Secret Lives of the Tsars

by Michael Farquhar

  Far from being offended by his wife’s presumption, Nicholas seemed to relish it. “Think, my wify, will you not come to the assistance of your hubby now that he is absent,” he wrote. “What a pity that you have not been fulfilling this duty long ago or at least during the war! I know of no more pleased feeling than to be proud of you, as I have been all these past months, when you urged me on with untiring importunity, exhorting me to be firm and stick to my own opinions.”

  With power now firmly in her grasp, Alexandra accelerated her campaign to rid the government of ministers and other officials she perceived to be her personal enemies, Rasputin’s, or both. In what historian Michael T. Florinsky described as “an amazing, extravagant, and pitiful spectacle … without parallel in the history of civilized nations,” men rose and fell with astonishing frequency. During a sixteen-month period, Russia had four different prime ministers, five ministers of the interior, four ministers of agriculture, and three ministers of war. The rapid rate of turnover was such that Prince Vladimir Volkonsky suggested a sign be placed on the government ministry building: “Piccadilly—the show changes every Saturday.”

  As good men continued to be driven out, Alexandra wrote gleefully to the emperor, “I am no longer in the slightest bit shy or afraid of ministers and speak like a waterfall in Russian.” Nicholas was delighted with her efforts. “It rests with you to keep peace and harmony among the Ministers,” he wrote in September 1916; “thereby you do a great service to me and to our country.… Oh, my precious Sunny, I am so happy to think that you have found at last a worthy occupation! Now I shall naturally be calm, and at least need not worry over internal affairs.”

  In fact, Nicholas all but abdicated sovereignty of his own realm, ceding it to his wife and thus, by association, to Rasputin as well. “As a consequence of Aleksandra’s meddling and Nicholas’s grateful acceptance of her advice in all except the rarest instances, Russia’s government was deprived of every reasonable statesman,” Lincoln wrote. “By the fall of 1916, Aleksandra’s performance of her ‘worthy occupation’ had left her country with a motley assortment of rogues, incompetents, non-entities, and madmen at the head of her government.”

  Two of the most egregious appointments in Alexandra’s game of “ministerial leapfrog” (as one called it at the time) were Boris Stürmer, described by a colleague as “false and double-faced,” and Alexander Protopopov, dismissed by British ambassador George Buchanan as “mentally deranged.” Rasputin adored them both.

  After leaving “a bad memory wherever he occupied an administrative post,” as Foreign Minister Serge Sazonov put it, Stürmer emerged from total bureaucratic obscurity to become Russia’s new prime minister in February 1916. His one qualification from Alexandra’s perspective: “He very much values Gregory [Rasputin], which is a great thing.” However, French ambassador Paléologue probed a little deeper in his assessment of the new head of government: “He … is worse than a mediocrity—third-rate intellect, mean spirit, low character, doubtful honesty, no experience and no idea of 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.”

  And if Stürmer was the ideal man to serve as prime minister, then it stood to reason that he would make a fine foreign minister as well. So, after removing Sazonov, described by Alexandra as “such a pancake,” she and Rasputin arranged for their man Stürmer to hold a second key position in the government. The diplomatic corps was stunned. “I can never hope to have confidential relations with a man on whose word no reliance can be placed,” concluded the British ambassador, while Paléologue continued his withering critique of the new foreign and prime minister: “His look, sharp and honeyed, furtive and blinking, is the very expression of hypocrisy … he emits an intolerable odor of falseness. In his bonhomie and affected politeness one feels that he is low, intriguing, and treacherous.”

  Yet Stürmer came off as a seasoned elder statesman compared to Alexander Protopopov, the “lunatic,” as Mossolov called him, whom Alexandra and Rasputin championed as minister of the interior—perhaps the most sensitive and critical post of all. “Under this office came the police, the secret police, informers and counterespionage,” wrote Massie—“all the devices which, as a regime grows more unpopular, become all the more necessary to its preservation.” With Protopopov at the helm, the tsarist regime in Russia would collapse within a year.

  Nicholas II, though always acquiescent to his wife’s wishes, hesitated when it came to appointing Protopopov—even with the empress’s essential endorsement of “He likes Our Friend for at least four years, and that says much for a man.” From headquarters the emperor wrote, “I must consider this question as it has taken me completely by surprise. Our Friend’s opinions of people are sometimes very strange, especially with appointments to high office.” Of course Alexandra eventually got her way. “It shall be done,” Nicholas telegraphed her. Then, in a separate letter, he wrote, “God grant that Protopopov may turn out to be the man of whom we are now in need.” The empress soothingly reassured her husband that indeed he was. “God bless your new choice of Protopopov,” she wrote. “Our Friend says you have done a very wise act in naming him.”

  No sooner had he assumed his post than Protopopov began demonstrating unsettling signs of insanity. Perhaps that had something to do with the scorching case of advanced syphilis from which he suffered. As vice president of the Duma, the new interior minister retained his seat there and spoke lovingly of the icon he kept at his desk. “He helps me do everything,” Protopopov said of the inanimate object; “everything I do is by His advice.” Michael Rodzianko, president of the Duma, reported more odd behavior: “He rolled his eyes repeatedly, in a kind of unnatural ecstasy. ‘I feel that I shall save Russia. I feel that I alone can save her.’ ”

  Apparently Alexandra and Rasputin felt the same way. So, with the organization of food supplies being one of the most pressing problems facing the country, they decided to have this critical responsibility transferred from the Ministry of Agriculture to a madman. The empress issued the order without informing the tsar.

  “Forgive me for what I have done,” she wrote to Nicholas—“but I had to—Our Friend said it was absolutely necessary.… I had to take this step upon myself as Gregory says Protopopov will have all in his hands … and by that will save Russia.… Forgive me, but I had to take this responsibility for your sweet sake.”

  By the fall of 1916, with Alexandra’s appointees firmly in place, Russia was in complete chaos. Millions of men had been killed or wounded in a senseless war, food supplies were scarce, the economy was broken, and revolution was once again in ferment. “We live in abnormal times and are gliding down a precipice,” one official observed.

  “There is no firewood in Petersburg, and not much to eat,” wrote the poet Zinaida Gippius. “The streets are filled with rubbish. The most frightening and crude rumors are disturbing the masses. It is a charged neurotic atmosphere. You can almost hear the laments of the refugees in the air. Each day is drenched in catastrophes. What’s going to happen? It is intolerable. ‘Things cannot go on like this,’ an old cab-driver says.”

  But the sorry state of Russia did go on, and the monarchy was held directly responsible. “Everywhere one hears the same indignant outcry,” a countess wrote after returning from Moscow. “If the Emperor appeared on the Red Square to-day he would be booed. The empress would be torn to pieces.” Nicholas’s cousin, Grand Duchess Marie (daughter of his exiled uncle Paul—see family tree), also observed the roiling discontent with the imperial regime during that perilous autumn of 1916.

  “It was about this time I first heard people speaking of the emperor and empress with open animosity,” Marie recounted. “The word ‘revolution’ was uttered more openly and more oft
en; soon it would be heard everywhere. The war seemed to recede to the background. All attention was riveted on interior events, Rasputin, Rasputin, Rasputin, it was like a refrain: his mistakes, his shocking personal conduct, his mysterious power. This power was tremendous; it was like dusk enveloping all our world, eclipsing the sun. How could so pitiful a wretch throw so vast a shadow? It was inexplicable, maddening, almost incredible.”

  While Grand Duchess Marie lamented “Rasputin, Rasputin, Rasputin,” it was her brother Dmitri who would actually do something about the hated staretz (see next chapter). Meanwhile, the rest of the imperial family was in a frenzy. “We’re heading straight for a revolution!” cried Marie and Dmitri’s father, Grand Duke Paul. “The first step has been taken!… If revolution breaks out, its barbarity will exceed anything ever known.… It will be hellish.… Russia won’t survive it!”

  Despite all the family warnings, Empress Alexandra still ruled Russia while her passive husband’s realm rapidly disintegrated. Finally, in utter desperation, Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich, a respected historian, first cousin of Alexander III, and future victim of the Bolshevik Revolution, outlined his grave concerns in a letter sent to the emperor.

  “You often told me you trusted no one and were constantly being betrayed,” the grand duke wrote. “If this is true the remark should apply above all to your wife, who, though she loves you, is constantly leading you in error, surrounded as she is by people in the grip of the spirit of evil.… Believe me, if I stress my desire that you should cast off the chains that imprison you, it is not for personal motives … but only with the hope of saving you and your throne and our dear country from the terrible and irreparable catastrophe that lies ahead.”

  Nicholas never bothered to read the letter. Instead, he passed it to the empress, whose reaction to it was sadly predictable. “I am utterly disgusted,” she fumed; “it becomes next to high treason.… You, my love, far too good and kind and soft—such a man [Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich] needs to be held in awe of you.… Wife is your staunch One and stands as a rock behind you.”

  Visiting Tsarskoe Selo in December 1916, Alexandra’s sister Ella, widow of the assassinated Grand Duke Serge and now a nun*7, discovered just how immobile and unfeeling a rock the empress could be when it came to any suggestion that she curb her political activities. “She dismissed me like a dog,” wrote Ella, who would never see her sister again. “Poor Nicky, poor Russia.”

  No matter how vehemently anyone else objected to it, in the empress’s own estimation her interference in government was entirely justifiable. “I am but a woman fighting for her Master and Child,” she wrote to Nicholas, “her two dearest ones on earth—and God help me being your guardian angel.”

  Nicholas II was fully aware that his empire was crumbling around him, yet he seemed incapable of taking any action to reverse the fatal course. “Why?” the French ambassador asked the emperor’s aunt Miechen. “Because he’s weak,” the grand duchess replied. “He hasn’t the energy to face the Empress’s brow-beating, much less the scenes she makes! And there’s another reason which is far more serious: he’s a fatalist. When things are going badly he tells himself it’s God’s will and he must bow to it! I’ve seen him in this state before, after the disasters in Manchuria and during the 1905 troubles.”

  “But is he in that frame of mind at the present moment?” asked Paléologue.

  “I’m afraid he’s not far from it,” Miechen replied. “I know he’s dejected, and worried to find the war going on so long without any results.”

  The emperor was in fact utterly depleted by care. “I was shocked to see Nicky so pale, thin and tired,” his sister Olga recalled of the tsar’s visit to Kiev in November 1916. “My mother was worried about his excessive quiet.”*8 Pierre Gilliard also noted the emperor’s abject state during the visit. “He had never seemed to me so worried before,” the tsarevitch’s tutor wrote. “He was usually very self-controlled, but on this occasion he showed himself nervous and irritable, and once or twice he spoke roughly to Alexis.”*9

  While in Kiev, the emperor’s mother strongly advised him to rid himself of the incompetent Stürmer in his dual roles as prime minister and foreign minister. With the Duma now in open revolt, Nicholas had little choice but to do just that. And though Alexandra grudgingly accepted the decision, she balked at the one condition Stürmer’s successor, Alexander Trepov, insisted upon to accept the post: the removal of Rasputin’s syphilitic protégé, Protopopov.

  The emperor tried to explain to his wife the necessity of Protopopov’s dismissal, and even begged her, “Do not drag Our Friend into this. The responsibility is with me, and therefore I wish to be free in my choice.” Of course there was virtually no chance of Alexandra letting that happen. “Change nobody now,” she wrote stridently; “otherwise the Duma will think it’s their doing and that they have succeeded in clearing everybody out.… Darling, remember that it does not lie in the man Protopopov or x.y.z. but it’s the question of monarchy and your prestige now, which must not be shattered in the time of the Duma. Don’t think they will stop at him, but will make all others leave who are devoted to you one by one—and then ourselves. Remember … the Tsar rules and not the Duma.”

  A furious row apparently ensued after Alexandra arrived at headquarters to meet with her husband—a scrap from which she, not surprisingly, emerged victorious. “Yes,” wrote the emperor in what Massie noted is the only evidence of tension between the couple in all their voluminous correspondence, “those days spent together were difficult, but only thanks to you have I spent them more or less calmly. You were so strong and steadfast—I admire you more than I can say. Forgive me if I was moody or unrestrained—sometimes one’s temper must come out!… Now I firmly believe that the most painful is behind us and that it will not be as bad as it was before. And henceforth I intend to become sharp and bitter [toward his wife’s opponents]…. Sleep sweetly and calmly.”

  Thus the unbalanced Protopopov endured to drive Russia deeper into ruin. And there was nothing the new prime minister could do about it. “Alexander Fedorovich,” the tsar wrote sternly to Trepov after he tried to resign. “I order you to carry out your duties with the colleagues I have thought fit to give you.” In desperation, the hapless Trepov attempted to give the all-powerful Rasputin a hefty bribe to stay clear of the government. But the Holy Devil just laughed at him.

  Alexandra was jubilant over her latest success. “I am fully convinced that great and beneficial times are coming for your reign and Russia,” she wrote after the Protopopov clash. “Be firm … one wants to feel your hand—how long, years, people have told me the same ‘Russia loves to feel the whip’—it’s their nature—tender love and then the iron hand to punish and guide. How I wish I could pour my will into your veins.… Be Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Emperor Paul—crush them all under you—now don’t you laugh, naughty one.”

  All Nicholas could do was respond meekly, with just a whisper of resentment: “My dear, Tender thanks for the severe scolding. I read it with a smile, because you speak to me as though I was a child.… Your ‘poor little weak-willed’ hubby, Nicky.”

  The inescapable fact was that no matter how much Alexandra encouraged, cajoled, and even bullied, Nicholas II would never be the iron-willed emperor she wanted him to be. In fact, Rasputin had it right about the tsar when he observed, “He is a simple soul. He was not cut out to be a sovereign; he is made for family life, to admire nature and flowers, but not to reign. That’s beyond his strength. So, with God’s blessing we come to his rescue.”

  That Nicholas remained essentially the same kind, decent gentleman he always had been was made touchingly evident during his trip to Kiev, where he visited a military hospital. “We had a young, wounded deserter, court-martialed and condemned to death,” recounted the emperor’s sister Olga. “Two soldiers were guarding him. All of us felt very troubled about him—he looked such a decent boy. The doctor spoke of him to Nicky who at once made for that corner of
the ward. I followed him, and I could see the young man was petrified with fear. Nicky put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and asked very quietly why he had deserted. The young man stammered that, having run out of ammunition, he had got frightened, turned and ran. We all waited, our breath held, and Nicky told him that he was free. The next moment the lad scrambled out of bed, fell on the floor, his arms around Nicky’s knees, and sobbed like a child. I believe all of us were in tears.

  “I have cherished the memory all down the years. I never saw Nicky again.”

  * * *

  *1 Alexandra’s grandmother Queen Victoria carried the hemophilic gene, which was then passed down matrilineally to many of her numerous descendants—Tsarevitch Alexis being one.

  *2 “Derevenko was so patient and so resourceful, that he often did wonders in alleviating the pain,” recalled Anna Vyrubova. “I can still hear the plaintive voice of Alexei begging the big sailor, ‘Lift my arm,’ ‘Put up my leg,’ ‘Warm my hands,’ and I can see the patient, calm-eyed man working for hours to give comfort to the little pain-wracked limbs.” The sailor, however, would soon reveal another, darker side (see following chapter).

  *3 By strict definition, a staretz was an aesthetic holy man, something Rasputin most certainly was not. But he was often referred to as such by his contemporaries and so will be here as well.

  *4 “The poor child lay in pain, dark patches under his eyes and his little body all distorted and the leg terribly swollen,” Olga recalled of one occasion. “The doctors were just useless … more frightened than any of us … whispering among themselves.” The next morning, after a visit from Rasputin, Olga observed, “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.”