It should be remembered that the Tsarina wrote to her beloved Nicky with relentless regularity; there were many letters in which Rasputin didn’t rate a mention. But the idea that the Man of God was wielding power, through the Tsarina, began to take hold. It became widely known that he was visiting her at Tsarskoye Selo; rumours were rife that ministerial appointments were being made on his say-so.
In June 1915 protesting mobs gathered in Red Square, in Moscow, calling for the Tsar’s abdication: the Tsarina must be sent to a convent and Rasputin hanged. As Governor of Moscow, Yussoupov’s father, ‘Papa Felix’, was the man responsible for quelling the riots. He made a hash of it, even boarding up shops that sold alcohol with looters still inside.
Shortly after the riots, Papa Felix went to see the Tsar, to complain about Rasputin, and was fired on the spot. Yussoupov’s mother was furious at her husband’s treatment, but the Tsarina remained unrepentant, repeating her maxim that her husband must have autocracy: ‘M. Philippe and Grigory say so too.’
The Yussoupovs were not a family to alienate. In her memoir Maria Rasputin, described in police records as a ‘peasant of Pokrovskoye village’, took great pleasure in sniffing at Felix Yussoupov’s credentials: ‘His nobility is of recent days. The title of Prince has been in the family for two generations only.’ But the Yussoupovs were at that time the wealthiest family in Russia. One estimate of their estate placed the value of their possessions, before the Revolution, at between 300 and 350 million dollars. There was so much oil on some of their land that peasants drove carts over the fields simply to grease their wheels. One year Papa Felix gave his wife a mountain for her birthday. The couple owned a gilded gondola with specially imported Venetian gondoliers and a personal train containing an aviary.
Yussoupov’s furious mother, Zenaide, wrote to her son: ‘Nothing can be done unless the book [the Bible, her code word for Rasputin] be destroyed and Valide [the Tartar word for Great Mother, the Tsarina] tamed.’ Zenaide was used to having her own way: she kept one servant solely in charge of her muffs.
For the Tsarina, the world was now divided into ‘ours’ and ‘not ours’. As the number of ‘not ours’ continued to grow, so ‘ours’ became more outlandish. There was the poltroonish Prince Mikhail Andronnikov, for example, a well-known conman, who now provided Rasputin with 1,500 roubles a month. Andronnikov was described, even by the forgiving Anna Vyrubova, as a ‘scented person of servile behaviour and dyed facial hair’. Fancying himself a kind of churchman, the Prince installed an altar and crucifixes in his bedroom. But these symbols did nothing to quell his sexual appetite: one of his servants estimated that his master had slept with more than 1,000 young males in two years. To Mossolov, the Prince pronounced loftily: ‘You know I have no official post. I might call myself ADC to the Almighty.’
In his endless round of back-scratching, Prince Andronnikov was behind Rasputin’s support of two further dodgy figures: Alexei Khvostov, appointed Minister for Internal Affairs and Stepan Beletsky, Director of the Department of the Police. Taking her lead from Rasputin, the Tsarina had added her weight behind Khvostov, writing to the Tsar: ‘Please speak seriously about Khvostov to Goremykin, am sure he is the man for the moment, as fears nobody and is devoted to you.’ Rasputin wouldn’t have needed great accounting skills to appreciate a fat wadge of 3,000 roubles from the grateful pair.
Following a social slight, Rasputin had originally been opposed to Khvostov. He had travelled all the way to Nizhny Novgorod to speak to him on behalf of the Tsar. But Khvostov, doubting his visitor’s status, had not offered him so much as a biscuit. Indeed, he sent for a policeman to accompany the Man of God back to the station. When Khvostov finally discovered who his visitor actually was and heard that, before leaving, Rasputin had sent a telegram to the Palace, he was panic-stricken and rushed to the capital to demand a meeting with the Tsar to discuss the problem of sewage in Nizhny.
Khvostov’s efforts at reconciliation were so effective that Rasputin soon pronounced him a ‘good man and close ally’. But that did not stop him also referring to Khvostov as ‘pot-belly’ and complaining about his singing at the restaurant Villa Rhode: ‘You’re fat and make a lot of noise.’ While the Tsarina continued to support Khvostov: ‘He will not let anything touch us & will do all in his power to stop attacks’, she also felt compelled to mention his weight: ‘His body is colossal but his soul high and clean’.
Rasputin had once been hostile to the Duma, ranting: ‘There’s not a single muzhik among them.’ He would rage that the Duma members ‘want to get rid of the Lord’s Anointed’ (by which he meant himself). There were certainly some who remained convinced that Rasputin drove through the streets in a car with blackened windows, shooting at random passers-by.
But now Rasputin seemed anxious for the Tsar to cast off his own reservations and foster better relations with the Duma. When the Duma was reconvened, on February 9 1916, the Tsar appeared in front of the assembly, at the Man of God’s suggestion, and was greeted with cheers. Rasputin was pleased. As he said of the Duma members to the Tsarina: ‘One cannot again uselessly offend them.’
Once prized for his stark simplicity, was Rasputin growing more clever or more corrupt? He was certainly becoming more pragmatic. ‘Our Friend says that if people offer great sums [so as to get a decoration] now one must accept as money is needed,’ wrote the Tsarina. She and Rasputin even decided it would be politic to mollify the hostile Duma President, Rodzyanko, with a medal: ‘Our Friend says also that it would be a good thing to do… it’s most unsympathetic but alas times are such just now.’
With these strategies and promotions, ‘ours’ hung on in the game. But Rasputin’s relations with his old adversary, the Church, had been anything but straightforward. In July 1915, the Tsar had thrown a spanner in the works with his appointment of Alexander Samarin as the new leader of the Synod. Four years previously, when Rasputin had suffered his indignities at the hands of ‘Blessed Mitya’ and the other clerics, Samarin had demanded assurances that Rasputin remain excluded from the Church. Years later, Samarin was still insulting Rasputin, calling him a horse thief and heretic.
Rasputin complained to the Tsarina about his appointment and she, in turn, protested to her husband. The Tsar made weak attempts to defend his choice to his wife: ‘Changes must happen now & one must choose a man whose name is known in the whole country & who is unanimously estimated.’
But the Tsarina was inconsolable, insisting that Samarin’s promotion had reduced Rasputin to ‘utter despair… His enemies are our enemies’. She accused Samarin of telling ‘stories against our Friend… using vile words in speaking of him’. She wrote beseechingly: ‘I am so wretched ever since I heard [the news] and can’t get calm.’ In August 29 1915 she told the Tsar to ‘give Samarin the short order’. And on September 11: ‘You must set yr. broom working & clear out all the dirt that has accumulated at the Synod.’
Instead, Samarin was setting to work with his own broom, denouncing Rasputin’s coffin-loving friend, Bishop Varnava, as an unbalanced fanatic. Varnava was by this time preaching obscure sermons that the war was caused by abortion, a practice introduced to Russia by the Germans. The Tsarina defended him stoutly: ‘Bishop Varnava comes from the people… he understands them.’ Samarin’s more serious complaint was that Varnava had conducted an important religious ceremony, a laudation, without Synod approval. The Tsarina had no time for such excuses: ‘Samarin intends getting rid of him [Varnava] because… he is good to Gr.’
Varnava was summoned by the Synod to Petrograd. While the hostile churchmen sat cross-legged, smirking and catcalling, Varnava was forced to stand. He had brought the Tsar’s telegram giving him permission to sing the laudation. The telegram did nothing to appease his accusers. The Tsarina, outraged, leapt to Varnava’s defence, telling her husband that he ‘should hurry with clearing out Samarin as he & Synod intending to do more horrors and he [Varnava] has to go there again, poor man, to be tortured’.
The unsuspecting Sa
marin went to the Tsar’s military headquarters to complain about Varnava, only to discover that he himself had fallen from favour: the Tsar asked him pleasantly about his family, then ordered the elderly Goremykin to call him from the dining table and tell him he was fired.
That same day, Alexander Volzhin was appointed head of the Synod. Volzhin had been suggested by ‘pot-belly’ Khvostov, and came with the endorsement of the Tsarina: ‘He made me a perfect impression… one sees he is full of the best intentions and understands the needs of our Church perfectly well.’ Her support had been assured after he asked her to bless him: ‘wh. touched me very much’.
The Tsarina was momentarily satisfied with the Synod, particularly when she was presented by its members with a Testimonial and Image in recognition of her work with war victims: ‘Since Catherine, no Empress personally received them alone. Grigory is delighted.’ Rasputin himself had been gratified when, on his last birthday, in January 1916, a speech was delivered in the Synod celebrating his importance for the State.
But the new leader, Volzhin, did not prove so well intentioned as the Tsarina had hoped. He had serious reservations about Rasputin’s protégés. Aside from the troublesome Varnava, there was Pitirim, who had once installed his male lover in a mansion and was later to be accused of stealing 100,466 roubles from a monastery. Ministers were already boycotting his liturgies at St Isaac’s Cathedral and Rodzyanko had railed at him: ‘Rasputin and men like him must be expelled and your own name cleared from the opprobrium of being looked upon as a nominee of Rasputin… Your Eminence, your very looks betray you.’ Yet Pitirim prided himself on his forbidding looks; some of his followers swore he had a halo.
Then there was Isidor, who had become a bishop in 1909, only to be stripped of his rank, two years later, for sodomising a lay brother. Rasputin had been behind his restoration as a bishop earlier in the year; his faith in Isidor was matched by the Tsarina, who wrote on October 1 1916 that she had spent a ‘quiet peaceful’ evening with Brother Grigory and Bishop Isidor: ‘We talked so well & calmly – such a peaceful harmonious atmosphere… Had a nice evening at A’s [Anna Vyrubova’s] yesterday – our Friend, His son & the bish Isidor.’
All three bishops were doing suspiciously well. Varnava stood to be promoted to Archbishop within months and Pitirim had been made Metropolitan of Petrograd, an appointment endorsed by Khvostov and Anna Vyrubova, for which Rasputin mysteriously received 75,000 roubles. Isidor, arguably most powerful of all, was now installed at Tsarskoye Selo as the Tsarina’s favourite. When she heard of Volzhin’s disapproval of the bishops, she was furious, dismissing Volzhin as ‘a coward & frightened of public opinion’; he was ‘too pompous’ and ‘quite unfit’ to lead the Synod.
Under Volzhin’s influence, the number of Synod members who were ‘not ours’ was growing. Heated discussions were held over who would hold the Synod’s number two position. Rasputin suggested Prince Nicholas Zhevakov, a mystic who had been visited by a vision in which the Russian Army was victorious after bringing a certain icon to the front. The Tsarina promptly wrote to her husband: ‘Rasputin finds you ought to tell Volzhin you wish Zhevakov to be named his side.’ The Tsarina liked to lend authority to Rasputin’s tips by substituting ‘finds’ for ‘thinks’.
But Rasputin found, instead, that Volzhin had had enough. In the summer of 1916, Volzhin asked to be relieved of his post. Rasputin and Pitirim immediately came up with a replacement: a short, be-wigged man called Nicholas Raev. Raev had served in the Ministry of Education, but his most recent enterprise had been a high-stakes gambling club. The Tsarina extolled the virtues of pupils at a school that operated under his auspices: ‘His girls behaved beautifully’ at a time when ‘there were rows in all the schools and universities’.
The Tsarina met Raev on June 27 1916 and found him an ‘excellent man’. Raev and Rasputin talked for more than an hour, after which Rasputin pronounced him ‘a real Godsend’. Raev was duly appointed head of the Synod on August 20 1916, with the mystic, Prince Zhevakov, as his assistant.
The ructions created by the Tsarina and Rasputin in the Synod were reflected in the Government. The months leading up to the Revolution saw four different prime ministers, five ministers of the Interior and four ministers of agriculture. Rasputin had at various points been behind the appointments of Khvostov, as Minister of the Interior, Raev, as leader of the Synod and Beletsky, as Director of the Department of Police. The Tsarina’s words had borne some fruit: ‘9 Sept 1915… Clean out all, give Goremykin new ministers to work with & God will bless you & their work.’
In fact, as an advisor and recommender of candidates Rasputin proved increasingly unreliable. His ever failing ‘gift for knowing people’ led to his frequently changing his mind and, on at least one occasion, recommending two rival candidates for the same government post.
On January 20 1916 Boris Sturmer replaced the elderly Goremykin as Prime Minister. The good news for the Tsarina and Rasputin was that Sturmer was as much ‘ours’ as Goremykin. Nevertheless, Sturmer, at 69, was only nine years younger than Goremykin and Rasputin was no respecter of age: ‘He’s old, but he’ll do.’ While regretting the departure of Goremykin, the Tsarina was gratified that Sturmer ‘very much valued Gr which is a good thing.’
But Rodzyanko denounced Sturmer as ‘an utter nonentity’. The new American ambassador, David R. Francis, was exasperated by Sturmer’s habit of looking in the mirror and twirling his moustaches during meetings. Sturmer’s moustaches were indeed remarkable, immaculately turned up and appearing to act as hooks to a lavish tongue of a beard. The French Ambassador Paleologue described him as a ‘false Father Christmas with moist red lips and a crafty smile, curiously repellent’ and insisted that Sturmer had been chosen ‘on account of his insignificance and servility’.
Paleologue’s evaluation was borne out by Rasputin’s threats: ‘If I say the word they’ll kick the old guy out’ and ‘Sturmer had better stay on his string or his neck will get broken.’ Any attempt to break free of his string was met with a rebuke: ‘Don’t you dare go against Mama’s wishes.’ As it turned out, Sturmer never went against Mama’s wishes, even taking upon himself, years later, the onerous task of burning Rasputin’s files.
For all his inadequacies, Sturmer also took on the job of Foreign Minister. The controversy surrounding his over-promotion was occasionally noted even by the Tsarina, who once suggested that he should take some time out: ‘Protopopov and our Friend both find for the quiet of the Duma, Sturmer ought to say he’s ill for three weeks.’ But she had been unable to stomach the preceding Foreign Minister, Serge Sazanov, particularly mistrusting his good relations with Paleologue and the British Ambassador, George Buchanan, and finally dismissing him as ‘long-nosed’ and a ‘pancake’.
The widely esteemed Minister of War, Alexei Polivanov, was next to go: ‘Is he not our Friend’s enemy?’ demanded the Tsarina. Polivanov had objected to Rasputin’s having access to four high-powered war office cars, all of them too fast to be trailed. The Tsarina grew impatient with her husband: ‘Lovey don’t dawdle, make up your mind, it is far too serious.’ When Polivanov finally fell, the Tsarina was momentarily appeased: ‘Now I shall sleep well.’ Polivanov’s replacement was a die-hard monarchist, General Dmitri Shuvalev, who was obsessed with footwear, turning every conversation to the whys and wherefores of boots.
The most controversial of the Tsarina and Rasputin’s campaigns, however, was for the promotion of Protopopov. In September 1916 the newly appointed Minister of the Interior was hissed at and jeered when he appeared in the Duma wearing an outlandish uniform that he had designed himself. He was inclined to sob and was addicted to the sinister Tibetan Dr Badmaev’s powders for male potency. But the Tsarina was only interested in Protopopov’s attitude to Rasputin. Protopopov had established some sort of friendship with Rasputin; but he was sufficiently nervous of public opinion to visit the flat in thick dark glasses. The Tsarina wrote that Protopopov ‘likes our Friend since at least four years’ and ‘G
rigory begs you earnestly to name Protopopov there… His love for Russia & you is so intense.’
When the Tsar had finally agreed to promote Protopopov, the Tsarina was jubilant: ‘Our Friend says you have done a very wise act in naming him.’ She wasted no time, once Protopopov was in place, in making use of him: ‘Our Friend begged for you to speak of all these things to Protopopov.’ The new Minister of the Interior embraced his power with gusto. Among his first projects was the orchestratration of letters from the Russian people to the Tsarina containing, as Gleb Botkin put it, ‘extravagant expressions of unbounded loyalty’. Protopopov insisted to an unreceptive Rodzyanko: ‘I feel that I alone can save her [Russia].’
The Imperial Court Director, Mossolov, was once obliged to have a three-hour meeting with Protopopov, during which he read files while the Minister talked, jumping from subject to subject. As Mossolov recalled: ‘I could see plainly that I had to deal with a lunatic.’ He subsequently described Protopopov to the Tsarina as ‘a muddle-headed person’ and was gratified by her response: ‘We so rarely hear the truth from anyone.’ But in October 1916, she showed no sign of believing Protopopov to be muddle-headed, writing to her husband: ‘Sturmer and Protopopov both completely believe in our Friend’s wonderful, God-sent wisdom.’
In desperation, Mossolov sought Rasputin out at Gorokhovaya Street, with the intention of ordering him to stop meddling in the promotion of ministers and, specifically, to oust Protopopov. The oddly matched companions drank three glasses of Madeira in silence, before Mossolov felt sufficiently braced to issue his unwelcome orders. During the ensuing discussion Rasputin had several fits of pique: ‘If that’s it, I’ll pack my bags and go; I see I’m no longer wanted here… Do you think Papa and Mama will let you do what you like?’
Rasputin Page 10