Nicholas and Alexandra: The Tragic, Compelling Story of the Last Tsar and his Family

by Robert K. Massie

  Rasputin’s first appearance in St. Petersburg occurred in 1903 and lasted for five months. Even in the capital, remote and sophisticated, his reputation had preceded him. He was said to be a strange Siberian moujik who, having sinned and repented, had been blessed with extraordinary powers. As such, he was received by the city’s most famous churchman, Father John of Kronstadt. John was a saintly figure noted for the power of his prayers, and his church at Kronstadt was an object of pilgrimages from across Russia. He had been the private confessor to Tsar Alexander III and had sat with the family by Alexander’s bed at Livadia while the Tsar was dying. To be received and blessed by this most revered priest in Russia was an impressive step in Rasputin’s progress.

  In 1905, Rasputin was back in St. Petersburg. This time, he was taken to meet the aged Archimandrite Theophan, Inspector of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy and former confessor to the Empress Alexandra. Like Father John, Theophan was struck by the apparent fervor of Rasputin’s faith and arranged for him to meet another ranking churchman, Bishop Hermogen of Saratov. With all of these priests and bishops, Rasputin’s approach was the same. He refused to bow and treated them with jolly, spontaneous good humor, as if they were friends and equals. Put off balance by his egalitarianism and simple sincerity, they were also impressed by his obvious gifts as a preacher. He was a phenomenon, it seemed to them, which had been given to the Church and which the Church, then trying to strengthen its roots among the peasants, could put to valuable use. They welcomed him as a genuine starets.

  In addition to the blessing of the Holy Fathers of the Church, Rasputin began his life in the capital with the endorsement of two ladies of the highest society, the Montenegrin sister princesses, Grand Duchess Militsa and Grand Duchess Anastasia. The daughters of King Nicholas I of Montenegro, each had married a cousin of Tsar Nicholas II, and both were prominent practitioners of the pseudo-Oriental brand of mysticism then in vogue in many of the capital’s most elegant drawing rooms. This upper layer of society, bored with the old church routines of traditional Orthodoxy, looked for meaning and sensation in the occult. Amid an atmosphere of decadence, of cards and gold lying on green baize tables, of couples flushed with champagne dancing all night, of galloping troikas, of fortunes staked at the race track, the mediums and clairvoyants flourished. Grand dukes and princes gathered around tables, the curtains drawn behind their backs, to hold seances and try feverishly to communicate with the other world. There were table-rappings in darkened rooms where strange voices were said to speak and the tables themselves were declared to have risen and floated in the air. Numerous great mansions had their domestic ghosts. Footsteps sounded, doors creaked and a certain tune was always played on the piano by invisible hands whenever a member of the family was dying. Rasputin, who had so impressed the saintly men of the Church, was received with equal excitement by this coterie of the occult.

  It was Grand Duchess Militsa who first brought Rasputin to Tsarskoe Selo. The fateful date, November 1, 1905 (O.S.), is fixed by an entry in Nicholas’s diary: “We have got to know a man of God, Gregory, from Tobolsk Province.” A year later, Nicholas wrote: “Gregory arrived at 6:45. He saw the children and talked to us until 7:45.” Still later: “Militsa and Stana [Grand Duchess Anastasia] dined with us. They talked about Gregory the whole evening.”

  Rasputin was not, in fact, the first “Holy Man” brought to the palace by the Grand Duchess Militsa. In 1900, when Alexandra was desperately anxious to give her husband a male heir, Militsa advised her of the existence of a French mystic and “soul doctor” named Philippe Vachot. Vachot had begun as a butcher’s assistant in Lyon, but he had found life easier as a faith healer; many believed he could also determine the sex of unborn children. This did not impress the French authorities, who three times had prosecuted him for practicing medicine without a license. In 1901, Nicholas and Alexandra paid an official visit to France, and Militsa arranged for them to meet Vachot. He proved to be a childlike little man with a high forehead and penetrating eyes. When the Imperial couple returned to Russia, Vachot went along as part of their baggage.

  Unfortunately for Vachot, the Empress’s next child, like the preceding three, proved to be a girl, Anastasia. In 1903, Vachot declared that the Empress was pregnant and would have a son. She was not even pregnant and Vachot’s stock plummeted. Despairing, Alexandra was persuaded to give up Vachot and he was sent home, lavishly remunerated, to die in obscurity. But before he left, he told the Empress, “You will someday have another friend like me who will speak to you of God.”

  At first, Rasputin’s reception at the palace caused little comment. His credentials on all sides were impeccable. He had the blessing of the most saintly men of the church; Father John and the Archimandrite Theophan had both advised the Empress to have a talk with the devout peasant, and he was introduced from the highest social circle of the capital.

  None of these people, however, expected the degree of intimacy with which Rasputin came to be accepted at the palace. Usually, he came in the hour before dinner when Alexis was playing on the floor in his blue bathrobe before going to bed. When Rasputin arrived, he sat down with the boy beside him and told stories of travels and adventures and old Russian tales. There was the story of the humpbacked horse, of the legless rider and the eyeless rider, of Alyonushka and Ivanushka, of the unfaithful Tsaritsa who was turned into a white duck, of the evil witch Baba Yaga, of the Tsarevich Vasily and the beautiful Princess Elena. Often, the girls, the Empress and the Tsar himself found themselves listening.

  It was on such an evening in the autumn of 1907 that Grand Duchess Olga, the Tsar’s youngest sister, first met Rasputin. Nicholas said to her, “Will you come and meet a Russian peasant?” and Olga followed him to the nurseries. There, the four girls and their small brother, all wearing white nightgowns, were waiting to go to bed. In the middle of the room stood Rasputin.

  “All the children seemed to like him,” said Olga. “They were completely at ease with him. I still remember little Alexis [then three], deciding he was a rabbit, jumped up and down the room. And then, quite suddenly, Rasputin caught the child’s hand and led him to his bedroom, and we three followed. There was something like a hush as though we had found ourselves in Church. In Alexis’s bedroom no lamps were lit; the only light came from the candles burning in front of some beautiful icons. The child stood very still by the side of the giant, whose head was bowed. I knew he was praying. It was all most impressive. I also knew that my little nephew had joined him in prayer. I really cannot describe it—but I was then conscious of the man’s sincerity…. I realized that both Nicky and Alicky were hoping that I would come to like Rasputin….”

  Rasputin’s manner with Nicholas and Alexandra exactly suited his role. He was respectful but never fawning; he felt free to laugh loudly and to criticize freely, although he larded his language heavily with biblical quotes and old Russian proverbs. He referred to the sovereigns not as “Your Majesty” or “Your Imperial Majesty,” but as Batiushka and Matushka, the “Father” and “Mother” of the Russian peasants. In these ways he deepened the contrasts between himself, the Man of God and representative of the Russian people, and the polished figures of court and society whom Alexandra despised.

  Both Nicholas and Alexandra spoke freely to Rasputin. To the Tsar, Rasputin was exactly what he had described to his sister, “a Russian peasant.” Once, speaking to one of the officers of his guard, Nicholas elaborated: “He [Rasputin] is just a good, religious, simple-minded Russian. When in trouble or assailed by doubts, I like to have a talk with him, and invariably feel at peace with myself afterward.” To Alexandra, Rasputin became much more important. Gradually, Alexandra became convinced that the starets was a personal emissary from God to her, to her husband and to Russia. He had all the trappings: he was a peasant, devoted to the Tsar and the Orthodox faith; he represented the historic triumvirate: Tsar-Church-People; in addition, as an irrefutable proof of his divine mission, Rasputin was able to help her son.

/>   This was the key. “It was the boy’s illness that brought Rasputin to the palace,” writes Sir Bernard Pares. “What was the nature of Rasputin’s influence in the family circle?” Pares goes on to ask. “The foundation of it all was that he could undoubtedly bring relief to the boy, and of this there was no question whatsoever.” The eyewitnesses agree. “Call it what you will,” declared Alexandra Tegleva, Alexis’s last nurse, “he [Rasputin] could promise her [the Empress] her boy’s life while he lived.” Mosolov, the court official, writes of Rasputin’s “incontestable success in healing.” Gilliard states that “Rasputin’s presence in the palace was intimately connected with the prince’s illness. She [Alexandra] believed that she had no choice. Rasputin was the intermediary between her and God. Her own prayers went unanswered but his seemed to be.” Kerensky, intruding on the family circle after Rasputin was dead, nevertheless declares that “it was a fact that more than once before the eyes of the Tsar and the Tsaritsa, Rasputin’s appearance by the bedside of the apparently dying Alexis caused a critical change.”

  What was it, exactly, that Rasputin did? The common belief, never verified, is that Rasputin used his extraordinary eyes to hypnotize the Tsarevich and then, with the boy in a hypnotic state, suggested that the bleeding would stop. Medically, it could not have been that simple. No doctor established in this field accepts the possibility that hypnosis alone could suddenly stop a severe hemorrhage. Nevertheless, there is a strong body of responsible opinion which believes that hypnosis, properly used, can play a part in controlling hemophilic bleeding.

  “Rasputin took the empire by stopping the bleeding of the Tsarevich,” wrote J. B. S. Haldane, the British geneticist “It was perhaps an imposture, but it is also possible that by hypnotism or a similar method, he was able to produce a contraction of the small arteries. These last were placed under the regulation of the [autonomic] nervous system and although they are not normally controlled by the will, their contraction can be provoked in the body of a hypnotized subject.”*

  If it is medically possible that Rasputin could have controlled Alexis’s bleeding by using hypnosis, it is far from historically certain that he did. Stephen Beletsky, Director of the Police Department, which monitored all Rasputin’s activities, declared that in 1913 Rasputin was taking lessons in hypnotism from a teacher in St. Petersburg; Beletsky put an end to the lessons by expelling the teacher from the capital. Rasputin’s successes with Alexis, however, began well before 1913. If he had been using hypnosis all the while, why did he need lessons?

  The probable answer to this mystery derives from recent explorations into the shadowy links between the working of mind and body and between emotions and health. In hematology, for example, it has been proved that bleeding in hemophiliacs can be aggravated or even spontaneously induced by emotional stress. Anger, anxiety, resentment and embarrassment cause an increase in blood flow through the smallest blood vessels, the capillaries. In addition, there is evidence that overwrought emotions can adversely affect the strength and integrity of the capillary walls. As these tend to become more fragile and break down under stress while at the same time they are attempting to handle an increased flow of blood, the likelihood of abnormal bleeding becomes greater.

  There is an opposite side to this proposition: It is strongly suspected that a decrease in emotional stress has a beneficial effect on bleeding. As calm and a sense of well-being return to a patient, his capillary blood flow will decline and the strength of his vascular walls increase. In this context, the question of whether Rasputin hypnotized the Tsarevich becomes a matter of degree. If, technically, it was not hypnosis that he practiced, it was nevertheless a powerful suggestion—Prince Yussoupov’s account gives an indication of its strength. When Rasputin used this power on Alexis, weaving his tales, filling a darkened room with his commanding voice, he did in effect cast a spell over a boy overwhelmed by pain. Then, as Rasputin assured him in tones which left no room for doubt, Alexis believed that the torment was receding, that soon he would be walking again, that perhaps they would go together to see the wonders of Siberia. The calm and sense of well-being produced by this powerful flow of reassuring language produced a dramatic emotional change in the Tsarevich. And, as if by a miracle, the emotional change affected Alexis’s body. The bleeding slowed, the exhausted child dropped off to sleep and eventually the bleeding stopped altogether. No one else could have done it, neither the anguished parents nor the terrified doctors. Only a man supreme in his own self-confidence could transmit this self-confidence to a child.

  Like every other explanation, this one is only a guess. It is supported, however, by current medical knowledge. It is also suggested by a wisp of testimony from Maria Rasputin, the starets’s daughter: “The power, the nervous force that emanated from my father’s eyes, from his exceptionally long and beautiful hands, from his whole being impregnated with willpower, from his mind concentrated on one desire … [were] transmitted to the child—a particularly nervous and impressionable subject—and … in some way … galvanized him. At first through the stream of emotion and later through the power of confidence, the child’s nervous system reacted, the envelope of the blood vessels contracted, the hemorrhage ceased.”

  The truth about Rasputin’s effect on the Tsarevich will never be precisely known. Few medical records of these episodes were kept and none survived the Revolution. Not even persons intimate with most of the family secrets were privy to these dramatic episodes. Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, the Tsarevich’s aunt, declares, “There is no doubt about that [Rasputin’s healing powers]. I saw those miraculous effects with my own eyes and that more than once. I also know that the most prominent doctors of the day had to admit it. Professor Fedorov, who stood at the very peak of his profession and whose patient Alexis was, told me so on more than one occasion, but all the doctors disliked Rasputin intensely.”

  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 re
veal. 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.