One of those closest to the royal family, Captain Sablin, heard the rumours, too. And his testimony is also preserved in the File. ‘Rumours started to reach me that he was cynical in his treatment of the ladies and was, for example, taking them to the public bathhouses…At first I did not believe the rumours. It seemed impossible that any society woman, unless possibly a psychopath, could give herself to such a slovenly peasant.’
But Sablin decided not to talk to the empress about those instances.
The least distrust, or worse, mockery of him, had a morbid effect on her … I explain her blind faith and that of the sovereign by their boundless love for the heir … They had caught hold of the belief that if the heir was alive, it was due to Rasputin’s prayers … I would wonder in my reports to the sovereign whether, in order not to tease society, ‘it might not be better to send Rasputin back to Tobolsk’. But the sovereign, thanks to his character, would reply evasively or, agreeing, would say, ‘Speak to the empress about it.’
Sablin did not realize that at the time the tsar already had a special justification for Rasputin, and for that reason did not ascribe any importance to the rumours.
Meanwhile, the rumours had reached the publisher Sazonov.
From the testimony of Sazonov in the File:
After rumours had reached us about Rasputin’s going to bathhouses with ladies, I asked him about it … He answered in the affirmative, adding that ‘the sovereign knows … I don’t go with one person but … with company,’ and explaining that he regarded pride as the greatest sin. The society misses undoubtedly were puffed up with pride, and in order to deflate it, it was necessary to humiliate them by forcing them to go to the bathhouse with a dirty peasant … To me as someone with a deep knowledge of the national soul, that made sense … although I … asked Rasputin not to do it any more. He gave me his word.
Two years later the police would record a visit to a family bathhouse by Rasputin and Sazonov’s wife, and they would go to the bathhouse by themselves, without any company.
And then to the rumours about the bathhouses were added new ones about the Tobolsk investigation into Rasputin’s having established a Khlyst sect in Siberia. And about his having taken his devotees to the notorious bathhouse there, as well.
And it was apparently for that reason that Nicholas, to Alix’s displeasure, decided for the time being not to receive Rasputin at the palace. And Alix asked the peasant not to be angry with them and to pray for them. And he prayed, but he was angry. Sablin in the File tells of being at Vyrubova’s when Rasputin telephoned her in a futile attempt to gain entry to the palace. ‘And he said from his heart, “They ask me to pray but are afraid to receive me.”’
And then Alix thought of a brilliant move.
The Monks’ Journey
In 1917 the investigators of the Extraordinary Commission visited a small, secluded retreat not far from the Verkhoturye Monastery, where an anchorite named Father Makary lived. Makary, an elder well known for his holy life, had since childhood been a swineherd in the monastery’s employ. He ate nothing for months, herded his pigs, and stood for hours in prayer in the deep forest. Being illiterate, he knew of Christ only through church services and the prayers he memorized by ear. But Makary was considered to be the spiritual father of Grigory Rasputin. And that was why the monk Makary was interrogated in his half-tumbled-down cell. Interrogating him was not easy, since the monk’s speech was confused.
His deposition remains in the File. The sixty-year-old monk Makary testified that ‘I came to know the elder G. E. Rasputin twelve years ago when I was still the monastery swineherd. At the time Rasputin had come to our monastery to pray and to make my acquaintance … I told him about the sorrows and misfortunes of my life, and he bade me pray to God.’ After that, Makary took monastic vows and began to live as an anchorite.
‘Rasputin apparently spoke to the former tsar about me, for money came to the monastery from the tsar for the construction of cells for me… Besides that, money was sent for me to travel to Petersburg…and I then went to Tsarskoe Selo, where I talked to the tsar and his family about our monastery and my life in it. I did not see any kind of bad actions by Rasputin and the others who came to us with him.’
And that was all they were able to extract from him about Rasputin.
The monk had indeed also been summoned to Tsarskoe Selo in the summer of 1909, but not at all to tell the tsars about his life in the monastery.
‘23 June. After tea, Feofan, Grigory, and Makary came to see us,’ Nicholas recorded in his diary.
It was then that Alix told the three of them about her idea. Knowing of Feofan’s doubts about Rasputin, she had devised the plan of getting Feofan together with Makary, who had such respect for Rasputin. So that they and Rasputin could go back to Our Friend’s home together. She believed that the trip would renew Feofan’s friendship with Father Grigory and dispel all his doubts. And that Feofan would then use his authority to put an end to the growing rumours, which were already beginning to scare her.
Feofan at the time was unwell. But the tsarina’s request was law. ‘I took myself in hand and in the second half of June 1909 set off with Rasputin and the monk of the Verkhoturye Monastery Makary, whom Rasputin called and acknowledged to be his “elder”,’ Feofan testified in the File.
And then he described their trip in its entirety. First, they went to the monastery at Verkhoturye, Rasputin’s favourite. But even before they got there, Rasputin astonished Feofan. ‘Rasputin started to behave without constraint. It had been my view that he had begun wearing expensive shirts for the royal court’s sake. But he wore the same kind of shirt in the railway car, spilling food on it and then putting on another one that was just as expensive.’ Rasputin had obviously decided to show Feofan how many favours the tsarina had done for him. But just as clearly Feofan was ready to regard everything with suspicion.
And the farther they went, the more suspicious he became. The ascetic Feofan was amazed when ‘as we were approaching the Verkhoturye Monastery, and, as is the custom with pilgrims, keeping the fast so we could prostrate ourselves before the relics, Rasputin ordered himself something to eat and then cracked nuts.’ Rasputin, now aware of his power, no longer felt the need to dissimulate. His God was a joyful one. And he allowed himself to kick off the fetters of ecclesiastical regulation.
Feofan was offended by everything: ‘Rasputin assured us that he revered Simeon of Verkhoturye. However, when the service in the monastery began, he went off somewhere to town.’ Rasputin’s two-storey house grated on Feofan, too. How different it was from Feofan’s own dwelling, which he had turned into a monastic cell, and from his idea of what the house should be like of the person he only recently had held in such esteem.
We can imagine the arrangement of Rasputin’s house quite accurately using the inventory of his property made after his death. On the ground floor where he lived with his family, it was the usual arrangement of a peasant lodge. But, to make up for that, upstairs the once indigent peasant had attempted to arrange everything city fashion and thus suitable for the ‘little ladies’ and other guests from Petersburg. There he put Feofan, as well. And the monk took indignant note of the piano, and the gramophone that Rasputin so liked to dance to, and the claret-red plush armchairs, and the sofa and the desk. A chandelier was suspended from the ceiling, and placed around the room were several bentwood ‘Viennese’ chairs, then in fashion. And there were two wide beds with soft springy mattresses and a divan. Two weight-clocks in ebony cabinets chimed majestically, and there was a wall clock and another cabinet clock. The monk was particularly outraged by the ‘large soft carpet covering the entire floor’.
Rasputin also introduced Feofan to his followers — Arsyonov, Raspopov, and another Rasputin — ‘my brothers in the life of the spirit’. But, as the monk observed, ‘although they sang very harmoniously … they still made an unpleasant impression, generally speaking.’ Feofan, a mystic of broad education who was well acquainted with heresi
es, sensed something dangerous in that singing.
Apparently he tried to talk about it with Makary.
‘The monk Makary … is, for me, a mystery. Much of what he says is incomprehensible, but from time to time he will say things that illuminate all life.’
But although capable of ‘illuminating all life’, Makary this time replied with ‘something incomprehensible’.
After thinking over all he had seen, Feofan concluded that Rasputin did not ‘occupy the highest level of spiritual life’. And on his return trip to Petersburg Feofan ‘stopped at the Sarov Monastery and asked God’s help in correctly answering the question of who and what Rasputin was. I returned to Petersburg convinced that Rasputin…was on a false path.’
On his return, he conferred with his friend the Archimandrite Benjamin about what he had seen on the trip. They then summoned Rasputin to the abbey.
‘When after that Rasputin came to see us, we, to his surprise, denounced him for his arrogant pride, for holding himself in higher regard than was seemly, and for being in a state of “spiritual temptation”.’
The Dangerous State Of ‘Spiritual Temptation’
This was a terrible charge.
I had a conversation at the Trinity-Saint Sergius Abbey with the monk Father Isaiah about the state of ‘spiritual temptation’. He told me: ‘A special spiritual loftiness is required to prophesy and heal. When it is lacking, the gift becomes a dangerous one, and the person becomes a sorcerer and falls into the state of “spiritual temptation”. He is now tempted by the devil, and it is by the power of the Antichrist that he performs his miracles.’
‘Arrogant pride’, ‘holding himself in higher regard than was seemly’, and ‘spiritual temptation’ — Feofan and Benjamin were, oddly enough, repeating everything that Militsa had once warned Rasputin about! It was the voice of the ‘black woman’ that was in Feofan and Benjamin’s arguments.
‘We proclaimed to him that we were for the last time demanding that he change his ways, and that if he himself did not do so, we would sever relations with him, make an open declaration of everything, and inform the tsar.’
Rasputin certainly had not expected to hear that from Feofan. ‘He was completely taken aback and started crying, and instead of trying to justify himself admitted that he had made mistakes. And he agreed to our demand that he withdraw from the world and place himself under my guidance.’
It was a safe enough promise. The peasant knew that the tsarina would never allow him to carry it out. For not only the boy, but she herself would wither away without him. Feofan lived in another world altogether. He had merely asked Rasputin, and the latter had promised, ‘to tell no one about our meeting with him’. ‘Rejoicing in our success, we conducted a prayer service … But, as it turned out, he then went to Tsarskoe Selo and recounted everything there in a light that was favourable to him but not to us,’ Feofan recalled in the File.
A Disputation With The Tsarina
But there was ‘someone’ who felt that what had happened was not enough. And that ‘someone’ expected a great deal more from Feofan, and had evidently been informing him of new rumours.
From Feofan’s testimony in the File: ‘After a while rumours reached me that Rasputin had resumed his former way of life and was undertaking something against us… I decided to resort to a final measure — to denounce him openly and to communicate everything to the former emperor. It was not, however, the emperor who received me but his wife in the presence of the maid of honour Vyrubova.’
Vyrubova’s presence in the room with the tsarina made everything clear to him. The naive Feofan had been left open to ‘a cunning manoeuvre: Rasputin had brought Vyrubova into play … and Vyrubova would out of gratitude have to support Rasputin.’
So that the bishop knew even as he was beginning his monologue that he was doomed. But duty above all else. Just as in ancient times when pastors had suffered for the truth before the tsars, Feofan too was ready to suffer.
I spoke for about an hour and demonstrated that Rasputin was in a state of ‘spiritual temptation’…The former empress grew agitated and objected, citing theological works …I destroyed all her arguments, but she … reiterated them: ‘It is all falsehood and slander’…I concluded the conversation by saying that I could no longer have anything to do with Rasputin … I think Rasputin, as a cunning person, explained to the royal family that my speaking against him was because I envied his closeness to the Family…that I wanted to push him out of the way.
Poor Feofan did not understand that it was not Rasputin, but Alix herself who had reached that conclusion.
From Feofan’s testimony: ‘After my conversation with the empress, Rasputin came to see me as if nothing had happened, having apparently decided that the empress’s displeasure had intimidated me…However, I told him in no uncertain terms, “Go away, you are a fraud.”’
The bishop did not understand the peasant, either. Grigory did not like conflict. He was ready to humiliate himself, if only to be reconciled to the kind, naive Feofan: ‘Rasputin fell on his knees before me and asked my forgiveness … But again I told him, “Go away, you have violated a promise given before God.” Rasputin left, and I did not see him again.’
A Reprisal
Feofan continued to act. He received at that time a ‘Confession’ of a repentant devotee of Rasputin’s. Or, more likely, it was given to him by that same ‘someone’. And after reading it, the honest Feofan understood with horror that Rasputin was ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing’, that he was, as Feofan testifies in the File, merely a ‘sectarian of the Khlyst type’, who ‘taught his followers not to reveal his secrets even to their confessors. For if there is allegedly no sin in what those sectarians do, then their confessors need not be made aware of it.’
And Feofan decided to show the confession to the ‘tsars’. ‘Availing myself of that written confession, I wrote the former emperor a second letter… in which I declared that Rasputin not only was in a state of spiritual temptation but was also a criminal in the religious and moral sense …In the moral sense because, as it followed from the ‘confession’, Father Grigory had seduced his victims.’ But no answer to Feofan’s request for an audience was forthcoming.
From Feofan’s testimony: ‘I sensed that they did not want to hear me out and understand … It all depressed me so much that I became quite ill — it turned out I had a palsy of the facial nerve.’
Rasputin could now celebrate: ‘Mama’ could be certain — the face of the elder Feofan, of the one who had moved against him, had been punished by heaven itself with the stamp of palsy. And the unhappy bishop departed to recover in the Crimea, still without an answer. He received it in November 1910 and was transferred out of Petersburg to the place he had been accustomed to going for treatment — the Crimea, where he became bishop of Taurida.
But he was an indomitable Russian pastor. And he would not give up. Now Feofan inundated his friend Bishop Hermogen with letters. He had decided to enlist in the battle one of the most vociferous and influential members of the Most Holy Synod.
Hermogen understood: a break with Rasputin would mean the end of his dream of a patriarchate.
From Feofan’s testimony in the File: ‘When Rasputin’s bad actions began to come to light, Hermogen vacillated for a long time, not knowing what attitude to take. But I…wrote him a letter indicating that he should make his relationship to Rasputin clear. For if I had to speak out against Rasputin, then it would be against him, too.’
From Hermogen’s testimony: ‘At the beginning of 1910 I received a letter from Bishop Feofan … The bishop set forth a number of facts discrediting Rasputin as someone who was leading a dissolute life. The letter, along with my own personal observations, served as the occasion for an abrupt change in my relations with Rasputin.’
Those ‘personal observations’ most likely assumed their final shape in Petersburg, where Hermogen had come for a meeting of the Most Holy Synod. It is possible that ‘someone’ had a talk wit
h Hermogen. And explained to him that so long as Rasputin remained at court, Hermogen’s much-desired assembly for the reinstitution of the patriarchate would not take place. For Rasputin was speaking out against it.
That, too, is in the book by Hermogen’s favourite, Iliodor: ‘The “elder” … said: “And it would be good without an Assembly; there is God’s anointed sovereign, and that is enough; God rules his heart — what need is there for an Assembly besides!”’
And then Iliodor, too, got ready to speak out together with Hermogen.
Apparently, Iliodor had, in 1910, already obtained proof of just how powerful Rasputin’s enemies were. And he decided not merely to betray his friend Grigory but to join the ranks of his enemies with a great trophy. That, in fact, was why in Pokrovskoe he had stolen the letters of the young grand duchesses and, more to the point, the letter of the tsarina herself. A letter that would, he believed, prove the tsarina’s fall into sin. Which would mean a scandal and divorce. And then they who had moved against Rasputin would be at the summit of church power!
But in the meantime Iliodor exploited Rasputin’s trust and friendship as much as he could. Using money collected by Rasputin, he even equipped a vessel for carrying pilgrims on a trip down the Volga, draping the vessel with his favourite slogans against Jews and revolutionaries. And he waited. And when Hermogen spoke out against the ‘elder’, Iliodor understood: the time had come.
And then during a sermon in his church Iliodor indicated to his flock that he had been mistaken about Rasputin, that he was a ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’.
War had been declared.
A Ravished Nurse?
The Rasputin File Page 17