Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty

by Robert K. Massie

  It turns out, however, that if Olga saw the “miraculous effects,” she never saw the cause. She did not ever see with her own eyes what happened at Alexis’s bedside. The sole experience she cites is this:

  “The poor child lay in pain, dark patches under his eyes and his little body all distorted, and the leg terribly swollen. The doctors were just useless … more frightened than any of us … whispering among themselves.… It was getting late and I was persuaded to go to my rooms. Alicky then sent a message to Rasputin in St. Petersburg. He reached the palace about midnight or even later. By that time, I had reached my apartments and early in the morning Alicky called me to go to Alexis’s room. I just could not believe my eyes. The little boy was not just alive—but well. He was sitting up in bed, the fever gone, the eyes clear and bright, not a sign of any swelling in the leg—Later I learned from Alicky that Rasputin had not even touched the child but merely stood at the foot of the bed and prayed.”

  Olga may have been misled, both about the severity of the hemorrhage and about the speed of recovery. But not necessarily. It is one of the mysteries of the disease that the recuperative powers of its victims, especially when they are children, are extraordinary. A child who has been totally disabled and in great pain can be quickly restored. Even a night’s sleep can bring color into the cheeks and life into the eyes. Swellings recede more slowly and afflicted joints may be weeks or months returning to normal. But to observers like Olga Alexandrovna, the difference between a night and the following morning could well have seemed miraculous.

  There were those who, in regard to Rasputin, expressed skepticism that his presence had any effect at all. Pierre Gilliard mentions the theory that Rasputin was a clever cheat who had an accomplice in the palace; the one most suspected, of course, was Anna Vyrubova. When Alexis fell sick, this theory runs, Rasputin waited until the crisis reached its peak. Then, signaled by his ally, he appeared at the precise moment the crisis was passing and took credit for the recovery. This theory, as Gilliard himself admits, is shaky. For one thing, it presupposes a medical knowledge on Anna Vyrubova’s part which her subsequent book does not reveal. It would have been risky; had Rasputin been summoned too soon or too late, his game would have been exposed. Most damaging of all to this theory is the fact that it assumes that Anna Vyrubova owed a greater allegiance to Rasputin than she did to the Empress. Overwhelmingly, the evidence denies this last assumption.

  Whatever it was that Rasputin did or did not do, there was only one judge of his effectiveness who mattered. This was the Empress Alexandra. She believed that Rasputin was able to stop Alexis’s hemorrhages and she believed that he did it through the power of prayer. Whenever Alexis began to recover from an illness, she attributed it exclusively to the prayers of the Man of God.

  * Recently, over a three-year period, 1961–1964, at Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia, Dr. Oscar Lucas used hypnosis to extract 150 teeth from hemophilic patients without transfusing a single pint of blood or plasma. Normally, for hemophiliacs, tooth extraction means a major operation requiring the transfusion of dozens of units of plasma before, during and for days after an operation. Lucas uses hypnosis in his work primarily to dissipate the fears that hemophiliacs naturally suffer when faced with the prospect of surgery and the accompanying major bleeding. “An emotionally tranquil patient has less bleeding difficulty than one emotionally distressed,” Lucas has explained. “Bleeding engenders fear and fear of bleeding is considerably greater in the hemophiliac than in non-bleeders. The anxiety which results may be averted through hypnosis.” Generally, Lucas suppressed anxiety by asking patients to recall pleasurable experiences. One patient enjoyed himself hugely during surgery by returning himself to a baseball park for the climactic inning of a crucial game. Whether Rasputin actually hypnotized the Tsarevich or not, the distraction a contemporary American receives from watching an exciting baseball game cannot be far different from that a small Russian boy would find in hearing the dramatic stories and legends told by a mysterious wanderer. Interestingly, Oscar Lucas was inspired to begin his own work in hypnosis after reading about Rasputin.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Holy Devil

  SUCCESS at Tsarskoe Selo ensured Rasputin’s success in society. As his social position improved, his wardrobe became more elegant. The rough linen shirts were exchanged for silk blouses of pale blue, brilliant red, violet and light yellow, some of them made and embroidered with flowers by the Empress herself. Black velvet trousers and soft kid leather boots replaced the mud-spattered garb of the peasant. The plain leather thong belted around his waist gave way to silken cords of sky blue or raspberry with big, soft, dangling tassels. On a chain around his neck, Rasputin wore a handsome gold cross. It too was a gift from Alexandra.

  In his new trappings, Rasputin strode confidently into crowded parlors and became the immediate center of attention. His rich clothes were in striking contrast to his rude, open, peasant’s face with its unkempt hair, matted beard, broad, pockmarked nose and wrinkled, weather-beaten skin. Advancing on the guests, Rasputin seized the hands of every new acquaintance between his own wide, horny palms and stared fiercely into the other’s eyes. Holding them with his gaze, Rasputin began his familiar banter, studded with impertinent questions. Asked what she liked least about Rasputin, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna cited his “curiosity, unbridled and embarrassing.” Olga had a strong taste of this in her first meeting with Rasputin at Tsarskoe Selo.

  “In Alicky’s boudoir,” Olga wrote, “having talked to her and Nicky for a few minutes, Rasputin waited for the servants to get the table for evening tea and then began plying me with most impertinent questions. Was I happy? Did I love my husband? Why didn’t I have any children? He had no right to ask such questions, nor did I answer them. I am afraid Nicky and Alicky looked rather uncomfortable. I do remember I was relieved at leaving the palace that evening and saying Thank God he hasn’t followed me to the station’ as I boarded my private coach in the train for St. Petersburg.”

  Rasputin was always ready, even in public gatherings, to offer intimate personal advice. The Empress’s friend Lili Dehn first met Rasputin at a moment when she was wondering whether to go on a trip with her husband or stay behind with her infant son. “Our eyes met,” she wrote. “… His eyes held mine, those shining, steel-like eyes which seemed to read one’s inmost thoughts. He came forward and took my hand.… ‘Thou art worried.… Well, nothing in life is worth worrying over—tout passe—you understand. That’s the best outlook.’ He became serious. ‘It is necessary to have Faith. God alone is thy help. Thou art torn between thy husband and thy child. Which is weaker? Thou thinks’t that thy child is the more helpless. This is not so. A child can do nothing in his weakness. A man can do much.’ ”

  Beneath his new finery, Rasputin remained the moujik. He gloried in the fact that a peasant was accepted in the silken drawing rooms of the aristocracy and he strutted his origins before his titled admirers. Amid a stream of guests coming in from the street and divesting themselves of furs and velvet capes, Rasputin handed the footman his plain, long, black caftan, the age-old coat of the Russian peasant. In polite conversation, Rasputin used coarse barnyard expressions. It was not a matter of the words slipping out accidentally; Rasputin used them often and with gusto, and he enjoyed the little gasps they invariably produced. He liked to describe in detail the sexual life of horses which he had observed as a child in Pokrovskoe, then turn to a beautiful woman in a décolleté dress and say, “Come, my lovely mare.” He found that society was as fascinated by his stories and tales of Siberia as the Imperial family. Frequently, seated in an elegant parlor, he would shake his head reprovingly and say, “Yes, yes, my dears, you are all much too pampered. Follow me in the summer to Pokrovskoe, to the great freedom of Siberia. We will catch fish and work in the fields and then you will really learn to understand God.” His table manners left people aghast. There is no more vivid image of Rasputin than that left by Simanovich, his aide and partner, who d
escribed Rasputin “plunging his dirty hands into his favorite fish soup.” Yet, this raw confirmation of Rasputin’s nature seemed to attract rather than repel. For a jaded, mannered, restless society, Rasputin was an exotic diversion.

  At first, Rasputin walked carefully in this new world of the wealthy. He soon discovered, however, that to many of the women who thronged around him, his sensual side was as interesting as his spiritual nature. Rasputin responded quickly. His lusts flared up, his gestures became excited, his eyes and voice turned suggestive, lewd and insinuating. His first conquests were easy and those that followed even easier; talk of his amorous adventures only increased his mysterious reputation. Noble ladies, wives of officers on duty far away, actresses and women of lower classes sought the rough, humiliating caresses of the moujik. Making love to the unwashed peasant with his dirty beard and filthy hands was a new and thrilling sensation. “He had too many offers,” said Simanovich.

  Rasputin made it easier for the ladies by preaching his personal doctrine of redemption: salvation is impossible unless one has been redeemed from sin, and true redemption cannot be achieved unless sin has been committed. In himself, Rasputin offered all three: sin, redemption and salvation. “Women,” says Fülöp-Miller, “found in Gregory Efimovich the fulfillment of two desires which had hitherto seemed irreconcilable, religious salvation and the satisfaction of carnal appetites.… As in the eyes of his disciples, Rasputin was a reincarnation of the Lord, intercourse with him, in particular, could not possibly be a sin; and these women found for the first time in their lives a pure happiness, untroubled by the gnawings of conscience.”

  For some, bestowal of this supreme honor by Father Gregory was a matter for boasting, not only by the ladies but also by their husbands. “Would you be ready to accede to him?” an outsider once incredulously asked one of Rasputin’s disciples. “Of course. I have already belonged to him, and I am proud and happy to have done so,” the lady supposedly replied. “But you are married! What does your husband say to it?” “He considers it a very great honor. If Rasputin desires a woman, we all think it a blessing and distinction, our husbands as well as ourselves.”

  Every day, numbers of admiring women came to Rasputin’s apartment to sit in his dining room, sip wine or tea, gossip and listen to the Father’s wisdom. Those who could not come telephoned tearful apologies. One frequent visitor, an opera singer, often rang up Rasputin simply to sing to him his favorite songs over the telephone. Taking the telephone, Rasputin danced around the room, holding the earpiece to his ear. At the table, Rasputin stroked the arms and hair of the women sitting next to him. Sometimes he put down his glass of Madeira and took a young girl on his lap. When he felt inspired, he rose before everyone and openly led his choice to the bedroom, a sanctum which his adoring disciples referred to as “The Holy of Holies.” Inside, if necessary, he whispered reassurance into the ear of his partner: “You think that I am polluting you, but I am not. I am purifying you.”

  Giddy at his success, not knowing where to stop, Rasputin even made advances to Grand Duchess Olga. One evening after dinner, Olga had gone with her brother and Alexandra to Anna Vyrubova’s cottage. “Rasputin was there,” she wrote, “and seemed very pleased to meet me again, and when the hostess with Nicky and Alicky left the drawing room for a few moments, Rasputin got up, put his arm about my shoulders, and began stroking my arm. I moved away at once, saying nothing. I just got up and joined the others.…”

  Not many days afterward, Anna Vyrubova arrived, flushed and disheveled, at Olga’s palace in town. She begged the Grand Duchess to receive Rasputin again, pleading, “Oh please, he wants to see you so much.” “I refused very curtly.… To the best of my knowledge Nicky put up with the man solely on account of the help he gave to Alexis and that, as I happen to know very well, was genuine enough.”

  Although the moments were wholly innocent, Rasputin’s visits to the palace nurseries touched the Tsar’s young daughters with rumors of scandal. On the pretext of saying prayers with the Tsarevich and his sisters, Rasputin sometimes hung about their upstairs bedrooms after the girls had changed into their long white nightgowns. The girls’ governess, Mlle. Tiutcheva, was horrified to see a peasant staring at her charges and demanded that he be barred. As a result, Alexandra became angy not at Rasputin, but at Tiutcheva, who dared to question the saintliness of the “Man of God.” Nicholas, seeing the impropriety of Rasputin’s presence, intervened in the quarrel and instructed Rasputin to avoid his daughters’ rooms. Later, Tiutcheva was dismissed, and blamed her downfall on Rasputin’s hold over the Empress. Tiutcheva returned to Moscow, where her family had important connections and were especially close to Alexandra’s sister Grand Duchess Elizabeth. Busily spreading her story across Moscow, Tiutcheva at the same time implored the Grand Duchess to speak bluntly to her younger sister the Empress. Ella was more than willing; having herself entered into religious retreat, she regarded Rasputin as a blasphemous and lascivious impostor. At every opportunity she spoke, sometimes gently, sometimes bitterly, to Alexandra about the starets. Her efforts had no effect except to open a breach between the two sisters which, as time went on, became so wide that neither could touch the other.

  By 1911, St. Petersburg was in an uproar over Rasputin. Not all the husbands were complaisant, nor did all the ladies of St. Petersburg enjoy having their buttons undone. The Montenegrin princesses, Grand Duchess Militsa and Grand Duchess Anastasia, closed their doors to their former protégé. Anastasia’s soldier-husband, Grand Duke Nicholas, swore “never to see the devil again.” The two Montenegrins even went to Tsarskoe Selo to report to the Empress their “sad discovery” about Gregory, but Alexandra received them coolly.

  It was the Church which initiated the first formal investigation of Rasputin’s activities and carried the first official complaints to the Tsar. Bishop Theophan, the saintly Inspector of the Theological Academy, who had been impressed by Rasputin’s faith and had recommended him to the Empress, was the first to entertain doubts. When women who had given in to Rasputin began coming to him with their confessions, Theophan went to the Empress. Once he had been Alexandra’s confessor; now he advised her that something was fearfully wrong about the “Holy Man” he had recommended to her. Alexandra sent for the starets and questioned him. Rasputin affected surprise, innocence and humility. The result was that Theophan, a distinguished theologian, was transferred from the Theological Academy to become Bishop of the Crimea. “I have shut his trap,” gloated Rasputin in private.

  Next, the Metropolitan Anthony called on the Tsar to discuss Rasputin. Nicholas replied that the private affairs of the Imperial family were no concern of the Church. “No, Sire,” the Metropolitan replied, “this is not merely a family affair, but the affair of all Russia. The Tsarevich is not only your son, but our future sovereign and belongs to all Russia.” Nicholas nodded and quietly ended the interview. But soon afterward, Anthony fell ill and died.

  The single most damaging attack on Rasputin came from a flamboyant young zealot of a monk named Iliodor. Iliodor was even younger than Rasputin, but he had built a reputation as a fiery orator and crowds flocked to hear him whenever he spoke. Simply by telling the multitude that he wanted to build a great monastery (“Let one man bring a plank, let another bring a rusty nail”), he attracted thousands of volunteers who erected a vast spiritual retreat near Tsaritsyn [later Stalingrad, now Volgograd] on the banks of the Volga.

  Austere in his behavior, Iliodor was fanatical in his beliefs. He preached strict adherence to the Orthodox faith and the absolute autocracy of the tsar. Yet alongside his extreme monarchism, he advocated a vague peasant communism. The tsar should rule, he said, but beneath the autocrat all other men should be brothers with equal rights and no distinctions of rank or class. As a result, Iliodor was as unpopular with government officials, local governors, aristocrats and the hierarchy of the Church as he was popular with the masses.

  In Rasputin, Iliodor saw an ally. When Rasputin was first brought to him by T
heophan, Iliodor welcomed the primitive religious fervor manifested by the starets. In 1909, Iliodor discovered Rasputin’s other face. He invited Rasputin to come with him to his spiritual retreat near Tsaritsyn. There, to Iliodor’s surprise, Rasputin responded to the respect and humility of the women they met by grabbing the prettiest and smacking their lips with kisses. From Tsaritsyn, the monk and the starets set out for Pokrovskoe, Rasputin’s home. On the train, Iliodor was even more dismayed when Rasputin, bragging about his past, boasted openly of his sexual exploits and jibed at Iliodor’s innocence. He gave a swaggering account of his relations with the Imperial family. The Tsar, said Rasputin, knelt before him and told him, “Gregory, you are Christ.” He boasted that he had kissed the Empress in her daughters’ rooms.

  Once they had reached Pokrovskoe, Rasputin supported his boasts by showing Iliodor a collection of letters he had received from Alexandra and her children. He even gave several of these letters to Iliodor—or so Iliodor said—saying, “Take your choice. Only leave the Tsarevich’s letter. It’s the only one I have.” Three years later, portions of these letters from the Empress to Rasputin began appearing in public. They became the basic incriminating documents for the lurid charge that the Empress was Rasputin’s lover. Of them, the most damning was this:

  My beloved, unforgettable teacher, redeemer and mentor! How tiresome it is without you! My soul is quiet and I relax only when you, my teacher, are sitting beside me. I kiss your hands and lean my head on your blessed shoulder. Oh how light, how light do I feel then. I only wish one thing: to fall asleep, to fall asleep, forever on your shoulders and in your arms. What happiness to feel your presence near me. Where are you? Where have you gone? Oh, I am so sad and my heart is longing.… Will you soon be again close to me? Come quickly, I am waiting for you and I am tormenting myself for you. I am asking for your holy blessing and I am kissing your blessed hands. I love you forever.