The letter has been little used by historians; they have not believed in it. And Badmaev, the man who had passed Iliodor’s ‘Grishka’ to the Duma, did not himself have the original. So perhaps there was no letter from the tsarina, after all?
But the original was soon found. The police, according to an Extraordinary Commission inquiry, tracked down a certain Madame Karbovich, one of Iliodor’s followers, with whom he had left the letters for safe keeping. A search of her premises was conducted by officers of the Department of Police, and the originals of the tsarina’s and grand duchesses’ letters were confiscated.
And, as Kokovtsev writes in his memoirs, ‘Makarov gave me the letters to read … There was a comparatively long one from the empress, which had been reproduced with complete accuracy in the copy distributed by Guchkov’ [Speaker of the Duma].
Prime Minister Kokovtsev recalled that Makarov ‘did not know what to do with it, and indicated his intention of passing it on to the sovereign… I objected that by doing so he would place the sovereign in an awkward position and acquire in the empress an implacable enemy… I recommended that he hand the letters over to the empress directly.’
But Makarov apparently also misinterpreted the contents of the letter. And believed that if the tsar read such a letter, it would be the end of the tsarina. And, as Kokovtsev recalled, Makarov handed the envelope containing the letters to the sovereign. As Makarov himself told Kokovtsev, the sovereign ‘turned pale, removed the empress’s letter from the envelope, glanced at her handwriting, and said, “Yes, the letter is genuine,” and then opening a desk drawer, he flung the letter into it in an abrupt and for him uncustomary manner’.
‘Your dismissal is assured,’ Kokovtsev told Makarov after his story.
Vyrubova confirms all this in her testimony, too: ‘The minister of internal affairs personally brought the originals of the letters to the sovereign. I myself saw the letters brought by Makarov and can affirm that they were originals and not copies.’
And in the File, Vyrubova adds that Minister of Internal Affairs Makarov ‘provoked the tsarina’s rage by not giving the Rasputin letter to her’.
In fact, the tsarina herself certified the authenticity of her letter. On 17 September 1915, she wrote to the tsar about her enemies that ‘they are no better than Makarov, who showed outsiders my letter to Our Friend.’
The tsar could not have failed to understand Makarov’s ulterior motive in giving the letters to him. And the tsarina should have been furious with him. Makarov ought to have destroyed the letters. And announced to all the scoundrels who were interfering in the personal life of their family that there were no letters, that they simply did not exist. But Makarov had done none of that.
All the same, just how had her letter reached Guchkov? Was it really true, as Alix believed, that it had come from Makarov, that he had shown it to ‘outsiders’?
Of course the minister was not at fault, as the File proves.
Once the tsar had been given the letters, there was nothing at all that Badmaev could count on in the way of gratitude from Alix. Realizing that none would be forthcoming, the ‘cunning Chinaman’ decided to obtain the gratitude of her enemies.
From Badmaev’s testimony in the File: ‘After reading the copies of the letters, I was convinced that they contained no evidence whatever that the tsarina was sleeping with Rasputin.’
As an experienced doctor, he readily grasped that it was merely a letter by a woman who, tormented by the illness of her son and by terrible foreboding, was pleading for release from her sufferings. And that this was her ‘sorrow’. And that only Rasputin was capable of relieving her attacks of acute neurasthenia. At the same time, she had been trying to write in a way that would be meaningful to the elder — to write in his own lofty, love-filled idiom.
But as Prime Minister Kokovtsev justly observed after reading the letter, ‘the separate parts and expressions in the tsarina’s letter that were essentially a manifestation of her mystical tendencies provided a pretext for the most disgraceful gossip.’ So Badmaev understood perfectly well how her enemies would read the letter. And how grateful they would be to him for the opportunity.
And he decided to render the Duma an unforgettable service. He secretly acquainted Protopopov, the Deputy Speaker of the State Duma, with Iliodor’s manuscript.
From Badmaev’s testimony in the File: ‘Protopopov asked me for permission to familiarize Guchkov and Rodzyanko with it. He pledged not to use it but violated his pledge.’
And then, as Kokovtsev recalled, ‘they started distributing around the city hectographic copies of four or five letters to Rasputin, one from Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna and the others from the grand duchesses.’
Thus did Guchkov exploit the letter. One can imagine his astonishment and rage upon reading Iliodor’s lampoon and the tsarina’s letter. Stolypin’s murder, Iliodor’s manuscript, and the newspaper articles about the influence of the semi-literate peasant Khlyst were, for him, all interwoven in a single picture of the collapse of power.
The easily enraged Guchkov was seething. It was then that he learned of other new evidence against Rasputin that overshadowed everything that had gone before. It was in Mikhail Novosyolov’s latest denunciatory article.
In it Novosyolov branded Rasputin in the imprecatory style of the ancient Orthodox pastors. ‘Indignant words involuntarily burst from the breasts of Orthodox Russian people in regard to … the vile corrupter of human souls and bodies, Grigory Rasputin.’ And he asked the Most Holy Synod how long they were going to tolerate that ‘sex maniac … Khlyst … and charlatan … and the criminal comedy that has victimized many whose letters were in his hands.’
As a supplement to the article, Novosyolov sent Guchkov a disturbing pamphlet called ‘Rasputin and Mystical Debauchery’. Reprinted in it were Novosyolov’s own 1910 articles against Rasputin and something named ‘The Confession of N’. Everyone who knew Rasputin could easily recognize in the confession’s anonymous author the unfortunate Berladskaya, who not so very long ago had told church investigators in a Tobolsk inquiry how Rasputin had sustained her spiritually, how he had literally saved her life after her husband’s suicide. Now she was telling an entirely different story.
Mystical Debauchery
Berladskaya’s tragedy began, as she stated in the ‘Confession’, when she learned that her husband was deceiving her. She left him along with the children and ‘initiated a divorce proceeding’. Her husband committed suicide. She blamed herself for his death and no longer wished to live. ‘An acquaintance offered in conversation to introduce me to a certain “peasant who can soothe the soul and speak of what is hidden”.’
Rasputin was able to soothe her and help her out of her stupor, and he introduced her to his disciples, who strengthened her ‘conviction of his holiness’. ‘I tried to submit in everything, and when my heart rose up with its “Don’t” and “I don’t want to,” or the onus was on me to “do penances” and my heart was not wholly in it, I would fight it, insisting that it was beyond my understanding, that it was all new, and that his words were a sacred law and not for me to argue with.’ And then his caressing began. ‘Sometimes his caresses oppressed me — the constant hugging and kissing and wish to kiss on the lips. I saw it more as a test of forbearance and was glad when it was over.’
It all happened after they set out for Pokrovskoe with her small son.
We were on our way, Grigory, one nurse, and my son and I. In the evening after everyone had retired (O Lord, what must You hear!), he climbed down from his berth and lay down beside me and began stroking me hard and kissing me and saying the most tender words and asking, ‘Will you marry me?’ I replied, ‘If necessary.’ I was completely in his power and believed that my soul would be saved only through him, however that might be expressed. I regarded it all — the kisses, the words, the passionate glances — as a test of the purity of my love for him, and I recalled the words of one of his disciples about a troubling test, a very grave one
. Lord, help me! Suddenly he suggested that we tempt ourselves in sinful love … I was certain he was testing me, and was himself pure. (O Lord, help me to write everything.) He forced me to ready myself… and began to perform what is possible for a husband… threatening violence over me, fondling me, kissing me, and soon… forcing me to lie still without resisting. O holy Lord and Master!
Following this she sets out Rasputin’s remarkable views on ‘sin’, which he tried to explain to her. I shall omit those views for the time being, returning to them when we at last move on to the chief mystery, his teaching.
After receiving the article and pamphlet, Guchkov played them like a musical score. Novosyolov’s article was published in the newspaper the Voice of Moscow. And since Prime Minister Kokovtsev and Minister Makarov had already had occasion to listen to displeased speeches from the tsar in regard to Rasputin, the newspaper and the copies of the pamphlet later found during a police search were confiscated at once.
Guchkov could now take action.
Rebellion In The Duma
Just as Guchkov had anticipated when he heard about the confiscation of the publications exposing the peasant-favourite’s debauchery, the entire Duma exploded. And then, to the deputies’ delight, Guchkov introduced a resolution of ‘urgent inquiry to the government in respect to the unlawfulness of its demand that the press publish no articles about Rasputin’.
The resolution was passed by an unprecedented majority (one vote against). Rasputin had thus united for the first time the mutually hostile right and left. Moreover, the proscribed article was quoted in full in the Duma’s resolution! And the tsar now had to accept in the form of a Duma resolution of inquiry the most terrible accusations against someone loved by his family.
What must Alix’s view of the publication have been? It was the second account by one of Rasputin’s faithful followers of the sinful exploits of the ‘Man of God’. First Vishnyakova, and now Berladskaya. Could she really fail to believe it as she had done the first time? Or did she know something that gave her an entirely different explanation for what had taken place?
And so, Novosyolov’s compilation was confiscated. But as so often happens in Russia, both the holographic copies of the manuscript and the surviving printed copies were sold out in both capitals. And, as Rodzyanko later recalled, they went for fabulous sums.
After Guchkov’s resolution of inquiry, a veritable flood of newspaper publications about the elder commenced. As a form of protest ‘against the unlawful stifling of the press’, newspapers all over Russia joined in describing the adventures of Our Friend, often making them up. The censor confiscated the issues, the publishers happily paid the fines, readers chased down the confiscated newspapers, and circulation grew.
Rasputin’s name had become a common noun.
From the diary of Grand Duchess Xenia for 25 January: ‘How will it all end? It’s terrible!’
From the diary of the general’s wife Bogdanovich: ‘18 February 1912. There has been no more shameful time. Russia is now ruled not by the tsar but by that rascal Rasputin … Rasputin has been complaining that the press has been attacking him and that he is ready to go, but that “his people” need him here.’ By ‘his people’ he meant the royal family.
‘22 February. All Petersburg is in a state about the way this Rasputin is carrying on in Tsarskoe Selo. He can, sad to say, do whatever he wants with the tsarina!!!!’
‘Don’t Make It Too Painful For Him’
Mikhail Rodzyanko, the newly-elected Speaker of the State Duma, believed that Guchkov’s resolution of inquiry had left the supreme authority no choice but to resolve the Rasputin matter. And he had in advance started preparing his report to the tsar.
But he first had to talk to the dowager empress. She was horrified by what she had read in the newspapers. And she summoned Rodzyanko.
He was led into the old empress’s little study. She immediately asked about Guchkov’s resolution. In his memoirs Rodzyanko describes explaining to her that the resolution was supposed to ‘put minds at ease’, ‘since the talk about Rasputin had gone too far in society’. But the widow of Alexander III had already grasped that Rasputin was the awful instrument by which they had decided to topple the monarchy. As Kerensky later put it, ‘without Rasputin there would have been no Lenin.’
And Rodzyanko told her all about Rasputin’s debaucheries. She listened without a word. And then, as they were parting, she suddenly said, ‘I have heard that you mean to speak to the sovereign about this. Don’t do that. He is too pure of heart to believe in evil.’
She knew her son’s character. If he was pressured, he would become extremely stubborn. And would remember that he was the autocrat. He who could no longer be any such thing. For Stolypin, the last person able to protect her son from all those mad talkers, was gone. And, on parting with Rodzyanko, she begged that fat man who understood her son so poorly, ‘Don’t make it too painful for him.’
On 13 February, the dowager empress summoned Prime Minister Kokovtsev for a visit.
‘The conversation, which lasted an hour and a half, was completely given over to Rasputin,’ Kokovtsev wrote in his memoirs.
After that she went to see Nicky and Alix.
From Nicholas’s diary: ‘15 February. Mama came for tea; we had a conversation with her about Grigory.’
Xenia’s diary for 16 February: ‘Mama is so pleased that she said everything … Alix defended Rasputin, saying he was a remarkable man and Mama should meet him … Mama merely advised them to let him go now while the Duma was still waiting for an answer… Alix declared that it was wrong to yield … But that they were still very grateful to Mama for having spoken so frankly. And she even kissed Mama’s hand.’
So Nicky’s mother could repeat to herself what she had said two days earlier to Prime Minister Kokovtsev: ‘My unhappy daughter-in-law is incapable of realizing that she is bringing about her own downfall and that of the dynasty … She deeply believes in the holiness of that dubious individual.’
But the tsar did follow his mother’s advice. As was his custom whenever a scandal flared up around Rasputin, he decided it would be better for Father Grigory to go back to Pokrovskoe for a while.
‘18 Feb. 1912. He departed from the Nikolaev Station,’ the secret agents recorded. ‘Winter Woman, Bird, Summer Woman, Dove, and Owl accompanied him to the station, along with some fifteen other unidentified people of both sexes.’
All of Rasputin’s permanent devotees had now been given nicknames of their own in the agents’ reports. And they had been conferred with a policeman’s sense of the picturesque. Akilina Laptinskaya (thirty-two) was named ‘Owl’ for her staid, thrifty quality. Pretty little Zina Manshtedt, who still looked like a girl despite her thirty-seven years, was called ‘Dove’. Mother Golovina (fifty-two) was called ‘Winter Woman’, since she was no longer young and lived on the Winter Canal. Her daughter Munya with her clear eyes was ‘Bird’, and Sazonov’s dark-haired, dark-eyed wife was ‘Crow’. But Vyrubova, thanks to her closeness to the ‘personages’, was spared a cognomen.
The agents followed Rasputin onto the train and reported that ‘On the 22nd he arrived in Tyumen and was met by his wife and daughter, who were very glad to see him.’
The peasant wrote to the ‘tsars’ from Pokrovskoe about Guchkov’s resolution. The letter to Tsarskoe Selo is preserved in Lokhtina’s diary. ‘Dearest Papa and Mama! Now the accursed demon gains strength. And the Duma serves him; there are a lot of lutioners [revolutionaries] and Yids in it. What do they care? They’d just as soon see the end of God’s anointed and down with him. And Guchkov, their lord … slanders and makes a discord with his resolutions. Papa, the Duma is yours, whatever you want to do, do it. Nobody needs these resolutions of inquiry.’
A Report By The Fattest Man In Russia
On 28 February, ‘armed with documents’, that is, with Novosyolov’s pamphlet, the ‘fat man Rodzyanko’ (as he was known in Tsarskoe Selo) set off with his report to the tsar. The Speak
er of the Duma began by touching on the perpetually bad administration of the Caucasus. And then he at last turned to the main issue. Rodzyanko brought to the tsar’s attention the ‘universal indignation accompanying the discovery that Rasputin is a Khlyst.’
‘What makes you think he is a Khlyst?’ the tsar asked.
Rodzyanko declared that the police had determined that he went to bathhouses with women.
‘Well, what of it? That is accepted among the common people.’
And then Rodzyanko started talking about Novosyolov’s pamphlet, about the Tobolsk investigation, about the letters and confessions of Rasputin’s victims, about the general’s wife L. whom Rasputin had driven mad, about the ‘rejoicings’ that had taken place in Sazonov’s apartment where Rasputin was staying, and, finally, about the baneful influence Rasputin might have on the soul of the heir.
‘Have you read Stolypin’s report?’ the tsar asked him.
‘No, I know about it, but I have not read it.’
‘I rejected it,’ the tsar said.
The Rasputin File Page 23