Alix decided to bring back the peasant to the capital, although she realized that Nicky would be obstinate. But as she was trying to persuade Nicky, the telegraph brought news to Petersburg that put an end to her efforts: in distant Pokrovskoe an unknown woman had walked up to Rasputin and stuck a knife in his stomach. The one person who apparently could have stopped Russia’s intervention, and consequently world war, fell to a knife.
Could Rasputin really have stopped the war? Much would later be said about that. His future acquaintance the singer Belling recounted in her memoirs how once during dinner he said, ‘If not for the damned evil-doer woman that cut up my intestines, there would be no war … While my intestines were healing, the Germans started fighting!’
As Rasputin’s friend Sazonov testifies in the File, ‘Rasputin himself confirmed to me: if he had been in Petrograd, there would have been no war.’ The peasant had the right to say that, since he knew that it was not he who was the main actor in the matter but she. All he had to do was play his part — come to Petersburg and prophesy against the war. So that on the basis of his prophecies the tsarina would have the right to break the tsar’s will.
But the court and society believed that he was the one. As Guchkov testified, ‘Rasputin’s attitude towards the war was negative. An Italian correspondent asked him before it began whether or not there would be a war. He answered, “Yes, they are starting one. But God willing, there will be no war, and I will see about it.”’
The Murderer’s Account
It had happened as Rasputin was coming back from church. He was almost home. Someone was waiting for him by his gate. It was a young woman. She asked for alms, and as Rasputin was giving her money, she pulled out a knife and stabbed him. The woman, a certain Khionia Guseva from Tsaritsyn, was seized. All the Russian papers gave front-page coverage to the event.
Preserved in the Tambov archive are the three volumes of the investigation into ‘the attempt on the life of the peasant… Grigory Efimovich Rasputin’. Khionia Guseva herself provided testimony: ‘On 29 June (NS) after the midday meal I saw … Grigory Rasputin coming … I had a dagger in a sheath under my skirt…and I pulled it out through a slit in my blouse. I stabbed him once in the stomach with the dagger. After which Rasputin ran away from me while I rushed after him … in order to inflict a fatal blow.’
They ran past houses and petrified crowds. A small woman brandishing a dagger, and Rasputin pressing his shirt against his wound. But she failed to stab him a second time. ‘He picked up a shaft on the ground and hit me on the head with it, at once knocking me down…It was afternoon and people came running from all directions and said, “Let’s kill her,” and picked up the shaft. I quickly got to my feet and said to the crowd, “Hand me over to a constable. Don’t kill me.” They tied my hands and took me to the regional office, and on the way they… kicked me, but they didn’t beat me.’
The young woman had a terrifying face with a nose ravaged as if by syphilis. But Khionia explained, ‘I am only a girl and never had children nor suffered from syphilis…I was spoiled by medicines, which ruined my nose when I was thirteen.’
When he learned that Khionia was from Tsaritsyn, Rasputin came to and declared that the attack had been a fatal greeting from the Tsaritsyn monk Iliodor. But Guseva denied that Iliodor had had anything to do with it. She explained her action as her own decision after reading about Rasputin in the newspapers: ‘I consider Grigory Efimovich Rasputin a false prophet and even an Antichrist… I decided to kill Rasputin in imitation of the holy prophet who stabbed four hundred false prophets with a knife.’
Rasputin lay between life and death for several days. All his admirers and the royal family sent him telegrams with best wishes for his recovery. Guseva’s interrogation was already under way. ‘During her interrogation,’ the New Times reported, ‘Guseva expressed regret at not having killed the elder. Khionia Guseva is a hatter by profession … She made Rasputin’s acquaintance in 1910 when he visited the Balashev monastery hostel in Tsaritsyn, where Khionia’s friend, the nun Xenia, lived.’ The newspapers were fascinated by the romantic possibilities. One version had it that Rasputin had seduced Guseva when she was young and beautiful. Another speculated that Rasputin had corrupted the young beauty Xenia as a minor during a rite of ‘rejoicing’, and that Guseva was taking revenge on her behalf. And although it soon became clear that the alluded-to Xenia had only seen Rasputin from a distance and was by no means young, no one bothered to refute anything. Readers wanted the ‘Rasputin story’.
Sent To A Madhouse
No sooner did he improve than the correspondents broke into his ward in the hospital at Tyumen. His misfortune temporarily reconciled at least a part of the press to him. And as a result the tone of some of the newspapers became almost sympathetic for a while. The Stock Exchange News wrote, ‘He sat worn out by ill-health in a hospital smock and recounted his experiences…The wider public is unacquainted with his thoughts, which he records in a notebook almost every day.’ And the correspondent offered a quotation: ‘It is a great thing to be present in the final hour of the sick. You receive two rewards: you are visiting a sick person, and at the same time everything earthly seems like an illusion to you and a trap of the demon.’
Guseva was sent to a Tomsk hospital for the insane. It was the only possible way of avoiding a scandalous trial that might have brought about yet another wave of hatred against Rasputin.
N. Veryovkin, deputy minister of justice at the time, testified during his interrogation before the Extraordinary Commission, ‘Guseva had been recognized insane … but the woman shouted, “I am in my right mind and I remember clearly: I meant to stab him with a knife.”‘ She was placed in a psychiatric hospital. Her relatives later applied for her release on the grounds that she had recovered. But the minister of justice issued instructions that her ‘release must not take place before any danger that the patient may present to those around her is completely eliminated’. So Guseva was destined to rot in the hospital until she was liberated by the revolution.
The attempt on Rasputin’s life was a shock for the unhappy general’s wife. At the time she had been visiting Iliodor at his farm. The Saint Petersburg Courier reported that ‘Lokhtina, upon learning of the attempted murder of Rasputin, ran to Iliodor’s house and shouted, “The day of judgment has come. Repent before it is too late.”‘ She spent half a day banging on the door and shouting before Iliodor’s votaries finally conveyed ‘Christ’s’ command that she clear out. She was afraid to go to Pokrovskoe; she was a pariah for Rasputin’s admirers, too. ‘The year that Guseva made her attempt on Rasputin’s life, all his admirers had turned away from Lokhtina because of her closeness to Iliodor … Lokhtina continued to believe that Iliodor was not involved. Rasputin, however, had no doubt of it,’ Maria Golovina testified.
The Attempt Explained
Rasputin would not stop talking about his Tsaritsyn enemy. The correspondent for the newspaper Kama-Volga Speech conducted an interview with him: ‘The Tsaritsyn woman, she … admired Iliodor. The woman, she would go for anything, as long as it was somebody else’s idea. Iliodor egged her on, she wasn’t acting on her own. She was just the hammer striking, but the anvil belonged to somebody else.’
And in his book A Holy Devil, Iliodor actually did confirm that he knew Guseva. ‘I know Khionia Guseva well. She is my spiritual daughter … Until the age of eighteen, she had a very beautiful face, and then she became deformed: her nose fell away. Her own explanation is that she prayed to God to take away her beauty. And he took it. It was simply that during a pilgrimage to the holy places she had slept in flophouses in the big cities and had been infected by the foul disease syphilis and turned into a freak.’ But Iliodor categorically denied any part in the attempted murder: ‘I have been unjustly accused by Rasputin of sending a murderer to him.’
Rasputin, however, handed over to the inquest a letter that had been sent to him in Pokrovskoe three days after the dagger attack: ‘I, and not you, Grigory, h
ave emerged the victor in this struggle! Your hypnosis has been dispersed, like smoke in the sun. I say that in spite of everything, you shall die! I am your avenger! The prisoner.’
‘I think the letter was written by Iliodor himself,’ Rasputin testified. The investigators attached the letter to the File. But unlike the investigators of 1914, we do not have to do our digging among scraps of evidence or rely on conjecture.
In the New York Public Library I read a most rare book given to the library by the daughter of the Russian general Denikin (who commanded the White Army during the civil war). The book was called Martha of Stalingrad, and its author was Iliodor. He wrote it after his emigration to America and published it in Russian. And in the book Iliodor says that it was he who decided to take Rasputin’s life. At his ‘New Galilee’, he gathered his flock by the banks of the river. Around four hundred people came. ‘The congregation chose the three most beautiful young women … Those three beauties,’ Iliodor writes, ‘were supposed to lure Rasputin and kill him.’ But Khionia Guseva, who was present, said, ‘Why ruin beautiful women whose lives are ahead of them? I am a wretched woman and of no use to any one…I alone shall bring about his execution. Father, give me your blessing to stab him as the ancient prophet stabbed the false prophets.’
Iliodor gave her his blessing for the murder.
And so Iliodor did stand behind Guseva’s dagger. But was he alone?
Who Was Involved In The Attempt?
It is not a very difficult question to answer. Because by 2 July Iliodor was already on his way out of the country. As he himself wrote, ‘I abandoned my homeland and, after dressing in women’s clothing, escaped over the border. On 19 July 1914, I crossed the river near the town of Tornio, four kilometres above the customs house and the border-guard post.’ But Iliodor failed to mention the most interesting part. As witnesses would testify, ‘Iliodor fled from his home by automobile.’
But where could the poor priest have found an automobile? By what route was the monk taken to Tornio? Who hired and paid for the guide who knew where the border-guard post was and could successfully take Iliodor over the border to Finland? Beletsky would recount in his testimony how he later tried to gain Rasputin’s confidence by informing him of a fact of which Rasputin had been unaware — that Iliodor’s wife had been permitted to take the monk’s dangerous archive out of the country with her!
She was let out ‘despite dispatches and even several telegrams to the Department of Police in Dzhunkovsky’s name from the chief of the Saratov Gendarme Directorate and the Saratov district governor indicating the time of Iliodor’s wife’s departure and requesting that she be detained and searched. But permission was granted [by Dzhunkovsky] only after she had left and successfully crossed the border.’
The same Dzhunkovsky who was head of the gendarmes and the head of the secret police. A close friend of Ella’s and Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich’s. So it had been no accident.
On 1 July, immediately after the attempt on his life, Rasputin was placed under police surveillance for his own protection.
Some highly interesting testimony given by Dzhunkovsky before the Extraordinary Commission remains.
‘I instituted dual surveillance of Rasputin. I received daily reports about Rasputin’s whereabouts, how long he spent at each location, and with whom…The surveillance was established…just before the attempt on his life.’
But the official surveillance was established after the attempt on Rasputin’s life. It was the unofficial surveillance that was under way before the attempt.
Grigory Novy
Rasputin was caught in a web. ‘It was Iliodor’s idea to kill me.’ How long could he have believed that? Could the intelligent peasant really have failed to heed Beletsky’s story about how ‘important people’ had catered to Iliodor? Of course not! So that he would very soon have grasped the inevitability of his own downfall. And that of the naive, unhappy couple surrounded by a family who did not like them, a hostile court, and a crazed society clamouring for war.
And he would now ever more frequently drown his premonitions and terror in wine. He had reached a final turning point in his life. He had long abstained from wine. For he knew himself. He tells an investigator in the Tobolsk file that he ‘gave up wine about ten years ago; I have a foul character when I’m drunk’. That ‘foul character’ was the aroused beast, the insanity and extremity of the debauch. There is a wind that perpetually bursts from beyond the Urals and rushes across the limitless Russian plain. And likewise in the Russian soul there beats and rages a boundless and dangerous force. And woe if it should break free. Now he would drink in earnest, in black earnest. Now he needed money, and huge amounts of it. Now he would have to overlook his secretary Laptinskaya’s extortion of money from his supplicants. Yes, it would be a kind of payment for his work; after all, he had been torn from peasant labour at the pleasure of the ‘tsars’. The ‘tsars’ did not pay him. At least let their subjects give him money so that the poor peasant could carouse to his heart’s content. Could at last go on a spree! So that all those gentlemen would have something to remember him by! To remember the peasant Grishka! The name he had been given by the ‘tsar’s proved prophetic: after the dagger blow he became both Rasputin and Novy [New].
War
Alix watched the animated joy of the war preparations with horror. While there at the other end of the world in Siberia her half-alive ‘alter ego’ lay tied to his bed.
The text of the ultimatum to Serbia had been approved by Austria-Hungary on 6 July. But its presentation in Belgrade was postponed until 10 July to coincide with the departure from Petersburg of President Poincaré of France, who had been visiting Russia. So the president and the tsar would not be able to come to an immediate agreement on joint action. Poincaré had arrived in Russia on 7 July for an official three-day visit. The signing of a secret accord intime formally acknowledged the military obligations imposed on both sides by the Franco-Russian alliance.
At a dinner in honour of the French president, Stana, that ‘black woman’, joyfully cried out, ‘We shall have war before the end of the month … [and] our armies will unite in Berlin.’ At manoeuvres under a glowering sky, the tsar and president had earlier watched the mighty Russian army with delight. And during the manoeuvres Alix had almost fainted. At the dinner honouring the French president, as the amazed French ambassador, Paléologue, would record, ‘She continually bit her lips, and her feverish breathing made the diamond-studded netting covering her breast sparkle … the poor woman was evidently struggling with an attack of hysteria.’
An hour after Poincaré’s departure from Petersburg, the Austro-Hungarian envoy in Belgrade handed the Serbian government the ultimatum. Serbia immediately appealed to Russia for protection. On 12 July the Council of Ministers under the chairmanship of the tsar promulgated a ‘Resolution Regarding the Period of War Preparation’. That evening the members of the General Staff committee were informed of the tsar’s decision ‘to support Serbia, even if to do so it should be necessary to announce a mobilization and undertake military action, although not until Austrian troops have crossed the Serbian frontier’.
France prepared for war along with Russia. Germany and Austria-Hungary had already begun preparations two weeks before. At the same time, England placed its navy in a state of combat readiness. Feverish diplomatic talks were in progress, but they could no longer change anything. Mad Europe was disposed to fight.
Meanwhile, Alix’s agitated telegrams had been flying first to Tyumen and then to Pokrovskoe, where the wounded Rasputin had been moved.
‘12 July 1914. Urgent Tyumen. For Novy from Peterhof. A grave moment. They are threatening war.’
‘16 July 1914. Bad news. Terrible times. Pray for him. I have no strength left to struggle with the others.’
She kept pleading for help. And once again the peasant did not let her down. Although half-alive, he picked up his clumsy pen.
On 16 July a ‘Ukase Regarding a Declaration of Gen
eral Mobilization’ was signed. Nikolai Nikolaevich was jubilant. The whole bellicose Romanov family rejoiced. But it was then, evidently, that the tsar received the telegram from Pokrovskoe that Alix had been so keenly anticipating.
A Prophecy
Rasputin had most likely sent several such telegrams. But with its fearful prediction, this was the most terrifying.
From Badmaev’s testimony: ‘And at the time of the war, he… sent a telegram about the same thing [not to fight], but they did not listen to him.’
From Vyrubova’s testimony in the File: ‘And then after the order for mobilization was given before the start of the present war, he sent the sovereign a telegram from the village of Pokrovskoe with a request to make some arrangement so there would be no war.’
As is clear from the records of the external surveillance of Rasputin after the war had already begun, ‘On 20 July 1915, while in the village of Pokrovskoe, Rasputin said to agent Terekhov, “Last year when I was lying in the hospital, I asked the sovereign not to go to war, and in that regard sent the sovereign about twenty telegrams, including a very serious one.”’
A photocopy of that ‘serious’ telegram from Rasputin to the tsar was published in Paris in 1968 in La revolution russe.
A threatening cloud hangs over Russia: misfortune, much woe, no ray of hope, a sea of tears immeasurable, and of blood? What shall I say? There are no words: an indescribable horror. I know that all want war from you, and the loyal [wish it] without realizing that it is for the sake of destruction. God’s punishment is a grievous one when the path is taken away. You are the tsar, the father of the nation. Do not permit the mad to triumph and destroy themselves and the nation. Everything drowns in great bloodshed. Grigory.
The Rasputin File Page 35