The Rasputin File (72 page)

The prince had wept. Somehow they forgot all about the bribes, and
Obolensky received an honourable assignment at the front as a brigade commander. How many of the proud had been forced to yield! Although one can imagine how in their humiliation they hated the mighty peasant.

Hold To The Centre, Mama!

And so, the new minister Protopopov had arrived. A new minister of internal affairs with incipient progressive paralysis. It was a symbol of authority.

Unlike his predecessors, Protopopov was prepared to deal with Rasputin. As Beletsky testified, ‘In his relations with Rasputin, he was no novice like those who had been friendly with Rasputin, thinking him a simple man, and then got caught.’ The Tsarskoe Selo ‘cabinet’ could be happy; it had found an obedient minister who at the same time was liked by the Duma. Rasputin told Manasevich, ‘We made a mistake with Fat Belly, because he too was one of these rightist fools. I tell you that all the rightists are fools. This time we have chosen between the right and the left — Protopopov.’ The peasant also spoke the best phrase about the members of the Russian parliament: ‘Both our rightists and leftists are fools. You, Mama, hold to the centre.’

Yet what was the tsar’s astonishment when the Duma greeted the appointment of yesterday’s favourite with violent hatred. And merely because the tsarina and Rasputin had supported him. Not the senile Goremykin, nor Stürmer, nor any of the later prime ministers provoked such hatred as the Duma’s former colleague.

From Guchkov’s testimony: ‘If Protopopov had been a confirmed enemy, I wouldn’t have disdained having anything to do with him. But Protopopov made a volte-face not from conviction but out of career considerations helped along by the shady go-betweens Badmaev and Rasputin.’

Protopopov’s peculiar meeting with the German Warburg was immediately recalled and linked to his appointment as minister. The unhappy ‘tsars’ had no idea what had happened. Nicholas even lost his temper for the first time!

From Vyrubova’s testimony: ‘When opposing voices were heard in the press and in society…the sovereign was surprised at how a person elected by the Duma to be its Deputy Speaker and then its representative abroad could in just a month become a scoundrel … After his report [to the tsar or tsarina] Protopopov would sometimes drop by to see me. He … impressed me as a very nervous person, and constantly complained of the fact that everyone was hounding him.’

Meanwhile, the new minister’s oddities were becoming ever more apparent. And his severe attacks of neurasthenia — the result of his terrible disease — compelled him to seek the help of the celebrated psychiatrist Vladimir Bekhterev.

But he apparently concealed from the investigators one other doctor. Could Protopopov have failed to turn to Rasputin, who was regarded as a great healer? So Rasputin presumably also took part in easing the sufferings of the unhappy minister. That too would have been a source of his dependence on Rasputin.

The Lady Behind The Scenes

Protopopov at the time was very much alone. The good-looking Sheila had dropped him.

The File, from the testimony of Sheila Lunts: ‘After returning home, my husband was displeased about my seeing Protopopov, and,’ she ingenuously added, ‘after Protopopov had arranged the right of residence for my father and sister in Petrograd, I stopped seeing him.’

And here, it seems that Rasputin was able to help. A lady of his circle rescued the minister from his loneliness. A lady, moreover, who had, according to the police reports been very close to Rasputin. And who at the time had a responsible role in the Tsarskoe Selo ‘shadow cabinet’.

The File, from Vyrubova’s testimony: ‘But even more often than he came to see me, Protopopov would drop by to visit a nurse from my infirmary, Voskoboinikova, with whom he would sometimes also have dinner…I told him it was awkward, but he objected that he found the simple circumstances restful.’

The File, from the testimony of Feodosia Voino, Vyrubova’s maid: ‘Protopopov frequently came to see Vyrubova at the infirmary where Voskoboinikova worked. She was an intermediary between Vyrubova and Protopopov…The people who were closest to Vyrubova and the ones she trusted the most were Voskoboinikova and Laptinskaya.’

Voskoboinikova has remained behind the scenes in Rasputin’s story. Even though she, like Laptinskaya, played a very serious part in it.

After the fall of the regime in 1917, Voskoboinikova was tracked down by the police and required to give the testimony preserved in the File.

At The Feeding Trough

Nadezhda Ivanovna Voskoboinikova, thirty years old, was the widow of a Cossack officer. After the death of her husband in 1911, she came from the provinces to Petrograd and took up with the family of Senator V. N. Mamontov, who was sixty-eight years old and deeply religious. According to Voskoboinikova, ‘Mamontov’s wife did not understand that friendship and even divorced him.’ The police didn’t understand it either, referring to her as ‘Mamontov’s lover’ in their reports. It was in fact through Mamontov that Voskoboinikova acquired the most useful of her acquaintances when, ‘on the grounds of religious inquiry’, he invited Rasputin to his home.

Thus did Voskoboinikova begin her ascent to the palace.

‘In 1915 … my nerves were in a shambles.’ And although Mamontov did warn her that ‘visiting Rasputin would be awkward in view of the rumours about him’, she went to see the peasant. ‘Rasputin encouraged me and said that God would help.’

After that, the investigator naturally asked her a very disagreeable question, to which she proudly replied, ‘Not only did I not see Rasputin at night, I did not see any of my acquaintances then.’ But the external agents’ reports give information of a different kind, and that information was the reason for the investigator’s question.

Although she had apparently visited ‘the little room with the sofa’, she, like many of her predecessors, was not invited back there again. And she could boldly declare: ‘Rasputin did not permit himself to take any liberties with me.’

After Mamontov’s death, which ‘Rasputin had foretold’, according to Voskoboinikova, Father Grigory did not forget her, and she found a position at Vyrubova’s infirmary.

Rasputin was right to value her — she knew how to be useful And soon afterwards she became a senior nurse and was introduced to the empress by the Friend. And the Empress, captivated by her devotion to Our Friend and the Friend, suggested that she ‘take the infirmary more decisively into her hands’. Telegrams have survived from which it is apparent that the tsarina greatly confided in Voskoboinikova in those final months of power. ‘It’s terribly hard and difficult,’ the tsarina complained to Voskoboinikova from Headquarters on 14 November 1916.

It was in the autumn of 1916 that through Rasputin, Voskoboinikova met the minister suffering from loneliness. Through her it would now be possible to address petitions to the Friend and obviously to Protopopov. She thus took her place at the feeding trough.

The File, from the testimony of Voino: ‘She came to us completely destitute…But very rapidly she turned into a chic young lady with a mass of precious things made of gold and had her own apartment on Nevsky Avenue … She treated Protopopov … familiarly, as he did her. He was not shy about putting his arm around her waist in my presence.’

In 1916 she occupied the same position in relation to Vyrubova that Laptinskaya did in relation to Rasputin. We shall find Voskoboinikova’s and Laptinskaya’s names in the lobby register among those few people who were received by the tsarina. And in the ‘shadow cabinet’, Voskoboinikova and Laptinskaya linked the ‘dark forces’ — Rasputin, Vyrubova, the tsarina, and Protopopov — together in a single chain. It was through them that the latter sent each other their most secret and important messages. It was through Voskoboinikova that the peasant, the tsarina, and Anya controlled the ailing minister.

The Dance Of Death

Although he had achieved great power, the peasant lived in constant fear.

The threat of an attempt on his life haunted him. Belling tells how when Osipenko wanted to rouse the drunken Rasputin and take him away, it was enough for him to yell, ‘What are you doing! They’re readying an attempt against us here, and you’re stuck in your chair!’ And Rasputin would ‘quickly put on his jacket and fur coat, pull his fur cap down over his head, and rush for the exit’.

With Komissarov’s departure and Manasevich’s arrest, he was only guarded by the security branch detail. And he realized that they could hand him over to his adversaries at any moment.

The File, from Filippov’s testimony: ‘Coming to see me now, he would try to get drunk as quickly as possible, demand Gypsies and entertainment, and if there was anything he was keen about, it was dancing.’

In drunkenness and dancing he sought to forget himself and recover a feeling of joy. He did not want to, but he sensed that a conspiracy was approaching. And it scared him.

Alix was already writing to Nicky, ‘21 Sept. 1916 … these brutes Rodzianko, Guchkov … &Co. are at the bottom of far more than one sees (I feel it) so as to force things out of the hands of the ministers. But you will see all soon & speak it over, & I’ll ask our Fr.’s advice. — So often He has sound ideas others go by — God inspires Him.’

And the ‘far more’ occurred. The last act had begun — the fall of the empire.

Shortly thereafter, on 1 November the whole country was shaken by a speech given in the Duma by Pavel Milyukov, the leader of the most influential opposition party, the Constitutional Democrats: ‘From border to border dark rumours have been spreading of betrayal and treason. The rumours have penetrated the highest circles and spared no one. The empress’s name has been repeated ever more frequently along with those of the adventurers who surround her…Is it stupidity or is it treason?’

And the word ‘treason’, which fitted the mood of the badly wounded army, was immediately taken on faith and firmly rooted in the consciousness of millions.

Alix demanded that Stürmer take action. She was in a fury, and this time Stürmer was too frightened to refuse. He summoned Rodzyanko. The ‘Old Chap’ had at the time sprained his ankle and couldn’t walk. The effect was comical. The helpless Stürmer, lying in bed with his leg elevated, tried to reprimand the enormous, powerful Rodzyanko, who towered over the prostrate prime minister.

From Rodzyanko’s testimony: ‘He said…he was asking me for a copy of Milyukov’s speech with the object of instituting a criminal action against him. I answered that I would not be sending him any copies whatever, [and said] “What are you defending him [Rasputin] for? He’s a first-class scoundrel — hanging him wouldn’t be enough!”‘ And from his bed came the prime minister’s feeble answer, ‘It is what is desired on high.’ Thus had he capitulated to the tsarina. Now enraged, the Speaker of the Duma continued to berate the old man: ‘What kind of monarchist are you after this? You’re a zealous republican who, by making allowances for Rasputin, is undermining the monarchist idea!’

No, they were all, with Rasputin’s help, undermining that idea. From the tsarina to Rodzyanko himself.

Now the peasant was talking ever more frequently of death.

The File, from Molchanov’s testimony:

In October 1916 I … visited him a couple of times or so. I noticed that he was in a rather melancholy mood. I noticed too that there was wine on the table, and that he had drunk a lot of it, as if to quiet a terrible foreboding. He kept repeating, ‘The times are changing, everything will be changed.’ On parting he was very affectionate and said that he appreciated my love and warm attitude. He remembered my late father with a kind word, and said that he would perhaps himself be killed and we would not see each other again … And then, as if suddenly regaining his senses, he said, ‘No, no, we shall see each other again. You’ll be coming to Petrograd.’

And every day on Gorokhovaya Street that mad, bewitching, drunken dancing went on, drowning out Rasputin’s terror. His weak-minded son, who was now serving on the tsarina’s hospital train, came to see him for several days and hid out from that madness in the remoter rooms. And if the apartment was quiet, it meant that the peasant was drinking in a restaurant or that a car had taken him to Tsarskoe Selo for a meeting of the ‘Tsarskoe Selo cabinet’. On 16 October Alix wrote to Nicky, ‘Had a nice evening at A.’s yesterday — our Friend, his son & the Bish. Issidor [the same Isidor Kolokolov who was accused of a liaison with a lay brother] … Gr. thinks it wld. be better to call in the younger men instead of those over 40, who are needed at home to keep all work going & to look after the houses.’

And that suggestion of the peasant’s was a completely reasonable one.

Then November began, the next to the last month of his life.

The Burial Place Is Ready

On the edge of Alexander Park not far from the Lamsky Stables, Vyrubova bought a parcel of land where she had decided to build the Chapel of St. Serafim the Righteous in gratitude for sparing her life in the railway accident.

On 5 November Alix informed Nicky, ‘The laying of the foundation stone [of] Ania’s church was nice, our Fr. was there, & nice Bishop Isidor.’ Rasputin would soon be buried under the altar of the new church. And the ‘ nice bishop’ would conduct the burial service.

A little celebration in honour of the laying of the foundation of ‘Anya’s church’, the Serafim Sanctuary, then took place at the infirmary, a celebration that would give rise to the next big scandal.

Shortly after the celebration, Rasputin’s implacable enemy, the monarchist Purishkevich, stood surrounded by parliament members at the conclusion of the latest Duma meeting. He was passing out to whoever wanted one a highly amusing photograph. In it Rasputin was shown sitting at a table next to the ‘ nice Bishop Isidor’, who was dressed in a cassock. There was wine on the table, and around the table there were balalaika players and sisters of mercy, laughing and obviously intoxicated. At a time when the Russian army was spilling its blood at the front and famine was looming over the country, how should the Duma members have reacted to the home-front jollity of that ‘spy and rogue’?