Cold Tobolsk, however, was very hard on the bishop. As his son related to Rasputin, Alexis suffered from nephritis, and cold regions had a severe effect on him. But that provincial bishop had no friends in the Synod to help him with a move to the south. So Rasputin understood that sitting in Tobolsk, which governed his own native village, was the bishop he needed. Aggrieved, without connections, badly in need of support, and, above all, a protector of the Khlysty.
And by 10 July, Molchanov’s father ‘received a telegram from the village of Pokrovskoe in which Rasputin asked for his blessing and permission to visit him in Tobolsk. Rasputin remained as his guest for three days.’ And soon afterwards followed Alexis’s first incentive. The provincial bishop was summoned to Tsarskoe Selo to Anya’s little house. Which at court was mockingly called the ‘parvis of power’. Just as mendicants in a church parvis ask for money, so there people solicited high offices.
The File, from the testimony of Molchanov: ‘My father made Vyrubova’s acquaintance and … conducted a night service and mass at the Feodor Cathedral … after which he took breakfast at Vyrubova’s…At breakfast a telegram was sent to the yacht [that is, to the royal family] … and a gracious reply was received.’
So in the autumn the bishop prepared a grateful response. The investigation of the Tobolsk Theological Consistory regarding Rasputin’s affiliation with the Khlyst sect was closed.
A Miracle, A Miracle!
In the autumn of 1912 Rasputin performed one of his true miracles: he saved the life of the heir. And even his enemies would be forced to acknowledge it.
The tragedy began in early October at Spala, the tsar’s hunting castle in the Belovezh forest reserve. Something taking place in one of the inner rooms of the castle was kept secret from everyone. Even Alexei’s tutor, Pierre Gilliard, had no idea where his pupil had disappeared to. And then, the scene famously described by Gilliard in his memoirs took place. During a ball, Gilliard had left the hall by an interior corridor and found himself before a door beyond which desperate moaning could be heard. And then at the other end of the corridor he saw Alix running towards him, holding up her gown to keep from tripping over it. She had evidently been summoned at the height of the ball: the boy was suffering a new attack of intolerable pain. In her agitation she did not even notice Gilliard.
From Nicholas’s diary for 5 October: ‘We celebrated a joyless name-day today. Poor Alexei has been suffering from secondary haemorrhages for several days now.’
The swelling was followed by blood poisoning. The doctors were already preparing Alix for the inevitable end. It was time to make an announcement of the heir’s illness.
From the diary of KR: ‘9 October. A bulletin has appeared about the illness of the Tsarevich. He is the sovereign’s only son! May God preserve him!’
The year before, Alexei’s kidneys had haemorrhaged. But, as Xenia recorded in her diary, ‘They sent for Grigory. Everything ended with his arrival.’
This time Rasputin was far away. But Alix believed: his prayers were stronger than any distance.
From the testimony of Vyrubova: ‘And then Rasputin was sent a telegram with the request that he pray, and Rasputin replied with a soothing telegram that the heir would live. “God has seen your tears and heeded your prayers …Your son will live.”’
And when Alix, with a face tormented by sleepless nights, triumphantly showed the telegram to the doctors, they merely nodded their heads in sorrow. But they noted with astonishment that even though the boy was still dying, she immediately became calm. Such was her faith in Rasputin’s power! And the doctors must have thought that the Middle Ages had finally returned to the palace. But the heir did recover! It seemed to her then that she had seen a Biblical miracle with her very own eyes! By prayer alone without even coming to Spala, he had saved her son.
On 21 October the court minister Fredericks announced from Spala that ‘The most critical and grave period of his Imperial Highness’s illness has … passed.’
‘Was that really not enough to gain the parents’ love,’ Vyrubova recalled. And on Rasputin’s arrival in Petersburg, the ‘tsars’ again heard something encouraging.
From the testimony of Vyrubova: ‘The doctors said the heir’s haemorrhaging was hereditary, and he would never get over it in view of the delicacy of his vessels. Rasputin reassured them, declaring that he would outgrow it.’
How could she not have deified him after that! This is the right word: she had already made him a God. As we shall see later on, it was a very convenient one for her.
The rumours that the heir might die forced Nicky’s brother Mikhail to take action. In the event of Alexei’s death, he would become the heir. He knew that the family would in that case never permit him to marry the former cavalry captain’s wife, Natalia Wulfert. But the ash-blonde hair and velvety eyes of the most elegant woman in Petersburg had conquered him, and so Misha wasted no time.
On 31 October the dowager empress received a letter from Cannes. ‘My dear Mama …How difficult and painful it is for me to cause you distress …but two weeks ago I married Natalia Sergeevna…I would never, perhaps, have made the decision to do so, had it not been for the illness of little Alexei.’ For the family of Alexander III, the future of the throne now lay only with the sick boy.
And that future was now in the hands of the strange miracle-worker.
Rasputin’s Merry Life
At the time the strange deity was continuing to lead an amazing life. And the agents were continuing to submit their reports to the Department of Police: ‘3 December 1912. He visited the editorial offices of the religious newspapers The Bell and The Voice of Truth with Lyubov and Maria Golovina … After which he took a prostitute on Nevsky and went to a hotel with her.’
‘9 January 1913. He wanted to visit the family baths with Sazonova, but they were closed. He parted with her and took a prostitute.’
‘10 January…He approached a prostitute.’
‘12 January. After visiting the Golovins, he took a prostitute.’
The same clear-cut alternation: from the prim household of the Golovins to a prostitute; then after a meeting with Vyrubova, a visit to the baths with one of his initiated devotees; then during a break, a prostitute; and in the evening sometimes even an automobile to Tsarskoe Selo!
But that pursuit of the body had now become habitual to him. Now for some reason he was not at all afraid of reports to the ‘tsars’. ‘If on his first visits he exhibited a certain caution before his encounters with prostitutes, glancing behind and going down back streets, then on his most recent visit those encounters have taken place quite openly,’ the external surveillance report summarized.
But then that subject in the tight-fitting peasant coat and unkempt beard who was given to darting down dubious streets and ‘running into’ the apartments of prostitutes had, in society’s view, once again presumed to meddle in international affairs.
Earlier that winter Rasputin had taken one more step towards his death.
Who Was The Peacemaker?
After the murder of Stolypin, an uncompromising opponent of Russian participation in wars, the Montenegrins’ father, King Nikola of Montenegro, felt more confident. And he took action. A secret alliance against Turkey was concluded among the Orthodox states of Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, and Bulgaria. The moment they had chosen was opportune: Turkish political life was in chaos.
And on the night of 26 September 1912 (9 October NS) the Winter Palace heard the sensational news that Montenegrin troops had occupied the Turkish fortress at Scutari in Albania. The tsar understood how that impudent disruption of the status quo in the Balkans would ignite an explosion of indignation among the great powers. The minister of foreign affairs was instructed to persuade Montenegro to end its occupation of the fortress. But the Montenegrins’ father knew of the bellicose mood in Petersburg and of the support of Grand Duke Nikolai, the ‘dread uncle’, and he callously continued the siege of Scutari.
And then more threatening n
ews came from the dangerous Balkans. On 5 (18 NS) October Serbia and Bulgaria entered the war against Turkey, followed by Greece the day after. And the Turkish army sustained defeat after defeat. News of the successes of the Balkan alliance — of their brothers in the faith — against the Turkish Moslems gave rise to an outpouring of joyous nationalism in Russia. There were continual demonstrations in Petersburg bearing the slogan, ‘A Cross for Holy Sophia’, a reference to the great Byzantine cathedral turned into a mosque in Istanbul. The old idea of pan-Slavism was abroad again, the idea of a great federation of Orthodox Slavic states with Russia at its head, and everyone was again caught up in the old dream of the Russian tsars: of taking Constantinople back by force from Turkey — Constantinople, the ancient capital of Byzantium, from which Rus had adopted its Christian faith.
The response was immediate. The Austrians and Germans threatened war.
And again the Balkan boiler was about to blow up the whole world.
On 10 and 29 November and on 5 December 1912, the Council of Ministers met in Petersburg. And the situation of a few years before was repeated. Russian society wanted to fight: the demands for military assistance to its ‘Balkan brothers’ were unanimous, and the registering of volunteers began. Even Rasputin’s friend Filippov was for war at the time. And there was no Stolypin powerful enough to overcome public opinion (or, more accurately, public insanity). War was again at the very threshold. And once again it would be a world war. The Austrian fleet and the ships of the great powers had already blockaded the Montenegrin coast. General mobilization was anticipated in Russia. Speaker of the State Duma Rodzyanko counselled the tsar to fight.
And then the tsar suddenly demonstrated character: he resolutely moved against public opinion. He demanded that the minister of foreign affairs put pressure on Montenegro. And on 21 April 1913 the Montenegrin king, after many hours of persuasion, consented to withdraw from Scutari in return for monetary indemnification. And the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Sazonov, announced with relief, ‘King Nikola was going to set the world on fire to cook his own little omelette.’ This was in reply to the constant reproaches that Russia had once again betrayed its Balkan brothers.
And then a rumour raced through Petersburg. It was Rasputin’s wish that had stood behind the tsar’s decisiveness! It was he who once again had prevented the ‘tsars’ from defending their fellow Slavs.
And it was true.
The File, from the testimony of Filippov:
In 1912–13, at the very height of the resolution of the Balkan question when we were on the verge of war with Austria, Rasputin, in response to my urgent demand that Russia vigorously go to war against the Germans in defence of Slavdom, observed that the Germans were a power, while the little brothers were just swine for whose sake not a single Russian was worth losing…Rasputin found that we would not be ready to fight the Germans … until we had regained our strength from the shock of the war with Japan.
From Vyrubova’s testimony: ‘Rasputin was adamantly opposed to any war whatsoever. He was against Russian interference in the Balkan war.’
From the testimony of Badmaev in the File: Rasputin ‘told me that he had asked the tsar not to fight in the Balkan war at a time when all the press was clamouring for Russia to take part, and he succeeded in convincing the tsar not to fight.’
And so the unbelievable had occurred: a semi-literate peasant had defeated all the parties and forced the tsar to act in contempt of public opinion! And he had done so alone!
Thus said the court and all Petersburg. From the very beginning Rasputin had had a clear realization of his main task at court — to grasp what the ‘smart one’, that infinitely strong-willed woman, wanted in the innermost reaches of her soul. And to give expression to it as his own prediction, as knowledge from God. He knew very well how horrified she was by even the thought of war with Germany. And he managed once more to give voice to her secret wishes. And once more he frightened the tsar with apocalyptic predictions of what would happen in the event of war. And she accepted those predictions with relief as God’s command given utterance by the man of God. And took his side. And the tsar was forced to submit.
However, that is not my assumption. Gilliard, the tutor of the royal children and someone who had lived with the family for many years and who understood Alexandra Fyodorovna very well, wrote of Rasputin in his memoirs: ‘His prophetic words most often merely confirmed the hidden wishes of the empress herself. She herself did not suspect that she had induced them, that she was their ‘inspirer’. Her personal wishes, passing through Rasputin, acquired in her eyes the force and authority of revelation.’
But that was not understood in society. And once again it was believed that the semi-literate, debauched peasant had cancelled a just war. And Nikolai Nikolaevich, who had for the second time suffered defeat in the Balkan story, would never forgive that. The unbending ‘dread uncle’ also believed that the peasant was guilty of Russia’s humiliation.
And in the File, Konstantin Chikhachev, the deputy chief of the Saratov Judicial Chamber, relates to the investigator some words he heard from Rasputin himself:’[Nikolai Nikolaevich] used to be terribly fond of me … We were friends right up until the Balkan war. He wanted the Russians to enter the war. Whereas I did not, and spoke against it. He has been angry with me ever since.’
Thus, the pan-European butchery was postponed. Thus, the grand duke and the other hawks fully believed that as long as the peasant was in the palace, there would be no war. But they knew that he was in the palace for the long term, and that he would not give up his place.
So only one solution remained: to remove him for good.
The Dangerous Dzhunkovsky
It had come at last: 1913, the festive year of the dynasty’s tercentenary.
At the very end of 1912, Minister of Internal Affairs Makarov fell, just as Prime Minister Kokovtsev had predicted to him. He was sent into retirement in early 1913, on the eve of the jubilee celebrations. The new minister of internal affairs, Vasily Maklakov, was chosen from among the provincial governors. He was a distant relative of Count Leo Tolstoy and the relative of a well-known liberal and Constitutional Democrat. But unlike his relatives, he was a monarchist, and during his term as governor he had become famous for expelling Jews from his province. He was just past forty. And in view of his youth, Vladimir Dzhunkovsky, the governor of Moscow and a former associate of Ella’s husband, the murdered Grand Duke Sergei, was appointed his deputy.
All the secret police forces were concentrated in Dzhunkovsky’s hands: he became chief of the gendarme corps, and the Department of Police was subject to him, as well. He also had complete responsibility for arranging the security of the royal family during the jubilee celebrations.
In 1917, during his interrogation by the Extraordinary Commission, Dzhunkovsky testified that he had been known to the tsar for a long time: ‘ever since I was a young officer, inasmuch as I had served in the Preobrazhensky regiment, first battalion’. The same place Nicholas, then the heir, had received his own military training. For Nicholas, so fond of everything military, that meant a great deal. The tsar had met Dzhunkovsky during the latter’s duty assignments at the Winter Palace and was thus acquainted with his monarchist views. The tsar was also pleased with the old Guards officer’s magnificent bearing. The external appearance of the new chief of gendarmes was truly fearsome. The poet Alexander Blok described Dzhunkovsky as possessing an ‘imposing face, sharply pointed moustaches, and a beetle brow’. Moreover, the formidable Dzhunkovsky was a man of the world and knew how to entertain. He could, whenever invited to breakfast, amuse the royal children with his very fine bird calls.
But for now, Dzhunkovsky readied the capital for the celebrations. Later on, after the death of the tsar and the end of the monarchy, he would describe it all in his memoirs.
Great Celebrations With The Peasant
The sacred day arrived. Three hundred years before, the Muscovite Assembly of the Land had elected as tsar the
boyar Mikhail Romanov. And on the morning of 21 February 1913, bells began ringing all over Russia. And processions of the cross with lighted candles were conducted around all its churches.
At 8:00 a.m. Petersburg was awakened by the cannon of the Peter and Paul Fortress. Dzhunkovsky began his drive around the city early in the morning. The streets were already filled with people. An especially large crowd had gathered next to Kazan Cathedral, where the royal family would appear. At noon a deafening ‘hurrah’ was heard from the troops stretched out in a chain from the Winter Palace to the cathedral. And a squadron-strong military escort in crimson Circassian coats came into view, and after them the tsar and the heir in an open calash, and then a coach carrying the two empresses with giant Cossacks on its footboards, and then another coach with the grand duchesses.
A festive prayer service began in Kazan Cathedral. And those invited, the leading people of the empire, saw the hated peasant inside the cathedral. It would have been impossible not to: he stood among the most distinguished guests.
The File, from the testimony of Yatskevich, director of the chancery of the chief procurator of the Synod: ‘During the service…I saw a peasant next to the senators. I was told it was Rasputin.’
The peasant was striking for the magnificence of his ‘national dress’. ‘He was luxuriously clad in a dark raspberry silk peasant shirt, high patent-leather boots, wide black trousers, and a black peasant’s coat,’ recalled Rodzyanko, who had been astonished to observe Rasputin standing in front of the members of the State Duma. And the Speaker of the Duma was seething. The huge, corpulent Rodzyanko strode over to Rasputin and ordered him to leave the cathedral at once. ‘If you do not leave, I shall order the ushers to carry you out,’ he recalled having said. And the peasant was afraid of a scandal. And he moved toward the doorway, saying, ‘O Lord! Forgive him his sin.’ Rodzyanko triumphantly escorted him to the doorway of the cathedral, where a Cossack gave Rasputin his fur coat and put him in a car. It is not difficult to imagine what Alix felt when she learned that Rasputin had been ejected from the cathedral, a place to which he had been summoned by the House of Romanov.
The Rasputin File Page 26