In preceding chapters I have mentioned the name of Rasputine, that
strange and ill-starred being about whom almost nothing is known to the
multitude but against whom such horrible accusations have been made that
he is universally classed with such monsters of iniquity as Cain, Nero,
and Judas Iscariot. Even H. G. Wells, in whose “Outline of History” Joan
of Arc and Abraham Lincoln are disposed of in a line, sacrifices
valuable space to state as an established fact that in 1917 the Russian
Court was “dominated by a religious impostor, Rasputin, whose cult was
one of unspeakable foulness, a reeking scandal in the face of the
world.” I have no desire in this book to attempt an exoneration of
Rasputine, for I am not so ambitious as to believe that I can change the
collective mind of the world on any point. In the interests of
historical truth, however, I believe it to be my simple duty to record
the plain tale of how and why Rasputine came to be a factor in the lives
of Nicholas II and of Alexandra Feodorovna, his wife, and exactly to
what extent he did, or rather, did not, dominate the Russian Court.
Those who expect from me secret and sensational disclosures will, I
fear, be disappointed, for Rasputine’s every movement for years was
known to the Russian police, and the most sensational fact of his whole
career, his assassination, has been described by practically every
writer of the events of the Russian Revolution.
I will first explain the exact status of the man, for this does not
appear to be generally understood. He has been called a priest, more
often still a monk, but the truth is he was not in holy orders at all.
He belonged to a curious species of roving religious peasant which in
Russia were called _Stranniki_, the nearest English translation of the
word being pilgrims. These wandering peasants, common sights in the old
Russia, were accustomed to travel from one end of the Empire to the
other, often walking with heavy chains on their bodies to make their
progress more painful and difficult. They went from church to church,
shrine to shrine, monastery to monastery, praying, fasting, mortifying
the flesh, and their prayers were, by a very considerable population,
eagerly sought and devoutly believed in. Once in a while a _Strannik_
appeared who, by virtue of his extreme piety, gift of speech, or strong
personality, acquired more than local reputation. Churchmen of high
rank, estate owners, and even members of the nobility invited these men
to their houses, listened with interest to their discourses, and asked
for their prayers. Such a _Strannik_ was Gregory Rasputine, who from the
humblest beginnings in a remote Siberian village became known all over
the Empire as a man of almost superhuman endowment.
Of the type of Russians to whom the _Stranniki_ made a genuine appeal
the Emperor and Empress undoubtedly belonged. The Emperor, like several
of his near ancestors, was a born mystic, and the soul of Alexandra
Feodorovna, either from natural inclination or from close association
with him whom she so dearly loved, leaned also towards mysticism. By
this I do not mean that the Emperor and the Empress were at all
interested in spiritualism, table-tipping, or alleged materializations
from the world beyond. Far from it. In the earliest days of my
acquaintance with the Empress, as far back as 1905, she gave me a
special warning against these things, telling me that if I wished for
her friendship never to have anything to do with so-called spiritism.
Both the Emperor and the Empress were profoundly interested in the
religious life and expressions of the whole human race. They read with
sympathy and understanding the religious literature not only of
Christendom but of India, Persia, and the countries of the Far East. I
remember in connection with the Empress’s first warning against
spiritism that she gave me a book, an obscure fourteenth-century missal
called “_Les Amis des Dieu_” which, in spite of her warm recommendation,
I found great difficulty in reading. This interest in religion and the
life of the spirit was actually what constituted what Mr. Wells calls
the “crazy pietism” of Nicholas II. It was simple Christianity lived and
not merely subscribed to as a theory. They believed that prophecy, in
the Biblical sense of the word, still existed in certain highly gifted
and spiritually minded persons. They believed that it was possible
outside the church and without the aid of regularly ordained bishops and
priests to hold communion with God and with His Spirit. Before I came to
Court there was a Frenchman, Dr. Philippe, in whom they reposed the
greatest confidence, believing him to be one in whom the gift of
prophecy existed. I never knew Dr. Philippe, hence I can speak of him
only as a sort of a forerunner of Rasputine, because, as the Empress
told me, his coming was foretold by Dr. Philippe. Very shortly before
his death the French mystic told them that they would have another
friend authorized to speak to them from God, and when Rasputine appeared
he was accepted as that friend.
Rasputine, although very poor and humble and almost entirely illiterate,
had acquired a great reputation as a preacher, and had especially
attracted the attention of Bishop Theofan, a churchman of renown in
Petrograd. Bishop Theofan introduced the _Strannik_ to the wife of Grand
Duke Nicholas, who immediately conceived a warm admiration for him, and
began to speak to her friends of his marvelous piety and spiritual
insight. At that time the Emperor was on very friendly terms with the
Grand Duke Nicholas, or rather with his wife and her sister, two
princesses of Montenegro who had married, not quite in conformity with
the rules of the Orthodox Church, the brothers, Grand Dukes Nicholas and
Peter. One of these sisters, Princess Melitza, Grand Duchess Peter, had
something of a reputation as a mystic, and it was at her house that the
Emperor and Empress met first Dr. Philippe and later Rasputine. In one
of my first conversations with the Empress she told me this, and told me
also how deeply the conversation of the Siberian peasant had interested
both her husband and herself. In fact Rasputine, at that period,
interested and impressed almost everyone with whom he came in contact.
When the house of Stolypine was blown up by terrorist bombs and, among
others, his beloved daughter was grievously wounded, it was Rasputine
whom the famous statesman summoned to her bedside for prayer and
supplication. I am aware that the public generally believes that it was
I who introduced Rasputine into the Russian Court, but truth compels me
to declare that he was well known to the Sovereigns and to most of the
Court long before I ever saw him.
It was about a month before my marriage in 1907 that the Empress asked
Grand Duchess Peter to make me acquainted with Rasputine. I had heard
that the Grand Duchess was very clever and well read, and I was glad of
the opportunity of meeting her in her palace on the English Quay in
Petrograd. Interesting as I found her, I was nevertheless thrilled with
excitement when a servant announced the arrival of Rasputine. Before his
entrance the Grand Duchess said to me: “Do not be astonished if I greet
him peasant fashion,” that is, with three kisses on the cheek. She did
so greet him and then she presented us to each other. I saw an elderly
peasant, thin, with a pale face, long hair, an uncared-for beard, and
the most extraordinary eyes, large, light, brilliant, and apparently
capable of seeing into the very mind and soul of the person with whom he
held converse. He wore a long peasant coat, black and rather shabby from
hard wear and much travel. We talked and the Grand Duchess, speaking in
French, bade me ask him to pray for some special desire of mine. Timidly
I begged him to pray that God would permit me to spend my whole life
serving their Majesties. To this he replied: “Your whole life will be
thus spent.” We parted then, but shortly afterwards, just before my
wedding day, when my heart was in a tumult of doubt and anxiety, I
wrote to the Grand Duchess Peter and asked her to seek Rasputine’s
counsel in my behalf. His word to me was that I would marry as I had
planned but that I should not find happiness in my marriage. It will be
seen how little I regarded him as a prophet at this time since I paid no
attention to his warning. A full year after my marriage I saw Rasputine
for the second time. It was on a train going from Petrograd to Tsarskoe
Selo, he being on his way there to visit friends who were in no way
connected with the Court.
But, asks the bewildered reader, when and how did Rasputine acquire the
dreadful, almost unprintable reputation which classes him with the
arch-fiend himself? To answer the question satisfactorily I should have
to reveal at great length the strangely abnormal and hysterical
mentality of the Russian people of that epoch. I shall try to do this as
I go farther, but here I shall give, as a sort of illustration of the
lunacy of the hour, a little experience of my own. It was on the first
occasion after my arrest by Kerensky in the spring of 1917, when I was
brought before the High Commission of Justice of the Provisional
Government. Weak and ill from my long imprisonment in the gloomy
Fortress of Peter and Paul, I found myself facing an imposing group of
something like forty judges, all learned in the law and clothed in such
dignity of office that I gazed at them in a kind of awe. In my
distracted mind I asked myself what questions these grave magistrates
would ask me, and in what profound language would their questions be
clothed. My heart almost stopped beating while I waited for the words
of the chief judge. And this is what was said, in a deep and solemn
voice: “Tell me, who was it at Court that Rasputine called a flower?”
Sheer amazement held me speechless, but even had I been given time I
could not have answered the question because there was no such person.
The judges whispered together for a moment and then the same man,
handing me a piece of cardboard, demanded impressively: “What is the
meaning of this secret card which was found in your house by the
soldiers?”
I took the piece of cardboard and almost instantly recognized it as a
menu card of the yacht _Standert_, dated 1908. On the reverse side were
written the names of war vessels present at that date at a naval review
held near Kronstadt, Russian vessels all, among which the position of
the Imperial yacht was marked by a crown. I handed the menu card back to
the judge saying merely: “Look at it, and look at the date.” He looked
at it and in some confusion muttered: “It is true.” One more question
those giant intellects found to ask me. “Is it a fact that the Empress
could not live without you?” To which I replied as any sensible person
would have done: “Why should a happy wife and mother be unable to live
without a mere friend?” The inquiry was then hastily closed and I was
ordered back to prison, to be watched more closely than ever, _because I
would not answer to judgment_.
This is a perfectly fair sample of the madness and confusion of the
Russian mind, or rather the Petrograd mind, before and after the
Revolution. That this madness, this unreasoning mania for the
destruction of all institutions might have something to justify itself
in the public mind, it was absolutely necessary to find and to persecute
individuals who typified, in popular imagination, the things which were
so bitterly hated. Rasputine, more than any one other individual in the
Empire, did typify old and unpopular institutions, and I can readily see
why some intelligent and fair-minded persons thus accepted him. Dillon,
for example, in his book, “The Eclipse of Russia,” says: “It is my
belief that although his friends were influential Rasputine was a
symbol.”
Russia, like eighteenth-century France, passed through a period of acute
insanity from which it is only now beginning to emerge in remorse and
pain. This insanity was by no means confined to the ranks of the
so-called Revolutionists. It pervaded the Duma, the highest ranks of
society, Royalty itself, all as guilty of Russia’s ruin as the most
blood-thirsty terrorist. What had happened in these dark years between
1917 and 1923 is simply the punishment of God for the sins of a whole
people. When His avenging hand has so plainly been laid upon all of the
Russian people how dare any of us lay the calamity entirely at the doors
of the Bolsheviki? We Russians look on the appalling condition of our
once great country, we behold the famishing millions on the Volga and in
the Ukraine, we count the fearful roll of the murdered, the imprisoned,
the exiled, and we cry weakly that the Tsar was guilty, Rasputine was
guilty, this man and that woman were guilty, but never do we admit that
we were all guilty, guilty of blackest treason to our God, our Emperor,
our country. Yet not until we cease to accuse others and repent our own
sins will the white dawn of God’s mercy rise over the starved and
barren desert that was once mighty Russia.
Rasputine, it seems to be generally assumed, having been introduced to
the Imperial Family, took up his residence in the palace of the
Romanoffs and thereafter held in his hands the reins of government.
Those who do not literally believe this are nevertheless persuaded that
Rasputine lived very near their Majesties, saw them constantly, was
consulted and obeyed by the Ministers, and with the aid and connivance
of adoring women attached to the Court, ruled by fear and superstition
the whole governing class of the Empire. If I denied that Rasputine ever
lived at Court, ever had the smallest influence over governmental
policies, ever ruled through adoring and superstitious women, I should
not hope to be believed. I will then simply call attention to the fact
that every move of Rasputine from the hour when he began to frequent the
palaces of the Grand Dukes, especially from the day he met the Emperor
and Empress in the drawing room of the Grand Duchess Melitza, to the
midnight when he met his death in the Yusupoff Palace on the Moika Canal
in Petrograd, is a matter of the most minute police record. The police
know how many days of each year Rasputine spent in Petrograd and how
much of his time was lived in Siberia. They know exactly how many times
he called at the palace at Tsarskoe Selo, how long he stayed and who was
present. They know when and under exactly the circumstances Rasputine
came to my house, and who else came to the house at the same time. The
police know more about Rasputine than all the journalists and the
historians put together, and their records show that he spent most of
his time in Siberia, and that when he visited Petrograd he lived in
rather humble lodgings in an unfashionable street, 54 Gorochovaia.
Rasputine never lived in the palace, seldom visited it, saw the Emperor
less frequently than the Empress, and had among the women of the Court
more enemies than friends.
The English-speaking reader may doubt the completeness and the accuracy
of police records, knowing that in his own country only criminals and
people of the underworld are really watched by the police. To know what
police surveillance can mean it is necessary to have known Russia before
1917. I do not speak of the Bolshevik police. It is fairly well known
what they are, but after all their methods, if not their motives, are
founded on the Okhrana of the old days.
To give an idea of the ever-open and searching eye of the old Russian
police I will describe what the situation was in the Imperial palace
itself. In connection with the palace, or any of the Imperial
residences, the persons of the Emperor and his family, the police force
was organized in three sections. There were the palace police, a Cossack
_convoi_, and a regiment of Guards known as the _Svodny Polk_. Besides
the ranking officers of these organizations there was, over them all, a
palace commandant, in the latest days of the Empire, General Voyeikoff.
It was impossible for anyone to approach the palace, much less to be
received by one of their Majesties, without the fact being known to
scores of these police guards. Every soldier, every guard, in uniform or
out, kept a notebook in which he was obliged to write down for
inspection by his superiors the movements of all persons who entered the
palace and even those who passed its walls. Moreover, they were obliged
to communicate by telephone with their superior officers every event,
however trivial, of which they were witness. This vigilance was extended
even to the persons of the Emperor and his family. If the Empress
ordered her carriage for two o’clock in the afternoon, the lackey
receiving the order immediately informed the nearest police guard of the
fact. The guard telephoned the news to the palace commandant’s office
and from there the information went by telephone to the offices of the
separate police organizations: “Her Majesty’s carriage has been ordered
for two o’clock.” This meant that from the time the Empress and her
companion, or her children, drove from the palace doors to the hour when
they returned the roads were lined with police, ready with their
notebooks to record every single incident of the drive. Should the
Empress stop her carriage to speak to an acquaintance, that unhappy
individual would afterwards be approached by a guard standing in the
road or behind trees or shrubbery, who would demand: “What is your name,
and for what reason had you conversation with her Majesty?” With all her
heart the Empress detested this system of police espionage, but it was
one of the Russian ironclad traditions which neither she nor the Emperor
could alter or abolish.
If the Imperial Family was thus subject to police surveillance the
reader can easily imagine how closely the ordinary citizen and
especially citizens of eminence were watched. I would not venture to
declare on my own unsupported authority that Rasputine rarely visited
the palace, at first two or three times a year, and but little oftener
at the last, but I can state that these facts are on record in the
police annals of Petrograd and Tsarskoe Selo. In the year of his death,
1916, Rasputine saw the Emperor exactly twice. There is one unfortunate
fact in connection with these visits. I write it regretfully but it is
true, and I can see how that circumstance served with some people to put
a false emphasis on the visits of Rasputine to the Imperial household.
In spite of the well-known fact that every visit of Rasputine was
necessarily a public appearance, in full limelight, as it were, the
Emperor and Empress attempted to throw over his visits a certain veil of
secrecy. They had done the same thing with Dr. Philippe, and I suppose
from the same motives. Every human being craves a little personal
privacy. In the most loving family circle who does not at times want to
be alone with his thoughts or his prayers behind closed doors? Thus it
was with their Majesties. Rasputine represented to them hopes and
aspirations far removed from earthly power and glory, and from earthly
pain and suffering. They knew that he was a simple peasant and that many
people of rank in official circles thought it strange, some even thought
it undignified, for their Majesties of great Russia to listen to the
counsels of so lowly and ignorant a man. For this reason, I know of no
other, the Emperor and Empress vainly tried to make the visits of
Rasputine as inconspicuous as possible. He was admitted into a side
entrance instead of the main doorway; he went upstairs by a small
staircase; he was received in the private apartments and never in the
public drawing rooms. It was the same in Tsarskoe Selo and in the
Crimea, in which latter place a day’s visit served for a year’s gossip
throughout the entire estate. More than once I pointed out to the
Empress the futility of the course pursued. “You know that before he
reaches the palace, much less your boudoir, he has been written down at
least forty times,” I reminded her. The Empress always agreed. She knew
that the police were everywhere, inside and outside the palace, in every
corridor, at every door. She knew that there could be no secrets in the
palace, and the Emperor knew it as well as she did, yet they persisted
in trying to shield Rasputine from the publicity they knew to be
inevitable for everyone.
It was generally in the evening that he was received, not because the
eternal police vigilance was relaxed at that time, but because it was
only in the evening that the Emperor found leisure for his personal
friends. In the hour following dinner it sometimes happened that little
Alexei came downstairs in his blue nightgown to talk with his father a
few minutes before going to bed. When on these occasions Rasputine was
present, the boy and his parents and any intimate friend who happened to
be in the room would listen fascinated while the _Strannik_ talked of
Siberia and its peasants, of his wanderings through remote corners of
Russia, and of his sojourn in the Holy Lands. His speech was simple, but
strangely eloquent and uplifting. Their Majesties talked gladly to him
of whatever happened to be on their minds, the ill health of their only
son, principally, and he seemed to know how to comfort and to give them
hope. They were always lighter of heart after his visits, and even had I
conspired with him to gain their friendship the effort would have been
quite useless and unnecessary. They liked him so well that when gossip
or newspaper accusations of Rasputine’s drunkenness and debauchery were
brought to their attention they said only: “He is hated because we love
him.” And that ended the matter.
I will say for the Empress that although she had the fullest confidence
in Rasputine’s integrity she thought it worth while to make some
inquiries into his private life in Siberia, where most of his time was
spent. On two occasions she sent me, with others, to his distant village
of Pokrovskoe to visit him. I wished then, and I do now, that she had
selected someone wiser and more critical than myself. Of detective
ability I possess not a trace. With me it is always, what I have seen I
have seen. In company with Mme. Orloff, mother of General Orloff, and
with two other women and our maids, I made the long journey to Siberia
leaving the railroad at the little town of Toumean. Here Rasputine met
us with a clumsy peasant cart drawn by two farm horses. In this
springless vehicle we drove eighty versts across the steppes to the
village where Rasputine dwelt with his old wife, his three children, and
two aged spinsters who helped in the housework and in the care of the
fields and the cattle. The household was almost Biblical in its bare
simplicity, all the guests sleeping in an upper chamber on straw
mattresses laid on the rough board floor. Except for the beds the rooms
were practically without furniture, although on the walls were ikons
before which faint tapers burned. We ate our plain meals in the common
room downstairs, and in the evening there usually came four peasant men,
devoted friends of Rasputine, who were called “the brothers.” Sitting
around the table they sang prayers and psalms with rustic faith and
fervor. Almost every day we went down to the river to watch Rasputine
and the brothers, fishermen all, draw in their nets, and often we ate
our dinner by the river, cooking fish over little campfires on the
shore, sharing in common our raisins, bread, nuts, and perhaps a little
pastry. The season being Lent we had no meat, no milk, nor butter.
On my return to Tsarskoe Selo I described this pastoral existence to the
Empress, and I had to add to my observations only that the clergy of the
village seemed to dislike Rasputine, while the majority of the villagers
merely took him for granted as one they had long been accustomed to. In
a later year I was again sent to Siberia, this time with Mme. Julia
(Lili) Dehn, wife of a naval officer on the yacht _Standert_, and
several others, and a man servant as my special assistant as I was then
very lame from the railroad accident which I have described. This time
we went by boat from Toumean to Tobolsk on the River Toura, to view the
relics of the Metropolitan John of Tobolsk, a sainted man of the time of
Peter the Great. While in Tobolsk we were entertained in the house of
the Governor of the Department, the same house where in the first days
of their Siberian exile the Imperial Family were lodged. It was a large,
very well furnished house on the river, but one could see that in winter
it must have been extremely cold. On our way back we stopped for two
days at Pokrovskoe, visiting Rasputine and finding him exactly as
before, the old wife and the serving maids still occupied with household
tasks and with field labor. I may add that in both of these visits I
went to the famous monastery of Verchotourie, on the Ural River, where
are kept some deeply venerated relics of St. Simeon. In the forests
surrounding the monastery are many tiny wooden huts in which dwell
solitary monks or anchorites, and among these was a celebrated old monk
known as Father Makari. This aged and pious monk apparently held
Rasputine in higher respect than did the village clergy, and they talked
together like equals and friends, while we listened silently but with
deep interest.
The wave of popular opposition against Rasputine began, I should say, in
the last two and a half years of his life. Long after it began, long
after his name was reviled and execrated in the press and in society,
his lodgings in Petrograd, where he began to spend longer and longer
intervals, were constantly crowded with beggars and petitioners. These
were people of all stations who believed that whether he were good or
evil his influence at Court was limitless. Every kind of petty official,
every sort of poverty-stricken aspirant and grafting politician, and, of
course, a whole crew of revolutionary agents, spies, and secret police
haunted the place, pressing on Rasputine papers and petitions to be
presented to the Emperor. To do Rasputine strict justice, he was forever
telling the petitioners that it would be no good at all for him to
present their papers, but he did not seem to have strength of mind to
refuse point-blank to receive them. Often in pity for those who were
sick and poor, or as he thought deserving, he would send them to one or
another of his rich and influential acquaintances with a note saying:
“Please, dear friend, receive him.” It is very sad to reflect that his
recommendation was the worst possible introduction a poor wretch could
bear with him.
One of the hardest tasks which the Empress imposed upon me was the
taking of messages, usually about the health of Alexei, to these crowded
lodgings of Rasputine. As often as I appeared the people overwhelmed me
with demands for money, positions, advancement, pardons, and what not.
It was of no use to assure the people that I neither possessed nor
desired to possess the kind of influence they believed to be mine. It
was equally useless to assure them that their petitions, if I took them,
would not be read by the Empress, but would merely be referred to her
secretary, Count Rostovseff. Sometimes I encountered a case of great
distress which if possible I tried privately to relieve. One day I met
on the staircase a very poor young student who asked me if I could help
him to a warm coat. I knew where I could get such a coat and I sent it
to the student. Months afterwards when I was a prisoner in the fortress
I received a note from this young man, telling me that he prayed daily
for my safety and release. This almost unique instance of gratitude
remains in my mind among memories much less agreeable of my visits to
the lodgings of Rasputine.