin said that they allegedly wanted to hand him over for trial because of that telegram … but that the sovereign … had answered, “These are our family affairs; they are not a matter for trial.”’

The grand duke had been put in his place.

Lying in his bed, the wounded Rasputin could only watch the world straining for war.

On 4 August (NS) England declared war on Germany. On 23 May 1915, Italy sided with the Entente. On 27 August 1916, Rumania allied itself with the Entente. On 6 April 1917, the United States entered the war. The First World War had begun.

10

THE NEW RASPUTIN

The Return

August 1914 was drawing to a close when he finally made it to the capital. Now he lived in a new apartment on Gorokhovaya Street.