“I have not the slightest doubt about your courage and bravery,” he told a group of graduating cadets, “but I need your lives, because useless losses in the officer corps may lead to serious consequences. I am sure that every one of you will give his life willingly, when it becomes necessary, but do it only in cases of exceptional emergency. In other words, I am asking you to care for yourselves.”
The essential problem was Russia itself. As Massie wrote, “behind the massive façade of an enormous empire, the apparatus of government, the structure of society and economy were too primitive, too inflexible, and too brittle to withstand the enormous strains of a great four-year war.”
Russia’s railway system was entirely inadequate to efficiently transport men and supplies to the front: “The Supreme Command ordered, but the railroads decided,” as General Albert Knox, a British military attaché, put it. Furthermore, there were not enough factories to produce vital war materials, or, because of blockades, the ability to import them. Thus, without adequate arms or ammunition, “the Russian steamroller,” was left helpless in the face of the enemy’s awesome weaponry. And in this vulnerable state, Knox wrote, brave men were “churned into gruel.”
“In recent battles, a third of the men had no rifles,” reported one general. “These poor devils had to wait patiently until their comrades fell before their eyes and they could pick up weapons. The army is drowning in its own blood.” In one instance, a private was bold enough to approach a general visiting the front. “You know, Sir, we have no weapons except the soldier’s breast,” he said. “This is not war, Sir, this is slaughter.” But it was an enemy general, Paul von Hindenburg, who perhaps best articulated the overwhelming extent of Russia’s human sacrifice:
“In the ledger of the Great War the page upon which the Russian losses were written has been torn out. No one knows the figures. Five or eight million? We, too, have no idea. All we know is that sometimes in our battles with the Russians we had to remove the mounds of enemy corpses from before our trenches in order to get a clear field of fire against fresh assaulting waves. Imagination may try to reconstruct the figure of their losses, but an accurate calculation will remain forever a vain thing.”
In the fury of war, and the crushing number of casualties that came with it, anti-German sentiment in Russia grew fierce. Bach, Brahms, and Beethoven were banished from orchestral programs, while rampaging mobs looted and burned stores owned by Germans. Even Christmas trees were legally banned. “I am going to find out about it and then make a row,” the empress announced in response to this assault on tradition. “It’s no concern of theirs nor the church’s and why take away a pleasure from the wounded men and children because it originally came from Germany—the narrow-mindedness is too colossal.”
The most ferocious attacks were aimed not at Christmas trees, but rather at the German-born empress herself. Never popular to begin with, the war brought out the most latent hatred of her subjects, who falsely accused her of being an operative for her homeland and the worst kind of traitor. In one particularly vicious story that made the rounds, a general was supposedly walking through the palace when he encountered Tsarevitch Alexis weeping. “What is wrong, my little man,” the general reportedly asked, to which the boy was said to answer: “When the Russians are beaten, Papa cries. When the Germans are beaten, Mama cries. When am I to cry?”
Although Empress Alexandra was a thoroughly flawed individual, whose foolish decisions during the war would ultimately prove fatal, she was nevertheless a sincere patriot. “Twenty years I have spent in Russia,” she once declared, “half my life—and the fullest, happiest part of it. It is the country of my husband and son. I have lived the life of a happy wife and mother in Russia. All my heart is bound in this country I love.”
After years spent malingering in her mauve boudoir, Alexandra plunged herself into the war effort with uncharacteristic vigor and sense of purpose. She and her older daughters enrolled in a Red Cross training program for nurses, and soon enough she arranged to have the empty Catherine Palace at Tsarskoe Selo transformed into a makeshift hospital.
“I have seen the Empress of Russia in the operating room,” wrote Anna Vyrubova, “holding ether cones, handling sterilized instruments, assisting in the most difficult operations, taking from the busy surgeons amputated legs and arms, removing bloody and even vermin-infested dressing, enduring all the sights and smells and agonies of that most dreadful of all places, a military hospital in the midst of war.”
For Alexandra, working in the hospital in some ways had the immediacy of the front lines. “How near death always is!” she wrote to her husband. And in her chosen role, the empress served with distinction. Unfortunately, though, nursing wasn’t her only wartime occupation. Had it remained so, and Alexandra let affairs of state alone, perhaps a Romanov might still be sitting on the Russian throne. Instead, in her grab for power, she led the dynasty to total ruin—with Rasputin right by her side.
Historians have long been inconsistent about the nature of the relationship between the empress and the mystic peasant during the war years. Some have asserted that it was Alexandra who set the agenda, and that she used her guru merely to endorse with his blessing what she had already decided. Others maintain that Rasputin was in control, and that given his success in healing her son, the empress concluded that he could run the empire just as well. Perhaps the truth existed somewhere in between—that the ambitions of both merged harmoniously. Yet whatever the precise formula, it proved deadly.
Certainly the two shared a common enemies list of those who they believed threatened them. And topping the roster in 1915 was General Vladimir Dzhunkovsky, commander of all the police in the empire, who made the fatal error of informing the emperor of all Rasputin’s sexual shenanigans when he ripped off his mask of holiness outside the palace. It was quite a colorful indictment.
The staretz had gained so much influence because of his royal connections that people from all segments of society flocked to his St. Petersburg apartment seeking favors. “Three to four hundred people would call on Rasputin daily,” one witness reported; “one day it was seven hundred.… I saw uniformed guards, students, school girls asking for financial support. There were officers’ wives asking for favors for their husbands, parents asking for military exemption for their sons.”
The price was often monstrously steep for women seeking the holy man’s services, but there was no cash involved. In one instance, a woman sought Rasputin’s help in having her husband returned from administrative exile in Siberia. According to a police report, she paid dearly. “Neither her tears, her entreaties, her talk of her children had any effect,” the report read, “and taking advantage of her distraught condition and regardless of the fact that there were people in the next room, he took her by force, and then visited her several times in her hotel, constantly promising that he would arrange matters, and take a petition to the tsar from her.… She was eventually persuaded to return home. Rasputin did nothing about the petition because, as he put it, ‘she was insolent.’ ”
Because the staretz was under constant police surveillance, a dossier grew fat with such tales, all of which were widely disseminated to people who lapped up every salacious detail. “Rasputin’s apartments are the scene of the wildest orgies,” wrote the American ambassador George Marye. “They beggar all description and, from the current accounts of them, which pass freely from mouth to mouth, the storied infamies of the Emperor Tiberius on the Isle of Capri are made to seem modest and tame.”
Perhaps the most infamous of all Rasputin’s exploits (and the one that led to Dzhunkovsky’s downfall) occurred in the spring of 1915, when the staretz traveled to Moscow, ostensibly to pray at the tombs of the patriarchs in the Kremlin. But there was much more fun to be had than that. “I was at Yar, the most luxurious night haunt of Moscow, with some English visitors,” reported Robert Bruce Lockhart. “As we watched the musical performance in the main hall, there was a violent fracas in one of the private
rooms. Wild shrieks of a woman, a man’s curses, broken glass and the banging of doors. Headwaiters rushed upstairs. The manager sent for the police.… But the row and roaring continued.… The cause of the disturbance was Rasputin—drunk and lecherous, and neither police nor management dared evict him.”
Outrageous as the story was, Lockhart only told half of it. When the police arrived, Rasputin dropped his trousers and began waving his genitals in the faces of other diners. And that, he declared, was just how he behaved in front of the tsar. As for Alexandra, he bragged that he could do anything he liked with “the old girl.” Finally the drunken staretz was dragged away, “snarling and vowing vengeance.”
Needless to say, Nicholas was not pleased when he read Dzhunkovsky’s report of the incident, and angrily confronted Rasputin. The wily peasant meekly admitted to some details, like his drunkenness, claiming he had been led astray. As for the other, far more serious charges, he simply denied them. Still, the emperor ordered him back to Siberia for a spell. Alexandra, too, was furious about the report, but not because of her mentor’s behavior, which she either did not believe or conveniently chose to ignore. Rather, she was incensed that Dzhunkovsky had shared the devastating information—not only with Nicholas, but others as well.
“My enemy Dzhunkovsky … has shown that vile, filthy paper to [Grand Duke] Dmitri,” the empress wrote to her husband. “If we let Our Friend be persecuted we and our country shall suffer for it.… I am so weary, such heartaches and pain from all this—the idea of dirt being spread about one we venerate is more than terrible. Ah, my love, when at last will you thump your hand upon the table and scream at Dzhunkovsky and others when they act wrongly—one does not fear you—and one must—they must be frightened of you, otherwise all sit upon us.”
Rasputin eventually got his revenge on the police chief who reported him. “Your Dzhunkovsky’s finished,” he taunted the officers outside his apartment. And so he was, for within several months Dzhunkovsky lost his post.
Coinciding with Dzhunkovsky’s downfall was that of the tsar’s cousin, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolavich (“Nikolasha,” to the family), commander in chief of the Russian forces. “He was the most admired man in the army, not only an old-fashioned soldier, but deeply Slav,” wrote Paléologue. “His whole being exuded a fierce energy. His incisive measured speech, flashing eyes and quick, nervous movements, hard, steel-trap mouth and gigantic stature [he stood six feet six inches tall] personify imperious and impetuous audacity.” Alexandra and Rasputin hated him.
The empress’s animosity stretched back at least as far as the horrible year of 1905, when Nikolasha threatened to shoot himself in front of the tsar if Nicholas did not accede to the formation of the Duma—the representative body whose very existence Alexandra viewed as an affront to the autocracy. Then there was the fact that Nikolasha was an ardent opponent of “Our Friend” Rasputin. According to one story, the staretz wanted to visit army headquarters and received the following reply from Nikolasha: “Yes, do come—I’ll hang you.” Thus was launched a vigorous campaign against the commander in chief, the man revered in the army as what Knox called “a sort of legendary champion of Holy Russia.”
“I have absolutely no faith in N[ikolasha],” Alexandra wrote to Nicholas in one of a barrage of letters on the subject—“know him to be far from clever and having gone against a Man of God, his work can’t be blessed or his advice good.… Russia will not be blessed if her sovereign lets a Man of God sent to help him be persecuted. I am sure.… You know N.’s hatred for Gregory is intense.”
Alexandra’s assault on Nikolasha included not-so-subtle digs at the passive emperor, whom she encouraged to be more like the man people perceived the commander in chief to be. “Forgive me, precious One, but you know you are too kind and gentle,” she wrote in the spring of 1915—“sometimes a good loud voice can do wonders, and a severe look—do my love, be more decided and sure of yourself.… You think me a meddlesome bore, but a woman feels and sees things sometimes clearer than my too humble sweetheart … a Sovereign needs to show his will more often.”
The empress also urged Nicholas to remember that Rasputin’s was the only voice (besides hers) of any value to him. And if the staretz believed Nikolasha should be removed, well then, there was no other choice but to trust him. “Hearken unto Our Friend,” she wrote. “Believe him. He has your interest and Russia’s at heart. It is not for nothing God sent him to us, only we must pay more attention to what He says. His words are not lightly spoken and the importance of having not only his prayers but his advice is great.… I am haunted by Our Friend’s wish and know it will be fatal for us and for the country if not fulfilled. He means what he says when he speaks so seriously.”
Alexandra’s anti-Nikolasha campaign was ultimately abetted by the war itself. Warsaw fell in August 1915, and with the army in full retreat, so was its commander in chief. Nikolasha’s fall did not cause much consternation, given the circumstances. But news of his replacement certainly did.
“There is a far more horrible event which threatens Russia,” Minister of War Alexis Polivanov reported to the Council of Ministers on August 6. “I feel obliged to inform the government that this morning, during my report, His Majesty told me of his decision to remove the Grand Duke and to personally assume the supreme command of the army.”
The ministers’ response was swift and unequivocal. “The execution of the Emperor’s decision is absolutely impossible, and one must resist him with all means,” declared Minister of the Interior Prince Shcherbatov. Equally adamant was Minister of Foreign Affairs Serge Sazonov, who said that “in general, all this is so terrible that my mind is in chaos. Into what an abyss Russia is being pushed.” Ten of the horrified ministers sent the emperor a collective letter, begging him to reconsider his decision, which, they wrote, “threatens Russia, You, and Your dynasty with the direst consequences.” Nicholas ignored their plea. And when eight ministers then tendered their resignations in protest, he simply refused to accept them.
The council’s negative reaction was not due to Nikolasha’s removal, which was expected, but to the very idea that the weak and vacillating tsar, with no demonstrated talent for strategy, would be taking his place. “Most of all, they feared the influence Aleksandra [cited author’s spelling] and, through her, Rasputin exercised upon the Emperor,” wrote W. Bruce Lincoln. “A neurotic Empress suffering from delusions of persecution and a crafty, nearly illiterate peasant would be the two closest advisers of the Commander in Chief of Russia’s armies.”
Members of the imperial family shared the ministers’ dismay. Bertie Stopford, attached to the British embassy, recalled Grand Duchess Marie (Miechen) blurting out at dinner one night, “It is quite disastrous,” after which, Stopford wrote, “We both cried in our soup.… Everybody during dinner was much depressed by this news.” Dowager Empress Marie was particularly distressed by her son’s decision. “There is no room in my brain for all this,” she cried.
Even in the face of all this opposition, Alexandra could not have been more pleased. Immediately after his departure for army headquarters to assume command, the empress wrote Nicholas a long letter—tinged with the triumph of a wife who had just obtained from her husband exactly what she wanted.
“I cannot find words to express all I want to,” she wrote. “My heart is far too full. I only long to hold you tight in my arms and whisper words of intense love, courage, strength and endless blessing.… You have fought this great fight for your country and throne, alone with bravery and decision. Never have they seen such firmness in you and it cannot remain without fruit.… Your faith has been tried—your trust—and you remained firm as a rock, for that you will be blessed. God anointed you at your coronation, He placed you where you stand and you have done your duty, be sure, quite sure of this and He forsaketh not His Anointed. Our Friend’s [Rasputin’s] prayers arise day and night for you to Heaven and God will hear them.”
Having sent the emperor off to run the war—armed with a ma
gic comb blessed by Rasputin and accompanied by the instructions “Remember to comb your hair before all difficult tasks and decisions, the little comb will bring its help”—Alexandra began to consolidate her power at home. “I long to poke my nose into everything,” the empress wrote in one letter shortly after the tsar’s arrival at headquarters. In another, she asserted herself more: “Lovey, I am here, don’t laugh at silly old wify, but she has ‘trousers’ on unseen.… I long to show my immortal trousers to those poltroons.” Sure enough, “silly old wify” was soon wearing the pants.
“Alexandra was intoxicated by power,” wrote Greg King. “Her marriage to a man regarded as semidivine exposed Alexandra to the ultimately fatal idea that unquestionable, absolute authority was invested in certain persons, endowing them with the ability to make judgments with a certainty provided by God. Over the years, she saw her husband falter in his role. With each perceived mistake Nicholas made, Alexandra drew herself toward the centers of power. If Nicholas could not stand firm, Alexandra would. She clearly felt herself stronger and more capable than her husband. Nicholas might hold the power in the government, but Alexandra claimed and exercised it. For her, there were no moments of self-doubt, no second thoughts. Her convictions were firm, and she would not allow the weak character of her husband to stand in the way of what she saw as his duty.”
During his first months away, Alexandra bombarded Nicholas with a mixture of feverish love letters, admonitions, and outright commands:
“Quickly shut [dissolve] the Duma,” she wrote just days after the emperor’s departure. “The Duma, I hope, will at once be closed,” she reiterated the following day.
“Shcherbatov is impossible to keep [as minister of internal affairs]…. Better quick to change him.”
“Samarin [director-general of the Holy Synod] goes on speaking against me. Hope to get you a list of names and trust we can find a suitable successor before he can do any more harm.”
Secret Lives of the Tsars Page 26