It is amusing, but there was another perspicacious person who also foresaw it — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. He believed that ‘war between Austria and Russia would be a very useful thing for revolution’ throughout Eastern Europe.
And the unbelievable occurred. After that telegram of Rasputin’s, the tsar’s telegram ordering the mobilization which was awaited by his allies and the whole world was cancelled. In the evening, when everything in the telegraph office had been made ready for the sending of the telegrams containing the ukase on general mobilization, a telephone call was received from the tsar rescinding the order. The ministers and the General Staff were thrown into a panic. It was decided to declare the rescission of the ukase ‘a misunderstanding, a mistake, that would soon been corrected’. Sergei Sazonov, the minister of foreign affairs, and Yanushkevich, the military chief of staff, conferred about whom to dispatch to the tsar to persuade him to rectify his ‘mistake’. But Nicholas was receiving no one.
Only Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich managed to get an audience. The ‘dread uncle’ succeeded in convincing the tsar of that which the tsar so wanted to be convinced. At three o’clock in the afternoon, Nicholas received Foreign Minister Sazonov and in the presence of his personal representative to the court of Kaiser Wilhelm, Count I. L. Tatischev, gave his consent for a general mobilization. Sazonov immediately telephoned Chief of Staff Yanushkevich to inform him of the decision, concluding with the sentence, ‘You may now break your telephone.’ He feared both the tsar and Rasputin.
At 5:30 p.m. on 17 July (30 NS), the telegrams regarding the general mobilization of the army and navy were sent out.
Germany ordered the Russian government to suspend by 12:00 noon on 19 July (1 August NS) ‘all operations threatening Austria and Germany’, that is, to halt the mobilization. Germany declared war on Russia the evening of the day that the ultimatum expired.
‘On 2 August [NS] the German ambassador, Count Friedrich Pourtalès, handed the declaration of war to Sazonov with tears in his eyes. At 2:00 p.m. a solemn mass was conducted at the Winter Palace. And a public declaration of war was also made there. I saw only gladness on people’s faces. The tsarina and tsar came out to the thousands who filled the square, and the crowd fell to its knees. She, however, seemed so agitated that she covered her face with her hands, and from the convulsive movement of her shoulders, one could surmise that she was crying,’ Vasiliev, the last director of the Department of Police, wrote in his memoirs.
‘20 July [2 August NS]. Germany has declared war on us, pray, they are in despair,’ Alix said in a telegram sent to Pokrovskoe.
At the time the whole country was reading this announcement from the tsar:
We declare to our loyal subjects that Russia, in keeping with its historical obligations, and being of one faith and blood with the Slavic peoples, has never regarded their fate with indifference. The fraternal feelings of the Russian people for Slavs have been aroused with particular force and complete unanimity in recent days, when Austria-Hungary, treating the acquiescent and peace-loving reply of the Serbian government with contempt, and spurning the well-intended mediation of Russia, presented demands to Serbia that were clearly unacceptable to a sovereign state. Austria-Hungary has rashly resorted to armed attack, beginning a bombardment of defenceless Belgrade…In this terrible hour of trial, may our internal quarrels be forgotten, and may the bond of unity between the tsar and people grow ever stronger.
Thus did the tsar write in his proclamation, ‘given on this twentieth day of July in the twenty-first year of our reign’, regarding Russia’s entry into the war.
Nicholas appointed the ‘dread uncle’ commander-in-chief — the army’s favourite, the six-and-a-half-foot tall Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, the peasant Grigory Rasputin’s main enemy.
There was nothing to do but submit. The joyful fervour regarding the future spilling of blood was universal.
Alix, too, had to conform to it — in a new telegram.
‘21 July. Nicholas asks you to bless his cousin as he goes to war. The mood here is cheerful.’
Meanwhile, the ‘dread uncle’, having become commander-in-chief, at once moved to deal with the peasant. Dispatches about Rasputin’s ‘serious telegram’ had been sent by Dzhunkovsky to the commander-in-chief. And the grand duke decided to have a serious talk with the tsar about the peasant who had dared to frighten the Tsar of All Russia with talk of defeat. According to the testimony of the same agent Terekhov, ‘Rasputin said that they allegedly wanted to hand him over for trial because of that telegram … but that the sovereign … had answered, “These are our family affairs; they are not a matter for trial.”’
The grand duke had been put in his place.
Lying in his bed, the wounded Rasputin could only watch the world straining for war.
On 4 August (NS) England declared war on Germany. On 23 May 1915, Italy sided with the Entente. On 27 August 1916, Rumania allied itself with the Entente. On 6 April 1917, the United States entered the war. The First World War had begun.
10
THE NEW RASPUTIN
The Return
August 1914 was drawing to a close when he finally made it to the capital. Now he lived in a new apartment on Gorokhovaya Street.
From Filippov’s testimony in the File: ‘Vyrubova transferred Rasputin to a building on Gorokhovaya convenient for meeting anyone coming to the city from the Tsarskoe Selo station.’
Agents loitered in the building’s courtyard. After the attempt on his life he was again being guarded, and the police chronicle of his life had resumed. The ‘Dark One’ — such was the disparaging nickname given to him by Dzhunkovsky’s people.
The first to visit were his old acquaintances: ‘Molchanov visited the Dark One on 21–3 and 29 August’ (from the external surveillance log).
Molchanov testified in the File:
I did not see him until the end of August 1914, when, after recovering from the attempt on his life, he returned to Petrograd…He walked around hunched over in a gown, since his wound was still bandaged and he wasn’t allowed to wear his normal clothing. His mood was noticeably depressed. He told me about the attempt, how some ‘stinker’ had wounded him, how he had run away pressing his shirt against the wound, how they had operated on him in Pokrovskoe using stearin candles for light, and how amazed the doctor had been that he hadn’t died.
He was still suffering from lingering horror and pain. And it was hard for him to stand up straight. But after throwing a coat over his hospital gown, Anya took him to see the tsarina. ‘On 25 August the Dark One went with Vyrubova to Tsarskoe Selo’ (from the external surveillance log).
How Alix had waited for him. The Russian offensive in East Prussia had misfired, and General Samsonov’s army had perished in the Masurian Lakes. By the beginning of September, the entire Russian army had been pushed out of eastern Prussia. The horrors of war. And, continuing to hope that it would somehow be possible to stop the slaughter that had already begun, she wrote to Nicky on 25 September: ‘This miserable war, when will it ever end. William [Kaiser Wilhelm], I feel sure must at times pass through hideous moments of despair when he grasps that it was he…wh. began the war & is dragging his country into ruin … It makes my heart bleed when I think how hard Papa & Ernie struggled to bring our little country to its present state of prosperity in every sense.’
She was already imagining the destruction of her little principality. ‘This miserable war, when will it ever end.’
But the tsar did not heed her prayer. For despite the defeat of Samsonov’s army, Russian troops in the south-west had been operating with rare success, smashing the Austro-Hungarian army and occupying Galicia and its ancient capital of Lvov. It was the second time the tsar had come to believe that a war could strengthen his regime. The first time had been the war with Japan, which ended in the 1905 revolution.
The Prophecies Change
And Rasputin understood at once: he could not for the time being come out against the war. Ev
eryone was in a happy fervour. ‘We shall sign a peace only in Berlin!’ was the universal refrain. ‘They have all lost their minds,’ the poet Zinaida Gippius wrote.
The German representatives were put to flight. A touching atmosphere of unity in the government and the Duma membership prevailed at the Duma session. And Alix had to talk constantly about carrying the war to a victorious conclusion; even she was weary of not joining in the universal refrain. Our Friend lent her his support. At the time, Vyrubova testified, Rasputin ‘indicated it was imperative to carry on to victory. He said not a word about a separate peace.’
Yet while forecasting victory, he did not forget to add what she so wanted to hear. ‘Rasputin predicted the war would be very hard on Russia and involve enormous losses,’ Vyrubova testified.
‘They are taking him to Tsarskoe Selo,’ the agents noted once again. It was too risky to bring him in. And he disappeared into Anya’s little house.
And then a calash would drive out from the Alexander Palace with the tsarina. And sometimes the children would come with her. The calash would stop at Anya’s house, the only place Alix could meet with Our Friend. She did not dare bring him to the Alexander Palace. The tsar did not want to annoy the ‘dread uncle’. Our Friend’s visits to the palace could occur only as a last resort when the heir was ill. She ordered that his visits not be recorded in the palace register, that chronicle of court life. But thanks to eternal Russian carelessness, entries regarding his visits did find their way into the register. On 17 October 1914, ‘Rasputin was received by Her Majesty at 08:30.’ On 23 April 1916 at 09:20 and on 5 September at 09: 45 ‘Rasputin was deigned to be received.’ Just three times, but how many more did he actually come to aid ‘Sunbeam’ (as she called her son)?
A Peculiar Occurrence
Rasputin’s health gradually returned and with it his enthusiasm for life. According to the external surveillance agents, after his return, the pretty brunette Baroness Kusova visited him daily at his home (from 22 August to 29 August). And in Tsarskoe Selo, he not only met the tsarina and Anya. As the agents reported, residing there in the palace of Grand Duke Pavel Alexandrovich were Sana and her husband Alexander Pistolkors. But Olga, Alexander’s mother and the grand duke’s wife, despised Rasputin. And Sana and Erik were thus obliged to meet him at Anya’s house.
But from 7 October, the good-looking Sana with her porcelain face became a continual guest at the peasant’s home on Gorokhovaya Street. The agents made no note of her husband’s presence. And Rasputin had been visited by his old friend Filippov on 26 August. Life was getting back on track. Or, more accurately, getting on a new track. For immediately after his return he started drinking heavily. And he would be drunk even in the afternoon. ‘5 October, 6: 30 p.m.,’ a security agent punctiliously recorded, he ‘got in a droshky drunk and dozed in the cab along the way.’ A constable on the corner, ‘taking him for a drunk, was about to send him to the precinct’, when an agent explained to him that it was Rasputin.
Alix’s New Roles
Alix’s confidence started to return the day that Rasputin arrived in the capital.
God’s envoy had defeated death, and she had to see that as auspicious. Now she was strong. Now he was with her. He remained with her even in her letters to Nicky, in that almost daily conversation with the tsar.
For the first time in their lives, Alix and Nicky were forced to remain apart for long periods. The tsar was continually at the front at General Staff Headquarters. How much she feared Nicky’s association with the ‘dread uncle’ and his entire circle. All of them despised Our Friend. And were very likely passing on various kinds of filth to the credulous tsar. That is why, inundating him with letters, she would constantly remind him about Our Friend. The historian Pokrovsky calculates that in 1914–15, merely the first year and a half of their correspondence, Rasputin is mentioned more than a hundred and fifty times.
From her letters. ‘19 Sept. 1914 …You, I know, not withstanding all you will have to do, will still miss yr. little family & precious agoo wee one [the heir]. He will quickly get better now that our Friend has seen him & that will be a relief to you.’
As soon as Nicky returned to Tsarskoe Selo, she organized a meeting between them.
‘20 Sept…. Our Friend … was so glad to have seen you yesterday … Gr[igory] loves you jealously and can’t hear N[ikolai Nikolaevich] playing a part.’
Now when meeting Our Friend at Anya’s, Alix observed the rule she had worked out with Nicky that there should be no witnesses to those meetings. That, apparently, is the reason why she wrote to Nicky: ‘23 Sept … Ania was offended I did not go to her, but she had lots of guests, & our Friend for three hours.’
But the very next day, ‘24 Sept…flew for a half an hour with Olga to Anias house, as our Friend spent the afternoon with her & wanted to see me. He asked after you… may God give you courage, strength, & patience, — faith you have more than ever and it is this wh. keeps you up … And our Friend helps you carry yr. heavy cross and great responsibilities.’
‘24 Oct….Our Friend intends leaving for home about the 5-th & wishes to come to us this evening.’
But she did not want to let him go without his meeting Nicky, who would soon be returning to Petrograd. She wanted him to instil in the tsar new and essential ideas that had occurred to her at the beginning of that terrible war.
‘25 Oct…. Our Friend came for an hour in the evening; he will await yr return and then go off for a little home … It seems Lavrinovsky [the governor of Taurida] is ruining everything — sending off good Tartars to Turkey … and our Friend wishes me quickly to speak to Maklakov [the minister of internal affairs], as he says one must not waste time until your return.’
So now Our Friend was advising what that enormously wilful, imperious nature had long dreamed of — to undertake herself the government of the state during Nicky’s absence!
Nicky returned to Tsarskoe Selo at the end of October. The peasant was waiting for him. The return was a happy one. Pushing back the Austro-Hungarian forces, the Russian army had already reached the German border. True, it meant the opening of a second front: on 29 October Turkey had entered the war on Germany’s side.
From Nicholas’s diary: ‘I have been in a furious mood in regard to the Germans and Turks. Only…under the influence of a calming conversation with Grigory has my soul regained its poise.’ After the daily horror of making momentous decisions, how much was he in need of Our Friend with his essential words about God’s Love for the dynasty, and about a novel but easily grasped idea: now that the tsar was at the front, the empress would have to be the ‘sovereign’s eye’. She would have to take a greater interest in state affairs.
Following that, Our Friend could quietly go back to Pokrovskoe. And after him the tsar, too, returned to the army in the field — first to the troops in the rear, then by train to the Caucasus and the army on the new Turkish front. Our Friend’s task now was to keep sending encouragement via incoherent telegrams about future victory.
Which he did punctually. ‘Angels in the ranks of our warriors, the salvation of the steadfast heroes with delight and victory,’ Our Friend cryptically wrote to Nicky in one telegram.
But at that time a new idea had taken possession of Alix. And for a while it even pushed aside her avidness for state responsibilities.
Thousands of wounded and maimed were being brought from the front. And the tsarina gave herself up to the cause of mercy with all the strength of her boundless energy. She organized her own hospital train and set up a hospital in Tsarskoe Selo in the great palace. She and the grand duchesses became sisters of mercy. It was fully consistent with her religiosity. And Our Friend immediately responded in kind.
On 21 November 1914, Alix wrote to Nicky, ‘This is the wire I just received from our Friend: “When you comfort the wounded God makes His name famous through your gentleness and glorious work.” So touching & must give me strength to get over my shyness.’
The ‘elder’ sensed t
hat the tsarina was trying to come out of her voluntary seclusion in Tsarskoe Selo. She had decided to become a ‘sister of mercy for Russia’. It was something she needed to do in order to silence the vile whispers that continued to haunt her about being ‘a German’. And how hard it was for her, that shy woman who was ashamed even of her English accent that for some reason was regarded as ‘German’ in Russia. Together with her daughters, she was now hard at work in the hospitals.
‘27 Oct. 1914 … We are going to another hospital now directly … We shall go as sisters (our Friend likes us to) & tomorrow also.’
‘28 Nov. 1914 … At times I feel I can’t any more & fill myself with heart-drops & and it goes again — & our Friend wishes me besides to go, & so I must swallow my shyness.’
Surrounded by the hostility of the court, she yearned for love. And there it was — the love of the wounded, the love of the simple people! Her dream had come true.
On a hospital tour, she came to Voronezh and met up with the tsar. So they could go to Moscow together. There in the ancient capital they were supposed to take part in church services, as she had dreamed of doing and as ‘Grigory had requested’.
They were met by the din of Moscow’s innumerable church bells, solemn prayers, and the joy of the common people.
From Moscow Alix went back to her beloved Tsarskoe Selo, while Nicky returned to the Headquarters she hated so much and the ‘dread uncle’. Rasputin was in Pokrovskoe at the time, and she called for him.
The Rasputin File Page 36