Once the crisis had passed, most of the Imperial household quickly returned to their normal pursuits. Nicholas received his ministers to discuss the war which Bulgaria and Serbia were waging against Turkey. He hunted, played tennis, walked in the woods and went rowing on the river. He took Anna Vyrubova out in a boat which hit a rock in a rapid current and almost capsized.
But for the two most intimately involved in the ordeal, recovery was slow. For weeks, Alexandra and Alexis sat together in his room. He was propped against pillows in his bed, while she sat in a chair beside him, reading aloud or knitting. “I must warn you that according to the doctors, Alexei’s recovery will be very slow,” Nicholas wrote to Marie. “He still has a pain in his left knee and cannot bend it. It has to be propped up on a pillow. But that does not worry the doctors for the chief thing is that the process of internal absorption continues and for this, complete immobility is necessary. His complexion is quite good now, but at one time he looked like wax, his hands, his feet, his face, everything. He has grown terribly thin but the doctors are now stuffing him for all they are worth.”
A month later, Alexis had recovered sufficiently to be moved back to Tsarskoe Selo. At the Empress’s command, the road from the house to the station had been smoothed and graded so that there should not be the slightest jolt. On the homeward journey, the Imperial train crawled at fifteen miles an hour.
Almost a year was to pass before Alexis could walk again. For months, his left leg, drawn up against his chest, refused to straighten. The doctors applied a metal triangle with sliding sides which could be moved to varying points as the leg permitted. Bit by bit, the triangle was widened and the leg extended. But even a year later, at Livadia, Alexis still was undergoing a series of hot mudbaths as a treatment for the limp he had acquired at Spala. Through all this time, official photographs of the Heir were posed either seated or on steps so that the bent leg would appear to be normal.
After Spala, Alexis became a more serious child, more reflective and more considerate of other people. For an eight-year-old boy, it was a matter to ponder that his father was autocrat over millions of men and the master of the largest empire on earth, and yet had no power to spare him the pain he had felt in his leg. For Alexandra, Spala was a supreme religious experience. She had been, for what seemed an eternity, in Hell. The power that vanquished Hell and saved her son had been a sign from Heaven. Beneath that sign stood Gregory Rasputin.
15
Rasputin
There was much about Gregory Rasputin that was repulsive. When he first appeared in 1905 in several of St. Petersburg’s most elegant drawing rooms, the heralded Siberian “miracle worker” was in his early thirties, broad-shouldered, muscular, of average height. He dressed roughly in loose peasant blouses and baggy trousers tucked into the top of heavy, crudely made leather boots. He was filthy. He rose and slept and rose again without ever bothering to wash himself or change his clothes. His hands were grimy, his nails black, his beard tangled and encrusted with debris. His hair was long and greasy. Parted loosely in the middle, it hung in thin strands to his shoulders. Not surprisingly, he gave off a powerful, acrid odor.
To his devotees, none of these details mattered. Women who found him disgusting discovered later that disgust was a new and thrilling sensation; that the rough and strong-smelling peasant was an alluring change from a surfeit of perfumed and pomaded cavalry officers and society gentlemen. Others, less sensual, reasoned that his coarse appearance was a sure sign of his spirituality. Were he not a Holy Man, they said to themselves, such a ragged moujik would not be here among us. Satisfied with this conclusion, they went out, adding their voices to the growing chorus which chanted that Rasputin was indeed a Man of God.
Rasputin’s eyes were his most remarkable feature. Friends and enemies alike described their strange power. Anna Vyrubova, who worshipped Rasputin, spoke of him as having a “pale face, long hair, un-cared for beard and the most extraordinary eyes, large, light, brilliant,” The monk Iliodor, who hated Rasputin, described his “steely grey eyes, deep set under their bushy eyebrows, which almost sank into pinpoints.” Paléologue, who had to consider Rasputin as a political phenomenon, found himself focusing on the eyes: “Rasputin was dark, with long stiff hair, a thick black beard, a high forehead, a broad prominent nose, and sensuous mouth. The full expression of his personality, however, seemed concentrated in his eyes. They were pale blue, of exceptional brilliance, depth and attraction. His gaze was at once piercing and caressing, naïve and cunning, far-off and intent. When he was in earnest conversation, his pupils seemed to radiate magnetism. He carried with him a strong animal smell, like the smell of a goat.”
It was difficult to resist the power of Rasputin’s steady gaze. Men and women who met him out of curiosity found themselves fascinated, lured and compelled by the glimmering eyes and the urgent, mysterious will behind them. Prince Yussoupov, who murdered Rasputin, went to him first, coolly announcing that he was sick, to learn more about Rasputin’s methods of “healing.”
“The ‘starets’ made me lie down on the sofa,” Yussoupov wrote later. “Then, staring intently at me, he gently ran his hand over my chest, neck and head, after which he knelt down, laid both hands on my forehead and murmured a prayer. His face was so close to mine that I could see only his eyes. He remained in this position for some time, then rising brusquely, he made mesmeric passes over my body.
“Rasputin had tremendous hypnotic power. I felt as if some active energy were pouring heat, like a warm current into my whole being. I fell into a torpor, and my body grew numb; I tried to speak but my tongue no longer obeyed me and I gradually slipped into a drowsy state, as though a powerful narcotic had been administered to me. All I could see was Rasputin’s glittering eyes; two phosphorescent beams of light melting into a great luminous ring which at times drew nearer and then moved farther away. I heard the voice of the starets but could not understand what he said.
“I remained in this state without being able to cry out or to move. My mind alone was free, and I fully realized that I was gradually falling into the power of this evil man. Then I felt stir in me the will to fight his hypnosis. Little by little the desire to resist grew stronger and stronger, forming a protective armour around me. I had the feeling that a merciless struggle was being fought out between Rasputin and me. I knew that I was preventing him from getting complete mastery over me, but still I could not move: I had to wait until he ordered me to get up.” Rasputin closed the interview with “Well, my dear, that’ll be enough for the first time.”
A story told by Fülöp-Miller, Rasputin’s biographer, indicates the strange duality of Rasputin’s nature:
“A young girl who had heard of the strange new saint came from her province to the capital and visited him in search of … spiritual instruction. His gentle monastic gaze and the plainly parted light brown hair … all at first inspired her with confidence. But when he came closer to her, she felt immediately that another quite different man, mysterious, crafty, and corrupting, looked out from behind the eyes that radiated goodness and gentleness.
“He sat down opposite her, edged quite near and his light blue eyes changed color and became deep and dark. A keen glance reached her from the corner of his eyes, bored into her, and held her fascinated. A leaden heaviness overpowered her limbs as his great wrinkled face, distorted with desire, came closer to hers. She felt his hot breath on her cheeks, and saw how his eyes, burning from the depths of their sockets, furtively roved over her helpless body, until he dropped his lids with a sensuous expression. His voice had fallen to a passionate whisper and he murmured strange, voluptuous words in her ear.
“Just as she was on the point of abandoning herself to her seducer, a memory stirred in her dimly … she recalled that she had come to ask him about God … she gradually awoke … the heaviness disappeared … she began to struggle…. He was at once aware of the increasing inner resistance, his half-shut eyes opened again, he stood up, bent over her … and pressed
a passionless, gentle, fatherly kiss on her forehead. His face distorted with desire became smooth again and was once more the kindly face of the wandering teacher. He spoke to his visitor in a benevolent, patronizing tone, his right hand raised to his forehead in blessing. He stood before her in the attitude in which Christ is depicted on old Russian icons; his glance was again gentle and friendly, almost humble, and only in the depth of those little eyes still lurked, almost invisible, the other man, the sensual beast.”
Rasputin focused his eyes not only on feverish women, but on ministers of the Imperial government. At the request of the Empress, he called on and was received by two successive Prime Ministers of Russia, Peter Stolypin and Vladimir Kokovtsov.
Stolypin, a man of great strength and will, later described the visit of Rasputin to his friend Michael Rodzianko, President of the Duma: “He [Rasputin] ran his pale eyes over me, mumbled mysterious and inarticulate words from the Scriptures, made strange movements with his hands, and I began to feel an indescribable loathing for this vermin sitting opposite me. Still, I did realize that the man possessed great hypnotic power, which was beginning to produce a fairly strong moral impression on me, though certainly one of repulsion. I pulled myself together….”
To a remarkable degree, the same scene was repeated with Stolypin’s successor, Kokovtsov: “When Rasputin came into my study and sat down in an arm chair, I was struck by the repulsive expression of his eyes,” Kokovtsov wrote. “Deep seated and close set, they glued on me and for a long time, Rasputin would not turn them away as though trying to exercise some hypnotic influence. When tea was served, Rasputin seized a handful of biscuits, threw them into his tea and again fixed his lynx eyes on me. I was getting tired of his attempts at hypnotism and told him in as many words that it was useless to stare at me so hard because his eyes had not the slightest effect on me.”
Both Stolypin and Kokovtsov departed from their interviews convinced that they, at least, had triumphed over the Siberian moujik. In fact, both had simply made more certain their own political fates. The interviews had been arranged by Alexandra so that Rasputin could evaluate the two ministers. Leaving each of them, he reported to her that neither man seemed attentive to him or to the will of God. Upon these reports, unknown to them, the palace reputations of both of these Prime Ministers, the best men that Russia had, began to decline.
Rasputin’s eyes were the foundation of his power, but when they failed him, he was quick to use his wheedling tongue.
The rise of Gregory Rasputin would have been impossible in any country other than Russia. Even in Russia, pungent, shaggy, semi-literate peasants did not normally take tea with prime ministers. Yet neither Kokovtsov nor Rasputin considered the scene quite as bizarre as it seems today; it was not, as someone put it, “as if Og had entered the White House.”
Rasputin appeared in St. Petersburg as a starets—a Man of God who lived in poverty, asceticism and solitude, offering himself as a guide to other souls in moments of suffering and turmoil. Sometimes, as in his case, the starets might also be a strannik—a pilgrim who carried his poverty and his offerings of guidance in wanderings from place to place. These were types that all Russians could recognize. Through Russian history, armies of impoverished pilgrims had walked across the steppes from village to village and monastery to monastery, living on whatever the peasants or monks might choose to give them. Many ascetics walked barefoot in the winter or wrapped their legs with heavy chains. Some preached, others claimed powers of healing. If the Orthodox Church caught them preaching heresy, they went to prison, but their poverty and self-sacrifice often made them seem holier than the local priests.
All Russians listened to these holy men. To illiterate peasants who had never walked beyond the nearest river, they talked of mighty cities, foreign lands, mysterious healings and miracles of God. Even educated Russians treated them with respect. Dostoyevsky wrote in The Brothers Karamasov, “The starets is he who takes your soul and will and makes them his. When you select your starets, you surrender your will. You give it to him in utter submission, in full renunciation.” Before his death, Count Leo Tolstoy visited the revered starets of Optina Poustin for counsel. Traditionally, the rags, the chains, the clear renunciation of the world gave these men freedoms that others lacked. They could rebuke the mighty, sometimes even the tsars themselves.
Rasputin was a fraudulent starets. Most were saintly old men who had left all temptation and worldly goods behind. Rasputin was young, he was married and had three children, and his powerful friends later bought him the grandest house in his village. His mind was impure and his moral behavior was gross. But he had in lavish abundance some of the dramatic trappings of holiness. Along with his burning eyes, he had a fluent tongue. His head was filled with Scriptures, and his deep, powerful voice made him a compelling preacher. Besides, he had wandered the length and breadth of Russia and twice made pilgrimages to the Holy Land. He presented himself as a humble penitent, a man who had sinned greatly, been forgiven and commanded to do God’s work. It was a touching symbol of his humility, people said, that he kept the nickname “Rasputin” which he had earned as a young man in his native village. “Rasputin” in Russian means “dissolute.”
Rasputin was born Gregory Efimovich, the son of Efim, a farmer who once had been a coachman in the Imperial Mail. The year was 1872; thus he was thirty-three when he first met the Imperial family, and forty-four when he died. His birthplace was Pokrovskoe, a village on the Tura River in western Siberia, 250 miles east of the Ural Mountains. It was a hard, wind-swept land where the temperature in winter dropped to forty below zero and to survive took great strength and hard physical work. Climate and isolation had their effect on the mind, and more mystics, more holy men and more outlandish sects came out of Siberia than any other part of Russia.
There is a story that, as a boy, Gregory uttered his first startling bit of prophecy. He lay in bed with fever while a group of villagers gathered in his father’s house to discuss the theft of a horse. From his bed, the story goes, Gregory arose, flushed and excited, and pointed his finger at a peasant in the room, declaring that he was the thief. Outraged, the peasant denied it, and Gregory was beaten. That night, however, a pair of distrustful villagers followed the accused man and saw him take the horse from his shed into the forest. Gregory acquired a modest local reputation as a seer, a heady thing for a boy of twelve.
As a young man, the seer became a rake. He drank and fought and made free with the village girls. He became a wagoner, carrying goods and passengers to other villages, an occupation that extended the range of his conquests. A good talker, sure of himself, he tried every girl he met. His method was direct: he grabbed and started undoing buttons. Naturally, he was frequently kicked and scratched and bitten, but the sheer volume of his efforts brought him notable success. He learned that even in the shyest and primmest of girls, the emptiness and loneliness of life in a Siberian village had bred a flickering appetite for romance and adventure. Gregory’s talent was for stimulating those appetites and overcoming all hesitations by direct, good-natured aggression.
On one of his trips, Gregory—now dubbed Rasputin by his snickering neighbors—carried a traveler to the monastery of Verkhoturye, a place used both as a retreat for monks and as a seat of ecclesiastical imprisonment for heretical sectarians. Rasputin was fascinated by both groups of inhabitants and remained at the monastery for four months.
Most of those confined at Verkhoturye were members of the Khlysty, a sect which believed in reaching God through the raptures of sexual encounter. Their secret nocturnal orgies took place on Saturday nights in curtained houses or clearings deep in the forest. Both men and women arrived dressed in clean white linen gowns and began singing hymns by candlelight. As the candles burned lower, the singers began to dance, slowly and reverently at first, then more wildly. In a fever of excitement, they stripped their bodies and submitted to the whip brandished by the local leader of the sect. At the peak of their frenzy, men and women fell o
n each other, regardless of age or family relationship, and climaxed their devotions with indiscriminate intercourse.
In later years, Rasputin’s enemies often charged him with membership in the Khlysty. Had they been able to prove it, even the Empress might have been shocked, but solid evidence was never available. The most that could be proved—and Rasputin freely admitted this—was that, like the Khlysty, Rasputin believed that to sin was the first step toward holiness.
Soon after returning to Pokrovskoe, Rasputin, then barely twenty, married a blonde peasant girl four years older than he. Through all his life, even at the height of his notoriety, his wife, Praskovie, remained at home in Pokrovskoe. She knew about his womanizing and never complained. “He has enough for all,” she said with a curious pride. She bore him four children—two sons and two daughters. The eldest son died in infancy and the other was mentally deficient; the two girls, Maria and Varvara, later came to live with their father and be educated in St. Petersburg.
To support his family, Rasputin took up farming. One day while plowing, he thought he saw a vision and declared that he had been directed to make a pilgrimage. His father scoffed—“Gregory has turned pilgrim out of laziness,” said Efim—but Gregory set out and walked two thousand miles to the monastery at Mount Athos in Greece. At the end of two years, when Gregory returned, he carried an aura of mystery and holiness. He began to pray at length, to bless other peasants, to kneel at their beds in supplication when they were sick. He gave up his drinking and curbed his public lunges at women. It began to be said that Gregory Rasputin, the profligate, was a man who was close to God. The village priest, alarmed at this sudden blossoming of a vigorous young Holy Man within his sphere, suggested heresy and threatened an investigation. Unwilling to argue and bored by life in Pokrovskoe, Rasputin left the village and began once again to wander.
Nicholas and Alexandra: The Tragic, Compelling Story of the Last Tsar and his Family Page 25