Their Friend confidently predicted that the glorious days of the reign were at hand. Happier times were coming, and the war would soon take a turn for the better. He joyfully persuaded the Empress that her appearance, and that of the Heir at the front, brought good fortune to the troops, and accordingly bade her visit GHQ to review the troops, and also provincial towns and hospitals, more frequently. The Empress felt ashamed that she was unable, in return for their Friend’s blessing and for the light and joy he brought into their lives, to grant his own small request: not to take his son, a category 2 reservist, into the army, or, if there was no avoiding it, to enlist him in the Combined Guards Regiment formed to protect the Tsarskoye Selo palace.
But to take full advantage of their Friend’s wisdom regular communication with him was necessary—by letter, by telegram (or by the newest medium, the telephone). He also had to be seen frequently. This, however, was not at all simple for the royal couple. To associate with him too openly would invite the ridicule and malice of high society, and of educated people generally. Shunning publicity, they had to meet their Friend discreetly, and as far as possible in secret, to prevent all those tongues from wagging. A Tsar does not live the life of a free man. He is much more restricted than his subjects. He has no right to intimate relationships. Every request for an audience goes through a chain of courtiers who will probably let the whole world know about it. So when, several times a year, the royal couple received Grigori Efimovich at home in the palace, he was ushered not into the big official reception room, but by a side entrance into the Empress’s study. (The servants knew, of course, and there might have been less gossip if she had received him in the grandest of the staterooms.) They would kiss three times, in the Russian fashion, and sit down to talk. It was always in the evening, and Aleksei would come along in his little blue dressing gown to keep them company until his bedtime. They talked a great deal about his health, and about the royal couple’s other worries. They also discussed the Divine, and their Friend filled them with hope, and entertained them with stories about Siberia. (In fact, he felt offended: he longed to be received openly. It gratified his pride when the royal couple had the courage to send telegrams directly, and not through Anya.)
The Empress did not invite their Friend to the palace in the Emperor’s absence. People were such unbelievably vicious gossips. (They had, for instance, concocted a slanderous tale about Grigori Efimovich which no one in his right mind could possibly believe: he was supposed to have been appointed by the Cathedral Church of St. Theodore to light the icon lamps—in every room of the palace.)
She needed to see him and to question him frequently—in the terrible last year it had been almost every other day, and there was no other choice but to meet in Anya’s “little house,” a separate establishment, but still in Tsarskoye Selo. Sometimes it was at her request, sometimes he summoned her. She would try to get there unnoticed, and he might be accompanied by his wife, or his daughters, when they came from Siberia to visit him. The Emperor himself had been known to go there, when their Friend urgently needed to see him, and the Empress occasionally visited him in Anya’s absence. They also invited potential ministers along for him to get to know them better, or their Friend might bring some bishop or other with him. The conversation would always be both edifying and soothing. Sometimes their Friend would come to see the Empress at the hospital. Such were the subterfuges forced on royalty by spiteful and suspicious eyes. He might inform the press that he was leaving for Siberia—and then stay put. Whenever she visited GHQ the Empress had to receive their Friend’s blessing first. She would have refused to leave without it. In Lent this year their Friend had taken communion in the same church and at the same time as the whole royal family.
But calumny was the life breath of the world in which she lived. Listen to the slander and lies they spread about that Holy Man, and he was the greatest of evildoers. Even the Empress’s sister believed these slanders—and they had parted forever as a result: our Friend’s enemies are our own enemies. (The Empress had even banished the Tsar’s onetime confessor, Bishop Teofan, for the same offense.) He had inevitably become the victim of envy on the part of those who had hoped and failed to draw near to the throne. Like every saint, he had to suffer for righteousness’ sake—suffer above all from calumny. People came to hate him, and bespattered him with lies. One slanderous tale was that he was a drunkard—he who would not even drink milk! The Holy Elder was called a debauchee and a lecher, the royal family themselves were supposedly involved in his debauches, and these filthy slanderers went so far as to say that he had the entrée to the bedrooms of the young Grand Duchesses! They had fabricated a police report on an alleged brawl in a restaurant, which had supposedly led to the dismissal of the head of the Corps of Gendarmes. If anything of the sort had happened, why hadn’t the police been called immediately, to catch him red-handed? True, our Friend kisses everyone, men and women alike, as people did in olden days. Read the apostles—their usual greeting was a kiss. (The Empress’s faith had been shaken, briefly, only once, when she read the letters written by the embittered Iliodor after his dismissal: annoyed with herself, she had quickly rejected stories which at first sight had looked plausible.) To cap it all they had accused the Man of God of links with the Germans! There was no limit to their malice and stupidity, though they were a great help to the revolutionaries.
The Empress had nevertheless sent Anya to Grigori’s native village, Pokrovskoye, beyond Tyumen, to check up on him. She was able to confirm their best assumptions: the village fished with nets like the apostles, chanting psalms and prayers the while. Huge icons hung around the walls of the two-story cottage. True, the local priest disliked Grigori—that was to be expected—and his fellow villagers did not think that he was in any way out of the ordinary.
The Empress had given a great deal of thought to their Friend. A prophet is, of course, always without honor in his own country. Wherever there is a servant of the Lord the Evil One lurks to instill his venom. Our Friend lives for his sovereign, and for Russia, and endures all slanders for our sake. So many of his prayers have already been answered! Russia will be deprived of God’s blessing if we allow the man whom God has sent to aid us, the man who prays for us unceasingly, to become the victim of persecution in our country. God would not forgive us for our weakness. Whenever they step up their attack on him the state’s fortunes take a turn for the worse! Let them all rise up against you, I shall never abandon you!
During the past year, since the Emperor had been spending more time at GHQ, and she had to manage in Petersburg alone, their Friend had actively helped her to choose ministers and to give them guidance. To assess a man’s worth immediately is the thorniest of problems, the heaviest of burdens, and sometimes the curse of those in the royal trade. But their Friend possessed this skill in full measure. He had long, pleasant, and fruitful talks with Stürmer (and ordered him to report to the Empress weekly), he had dined with the Finance Minister, and with the Minister of Trade and Industry. (They were getting more used to the idea that Grigori had to be consulted on important matters.) On one occasion, to decide whether Khvostov (the uncle) was a suitable replacement for Goremykin (how could they find out? How could they get a close look at him?) it was their Friend’s idea to approach him in the guise of an ordinary petitioner and size him up in that way. He did so, and found the man unsuitable.
She was so accustomed to consulting their Friend on the choice of ministers that she sometimes sought his advice on the appointment of a city governor. He had approved of the Moscow governor. But with Obolensky’s appointment as governor of Petrograd there was a hitch. The incident demonstrated Grigori Efimovich’s goodness of heart and his spiritual responsiveness. He had been the first to urge dismissal of this particular governor, on the grounds that he was causing great hardship to the population, was completely mishandling the provisioning of the city, and was responsible for the bread queues. True, Obolensky had never shown hostility toward Grigori, which mad
e it painful to call for his resignation, but the well-being of Petrograd demanded it. Perhaps he could be transferred to a provincial governorship somewhere? But then Obolensky invited Grigori to dinner, showed his guest, list in hand, that he always carried out his requests, wept copiously—and Grigori Efimovich departed deeply moved. In a spiritual sense it meant a great deal that a man with such a soul had come over to him without reserve. That man must not be demoted, but appointed governor-general of Finland, which was his dearest wish, or else Vice-Minister of the Interior.
The defense of their Friend, which she saw as her highest duty, was sometimes uppermost in the Empress’s thoughts about the Duma—if they were left sitting there too long with nothing to do they would start talking about him, or about Archbishop Varnava of Tobolsk, who had been appointed at his request. And she always considered his interests in her choice of ministers. (Last year’s contingent, forced on them by Nikolasha, were a bunch of contemptible cowards, and all of them hostile.) The Empress’s ambition was to produce a unified cabinet in which the ministers to a man would support their Friend and heed his advice. The need to protect their Friend from persecution, attacks, and unpleasantness influenced the choice of the Procurator-General of the Holy Synod in particular: persecution of their Friend and those bishops who supported him by other churchmen was only to be expected (and particularly dangerous). The quest for suitable candidates made the Empress’s head ache. Samarin was insufferable, but it took them a long time to find someone to replace him. There was no one! Their first choice was Volzhin (and their Friend approved him), but no sooner was he appointed than he showed himself to be a coward in his dealings with the Duma, and in awe of public opinion. He had not dared to help Metropolitan Pitirim, or even to rusticate that swine Archbishop Nikon of Vologda. As long as Volzhin was there, church business would never go smoothly—he had proved completely incapable of understanding it. Pitirim had written to the Empress to tell her what should be done, and she had informed the Emperor, so that he could give Volzhin his orders. Then they were lucky enough to find Rayev, a splendid person and one familiar with matters ecclesiastical from his childhood. Stürmer praised him highly, and when the Empress received him he made an excellent impression. He was given Zhevakov as his assistant, and together they would be a real boon to the Church. There was no longer any resistance to the things the Church needed to do. Above all, the metropolitans must be “our” people: Pitirim was transferred from Georgia to Petrograd, Makari from Tomsk to Moscow, and Vladimir, who had done his best to harm all “our” people, was transferred to Kiev, the best place for him. All just as their Friend had wished. To reinforce Pitirim’s position, the Empress arranged a special trip for him to GHQ to see the Emperor. The priest Melchisedek was elevated to a bishopric, and their Friend destined him for a metropolitan archbishopric some time in the future. Varnava, of course, still had opponents in the Synod—animals, there was no other word for them. The Synod was still unruly and likely at any moment to produce some bombshell, like its decision to establish seven archbishoprics in Russia instead of the existing three. The Synod got as far as publishing this, but then their Friend objected: how can we agree to seven of them, when even now we can scarcely muster three decent metropolitans? The Empress succeeded in quashing the decision.
And then the agonizing search to find Russia a worthy Prime Minister! There was no such person. The Empress often exclaimed, “Lord God, where in Russia can we find the people we need?” She could never understand why, in such a great country, you could not find suitable candidates for every post. You could sometimes feel bitterly disappointed in the Russian people. Now that the Emperor had left for GHQ, and was fully occupied with military matters, it had become more and more obvious that Goremykin was getting weaker, and that the job would prove too much for him. The Duma detested him, and there was reason to fear that it would hiss him off the stage. The Empress spent her sleepless nights agonizing over every possible candidate for the post, then discussed them with their Friend. In the end they had hit upon Stürmer. He was loyal (loyal also to their Friend!) and his head was still uncluttered. Could they risk appointing someone with a German name? He had a high opinion of Grigori, which was very important. At any rate, he would do for the present, and if the Emperor decided someone younger was needed he could be replaced. The Emperor agreed, but then Stürmer himself took fright, and asked permission to change his name to “Panin,” his mother’s name. Both their Friend and the Empress vigorously opposed it. If people objected to his name—let them! There would be objections whoever was appointed. Dozens, no, hundreds of loyal servants of the crown had already been dismissed in the ludicrous campaign against German surnames—and where were suitable replacements to be found? Stürmer’s first action as Prime Minister was to declare that Russia would not lay down her arms until she and her allies together had emerged victorious. And for all the raving of the liberal and revolutionary riffraff, he had now presided over the cabinet satisfactorily for nine months.
Choosing a Minister of the Interior had been a more tragic experience. One candidate, Makarov, had previously served in the post after Stolypin, and had valuable experience, but was completely disqualified by his behavior in the Iliodor scandal. What is more, he had not only failed to stand up for the Empress, but had dishonestly shown her letter to outsiders and was in fact hostile to her. (Unfortunately, he had nonetheless been appointed that summer to the Ministry of Justice—no good could come of that.) The Emperor had to explain to the new Minister of Justice as soon as he was appointed that if he persecuted their Friend himself, or even allowed people to write or say disgusting things about him, it would be as if he were acting directly against the royal couple.
Khvostov (the nephew) had enchanted them to begin with, and they had appointed him to Internal Affairs, but what a grievous error it was, alas how easy it was to be mistaken in people! What was wanted was a man of resolute character, someone who was utterly unafraid of leftists. Their Friend, and Anya, had interviewed him first, and praised him highly. He had then successfully sought an audience with the Empress. She had looked forward eagerly to seeing him, and when she saw and heard him she was greatly impressed! This was a man, not an old woman, one who would not allow anything to hurt them. For the Emperor he was ready to be cut into little pieces. He believed in the Empress’s wisdom. He would stand up for their Friend and allow no gratuitous reference to him. He had a Russian name, he was a member of the Duma and so knew them all, how to talk to them, and how to defend the government. He was confident that he had the skill and good sense to put things right. He would prevent the publication of misleading articles. Working with him would be sheer delight! He was remarkably clever. A good speaker. The Empress urged her husband not to hesitate to make this young man a minister. The Emperor, as it turned out, was against him, but took him nonetheless on her insistence. Only later, much later, did the Empress, desperately disillusioned, recall that she had felt certain misgivings, wondered whether the candidate was perhaps too sure of himself, and whether in some contexts he might not be less than loyal. Meanwhile, something dreadful had happened: the devil had entered into Khvostov, and he had abruptly changed, he had not only turned against their Friend but had accused his circle of espionage, and asked the Emperor’s permission to exile him to Siberia. For five terrible months, while Khvostov was still in power, with the police and money at his disposal, the Empress had seriously feared for the lives of their Friend and Anya. When Khvostov was dismissed, the Empress and their Friend had felt that this was too lenient, that he should have been stripped of his embroidered uniform and put on trial. (Grigori’s wrath was fearful to behold—she had never seen him like that before!)
After this sad setback the Empress had become apathetic, and in the early months of 1916 intervened very little in state affairs. Her confidence in her own judgment was shaken. But after a while she returned to the fray. How could she refrain from intervening? You would have to be mindless, soulless, heartless, not
to grieve over what was happening in Russia. Events did not stand still, but demanded action—and whether she liked it or not the responsibility fell on her while the Emperor was at GHQ. Many ministers, the best of them, sought audience with her, while the poorer ones had to be eased out. How would she ever find for every office people who would carry out her instructions? The search for a Minister of War had given them a great deal of trouble. The sarcastic Polivanov, a friend of Guchkov and a traitor, and also the choice of the old General Staff, could not remain in office! (Now there was your traitor—not Sukhomlinov!) Replacing Polivanov would clip the revolutionary party’s wings at once! It must be done quickly—for the sake of the throne, for their son’s sake, for Russia’s sake! But month after month went by and they could not find a successor. Shuvaev, the replacement dreamt up by GHQ with the Emperor present, was someone of whom the Empress could not possibly approve: she doubted whether he could cope with the duties of the office—making a statement in the Duma, for instance. Their Friend, and the Empress herself, pressed the claims of the highly respected elderly General Ivanov—now there was a man with both experience and authority, the Duma’s hearts would undoubtedly go out to “Granddad” Ivanov. But the Emperor kept Ivanov on at GHQ, with nothing at all to do, and refused to make him minister. The Empress then began insisting with renewed fervor on the candidate she had most favored in Polivanov’s time, the meticulously efficient Belyaev. (She knew him from one of her Committees of Trustees, on which he had never created difficulties.) That would have been a sensible choice. Transferred from staff work and given ministerial independence he would be very good. He was so hardworking, and such an absolute gentleman, he had answered the English King and Lord Kitchener so cleverly, as a member of the Russian delegation. Besides, she knew his old mother. He would never think of attacking their Friend. But alas, instead of promoting him the Emperor had for some reason relieved him of his post as Chief of the General Staff and had now sent him off to Romania somewhere. But the Empress went on hoping that she would finally prevail, and that this noble general would become Russia’s War Minister in a very short time.
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