There is a photograph which, in the last days of the Empire, was
published all over Russia, and was, I am informed, also published in
western Europe and in America. It represents Rasputine sitting like an
oracle in his lodgings, surrounded by ladies of the aristocracy. This
photograph is supposed to illustrate the enormous hold which Rasputine
possessed on the affections of the women of the Court. In plain language
it is assumed to be a representation of Rasputine sitting in the midst
of his harem. There has been no account published which, as far as I
know, does not dwell on this phase of the Rasputine story, and there
have been books published in which the most erotic letters, purporting
to have been written him by the Empress herself and even by the innocent
young Grand Duchesses, have been included, the publishers apparently
never having inquired into their authenticity. Knowing that my evidence
will be considered of little worth, I still have the temerity to state
without any qualification whatsoever that these stories are without the
slightest foundation. Rasputine had no harem at Court. In fact, I cannot
remotely imagine a woman of education and refinement being attracted to
him in a personal way. I never knew of one being so attracted, and
although accusations of secret debauchery with women of the lower
classes were made against him by agents of the Okhrana, the special
inquiry instituted by the Commission of the Provisional Government
failed to produce any evidence in support of the charges. The police
were never able to bring forward a single woman of any class whom they
could accuse with Rasputine.
The photograph, however, is authentic. I figure in it myself, therefore
I am in a position to explain it. It shows a group of women and men who
after attending early Mass sometimes gathered around Rasputine for
religious discourse, for advice on all manner of things, and probably on
the part of some for the gratification of idle curiosity. I do not know
whether or not in western countries religion produces in the neurotic
and shallow-minded a kind of emotional excitement which they mistake for
faith, but in Russia there was a time when this was so. For the most
part, however, it was really serious people, men and women, who went
after Mass to listen to the discourses of Rasputine. He was, as I have
said, an unlettered man, but he knew the Scriptures and his
interpretations were so keen and so original that highly educated
people, even learned churchmen, liked to listen to them. In matters of
faith and doctrine he could never be confused or confounded. Moreover,
his sympathy and his charity were so wide and tender that he attracted
women of narrow lives whose small troubles might have been dismissed as
trivial by ordinary confessors. For example, many lovelorn women (men
too) used to go to those morning meetings to beg his prayers on their
heart’s behalf. He knew that unsatisfied love is a very real trouble,
and he was always gentle and patient with such people, that is, if
their souls were innocent. For irregular love affairs he had no patience
whatever, and in this connection I remember an incident which
illustrates this point, and also his remarkable powers of divination, or
if you prefer, his keen intuition. A young married woman, harmless
enough in her intentions, but rather frivolous nevertheless, came one
morning to Rasputine’s lodgings en route to a rendezvous with a handsome
young officer who at the moment strongly attracted her. It was her idea
to ask Rasputine’s prayers in behalf of her special desire, but before
she could say a word to him he gave her a keen glance and said: “I am
going to relate to you a story. Once when I was traveling in Siberia I
entered a small railroad station and beheld at a table a monk who
recognized me and begged me to join him in a glass of tea. As I
approached the table I saw him hastily conceal a bottle under the folds
of his soutaine. He said: ‘You are called a saint. Will you not help me
to understand some of the troubled problems of my life?’ I replied ‘Ah!
You call me a saint. But why do you at the time of asking me to help
your troubled soul try to hide that bottle under your robe?’” The young
woman turned deathly pale and without a word rose hastily and left the
room.
This is only one of many similar incidents. Once at Kiev a Government
functionary approached Rasputine and asked his prayers for one lying
very ill. Rasputine’s amazing eyes gazed into the eyes of the other and
he said calmly: “I advise you to beseech not my prayers but those of
Ste. Xenia.” The functionary completely taken aback exclaimed: “How
[Illustration: THE THREE CHILDREN OF RASPUTINE BEFORE THEIR HOUSE IN
SIBERIA.]
[Illustration: THE GUEST ROOM (THE ONLY LARGE ROOM) IN RASPUTINE’S HOUSE
IN SIBERIA.]
could you know that her name was Xenia?” I could relate many other such
instances which can, of course, be attributed to intuition, thought
transference, anything you like. But of true predictions of future
events made by Rasputine what explanation can be given? What of his
mysterious powers over the sick?
In behalf of the suffering little Tsarevitch the Emperor and Empress
constantly asked the prayers of Rasputine, and the incident which I
shall now relate will appeal to any mother or father of a suffering
child and will render less childlike the faith of the afflicted parents
of the heir to the throne. One day during the War the Emperor left
Tsarskoe Selo for general headquarters, taking with him as usual the
Tsarevitch. The child seemed to be in good condition, but a few hours
after leaving the palace he was taken with a nosebleed. This is
ordinarily a harmless enough manifestation, but in one suffering from
Alexei’s incurable malady it was a very serious thing. The doctors tried
every known remedy, but the hemorrhage became steadily worse until death
by exhaustion and loss of blood was threatened. I was with the Empress
when the telegram came announcing the return of the Emperor and the boy
to Tsarskoe Selo, and I can never forget the anguish of mind with which
the poor mother awaited the arrival of her sick, perhaps her dying
child. Nor can I ever forget the waxen, gravelike pallor of the little
pointed face as the boy with infinite care was borne into the palace and
laid on his little white bed. Above the blood-soaked bandages his large
blue eyes gazed at us with pathos unspeakable, and it seemed to all
around the bed that the last hour of the unhappy child was at hand. The
physicians kept up their ministrations, exhausting every means known to
science to stop the incessant bleeding. In despair the Empress sent for
Rasputine. He came into the room, made the sign of the cross over the
bed and, looking intently at the almost moribund child, said quietly to
the kneeling parents: “Don’t be alarmed. Nothing will happen.” Then he
walked out of the room and out of the palace.
That was all. The child fell asleep, and the next day was so well that
the Emperor left for his interrupted visit to the Stavka. Dr. Derevanko
and Professor Fedoroff told me afterwards that they did not even attempt
to explain the cure. It was simply a fact. For this and for other like
services Rasputine never received any money from the Emperor or the
Empress. Indeed he was never given any money by their Majesties except
an occasional one-hundred-ruble note to pay cab fares and traveling
expenses when he was sent for. In the last two years of his life the
rent of his modest lodgings in Petrograd was paid. What money he had was
received from petitioners who hoped through him to benefit in high
quarters. Rasputine took this money, but he gave most of it to the poor,
so that when he died his family was left practically penniless. That
Rasputine, whatever his faults, was no mercenary is the simple truth. As
far back as 1913 Kokovseff, Minister of Finance, who disliked and
distrusted Rasputine, offered him 200,000 rubles if he would leave
Petrograd and never return. Two hundred thousand rubles was a fortune
beyond the dream of avarice to a Russian peasant, but Rasputine
declined it, saying that he was not to be bought by anybody. “If their
Majesties wish me to leave Petrograd,” he said, “I will go at once, and
for no money at all.”
I know of many cases of illness where the prayers of Rasputine were
asked, and had he been so minded he might have demanded and been given
vast sums of money. But the fact is he often showed himself extremely
reluctant to exert whatever strange power he possessed. In some
instances where sick children were involved he would even object,
saying: “If God takes him now it is perhaps to save him from future
sins.”
This indifference to money on the part of Rasputine was all the more
conspicuous in a country where almost every hand was stretched out for
reward, graft, or blackmail. The episode of one of Rasputine’s bitterest
enemies, the “mad” monk Illiador, is illuminating. Illiador was a person
altogether disreputable, an unfrocked monk, and in my opinion a man
mentally as well as morally irresponsible. He made friends with certain
ministers, among them Chvostoff, one of several who, after the death of
Stolypine, held for a time the portfolio of Minister of the Interior.
Between Chvostoff and Illiador was concocted a plot to assassinate
Rasputine. This was not successful because Illiador made the mistake of
sending his wife to Petrograd with incriminating documents. But he was
able to send a woman to Siberia, and she dealt Rasputine a knife wound
from which he with difficulty recovered. This was in 1914.
After Rasputine the object of Illiador’s greatest hatred was the
Empress. His plot against Rasputine failing, he wrote against the
Empress one of the most scurrilous and obscene books imaginable, but
before attempting to publish it he sent her word that he would sell her
the manuscript for sixty thousand rubles. Publishers in America, he
wrote, would pay him a much higher price for the book, but he was
willing to sacrifice something to save a woman’s reputation. To this low
blackmailer the indignant Empress returned no answer at all. Illiador
lives in Russia now, a great favorite with the Bolsheviki because of his
bitter attacks on the clergy. But whether or not they permitted him to
retain his profits on the book against the Empress I do not know.
But what of Rasputine’s political influence, his treason with the
Germans? The excuse for his murder was that he was leading the Emperor
and Empress into the German net, persuading them to betray the Allies by
making a separate peace. If I knew or suspected this to be true I would
not hesitate to record it here. I would not dare to suppress such
important historical evidence, if I had it, because all that I am
writing in this book is for the future, not the present; for history,
not for the ephemeral journalism of the day. Ministers, politicians,
churchmen haunted the lodgings of Rasputine, and if any man ever had an
opportunity to mingle in secret diplomacy he was that man. As a matter
of plain justice to him, I do not believe such matters ever interested
him. On two occasions of which I have knowledge he did give the Emperor
political advice, and very shrewd advice, although it was received with
irritation and resentment by his Majesty. One of these occasions was in
1912 when Grand Duke Nicholas, whose wife it will be remembered was a
Montenegran, tried his every power of persuasion to bring Russia into
the Balkan Wars. Rasputine implored the Emperor not to listen to this
counsel. Only enemies of Russia, he declared, wanted to involve their
country in that struggle, the inevitable outcome of which would be
disaster to the Empire and to the house of Romanoff.
Rasputine always dreaded war, predicting that it would surely bring ruin
to Russia and the monarchy. At the beginning of the World War he was
lying wounded by Illiador’s assassin in Siberia, but he sent a long
telegram to the Emperor begging him to preserve peace. The Emperor,
believing intervention in Serbia a point of honor, tore up the telegram
and for a time appeared rather cold towards Rasputine. But as the War
progressed they became friends again, for after it became inevitable
Rasputine wanted the War fought through to a victorious end. The last
time the Emperor saw him, about a month before his assassination, he
gave a signal proof of this. The meeting took place in my house, and I
heard every word of the conversation. The Emperor was depressed and
pessimistic. Owing to heavy storms and lack of transportation facilities
there had been difficulty in getting foodstuffs into Petrograd, and even
some army battalions were lacking certain necessities. Nature itself,
said the Emperor, seemed to be working against Russia’s success in the
War, to which Rasputine replied strongly advising the Emperor never, on
any account, to be tempted to give up the struggle. The country that
held out the longest against adverse circumstances, he said, would
certainly win the War.
As Rasputine was leaving the house the Emperor asked him, as usual, for
his blessing, but Rasputine replied: “This time it is for you to bless
me, not I you.” Finally at parting he humbly begged the Emperor to do
everything he could in behalf of the wounded and of war orphans,
reminding him that all Russia was giving its nearest and dearest for his
sake. Did Rasputine on this day have a premonition of the fate that was
so soon to overtake him? I cannot answer that question. It is impossible
for me to know with any certainty whether or not this strange man was
actually gifted with the spirit of prophecy or whether his frequent
forecastings of truth were simply fruits of a mind more than normally
keen and observant. All I can do, all I have attempted to do, is to
picture Rasputine as I knew him. I never once saw him otherwise than I
have described. I knew that he was reputed to drink and to indulge in
other reprehensible practices. I heard, I suppose, every wild tale that
was told of him. But no one ever presented to the Imperial Family or to
myself any evidence, any facts in support of these accusations. It is a
matter of record, and this the historians of the future will stress,
that this man was called a criminal, but that he was never meted out the
common justice which is supposed to be the right of the most abandoned
criminal. He was accused of nameless crimes and he was executed for
those crimes. But he was denied even the rough justice of a trial by his
self-appointed judges. Did “Tsarist” Russia ever do such a thing to a
man caught red-handed in the murder of an Emperor?
I have added as an appendix to this book a document which has been
published in Russian and French, but which I believe appears here for
the first time in English. It is the statement of Vladimir Michailovitch
Roudneff, a judge of a superior court in Ekaterinoslav, one of a number
of distinguished jurists appointed by Kerensky, when Minister of Justice
in the Provisional Government, to a special High Commission of Inquiry
and Investigation into the Acts of the Sovereigns and other prominent
personages before the Revolution of 1917. Judge Roudneff, with great
courage and honesty, made an effort to sift the evidence against
Rasputine and to separate truth from mere rumor. That he was unable to
treat the matter in a mood of perfect judicial calm, although he
earnestly wished to do so, is proof enough of the madness of the Russian
mind in that time of turmoil and bewilderment. Anyone at all familiar
with rules of evidence will perceive how, with the best intentions,
Judge Roudneff often offers opinion where facts alone are called for. A
great many of his statements, if given in a court of justice, would in
any civilized country be challenged and probably ruled out. However, the
statement is valuable because it is the unique attempt of a
justice-loving individual to escape from the mob mind of 1917 Russia and
to present impartially the known facts about Rasputine. For his honesty
in insisting that the facts be made public Judge Roudneff was
ignominiously removed from the commission by its president, Judge
Mouravieff. As far as I know and believe, none of the other members of
the commission attempted to publish their findings.
I shall always feel that it was a great pity that Rasputine was not
arrested, tried in the presence of his accusers and of all available
witnesses, and if found guilty punished to the very limit of the law. As
it was he was merely lynched and the question of his guilt or innocence
will ever remain unsolved. Latest accounts certainly absolve the Empress
of Russia from being his tool and his guilty partner, and death, whether
by assassination or at the hand of public justice, has the same end, the
righteous judgment of God, and from that perfect justice not the worst
enemy of the man could bar the soul of Rasputine.
One thing more I deeply regret and that is that Judge Roudneff could not
have tried Rasputine in person as he did try me. I appeared before him
no less than fifteen times and I always found him studious at getting at
the truth, separating facts from hysterical gossip, all in the interests
of justice and of historical records. In his reports concerning me there
are some errors, but not serious ones, some confusion of dates, but
nothing important, and once or twice some trifling injustice for which I
bear not the slightest malice. Judge Roudneff, for example, accuses me
of loquacity, and in my testimony of jumping irrelevantly from one
thought to another. I cannot help wondering if even a learned judge,
after weeks of imprisonment, accompanied by inhuman insults and bodily
injuries, and for the first time given an opportunity for explanation
and self-defense, would have spoken in quite a calm and normal manner.
However, I do not complain of anything Judge Roudneff says of me. I am
grateful to the only Russian in a position of authority who has had the
chivalry to give me the benefit of a reasonable doubt.
All others, including members of the Romanoff family who have known me
from my earliest childhood, who in youth danced and chatted with me at
Court balls, who knew my mother and my father, with his long and
honorable record, have assailed me without a shred of mercy. They have
represented me as a common upstart, an outsider in society who managed
through unworthy schemes to worm her way into the confidence of the
Empress. They have represented me as an abandoned woman, a criminal, a
would-be poisoner of the Tsarevitch. They have been so loud in their
denunciations of one defenseless woman that they have succeeded in
concealing the fact of their own participation in events for which the
Sovereigns were brought to ruin. They have thrown a blind before their
responsibility for bringing Rasputine to the Court of Russia. Never do
they allow it to be remembered that it was the Grand Dukes Nicholas and
Peter and their Montenegran wives, Stana and Melitza, who introduced the
Emperor and Empress to the poor peasant pilgrim who, had he never been
taken up by these aristocrats, might have lived out an obscure, and
perhaps valuable, existence in far Siberia. It was easier for these
powerful ones, these sheltered women, these noble gentlemen, to avoid
explanation of their part in the Russian tragedy and to take refuge
behind the skirts of a woman who, after the overthrow of the Imperial
Family, had not a friend on earth to defend or to protect her.