The Rasputin File (47 page)

From Filippov’s testimony in the File: ‘Vyrubova transferred Rasputin to a building on Gorokhovaya convenient for meeting anyone coming to the city from the Tsarskoe Selo station.’

Agents loitered in the building’s courtyard. After the attempt on his life he was again being guarded, and the police chronicle of his life had resumed. The ‘Dark One’ — such was the disparaging nickname given to him by Dzhunkovsky’s people.

The first to visit were his old acquaintances: ‘Molchanov visited the Dark One on 21–3 and 29 August’ (from the external surveillance log).

Molchanov testified in the File:

I did not see him until the end of August 1914, when, after recovering from the attempt on his life, he returned to Petrograd…He walked around hunched over in a gown, since his wound was still bandaged and he wasn’t allowed to wear his normal clothing. His mood was noticeably depressed. He told me about the attempt, how some ‘stinker’ had wounded him, how he had run away pressing his shirt against the wound, how they had operated on him in Pokrovskoe using stearin candles for light, and how amazed the doctor had been that he hadn’t died.

He was still suffering from lingering horror and pain. And it was hard for him to stand up straight. But after throwing a coat over his hospital gown, Anya took him to see the tsarina. ‘On 25 August the Dark One went with Vyrubova to Tsarskoe Selo’ (from the external surveillance log).

How Alix had waited for him. The Russian offensive in East Prussia had
misfired, and General Samsonov’s army had perished in the Masurian Lakes. By the beginning of September, the entire Russian army had been pushed out of eastern Prussia. The horrors of war. And, continuing to hope that it would somehow be possible to stop the slaughter that had already begun, she wrote to Nicky on 25 September: ‘This miserable war, when will it ever end. William [Kaiser Wilhelm], I feel sure must at times pass through hideous moments of despair when he grasps that it was he…wh. began the war & is dragging his country into ruin … It makes my heart bleed when I think how hard Papa & Ernie struggled to bring our little country to its present state of prosperity in every sense.’

She was already imagining the destruction of her little principality. ‘This miserable war, when will it ever end.’

But the tsar did not heed her prayer. For despite the defeat of Samsonov’s army, Russian troops in the south-west had been operating with rare success, smashing the Austro-Hungarian army and occupying Galicia and its ancient capital of Lvov. It was the second time the tsar had come to believe that a war could strengthen his regime. The first time had been the war with Japan, which ended in the 1905 revolution.

The Prophecies Change

And Rasputin understood at once: he could not for the time being come out against the war. Everyone was in a happy fervour. ‘We shall sign a peace only in Berlin!’ was the universal refrain. ‘They have all lost their minds,’ the poet Zinaida Gippius wrote.

The German representatives were put to flight. A touching atmosphere of unity in the government and the Duma membership prevailed at the Duma session. And Alix had to talk constantly about carrying the war to a victorious conclusion; even she was weary of not joining in the universal refrain. Our Friend lent her his support. At the time, Vyrubova testified, Rasputin ‘indicated it was imperative to carry on to victory. He said not a word about a separate peace.’

Yet while forecasting victory, he did not forget to add what she so wanted to hear. ‘Rasputin predicted the war would be very hard on Russia and involve enormous losses,’ Vyrubova testified.

‘They are taking him to Tsarskoe Selo,’ the agents noted once again. It was too risky to bring him in. And he disappeared into Anya’s little house.

And then a calash would drive out from the Alexander Palace with the
tsarina. And sometimes the children would come with her. The calash would stop at Anya’s house, the only place Alix could meet with Our Friend. She did not dare bring him to the Alexander Palace. The tsar did not want to annoy the ‘dread uncle’. Our Friend’s visits to the palace could occur only as a last resort when the heir was ill. She ordered that his visits not be recorded in the palace register, that chronicle of court life. But thanks to eternal Russian carelessness, entries regarding his visits did find their way into the register. On 17 October 1914, ‘Rasputin was received by Her Majesty at 08:30.’ On 23 April 1916 at 09:20 and on 5 September at 09: 45 ‘Rasputin was deigned to be received.’ Just three times, but how many more did he actually come to aid ‘Sunbeam’ (as she called her son)?

A Peculiar Occurrence

Rasputin’s health gradually returned and with it his enthusiasm for life. According to the external surveillance agents, after his return, the pretty brunette Baroness Kusova visited him daily at his home (from 22 August to 29 August). And in Tsarskoe Selo, he not only met the tsarina and Anya. As the agents reported, residing there in the palace of Grand Duke Pavel Alexandrovich were Sana and her husband Alexander Pistolkors. But Olga, Alexander’s mother and the grand duke’s wife, despised Rasputin. And Sana and Erik were thus obliged to meet him at Anya’s house.

But from 7 October, the good-looking Sana with her porcelain face became a continual guest at the peasant’s home on Gorokhovaya Street. The agents made no note of her husband’s presence. And Rasputin had been visited by his old friend Filippov on 26 August. Life was getting back on track. Or, more accurately, getting on a new track. For immediately after his return he started drinking heavily. And he would be drunk even in the afternoon. ‘5 October, 6: 30 p.m.,’ a security agent punctiliously recorded, he ‘got in a droshky drunk and dozed in the cab along the way.’ A constable on the corner, ‘taking him for a drunk, was about to send him to the precinct’, when an agent explained to him that it was Rasputin.

Alix’s New Roles

Alix’s confidence started to return the day that Rasputin arrived in the capital.

God’s envoy had defeated death, and she had to see that as auspicious. Now she was strong. Now he was with her. He remained with her even in her letters to Nicky, in that almost daily conversation with the tsar.

For the first time in their lives, Alix and Nicky were forced to remain apart for long periods. The tsar was continually at the front at General Staff Headquarters. How much she feared Nicky’s association with the ‘dread uncle’ and his entire circle. All of them despised Our Friend. And were very likely passing on various kinds of filth to the credulous tsar. That is why, inundating him with letters, she would constantly remind him about Our Friend. The historian Pokrovsky calculates that in 1914–15, merely the first year and a half of their correspondence, Rasputin is mentioned more than a hundred and fifty times.

From her letters. ‘19 Sept. 1914 …You, I know, not withstanding all you will have to do, will still miss yr. little family & precious agoo wee one [the heir]. He will quickly get better now that our Friend has seen him & that will be a relief to you.’

As soon as Nicky returned to Tsarskoe Selo, she organized a meeting between them.

‘20 Sept…. Our Friend … was so glad to have seen you yesterday … Gr[igory] loves you jealously and can’t hear N[ikolai Nikolaevich] playing a part.’

Now when meeting Our Friend at Anya’s, Alix observed the rule she had worked out with Nicky that there should be no witnesses to those meetings. That, apparently, is the reason why she wrote to Nicky: ‘23 Sept … Ania was offended I did not go to her, but she had lots of guests, & our Friend for three hours.’

But the very next day, ‘24 Sept…flew for a half an hour with Olga to Anias house, as our Friend spent the afternoon with her & wanted to see me. He asked after you… may God give you courage, strength, & patience, — faith you have more than ever and it is this wh. keeps you up … And our Friend helps you carry yr. heavy cross and great responsibilities.’

‘24 Oct….Our Friend intends leaving for home about the 5-th & wishes to come to us this evening.’

But she did not want to let him go without his meeting Nicky, who would soon be returning to Petrograd. She wanted him to instil in the tsar new and essential ideas that had occurred to her at the beginning of that terrible war.

‘25 Oct…. Our Friend came for an hour in the evening; he will await yr return and then go off for a little home … It seems Lavrinovsky [the governor of Taurida] is ruining everything — sending off good Tartars to Turkey … and our Friend wishes me quickly to speak to Maklakov [the minister of internal affairs], as he says one must not waste time until your return.’

So now Our Friend was advising what that enormously wilful, imperious
nature had long dreamed of — to undertake herself the government of the state during Nicky’s absence!

Nicky returned to Tsarskoe Selo at the end of October. The peasant was waiting for him. The return was a happy one. Pushing back the Austro-Hungarian forces, the Russian army had already reached the German border. True, it meant the opening of a second front: on 29 October Turkey had entered the war on Germany’s side.

From Nicholas’s diary: ‘I have been in a furious mood in regard to the Germans and Turks. Only…under the influence of a calming conversation with Grigory has my soul regained its poise.’ After the daily horror of making momentous decisions, how much was he in need of Our Friend with his essential words about God’s Love for the dynasty, and about a novel but easily grasped idea: now that the tsar was at the front, the empress would have to be the ‘sovereign’s eye’. She would have to take a greater interest in state affairs.

Following that, Our Friend could quietly go back to Pokrovskoe. And after him the tsar, too, returned to the army in the field — first to the troops in the rear, then by train to the Caucasus and the army on the new Turkish front. Our Friend’s task now was to keep sending encouragement via incoherent telegrams about future victory.

Which he did punctually. ‘Angels in the ranks of our warriors, the salvation of the steadfast heroes with delight and victory,’ Our Friend cryptically wrote to Nicky in one telegram.

But at that time a new idea had taken possession of Alix. And for a while it even pushed aside her avidness for state responsibilities.

Thousands of wounded and maimed were being brought from the front. And the tsarina gave herself up to the cause of mercy with all the strength of her boundless energy. She organized her own hospital train and set up a hospital in Tsarskoe Selo in the great palace. She and the grand duchesses became sisters of mercy. It was fully consistent with her religiosity. And Our Friend immediately responded in kind.

On 21 November 1914, Alix wrote to Nicky, ‘This is the wire I just received from our Friend: “When you comfort the wounded God makes His name famous through your gentleness and glorious work.” So touching & must give me strength to get over my shyness.’

The ‘elder’ sensed that the tsarina was trying to come out of her voluntary seclusion in Tsarskoe Selo. She had decided to become a ‘sister of mercy for Russia’. It was something she needed to do in order to silence the vile whispers that continued to haunt her about being ‘a German’. And how
hard it was for her, that shy woman who was ashamed even of her English accent that for some reason was regarded as ‘German’ in Russia. Together with her daughters, she was now hard at work in the hospitals.

‘27 Oct. 1914 … We are going to another hospital now directly … We shall go as sisters (our Friend likes us to) & tomorrow also.’

‘28 Nov. 1914 … At times I feel I can’t any more & fill myself with heart-drops & and it goes again — & our Friend wishes me besides to go, & so I must swallow my shyness.’

Surrounded by the hostility of the court, she yearned for love. And there it was — the love of the wounded, the love of the simple people! Her dream had come true.

On a hospital tour, she came to Voronezh and met up with the tsar. So they could go to Moscow together. There in the ancient capital they were supposed to take part in church services, as she had dreamed of doing and as ‘Grigory had requested’.

They were met by the din of Moscow’s innumerable church bells, solemn prayers, and the joy of the common people.

From Moscow Alix went back to her beloved Tsarskoe Selo, while Nicky returned to the Headquarters she hated so much and the ‘dread uncle’. Rasputin was in Pokrovskoe at the time, and she called for him.

‘14 Dec. 1914 … Our Friend arrives tomorrow and says we shall have better news from the war.’ Now he was coming. And nature itself rejoiced in the arrival of the man of God.

‘15 Dec…. Bright sunny day, He must have arrived, A[nya] has gone to meet him.’

As soon as he arrived he heard the phone ring — it was ‘Mama’.

‘16 Dec…. I spoke a second to Gr[igory] by telephone, sends: “Fortitude of spirit, — will soon come to you, will discuss everything.’“

Matters at the front had grown more complicated, but Our Friend told her what she wanted to hear. ‘17 Dec … This morning our Friend told her [Anya] by telephone that He is a little more quiet about the news.’

But at the same time she did not forget to carry on her jealous struggle against the commander-in-chief through the words of Our Friend.

‘22 Jan. 1915 … Ania … begs me to tell you what she forget giving over to you yesterday fr. our Friend, that you must be sure not once to mention the name of the commander in Chief, in your manifest — it must solely come fr. you to the people.’

As would become clear, the commander-in-chief knew about those letters of hers.

Another Attempt On His Life?

Right before Christmas Our Friend was involved in a strange incident.

‘Around Christmas …I read in the
Stock Exchange News
that an automobile had run into…his droshky,’ Molchanov testified.

Automobiles rarely collided with droshkies in those days. A remarkable incident for the times. Simultaneously the newspaper persecution resumed. Now he was reminded of all his efforts for peace. ‘Grigory Rasputin is a most evil enemy of the holy church of Christ…During the struggle for liberation of the Balkan countries… only an enemy of the Orthodox Church could have advised Russian diplomacy to regard the frenzied brutality of the Turks with equanimity … It is not for Russia’s good that she has been sent such detractors of Orthodoxy, such soulless false prophets,’ the magazine
Reactions to Life
wrote in December 1914.