She: “Dec. 14th.… Scarcely slept this night again.… Trepov was very wrong in putting off the Duma now & wishing to call it beginning of January again, the result being … nobody goes home & all will remain, fomenting, boiling in Petrograd.… Lovy, our Friend begged you to shut it 14th … & you see, they have time to make trouble.… Be Peter the Great, John [Ivan] the Terrible, Emperor Paul—crush them all under you—now don’t laugh, naughty one—but I long to see you with all those men.… ‘Do not fear,’ the old woman said & therefore I write without fear to my agoo wee one.”
Her constant pressure had kept him on the brink. Now she had gone too far.
He: “14 December, 1916.… Tender thanks for the severe written scolding. I read it with a smile, because you speak to me as though I was a child.”
She: “Dec 15th 1916.… Please, forgive me for my impertinent letters, but writes from deepest love—& sometimes driven to exasperation, knowing one cheets you & proposes wrong things.… Wish the telephone were not so bad.”
He: “16 December, 1916.… No, I am not angry with you for the other, written by you. I perfectly understand your desire to help me! But I cannot change the day for the reassembly of the Duma, because the day is already fixed in the Proclamation.… Tender greetings and kisses sends to you Your ‘poor, weak-willed little hubby.’ ”
Yes, this time he was implacable.
She: “Dec 17th 1916.… Again very cold & gently snowing.… Heart is not famous & don’t feel well. You see my heart for some time was bad again.… The moral strain of these last trying months on a weak heart of course had to tell … the old machine broke down.… Has Baby’s ‘worm’ quite been got rid of? Then he will get fatter & less transparent—the precious Boy!”
The end of her letter was finished in pencil—after she learned of what was for her the most dreadful event possible:
“We are sitting together—you can imagine our feelings—thoughts—our Friend has disappeared. Yesterday A[nya] saw him & he said Felix [Prince Yusupov] asked him to come in the night, a motor wld. fetch him to see Irina.—A motor fetched him (military one) with 2 civilians & went away. This night big scandal at Yousupov’s house—big meeting, Dmitrii [Pavlovich, Nicholas’s cousin], Purishkevich [Vladimir Mitrofanovich Purishkevich, extremely right-wing Duma member], etc all drunk. Police heard shots, Purishkevich ran out screaming to the Police that our Friend was killed. Police searching & Justice entered now into Yusupov’s house—did not dare before as Dmitrii there. Chief of police has sent for Dmitrii. Felix wished to leave to-night for Crimea, [I] begged Protopopov to stop him. Our Friend was in good spirits but nervous these days & for A[nya] too, as Batiushin [the military investigator handling the case of the German spies] wants to catch things against Ania. Felix pretends he never came to the house & never asked him. Seems quite a paw. I still trust in God’s mercy that one has only driven Him off somewhere.… We women are alone with our weak heads. Shall keep her [Anya] to live here—as now they will get at her next. I cannot & wont believe He has been killed. God have mercy. Such utter anguish.… Come quickly—nobody will dare to touch her or do anything when you are here.”
They had been plotting Rasputin’s murder for a long time. The large Romanov family saw it as the sole means of saving the dynasty. And the Holy Devil knew about it. When the clouds had thickened, he made a brilliant move, as always. He composed a will and prophecy, which he showed to the tsaritsa.
The “Spirit of Grigory Rasputin Novykh” promised:
“Russian Tsar!
“… Know, that if your relatives commit murder, then not one of your family, i.e., your relatives and children, will live more than two years.… The Russian people will kill them.… They will kill me. I am no longer among the living. Pray. Pray. Be strong. Worry about your elected family.”
Rasputin transmitted it to the empress through his secretary. Imagine what poor Alix felt! She did not show the letter to Nicholas, but the holy man’s guard was strengthened. The tsaritsa and her daughters themselves went to ask Rasputin not to receive any guests without her knowledge. They locked up his clothing and so on.
But the cunningly artless holy man outwitted the “accursed aristocrats.”
Vera Leonidovna:
“It was a puzzling intrigue in the spirit of my favorite play, Masquerade. Dmitry and Felix dreamed it up. Felix was an old enemy of the holy man. Through Mania Golovin he let it be known he was looking to reconcile with the holy man. It was all done very realistically. The holy man knew that Felix wanted to join the Guards; but the tsar, who did not want homosexuals, opposed it. So through poor, unsuspecting Mania, who was certain she was going to reconcile the holy man and her friend Felix, Felix asked the holy man to put in a word for him with Alix, which Rasputin agreed to do. That fateful evening, Grigory was going to see Felix in his palace for a complete reconciliation. He had been promised wine and dancing, of which he was passionately fond. One day I’ll tell you how marvelously he danced. That evening he had promised to heal Princess Irina.… The legend about the holy man lusting after Irina was created later by the assassins themselves: ‘Grigory’s filthy intentions toward the daughter of Sandro himself.’ All this was supposed to vindicate the assassins. Subsequently there was a legend about how Rasputin had been poisoned with potassium cyanide, but it wasn’t poison that took him. In fact, the person who gave him the poison didn’t want to take a sin on his soul, so he gave him a harmless powder.… When Felix realized the poison wasn’t working, he shot him and Rasputin fell. A second legend arose that Felix killed him and he rose up. In fact, he was only wounded. Felix wasn’t a murderer, and he was nervous. Rasputin was lying motionless on the pelt of a white bear, and Felix was with him in the room. Rasputin evidently came to and hurled himself on Felix to strangle him, bellowing horribly, like a wounded beast. Imagine what Felix must have felt when the ‘corpse’ fell on him! Horrified, Felix froze, and Rasputin was able to flee the cellar for the courtyard. He was killed right by the gate, with a revolver, and evidently not completely, because when they rolled him onto a portière to load him into Grand Duke Dmitry’s automobile he opened his eyes—and none of them ever forgot that inexpressible look. They had tried to kill Rasputin in the half-cellar.”
She (telegram): “Dec. 18th 1916. In your name I order Dmitrii forbidden to leave his house till yr. return. Dmitrii wanted to see me today, but I refused. Mainly he is implicated. The body still not found. When will you come?”
I am leafing through the diaries of the grand duchesses. Olga’s diary: “December 17.… Father Grigory has been missing since last night. They are looking everywhere. It is terribly hard. The four of us slept together. God help us!…
“December 18.… Ania is staying with us, since Mama is afraid for her.… We have finally learned that Father Gregorii was killed, probably by Dmitrii, and thrown from the bridge by Krestovskii. He was found in the water. No words can say how hard it is. We sat and drank tea, and the whole time we felt that Father Gregorii was with us.”
Did Dmitry kill him? This was the end to all her hopes. This is why “No words can say how hard it is.”
He (telegram): “18 Dec, 1916.… I have only just read your letter. Am horrified and shaken. In prayers and thoughts I am with you. Am arriving to-morrow at 5 o’clock.”
——
Was Rasputin’s prediction only a muzhik’s cunning or was it dictated by the Holy Devil’s dark power? Or both? This drunken, insanely debauched muzhik who had trampled the luxurious floors of their palaces truly was a precursor. The precursor of those hundreds of thousands of terrible muzhiks who would trample their palaces and murder them—and throw their corpses, like carrion, without burial, into the warm July earth.
At first Rasputin’s corpse was placed in a crypt at St. Feodor’s Cathedral. Then he was buried secretly—not far from the park and palace, under a chapel that was being built. Right under the altar. He was close by as before.
Nicholas’s diary:
“December 21.
Wednesday.… At 9 the whole family went past the photography building and turned right toward the field, where we assisted at a sad scene: the coffin with the body of the unforgettable Grigory, murdered on the night of December 17 by monsters in the home of F. Yusupov, had already been lowered into the grave. Father Alexander Vasiliev finished the eulogy, after which we returned home. The weather was gray with 12 degrees of frost. Walked until reports.… In the afternoon took a walk with the children.”
Nicholas was firm: The decision was made to banish “the monsters Dmitry and Felix” from Petrograd. His wife’s sufferings were not all that forced him to be firm. For a Christian, murder is blasphemous—not only that, the tsar’s own relatives had killed the muzhik! The rest of the Romanov family honored the “monsters.” At the station Felix was seen off by his father-in-law, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich. How poor Dmitry envied everyone who remained in his beloved Petrograd. How many of his relatives—of those who remained in “beloved Petrograd”—would be killed! Felix and Dmitry, though, the “monsters” banished from the capital, would survive.
For the next few days it was as if Alix had turned to stone. At first she had been violent, shouting “Hang them!,” but later she became ominously calm, almost indifferent. She understood that this was the end. The end that the holy man had predicted. Alix showed Nicky the holy man’s will, and he tried to calm her: Grigory’s behests were being carried out. Trepov, whom the empress (and consequently Grigory) did not like, was being driven out. The decrepit Golitsyn was being appointed prime minister, which for all intents and purposes meant that Protopopov, the holy man’s favorite, was to head the government.
Society rebelled. Endless meetings were held—municipal, district, noble—and all against the new government. While everyone was waiting for the revolution, it had already begun. The holy man was right: it began immediately upon his death!
Chapter 8
THE FALL OF ATLANTIS
NEW YEAR 1917
Frost, the sun secreted behind the clouds. The pure snow of Tsarskoe Selo glittering as if splashed with quicksilver. The sovereign’s annual grand entrance in the Great Palace. Another New Year’s in the long line of years of his reign.
“1 January. Sunday. The day passed gray, quiet, and warm.… At about 3 Misha arrived, and he and I left for the Great Palace to a reception of the Ministers, Suite, and diplomats.”
In early 1917 no one had the slightest doubt about the coming revolution. Plots were being hatched in luxurious Petrograd apartments. And in the palaces.
The plot of the grand dukes—here, of course, the name of the army’s favorite immediately surfaced: the former commander-in-chief, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich. Sixteen grand dukes sent an emissary to Tiflis to the out-of-favor Nikolasha. Duma plotters, too, began open negotiations with Nicholas Nikolaevich. In the name of Duma member Prince Georgy Lvov, it was already being openly proposed to Nikolasha that he replace the other Nicholas on the throne. Nicholas Nikolaevich hesitated—and refused. He remained a loyal subject.
The sons of Vladimir Alexandrovich went into action and called the monarchist Purishkevich to the palace of Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich. “Still under the impression of my conversation with them, I left the grand duke’s palace with the firm conviction that he, Guchkov, and Rodzianko were plotting something inadmissible … with respect to the sovereign,” Purishkevich wrote in his diary. In fact, this never went beyond seditious conversations either. Many in the large Romanov family at the time could have repeated the words that burst from Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich: “He [the tsar] infuriates me, yet I still love him!”
Endless meetings in Duma members’ apartments. General Krymov arrived from the front and told of the tragic situation in the army—the rumors of treason and the numerous defeats. The conclusion: a coup was inevitable.
At this time, as once before in the nineteenth century, the opposition was allying itself increasingly in secret Masonic lodges, which flourished in Russia after the 1905 revolution. By 1917 they had united society’s liberal elite, which was fed up with the Rasputin business. The paradox of the situation was that on the eve of 1905, when the police had frightened Nicholas with Masons, Masonry scarcely existed in Russia. Now, on the eve of 1917, when Masonry had become a real force, the police knew little about it. Meanwhile, the Masonic lodges included among their members tsarist ministers, generals, members of the State Council, Duma figures, prominent diplomats, industrialists: P. Balk, minister of finance; N. Pokrovsky, minister of foreign affairs; N. Polivanov, minister of war; Generals V. Gurko, A. Krymov, and N. Ruzsky; K. Dzhunkovsky, the chief of police, and so on. No, they did not want revolution—but they did want changes. Even in the lodges, then, activity was limited to seditious conversations. “Quite enough was done to get someone hanged, but not enough actually to carry out any plans,” one of the chief opposition leaders, Duma member Guchkov, would later say. Guchkov was trying to take practical steps: he was beginning to prepare a coup for March, when military units loyal to the Duma would be moved up toward Petrograd. To avoid bloodshed, he was planning to seize the tsar’s train and force the tsar to abdicate then and there. But none of the prominent military men (other than Krymov) joined in his plot. “I will never enter into a plot, I have sworn an oath.” Many could have repeated this statement by Duma Chairman Rodzianko.
At that time the head of the Petrograd secret police was submitting endless reports to Internal Affairs Minister Protopopov.
January 9: “Alarming mood among the revolutionary underground and widespread propagandization of the proletariat.”
January 28: “Events of extraordinary importance, fraught with exceptional consequences for Russian statehood, are not beyond the hills.”
February 5: “Animosity is mounting.… Spontaneous demonstrations by the popular masses will be the first and last stage on the path to senseless and merciless excesses of the most horrible thing of all—anarchical revolution.”
Protopopov blithely shelved the reports. After all, the empress had said: “There is no revolution in Russia, nor could there be. God would not allow it.”
Nicholas’s diary:
“29 January. Sunday.… In the afternoon took a walk and worked in the snow a while.… At 6 received old Klopov.”
Yes, this was the same Klopov who had come to see Nicholas at the dawn of his reign. Then Klopov had wanted to tell Nicholas the people’s truth. He came now one more time, to save his beloved tsar.
After the revolution Klopov worked quietly as a bookkeeper, and he died in 1927. Klopov left a note among his papers about his 1917 audience with Nicholas. He talked to the tsar about the court’s egoism, about the government’s criminal actions. Nicholas listened with a strange smile on his face, as if he were absent. Klopov left frightened by the incomprehensible equanimity of the tired man who had sat before him.
At this time Nicholas’s childhood friend Sandro, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, wrote Nicholas a letter. He wrote it at several sittings, decided to send it, and then changed his mind.
Nicholas’s diary:
“10 February.… Sandro arrived at 2 and had a long talk with Alix in my presence in the bedroom.”
Alix lay in bed for Sandro’s visit, as she was unwell. Sandro kissed her hand, and her lips grazed his cheeks. Sandro wanted to talk with her alone, but Nicky remained. She feared a tête-à-tête.
Later Alexander Mikhailovich told all about his conversation with Alix in his memoirs. But we are all strong in hindsight. It would be more accurate to draw on his own letter, which he wrote to Nicholas at the time and never sent:
“… We are living through a most dangerous moment in Russia’s history.… Everyone senses it: some with their mind, some their heart, some their soul….
“Certain forces inside Russia are leading you, and consequently Russia as well, to irrevocable ruin. I say ‘you and Russia’ wholly consciously, since Russia cannot exist without a tsar. One must remember, nevertheless, that the tsar al
one cannot rule a state such as Russia.… The current situation, in which all responsibility lies on you and you alone, makes no sense.
“… Events have shown that your advisers are continuing to lead Russia and you to certain ruin,” Sandro repeated. “It leads one to utter despair that you do not care to heed the voices of those who know the state Russia is in and advise you to take the measures necessary to lead us out of chaos.
“… The government today is the organ preparing the revolution. The people do not want it, but the government is taking every possible measure to create as many dissatisfied people as possible and is succeeding completely at it. We are assisting at an unprecedented spectacle of revolution from above, rather than below.”
In his conversation at Alix’s bedside, Sandro begged Alix to confine herself to family matters, and Alix cut him off. He persisted. She raised her voice; so did he. During their stormy exchange Nicholas smoked silently. Sandro left, promising that one day Alix would recognize his truth. He kissed her hand in parting but received no parting kiss in response.
The entire conversation with Sandro made Alix see one thing: they wanted to remove Protopopov, whom the holy man had bequeathed to them. She was furious. What they needed was to disband the Duma, not remove devoted people from the throne.
That day Nicholas was forced to listen to a great deal more. He recorded in his diary, laconically and in order as always, the day’s chain of events.
The Last Tsar Page 20