How did Nicholas regard these ardent, persistent letters exhorting him to choose this or that minister and, above all, to believe more in “our Friend”? There were times when he reacted by quietly ignoring her advice, wrapping himself in a mantle of silence, avoiding direct answers and calmly going his own way. The very vociferousness of Alexandra’s letters is evidence that she was often dissatisfied with his response; had she truly been ruling the empire and Nicholas merely a pawn executing her commands, these insistent, repetitive exhortations would not have been necessary.
But if Nicholas did not always gratify his wife’s entreaties, he rarely confronted her with an overt refusal. This was especially true in any matter involving Rasputin. Toward the starets, the Tsar’s own attitude was one of tolerant respect tinged with an amiable skepticism. At times, he confessed himself soothed by Rasputin’s semi-religious chatter. Leaving for the front in March 1915, he wrote to Alexandra, “I am going with such a calm in my soul that I am myself surprised. Whether it is because I had a talk with our Friend or because of the newspaper telling of the death of Witte [who had died of a stroke at sixty-seven] I don’t know.” On other occasions, Nicholas was annoyed at Rasputin’s intrusion into political matters and begged his wife “do not drag our Friend into this.”
Nevertheless, when the Empress threw herself at him verbally, pleading that he follow the advice of “the Man of God,” Nicholas often bowed. He knew very well how much she counted on the presence and prayers of Rasputin; he had seen with his own eyes what had happened at the bedsides of Alexis and Anna. To comfort her, encourage her and appease her fears, he endorsed her suggestions and recommendations. This relationship was greatly accentuated once Nicholas had left for Headquarters. Then, having left the management of internal affairs in the Empress’s hands, Nicholas regularly deferred to her suggestions in the appointment of ministers. And it was her choice of ministers, proposed by Rasputin, beseechingly pressed on and unwisely endorsed by the absentee Tsar, which lost the Tsar his throne.
* A novel explanation of Rasputin’s two violently contrasting images—the holy man and the debauchee—is offered by Maria Rasputin in her book, Rasputin, My Father. According to this faithful daughter, her saintly father’s good name was blackened by the monstrous device, concocted by the Tsar’s enemies, of hiring an actor who resembled the starets and instructing him to debauch himself in the most obscene manner in the most public places. It is a dutiful effort, but it breaks under the weight of contrary evidence.
24
The Government Disintegrates
In the early autumn of 1915, Alexandra Fedorovna had been Empress of Russia for twenty-one years. During this time, she had shown little interest in politics and no personal ambition. Except in defense of Rasputin, she rarely even mentioned government affairs to the Tsar. She scarcely knew her husband’s ministers and, during the first decade of her marriage, held them completely in awe. In 1905, Count Fredericks persuaded her with difficulty to speak to the Tsar on a political matter. When he came back and asked her a second time, Alexandra burst into tears. After her son was born and Rasputin appeared, she intervened when he seemed threatened. Then her power could become formidable: Kokovtsov’s dismissal as Premier was primarily her work. But she remained shy and silent in the presence of the ministers and she still had no experience in government affairs.
All this changed when Nicholas took command of the army. Then the gap he left behind in the civil administration was filled by his wife. It was not a formal regency; rather, it was an almost domestic division of family duties. As such, it was wholly within the tradition of the Russian autocracy. “When the Emperor went to war, of course his wife governed instead of him,” said Grand Duke Alexander, explaining what he considered a natural sequence of events.
That Nicholas regarded her role in this light is clear from his letters. “Think, my wify, will you not come to the assistance of your hubby now that he is absent,” he wrote cheerfully after leaving for Headquarters. “What a pity that you have not been fulfilling this duty long ago or at least during the war.” On September 23, 1916 (O.S.), he said, “Yes, truly, you ought to be my eyes and ears there in the capital while I have to stay here. It rests with you to keep peace and harmony among the Ministers—thereby you do a great service to me and to our country…. I am so happy to think that you have found at last a worthy occupation. Now I shall naturally be calm and at least not worry over internal affairs.” And the next day: “You will really help me a great deal by speaking to the ministers and watching them.” When she felt unsure and apologized for her presumption, he reassured her: “There is nothing to forgive you for, on the contrary, I must be deeply grateful to you for so far advancing this serious matter by your help.”
Once the Tsar had asked for her help, Alexandra threw herself into the task. To “keeping peace and harmony among the ministers” and managing internal affairs, she brought the same intense devotion and narrow stubbornness she had shown in fighting for the life of her son. Lacking experience, she made numerous, outsized mistakes. She groped blindly for people and facts, unable to verify what she was told, often depending on the impressions of a single short interview. As she went along, her self-confidence improved, and it was a personal triumph when in September 1916 she delightedly wrote to the Tsar, “I am no longer the slightest bit shy or afraid of ministers and speak like a waterfall in Russian.”
Rasputin was not only her advisor, he was also her yardstick for measuring other men. “Good” men esteemed Rasputin’s advice and respected him. “Bad” men hated him and made up disgusting stories about him. The work of “good” men would be blessed, and therefore they should be appointed to high office. “Bad” men were sure to fail, and those already in office should be driven out. Alexandra did not particularly care whether a prospective minister had special aptness or expertise for his new role. What mattered was that he be acceptable to the Man of God. It was far more important that he like Rasputin than that he understand anything about munitions or diplomacy or the distribution of food.
Every new candidate for the Council of Ministers was scrutinized and measured in this manner: “He likes our Friend…. He venerates our Friend…. He calls our Friend Father Gregory…. Is he not our Friend’s enemy?” Unlike the Duma, whose very existence she considered a stain on the autocracy, the Empress accepted the Council of Ministers as a legitimate institution. Ministers, appointed by the Tsar and responsible only to him, were necessary to govern the country. What Alexandra could not abide were ministers who opposed the autocratic will. Any sign that a minister disagreed with the Tsar made her suspicious; the thought that ministers and Duma might be working together drove her frantic.
For her, the ideal minister was personified by the aged Prime Minister, Ivan Goremykin. Having stepped down as Prime Minister in 1906 to make way for Stolypin, Goremykin had been restored to power before the outbreak of war. Now seventy-six and in failing health, Goremykin had no illusions about his role. As far back as 1896, Pobedonostsev had written to Nicholas that Goremykin needed a rest, otherwise “he would not last throughout the winter.” Goremykin had repeatedly asked—and been denied—permission to resign. “The Emperor can’t see that the candles have already been lit around my coffin and that the only thing required to complete the ceremony is myself,” he said mournfully.
Nevertheless, Goremykin’s stubborn, old-fashioned views of autocracy and the role of the minister were much too rare and valuable for him to be let go. “I am a man of the old school and an Imperial Command is for me a law,” he declared. “To me, His Majesty is the anointed one, the rightful sovereign. He personifies the whole of Russia. He is forty-seven and it is not just since yesterday that he has been reigning and deciding the fate of the Russian people. When the decision of such a man is made and his course of action is determined, his faithful subjects must accept it whatever may be the consequences. And then let God’s will be fulfilled. These views I have held all my life and with them I shall die.”
Not surprisingly, the Empress was delighted with Goremykin, whom she always affectionately called the “Old Man.” “He sees and understands all so clearly and it is a pleasure speaking to him,” she declared.
Just how unique Goremykin and his views of autocracy were became glaringly apparent in the severe ministerial crisis which followed the Tsar’s decision to take command of the army. Of all the ministers, Goremykin alone supported his master’s decision. In vain, he urged them, “I call upon you, gentlemen, in the face of events of extraordinary importance to bow to the will of His Majesty, to lend him your full support in the moment of trial, and to devote all your powers to the service of the Sovereign.” When they refused, he said wearily, “I beg you to inform the Emperor that I am not fitted for my position and that it is necessary to appoint a man of more modern views in my place. I shall be grateful to you for the service.”
Instead, the majority of the ministerial council decided that, as the Tsar refused to heed its advice, there was nothing to do but resign. “It is our duty,” declared Sazonov, the Foreign Minister, “… to tell the Tsar frankly that under existing conditions we cannot govern the country, that we cannot serve conscientiously and that we are doing harm to the country…. The Cabinet cannot perform its functions while it does not enjoy the confidence of the Sovereign.” A collective letter of resignation, signed by eight of the thirteen ministers, was addressed to the Tsar. It had no effect whatsoever. Nicholas summoned the ministers to Headquarters and told them that until he saw fit to replace them, they were not permitted to resign.
A few days later, in a letter to Alexandra, he ruminated on the gap between himself and his ministers. “The behavior of some of the Ministers continues to amaze me. After all I told them at that famous evening sitting, I thought they understood … precisely what I thought. What matter—so much the worse for them. They were afraid to close the Duma—it was done. I came away here and replaced N. [Grand Duke Nicholas] in spite of their advice; the people accepted this move as a natural thing and understood it as we did. The proof—numbers of telegrams which I receive from all sides with the most touching expressions. All this shows me clearly one thing: that the Ministers always living in town, know terribly little of what is happening in the country as a whole. Here I can judge correctly the real mood among the various classes of people…. Petrograd and Moscow constitute the only exceptions on the map of the fatherland.”
The Empress was less interested in finding excuses for ministerial behavior than she was in driving each man who had signed the letter out of office. Thus, the next sixteen months saw a sad parade of dismissals, reshuffles and intrigues. In that time, Russia had four different prime ministers, five ministers of interior, four ministers of agriculture and three ministers of war. “After the middle of 1915,” wrote Florinsky, “the fairly honorable and efficient group who formed the top of the bureaucratic pyramid degenerated into a rapidly changing succession of the appointees of Rasputin. It was an amazing, extravagant, and pitiful spectacle, and one without parallel in the history of civilized nations.”
Two of the signers, Prince Shcherbatov, the Minister of Interior, and Samarin, the Procurator of the Holy Synod (Minister of Religion), went quickly, dismissed without explanation early in October. Krivoshein, the Minister of Agriculture, left in November, and Kharitonov, the State Controller, departed in January. The next to go, in February 1916, was the faithful Goremykin. “The ministers do not wish to work well with old Goremykin … therefore, on my return some changes must take place,” had written Nicholas. At first, the Empress was reluctant. “If in any way you feel he hinders, is an obstacle for you, then you better let him go,” she wrote, “but if you keep him he will do all you order and try to do his best…. To my mind, much better clear out ministers who strike and not change the President who with decent, energetic, well-intentioned … [colleagues] can serve still perfectly well. He only lives and serves you and your country and knows his days are counted and fears not death of age, or by knife or shot.” Rasputin also hated the idea of losing Goremykin: “He cannot bear the idea of the Old Man being sent away, has been worrying and thinking over that question without end. Says he is so very wise and when others make a row … he sits merely with his head down—it is because he understands that today the crowd howls, tomorrow rejoices, that one need not be crushed by the changing waves.”
Nevertheless, in Goremykin’s enfeebled hands, the government had almost ceased to function. His fellow ministers avoided or ignored him. When he appeared in the Duma, the elderly man was greeted by a prolonged hiss which made it impossible for him to speak. The Tsar, the Empress and Goremykin himself understood that the situation could not continue. “I keep wracking my brains over the question of a successor for the Old Man,” wrote Nicholas. Alexandra sadly agreed, and for a while they thought of appointing Alexander Khvostov, the conservative Minister of Justice. An uncle of the singing Minister of Interior, this older Khvostov was one of the ministers who had refused to sign the infamous letter. First, however, Khvostov was to have a visit from Rasputin.
“Our Friend told me to wait about the Old Man until he had seen Uncle Khvostov on Thursday, what impression he will have of him,” Alexandra wrote to the Tsar. “He [Rasputin] is miserable about the dear Old Man, says he is such a righteous man, but he dreads the Duma hissing him and then you will be in an awful position.” The following day, the Empress wrote, “Tomorrow Gregory sees old Khvostov and then I see him in the evening. He wants to tell his impression if a worthy successor to Goremykin.” But Khvostov did not survive the interview; Alexandra wrote indignantly that Rasputin was received “like a petitioner in the ministry.”
The next candidate brought forward, Boris Stürmer, was more successful. Equipped with Goremykin’s arch-conservative instincts while lacking completely the old man’s courage and honesty, Stürmer, then sixty-seven, was an obscure and dismal product of the professional Russian bureaucracy. His family origins were German; his great-uncle, Baron Stürmer, had been Austria’s representative on the guard which sat on St. Helena keeping watch on Napoleon. Stürmer himself, first as Master of Ceremonies at court, then as the reactionary governor of Yaroslav province, had attracted a universally bad reputation. “A man who had left a bad memory wherever he occupied an administrative post,” declared Sazonov. “An utter nonentity,” groaned Rodzianko. “A false and double-faced man,” said Khvostov.
When Stürmer first appeared, Paléologue, who had scarcely heard of him, busied himself for three days gathering information. Then he penned this discouraging portrait: “He … is worse than a mediocrity—third rate intellect, mean spirit, low character, doubtful honesty, no experience and no idea ot State business. The most that can be said for him is that he has a rather pretty talent for cunning and flattery…. His appointment becomes intelligible on the supposition that he has been selected solely as a tool; in other words, actually on account of his insignificance and servility…. [He] has been … warmly recommended to the Emperor by Rasputin.”
In fact, Stürmer was first recommended to the Tsar by Rasputin’s friend and protégé Pitirim, who, with Rasputin’s aid, had been named Metropolitan of the Orthodox Church in Petrograd. “I begat Pitirim and Pitirim begat Stürmer” was the way Rasputin sardonically put it. Nevertheless, Stürmer’s name was the one that filled the Empress’s letters. “Lovy, I don’t know but I should still think of Stürmer…. Stürmer would do for a time. He very much values Gregory which is a great thing…. Our Friend said about Stürmer to take him for a time at least, as he is such a decided loyal man.”
To the astonishment of Russia and even of the faithful Goremykin, who had no inkling that his wish for retirement was about to be granted, the unknown Stürmer was suddenly named Prime Minister in February 1916. The Duma regarded the appointment as a crushing humiliation, an insult to all of their work and aspirations. There was no doubt that when the new Prime Minister appeared before them, their outrage would exceed anything they had directed at Goremyk
in. At this point, Rasputin offered an ingenious suggestion. The starets had no love for the Duma, but he understood its usefulness. “Dogs collected to keep other dogs quiet,” he called the members. Under the circumstances, he advised Nicholas to make a placating gesture. “Of course if you could have turned up for a few words, quite unexpected at the Duma … that might change everything,” Alexandra explained the scheme to her husband. Nicholas agreed, and on February 22, 1916, the Tsar appeared in person before the Imperial Duma. The gesture was an overwhelming success. A Te Deum was sung, Nicholas greeted the members as “representatives of the Russian people” and presented the Order of St. Anne to Rodzianko. Although Stürmer was present at the side of the Tsar, his appointment was temporarily forgotten—as Rasputin had cunningly foreseen—amid a storm of cheers.
With Stürmer installed at the top, the Empress, urged on by Rasputin, continued to weed among the ministerial ranks. Her next major target was Polivanov, the Minister of War. The Empress had never liked him. “Forgive me,” she had written the Tsar when Polivanov was appointed, “but I don’t like the choice of Minister of War Polivanov. Is he not our Friend’s enemy?” In the short time since he replaced the indolent Sukhomlinov, the brusque, efficient Polivanov had worked wonders in training and equipping the army. It was primarily due to his efforts that the beaten Russian army of 1915 was able to recover and launch the great offensive of 1916. Nevertheless, Polivanov was marked, not only by his rough refusal to have anything to do with Rasputin, but also by his eagerness to work closely with the Duma in obtaining maximum support for his army program. In the end, Polivanov’s doom was sealed when he discovered that Rasputin had been supplied by Stürmer with four high-powered War Office cars too fast to be followed by the police when he set off for one of his steamy nocturnal haunts. Polivanov sternly objected, and soon Alexandra was writing to Nicholas, “Get rid of Polivanov … any honest man better than him…. Remember about Polivanov…. Lovy, don’t dawdle, make up your mind, it’s far too serious.” On March 25, Polivanov fell. “Oh, the relief! Now I shall sleep well,” she said when she heard the news. Others were appalled. Polivanov was “undoubtedly the ablest military organizer in Russia and his dismissal was a disaster,” wrote Knox. General Shuvaiev, Polivanov’s successor, Knox described as “a nice old man, quite straight and honest He had no knowledge of his work, but his devotion to the Emperor was such that if the door were to open and His Majesty were to come into the room and ask him to throw himself out of the window, he would do so at once.”
Nicholas and Alexandra: The Tragic, Compelling Story of the Last Tsar and his Family Page 44