RAZPUTIN THE PEASANT
The walls of Ipatiev’s house epitomised the Revolution. One name and one
effigy predominated: the name of Grishka, the silhouette of Razputin,
loathsomely caricatured. One met, here and there, allusions to the
“tsar-bloodsucker” and other catchphrases of the Revolution, but one
felt that they were perfunctory. The one and only unpardonable crime in
the eyes of the Red guards had been the preference shown by the Empress
for a peasant--a common man like one of themselves. What a commentary on
the blindness of the unfortunate Alexandra!
Political propaganda had represented Razputin as a monster of iniquity
and occult powers, whereby he held the Empress under his thraldom. The
_dossier_ kills this legend--it is nothing more.
Gregory Razputin was forty-five at the time of his death (1916). Till
the age of thirty-four he had lived as an ordinary peasant in his native
village of Pokrovskoe, between Tobolsk and Tiumen. He had a wife and
three children, a comfortable home, and enough land to feed himself and
family. Grishka--to use the familiar diminutive of his Christian name,
as is customary in the villages--was a fair type of the Siberian
peasant-farmer. They are endowed with an abundance of mother-wit, wield
the vernacular with consummate skill, and are fine, upstanding fellows,
able to do a day’s work or celebrate a festival equally well. Such was
Gregory Razputin. Nothing indicated a future for him different from the
rest. He might be expected to plough, drink vodka, beat his wife, trick
his neighbours, and pray before the Holy Ikons in the usual sequence
till one day the Voice or the Reaper gathered him in.
One day he heard the Voice. It happened to peasants now and then in
youth, sometimes in the prime of life, and often in their old age. After
that they left their mundane affairs, and prepared themselves for
Eternity. Grishka had been “called” when he was fourteen, and in an
ecstasy had tried to mutilate himself. But he had fallen from grace. Now
twenty years later, the call came again. Grishka was “converted” by
Dmitri Pecherkin, a _strannik_ (wanderer), who had deserted his home in
the same province of Tobolsk to pray at the Holy Places. In 1905
Razputin turned over his farm to his wife, son, and daughters, and
joined Dmitri in his wanderings. Together they visited Mount Athos,
Jerusalem, Kiev, Moscow, and Petrograd.
I have a copy of his work, “My Thoughts and Reflections” (published in
Petrograd, 1915), describing his pilgrimages. It is an assortment of
stereotyped phrases, texts from Scripture, homely proverbs--just the
conversation of an ordinary _strannik_. One is struck with wonderment
that the “author” of such utter commonplace should have influenced the
destinies of a vast Empire, or could for one moment impose upon the
cultured intellect of an Empress.
I believe that Razputin was quite sincere in following Pecherkin, and
that during his earlier days in the capital he was still an earnest
devotee. Bishop Feofan met him in Petrograd and was impressed by his
sincerity. But even at this time (about 1907) he was already inclining
once more towards worldly things. Pecherkin tried in vain to persuade
him to take the vows and join him in a monastery. Razputin had a fancy
for the drawing-rooms of the great city, where he was petted and paraded
by hostesses in search of a sensation. And thus it came to pass that,
with the help of Feofan and the Grand Duchesses Militza and Anastasia
(the Montenegrin Princesses who had already introduced various “saints”
to the mystically disposed sovereigns), Razputin came to the Court.
The diaries and depositions of his daughter Matrena form part of the
_dossier_. Amidst a mass of verbiage one is able to discover here and
there precise landmarks of the Razputin history. One sees the “saint”
gradually drawn into the multiple cog-wheels of Court intrigue; bound
firmly to the family chariot, as his daughters are put to fashionable
schools; having to make money for the girls; obliged to remain a
peasant in garb and language to please his protectress. But a peasant
who is divorced from his normal occupation and has disobeyed the Voice
takes to drink. There is no alternative.
The unhealthy life of the city set its mark on him. “Fish-soup, bread
and _kvass_ with onions, were his daily fare, but he drank red wine and
Madeira ... always jolly in his cups, singing and dancing as the
villagers do”; “whenever we remonstrated with him, he would say that he
could never drink enough to drown the sorrow that was to come.” That is
the description given by his daughter of Razputin “at home” in
Petrograd. But these mild debauches were constantly supplemented by
swinish orgies outside. Many a peasant, placed in the same position,
would have acted in the same way.
Razputin was just an ordinary peasant, except for a certain pathological
propensity, traceable to his attempted self-mutilation. He was rustic
even in the measure of his “perquisites.” In his native Pokrovskoe it
was not considered dishonourable to cheat one’s neighbour, but always in
a small way, of course. So here, this man, who could have amassed a
colossal fortune, contented himself with dabbling in small “affairs”
that brought in a few hundred roubles. His whole estate at the time of
his death did not much exceed £10,000. Matrena declares most positively
that he never possessed or attempted to display at home any occult gift
of mesmerism, healing, or clairvoyancy.
This drunken immoral peasant nevertheless played a political _rôle_. He
gave advice to the Tsar on all sorts of important matters. He even had
the audacity to stamp his foot at Nicholas for not heeding it. We know
that at least on one occasion he directly influenced the Tsar to take a
fatal decision. For the Imperial fête day, December 6/19, 1916, all
political Russia, nobles, burgesses, and peasants, expected the Tsar to
go to the Duma and announce the formation of a Ministry enjoying public
confidence. Alexandra was, of course, violently opposed to any
concession, but she feared the influence of the Army on Nicholas, and
Razputin was produced for the occasion. He succeeded in dissuading the
hapless Monarch, to his undoing and to the ruin of the Army and of
Russia.
I do not propose to rehearse the well-known stories about Razputin’s
influence on the dismissal or appointment of Ministers or prelates.
Those stories are true only in so far as they represent Grishka acting
as the instrument of another person’s will, in most cases Alexandra’s.
He was too ignorant, too petty, to understand political questions. For
instance, he was always urging the Emperor to come into direct contact
with the people. “Get rid of the Ministers. They lie to you. Address
yourself direct to the people. You will then know the truth and
everything will right itself.” Nicholas became rather tired of this
parrot-like repetition. He had heard it all so often from his wife. One
day he told Razputin:--“It sounds very nice, but how is it to be done?
You know quite well that if I took your advice I should very soon lose
my life.” “No, never,” was the reply. “You will be killed by an
intellectual, not by a peasant”--not a convincing or cheerful response.
On one point Razputin took what seemed to be a line of his own: he was
against the war with Germany. “She is too strong. We must be friends,”
he declaimed. This view did not reflect the mind of the Empress. Who had
instilled it into him? It is not difficult to guess. His daughter and
her husband are known to have been acquainted with one of the secret
agents of Germany. Besides, there were also Badmaiev and a number of
other doubtful personages around him. When war broke out Razputin was
lying wounded at Pokrovskoe. The Tsar telegraphed to him about the war.
Grishka fell into such rage that his wound reopened.
He served the German interest in a more subtle and redoubtable manner.
His very existence was bringing about the collapse of Russia by
destroying the faith of the people in the Tsar. All the foremost
supporters and friends of the “saint” were of the German orientation.
That was not a coincidence. Every one who even tolerated Razputin was
helping the enemy.
It being pretty well established that Razputin was the direct cause--in
the Empress’s hands--of the Revolution and the downfall of Russia, I
would ask what the Ludendorffs and their Russian dupes have to say in
justification of the argument that it was the Entente that brought about
the Revolution. Razputin’s relationship to the defeatists was so clear
to everybody in Russia that people--Russians as well as Allies--fell
naturally into the mistake of supposing that the Empress must be
pro-German, since she supported Razputin. Who magnified Razputin before
the war? The _Cologne Gazette_. Who was his arch-apologist? The
pro-German Witte. The Germans had almost as much to do with the Razputin
scandal as they had to do with Lenin and the exploits of his hundred
Jews.[5]
The murder of Razputin evoked the greatest outburst of popular rejoicing
that any act had ever produced. “_Ubili!_” (they have killed) was the
universal greeting. People did not stop to ask who had been killed. They
knew. The whole nation had desired his death, and one wonders that he so
long survived. But his murder was, none the less, a mistake, since he
was merely an ignorant tool, and the circumstances of his end--the
lawless joy that it evoked--only helped the revolutionaries.
Thenceforth, the Empress’s name was in the gutter, and there was only
one hope of salvation for the Tsar--to dissociate himself from his wife.
To do that--to put her away into a monastery as Tsar Peter Alexeievich
would have done--was quite beyond the capacity of a gentle soul like
Nicholas Alexandrovich....
It had been suggested before the Revolution that she should go alone to
England “on a visit.” This argued complete ignorance of the inner life
of the Sovereigns. The Razputin scandal had arisen because Alexandra
morbidly imagined that the destinies of Russia depended upon their joint
faith and prayers--hers and the “saint’s.” Also she was convinced that
without her constant presence and support Nicholas would be lost. Sooner
would she have died than go away, particularly after the death of her
“saint.”
There had been plots to kill Alexandra and even the Tsar. It is curious,
indeed, that her life should have been spared. One must bear in mind the
probability of German “protection.” It is evident that Alexandra’s death
would have put an end to the Razputin scandal and therefore been
unprofitable for Germany. As for Nicholas, the people were on his side
to the last--till the Revolution extinguished in men’s minds the last
vestige of all that was seemly.
The manner of Razputin’s murder is known to all. The man who killed him
is no more. His diary has been published. It gives almost a complete
account of the murder. One feature has escaped attention, and I mention
it because it gives point to the true version of Razputin’s character as
related above. The accomplices had prepared a most elaborate scheme for
killing him, yet in the end it was Purishkevitch with a vulgar revolver
that effected the deed. Poisoned tarts, “doctored” wine, and even a
revolver shot had been in vain. The conspirators had innocently
administered an antidote with the poison; the shooter’s hand had
trembled so that he had failed to hit Razputin standing a few paces
away. But why all this rigmarole? The fact is the conspirators were
affected by the Razputin propaganda; they also believed that the man was
more than mortal. Purishkevich thought that the devil was in him till
the third bullet brought him down. That was an epoch-making shot.
Razputin was fond of identifying his own well-being with that of Russia.
In this, as in other things, he merely copied the Empress. When Khionia
Guseva, incited by the monk Iliodor, who had fallen out with Grishka,
stuck a knife into the “saint,” he announced that “much blood would
flow” and that there would be “woe unutterable if and when he died.” But
he was ever prophesying all sorts of things, good and bad, like the
proverbial tipster. It suited the interested or superstitious to
proclaim him infallible. Anyhow, it did not require much acumen to read
the signs of coming disaster in Russia. Grishka was no fool, and he must
have had a shrewd idea what his own friends and supporters were doing.
But charlatanism “paid,” and he had a family to support and lots of
“friends” coming for assistance, all of which flattered Grishka’s cheap
little soul and kept him on his daily round of prayer and debauch.
Razputin the monster is a fiction, bred in the busy brains of
politicians and elaborated by the teeming imagination of sensational
novelists. Razputin the saint is an imaginary product of a woman’s
diseased mind. Even the stories of the sanctifying baths and other
_khlyst_ (flagellant) doctrines, supposed to have been applied by a
demoniacal Grishka, turn out to be imaginary. It is not unusual for the
peasants in certain parts of Russia to take the steam bath in common. No
strangers are admitted, and there is nothing unseemly in the practice.
It was quite appropriate for a native of Tobolsk. In this and in his
gross familiarities with the other sex Grishka was merely Razputin the
peasant, a village satyr.