The Rasputin File (59 page)

The Road To Power, 1915-Style

In the four years since that visit, Khvostov had left the post of governor, retired from the service, and been elected to the Duma. He had, however, remained just as jolly, fat, and ruddy-cheeked as before. In the Duma, he had become the leader of a rightist faction whose members proudly wore on their lapels the pin of the anti-Semitic organization Union of the Russian People. His anti-Semitic speeches had been very well received in Tsarskoe Selo. As Khvostov later explained to the investigators of the Extraordinary Commission, ‘I took up German espionage and German domination. That question interested me to the highest degree.’ It would have been hard to find a better candidate — a man of the Duma yet a leader of the right and an indomitable foe of German espionage, which, in view of the rumours circulating around Rasputin and the tsarina, was no small matter. And, finally, Khvostov was a Russian, which was highly important, given the unfortunate predominance of German last names at court.

Andronikov knew Khvostov well, as of course he did more or less all
important people. And he knew that Khvostov would accept any conditions to ascend Olympus with such speed. And after his conversation with Khvostov, it seemed that Andronikov was able to persuade Rasputin of it, too. For the peasant remembered the reception that Khvostov had given him. But Andronikov apparently convinced him that the old haughty Khvostov no longer existed. There was a new Khvostov, who understood that in order to be minister, he would have to serve Our Friend.

Rasputin’s wavering was decisively overcome by the prince’s proposal to appoint Beletsky, whom Rasputin had already met and of whose loyalty he was assured, under Khvostov. Beletsky would take responsibility for the Department of Police away from Khvostov and, it follows, responsibility for Rasputin’s security along with it. So the candidacy was a superb one. And after meeting Vyrubova, Khvostov proceeded to the tsarina. ‘The empress received me graciously and hinted … that, although I was not without fault as far as Rasputin was concerned, she was sure that my eyes had been opened … and she would not stand in the way of my nomination, providing Rasputin’s security remained with Beletsky.’

While Anya and the tsarina were talking over future nominations with Andronikov, a dangerous event occurred in the Duma.

The Peasant Unites The Haters

Society and the Duma were full of rumours leaking from the palace. The removal of the grand duke had created a new reality. There was a new commander-in-chief who was considered incapable of heading the army, and there was Prime Minister Goremykin, an old man completely under the tsarina’s thumb who was considered incapable of heading the government. And there were persistent rumours about impending nominations that, in the tsar’s absence, would become the prerogative of the tsarina. That threatened the creation of a cabinet of ‘dark forces’. One that would, it was believed, operate with the prime minister’s responsibilities assigned to the semi-literate peasant. Who was about to return to the capital.

On 25 August 1915, the Progressive Bloc was formed in the Duma. The struggle against the ‘dark forces’ had accomplished the impossible. It had united all those extremely disparate and at times mutually hostile people. It comprised 300 deputies out of a possible 442. The Bloc was supposed to remove the ‘dark forces’ (Rasputin and the tsarina) from power without repercussions, and lead the country to the creation of a truly constitutional monarchy. And to that end to secure the retirement from the government
of Goremykin and the creation of ‘a government of confidence’ that would be answerable to the Duma. The Bloc’s slogan was: ‘The masses remain calm — the Duma speaks for them.’

At the same time, Guchkov was preparing in the Duma a resolution of inquiry regarding Rasputin’s scandal at the Yar. It was then that Khvostov demonstrated that his recommendation by Our Friend’s envoy had not been in vain. ‘Khvostov said that …are solution of inquiry was being prepared in the Duma. They had asked Khvostov for his signature, but he refused and observed that if the question were raised, the amnesty [the tsar’s amnesty for convicts was then being considered] would not be granted. They thought it over … and rejected the resolution,’ Vyrubova testified. On 30 August 1915, Alix wrote to Nicky, ‘Guchkov ought to be got rid of, only how is the question, wartime — is there nothing one could hook on to have him shut up…but it’s loathsome to see his game, his speeches & underhand work … [They] say he [Rasputin] lives at T[sarskoe] S[elo], as before they said we had Ernie here.’

The most preposterous rumours were abroad in the capital, while Our Friend remained as before in Pokrovskoe awaiting the promised changes. All that time he fought for his son’s release from the draft. He realized that his pitiful, weak-minded son would perish at the front. And he sent his wife Praskovia to Petrograd to entreat the tsars to leave his son at home. And he sent pleading telegrams and petitions. And in her next letter Alix again asked Nicky, ‘Can you not find out when his province is called up & let know at once? Does it concern His son? Please, answer as quickly as you can.’ On 30 August she repeated her request. ‘I enclose a petition from our Friend, you write your decision upon it, I think it certainly might be done.’

But again the Tsar remained silent. And again she asked him. ‘i Sept. 1915 … Our Friend is in despair his boy has to go to war, — the only boy, who looks after all when he is away.’

And again Nicky said nothing. He could not explain to her that while he might change ministers, he was unable to leave the peasant’s son at home. It would be a provocation to the family and to society. While focusing on the struggle for ‘ours’, Alix had somehow failed to remember that not long before Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich’s son Oleg, just a boy, had been killed. And his father had been unable to endure his grief — the grand duke had been throttled by an attack of angina pectoris. And there were other young grand dukes at the front. How could he then excuse the peasant’s son from service! But, as always, she stubbornly kept trying to get her way. ‘ii Sept. 1915 …I understand the boy had to be called in, but he might have got him to a train as sanitary [medical orderly]
or anything …an only son … One longs to help without harming Father or Son.’

Although Rasputin’s son would eventually be drafted, she would be able to secure him a place as a medical orderly — on her own hospital train.

Indignant discussion continued in the Duma about the impending appointment of ministers pleasing to the peasant, and about the fact that Prime Minister Goremykin was travelling back and forth with reports to the tsarina.

On 6 September Zinaida Yusupova wrote to her son in the Crimea in her amusing code, ‘The general mood is one of disgust. The “Fur Coat in Mothballs” [the old man Goremykin] continues to travel back and forth to the Valida [the empress]. She is simply triumphant!’

The opposition continued its attacks. This time the news was from Moscow, the seat of the anti-Rasputin opposition. Vladimir Gurko, a respected man of right-wing convictions with the high rank of chamberlain who was also a member of the Council of State, took a public stand. And a phrase spoken by Gurko soon spread throughout Russia: ‘We desire strong authorities… meaning…authorities with a whip
[khlyst]
and not under a Whip
[Khlyst].’

‘A slandering pun, directed against you & our Friend, God punish them for this,’ Alix wrote to the tsar on 8 September.

‘The Ministers Are Rotten’

The peasant understood: he who had saved their son so many times had been unable to protect his own. His son had been drafted into the army. And it was then that Rasputin took to drink once and for all. And the beast, the ‘Dark One’, the fearsome peasant fully awoke in him.

An agent reported:

5 September. The Dark One was visiting his brother. His father went there, too, and started cursing him in the foulest language. The Dark One, enraged, leapt up from the table, pushed his father out the door, knocked him to the ground, and started hitting him with his fists. His father yelled, ‘Don’t hit me, you scoundrel!’ And they had to be pulled apart by force. One of his father’s eyes was so badly pummelled it had swollen shut. As he left, the old man started cursing the Dark One even more, threatening to tell everyone that he [Grigory] didn’t know anything except how to hold Dunya [the maid Dunya Pechyorkina] by her soft parts. After which, the Dark One had to be kept from attacking his father again.

The agents enjoyed reading him the newspapers, which were just as interested in him as before. And he was apparently also tormented by visions. He sensed that there, far away in Petrograd, the inevitable was looming.

‘6 September,’ the agents recorded, ‘Rasputin said, “My soul is full of grief. It has even made me deaf … Two hours I feel all right in my soul, but five hours are bad…and bad because of what is going on in the country, and because what the damned papers write about me greatly annoys me. I’ll have to take them to court.”’

While Rasputin was carousing in Pokrovskoe, the tsarina was tirelessly pleading for Khvostov’s nomination as minister. And our Friend’s predictions were once more brought into play.

‘7 Sept. 1915 … one needs an energetic man who knows people in every place, & a Russian name.’

‘9 Sept. 1915 … Clean out all, give Goremykin new ministers to work with & God will bless you& their work…My image of yesterday, of 1911 with the bell has indeed helped me to “feel” the people…And the bell would ring if they came with bad intentions & wld. keep them fr. approaching me … And you my love, try to heed what I say, it’s not my wisdom, but a certain instinct given by God beyond myself so as to be your help.’

The tsar wavered; he was still unaccustomed to her direct participation in affairs. She was tense. All her indomitable energy had been directed to help him. And it made her angry that he did not understand that.

‘10 Sept. 1915 … Please speak seriously about Khvostov as Minister of the Interior to Goremykin am sure he is the man for the moment, as fears nobody and is devoted to you.’

But appointing a new minister of internal affairs was only the beginning.

On ii September she was already demanding the head of Chief Procurator Samarin. Now they [the Duma] have betted that you cannot send Samarin away—& you will…At once my love, clear him out & Stcherbatov [the minister of internal affairs] too … Please take Khvostov in his place … Take a slip of paper & note down what to talk over [with Prime Minister Goremykin]…. i) Samarin… Samarin is stupid insolent fellow.’ She would now write directly and insistently about Khvostov. And she would not relent until he yielded.

12 September: ‘The ministers are rotten.’

14 September: ‘People get angry I mix in — but it’s my duty to help you. Even in that I am found fault with, sweet Ministers and society … Such is the unedifying world.’

Sometimes she wrote two letters a day. She was sure their enemies at Headquarters would not let Nicky carry out these wise decisions. It was not for nothing that a foe of the man of God — Nicholas’s young cousin Dmitry — was at Headquarters.

13 September: ‘Why don’t you send him back to his regiment? … It does not look well, no Granddukes are out [at the front], only Boris from time to time, the poor Constantins boys always ill.’

She could fight, and in combat she was ruthless. Her daughter’s former fiancé who had been raised in her family, was to be sent to the front closer to death for having dared to go against the elder.

And all that time Our Friend had been with them. He had not forgotten to send the needed telegrams. On 8 September she wrote:

‘About the war news our Friend writes (add it to yr. list of telegrams) … “Don’t fear it will not be worse than it was, faith and the banner will favour us.”’

On 9 September she wrote: ‘Did you copy out his telegr. for yourself on the extra sheet? If not, here it is again: “Do not fall when in trouble God will glorify by his appearance.”’

Such were the seer’s predictions one and a half years before the revolution. Rasputin had also sent a badly needed telegram requesting the nomination of the God-pleasing Khvostov.

Ahead lay a meeting at Headquarters of the Council of Ministers at which Alix expected that the appointment of Khvostov would at last be announced. And she asked Nicky to turn for help to Our invisibly present Friend.

‘15 Sept. 1915 … Remember to keep the Image in yr. hand again & several times to comb yr. hair with His comb before the sitting of the ministers. Oh, how I shall think of you& pray for you more than ever then, Beloved One.’

They were worried in Petrograd. The deputy internal affairs minister, G. R. Mollov, had received reliable information from one of his agents that Khvostov had been summoned to Tsarskoe Selo by the empress and given hope of an appointment to the post of minister of internal affairs. ‘I informed Prince Scherbatov,’ Mollov later recalled, ‘that it appeared that his and my days at our occupations were numbered… Scherbatov …did not agree, and said that he had recently returned from Headquarters, where he had been graciously received by the sovereign.’ The Sabler story was being repeated.

On 15 September an agitated Colonel Globachyov, chief of the Petrograd
security branch, arrived at the Ministry of Internal Affairs. ‘Globachyov presented me with a telegram from one of the agents assigned to Rasputin. In the telegram it was mentioned that Rasputin had received a letter from Vyrubova with approximately the following contents: “Sana [a diminutive form of ‘Alexandra’ — that is, Alix] is feeling sad and is eager to see you in about ten days time. Bless.” It was mentioned in the same telegram that Rasputin meant to come to Petrograd soon afterwards,’ Mollov testified in the File. Putting the two events together, Mollov clearly understood what lay in store.

Alix at the time was continuing to shower the tsar with letters. She could not stop. Her energetic temperament would not permit her. On 17 September she sent him two complete letters.

‘17 Sept…. Only wire a word to quiet me. If no ministers yet changed — simply wire “no changes yet,” & if you are thinking about Khvostov say “I remember the tail”
[khvost
in Russian].’