Among Rasputin’s adversaries was Mr. Stolypine, who, with strong
common sense and great intelligence, had objected to the importance
which certain social circles in St. Petersburg had tried to give to
the soothsayer. At first he had regarded the whole matter as a kind
of wild craze which was bound to subside in time, as other crazes of
the same sort had dwindled into insignificance in the past. Later on,
however, some reports that had reached him concerning the persons who
frequented Rasputin’s society had given him reason to think that there
might be something more than stupid, enthusiasm in the various tales
which had come to his ears in regard to the Prophet of Pokrovskoie.
He, therefore, expressed the wish to see him, so as to be able to form
a personal judgment of the man, and a meeting was arranged in due
course at the house of one of the ladies who patronised Rasputin. It is
related that after he had cast his eyes upon him Mr. Stolypine, when
asked to give his opinion on the personality of the individual about
whom he had heard so many conflicting reports, had simply replied:
“The best thing to do with him is to send him to light the furnace; he
is fit for nothing else.”
The words were repeated and circulated freely in St. Petersburg;
they reached Rasputin, and enraged him the more, because, shortly
afterwards, it was Mr. Stolypine who had insisted on having him
expelled from the capital, and who for two whole years had refused to
allow him to enter it again. When, therefore, in the early autumn of
1912 the “prophet” at last was allowed to return to St. Petersburg,
it was with the feelings of the deepest enmity against the Minister
who had exiled him. He had the satisfaction of finding that during
his enforced absence the popularity of Mr. Stolypine had decreased,
and that a considerable number were openly talking about overthrowing
him. Rasputin very soon discovered the use which could be made of this
state of things, which surpassed by far any hopes he might have nursed
of being able to be revenged upon the President of the Cabinet for the
injury which he imagined that the latter had done to him. He proceeded
in all his sermons to compare him with the Antichrist, and to say that
Russia would never be quiet so long as he remained one of its rulers.
The police agent, whose name I have already mentioned, Mr.
Manassevitsch Maniuloff, who always had his eye on Rasputin, and who
had hastened to call upon him as soon as he had seen him return to
the capital, was not slow to notice the now outspoken animosity of
the latter in regard to the Prime Minister, who was offensive to him
as well as to the whole secret police. The latter, finding that it
could no longer do what it pleased, and that it had to respect the
private liberty and life of the peaceful Russian citizens, or else be
called to account by Mr. Stolypine, who ever since his appointment had
been working against the occult powers of the “Okhrana,” had but one
idea; and this was to get rid by fair means or by foul of a master
determined to control the police. It is known in Russia that Mr.
Stolypine’s assassination was the work of the secret police itself, who
had found the murderer in the person of one of its own agents, to whom
it had furnished even the revolver with which to kill the unfortunate
Stolypine. But few people dared relate all that they suspected in
regard to this heinous crime, and fewer still were aware of all its
details, and of the manner in which it had been planned.
The truth of the story is that Mr. Maniuloff secretly took to
Rasputin’s house two or three police agents, to whom the latter said
that God himself had revealed to him that Russia could never be saved
from the perils of revolution until the removal of Mr. Stolypine.
He even blessed the officers, together with a pistol with which he
presented them. It turned out afterwards that this pistol was the
very weapon which the Jew Bagroff fired at the Prime Minister in the
theatre of Kieff during the gala performance given there in honour of
the Emperor’s visit to the town. When Stolypine had succumbed to his
wounds, Rasputin made no secret of the satisfaction which his death
had occasioned to him, and exerted himself in favour of several people
who were supposed to have been privy to the plot that had been hatched
against the life of the Prime Minister. He told his disciples that the
fate which had overtaken the unhappy Stolypine did not surprise him at
all, and that every one of those who would venture to oppose him would
meet with a similar one in the future.
In a certain sense, this threat had an effect on those before whom
it was uttered. People began to dread Rasputin, not on account of
any supernatural powers he might have been endowed with, but because
they saw that he had managed to get into association with individuals
utterly unscrupulous and ready to resort to every means, even to
assassination, in order to come to their own ends. They thought it
better and wiser, therefore, to get out of his way and not to attempt
to thwart him. He became associated in the mind of Russian society
with conspirators similar to the Italian carbonari or Camorrists. The
conviction that, under the veil of religious fervour, he was able to
persuade his satellites to do whatever he pleased, and to hesitate at
nothing in the way of infamy and crime, gradually established itself
everywhere until it was thought advisable to have nothing to do with
him, or else to submit to him absolutely and in everything. It was very
well known that he had had a hand in the murder of Mr. Stolypine, but
not one single person could be found daring enough to say so, and an
atmosphere of impunity enveloped him together with those who worshipped
at his shrine or who had put themselves under his protection.
It was during this same winter of 1912–13 that the name of Rasputin
became more and more familiar to the ears of the general public,
which until that time had only heard about him vaguely and had not
troubled about him at all. It was also then that rumours without
number concerning the prayer meetings at which he presided began to
circulate. Innumerable legends arose in regard to those meetings,
which were compared to the worst assemblies ever held by Khlysty
sectarians. In reality nothing unmentionable took place during their
course. Rasputin was far too clever to apply to the fine ladies, whose
help he considered essential to the progress of his future career, the
same means by which he had subjugated the simple peasant women and
provincial girls whom he had depraved. He remained strictly on the
religious ground with his aristocratic followers, and he tried only to
develop in them feelings of divine fervour verging upon an exaltation
which was close to hysteria in its worst shape or form. In a word, it
was with him and them a case like that of the nuns of Loudun in the
sixteenth century. Had he lived in the middle ages it is certain that
Rasputin would have been burnt at the first stake to be found for the
purpose, which, perhaps, would not have been such a great misfortune.
[Illustration:
_Photograph, International Film Service, Inc._
RASPUTIN AND HIS “COURT”]
I have seen a photograph representing the “Prophet” drinking tea with
the ladies who composed the nucleus of the new church or sect, which
he prided himself upon having founded. It is a curious production.
Rasputin is seen sitting at a table before a samovar or tea urn slowly
sipping out of a saucer the fragrant beverage so dear to Russian
hearts. Around him are grouped the Countess I., Madame W., Madame
T. and other of his feminine admirers, who, with fervent eyes, are
watching him. The expression of these ladies is most curious, and makes
one regret that one could not observe it otherwise than in a picture.
Their faces are filled with an enthusiasm that bears the distinct
stamp of magnetic influence, and it is easy to notice that they are
plunged into that kind of trance when one is no longer accountable for
one’s actions.
The method used by Rasputin was to humiliate all the women of the
higher circles whom he had subjugated, and who had been silly enough
to allow themselves to fall under his spell. Thus he liked to compell
them to kiss his hands and feet, to lick the plates out of which he had
been eating, or to drink out of the glass which he had just drained.
He made them say long prayers in a most fatiguing posture, compelled
them sometimes to remain for hours prostrate on the ground before some
sacred image, or to stand for a whole day in one place without moving,
as a penance for their sins; or again to go for hours without food.
Once he commanded one of them to walk in one night to the village of
Strelna, a distance of about twenty-five miles from St. Petersburg, and
to return immediately, without giving herself any rest at all, with a
twig from a certain tree he had designated to her.
In a word, Doctor Charcot would have found in him an invaluable
assistant in the experiments he was so fond of making. But he did
not go further than these eccentricities. Orgies did not take place
during the prayer meetings in which Rasputin exerted to the utmost
the magnetic powers which he undoubtedly possessed. While he had been
preaching to the humble followers he had at the beginning of his career
of thaumaturgy the theory of free love, to his St. Petersburg disciples
he declared that sensuality was the one great crime which the Almighty
never forgave to those who had rendered themselves guilty of it. It
was in order to subdue the flesh and the devil that he commanded his
victims to mortify themselves together with their senses, and that he
submitted them to the most revolting practices of self-penitence before
which they would have recoiled with horror had they been of sound mind.
There is a curious account of an interview with him which was published
in the _Retsch_, the organ of the Russian Liberal party, immediately
after the death of Rasputin by Prince Lvoff, who had had the curiosity
to speak with the “Prophet.” The Prince was one of the leaders of the
progressive faction of the Duma. This is what he wrote, which I feel
certain will interest my readers sufficiently for them to forgive me
for quoting it in extenso:
“I have had personally twice in my life occasion to speak with
Rasputin. The first time was toward the end of the year 1915,
when I was invited by Prince I. W. Gouranoff to meet him.
When I arrived Rasputin was already there, sitting beside a
large table, with a numerous company gathered around him,
among which figured, in the same quality as myself, as a
curious stranger, the present chief of the military censorship
in Petrograd, General M. A. Adabasch, who was the whole time
attentively watching the “Prophet” from the distant corner
whither he had retired. Rasputin was dressed in his usual
costume of a Russian peasant and was very silent, throwing
only now and then a word or two into the general conversation
or uttering a short sentence, after which he relapsed into
his former silence. In his dress and in his manners he was
absolutely uncouth, and when, for instance, he was offered an
apple he cut a hole at its top with his own very dirty pocket
knife, after which he put the knife aside and tore the fruit
in two with his hands, eating it, peel and all, in the most
primitive manner. After some time he got up and went to the
next room, where he sat down on a large divan with a few ladies
who had joined him, toward whom his manner left very much to be
desired.
I had kept examining him the whole time with great attention,
seeking for that extraordinary glance he was supposed to
possess, to which was attributed his power over people,
but I could not find any trace of it or notice anything
remarkable about him. The expression of his face was that of
a cunning mougik, such as one constantly meets with in our
country, perfectly well aware of the conditions in which he
found himself, and determined to make the best out of them.
Everything in him, to begin with his common dress and to end
with his long hair and his dirty nails, bore the character of
the uncivilised peasant he was. He seemed to realise, better
perhaps than those who surrounded him, that one of his trump
cards was precisely this uncouthness, which ought to have been
repelling, and that if he had put on different clothes and
tried to assimilate the manners of his betters, half of the
interest which he excited would have disappeared. I did not
stay a long time, and went away thoroughly disappointed, and
perhaps even slightly disgusted at the man.
A few months later, in February of the present year, 1916,
I was asked again to meet Rasputin at Baron Miklos’s house.
There I found a numerous and most motley company assembled.
There were two members of the Duma, Messrs. Karaouloff and
Souratchane; General Polivanoff; a great landowner of the
government of Woronege, N. P. Alexieieff; Madame Svetchine;
the Senator S. P. Bieletsky and other people. Ladies were in a
majority. Rasputin remained talking for a long time with the
Deputy Karaouloff in another room than the one in which I found
myself. Then he came to join us in the large drawing room,
where he kept walking up and down with a young girl on his
arm--Mlle. D., a singer by profession--who was entreating him
to arrange for her an engagement at the Russian Opera, which he
promised her to do “for certain,” as he expressed himself.
Every five or ten minutes Rasputin went up to a table on
which were standing several decanters with red wine and other
spirits, and he poured himself a large glass out of one of
them. He swallowed the contents at one gulp, wiping his mouth
afterwards with his sleeve or with the back of his hand. During
one of these excursions he came up to where I was sitting,
and stopped before me exclaiming: “I remember thee. Thou art
a gasser, who writes, and writes, and repeats nothing but
calumnies.” I asked the “Prophet” why he did not say “you” to
me, instead of addressing me with the vulgar appellation of
“thou.”
“I speak in this way with everybody,” he replied. “I have got
my own way in talking with people.”
I made him a remark concerning some words which he had
pronounced badly, adding, “Surely you have learned during the
ten years which you have lived in the capital that one does not
use the expressions which you have employed. And how do you
know that I have written or repeated calumnies. You cannot read
yourself, so that everything you hear is from other people, and
you cannot feel sure whether they tell you the truth.”
“This does not matter,” he replied. “Thou hast written that one
is stealing, and thou knowest thyself how to do so.”
“I do not know how to steal,” I answered. “But I have written
that one is doing so at present everywhere. This it was
necessary to do for the public good.”
“Thou hast done wrong; one must only write the truth. Truth is
everything,” he said.
The conversation was assuming an angry and sharp tone. Rasputin
became enraged at my telling him that all he was saying was
devoid of common sense, and he began shouting at me, at the top
of his voice. “Be quiet, how darest thou say such things. Be
quiet!”
I did not wish to remain quiet, and I began in my turn to shout
at the “Prophet,” who became absolutely furious when I assured
him that I was not a woman whom he could frighten, that I
wanted nothing from him, and that he had better leave me alone,
or it might be the worse for him.
He then howled at me, screaming as loud as he could: “It is an
evil thing for everybody that thou art here!”
When in the following April it came to my knowledge that Mr.
Sturmer wanted to expel me from the capital, I was surprised to
have Baron Miklos come to me one day in the name of Rasputin,
who had asked him to tell me that though I was a “proud man,”
he did not bear me any grudge, that if I wished it, he would
take steps to have the order for my expulsion revoked, and that
at all events, he begged me not to think that he had taken any
part in this whole affair. I categorically refused to avail
myself of the help of Rasputin, and there ended the whole
matter.”
I have reproduced this tale because it seems to me that it helps one
to understand the personality of Rasputin, and because it describes
to perfection the manner in which he used to treat the people with
whom he dealt. Personally, when I interviewed the “Prophet,” I had
the opportunity to convince myself that the impression which he had
produced upon Prince Lvoff was absolutely a correct one, and I made the
same remark which the latter had done in regard to the total absence
of this magnetic strength which Rasputin was supposed to possess over
those with whom he entered into conversation. The man was a fraud
and nothing else. He had been deified by the group of foolish people
whom he had persuaded that he was a messenger from Heaven, come to
announce to Holy Russia that a new Christ had arisen. But his pretended
fascination existed only in the imagination of the persons who
asserted its existence. To the impartial observer he appeared what he
was--an arrogant and insolent peasant, who, knowing admirably well on
which side his bread was buttered, exploited with considerable ability
to his personal advantage the stupidity of his neighbours.
I have already related that his house had become a kind of Stock
Exchange in which everything could be bought or sold, where all kinds
of shady transactions used to take place, and where the most disgusting
bargaining for places and appointments was perpetually going on. Gifts
innumerable were showered upon him, which he pretended he distributed
to the poor, but which in reality he carefully put into his own pocket.
This peasant, who when he had arrived in St. Petersburg for the first
time, had hardly possessed a shirt to his back, had become a very rich
man. He had bought several houses, gambled in stock shares and other
securities, and had contrived to accumulate a banking account which,
if one is to believe all that has been related, amounted to several
millions. From time to time, however, he used to come out with some
munificent offering to some charity or other, with which he threw
dust in people’s eyes. They thought that it was in this manner that
he employed all the money which was showered upon him by his numerous
admirers. It was in this way that he built in St. Petersburg, not far
from the spot where, by a strange coincidence, his murdered body was
afterwards found, a church which was called the Salvation Church, which
adjoined a school for girls. There he used to go often. Whenever he
went he was always met by the clergy in charge with great pomp, as
if he had been a bishop or some great ecclesiastical dignitary, and
was awaited at the door with the cross and holy water. This church was
placed under the special protection of the Metropolitan of Petrograd,
Pitirim, who often celebrated divine service in it, at which Rasputin
always made it a point to be present. But instead of meeting the
Metropolitan, as he ought to have done, he was in the habit of arriving
after him. Mgr. Pitirim, however, awaited his arrival just as he would
have waited for the Emperor. Indeed the submission which the official
head of the clergy of the capital affected in regard to Rasputin is one
of the most extraordinary episodes in the latter’s wonderful career.
In fact, when one reviews all one has heard concerning this personage,
one is tempted to ask the question whether his appearance in St.
Petersburg had not brought along with it an epidemic of madness among
all those who had come in contact with him. It hardly seems possible
that bishops, priests, ministers, high dignitaries, statesmen, even,
or at least men having the pretension to be considered as such, should
have thought it necessary to go and seek the favour of this vulgar,
ill-bred, dirty Russian mougik, devoid of honesty and of scruples,
about whom the most disgraceful stories were being repeated everywhere,
and whose presence in the houses where he was a daily visitor used
to give rise to the worst kind of gossip. This gossip was of such a
nature that decent persons hesitated before repeating it, let alone
believing it. Like an insidious poison it defiled all whom it touched.
One fails to realise by what kind of magic grave men like Mr. Sabler,
for instance, who for some time had occupied the highly responsible
and delicate function of Procurator of the Holy Synod, one of the most
important posts in the whole Russian Empire, could be made so far to
forget himself as to prostrate himself before Rasputin in his eagerness
to become entitled to the latter’s good graces and protection. And that
he did so is at least not a matter of doubt, if we are to believe the
following letter which the monk Illiodore wrote from his exile on the
fifth of May, 1914, to a personage very well known in the political
circles of St. Petersburg.
“I swear to you with the word of honour of an honest man
that the letter in which I called Sabler and Damansky the
instruments of ‘Gricha’ (Rasputin) contained nothing but the
solemn truth, and I repeat it once more, that according to
what Rasputin told to me on the twenty-eighth of June, 1911,
at 3 o’clock in the afternoon in my little cell, Sabler really
kissed the feet of ‘Gricha,’ who, in relating this story to
me, showed me with an expressive pantomime in what way he had
done so. I consider as utterly false and as a barefaced lie the
declaration of Mr. Sabler that he had never prostrated himself
before any one, except before the sacred images. Respectfully
yours,
S. M. TROUFANOFF,
formerly the monk Illiodore.”
It is difficult to say, of course, how much reliance can be placed on
those assertions of Illiodore, and whether Mr. Sabler really thought
it necessary to fall on the ground before Rasputin. But out of this
letter one can infer that the influence of the latter was considered
to be important enough for people to trouble themselves about relating
stories of the kind to show it up. Altogether, one may safely conclude,
out of the very spare material which so far has come to light in regard
to the activity of Rasputin, that we have not yet heard the whole truth
about all the circumstances which accompanied his sudden rise and fall,
and that there must have been in both events things which perhaps will
never come to light. But all of them point out to some dark intrigue
in which he was but one of the pawns, whilst believing himself to be
the principal actor. One must not forget that the Czar himself was at
one time liberal in his ideas and opinions, and that it was entirely
due to his personal initiative that the Constitution, such as it is,
which Russia possessed before his fall was promulgated. This was not
done without arousing terrible animosities, provoking awful discontent.
From the first hour that its contents were published, there were found
persons who began to work against it, and who by their efforts brought
about the revolution of the year 1905, with the help of which they
hoped to bring back the days of absolute government, when every public
functionary was a small Czar in his own way, and when the caprice of
the first police official could send away to distant Siberia innocent
people. This abuse Nicholas II. had tried to put an end to, which was
not forgiven by the crew of rapacious crocodiles, who up to that day
had administered the affairs of the Russian Empire, and they it was
who determined to take their revenge for this noble and disinterested
intention of their sovereign.
Rasputin became the instrument of the reactionary party, which he,
in his turn, contrived to make instrumental in carrying out his own
views and aims. His head had been turned by the unexpected position in
which he had found himself placed. It is not surprising that he lost
his balance and that he ended by considering himself as being what he
had been told by so many different people that he was--a Prophet of
the Lord, having the right to say what he liked, to calumniate whom he
liked, to make use of whatever means he found at hand, to eliminate
from his path any obstacles he might have found intruding upon it.
His name became synonymous with that of this ultraconservative party
which was leading Russia towards its ruin, and which always contrived
to reduce to nothing all the good intentions of the Czar. Rasputin
was a symbol and a flag at the same time; the symbol of superstition,
and the flag of dark reaction. It is impossible to know to this day
whether he was not also what everything points to; that is, an agent of
the German Government, who had entered into German interests, and who
had during the last months of his life been working together with Mr.
Sturmer and the latter’s private secretary, the famous Manassevitsch
Maniuloff, towards a separate peace with the Central Powers, the
conclusion of which would have dishonoured forever the Czar, together
with his Government, and which would have provoked such discontent in
the country that the dynasty might have collapsed under its weight.
There exist at least indications that such a thing was within the
limits of possibility, and, if so, those who put an end to the evil
career of this dangerous man deserve well from their country, and the
leniency which has been shown to them is but the reward for an act of
daring which, though unjustifiable from the moral point of view, is
nevertheless to be condoned by the circumstance that its patriotic aim
was so great that it was worth while risking everything, even remorse,
in order to accomplish it.
In a certain sense, Rasputin was the curse of Russia. Thanks to him,
the purest existences were subjected to a whole series of base attacks
and of vile calumnies. Thanks to him, our enemies were given the
opportunity to pour out upon us, upon our institutions, our statesmen
and even upon our sovereign the poison of their venom, and to represent
us to those who do not know us in a light which, thanks be rendered to
God, was an absolutely false and untrue one.
Russia was far too great for such things to touch her. That Germany
rejoiced at every tale which reached its ears in regard to Rasputin is
evident if one reads its newspapers. That it was in understanding and
accord, if not directly with him, at least with some of those who were
his immediate friends and habitual confidents, has been proved to the
satisfaction of all impartial persons. And that he worked continually
towards establishing an understanding between the Czar and the Kaiser
is another fact of which more than one man in Russia is aware. Whether
he did so intentionally, or whether he was the unconscious instrument
of others cleverer and more cultivated than he ever was or would
become, is still a point that has not been cleared up to the general
satisfaction. But that his so-called influence only existed over
certain weak people, and that the Czar himself never knowingly allowed
it to be exercised in matters of state, is a fact about which there can
exist no doubt for those who knew the sovereign.