Queen Victoria's Gene

by D M Potts

  When orthodox medicine could offer no hope Alix had resorted to quacks. Following the departure of Philippe she turned to Badmaev, a Buddhist Mongol from central Asia, described by Palaeologue, the French ambassador, as an ignorant fanatic. Without any medical qualifications he took obscure cases of a psychological or gynaecological nature for which he invented expensive new treatments with herbs and magic potions. These were supposed to be specially imported from Tibet but were, in fact, purchased from the nearest grocers and chemists.

  Theofan, the royal family’s private bishop, distrusting the Lutheran background of the tsarina and the non-Orthodox faiths of her medical advisors, decided that if Alix wanted to be surrounded by quacks they should at least be Russian Orthodox ones. He appointed Rasputin ‘Imperial Lamp Tender’ in charge of the lamps burning before the numerous icons in the royal palaces. While tending the lamps he became acquainted with Badmaev, who unwisely called him in for consultation during a bleeding episode. Rasputin rapidly rose from wick-trimmer to royal physician, displacing Badmaev.

  Rasputin not only met the tsarina’s proclivity for fakes and charlatans but in a unique way offered the royal couple the only therapy available for their child’s bleeding episodes. Torn blood vessels will heal, but movement prevents healing and stress raises blood pressure, which increases bleeding. First, Rasputin was able to calm and even put to sleep an often hysterical child and reassure his family – and this was a considerable advantage during a bleeding episode. Second, as the British geneticist J.B.S. Haldane suggested, Rasputin’s hypnotic presence may actually have helped the tsarevitch constrict the arterioles, which are controlled by the autonomic nervous system. The Grand Duchess Olga was a witness of one of Rasputin’s ‘treatments’ at Tsarskoe Selo:

  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, his 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.

  Whatever the physiological basis of Rasputin’s power his ability to help the only male heir to the throne, when orthodox medicine was helpless, gave him absolute power. Rasputin’s most dramatic intervention was performed at a distance and was clearly purely coincidental. The royal family was on a hunting expedition to Belovehi in Poland in 1913 when Alexis had two serious bleeds, the second forming a large hot painful lump in his groin. The child screamed with pain and the doctors feared the mass of blood becoming infected. Consideration was given to draining the unclotted mass but the doctors were afraid they would precipitate uncontrolled bleeding. Anna Vyrubova telegrammed Grigorii who had returned to his ancestral village of Pokrovskoe east of the Urals. He cabled back, ‘the illness is not serious, don’t let the doctors tire him’. Next morning the tsarevitch had recovered and Rasputin’s place in the royal household was unassailable. The tsar explained to Kokovtsov, the last peace-time prime minister, ‘Rasputin is a simple peasant who can relieve the suffering of my son by a strange power. The Empress’ reliance upon him is a matter for the family and I will allow no one to meddle in my family’s affairs.’ This attitude was the more unaccountable and unacceptable to the Russian people because no one outside the most immediate family circle was allowed to know the nature of the tsarevitch’s affliction. Even Pierre Gilliard, who was tutor to the four princesses between 1905 and 1913, did not discover the fact until he was appointed tutor to the tsarevitch himself. That many Russians would have seen the illness as a judgement of God made concealment even more important, but to outsiders the tsarina’s absolute faith in Rasputin was as inexplicable as it was deplorable. It was taken as evidence of her total unfitness for the position to which marriage had brought her.

  Rasputin was one of the few people who went into the domestic apartments at Tsarskoe. He incongruously called the royal couple Momma and Papa and they called him their Friend sent by God. To the royal children he brought a glimpse of the outside world they had not seen before and they obviously liked the bearded eccentric. While the tsarina had complete faith in Rasputin and was completely under his will, the tsar retained more independence. He declined to discuss affairs of state with him but admitted that at times of stress or anxiety Rasputin could soothe him and raise his spirits: ‘Five minutes conversation is enough to feel myself calm and resolute. Rasputin can always say what I need to learn at the moment and the effect of his words lasts for weeks.’ As Rasputin’s control of the royal family, and particularly the tsarina, grew, he began first to meddle in church affairs and then in politics. In 1911 the church leadership turned against him and in one confrontation a more eccentric than usual priest suddenly lunged at Rasputin, grabbing at his penis, while Bishop Hermogenes attacked him with a heavy cross.

  Over the years the imperial couple gradually exhausted all their subjects’ reserves of loyalty, respect and trust. They were rarely seen but it was universally known that they consorted with a drunken lascivious peasant. An intelligent, outgoing tsar might well have converted Russia into a respectable liberal democracy. Unfortunately, Nicholas was weak, timid and suspicious. During the next ten critical years, under the influence of his wife and Rasputin and continually worried by the young tsarevitch’s bouts of bleeding, he shed all intelligent or forceful ministers. A month before the revolution, Rodzianko warned him, ‘Your Majesty, there is not one reliable or honest man left around you; all the best men have been removed or have retired. There remain only those of ill repute.’

  Protopopov, Minister of the Interior when the first revolution broke out, was typical of the people who were placed in positions of eminence by the malign influence of Rasputin. The British ambassador described him as certifiably insane.11 The French ambassador reported that Protopopov was in the early stages of general paralysis of the insane due to syphilis. Protopopov himself claimed that he could communicate with Rasputin by telepathy. When the riots began in Petrograd in 1917 Protopopov, who was responsible for the maintenance of law and order, locked himself in a darkened room and sought advice from the spirit of Rasputin, by then assassinated.

  Rasputin was probably too shrewd to have tried to seduce the tsarina but inevitably rumours abounded, and lascivious letters purporting to have passed between Rasputin and the tsarina were in circulation. Rasputin added fuel to this speculation by his drunken boasts. It was widely believed that he took part in orgies involving not only the empress but also her four growing daughters. Alix certainly encouraged them to write most remarkable letters. At the age of fourteen, Olga addressed him as her ‘dear darling beloved friend’, and signed ‘ardently loving you, your Olga’. ‘My Dear and true friend’, wrote the Grand Duchess Tatiana, ‘God loves you so. And, you say God is so good and kind that he will do anything you ask. So visit us soon. It is so dull without you. Mother is ill without you and it is so sad to see her ill.’ Alix clearly loved the man who appeared to heal her son. In one letter she wrote: ‘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 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, for ever on your shoulders and in your arms. . . . I am asking for your holy blessing and I am kissing your blessed hands. I love you for ever. Yours, M [Mama].’

  Protected from arrest by the tsarina his behaviour became more outrageous. Russian secret police reported regularly on his behaviour. On on
e occasion he exposed himself to a number of women in a public restaurant. He followed this by giving his audience a vivid description of his amorous adventures, naming the women involved, and boasted that he could do anything he liked with the tsarina, whom he referred to as ‘the old girl’.

  Rasputin’s apartments were the scenes of the wildest orgies. ‘They beggared all description’, wrote the American ambassador, ‘The . . . infamies of the Emperor Tiberius on the Isle of Capri are made to seem modest and tame.’ Even though the secret police documented his wild adventures outside the palace in great detail, the tsar merely took the criticisms as a breach of etiquette. ‘Better one Rasputin than ten fits of hysterics a day’, he let slip on one occasion. Even when a detailed account of Rasputin’s activities in the restaurant were sent to Nicholas such was Alix’s obsession that nothing could be done. In 1911 the able Stolypin, shocked by reports of Rasputin’s behaviour, attempted to have the latter sent back to his home. When he tried to warn Nicholas of the effect Rasputin was having on his reputation Nicholas replied ‘Perhaps everything you say is true. But, I must ask you never to speak to me again about Rasputin. In any case, I can do nothing at all about it.’ Alix was so enraged by Stolypin’s attempts to remove Rasputin that when Stolypin was assassinated she regarded it as a divine judgement on him: ‘Those who have offended God in the person of our Friend may no longer count on divine protection.’ Alix habitually referred to Rasputin as ‘our friend’.

  The effect on the morale of those classes on whom the emperor depended is illustrated by an entry in the diary of General Bogdanovich: ‘I took up my pen feeling crushed and wretched. I have never known a more disgraceful time. It is not the tsar but the upstart Rasputin who governs Russia, and he states openly that the tsar needs him even more than the tsarina: and then there is that letter to Rasputin in which the tsarina writes she only knows peace with her head on his shoulder. . . . The tsar has lost all respect and the tsarina declares that it is only thanks to Rasputin’s prayers that the tsar and their son are alive and well; and this is the twentieth century!’

  Even so, the bizarre ramshackle system of tsarist rule might have survived indefinitely had it not been for the stresses of the First World War. Conversely, it is just possible that the war might not have started if the tsar had not been so exercised by his son’s suffering. Three days before Franz Ferdinand’s assassination, the tsarevich had slipped on a ladder on the Standart. The boy’s ankle swelled rapidly and the internal bleeding led to great pain. To add to the royal family’s distress, a few hours before Franz Ferdinand’s murder in Sarajevo a syphilitic ex-prostitute, Chionya Gusyeva, had attempted to assassinate Rasputin in his home village in Siberia. For the first time for a year Rasputin had returned home to visit his family. Gusyeva stabbed him deeply, exposing his intestines. Remarkably, Rasputin survived even though surgical repair had to be delayed for six hours and he refused an anaesthetic during the operation. It is curious to think how different the history of the world might have been if Franz Ferdinand had been slightly tougher and Gregorii Rasputin a trifle weaker. But it was Rasputin who lived, although he had to remain in Siberia for some time.

  Ironically, June and July 1914 were perhaps the only times when it might have been useful for Rasputin to be near the tsar. If he had alleviated the heir’s suffering it would have taken a weight off Nicholas’s mind at a crucial time. More importantly, Rasputin was strikingly perceptive of the danger of war. He wrote shakily from his sick bed: ‘Thou art the Tsar, the father of the people, don’t let the lunatics triumph and destroy themselves and the people. If we conquer Germany, what in truth will happen to Russia? When you consider it like that there has never been such a martyrdom. We all drown in blood. “Terrible is the destruction and without end the grief.” Gregorii.’ – and he always believed: ‘Had I been there, there would have been no war. I would not have permitted it.’

  It may have been an idle boast, but in view of Rasputin’s power over the royal family in other ways, it was quite possible. The tsar knew his country’s weaknesses and had no stomach for a patriotic war. He tried to compromise by limiting mobilization to the south of the country, hoping that support could be given to Serbia without bringing about a confrontation with Germany. But he was overtaken by the pace of events. Germany attacked France through Belgium and Britain went to the assistance of Belgium, in response to the guarantee that Victoria had renewed to her beloved Uncle Leopold over seventy years earlier.

  Russia entered the war badly equipped, but the speed of its mobilization surprised the Germans. Russia immediately invaded East Prussia and in doing so relieved pressure on the western front. Germany hoped to defeat France first and threw seven-eighths of her army into the invasion. German mobilization went according to plan until the tsar’s invasion of East Prussia. Due to greatly superior German staffwork and an acute shortage of ammunition on the Russian side, the Russian invasion ended in disaster at the battle of Tannenberg, but the attack forced Germany to switch two army corps, a cavalry division and their best commander from the west to the east. The hoped-for breakthrough into France never occurred. General Dupont, one of the French General Joffre’s aides, wrote of the diversion from the Schlieffen Plan, ‘This was perhaps our salvation’.

  Early in 1915 Hindenburg persuaded the kaiser to transfer more troops from the stalemate on the western front in order to mount a major offensive against Russia. The tsar had a superfluity of soldiers but too few officers to lead them and a gross deficiency in guns and ammunition: one soldier in three had no rifle and some had no boots. In a series of hideous encounters, in which the Germans used poison gas for the first time in warfare, the Russians lost 100,000 killed and 130,000 taken prisoner. Winter snows, frost and mud added to the misery. The Germans made considerable advances but failed to meet their strategic goals and the Russians achieved considerable success against the Austrians on the southern front.

  Allied warships bombarded the Dardanelles in an attempt to break open the route between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, which Turkey had blocked since the beginning of the war. Had they succeeded the Russians could have received supplies of arms from the west, but both the naval attack and the later landings failed miserably. German reinforcements on the Austrian front eventually drove the Russians back. The retreat became general, Warsaw fell, essential railways were cut and numberless columns of refugees packed the roads beside the fleeing troops. To his credit Grand Duke Nicholas, the Russian Commander in Chief, aided by the onset of winter, managed to slow the German advance later in 1915 but in one year Russia had lost about one million men in battle and three-quarters of a million captured by the enemy.

  In August 1915 the Minister for War reported: ‘One can expect irreparable catastrophe at any time. The army is no longer retreating, it is simply running away.’ ‘But’, he concluded his report, ‘there is a far more horrible event which threatens Russia. I feel obliged to inform the government that this morning . . . His Majesty told me of his decision to remove the Grand Duke (Nikolaevich) and to personally assume supreme command of the army.’ In spite of a collective appeal by the Council of Ministers, Nicholas arrived at the Headquarters although he was persuaded to leave the not very competent grand duke in effective command. Alix bombarded him with letters of advice: ‘Being firm is the only saving’, and reassuring him, ‘our Friend’s prayers arise night and day for you to heaven and God will hear them’. As he left for the Headquarters she gave Nicholas one of Rasputin’s combs with the advice, ‘Remember to comb your hair before all difficult tasks and decisions . . . it will help you in the future and give strength to the others to fulfil your orders’. Such was the Russia which faced the most powerful and best organized army in the world.

  For a while it seemed that Nicholas’s assumption of command might pay off. In 1915 and 1916 Russian industry was reorganized on a war footing and the supplies of shells and equipment became adequate. Although the Russians were driven back by the Germans and lost all of Poland
in 1915, they advanced against the Turks with tragic consequences for the Armenians under Turkish control. In 1916 in a brilliant campaign led by General Brusilov, planned to coincide with the catastrophic British campaign in Flanders and an Italian attack at the head of the Adriatic, the Russians broke the Austrian line over a 200-mile front and took 350,000 prisoners. Germany was hard pressed on all fronts and even Romania rashly declared war on the Teutonic giant, but the Germans reinforced the Austrians yet again and the Brusilov offensive was halted after the loss of 350,000 men. As the emperor was in command he also took the blame.

  As the war progressed, Alix became increasingly involved in her husband’s affairs: she was obsessed with strengthening his will. When dealing with his Headquarters staff, she instructed him, ‘Be Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Emperor Paul – crush them all under you’. He replied, ‘God bless you, my Darling, my Sunny! Your poor weak-willed little hubby Nicky.’ ‘Don’t laugh at silly old wifey, she has trousers unseen’, she encouraged him. She returns to her trousers metaphor repeatedly. Sometimes they were ‘black trousers’. Once ‘I yearn to show these cowards my immortal trousers’. ‘He is a man, not a petticoat’, was a high compliment. In a different culture she might have become a militant feminist, in early twentieth-century Russia she had to work through and on her husband. Her attitude inevitably made her many enemies ‘who fear that I interfere too much in the affairs of state’. In September 1916 the empress cabled, ‘Our Friend begs you not to worry too much over the question of food supply, says things will arrange themselves’. A letter told Nicholas, ‘This must be your war and peace. . . . They have not the right to say a single word on these matters.’