The Rasputin File

by Edvard Radzinsky

  But again the Tsar remained silent. And again she asked him. ‘i Sept. 1915 … Our Friend is in despair his boy has to go to war, — the only boy, who looks after all when he is away.’

  And again Nicky said nothing. He could not explain to her that while he might change ministers, he was unable to leave the peasant’s son at home. It would be a provocation to the family and to society. While focusing on the struggle for ‘ours’, Alix had somehow failed to remember that not long before Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich’s son Oleg, just a boy, had been killed. And his father had been unable to endure his grief — the grand duke had been throttled by an attack of angina pectoris. And there were other young grand dukes at the front. How could he then excuse the peasant’s son from service! But, as always, she stubbornly kept trying to get her way. ‘ii Sept. 1915 …I understand the boy had to be called in, but he might have got him to a train as sanitary [medical orderly] or anything …an only son … One longs to help without harming Father or Son.’

  Although Rasputin’s son would eventually be drafted, she would be able to secure him a place as a medical orderly — on her own hospital train.

  Indignant discussion continued in the Duma about the impending appointment of ministers pleasing to the peasant, and about the fact that Prime Minister Goremykin was travelling back and forth with reports to the tsarina.

  On 6 September Zinaida Yusupova wrote to her son in the Crimea in her amusing code, ‘The general mood is one of disgust. The “Fur Coat in Mothballs” [the old man Goremykin] continues to travel back and forth to the Valida [the empress]. She is simply triumphant!’

  The opposition continued its attacks. This time the news was from Moscow, the seat of the anti-Rasputin opposition. Vladimir Gurko, a respected man of right-wing convictions with the high rank of chamberlain who was also a member of the Council of State, took a public stand. And a phrase spoken by Gurko soon spread throughout Russia: ‘We desire strong authorities… meaning…authorities with a whip [khlyst] and not under a Whip [Khlyst].’

  ‘A slandering pun, directed against you & our Friend, God punish them for this,’ Alix wrote to the tsar on 8 September.

  ‘The Ministers Are Rotten’

  The peasant understood: he who had saved their son so many times had been unable to protect his own. His son had been drafted into the army. And it was then that Rasputin took to drink once and for all. And the beast, the ‘Dark One’, the fearsome peasant fully awoke in him.

  An agent reported:

  5 September. The Dark One was visiting his brother. His father went there, too, and started cursing him in the foulest language. The Dark One, enraged, leapt up from the table, pushed his father out the door, knocked him to the ground, and started hitting him with his fists. His father yelled, ‘Don’t hit me, you scoundrel!’ And they had to be pulled apart by force. One of his father’s eyes was so badly pummelled it had swollen shut. As he left, the old man started cursing the Dark One even more, threatening to tell everyone that he [Grigory] didn’t know anything except how to hold Dunya [the maid Dunya Pechyorkina] by her soft parts. After which, the Dark One had to be kept from attacking his father again.

  The agents enjoyed reading him the newspapers, which were just as interested in him as before. And he was apparently also tormented by visions. He sensed that there, far away in Petrograd, the inevitable was looming.

  ‘6 September,’ the agents recorded, ‘Rasputin said, “My soul is full of grief. It has even made me deaf … Two hours I feel all right in my soul, but five hours are bad…and bad because of what is going on in the country, and because what the damned papers write about me greatly annoys me. I’ll have to take them to court.”’

  While Rasputin was carousing in Pokrovskoe, the tsarina was tirelessly pleading for Khvostov’s nomination as minister. And our Friend’s predictions were once more brought into play.

  ‘7 Sept. 1915 … one needs an energetic man who knows people in every place, & a Russian name.’

  ‘9 Sept. 1915 … Clean out all, give Goremykin new ministers to work with & God will bless you& their work…My image of yesterday, of 1911 with the bell has indeed helped me to “feel” the people…And the bell would ring if they came with bad intentions & wld. keep them fr. approaching me … And you my love, try to heed what I say, it’s not my wisdom, but a certain instinct given by God beyond myself so as to be your help.’

  The tsar wavered; he was still unaccustomed to her direct participation in affairs. She was tense. All her indomitable energy had been directed to help him. And it made her angry that he did not understand that.

  ‘10 Sept. 1915 … Please speak seriously about Khvostov as Minister of the Interior to Goremykin am sure he is the man for the moment, as fears nobody and is devoted to you.’

  But appointing a new minister of internal affairs was only the beginning.

  On ii September she was already demanding the head of Chief Procurator Samarin. Now they [the Duma] have betted that you cannot send Samarin away—& you will…At once my love, clear him out & Stcherbatov [the minister of internal affairs] too … Please take Khvostov in his place … Take a slip of paper & note down what to talk over [with Prime Minister Goremykin]…. i) Samarin… Samarin is stupid insolent fellow.’ She would now write directly and insistently about Khvostov. And she would not relent until he yielded.

  12 September: ‘The ministers are rotten.’

  14 September: ‘People get angry I mix in — but it’s my duty to help you. Even in that I am found fault with, sweet Ministers and society … Such is the unedifying world.’

  Sometimes she wrote two letters a day. She was sure their enemies at Headquarters would not let Nicky carry out these wise decisions. It was not for nothing that a foe of the man of God — Nicholas’s young cousin Dmitry — was at Headquarters.

  13 September: ‘Why don’t you send him back to his regiment? … It does not look well, no Granddukes are out [at the front], only Boris from time to time, the poor Constantins boys always ill.’

  She could fight, and in combat she was ruthless. Her daughter’s former fiancé who had been raised in her family, was to be sent to the front closer to death for having dared to go against the elder.

  And all that time Our Friend had been with them. He had not forgotten to send the needed telegrams. On 8 September she wrote:

  ‘About the war news our Friend writes (add it to yr. list of telegrams) … “Don’t fear it will not be worse than it was, faith and the banner will favour us.”’

  On 9 September she wrote: ‘Did you copy out his telegr. for yourself on the extra sheet? If not, here it is again: “Do not fall when in trouble God will glorify by his appearance.”’

  Such were the seer’s predictions one and a half years before the revolution. Rasputin had also sent a badly needed telegram requesting the nomination of the God-pleasing Khvostov.

  Ahead lay a meeting at Headquarters of the Council of Ministers at which Alix expected that the appointment of Khvostov would at last be announced. And she asked Nicky to turn for help to Our invisibly present Friend.

  ‘15 Sept. 1915 … Remember to keep the Image in yr. hand again & several times to comb yr. hair with His comb before the sitting of the ministers. Oh, how I shall think of you& pray for you more than ever then, Beloved One.’

  They were worried in Petrograd. The deputy internal affairs minister, G. R. Mollov, had received reliable information from one of his agents that Khvostov had been summoned to Tsarskoe Selo by the empress and given hope of an appointment to the post of minister of internal affairs. ‘I informed Prince Scherbatov,’ Mollov later recalled, ‘that it appeared that his and my days at our occupations were numbered… Scherbatov …did not agree, and said that he had recently returned from Headquarters, where he had been graciously received by the sovereign.’ The Sabler story was being repeated.

  On 15 September an agitated Colonel Globachyov, chief of the Petrograd security branch, arrived at the Ministry of Internal Affairs. ‘Globach
yov presented me with a telegram from one of the agents assigned to Rasputin. In the telegram it was mentioned that Rasputin had received a letter from Vyrubova with approximately the following contents: “Sana [a diminutive form of ‘Alexandra’ — that is, Alix] is feeling sad and is eager to see you in about ten days time. Bless.” It was mentioned in the same telegram that Rasputin meant to come to Petrograd soon afterwards,’ Mollov testified in the File. Putting the two events together, Mollov clearly understood what lay in store.

  Alix at the time was continuing to shower the tsar with letters. She could not stop. Her energetic temperament would not permit her. On 17 September she sent him two complete letters.

  ‘17 Sept…. Only wire a word to quiet me. If no ministers yet changed — simply wire “no changes yet,” & if you are thinking about Khvostov say “I remember the tail” [khvost in Russian].’

  But Alix knew that if he hadn’t already decided without her, she would prevail on his return. And she entreated Nicky to ‘come & quickly make the changes … Khvostov hopes that in 2, 3 months one can put all into order with cleverness & decision … how infinitely do I long to help you& be of real use… Some are afraid I am meddling in state affairs (the ministers) & others look upon me as the one to help as you are not here (Andronikov, Khvostov).’

  So Andronikov, the ‘shady prince’, had become a good soul.

  ‘Really, my Treasure, I think he is the man & our Fr. hinted to A[nya] in his wire … Khvostov has refreshed me…I yearned to see a “man” at last — & here I saw & heard him … Nobody is any the wiser I saw him,’ Alix reassured Nicky.

  But he continued to waver. He still could not get used to her new role. And he failed to announce the new appointments at the Council of Ministers meeting at Headquarters.

  She pressed on. 18 September … I am bothering you with this talk, but I should like to convince you … that this (very fat young man of much experience) is the one you would approve of& that old woman who writes to you I should say too.’

  The Friend had during that time been tirelessly sounding out the new candidates.

  20 Sept. 1915 … I send you… a summary of her [Anya’s] talk with Beletzky — that does indeed seem a man who could be most useful to the minister of the Interior, as he knows everything … Andronnikov gave Ania his word of honour, that nobody shall know, that Khvostov comes to Ania (she sees him in her house, not in the palace) or Beletzky, so that her & my name will remain out of this … Our Friend’s wife came, Ania saw her — so sad & says he suffers awfully through calumnies & vile things one writes about him — high time to stop all that — Khvostov & Beletzky are men to do that.

  Praskovia had been unable to protect her son. She took leave of the capital, saying that she had to return to Pokrovskoe, ‘because Grigory’s life was threatened with danger’. And in fact he had, as the agents reported, received the following typewritten letter: ‘Grigory! Our Fatherland is being destroyed, they want to conclude a shameful peace …We, the delegates, beseech you to do something so that the ministers will be answerable to the people. And if you do not do that, we shall kill you, there will be no mercy. The lot has fallen to us ten.’

  It was devoutly believed in society that everything happening at the top had been inspired by the semi-literate peasant, who had taken control of the tsarina’s will.

  The Scandalous Pastors

  Simultaneously with the struggle for new, obedient ministers, Alix was involved, and no less energetically, in the struggle for an obedient church.

  There was a logic in this. The church was a state institution strictly controlled by the tsars through the Synod. Moreover, ideas about the Anglican Church, which was dependent on the will of the monarch, lay in the subconscious of that ‘English’ princess. Of that last ‘English’ princess, I should add, to struggle for the unlimited autocracy of the times of the indomitable medieval kings.

  And on 11 September 1915, she wrote to Nicholas, demanding he replace Samarin, the chief procurator of the Synod. ‘You are the head & protector of the Church & he tries to undermine you in the eyes of the Church. At once my Love, clear him out.’ She wanted to rid the Synod of those bishops who would not submit: ‘you must set yr. broom working & clear out all the dirt that has accumulated at the Synod.’

  Unfortunately, however, she had little idea of who was needed to replace them. And the peasant — the man of God next to the throne — had once again to provide the candidates. Who, if not he, should dictate the appointment of church hierarchs? Naturally after discussing it with her. And here Rasputin remained her alter ego.

  Before Alix got involved in running the church, Rasputin had had few church allies among the ‘highly placed’. For the majority of the latter, he remained a suspicious, ignorant peasant and covert sectarian. For Rasputin himself, the official church was the bishops in their medals, something remote from and hostile to him. He held them in contempt and had a peasant’s fear of them. But gradually that fear passed. His royal devotee’s acceptance of his holiness had inspired him with confidence. She was indignant at their presumptuous failure to acknowledge someone who was such a great authority for the ‘tsars’. So that recognition of Rasputin was becoming synonymous with loyalty here, as well. And from about 1912 Alix began to see that high appointments were given to those who revered Our Friend. Thenceforth, his (meaning her) support began moving clergymen into high posts. And now even in the first Russian capital, Mother Moscow, sat someone who venerated Father Grigory, the eighty-year-old Makary. He, too, was from the Siberian hinterland, where he had graduated from Rasputin’s local Tobolsk Theological Seminary.

  Another influential member of the Synod was the exarch of Georgia. As already related, Molchanov’s father, a disgraced bishop who had been censured for his liaison with a young teacher, had been appointed exarch of Georgia in spite of the Synod. It was then that Rasputin’s practice began of recommending culpable pastors for high church positions. Above all, those accused of homosexuality, a serious offence from the point of view of both the Russian legal code of the day and the church. Because their situation made them utterly dependent on him. And also because it was connected with the mystical idea of the unity of the male and female principles in the Khlyst conception of Christ. And the Khlyst Rasputin, who believed that the Holy Spirit had descended on him, apparently sensed that unity in himself — he was above gender. Hence, not only his very civil attitude towards homosexuality but apparently even his possibility of treating lust, and not merely in women but also in men. Perhaps it is here that an explanation is to be found for Rasputin’s extremely close relationship with Iliodor (in the past) and Felix Yusupov (in the future).

  But one way or another, after Bishop Alexis died in 1914, Pitirim, a homosexual suspected of Khlyst connections whose candidacy had been advanced by Rasputin and, it follows, the tsarina, became exarch of the Caucasus.

  The File, from the testimony of Yatskevich:

  Pitirim is one of the most infamous names in our church. While bishop of the Tula eparchy, which was actually run by his lay brother Karnitsky, with whom the bishop had a liaison condemned by the church and the law, he had stolen the riches of the bishop’s sacristy, which became clear after his transfer to the Kursk eparchy. His young lay brother ran the bishop and the eparchy in Kursk, as well. It was then in fact… that he began openly protecting … a society of monks in the Bogodukhov Monastery who had been exposed as Khlysty. As a result, he was removed from Kursk. He then became bishop of Saratov, where he found himself another young lay brother, a certain Osipenko, who took the place of the previous one.

  That was the sort of person Rasputin had put forward to be exarch of Georgia. And the sovereign (meaning the tsarina) would subsequently cross out all the Synod’s candidates for exarch and write in ‘Pitirim’.

  It was at that time, as well, that another homosexual devoted to Rasputin turned up in his vicinity — Father Isidor. The clergyman Isidor Kolokolov, as the same Yatskevich testified in the File, ‘had be
en accused of sodomy with a lay brother Flavion, and for it had been appointed an ordinary monk at one of the monasteries. Isidor frequented Rasputin’s home and soon afterwards became … the prior of one of the monasteries in Tobolsk, where he took his lay brother…even though the Synod had documentary proof of their cohabitation.’

  Isidor became one of those closest to Rasputin. He would be received by the tsarina more than once and mentioned in her letters. ‘Spent a lovely evening with our Friend and Isidor,’ she would write to the tsar (3 November 1916).

  And, finally, there was Varnava, another bishop promoted by Rasputin and a most unusual figure.

  Varnava, a priest from the little town of Golutvina, lacked a higher seminary education. But he had acquired enormous influence with the local population and the Moscow merchants thanks to his lively, accessible discourse. And Rasputin had noted him at once. He personified, as it were, what Our Friend had been telling the tsars about the pastors of the people: ‘although not schooled but believing; for from the schooled there is no sense to be had, as almost all are non-believers.’ Alix understood that this double of Our Friend was ready to serve. And at the sovereign’s personal wish (meaning, once again, the empress’s), Varnava had been appointed bishop of Kargopol. Even though the appointment of a man without a higher seminary education had provoked a storm in the Synod.