To Kill Rasputin: The Life and Death of Grigori Rasputin (Revealing History)

by Cook, Andrew

  Militsa was furious, and suspected Rasputin of turning the Tsarina against her. Rasputin made one of his journeys home with several adoring St Petersburg ladies in tow only to find, once he got to Pokrovskoe, that the entire Church establishment of Tobolsk was out to get him. They were asking questions (not for the first time), taking witness statements and generally building a case that he was a Khlyst, guilty of fornication, adultery and sexual orgies with various women. Olga Lokhtina, who had not yet deserted her family in favour of the bare feet, white dress and ribbons, deduced that there must be a malicious and powerful influence behind this sudden investigation. She concluded that the secret enemy was Militsa, and she returned to Tsarskoye Selo and made sure that the Tsar would bury the incriminating evidence forever as soon as it reached him.

  From 1907 Militsa, Anastasia and Grand Duke Nikolai were the ‘out-crowd’. Rasputin and Anna Vyrubova were in.

  Vyrubova had been an unmarried girl called Anna Taneev when she became intimate with the Tsarina. Her father was a court official and she had never been far from the inner circle – Yusupov remembered loathing her at school. She and the Tsarina were already inciting gossip about a lesbian affair when she married in 1907. Her husband, a nonentity who owned a large estate, proved significant only as provider of a name and a marital status; after a few years they divorced. She accused him of impotence and sadism, and it was true that the marriage had never been consummated. He married again quite soon, was perfectly happy with his new wife and lived quietly on his country estate. Vyrubova and the Tsarina, however, caused talk by sharing a bed.38

  One of the most complicated issues in Rasputin’s story is the relationship of the Tsar and the Tsarina. It appeared to be cloyingly affectionate, yet one partner constantly dominated. This is usually a dysfunctional arrangement for both parties. Their religious beliefs would have made it difficult for either of them to admit to marital problems, even to one another, and it seems that they found, over the years, a modus vivendi.

  The trouble was, nobody quite believed in it. In 1909 the royal family’s appointed religious advisor, Father Ioann, died. Rasputin, although unqualified as a priest, effectively took his place. By 1910 he was often mentioned in society, and not in flattering terms.

  People assumed he was an adventurer, lining his own nest. He complained that the Tsarina paid him hardly anything, yet expected him to be at her beck and call. He was living in modest circumstances in St Petersburg – in fact, in other people’s apartments – and it seemed that all the Tsarina donated was a few roubles and some hand-embroidered silk shirts. But he had always scorned money, and gave generously what little he had; perhaps nice clothes and important friends mattered more.

  However, money was being sent home, so other admirers must have given him some. In Pokrovskoe a comfortable two-storey house was being built, the better to accommodate his lady visitors from the capital. Now that he was nearly forty, and those three of his five children who had lived were growing up, Rasputin may have recognised that soothsaying and healing might as well provide a living.

  He made new friends. Among them were Bishop Hermogen of Tobolsk and the notorious Orthodox preacher Iliodor. It was the latter who introduced Rasputin to crowds of new followers and, in gratitude, Rasputin invited Iliodor to Pokrovskoe. There he showed him letters he had received from the Tsarina and her daughters; and there, in 1910, Iliodor stole one or two.

  Particularly shocking, after 1910 especially, were persistent stories that Rasputin took his St Petersburg ladies to public bathhouses. He freely admitted to this and explained that the Tsarina knew all about it. ‘I don’t go with one person… but with company’, he told his publisher, Sazonov.39 He insisted that it was good for these women to reduce their pride by accompanying a peasant to a bath-house; pride was a sin. He was notoriously promiscuous. Two years later, watchful Okhrana agents would note Rasputin and Mrs Sazonov visiting a bath-house together.

  By the end of 1910 Rasputin’s friends were having second thoughts. Bishop Feofan, Bishop Hermogen and, thanks to them, the entire Synod wanted to keep Rasputin in check. The sly Iliodor already supported them, though he remained friendly with Rasputin. There were articles about Rasputin in the newspapers, none of them flattering to him or the Tsar and Tsarina. The imperial couple had not the wit to understand that public opinion mattered. Stolypin, Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, thought Rasputin was a scoundrel; but Rasputin was like a lightning conductor, deflecting anger from its true target.

  In 1909 Rasputin and Stolypin had been briefly on the same side. In a kind of dress rehearsal for 1914, the Orthodox Serbs in the Balkans asked for Russia’s protection from the Austro Hungarians. The Orthodox Synod wanted the Tsar to send troops to defend the Serbs; so did Grand Duke Nikolai and the Montenegrin princesses; so did all the young officers who had been humiliated when Russia lost the war against Japan. Only Stolypin talked sense, and pointed out that Germany would attack if the Tsar tried to defend Serbia, and Russia was unprepared to resist. So Serbia was occupied, and Russia humiliated, but the threat of war was allowed to subside. Not because of Stolypin, or even the elder statesman Count Witte, but because Rasputin had advised the Tsar to keep out of it.

  The Tsarina

  …was grateful to Rasputin, and happy, for it had turned out that her own wishes were remarkably consistent with the commands of Father Grigori and heaven.40

  This was the key to his influence. Pierre Gilliard, the Tsarevich’s tutor who saw Rasputin often and was part of the imperial household from 1904 onwards, wrote in his memoir:

  Cunning and astute as he was, Rasputin never advised in political matters except with the most extreme caution. He always took the greatest care to be very well informed as to what was going on at court and as to the private feelings of the Tsar and his wife. As a rule, therefore, his prophecies only confirmed the secret wishes of the Tsarina. In fact, it was almost impossible to doubt that it was she who inspired the ‘inspired’, but as her desires were interpreted by Rasputin, they seemed in her eyes to have the sanction and authority of a revelation.41

  Stolypin, like everyone else, blamed Rasputin rather than the Tsarina for a whole series of decisions, especially the one that placed a Rasputin loyalist called Sabler at the head of the Synod. He also loathed him for his association with the right-wing Iliodor. And now it came to his notice that Rasputin and Witte were getting quietly friendly, and that Count Witte wanted Stolypin’s job as Prime Minister while he, Stolypin, was losing the Tsar’s support for his reformist policies.

  He began making his resentment public. He refused to censor articles appearing in the press condemning Rasputin. In his joint capacity as Minister of the Interior, he had already ordered Okhrana surveillance in order to gather evidence of Rasputin’s behaviour, which he knew to be inappropriate for a person employed as imperial advisor. Rasputin must have been wary of snoopers, because Alexandra found out about the Okhrana operation almost at once and got her husband to put a stop to it. Stolypin was nonetheless able to report to the Tsar about Rasputin’s

  …private life, a series of drunken and sometimes scandalous sexual liaisons and recently, dealings with dubious entrepreneurs and backers trying to turn his influence to advantage.

  This is an anonymous description of Stolypin’s report from a book about Nicholas II, published in 1917. Its significance is that it places his drunkenness, and alleged venality, as early as 1910 or 1911, while other writers – relying on the testimony of Rasputin’s friends to the Extraordinary Commission of 1917 – say that his corruption and drunkenness developed later. Jaundiced observers were more impatient. One such was Vladimir Nikolaivich Kokovtsov.

  I served eleven years in the Central Prison Administration… and saw all the convict prisons, and… among the Siberian vagrants of unknown ancestry, as many Rasputins as you like. Men who, while making the sign of the cross, could take you by the throat and strangle you with the same smile on their faces.42

  Not long after
Stolypin’s allegations, Rasputin was advised to make himself scarce for a while, and decided to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

  He stayed away for four months, returning in the summer of 1911 and publishing a short memoir of his travels. This was dictated to, and written down by, Lokhtina. Rasputin had learned to read and write by now, but not very well. Lokhtina made his ramblings readable, and captured what was inspiring in them.

  In the autumn he went to Kiev, where the Tsar and Tsarina were to attend the opening of a new regional Duma. Stolypin would be there too, because it was thanks to his reforming zeal that regional government had at last arrived.

  It is apparent from the evidence of an extreme right-wing politician called Khvostov (a fierce opponent of the progressive Stolypin) that Rasputin had something to do with Stolypin’s assassination at Kiev. Ten days before the Kiev ceremonies, Rasputin travelled to Nizhni Novgorod to pay Khvostov an unexpected visit. Khvostov had never met him before, and when Rasputin offered him Stolypin’s job as Minister of the Interior he thought the man was mad. He pointed out that the position was already occupied. Ah, said Rasputin, but all the same, Stolypin would be leaving. Khvostov made some facetious remark and saw him off the premises.

  …he departed angry. I didn’t invite him to dine and refused to introduce him to my family, even though he asked me to do so. 43

  Ten days later, Stolypin was shot at the Kiev Opera. The assassin had warned the local Okhrana of the time and place of the shooting the night before, but they still let him into the Opera House, complete with revolver.

  From the first, Rasputin was named in connection with the assassination. It was all too much for Bishop Hermogen and even Iliodor. On 16 December 1911 (a date that would prove fatal five years later) they tricked Rasputin into visiting the Yaroslav Monastery. There, in front of a kind of clerical kangaroo court, he was tried, found guilty and badly beaten up by the assembled holy men before being threatened at sabre-point, bashed over the head with a crucifix and sent packing.

  Hermogen did not stop there, but publicly insisted to the Synod that Rasputin was a Khlyst and privately accused him of adultery with the Tsarina. This could not be allowed to go on, and both Hermogen and Iliodor were sent into exile. Defiantly, they refused to disappear, but holed up in St Petersburg, releasing snippets of scandal to the papers. Even now, Iliodor hung onto his secret weapon: the stolen letters. Meanwhile, the Minister of the Interior who replaced Stolypin was Makarov – and in January 1912 he ordered another Okhrana surveillance. He intended to bide his time and say nothing about what he discovered unless it should ever prove useful to do so. The Tsar agreed to Rasputin’s being watched for purposes of protection; and later events would show that he did indeed need protecting.

  Now, in 1912, the Okhrana agents watched Rasputin’s comings and goings, his daily visits to the bath-house with prostitutes and followers, and his visits to the Golovinas’ house on the Moika (Mounya Golovina had been among the faithful since 1908). In her own drawing room Mounya had introduced Yusupov to Rasputin in 1909, before the young playboy left for Oxford. The current Rasputinists gathered there: Zinaida Manshtedt – a lover of his, if the sworn statement of the Tsar’s children’s nurse can be believed – and Lili Dehn, a well-known actress and close friend of the Tsarina. On most days he also saw Akilina Laptinskaya, a nurse he had been close to for years; she had worked at the Verkhoturye Monastery around 1903.

  Rasputin would spend all day with one or several of these women, running around the city by cab or carriage, and when left alone, would find a prostitute and take her to a bath-house or, very occasionally, to a room somewhere. These episodes, if challenged, were explained away by his assertion that he must tempt himself, and resist, in order to score points towards his own redemption. If he had intercourse with them, and several women later testified that (with or without consent) he did, no resulting pregnancy was ever revealed.

  Sometimes he saw Badmaëv. Badmaëv was a well-connected Asiatic from the Far Eastern steppe who manufactured and peddled herbal remedies to the great and good. He had been a protégé of Alexander III, the Tsar’s father. Mostly, his herbal remedies were prescribed as aids to potency, but he also sold happy pills: concoctions, maybe opiate-based, that made people calm, dreamy and dull-witted. Badmaëv was a friend of Rasputin’s, but was also close to Hermogen and other clerics. He cultivated Rasputin in the vain hope of one day being appointed Supplier of Herbal Cures to the Tsarevich. The connection never worked.

  Hermogen and Iliodor were still wanted men, but Makarov knew the stolen letters existed and were Iliodor’s weapon for blackmailing the Tsar. He ordered an Okhrana search and they were found. They appeared to be (and were later confirmed by Alexandra as) perfectly genuine:

  My much-loved, never to be forgotten teacher, saviour and instructor. I am so wretched without you. My soul is only rested and at ease when you, my teacher, are near me. I kiss your hands and lay my head upon your blessed shoulders. I feel so joyful then. Then all I want is to sleep, sleep for ever on your shoulder, in your embrace. It is such happiness to feel your presence close to me. Where are you, where have you run off to?… Come back soon. I await you and yearn for you. I ask you for your holy blessing and kiss your blessed hands. Your eternally loving Mama.44

  Like others before him, Makarov thought the Tsar would be appalled when he read this and would order Rasputin away from the court. Not a bit of it. Rasputin did leave St Petersburg for a while, but only because his presence was embarrassing; the Tsar was not at all angry (except with the unfortunate Makarov). A contemporary confided to her diary in despair:

  The tsar has lost all respect and the tsarina declares that it is only thanks to Rasputin’s prayers that the tsar and their son are alive and well; and this is the twentieth century!45

  Nicholas was suspicious of the Duma. He had been gracious enough to permit its existence, but now it stood between him and ‘the people’. It loomed in the tall, fat form of the Speaker of the Duma, Rodzyanko. Behind him lurked all sorts of liberals. Guchkev was particularly odious, for he despised Rasputin. Nicholas told Rodzyanko and the Duma to mind their own business. His family’s relationship with Rasputin was a purely private affair. He was deeply offended; these people appeared to be challenging autocracy itself.

  Within twelve months Rasputin was back in St Petersburg with his position consolidated, because he had effected an apparently miraculous cure.

  Over the years, the Tsar and Tsarina had come to rely on him to relieve their son’s illness. He had always managed to do it. He talked to the boy, and prayed with him, sat with him and was generally so comforting that it has been suggested his tranquil presence could have encouraged the release of agents into the child’s body that constricted the blood vessels and staunched internal bleeding. In 1912, also, a cure took place that cannot be conclusively explained by science, since Rasputin was 1,000 miles from his patient when it happened. The royal family had spent most of the summer in the Crimea and now, as autumn began, were at their hunting lodge in Poland when the Tsarevich had a minor accident. Any other child would have had a nasty bruise. Surgeons rushed in from St Petersburg but had to give up; a great tumour had formed in his groin, threatening blood poisoning, but they dared not operate, for he would almost certainly bleed to death.

  Rasputin had been in Pokrovskoe all summer. Djhunkovski, Head of the Okhrana, had been quietly keeping an eye on him. Rasputin got a telegram. He prayed. He prayed so intensely that his face was ‘grey and streaked with sweat’.46 He sent a telegram back: the doctors must not be allowed to tire the boy, who would recover.

  Indeed he did. Nobody could explain it, but he did. After this, the Tsarina would never allow Rasputin to stay away so long. Soon he was back in St Petersburg, and more secure than before. He brought his two elder daughters to the city to be educated. There was not much money left over, because the Tsarina seemed unaware that he and his family needed money to live, but he rented his own apartment not far from the smart Engli
sh Quay. He drank a little wine, only rarely too much. He still restrained himself in the matter of food, eating only vegetables and fish and avoiding sugar. Akilina Laptinskaya and young Katya Petyorkina kept house for him.

  The old round of visits to Tsarskoye Selo recommenced. This was his heyday; his position had never been more assured. Yet instead of growing fat and complacent he behaved like a man with hounds at his heels. Never exactly well organised, in a matter of months he adopted what we now call a ‘chaotic lifestyle’. He stayed up all night and slept late, and spent the waking hours receiving petitioners and followers, visiting friends and gossiping. Increasingly, there were meetings about deals and favours and money, the whole merry round accompanied by glass after glass of Madeira. Rasputin visited bath-houses daily, usually managed to pick up a prostitute somewhere, and was rarely sober. He liked sweet wine and gypsy music, and would dance himself into a frenzy every night if he got the chance. Night life in the capital was sophisticated and entertaining for those who could afford the Villa Rhode or the restaurant at the Astoria, where the ‘marble stairs and plate glass windows, thick red carpets and graceful palms, gave it a glow of comfort unknown in any other hotel in Petrograd [sic]’.47 Rasputin was frequently seen there; and years later, the head waiter at the Villa Rhode would recall his disgusting table manners.48 After an evening at a night club or a restaurant, he often took his entourage across the Neva towards the Islands, the wilderness, the gypsies – and champagne.

  The gypsies were famous; people were in awe of their singing. Bruce Lockhart was stationed in Moscow, and, during his first few days there in 1912, his host at a spectacular ball got up a small party that would go on to Streilna, a night club far from the city centre, to hear the gypsies.