The Rasputin File (70 page)

A View Of Rasputin Through The Window

Preserved in the Extraordinary Commission archive is an amusing diary. It contains a description of Rasputin’s life by a neighbour, a Synod official named Blagoveschensky: ‘His kitchen was right across from my own, so I could see everything extremely well.’ He could also hear extremely well, since Rasputin lived on the other side of the wall.

And he watched and listened and wrote it all down in his diary.

15 June. I’m writing at home in my study, and a bacchanalia of some sort has been taking place on the other side of the wall. A binge, evidently, before his return to his native region. Dancing, laughter. By 12:00 musicians arrived, a string orchestra from some amusement park. They played and sang operetta tunes accompanied by loud dancing … Georgian songs have been repeatedly sung by a baritone [presumably, Rasputin’s daughter’s fiancé Pankhadze]. The binge continued until early in the morning. By the end separate drunken voices could be heard and the dancing of one person. Apparently he himself had let go completely and was singing and dancing solo. They constantly came to the kitchen for snacks of fruit and bottles of wine, more and more ladies and young women, all animated, flushed, cheerful in a free-and-easy way. The ladies themselves washed all the dishes.

Farewell To Saint Simeon

As he was leaving Petrograd, Rasputin warned his devotees to value the time with him.

From Manasevich’s testimony: ‘At the end of 1916 in my and Vyrubova’s presence, he assured his devotees that he had another five years left in the world [during which time, according to Vyrubova, he had promised that the heir would finally ‘outgrow his illness’]. And then he would withdraw from the world and all those close to him to a remote place known only to him, where he would be saved by following an ascetic way of life.’ Manasevich didn’t understand: Rasputin was again reminding them of the words of Jesus — ‘I shall not always be with you’; he was reminding them of the
Khlyst
mystery — of the One who was supposed to be living in him.

But Alix soon afterwards called him back. And again he returned to the threatening capital, empty for the summer, eternally damp from its wet winds. Then at the end of the summer he broke free again to go to his peasant labours, the gathering of the harvest. And again he caroused before his departure, so that they would remember Grishka. A time of troubles was coming, and who knew if he would ever come back. And again his indignant neighbour wrote it all down in his diary.

‘A binge continued all night. A Gypsy chorus of about forty people was invited. They sang and danced until 3:00 a.m. He has in fact been drinking heavily since 6 August and pressing himself on the servant girls in the courtyard and sneaking off with them to kiss. On 9 August he went back to his village, they say.’

He did not go by himself. As if he sensed that it was for the last time. He took the most loyal of his devotees to the Verkhoturye Monastery with him to make obeisance for the last time to the relics of Saint Simeon. The lame Vyrubova, accompanied by her maid Maria Belyaeva and the medical orderly Akim Zhuk, and Lili Dehn, Munya Golovina, and Rasputin’s two daughters were all lodged at the monastery inn and resolutely endured the dirt and the swarms of bedbugs. Father Grigory himself stayed in a cell at the monastery. From the inn they drove to see the anchorite Makary at Verkhoturye, where in a small room built onto his cell the mad general’s wife was also staying at the time. She carried firewood, cleaned, and washed his cell and prayed. From the testimony of the maid Belyaeva in the File: ‘ Lokhtina lived in a special cell …dressed all in white with little icons on her breast … Vyrubova and I spent the night with her. Dehn spent the night with us, too. The next day we went back to the monastery, where Saint Simeon’s relics were kept.’

After paying his respects to Saint Simeon, Rasputin set off with his daughters for Pokrovskoe, while his devotees returned to the capital. They didn’t know that it was their last parting with his monastery.

A Line For Conversations With Berlin

But at the end of August Alix summoned him once again. And back in the capital he again felt doomed. At the time they were already saying on every corner and in every home that Rasputin was in the pay of German agents. And Rasputin, and the tsarina who deferred to him, and Vyrubova — the ‘dark forces’ — decided to lead Russia out of the war. ‘Rasputin and treason weren’t even talked about but simply referred to as self-evident,’ wrote the celebrated man of letters Victor Shklovsky.

The ‘dark forces’, the danger of a separate peace with Germany, and getting rid of Rasputin were the ideas by which society lived at the time Interspersed in the diary of Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich are lines like ‘Alix is remarkably unpopular’; ‘O God, save Russia! Anything but that shameful peace’; ‘Yesterday a sister of mercy from the Winter Palace reported that they have a secret phone line for conversations with Berlin.’

A main task of the Extraordinary Commission in 1917 was to establish as fact the tsarina’s secret relations with her German relatives and their plan for a separate peace. However, the Commission could establish nothing o: the sort. On the contrary, the facts confirmed the ‘tsars’ ‘innocence. When at the end of 1916 the German government approached the Entente with an offer of peace, Nicholas replied that ‘the time for peace negotiations ha: not yet arrived, since the achievement by Russia of the goal of taking Constantinople and the Straits, as well as the creation of a free Poland from the three territories now partitioned, still has not been assured.’ The British ambassador Sir George Buchanan made the same point in his memoirs by quoting a cable he had sent to the Foreign Office in February 1917: ‘the one point on which we can count on his [the emperor’s] remaining firm is the war, more especially as the empress, who virtually governs Russia, is herself sound on this question.’ And Rasputin himself had declared severa times that he was for fighting on until victory.

Her Secret… Her Tragedy

From Manasevich’s testimony: ‘Rasputin would say, “If I had been there a the beginning of the war, there would have been no war. But since they have already started it, it has to be carried through to the end. If there’s ar argument, then argue, but if it’s a half-argument, it will still be an argument.”‘ About her [the tsarina] he said, ‘she is terribly in favour of continuing the war. But there have been moments when she has wept, thinking her brother had been wounded or killed.’

The master of the royal yacht
Shtandart
, Nikolai Sablin, who was very close to the ‘tsars’, said the same thing: ‘The sovereign advocated carrying on the war to victory … and the empress viewed the war the same way. No documents attesting to the contrary have been found.

The ashes found in Alix’s fireplace after the February Revolution do indicate the burning of numerous documents, however. The question ha naturally remained as to just what she burned. Something intimate? Bu then why have all the intimate letters about jealousy survived? And wha could the tsarina, who was utterly devoted to her family, possibly have
regarded as taboo? No, it’s more likely that she burned something else, something dangerous to her.

In her correspondence with the tsar, there are references as early as September 1915 to letters from her brother Ernie, who so wanted that peace. Was it not his letters that had been turned to ashes in her fireplace? Actually, there’s evidence enough in the documents that have remained:

‘1 Nov. 1915 …Our Friend was always against this war, saying the Balkans were not worth the world to fight about.’ But Nicky was silent. True to his ruinous obligations to his allies, he did not wish to understand her appeal. And she did not dare to continue. That topic was forbidden to her, whom the crowd called the ‘German woman’.

But now in 1916, with a premonition of danger, she moved from calls to actions of a sort. In the last autumn of their reign, she wrote to her husband:

‘18 Sept…. Put all my trust in God’s mercy, only tell me when the attack is to begin, so as that He can particularly pray then; — it means too much & He realizes your suffering.’

The reference is to the offensive then being readied by General Brusilov. And then suddenly the attack did not take place. Nicholas called it off, to the great surprise of Headquarters. It turned out that Alix had pleaded with him not to go on with it, citing as always the predictions of Our Friend. And Our Friend naturally greeted Nicky’s decision with joy.

‘23 Sept….Our friend says about the new orders you gave to Brussilov etc.: “Very satisfied with father’s orders, all will be well.” He won’t mention it to a soul,’ she wrote to her husband. But they had forgotten about the tsar’s character. Those around him persuaded him to change his mind. And General Brusilov proceeded with his offensive.

24 Sept…. Lovy, our Friend is much put out that Brussilov has not listened to yr. order to stop the advance — says you were inspired from above to give that order…&God wld. bless it. — Now he says again useless losses. Hopes you will still insist, as now all is not right.’

And the sovereign and commander-in-chief justified himself.

24 September. I have just received your telegram in which you report that our Friend is very upset. When I gave that order, I did not know that Gurko [who commanded an army] had decided to combine all the forces remaining at his command and prepare an attack jointly with the Guards and the neighbouring forces. That combination gives hope of success. These details are for you alone — I beg of you, dear one. Tell Him only that Papa has ordered that reasonable measures be taken!

He was concerned. He had heard about the spies in the elder’s midst.

But she pleaded again. ‘25 Sept…. Oh, give your order again to Brussilov — stop this useless slaughter … Stick to it, you are head master & all will thank you on their knees — and our glorious guard! — Those boggs, impregnable — open spaces, impossible to hide, few woods, soon leaves will fall & no saving shelter for advance … Our generals don’t count the ‘lives’ any — hardened to losses — & that is sin…God blesses yr. idea — have it executed — spare those lives.’

Those letters were the real expression of her thoughts, thoughts of which Buchanan was unaware: no advances whatsoever were needed; what was needed was to stop the war. Not long before, as the result of an unsuccessful offensive on the western front, 80,000 men had been lost over nine days. If the new offensive also miscarried, there would be terrible casualties, bringing closer an uprising among the people. But if the offensive should prove successful, that would a mean a continuation of the war and again produce the inevitable uprising, as Father Grigory had prophesied. For on his return from the village, Our Friend had been constantly telling Alix how much the peasants hated the war. And she was happy: the peasant had told her exactly what she wanted to hear — that the war must be ended at all costs.

The Clear Minds Of The ‘Dark Forces’

The most amazing part is that at the time Alix and the peasant were the only ones who were right. Neither the great Romanov family, nor the court, nor the Russian bourgeoisie, nor the Progressive Bloc in the Duma had grasped that the war must stop. As not only the fate of the monarchy but also the downfall of the Provisional Government that came after it would eventually prove. It was the reason for the victory of the Bolsheviks, who understood and put into play the central idea of ending the war at all costs. Just as the Bolsheviks’ predecessors, the ‘dark forces’, the last tsarina and Rasputin, had wanted to do. The ‘dark forces’ could have saved the empire.

Presumably, this was all reflected in her correspondence with her brother Ernie, and it was the letters from him that she burned.

And it was the reason behind a secret meeting that took place in Sweden, which the Provisional Government’s Extraordinary Commission just could not figure out.

It’s unlikely that anyone could have predicted then in the summer of
1916 that the Deputy Speaker of the Duma, Alexander Protopopov, that charmer and darling of the Duma opposition, that Lovelace and favourite of fortune, would in a matter of months become the most detested man in Russian political life.

In the summer of 1916 Protopopov was the head of a Duma delegation to Sweden.

In Stockholm he met a German named Warburg.

Warburg, the brother of a well-known German businessman, was attached to the German embassy in Stockholm. During his meeting with Protopopov, Warburg informed him of ‘Uncle Willy’s’ wish to conclude a separate peace with his former friend Nicky and of the possible conditions for that peace. The peace that the German emperor was offering Russia was an honourable and advantageous one. On the delegation’s return Protopopov made a report to Nicholas about his conversation. Nicholas, touchingly keeping his word to his allies, took a dim view of Protopopov’s meeting and found the discussion of peace premature. With that the matter died. Protopopov was one of the leaders of the Duma opposition who had demanded war until victory, and it would never have occurred to anyone at the time to suspect him of dealings with the Germans.

The Favourite Of The Ladies And The Deputies

Sheila Lunts’s finding Protopopov boozing with Rasputin in Knirsha’s disreputable apartment had been no accident. It turned out that the Duma’s favourite had all along been in secret contact with Rasputin, the man most despised by the Duma.

Rasputin and Protopopov had been brought together by their mutual acquaintance Badmaev, the doctor of Tibetan medicine.

Alexander Protopopov was a typical figure of the end of the empire, a product of a decadent time. Brilliantly educated, he had been trained in a Jesuit college in Paris. He was charming in society, was an excellent pianist, and a friend of the famous Jules Massenet. But all these gifts had somehow been deformed and had become rotten in him. For that intelligent man was also quite mad! In both the literal and the figurative sense. Even during his service in the Horse Guards regiment he had been notorious for his participation in the most shameful orgies. He had reduced his extremely large fortune to disorder with his risky entertainment. As a result of his neglected venereal disease he had sought the acquaintance of Doctor
Badmaev, who undertook to treat what conventional medicine had given up on. Protopopov was suffering from the onset of progressive paralysis and attacks of severe depression. His only hope lay in Badmaev’s mysterious Tibetan remedies.