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Title: Rasputin and the Russian Revolution
Author: Princess Catherine Radziwill
Release Date: September 21, 2021 [eBook #66358]
Language: English
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at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RASPUTIN AND THE RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION ***
Transcriber’s Note: Italic text is enclosed in _underscores._
RASPUTIN AND THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
[Illustration:
_Photo by Paul Thompson_
GREGORY RASPUTIN
“The Black Monk of Russia”]
RASPUTIN
AND THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
BY
PRINCESS CATHERINE RADZIWILL
(COUNT PAUL VASSILI)
AUTHOR OF
“BEHIND THE VEIL AT THE RUSSIAN COURT,”
“GERMANY UNDER THREE EMPERORS,”
ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
MCMXVIII
COPYRIGHT, 1917,
BY PUBLIC LEDGER COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1918,
BY JOHN LANE COMPANY
Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U. S. A.
TO
MONSIEUR JEAN FINOT
_Editor of the “Revue”_
_My dear Mr. Finot:_--
_Allow me to offer you this little book, which may remind you of the
many conversations we have had together, and of the many letters which
we have exchanged. In doing so, I am fulfilling one of the pleasantest
of duties and trying to express to you all the gratitude which I feel
towards you. Without your kind help, and without your advice, I would
never have had the courage to take a pen in my hand, and all the small
success I may have had in my literary career is entirely due to you,
and to the constant encouragement which you have always given to me,
and which I shall never forget, just as I shall always remember that it
was in the “Revue” that the first article I ever published appeared.
Permit me to-day to thank you from the bottom of my heart, and believe
me to be,_
_Always yours most affectionately,
Catherine Radziwill
(Catherine Kolb-Danvin)_
PUBLISHERS FOREWORD
When the book called “Behind the Veil at the Russian Court” was
published the Romanoff’s were reigning and, considering the fact
that she was living in Russia at the time, the author of it, had her
identity become known, would have risked being subjected to grave
annoyances, and even being sent to that distant Siberia where Nicholas
II is at present exiled. It was therefore deemed advisable to produce
that work as a posthumous one, and “Count Paul Vassili” was represented
as having died before the publication of “his” Memoirs. This however
was not the case, because on the contrary “he” went on collecting
information as to all that was taking place at the Russian Court as
well as in the whole of Russia, and, consigning this information to
a diary, “he” went on writing. If one remembers, “Count Vassili”
distinctly foresaw and prophesied in “his” book most of the things that
have occurred since it was published. This fact will perhaps give added
interest to the present account of the Russian Revolution which now
sees the light of day for the first time. Though devoid of everything
sensational or scandalous it will prove interesting to those who have
cared for the other books of “Count Vassili,” for it contains nothing
but the truth, and has been compiled chiefly out of the narrations
of the principal personages connected in some way or other with the
Russian Revolution. The facts concerning Rasputin, and the details of
this man’s extraordinary career, are, we believe, given out now for the
first time to the American public, which, up to the present moment,
has been fed on more or less untrue and improbable stories or, rather,
“fairy tales,” in regard to this famous adventurer. The truth is far
simpler, but far more human, though humanity does not shine in the best
colours in its description.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PART I.--RASPUTIN 13
PART II.--THE GREAT REVOLUTION 191
PART III.--THE RIDDLE OF THE FUTURE 301
ILLUSTRATIONS
Gregory Rasputin--“The Black Monk of Russia” _Frontispiece_
PAGE
The Ex-Czar and His Family 34
Rasputin and His “Court” 74
Rasputin 94
The First Bolsheviki Cabinet 200
The Bolsheviki Headquarters in Petrograd 220
The Bolsheviki General Staff 230
Soldier and Sailor Citizens’ Duma 240
Foreign Minister Leon Trotzky 250
Meeting Addressed by Nikolai Lenine 260
Alexander Kerensky 276
Revolutionary Crowd in Petrograd 280
Bolsheviki Sailors Buried at Moscow 290
Kerensky Inspiring Troops To Support Revolutionary Government 304
Peace Document of Delegates at Brest-Litovsk Conference
310
The House at Brest-Litovsk Where Peace Negotiations Between the
Russian Bolsheviki and the Austrian-Germans Were Conducted 318
PART I
RASPUTIN
INTRODUCTION
This exposé, based on facts which have come to my knowledge, though
probably far from being complete, aims at depicting the recent state
of things in Russia, and thus to explain how the great changes which
have taken place in my country have been rendered possible. A lot of
exaggerated tales have been put into circulation concerning the Empress
Alexandra, the part she has played in the perturbations that have
shaken Russia from one end to another and the extraordinary influence
which, thanks to her and to her efforts in his behalf, the sinister
personage called Rasputin came to acquire over public affairs in the
vast empire reigned over by Nicholas II. for twenty-two years. A good
many of these tales repose on nothing but imagination, but nevertheless
it is unfortunately too true that it is to the conduct of the Empress,
and to the part she attempted to play in the politics of the world,
that the Romanoffs owe the loss of their throne.
Alexandra Feodorovna has been the evil genius of the dynasty whose head
she married. Without her it is probable that most of the disasters that
have overtaken the Russian armies would not have happened, and it is
certain that the crown which had been worn by Peter the Great and by
Catherine II. would not have been disgraced. She was totally unfit for
the position to which chance had raised her, and she never was able
to understand the character or the needs of the people over which she
ruled.
Monstrously selfish, she never looked beyond matters purely personal
to her or to her son, whom she idolized in an absurd manner. She,
who had been reared in principles of true liberalism, who had had
in her grandmother, the late Queen Victoria, a perfect example of a
constitutional sovereign, became from the very first day of her arrival
in Russia the enemy of every progress, of every attempt to civilise
the nation which owned her for its Empress. She gave her confidence
to the most ferocious reactionaries the country possessed. She tried,
and in a certain degree succeeded, in inspiring in her husband the
disdain of his people and the determination to uphold an autocratic
system of government that ought to have been overturned and replaced by
an enlightened one. Haughty by nature and by temperament, she had an
unlimited confidence in her own abilities, and especially after she had
become the mother of the son she had longed for during so many years,
she came to believe that everything she wished or wanted to do had to
be done and that her subjects were but her slaves. She had a strong
will and much imperiousness in her character, and understood admirably
the weak points in her husband, who became but a puppet in her hands.
* * * * *
She herself was but a plaything in the game of a few unscrupulous
adventurers who used her for the furtherance of their own ambitious,
money-grubbing schemes, and who, but for the unexpected events that
led to the overthrow of the house of Romanoff, would in time have
betrayed Russia into sullying her fair fame as well as her reputation
in history.
* * * * *
Rasputin, about whom so much has been said, was but an incident in
the course of a whole series of facts, all of them more or less
disgraceful, and none of which had a single extenuating circumstance to
put forward as an excuse for their perpetration.
* * * * *
He himself was far from being the remarkable individual he has been
represented by some people, and had he been left alone it is likely
that even if one had heard about him it would not have been for any
length of time.
* * * * *
Those who hated him did so chiefly because they had not been able to
obtain from him what they had wanted, and they applied themselves to
paint him as much more dangerous than he really was. They did not know
that he was but the mouthpiece of other people far cleverer and far
more unscrupulous even than himself, who hid themselves behind him
and who moved him as they would have done pawns in a game of chess
according to their personal aims and wants. These people it was who
nearly brought Russia to the verge of absolute ruin, and they would
never have been able to rise to the power which they wielded had not
the Empress lent herself to their schemes. Her absolute belief in the
merits of the wandering preacher, thanks to his undoubted magnetic
influence, contrived to get hold of her mind and to persuade her that
so long as he was at her side nothing evil could befall her or her
family.
It is not generally known outside of Russia that Alexandra Feodorovna
despised her husband, and that she made no secret of the fact. She
considered him as a weak individual, unable to give himself an account
of what was going on around him, who had to be guided and never left to
himself. Her flatterers, of whom she had many at a time, had persuaded
her that she possessed all the genius and most of the qualities of
Catherine II., and that she ought to follow the example of the latter
by rallying around her a sufficient number of friends to effect a
palace revolution which would transform her into the reigning sovereign
of that Russia which she did not know and whose character she was
unable to understand. Love for Nicholas II. she had never had, nor
esteem for him, and from the very first moment of her marriage she had
affected to treat him as a negligible quantity. But influence over him
she had taken good care to acquire. She had jealously kept away from
him all the people from whom he could have heard the truth or who could
have signalled to him the dangers which his dynasty was running by the
furtherance of a policy which had become loathsome to the country and
on account of which the war with Germany had taken such an unexpected
and dangerous course.
The Empress, like all stupid people, and her stupidity has not been
denied, even by her best friends, believed that one could rule a nation
by terror. She, therefore, always interposed herself whenever Nicholas
II. was induced to adopt a more liberal system of government and urged
him to subdue by force aspirations it would have been far better for
him to have encouraged. She had listened to all the representatives of
that detestable old bureaucratic system which gave to the police the
sole right to dispose of people’s lives and which relied on Siberia and
the knout to keep in order an aggrieved country eager to be admitted to
the circle of civilised European nations.
Without her and without her absurd fears, it is likely that the first
Duma would not have been dissolved. Without her entreaties, it is
probable that the troops composing the garrison at St. Petersburg
would not have been commanded to fire at the peaceful population of
the capital on that January day when, headed by the priest Gapone, it
had repaired to the Winter Palace to lay its wrongs before the Czar,
whom it still worshipped at that time. She was at the bottom of every
tyrannical action which took place during the reign of Nicholas II. And
lately she was the moving spirit in the campaign, engineered by the
friends of Rasputin, to conclude a separate peace with Germany.
In the long intrigue which came to an end by the publication of the
Manifesto of Pskov, Rasputin undoubtedly played a considerable part,
but all unconsciously. Those who used him, together with his influence,
were very careful not to initiate him into their different schemes.
But they paid him, they fed him, they gave him champagne to drink and
pretty women to make love to in order to induce him to represent them
to the Empress as being the only men capable of saving Russia, about
which she did not care, and her crown, to which she was so attached.
With Rasputin she never discussed politics, nor did the Emperor. But
with his friends she talked over every political subject of importance
to the welfare of the nation, and being convinced that they were the
men best capable of upholding her interests, she forced them upon her
husband and compelled him to follow the advice which they gave. She
could not bear contradiction, and she loved flattery. She was convinced
that no one was more clever than herself, and she wished to impose her
views everywhere and upon every occasion.
Few sovereigns have been hated as she has been. In every class of
society her name was mentioned with execration, and following the
introduction of Rasputin into her household this aversion which she
inspired grew to a phenomenal extent. She was openly accused of
degrading the position which she held and the crown which she wore. In
every town and village of the empire her conduct came to be discussed
and her person to be cursed. She was held responsible for all the
mistakes that were made, for all the blunders which were committed, for
all the omissions which had been deplored. And when the plot against
Rasputin came to be engineered it was as much directed against the
person of Alexandra Feodorovna as against that of her favourite, and it
was she whom the people aimed to strike through him.
Had she shown some common sense after the murder of a man whom she well
knew was considered the most dangerous enemy of the Romanoff dynasty
things might have taken a different course. Though every one was agreed
as to the necessity of a change in the system of government of Russia,
though a revolution was considered inevitable, yet no one wished it
to happen at the moment when it did, and all political parties were
agreed as to the necessity of postponing it until after the war. But
the exasperation of the Empress against those who had removed her
favourite led her to trust even more in those whom he had introduced
and recommended to her attention. She threw herself with a renewed
vigour into their schemes, urging her husband to dishonour himself,
together with his signature, by turning traitor to his allies and to
his promises. She wanted him to conclude a peace with Germany that
would have allowed her a free hand in her desires to punish all the
people who had conspired against her and against the man upon whom she
had looked as a saviour and a saint. Once this fact was recognised the
revolution became inevitable. It is to the credit of Russia that it
took place with the dignity that has marked its development and success.
This, in broad lines, is the summary of the causes that have brought
about the fall of the Romanoff dynasty, and they must never be lost
sight of when one is trying to describe it. It is, however, far too
early to judge the Russian revolution in its effects because, for
one thing, it is far from being at an end, and may yet take quite an
unexpected turn. For another, the events connected with it are still
too fresh to be considered from an objective point of view. I have,
therefore, refrained from expressing an opinion in this narrative. My
aim has been to present to my readers a description of the personality
of Rasputin, together with the part, such as I know it, that he has
played in the development of Russian history during the last five years
or so, and afterward to describe the course of the revolution and the
reasons that have led to its explosion in such an unexpected manner.
CHAPTER I
We live in strange times, when strange things happen which at first
sight seem unintelligible and the reason for which we fail to grasp.
Even in Russia, where Rasputin had become the most talked-of person
in the whole empire, few people fully realised what he was and what
had been the part which he had played in Russia’s modern history. Yet
during the last ten years his name had become a familiar one in the
palaces of the great nobles whose names were written down in the Golden
Book of the aristocracy of the country, as well as in the huts of the
poorest peasants in the land. At a time when incredulity was attacking
the heart and the intelligence of the Russian nation the appearance of
this vagrant preacher and adept of one of the most persecuted sects
in the empire was almost as great an event as was that of Cagliostro
during the years which preceded the fall of the old French monarchy.
There was, however, a great difference between the two personages.
One was a courtier and a refined man of the world, while the other
was only an uncouth peasant, with a crude cunning which made him
discover soon in what direction his bread could be buttered and what
advantages he might reap out of the extraordinary positions to which
events, together with the ambitions of a few, had carried him. He was
a perfect impersonation of the kind of individual known in the annals
of Russian history as “Wremienschtchik,” literally “the Man of the
Day,” an appellation which since the times of Peter the Great had clung
to all the different favourites of Russian sovereigns. There was one
difference, however, and this a most essential one. He had never been
the favourite of the present Czar, who perhaps did not feel as sorry as
might have been expected by his sudden disappearance from the scene of
the world.
I shall say a thing which perhaps will surprise my readers. Personally,
Rasputin was never the omnipotent man he was believed to be, and
more than once most of the things which were attributed to him were
not at all his own work. But he liked the public to think that he
had a finger in every pie that was being baked. And he contrived to
imbue Russian society at large with such a profound conviction that
he could do absolutely everything he chose in regard to the placing
or displacing of people in high places, obtaining money grants and
government contracts for his various “protégés,” that very often the
persons upon whom certain things depended hastened to grant them to
those who asked in the name of Rasputin, out of sheer fright of finding
this terrible being in their way. They feared to refuse compliance with
any request preferred to them either by himself or by one who could
recommend himself on the strength of his good offices on their behalf.
But Rasputin was the tool of a man far more clever than himself, Count
Witte. It was partly due to the latter’s influence and directions that
he tried to mix himself up in affairs of state and to give advice to
people whom he thought to be in need of it. He was an illiterate brute,
but he had all the instincts of a domineering mind which circumstances
and the station of life in which he had been born had prevented
from developing. He had also something else--an undoubted magnetic
force, which allowed him to add auto-suggestion to all his words and
which made even unbelieving people succumb sometimes to the hypnotic
practices which he most undoubtedly exercised to a considerable extent
during the last years of his adventurous existence.
Amidst the discontent which, it would be idle to deny, had existed
in the Russian empire during the period which immediately preceded
the great war the personality of Rasputin had played a great part
in giving to certain people the opportunity to exploit his almost
constant presence at the side of the sovereign as a means to foment
public opinion against the Emperor and to throw discredit upon him by
representing him as being entirely under the influence of the cunning
peasant who, by a strange freak of destiny, had suddenly become far
more powerful than the strongest ministers themselves. The press
belonging to the opposition parties had got into the habit of attacking
him and calling his attendance on the imperial court an open scandal,
which ought in the interest of the dynasty to be put an end to by every
means available.
In the Duma his name had been mentioned more than once, and always
with contempt. Every kind of reproach had been hurled at him, and
others had not been spared. He had become at last a fantastic kind
of creature, more exploited than exploiting, more destroyable than
destructive, one whose real “rôle” will never be known to its full
extent, who might in other countries than Russia and at another time
have become the founder of some religious order or secret association.
His actions when examined in detail do not differ very much from those
of the fanatics which in Paris under the reign of Louis XV. were called
the “Convulsionnaires,” and who gave way to all kind of excesses
under the pretext that these were acceptable to God by reason of the
personality of the people who inspired them. In civilised, intelligent,
well-educated Europe such an apparition would have been impossible,
but in Russia, that land of mysteries and of deep faiths, where there
still exist religious sects given to all kinds of excesses and to
attacks of pious madness (for it can hardly be called by any other
name), he acquired within a relatively short time the affections of a
whole lot of people. They were inclined to see in him a prophet whose
prayers were capable of winning for them the Divine Paradise for which
their hungry souls were longing. There was nothing at all phenomenal
about it. It was even in a certain sense quite a natural manifestation
of this large Russian nature, which is capable of so many good or
bad excesses and which has deeply incrusted at the bottom of its
heart a tendency to seek the supernatural in default of the religious
convictions which, thanks to circumstances, it has come to lose.
The American public is perhaps not generally aware of the character of
certain religious sects in Russia, which is considered to be a country
of orthodoxy, with the Czar at its head, and where people think there
is no room left for any other religion than the official one to develop
itself. In reality, things are very different, and to this day, outside
of the recognised nonconformists, who have their own bishops and
priests, and whose faith is recognised and acknowledged by the State,
there are any number of sects, each more superstitious and each more
powerful than the other in regard to the influence which they exercise
over their adherents. These, though not numerous by any means, yet are
actuated by such fanaticism that they are apt at certain moments to
become subjects of considerable embarrassment to the authorities. Some
are inspired by the conviction that the only means to escape from the
clutches of the devil consists in suicide or in the murder of other
people.
For instance, the Baby Killers, or Dietooubitsy, as they are called,
think it a duty to send to Heaven the souls of new-born infants, which
they destroy as soon as they see the light of day, thinking thus to
render themselves agreeable to the Almighty by snatching children away
from the power of the evil one. Another sect, which goes by the name
of Stranglers, fully believes that the doors of Heaven are only opened
before those who have died a violent death, and whenever a relative
or friend is dangerously ill they proceed to smother him under the
weight of many pillows so as to hasten the end. The Philipovtsy preach
salvation through suicide, and the voluntary death of several people in
common is considered by them as a most meritorious action. Sometimes
whole villages decide to unite themselves in one immense holocaust and
barricade themselves in a house, which is afterward set on fire.
An incident that occurred during the reign of Alexander II. is
remembered to this day in Russia. A peasant called Khodkine persuaded
twenty people to retire together with him into a grotto hidden in the
vast forests of the government of Perm, where he compelled them to die
of hunger. Two women having contrived to escape, the fanatics, fearing
that they might be denounced, killed themselves with the first weapons
which fell under their hand. It was their terror that they might find
themselves compelled to renounce their sinister design, and thus fall
again into the clutches of that Satan for fear of whom they had made
up their minds to encounter an awful death. Even as late as the end of
the last century such acts of fanaticism could be met with here and
there in the east and centre of Russia. In 1883, under the reign of the
father of the last Czar, a peasant in the government of Riazan, called
Joukoff, burnt himself to death by setting fire to his clothes, which
he had previously soaked in paraffin, and expired under the most awful
torments, singing hymns of praise to the Lord.
Among all these heresies there are two which have attracted more
than the others the attention of the authorities, thanks to their
secret rites and to their immoral tendencies. They are the Skoptsy,
or Voluntary Eunuchs, about which it is useless to say anything here,
and the Khlysty, or Flagellants, which to this day has a considerable
number of adepts and to which Rasputin undoubtedly belonged, to which,
in fact, he openly owed allegiance. This sect, which calls itself “Men
of God,” has the strangest rites which human imagination can invent.
According to its precepts, a human creature should try to raise its
soul toward the Divinity with the help of sexual excesses of all kinds.
During their assemblies they indulge in a kind of waltz around and
around the room, which reminds one of nothing so much as the rounds of
the Dancing Dervishes in the East. They dance and dance until their
strength fails them, when they drop to the floor in a kind of trance or
ecstasy, during which, being hardly accountable for their actions, they
imagine that they see Christ and the Virgin Mary among them. They then
threw themselves into the embrace of the supposed divinities.
As a rule the general public knows very little concerning these sects,
but I shall quote here a passage out of a book on Russia by Sir Donald
Mackenzie Wallace, which is considered to this day as a standard work
in regard to its subject. “Among the ‘Khlysty,’” he writes, “there
are men and women who take upon themselves the calling of teachers
and prophets, and in this character they lead a strict, ascetic
life, refrain from the most ordinary and innocent pleasures, exhaust
themselves by long fasting and wild ecstatic religious exercises and
abhor marriage. Under the excitement caused by their supposed holiness
and inspiration, they call themselves not only teachers and prophets,
but also Saviours, Redeemers, Christs, Mothers of God. Generally
speaking, they call themselves simply gods and pray to each other as
to real gods and living Christs and Madonnas. When several of these
teachers come together at a meeting they dispute with each other in a
vain, boasting way as to which of them possesses most grace and power.
In this rivalry they sometimes give each other lusty blows on the ear,
and he who bears the blows the most patiently, turning the other cheek
to the smiter, acquires the reputation of having the most holiness.
“Another sect belonging to the same category and which indeed
claims close kindred with it is the Jumpers, among whom the
erotic element is disagreeably prominent. Here is a description
of their religious meetings, which are held during summer in a
forest and during winter in some outhouse or barn. After due
preparation prayers are read by the chief teacher, dressed in
a white robe and standing in the midst of the congregation.
At first he reads in an ordinary tone of voice and then
passes gradually into a merry chant. When he remarks that the
chanting has sufficiently acted on the hearers he begins to
jump. The hearers, singing likewise, follow his example. Their
ever-increasing excitement finds expression in the highest
possible jumps. This they continue as long as they can--men
and women alike yelling like enraged savages. When all are
thoroughly exhausted the leader declares that he hears the
angels singing, and then begins a scene which cannot be here
described.”
I have quoted this passage in full because it may give to the reader
who is not versed in the details of Russian existence and Russian
psychology the key to the circumstances that helped Rasputin to absorb
for such a considerable number of years the attention of the public in
Russia, and which, in fact, made him possible as a great ruling, though
not governing, force in the country. In some ways he had appealed
to the two great features of the human character in general and of
the Russian character in particular--mysticism and influence of the
senses. It is not so surprising as it might seem at first sight that he
contrived to ascend to a position which no one who knew him at first
ever supposed he would or could attain.
At the same time I must, in giving a brief sketch of the career of
this extraordinary individual, protest against the many calumnies
which have associated him with names which I will not mention here out
of respect and feelings of patriotism. It is sufficiently painful to
have to say so, but German calumny, which spares no one, has used its
poisoned arrows also where Rasputin came to be discussed. It has tried
to travesty maternal love and anxiety into something quite different,
and it has attempted to sully what it could not touch. There have been
many sad episodes in this whole story of Rasputin, but some of the
people who have been mentioned in connection with them were completely
innocent of the things for which they have been reproached. Finally,
the indignation which these vile and unfounded accusations roused in
the hearts of the true friends and servants of the people led to the
drama which removed forever from the surface of Russian society the
sectarian who unfortunately had contrived to glide into its midst.
The one extraordinary thing about Rasputin is that he was not murdered
sooner. He was so entirely despised and so universally detested all
over Russia that it was really a miracle that he could remain alive so
long a time after it had been found impossible to remove him from the
scene of the world by other than violent means. It was a recognised
fact that he had had a hand in all kinds of dirty money matters and
that no business of a financial character connected with military
expenditure could be brought to a close without his being mixed in
it. About this, however, I shall speak later on in trying to explain
how the Rasputin legend spread and how it was exploited by all kinds
of individuals of a shady character, who used his name for purposes
of their own. The scandal connected with the shameless manner in
which he became associated with innumerable transactions more or less
disreputable was so enormous that unfortunately it extended to people
and to names that should never have been mentioned together with him.
* * * * *
It must never be forgotten, and I cannot repeat this sufficiently,
that Rasputin was a common peasant of the worst class of the Russian
moujiks, devoid of every kind of education, without any manners and in
his outward appearance more disgusting than anything else. It would be
impossible to explain the influence which he undoubtedly contrived to
acquire upon some persons belonging to the highest social circles if
one did not take into account this mysticism and superstition which lie
at the bottom of the Slav nature and the tendency which the Russian
character has to accept as a manifestation of the power of the divinity
all things that touch upon the marvellous or the unexplainable.
Rasputin in a certain sense appeared on the scene of Russian social
life at the very moment when his teachings could become acceptable, at
the time when Russian society had been shaken to its deepest depths by
the revolution which had followed upon the Japanese war and when it was
looking everywhere for a safe harbour in which to find a refuge.
* * * * *
At the beginning of his career and when he was introduced into the most
select circles of the Russian capital, thanks to the caprices and the
fancies of two or three fanatic orthodox ladies who had imagined that
they had found in him a second Savonarola and that his sermons and
teachings could provoke a renewal of religious fervour, people laughed
at him and at his feminine disciples, and made all kinds of jokes, good
and bad, about him and them. But this kind of thing did not last long
and Rasputin, who, though utterly devoid of culture, had a good deal
of the cunning which is one of the distinctive features of the Russian
peasant, was the first to guess all the possibilities which this sudden
“engouement” of influential people for his person opened out before
him and to what use it could be put for his ambition as well as his
inordinate love of money. He began by exacting a considerable salary
for all the prayers which he was supposed to say at the request of his
worshippers, and of all the ladies, fair or unfair, who had canonised
him in their enthusiasm for all the wonderful things which he was
continually telling them. He was eloquent in a way and at the beginning
of his extraordinary thaumaturgic existence had not yet adopted the
attitude which he was to assume later on--of an idol, whom every one
had to adore.
[Illustration:
_Photograph, International Film Service, Inc._
THE EX-CZAR AND HIS FAMILY]
* * * * *
He was preaching the necessity of repenting of one’s sins, making
due penance for them after a particular manner, which he described
as being the most agreeable to God, and praying constantly and with
unusual fervour for the salvation of orthodox Russia. He contrived
most cleverly to play upon the chord of patriotism which is always so
developed in Russians, and to speak to them of the welfare of their
beloved fatherland whenever he thought it advantageous to his personal
interests to do so. He succeeded in inspiring in his adepts a faith
in his own person and in his power to save their souls akin to that
which is to be met with in England and in America among the sect of
the Christian Scientists, and he very rapidly became a kind of Russian
Mrs. Eddy. A few hysterical ladies, who were addicted to neuralgia or
headaches, suddenly found themselves better after having conversed or
prayed with him, and they spread his fame outside the small circle
which had adopted him at the beginning of his career. One fine day a
personal friend of the reigning Empress, Madame Wyroubourg, introduced
him at Tsarskoie Selo, under the pretext of praying for the health
of the small heir to the Russian throne, who was occasioning some
anxiety to his parents. It was from that day that he became a personage.
* * * * *
His success at court was due to the superstitious dread with which
he contrived to inspire the Empress in regard to her son. She was
constantly trembling for him, and being very religiously inclined, with
strong leanings toward mysticism, she allowed herself to be persuaded
more by the people who surrounded her than by Rasputin himself. She
believed that the man of whose holiness she was absolutely persuaded,
could by his prayers alone obtain the protection of the Almighty for
her beloved child. An accidental occurrence contributed to strengthen
her in this conviction. There were persons who were of the opinion
that the presence of Rasputin at Tsarskoie Selo was not advantageous
for many reasons. Among them was Mr. Stolypine, then Minister of the
Interior, and he it was who made such strong representations that at
last Rasputin himself deemed it advisable to return to his native
village of Pokrovskoie, in Siberia. A few days after his departure the
little Grand Duke fell seriously ill and his mother became persuaded
that this was a punishment for her having allowed the vagrant preacher
to be sent away. Rasputin was recalled, and after this no one ever
spoke again of his being removed anywhere. From that time all kinds of
adventurers began to lay siege to him and to do their utmost to gain an
introduction.
Russia was still the land where a court favourite was all-powerful,
and Rasputin was held as such, especially by those who had some
personal interest in representing him as the successor to Menschikoff
under Peter the Great, Biren under the Empress Anne and Orloff under
Catherine II. He acquired a far greater influence outside Tsarskoie
Selo than he ever enjoyed in the imperial residence itself, and he
made the best of it, boasting of a position which in reality he did
not possess. The innumerable state functionaries, who in Russia
unfortunately always have the last word to say everywhere and in
everything and whose rapacity is proverbial, hastened to put themselves
at the service of Rasputin and to grant him everything which he asked,
in the hope that in return he would make himself useful to them.
A kind of bargaining established itself between people desirous of
making a career and Rasputin, eager to enrich himself no matter by what
means. He began by playing the intermediary in different financial
transactions for a substantial consideration, and at last he thought
himself entitled to give his attention to matters of state. This was
the saddest side of his remarkable career as a pseudo-Cagliostro. He
had a good deal of natural intelligence, and while being the first to
laugh at fair ladies who clustered around him, he understood at once
that he could make use of them. This he did not fail to do. He adopted
toward them the manners of a stern master, and treated them like his
humble slaves. At last he ended by leading the existence of a man of
pleasure, denying himself nothing, especially his fondness for liquor
of every kind. At that time there was no prohibition in Russia and,
like all Russian peasants, Rasputin was very fond of vodka, to which he
never missed adding a substantial quantity of champagne whenever he
found the opportunity.
I shall abstain from touching upon the delicate point of the orgies
to which it is related that Rasputin was in the habit of addicting
himself, the more so because I do not really believe these ever took
place in those higher circles of society where it was said they
regularly occurred. That strange things may have happened among the
common people, who in far greater numbers than it has ever been known,
used to attend the religious meetings which he held, I shall not deny.
It must always be remembered that Rasputin belonged to the religious
sect of the Khlysty, of whose assemblies we have read the description,
and it is quite likely, and even probable, that the assemblies of these
sectarians at which he presided were not different from the others to
which these heretics crowded. But I feel absolutely convinced that as
regards the relations of the adventurer with the numerous ladies of
society silly enough to believe in him and in his gifts of prophecy,
these consisted only of superstitious reverence on one side and
exploitation of human stupidity on the other.
I must once more insist on the point that the apparition of Rasputin
in Russian society had nothing wonderful about it, and that the only
strange thing is that such a fuss was made. Before his time people
belonging to the highest social circles had become afflicted with
religious manias of one kind or another out of that natural longing for
something to believe in and to worship which lies hidden at the bottom
of the character of every Russian who has the leisure, or the craving,
to examine seriously the difficult and complicated problems of a future
life and of the faith one ought to follow and to believe in.
In 1817 there was discovered in the very heart of St. Petersburg,
holding its meetings in an imperial residence (the Michael Palace), a
religious sect of most pronounced mystical tendencies, presided over
by a lady belonging to the best circles of the capital--the widow of a
colonel, Madame Tatarinoff. In her apartments used to gather officers,
State functionaries, women and girls of good family and excellent
education who, with slight variations, practised all the religious
rites of the Khlystys. One of the Ministers of Alexander I., Prince
Galitzyne, was suspected of having honoured these assemblies with his
presence. Thanks to a letter which accidentally fell into the hands
of the police, the Government became aware of what was going on, and
Madame Tatarinoff, this Russian Madame Guyon, expiated in exile in a
distant province of Siberia the ecstasies which she had practised and
which she had allowed others to practise under her roof. Some of her
disciples were prosecuted, but the greater number escaped scot free.
The authorities did not care to increase the scandal which this affair
had aroused in the capital.
Much later, in 1878, after the Russo-Turkish war, which, like the
Japanese affair, had been followed by a strong revolutionary movement
in the country that culminated in the assassination of the Czar,
Alexander II., another prophet, this time of foreign origin, appeared
on the social horizon of St. Petersburg society, where he made a
considerable number of converts. This was the famous Lord Radstock,
whose doctrines were taken up by a gentleman who up to that time
had been known as one of the gayest among the gay, a colonel in the
Guards--Mr. Basil Paschkoff. He was enormously rich, and put all his
vast fortune at the service of the religious craze which had seized
him. He used his best efforts to convert to the doctrine of salvation
through faith only not alone his friends and relatives, but also the
poorer classes of the population of the capital, devoting in particular
his attention to the cab drivers. All these people used to meet at
his house, where they mingled with persons of the highest rank and
standing, such as Count Korff, and a former Minister, Count Alexis
Bobrinsky. Later on the whole Tchertkoff family, to which belonged
the famous friend of Count Leo Tolstoy, associated itself with them,
and, indeed, displayed the greatest fanaticism in regard to its
participation in the doctrines of the new sect.
The Paschkovites, as they came to be called, had nothing at all in
common with the Khlystys. Their morals were absolutely unimpeachable,
and what they preached was simply the necessity to conform one’s morals
were absolutely unimpeachable, and what they explained and commented
upon, each person according to his own light. They were Protestants in
a certain sense, inasmuch as their views were distinctly Protestant
ones. But they had much more in common with the nonconformists than
the real followers of Luther or of Calvin. They were a kind of refined
Salvation Army, if this expression can be forgiven me; though they
never acquired the importance, nor did the good which the latter has
done, perhaps because they could never make any practical application
of the principles and of the ideas which animated them. But at one time
the Paschkovist craze was just as strong as the Rasputin one became
later on, and Lord Radstock and Mr. Paschkoff were considered just as
much prophets among their own particular circle as was Rasputin among
the fanatical ladies who had taken him up.
These crises of religious mania are regular occurrences in Russian
higher social circles when unusually grave circumstances arrive to
shake their equanimity. Seen from this particular point of view,
the apparition of Rasputin and the importance which his personality
acquired in the life of the Russian upper classes present nothing very
wonderful. Before him other so-called prophets had kept the attention
of the public riveted upon their doings and their actions.
What distinguished his short passage was the fact that it was made
the occasion by the natural enemies of the empire, consisting of the
discontented at home, and of the Germans outside the frontier, to
discredit the dynasty as well as those whose life was spent in its
immediate vicinity and to present this figure of the vagrant half-monk
and half-layman, who preached a new relation to those foolish enough to
listen to him, as being one of almost gigantic importance, who could at
his will and fancy direct the course of public affairs and lead them
wherever he wanted.
My object in this study will be to show Rasputin for what he really
was, and in retracing the different vicissitudes of his strange career,
not to give way to the many exaggerations, which, in familiarising
people abroad with his person and with his name, have made out of him
something quite wonderful, and almost equal in power with the Czar
himself. It is time to do away with such legends and to bring Rasputin
back to his proper level--a very able and cunning, half-cultured
peasant, who owed his successes only to the fanaticism of the few, and
to the interest which many had in dissimulating themselves behind him,
in order to bring their personal wishes to a successful end. It is not
Rasputin who performed most of the actions put to his credit. It was
those who influenced him, who pushed him forward and who, thanks to
him, became both rich and powerful. He has disappeared. I wish we could
be as sure that they have disappeared along with him.
CHAPTER II
The beginning of the career of Gregory Rasputin is shrouded with a veil
of deep mystery. He was a native of Siberia, of a small village in the
government of Tobolsk, called Pokrovskoie. Some people relate that
when quite a youth he was compromised in a crime which attracted some
attention at the time--the murder of a rich merchant who was travelling
from Omsk to Tobolsk to acquire from an inhabitant of the latter town
some gold diggings, of which he wished to dispose. This merchant
was known to carry a large sum of money, and as he never reached
his destination inquiries were started. At last his body was found,
with the head battered by blows, hidden in a ditch by the high road,
together with that of the coachman who had driven him. The murderers
were never discovered, but dark rumours concerning the participation of
the youth Rasputin in the deed spread all over the village.
Whether it was the desire to put an end to them, or remorse for an
action of which he knew himself to be guilty, it is difficult to say,
but the fact remains that suddenly Gricha, as he was called, developed
mystical tendencies and took to attending some religious meetings at
which a certain wandering pilgrim used to preach. The latter used to
go from place to place in Siberia predicting the end of the world and
the advent of the dreaded day of Judgment when Christ would once again
appear to demand from humanity an account of its various good or bad
actions. For something like two years Rasputin followed him, until at
last he began himself to assume the character of a lay preacher, to
apply himself to the study of the Scriptures and to try to establish a
sect of his own, the principles of which he exposed to his followers in
these terms:
I am possessed of the Holy Spirit, and it is only through
me that one can be saved. In order to do so, one must unite
oneself with me in body and soul. Everything which proceeds
from me is holy, and cleanses one from sin.
On the strength of this theory, Rasputin declared that he could do
whatever he liked or wished. He surrounded himself with worshippers
of both sexes, who believed that by a close union with him they could
obtain their eternal salvation, together with divine forgiveness for
any sins they might have committed during their previous existence.
Strange tales began to be related concerning the religious assemblies
at which the new prophet presided. But, nevertheless, the whole
village of Pokrovskoie, whither he had returned after his few years’
wanderings, accepted his teachings and submitted to his decrees with
scarcely any exceptions. These unbelievers were looked upon askance
by the majority of the inhabitants, who had succumbed to the “monk’s”
power of fascination and hypnotism. It was with nothing else that
Rasputin kept his “flock” subjugated. He introduced among them the
cult of his own person, together with certain rites which he called
“sacrifice with prayer.”
According to the narratives of some people, who out of curiosity had
attended these ceremonies, this is how they proceeded: In the night,
as soon as the first stars had become visible in the sky, Rasputin,
with the help of his disciples, dragged some wood into a deep ditch dug
for the purpose and lighted a huge bonfire. On a tripod placed in the
midst of this fire was put a cup full of incense and different herbs,
around which people began to dance, holding themselves by the hand all
the while, and singing in a voice which became louder and louder as the
wild exercise became more and more accelerated different hymns which
always ended with the phrase: “Forgive us our sins, O Lord, forgive us
our sins.”
* * * * *
The dance went on until people fell exhausted to the ground and groans
and tears replaced the former singing. The fire died out slowly and,
when darkness had become complete, the voice of Rasputin was heard
calling upon his disciples to proceed to the sacrifice which God
required them to perform. Then followed a scene of general orgy.
* * * * *
As one can see by this tale, the strange practices introduced by the
seer, about whom people were already beginning to talk, differed in
no way from those generally in use among the Khlysty, and, indeed,
Rasputin made no secret of his allegiance to this particular form of
heresy, in which, however, he had introduced a few alterations. For
instance, he did not admit that the souls of his followers could be
saved by a general prayer, but only thanks to one uttered in common
with him, and by a complete submission to his will. Some persons have
alleged that during the early wanderings of Rasputin he had gone as far
as China and Thibet, and there learned some Buddhist practices, but
this is hardly probable, as in that case his instruction would have
been more developed than it was. It is far more likely that during his
travels he had met with exiled sectarians belonging to the different
persecuted religious Russian communities, of which there exist so many
in the whole Oural region, and that they initiated him into some of
their rites and customs. They also made him attentive to the hypnotic
powers, which he most undoubtedly possessed, teaching him how to use
them for his own benefit and advantage.
Very soon Rasputin found that Pokrovskoie was not a field wide enough
for his energies, and he took to travelling, together with a crowd of
disciples that followed him everywhere over the eastern and central
Russian provinces. There he contrived to win every day new adherents
to the doctrines in which free love figured so prominently. Among the
towns where he obtained the most success can be mentioned those of
Kazan, Saratoff, Kieff and Samara.
Concerning his doings in Kazan, people became informed through a letter
which one of his victims addressed to the bishop of that diocese,
Monsignor Feofane, who had shown at the beginning of Rasputin’s career
a considerable interest in him and who had protected him with great
success. In this letter, which later on found its way into the press,
the following was said among other things:
“Your Reverence, I absolutely fail to understand how it is
possible that you continue to this day to know and see Gregory
Rasputin. He is Satan in person and the things which he does
are worthy of those that the Antichrist alone is supposed to
perform, and prove that the latter’s advent is at hand.”
The writer then proceeded to explain that Rasputin had completely
subjugated the mind of her two daughters, one of whom was aged twenty,
whilst the second had not yet attained her sixteenth year.
“One afternoon,” writes this unfortunate mother, “I met in the
street, coming out of a bathhouse, Rasputin, together with my
two girls. One must be a mother to understand the feelings
which overpowered me at this sight. I could find no words to
say, but remained standing motionless and silent before them.
The prophet turned to me and slowly said: ‘Now you may feel at
peace, the day of salvation has dawned for your daughters!’”
Another woman, who had also fallen under the spell of Rasputin, wrote
as follows about him:
“I left my parents, to whom I was tenderly attached, to follow
the prophet. One day when we were travelling together in a
reserved first-class carriage, talking about the salvation of
souls and the means to become a true child of God, he suddenly
got up, approached me, and * * * proceeded to cleanse me of
all my sins. Towards evening I became anxious and asked him:
‘Perhaps what we have been doing to-day was a sin, Gregory
Efimitsch?’ ‘No, my daughter,’ he replied, ‘it was not a sin.
Our affections are a gift from God, which we may use as freely
as we like.’”
Bishop Feofane finally was obliged to recognise the evil which Rasputin
was constantly doing, and he bitterly repented having been taken in
by him and by his hypocrisy. He reproached himself especially for
having given him a letter of recommendation to the famous Father John
of Cronstadt, through whom Rasputin was to become acquainted with
some of the people who were later on to pilot him in the society of
St. Petersburg. The bishop was not a clever man by any means, but he
had been sincere in his admiration for Rasputin, a fact which added
to the consternation that overpowered him when the truth about the
famous sectarian became known to him. He assembled a kind of judicial
court, composed of one bishop, one monk and three well-known and highly
respected civil functionaries, and called upon the prophet to come and
explain himself before this court as to the actions which were imputed
to him. Among these figured his general conduct in regard to the women
who had enrolled themselves in the ranks of his disciples. But somehow
the adventurer succeeded in dispelling the suspicions that had become
attached to his name and conduct, and he explained in a more or less
plausible manner the things which had been told about him. His leanings
towards feminine society, and his invariable custom of bathing with
women, he declared to be quite innocent things, and only a proof of
his desire to show that it was quite possible for human beings to rise
above every kind of carnal temptation.
In spite of this episode, which would have interfered with the career
of any one but Rasputin, the fame of the latter grew with every day
that passed. He established himself at last in the town of Tiumen in
Siberia, where he hired the whole of a large house for himself and some
of his most favoured disciples, and he began to turn his activity into
another and more profitable channel. He established reception hours
every day, when all his followers, admirers and friends could come to
speak with him about any business they liked. Hundreds of people used
to attend those receptions, among them some very influential persons
curious to see and speak with the modern Peter the Hermit, who declared
that he had been called by God to save Holy Russia. In some mysterious
manner he acquired the reputation of having great influence in high
quarters, where (this must be noticed) he was at the time still quite
unknown. Governors fearing dismissal, rapacious functionaries whose
exactions had become too flagrant, as well as business men in quest
of some good “geschaft,” to use the German expression employed before
the war among financial circles in Russia, crowded round him, waiting
sometimes hours for an opportunity to speak with him, and fully
believing in his capacities for obtaining what they required.
Rasputin soon became a kind of business agent and surrounded himself
with a number of secretaries of both sexes, whose occupation consisted
in attending to his correspondence--he could himself hardly read or
write--and in receiving the numerous offerings which were being brought
to him daily. These secretaries, among whom figured a sister of the
Bishop of Saratoff, Warnava, made an immense amount of money themselves
because no one was ever admitted into the presence of Rasputin
without having previously paid dearly for this favour. Very soon they
established a tax in regard to the audiences granted by their master.
Besides this sister of Bishop Warnava, Rasputin had another female
secretary, and they both accompanied him in all his travels, calling
themselves his spiritual sisters. They constituted, so to say, his
bodyguard, and wherever he went, even in St. Petersburg, they never
left off attending him and seeing to all his wants. They were the
channel through which everything had to go, and without their consent
no one was ever admitted into the presence of the “Saint,” as they
already had begun to call him.
Gregory Rasputin very often used to visit Tobolsk, where he was always
received with great ceremony and pomp, as if he had been really the
important personage he believed himself. The policeman in the streets
saluted him as he passed; the carriage in which he drove was escorted
or preceded by a high police functionary, and the governor asked him
to dinner. The same kind of thing used to take place in other Siberian
cities. In one of them the staterooms reserved at the railway station
for any high authority on a visit to the place were thrown open to
him. In another triumphal arches were erected in his honour, while in
a third he was met by deputations in the midst of which could be seen
civil functionaries and religious dignitaries.
How all this happened no one knew or could explain. In what consisted
the fame of Rasputin and what he had done to deserve all these honours
nobody could tell. But fame he had acquired, honours he had obtained,
and where another person gifted with a smaller amount of impudence
than he was possessed of, would have been put into prison or sent to
a madhouse, Gricha had it all his own way, and defied governors and
judges with an equal indifference, sure that none among them would be
daring enough to try to put a stop to his progress or to his avidity.
Most friendly, not to say intimate, relations were established between
Rasputin and Bishop Warnava, especially after the latter’s elevation to
the Episcopal See of Tobolsk. The first sermon which Warnava preached
in that town he dedicated to the wife of Rasputin. One need not say
that the whole clergy of the town and of the diocese trembled before
Rasputin, who did not fail to exact from it large sums of money, which
he extorted, thanks to the promises which he made but never meant in
the least to keep.
During the course of the year 1909 complaints about Rasputin’s
behaviour increased to a considerable extent. He was once more called
before an ecclesiastical court to give explanations in regard to
his general conduct. Among his judges figured again Bishop Feofane.
This time Rasputin could not clear himself of the charges preferred
against him, and he was invited to retire for one year into a monastery
by way of penance. But Rasputin refused to submit to this sentence
and categorically declined to do as he had been told. He gave as a
reason for his disobedience to the commands of his ecclesiastical
superiors that his conscience obliged him to resist because it would be
impossible for his “spiritual sisters and daughters” to accompany him
in his retreat and live together with him in the monastery they wished
him to enter.
At the time this incident took place Rasputin was already living in
St. Petersburg, whither he had repaired on the invitation of some of
his admirers and protectors, who had the opportunity to listen to his
preachings in Kieff and other Russian towns. Among them figured the
Countess Sophy Ignatieff, a woman of high standing, irreproachable
reputation and great influence in some circles of the capital, where
her salon was considered the centre of the conservative orthodox party.
Bishops and priests figured among her daily visitors, and it was among
her habitués that the most important ecclesiastical appointments in the
Empire were discussed. Often it was the candidates whom she honoured
with her protection who were chosen for a bishop’s place or for that
of a superior to one of those rich monasteries the heads of which are
quite personages in the state.
The Countess was already an old woman, widow of a man who had been
murdered during the revolution of 1905, and, incapable of being even
suspected of any frailties of conduct. She was the mother of a large
family, and though by no means brilliant, was yet clever in her way,
with a slight propensity to intrigue. She was extremely devout, with
a strong tendency to exaltation where religious matters came into
question, and was continually lamenting what she called the relaxation
of modern society in those practices of strict church discipline
which Russians belonging to the higher classes have lately taken
to forgetting. She would not have missed attending any of the long
Church services, sometimes so tiring in the Orthodox faith, which are
celebrated on Sundays and many feast days, and she strictly fasted at
prescribed times. Indeed, her whole existence was, as regards its daily
routine, more that of a nun than of a woman of the world. But for all
that, she liked to keep herself well informed as to all that was going
on around her, and politics was her especial hobby.
Among those who frequented her house were Mr. Sabler, then Procurator
of the Holy Synod, together with his future successor, Mr. Loukianoff;
a good sprinkling of ministers--she was distantly related to Mr.
Stolypine, a fact that had considerably added to her importance
during the latter’s lifetime--and a few influential dames belonging
to the immediate circle of friends of the imperial family. All
this constituted a coterie that had gradually assumed perhaps more
importance than it really deserved, but that brought into St.
Petersburg society an element with which it would not have been wise
to trifle and which it was impossible to overlook, for any one caring
to concern himself or herself with the course that public affairs were
taking and assuming.
A few years before the time I am referring to, that is about 1908 or
1909, a good deal of interest was excited not only in St. Petersburg,
but in the whole of Russia, by a monk called Illiodore, who also
preached a new gospel to those willing to listen. There was, however,
about him none of the peculiarities which distinguished Rasputin, and
no one had ever found one word to say against his morals. But he tried
also to found a religion of his own in the sense that he attempted to
develop on a higher scale, and with certain Protestant leanings, the
feelings of fervour of the people. At Saratoff, where he lived, he did
a great deal of good, and he had built there a large church, Orthodox,
of course, which soon became a centre of pilgrimage to which flocked
thousands and thousands of people desirous of hearing him and of
listening to his inflamed speeches. They reminded one of those crusades
that in the Middle Ages had stirred whole nations to rise and rush to
deliver the Holy Sepulchre from the yoke of the infidels. He was far
more a Peter the Hermit than Rasputin, and had, moreover, education,
which the other lacked.
But ecclesiastical authorities in St. Petersburg did not approve of
his teachings, and he soon came into conflict with them, together
with the Bishop of Saratoff, who had all along supported him and who
considered him as being really a good and pious man. This conflict
led to a quarrel, the result of which was that Illiodore was confined
in a monastery, whence, however, with the help of his disciples and
adherents, he contrived to make his escape. There was also a whole
series of lawsuits, into the details of which it is useless to enter
here. At last the monk was unfrocked for rebellion to his superiors,
by a decree issued from the Holy Synod, and compelled to take back his
secular name of Trufanoff. He became fearful of further annoyance and
managed to get hold of a false passport, with the help of which he made
his way into Norway, where we shall find him presently mixed up in a
most extraordinary adventure with which Rasputin was concerned. But
before all this had occurred there was a brief period when Illiodore
was quite an important personage in Russia, and the salons of the
Countess Ignatieff and of other ultra-devout ladies used to see a lot
of him whenever he happened to be in St. Petersburg. These feminine
listeners were very fond of him, and did their best to spread his
reputation all over the capital.
During Rasputin’s wanderings he had come across Illiodore at Saratoff,
and the latter, like so many others before and after him, had succumbed
to the hypnotic spell which “Gricha” was casting around him. He had
believed him to be a real servant of God, and he had engaged him
to come to St. Petersburg and to preach there before some of the
people who had already listened to his (Illiodore’s) sermons. He
had introduced him to the celebrated Father John of Cronstadt, this
saintly priest who was so famous for his virtues and his good deeds.
And, strange though this may appear, Father John also had been struck
by Rasputin’s eloquence and had believed him to be really inspired
by the Lord. In order to explain the state of mind prevalent at the
time among the orthodox clergy one must say that the clergy, or at
least some of their important members, were trying to bring about a
revival of religious fervour in the Orthodox Church, especially among
persons belonging to the upper classes, who had, during the last
twenty-five years or so, become more than indifferent in regard to
spiritual matters, and who had considered religion more a question of
“convenience” than anything else. Since the religious censorship had
been suppressed and books to any amount treating of every conceivable
subject had been allowed to circulate freely in the country, the former
attachment to the Mother Church had waxed fainter and fainter, until
this Church appeared in the eyes of many as simply a question of good
breeding, to which it was necessary to conform when one belonged to
good society, but which, beyond this, was treated entirely as a matter
devoid of importance.
In view of this fact, those Prelates and Dignitaries who lamented over
this state of things were not sorry to find that there were still in
the world people capable of arousing in the minds of others an interest
in religion and religious matters. This explains partly why the craze
which seized some persons in regard to Illiodore at first, and to
Rasputin later on, was not viewed with the dissatisfaction one might
have expected by the Russian ecclesiastical authorities. They argued
that surely it was better for people to pray in the way these two
so-called “saints” told them to do than not to pray at all. It was only
much later, after Illiodore’s rebellion to the orders of his superiors,
and Rasputin’s ever-growing personal influence had begun to alarm them,
that there were found some bishops in Russia who made a stand against
both, until at last a catastrophe removed these two men from the scene
of their previous labours and successes.
Rasputin and Illiodore were in time to become mortal enemies, but at
first a great friendship united them, and when Rasputin was sentenced
to enter a convent in the manner already related, Illiodore took up his
cause most warmly and telegraphed to one of the former’s admirers, an
ecclesiastic of high rank in St. Petersburg, in the following terms:
“Neither Bishop Feofane nor Archimandrite Serge has behaved fairly in
regard to the ‘Blessed Grigory.’” Illiodore’s efforts, however, did
not avail and Rasputin was ordered to leave the capital immediately.
But instead of being compelled to enter the convent whither they had
wished to confine him at first, he was allowed to return to his native
village of Pokrovskoie. Before doing so he bethought himself of calling
on his former patron, Bishop Feofane, but the latter met him with the
exclamation, “Don’t approach me, Satan! Thou art not a blessed thing,
but only a vulgar deceiver!” At Pokrovskoie Rasputin surrounded himself
with twelve sisters, of whom the oldest was barely twenty-nine years
of age. They all lived in his house, which was extremely well arranged
and richly furnished. Rasputin’s wife, together with her children,
was also there and occupied a suite of five rooms, whilst each of the
sisters had a separate room to herself.
People wondered that the woman who ought to have been the sole mistress
in the place had consented to share her authority with all these
girls, and some even thought that she was just as bad as her husband.
In reality, the “Prophet’s” consort had done all that she could to
persuade her husband to give up the “mission” which he declared had
been imposed upon him by the Almighty and to return to his former life
of a simple peasant. Her efforts had remained fruitless, and Rasputin
had replied to all her entreaties that his past existence had come
forever to an end, and that he knew his star was about to shine in a
wonderful way within a short time. He commanded his wife not to attempt
to interfere in the matter of his own personal relations with the
“Sisters” living under their roof. Though she tried to submit to his
will, yet there were occasions when terrible scenes occurred between
husband and wife. Then the latter would attack violently the girls,
whom she accused of all kinds of dreadful things, and would then fall
on the ground in attacks of strong hysterics, screaming so dreadfully
that people heard her from the street. But tears and submission were
equally of no avail and Rasputin did not trouble about his wife’s
rage or grief any more than he had troubled in general with any other
impediment he had found in his way. As concerns the kind of life which
the “Sisters” were leading at Pokrovskoie this is how one of them
describes it:
It is now already six months since I am here, living in a kind
of nightmare. I do not know to this day whether the “Blessed”
Gricha is a saint or the greatest sinner the earth has ever
known. I cannot find a quiet place in this miserable village. I
would like to run away, to return to St. Petersburg, but I dare
not do so. I am so afraid, so terribly afraid of the “Blessed”
one. His large, grey, piercing eyes crush me, enter into my
very soul and absolutely terrify me. At a distance of 5,000
versts I feel his presence near me. I feel that he has got
extraordinary powers, that he can do everything that he wishes
with me.
For two whole years Rasputin was not allowed to show himself in the
Russian capital, but the influential friends he had there never left
off trying to get the decree of banishment rescinded. Among others, the
Archbishop of Saratoff, Hermogene, and Illiodore worked most actively
in his favour, and the latter in one of his sermons did not hesitate
to call Rasputin the “greatest saint which the modern Russian Church
had ever known.” At last the efforts of his friends proved successful
and Rasputin, toward the end of the year 1912, reappeared in St.
Petersburg, where this time his progress was far more rapid than it
had been formerly, and here his reputation of a latter-day saint grew
with every hour, until at last he came to be looked upon as a real
manifestation of the Divinity upon earth.
It was about that time that he was seen more frequently at Tsarskoie
Selo, where the poor Empress was eating her heart away in anxiety over
the health of her only son, the little heir to the throne, whose days
seemed to be numbered. Rasputin, who had been introduced to her as a
pious, good man, whose prayers had already worked miracles, was very
quickly able to influence her in the sense that he persuaded her that
the small Grand Duke could only be cured if constant prayers were said
for him by people who were agreeable to the Lord. It is not to be
denied that the pseudo-saint had cultivated to a considerable extent
the science of hypnotism and that he used it in regard to the consort
of the sovereign in the sense that she grew really to believe that the
presence of the “Prophet” by the side of her sick child might cure the
latter. There was nothing else in their relations to each other, which
remained always, in spite of all that has been said, purely official
ones.
Rasputin was far too clever ever to say one word capable of offending
the Empress, whose proud temperament would never have forgiven him any
familiarity had he dared to venture upon it. Whenever he was in her
presence he kept a most humble attitude, and certainly never discussed
with her any matters of state and never dared entertain her with aught
else than religious questions. He was far less guarded with regard to
what he told the Emperor, with whom it is unfortunately true that he
sometimes allowed himself remarks he would have done better to keep
to himself. But the Czar never looked upon him in any other light
than in that of a jester whose sayings were absolutely devoid of any
importance whatever, but who could amuse him at times by the daring
manner in which he would touch upon things and criticise people whose
names no one else would ever have dared to mention in a disparaging
tone before Nicholas II. But between that and the possession of any
real power and influence, there was an abyss which, unfortunately, in
view of the turn that events were to take, no one noticed among all
those who lamented over the almost constant presence of Rasputin at
Tsarskoie Selo.
All that I have said, however, refers only to the Emperor and Empress.
In regard to some people who surrounded them it was not quite the
same. It is certain that from the first day that the “Prophet” was
introduced at Tsarskoie Selo some intriguing persons applied themselves
to make use of him for their own special benefit and advantage, and
tried to create around him a legend that had hardly anything in common
with the real truth. It is useless to mention the names of these
people, whose influence it must be hoped is now at an end. But it is
impossible not to speak of their activity in regard to the spreading of
these rumours which attributed to Rasputin an importance he was never
really in possession of. This caused no small damage to the prestige
of the dynasty. Rasputin ought to have been considered for what he
was--that is, a kind of jester, “un fou du roi,” who, like Chicot in
Dumas’ famous novels, allowed himself to say all that he thought to
his sovereign and whose words or actions no one could take seriously
into account. Instead of this some ambitious men and women, mostly
belonging to that special class of Tchinovnikis or civil functionaries
that has always been the curse of Russia and that, happily, is losing
every day something of its former power, profited by the circumstance
that the solitary existence led by the Imperial Court in its various
residences did not allow any outside rumours to penetrate to the ears
of the rulers of the country. They intentionally transformed Rasputin
into a kind of _deus ex machina_, whose hand could be traced in every
event of importance which occurred and who could at will remove and
appoint Ministers, generals, ladies in waiting, court officials and
at last induce the Czar himself to deprive his uncle, the Grand Duke
Nicholas, of the supreme command of the army and to assume it himself.
These different tales were repeated and carried about all over Russia
with alacrity, and all the enemies of the reigning house rejoiced in
hearing them. They were untrue nine times out of ten, and generally
invented for a purpose. Rasputin did not influence the Czar, who is
far too intelligent to have ever allowed this uneducated peasant to
guide or to advise him, but unfortunately he influenced other people,
who really believed him to be all powerful. A kind of camarilla formed
itself around Rasputin that clung to him and used him for its own
purposes, and that went about saying that he was the only man in the
whole of Russia capable of obtaining what one wanted, provided it
pleased him to do so. One declared that he could persuade the Empress,
always trembling for the health of her only son, to discuss with
her imperial spouse any subject that he might suggest. In reality no
such thing ever took place. Alexandra Feodorovna always kept Rasputin
at arms’ length, and for one thing had far too much faith in his
absolute disinterestedness even to imagine offering him any reward
or gratification. But it is a fact that he was often called by her
to pray at the bedside of the little boy, who represented the best
hope of Russia. This circumstance was cleverly exploited. No one was
ever present at his interviews with the Czar or with the Empress; it
was therefore easy for him to say what he liked about them, certain
that no one could ever contradict him, with the exception of the
interested persons themselves, and these could never get to hear or
to learn anything about the wild tales which it pleased him, together
with his friends, to put into circulation regarding the position which
he occupied at the court. Thanks to his persuasive powers and to the
undoubted magnetic force he was possessed of, he contrived to imbue
even earnest and serious people with the conviction that he was at
times the echo of the voices of those placed far above him, and that
they had called upon him to say to others what it embarrassed them to
mention themselves.
In Russia, as a general rule, the people in power were all cringing
before the Czar, whom they never dared to contradict. There were at
the time I am writing about some Ministers who believed, or affected
to believe, in all the extraordinary tales which it pleased Rasputin
to repeat, and who thought it useful to follow the indications which
it pleased him to give to them. He was only too delighted to be
considered the most powerful personage in the whole of the Russian
Empire. He helped as much as he could to accredit all the legends going
about among the public in regard to his own person, and he imagined
that the best way to add to his reputation as a man who did not care
for the opinions of the world was to treat this world with disdain and
with contempt, and to transform into his humble slaves ladies belonging
to the highest social ranks, just as he had transformed into his
hand-maidens the peasant girls who had fallen under his spell.
That he magnetised most of the people with whom he prayed seems but too
true. Perhaps they did not notice it, and perhaps this was done with
the consent of those on whom he exercised his hypnotic strength--it
is difficult to know exactly--but that his prayer meetings were the
scene of spiritist and magnetic experiences all who have ever been
present agree in saying. He made no secret about the fact, and openly
acknowledged the use which he made of the state of trance in which he
liked to throw his disciples, especially those belonging to the weaker
sex. He practiced to the full all the customs of the “Khlystys,” but he
added to them a cunning such as is but rarely found in a human being,
and a rough knowledge of human nature which gave him the facility to
exploit the passions of the many vile people who thought that he was
their instrument while in reality it was they who were playing fiddle
to his tune.
After his return to St. Petersburg he applied himself to the task of
setting aside all his former patrons, such as Illiodore, against whom
he contrived to irritate several important members of the Holy Synod
with false reports about remarks which the now disgraced monk was
supposed to have made. He contrived also to bring about the exile of
the Archbishop of Saratoff, Hermogene, from whom he feared disagreeable
revelations concerning his own past life and certain episodes connected
with the days when he had preached his so-called doctrine in the
town and government of Saratoff. On the other hand, he toadied to
other ecclesiastical dignitaries eager for promotion, and in that way
obtained their support in the Synod. Very soon he turned his thoughts
to more practical subjects than religious fervour or religious reforms,
and sought the society of business and financial people. Among these he
soon obtained the opportunities he longed for and established a kind of
large shop or concern where everything in the world could be bought or
sold, from a pound of butter to a minister’s portfolio.
It is no exaggeration to say that there was a time when nothing of
importance ever occurred in the political, social and administrative
life of the Russian capital that was not attributed to Rasputin, and
the result of this was that there crowded about him all kinds of
dark personalities, who hoped, thanks to his support and influence,
to obtain this or that favour. Everything interested him, everything
attracted his attention; railway concessions, bank emissions, stock
exchange speculations, purchase of properties, acquisition of shares
in industrial concerns, arranging of loans for persons in need of
them--nothing seemed too small or too important for his activity. He
liked to think himself necessary to all these high-born people, whom
he compelled to wait for hours in his ante-chambers, just as if he
had been a sovereign. And for every favour he granted, for every word
which he promised to say, he exacted payment in the shape of a pound of
flesh, which consisted, according to circumstances, in a more or less
important commission.
Ministers and functionaries feared him. They knew that he could do
them an infinitude of harm by causing to be circulated against them
rumours of a damaging character, the result of which would have
undoubtedly been their disgrace or removal to another sphere of action
very probably not at all desirable. He was credited for an infinitude
of things he had never thought of performing, and he was supposed
to have been privy to all kinds of governmental changes that either
pleased or displeased those who criticised them. As time went on one
accused him among other things of the dismissal of the procurator of
the Holy Synod, Mr. Loukianoff, with whom he had for a long period
been at daggers drawn and who had openly expressed his disapproval
of the “Prophet” and his disbelief in his miraculous powers. The
elevation of the Archimandrite Warnava, one of his warmest patrons in
the past, to the Episcopal See of Tobolsk was also said to have been
Rasputin’s work, and the public persisted so entirely in seeing his
hand everywhere and in everything that it was even rumoured that it
was he who was answerable for the decision of the censor forbidding
the representation of a drama by the celebrated author Leonide
Andreieff called, “Anathema,” on the eve of the day when it was to be
produced--a decision which caused an immense sensation in the society
of the Russian capital.
It was natural that among the many people who crowded around Rasputin
some secret police agents found their way. One of these who was
later to become the hero of more than one scandal, a certain Mr.
Manassevitsch Maniuloff, bethought himself of becoming the mentor
of the “Prophet.” He was in close relation with Count Witte, always
eager for his own return to power, and desirous of overturning every
individual in possession of the posts which he had formerly occupied
himself. The two men tried to imbue Rasputin with the idea that he
had great political talents, and that it was a pity he had not yet
turned these into account for the good and the welfare of Holy Russia.
Rasputin did not believe in the sincerity of his newly acquired
advisers, but he was shrewd enough to see that their help would be of
wonderful value to him. He willingly entered into the plans which they
unfolded to him between two glasses of brandy or two cups of champagne
as the occasion presented itself. Count Witte was very well aware of
all the secret influences which were paramount at Tsarskoie Selo, and
he contrived to turn them in favour of Rasputin, suggesting at the same
time to the latter the things which he ought to say, when in presence
of certain personages. It was easy to throw in a word now and then,
either in the shape of a jest, or of a remark uttered inadvertently and
unintentionally, but yet sure to bear fruit in the future. The great
thing was to give to Rasputin the idea that he was a personage of
importance. This was not a very difficult matter considering the very
high opinion which he already had of his own capacities, coupled with
his set resolution to make the most hay whilst the sun was shining, and
never to miss an opportunity of asserting his personality no matter on
what occasion or with what purpose.
The Balkan war gave Rasputin a golden opportunity for exercising his
various talents, and it is pretty certain that he made at the time
strenuous efforts in favour of peace, repeating to whomsoever wished
to hear him that he had had visions which predicted that the greatest
calamities were awaiting Russia, if she mixed herself up in it. This
feeling was shared by a numerous party, and the sovereign himself
was the most resolute adversary of any military intervention in this
unfortunate affair. It is likely that even without Rasputin Russia
would not have drawn her sword either for Bulgaria or for Serbia, but
nevertheless it pleased his friends to say that without him this would
have most undoubtedly occurred. And it also pleased him to assert
that on this occasion he had proved to be the saviour of his native
land. We shall see him repeat this legend with great relish during a
conversation which I had with him personally just before the breaking
out of the present war.
There was also another incident in which Rasputin most certainly was
implicated. This was the dismissal of Mr. Kokovtsoff, then Prime
Minister and President of the Council, followed by the appointment
in his place of old and tottering Mr. Goremykine, to whom no one in
the whole of Russia had ever given a thought as a possible candidate
for this difficult post. Count Witte was the personal enemy of Mr.
Kokovtsoff, whom he had never forgiven for his so-called treason in
regard to himself, and he never missed any opportunity to attack him
in the Council of State, of which they were both members, criticising
his financial administration and making fun of the splendid budgets
which were regularly presented to the Duma. These Witte declared to be
entirely artificial, reposing on a clever manipulation of figures. In
some ways it was easy to find fault with Mr. Kokovtsoff, whose name had
been mixed up far too much for the good of his personal reputation in
all kind of financial transactions and Stock Exchange operations. But,
then, the same thing had been said about Count Witte with perhaps even
more reason than about Mr. Kokovtsoff, whose wife, at least, had never
been suspected of any manipulations with her banking account. Indeed,
no finance minister in Russia had escaped accusations of the kind from
his detractors or his adversaries, and it had never interfered with
their administrative careers nor prevented them from sleeping soundly.
So far, so well; but then this was more the work of events as they
had unfolded themselves naturally than the merit of Rasputin; yet he
was openly congratulated by his friends, or so-called ones, on the
success which he had obtained in driving Mr. Kokovtsoff away. The
ultra-orthodox party which hailed the advent to power of one of its
members--Mr. Goremykine having always been considered as one of the
pillars of the conservative faction--not only cheered the “Prophet”
with enthusiasm but also started to proclaim anew his genius and clear
understanding of the needs of the Russian people. Thus a ministerial
crisis culminated in the apotheosis of a man whose only appreciation
of the qualities and of the duties of a Minister consisted in the
knowledge of that Minister’s existence as a public functionary.
CHAPTER III
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.
CHAPTER IV
I have quoted the impressions of Prince Lvoff in regard to Rasputin,
and have remarked that I have had personally the opportunity to
convince myself that they were correct, at least in their broad lines.
The interview which I had with Rasputin in the course of the winter of
1913–14 left me with feelings akin to those experienced by the Prince.
This interview took place under the following circumstances: I had been
asked by a big American newspaper to see the “Prophet,” whose renown
had already spread beyond the Russian frontiers, and who was beginning
to be considered as a factor of no mean importance in the conduct of
Russian state affairs. This, however, was by no means an easy matter.
For one thing, he was seldom in St. Petersburg. He spent most of his
time at Tsarskoie Selo, where his headquarters were the apartments of
Mme. W. He used to make only brief and flying visits to the capital,
where he possessed several dwellings. One never knew in which one he
could be found, as he used to go from one to another, according to
his fancy. He gave audiences like a sovereign would have done, and
before any one was allowed to enter his presence that person had to be
subjected to a course of cross-examination so as to make quite sure
that no malicious or evil designs were harboured by him in regard to
the “Prophet.”
At last, after a succession of unavailing efforts, I chanced to light
on a certain Mr. de Bock, with whom Rasputin had business relations,
and for whom he procured when the war broke out an important contract
connected with the supply of meat for the troops in the field. It was
this personage who finally obtained for me the favour of being admitted
into the home of Rasputin. The latter was living at the time in a
very handsome and expensive flat, in a house situated on the English
Prospekt, a rather distant street in St. Petersburg, whose proximity to
the quarters of the working population of the capital had appealed to
the “Prophet’s” tastes. When I arrived there at about 4 o’clock in the
afternoon, I was, first of all, stopped by the hall porter, who wanted
me to explain to him where and to whom I was going. Upon hearing that
it was to Rasputin he insisted on my taking off my fur coat downstairs,
and then examined me most carefully and suspiciously, surveying with
special attention the size and volume of my pockets, so as to make
sure that I was not carrying any murderous instruments hidden in their
depths.
Upstairs the door was opened by an elderly woman with a red kerchief
over her head, who, I learned afterward, was one of the “sisters”
who followed the “Prophet” everywhere. She asked for my name, and
then ushered me into a room, sparely but richly furnished. There some
half-dozen people were waiting, in what seemed to me to be extreme
impatience, for the door of the next room to open and admit them.
Voices were heard through the door angrily discussing something or
other. Among the people present I recognised a lady-in-waiting on the
Empress, an old general in possession of an important command, two
parish priests, three women belonging to the lower classes, one of whom
seemed to be in great trouble, and a typical Russian merchant in high
boots and dressed in the long caftan which is still worn by some of
those who have kept up the traditions of the old school. Then there was
a little boy about ten years old, poorly clad, who was crying bitterly.
All these people kept silent, but the eager expression on their faces
showed that they were all labouring under an intense agitation and
emotion. When I entered the apartment a distinct look of disappointment
appeared on all their faces. At last the old general approached me, and
asked me in more or less polite tones whether I had a special card of
admission or not.
“What do you mean?” I inquired.
“Well, you see,” he said, “we all who are in this room have got
one, but there”--and he pointed with his finger to the adjoining
door--“there sit the people who have come here on the chance, just to
try whether Gregory Efimitsch will condescend to speak to them. Some
have been sitting there since last night,” he significantly added.
And as he spoke he slightly pushed ajar the door he had mentioned. I
could see that a room, if anything smaller than the one we were in, was
packed full of persons of different ages and types, all of whom looked
tired. They were sitting not only on the few chairs which the apartment
contained, but also on the floor. There were women with children
hanging at their breast, military men, priests, monks, common peasants
and two policemen. The last named were seated by the window leisurely
eating a piece of bread and cold meat, which they were cutting into
small slices with a pocketknife. They had evidently made themselves at
home, regardless of consequences or of the feelings of other people.
Suddenly we heard another door slam, and a strong step resounded in the
hall. A man began to speak in a loud voice. He said: “You just go to
see----” and here the name of one of the most influential officials in
the Home Office was mentioned, “and you tell him that Gricha has said
he was to give you a place, and a good one, too. It does not matter
whether there is none vacant, he must find one. There, take this paper,
and now go, and don’t forget to show it when you come to the Home
Office.”
The door slammed again, and all remained silent for a few minutes. Then
the elderly woman who had admitted me, came into the apartment where we
were sitting and beckoned me to follow her. But this proved too much
for the feelings of the old general who had accosted me on my entrance,
and he pushed himself forward in front of me, exclaiming as he did so:
“I have been here a longer time than she has been,” pointing at me with
his finger, “and I must get in first.”
“You cannot do so,” replied the woman; “my orders are to let this lady
in first.”
“Do you know who I am, woman?” screamed the general at the top of his
lungs; he was evidently in a towering passion. “Go at once, and tell
Gregory Efimitsch that I must see him at once, I have been waiting here
for more than an hour.”
“I cannot do so,” replied the woman, “I must obey the orders that have
been given to me.”
“Then I shall do it myself,” exclaimed the general, and he rushed
toward the door, which he opened, when he was stopped by a whole
torrent of invectives coming from the next room.
“How dare you disobey my orders?” cried out an angry voice. “Thou pig
and son of a pig, I have said I wish to see this person and no one
else! Thou idle creature! Chuck him out of the room, that pig who
dares to contradict me, and you come in here!” And the tall figure of
Rasputin appeared on the threshold of the room. He rudely pushed aside
the general and, seizing my hand, pulled me into another apartment,
which seemed to be his dining room.
It was a rather large corner room with three windows, in which stood
a quantity of flowers and green plants. A round table occupied the
middle, on which was laid a striped white-and-red tablecloth. A samovar
was standing on it, together with glasses on blue-and-white saucers,
slices of lemon, sugar in a silver sugar basin, and quantities of cakes
and biscuits. Chairs were placed around it, on one of which Rasputin
sat down, facing the tea urn, after having made me a sign to do
likewise. I noticed that there was a large writing table in one corner
covered with books and papers.
The “Prophet” himself did not at all strike me as being the remarkable
individual I had been led to expect. He must have been about forty
years old, tall and lean, with a long black beard and hair, falling
not quite down to his back, but considerably lower than his ears. The
eyes were black, singularly cunning in their expression, but did not
produce, at least not on me, the uncanny impression I had been told
they generally made on those who saw them for the first time. The hands
were the most remarkable thing about the man. They were long and thin,
with immense nails, as dirty as dirty could be. He kept moving them in
all directions as he spoke, sometimes folding them on his breast and
sometimes lifting them high up in the air. He wore the ordinary dress
of the Russian peasant, high boots and the caftan, which, however, was
made of the best and finest dark-blue cloth. What could be seen of his
linen was also of the best quality.
After having beckoned to me to sit down, Rasputin poured out some tea
in a glass and proceeded to drink it, sipping the beverage slowly out
of the saucer into which he poured it out of the glass which he had
just filled. Suddenly he pushed the same saucer toward me with the word:
“Drink.”
As I did not in the least feel inclined to take his remains, I declined
the tempting offer, which made him draw together his black and bushy
eyebrows with the remark:
“Better persons than thou art have drunk out of this saucer, but if
thou wantest to make a fuss it is no concern of mine.”
And then he called out, “Avdotia! Avdotia!” The elderly woman who had
opened the door for me hastened to come into the room.
“There,” said Rasputin, “this person”---pointing toward me with his
forefinger--“this person refuses to drink out of the cup of life; take
it thou instead.”
The woman instantly dropped on her knees and Rasputin proceeded to open
her mouth with his fingers and pour down her throat the tea which I had
disdained. She then prostrated herself on the ground before him and
reverently kissed his feet, remaining in this attitude until he pushed
her aside with his heavy boot and said, “There, now thou canst go.”
Then he turned to me once more. “Great ladies, some of the greatest
in the land, are but too happy to do as this woman has done,” he said
dryly. “Remember that, daughter.”
Then he proceeded at once with the question, “Thou hast wished to see
me. What can I do for thee? I am but a poor and humble man, the servant
of the Lord, but sometimes it has been my fate to do some good for
others. What dost thou require of me?”
I proceeded to explain that I wanted nothing in the matter of worldly
goods, but asked this singular personage to be kind enough to tell me
for the paper which I represented whether it was true that but for him
Russia would have declared war upon Austria the year before.
[Illustration:
_Photograph, International Film Service, Inc._
GREGORY RASPUTIN]
“Who has told you such a thing?” he inquired.
“It is a common saying in St. Petersburg,” I replied, “and some people
say that you have been right in doing so.”
“Right? Of course, I was right,” he answered with considerable
irritation. “All these silly people who surround our Czar would like
to see him commit stupidities. They only think about themselves and
about the profits which they can make. War is a crime, a great crime,
the greatest which a nation can commit, and those who declare war are
criminals. I only spoke the truth when I told our Czar that he would be
ruined if he allowed himself to be persuaded to go to war. This country
is not ready for it. Besides, God forbids war, and if Russia went to
war the greatest misfortunes would fall upon her. I only spoke the
truth; I always speak the truth, and people believe me.”
“But,” I remarked, “no one can understand how it is that your opinion
always prevails in such grave matters. People think that you must have
some strange power over men to make them do what you like.”
“And what if I have,” he exclaimed angrily. “They are, all of them,
pigs--all these people who want to discuss me or my doings. I am but a
poor peasant, but God has spoken to me, and He has allowed me to know
what it is that He wishes. I can speak with our Czar. I am not afraid
to do so, as they all are. And he knows that he ought to listen to me,
else all kind of evil things would befall him. I could crush them all,
all these people who want to thwart me. I could crush them in my hand
as I do this piece of bread,” and while he was speaking he seized a
biscuit out of a plate on the table and reduced it to crumbs. “They
have tried to send me away, but they will never get rid of me, because
God is with me and Gricha shall outlive them all. I have seen too much
and I know too much. They are obliged to do what I like, and what I
like is for the good of Russia. As for these ministers and generals,
and all these big functionaries whom every one fears in this capital,
I do not trouble about them. I can send them all away if I like. The
spirit of God is in me and will protect me.
“Thou canst say this to those who have sent thee to see me. Thou canst
tell them that the day will come when there will be no one worth
anything in our holy Russia except our Czar and Gricha, the servant of
God. Yes, thou canst tell them so, and be sure that thou dost it.”
I protested that I should consider this my first duty, but at the same
time begged “the servant of God,” as he called himself, to explain to
me by what means he had acquired the influence which he possessed.
“By telling the truth to people about themselves,” he quickly replied.
“Thou probably thinkest that all these fine ladies about the court who
come to me do not care to be told about their failings. But there it
is that thou art mistaken. They feel so disconcerted when they hear
me call them by their proper names and remind them that they are but
b----s, and the daughters of b----s, that they immediately fall at my
feet. A silly lot are these women, and Gricha is not such a fool as
one thinks. He knows how they ought to be treated. Wilt thou see how I
treat them?”
I said that nothing would give me more pleasure. Rasputin went to the
door and called Avdotia.
“Go to the telephone,” he said when she came in, “ask the Countess
I---- to come at once. She must come herself to the telephone, and if a
servant replies, say that he must call her immediately, and then tell
her that I require her presence here at 12 o’clock to-night; not one
minute earlier or later, mind.”
The woman went away, and I could hear her talking at the telephone in
the next room in an authoritative tone. Soon she returned with the
words:
“The Countess sends her humble respects to Gregory Efimitsch, and she
will be here at midnight as she has been ordered to.”
Rasputin turned toward me with a triumphant smile on his coarse cunning
countenance.
“Thou canst see, they are losing no time to obey me. Thou dost not know
what women are, and how they like to be handled. Wait, and thou shalt
see something better. Avdotia,” he called again. “Is Marie Ivanovna
here?” he asked, when she came in response to his call. “Yes, since
three hours,” was the reply. “Call her here.”
A young woman of about twenty-five years of age appeared. She was very
well dressed in rich furs, and ran up to Rasputin, kneeling before him,
and kissing with fervour his dirty hands.
“How long hast thou been here?” he asked.
“About three hours, Batiouschka,” she answered.
“This is well, thou art to remain here until midnight, and neither to
eat or to drink all that time, thou hearest?”
“Yes, Batiouschka,” was the reply, uttered in timid, frightened tones.
“Now go into the next room, kneel down before the Ikon, and wait for
me without moving. Thou must not move until I come.”
She kissed his hands once more, prostrated herself on the floor before
him three times in succession, and then retired with the look of being
in a kind of trance during which she could neither know nor understand
what was happening to her.
“If thou carest, thou canst follow her, and see whether she obeys me or
not,” said Rasputin in his usual dry tone.
I declined the invitation, protesting that I had never doubted but
that the “Prophet” would be obeyed, adding, however, that though I had
understood he could control the fancies and imagination of women gifted
with an exalted temperament, yet I was not convinced that his influence
could be exerted over unemotional men, and that this was the one point
which interested my friends.
“Thou must not be curious,” shouted Rasputin. “I am not here to tell
thee the reasons for what I choose to do. It should suffice thee to
know that I would at once return to Pokrovskoie if ever I thought my
services were useless to my country. Russia is governed by fools.
Yes, they are all of them fools, these pigs and children of pigs,” he
repeated with insistence. “But I am not a fool. I know what I want, and
if I try to save my country, who can blame me for it?”
“But Gregory Efimitsch,” I insisted, “can you not tell me at least
whether it is true that some ministers do all that you tell them?”
“Of course, they do,” he replied angrily. “They know very well their
chairs would not hold them long if they didn’t. Thou shalt yet see
some surprises before thou diest, daughter,” he concluded with a
certain melancholy in his accents.
Avdotia entered the room again.
“Gregory Efimitsch,” she said, “there is Father John of Ladoga waiting
for you.”
“Ah! I had forgotten him.” Then he turned toward me.
“Listen again,” he said; “this is a priest, very poor, who is seeking
to be transferred into another parish somewhere in the south. Avdotia,
call on the telephone the secretary of the Synod and tell him that I am
very much surprised to hear that Father John has not yet been appointed
to another parish. Tell him this must be done at once, and that he must
have a good one. I require an immediate answer.”
The obedient Avdotia went out again, and we could hear her once more
talk on the telephone. “The secretary of the Synod presents his humble
compliments to you, Batiouschka,” she said when she returned.
“Who cares for his compliments?” interrupted Rasputin. “Will the man
have his parish or not? This is all that I want to know.”
“The order for his transfer will be presented for the Minister’s
signature to-morrow,” said Avdotia.
“This is right,” sighed Rasputin with relief. And then turning to me:
“Art thou satisfied?” he asked, “and hast thou seen enough to tell to
thy friends?”
I declared myself entirely satisfied.
“Then go,” said Rasputin. “I am busy and cannot talk to thee any
longer. I have so much to do. Everybody comes to me for something,
and people seem to think that I am here to get them what they need or
require. They believe in Gricha, these poor people, and he likes to
help them. But as for the question of war, this is all nonsense. We
shall not have war, and if we have, then I shall take good care it will
not be for long.”
He dismissed me with a nod of his head, and his face assumed quite
a shocked look when he found that I was retiring without seeming to
notice the hand which he was awkwardly stretching out to me. But I
knew that he expected people, as a matter of course, to kiss his dirty
fingers, and as I was not at all inclined to do so, I made as if I did
not notice his gesture. As I was passing into the next room, I could
perceive through a half open door leading into another apartment the
young lady whom Rasputin had called Marie Ivanovna. She was prostrated
before a sacred image hanging in a corner, with a lamp burning in
front of it, with her eyes fixed on Heaven, and quite an illuminated
expression on her otherwise plain features. St. Theresa might have
looked like that. But seen in the light of our incredulous Twentieth
Century, she appeared a worthy subject for Charcot, or some such
eminent nerve doctor, and her place ought to have been the hospital of
“La Salpetriere” rather than the den of the modern Cagliostro, who was
making ducks and drakes out of the mighty Russian Empire.
As I was going down the stairs, I met an old man slowly climbing them,
with a little girl whom he was half carrying, half dragging along with
him. He stopped me with the question:
“Do you happen to know whether the blessed Gregory receives visitors?”
I replied that the “Prophet” was at home, but that I could not say
whether he would receive any one or not.
“It is for this innocent I want to see him,” moaned the man. “She is so
ill and no doctor can cure her. If only the blessed Gregory would pray
over her, I know that she would be well at once. Do you think that he
will do so, Barinia?” the man added anxiously.
“I am sure he will,” I replied, more because I did not know what to say
rather than from the conviction that Rasputin would receive this new
visitor. I saw the old creature continue his ascent up the staircase,
and the whole time he was repeating to the child, “You shall get well,
quite well, Mania, the Blessed One shall make you quite well.”
On the last steps before the stairs ended on the landing, two men were
busy talking. They were both typical Israelites, with hooked nose and
crooked fingers. They were discussing most energetically some subject
which evidently was absorbing their attention to an uncommon degree,
and discussing it in German, too.
“You are quite sure that we can offer him 20 per cent?” one was saying.
“Quite sure, the concession is worth a million; the whole thing is to
obtain it before the others come on the scene.”
“Who are the others?” asked the first of the two men.
“The Russo-Asiatic Bank,” replied the second. “You see the whole matter
lies in the rapidity with which the thing is made. The only one who can
persuade the minister to sign the paper is the old man upstairs,” and
he pointed out toward Rasputin’s apartment. Thereupon the two in their
turn started to mount the steps.
My first interview with Rasputin, all the details of which I wrote down
in my diary when I got home, gave me some inkling as to the different
intrigues which were going on around this remarkable personage. It
failed, however, to make me understand by what means he had managed to
acquire, if he really acquired, a fact of which I still doubted, the
strong influence which he liked to give the impression he exercised.
It was quite possible that he had contrived through the magnetic
gifts with which he was endowed to subdue to his will the hysterical
women, whose bigotry and mystical tendencies he had exalted to the
highest pitch possible. But how could he, a common peasant, without any
education, knowledge of the world or of mankind, have imbued ministers
and statesmen with such a dread that they found themselves ready to do
anything at his bidding and to dispense favours, graces and lucrative
appointments to the people whom he called to their attention. There was
evidently something absolutely abnormal in the whole thing, and it was
the reason for this abnormality that I began to seek.
This search did not prove easy at first, but in time, by talking
with persons who saw much of Rasputin and of the motley crew which
surrounded him, I contrived to form some opinion as to the cause of
his success. It seemed to me that he was the tool of a strong though
small party or group of men, desirous of using him as a means to attain
their own ends. There is nothing easier in the world than to make or to
mar a reputation, and it is sufficient to say everywhere that a person
is able to do this or that thing, to instil into the mind of the public
at large the conviction that such is the case. This was precisely what
occurred with Rasputin.
Count Witte, who was one of the cleverest political men in his
generation and perhaps the only real statesman that Russia has known in
the last twenty-five years, ever since his downfall had been sighing
for the day when he should be recalled to power. He knew very well all
that was going on in the Imperial family, and it was easier for him
than for any one else to resort to the right means to introduce an
outsider into that very closed circle which surrounded the Czar. So
long as he had been a minister and had under his control the public
exchequer it had been relatively easy for him to obtain friends, or
rather tools, that had helped him in his plans and ambitions. When
this faculty for persuasion failed him he bethought himself to look
elsewhere for an instrument through which he might still achieve the
ends he had in mind. He was not the kind of man who stopped before any
moral consideration. For him every means was good, provided it would
prove effective. When he saw that certain ladies in the entourage
of the sovereigns had become imbued with the Rasputin mania, he was
quick to decide that this craze might, if properly managed, prove of
infinite value to him. He therefore not only encouraged it as far as
was in his power by pretending himself to be impressed by the prophetic
powers of the “Blessed Gregory,” but he also contrived very cleverly to
let the fact of the extraordinary ascendancy which Rasputin was rapidly
acquiring over the minds of powerful and influential persons become
known. Very soon everybody talked of the latter-day saint who had
suddenly appeared on the horizon of the social life of St. Petersburg,
and the fame of his reputation spread abroad like the flames of some
great conflagration.
Russia is essentially the land where imperial favourites play a rôle,
and soon the whole country was not only respecting Rasputin, but was
trying to make up to him and to obtain, through him, all kinds of
favours and material advantages. Together with Count Witte a whole
political party was working, without the least consideration for the
prestige of the dynasty which it was discrediting, to show up the
rulers as associated with the common adventurer and sectarian, who,
under other conditions, would undoubtedly have found himself prosecuted
by the police authorities for his conduct. They had other thoughts in
their heads than the interests of the dynasty, these money-seeking,
money-grubbing, ambitious men. They represented nothing beyond the
desire to become powerful and wealthy. What they wanted was important
posts which would give them the opportunity to indulge in various
speculations and more or less fraudulent business undertakings they
contemplated.
Russia at the time was beginning to be seized with that frenzy
for stock-exchange transactions, share buying and selling, railway
concessions and mining enterprises which reached its culminating point
before the beginning of the war. Men without any social standing, and
with more than shady pasts, were coming forward and acquiring the
reputation of being lucky speculators capable in case of necessity
of developing into clever statesmen. These men began to seek their
inspirations in Berlin, and through the numerous German spies with
which St. Petersburg abounded they entered into relations with the
German Intelligence Department, whose interests they made their own,
because they believed that a war might put an end to the industrial
development of the country, and thus interfere with their various
speculations. The French alliance was beginning to bore those who had
got out of it all that they had ever wanted; it was time something new
should crop up, and the German and Russian Jews, in whose hands the
whole industry and commerce of the Russian Empire lay concentrated,
began to preach the necessity of an understanding with the great
state whose nearest neighbour it was. A rapprochement between the
Hohenzollerns and the Romanoffs began to be spoken of openly as a
political necessity, and it was then that, thanks to a whole series of
intrigues, the Czar was induced to go himself to Berlin to attend the
nuptials of the only daughter of the Kaiser, the Brunswick.
This momentous journey to Berlin was undertaken partly on account of
the representations of Rasputin to the Empress, whose love for peace
was very well known. Europe had just gone through the anxiety caused
by the Balkan crisis, and it was repeated everywhere in St. Petersburg
that a demonstration of some kind had to be made in favour of peace
in general and also to prove to the world that the great Powers were
determined not to allow quarrels in Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece to
trouble the security of the world. The marriage festivities of which
Berlin became the theatre at the time seemed a fit opportunity for this
demonstration. The bureaucratic circles in the Russian capital and the
influence of Rasputin were used to bring about this trip of the Czar.
Rasputin was thus fast becoming a personage, simply because it suited
certain people--the pro-German party, to use the right word at last--to
represent him as being important. They pushed things so far that many
ministers and persons in high places refused on purpose certain things
which were asked of them and which were absolutely easy for them to
perform simply because they wished Rasputin to ask for them for those
who were weary of always meeting with a non possumus in questions for
which they required the help of the Administration.
Rasputin’s various intermediaries, through whom one had to pass before
one could approach him, sold their help for more or less large sums of
money, and thus began a period of vulgar agiotage, to use the French
expression, of which Russia was the stage, and Rasputin, together with
the men who used him, the moving spirits. I very nearly said the evil
spirits. But of this, more later on.
CHAPTER V
I must now make one remark which is absolutely necessary in order to
enable the foreign readers to understand how the numerous legends
which were connected with Rasputin and the influence of the latter on
the course of public affairs could come to be accepted by the nation
at large. One can seek its principal reason in the tendency which the
Russian government has cultivated since immemorial times to forbid the
open discussion of certain things and facts. At the time about which
I am writing present military censorship did not exist, and there was
no war which could have justified the control by the government of
the publication by the daily press of the current events of the day.
Yet the censors did not allow any mention of Rasputin to be made in
any organ of publicity. Thanks to this senseless interdict, it helped
the invention of the most unbelievable tales concerning him and the
attitude which he had adopted in regard to state affairs, with which
he had begun to occupy himself, much to the dismay of those who had by
that time learned to appreciate the fact that the “Prophet” was but
the plaything of men far cleverer than himself and 50,000 times more
dangerous.
St. Petersburg has always been famed for its gossiping propensities,
and in no place in the whole world do the most incomprehensible rumours
start and flourish with the rapidity that they do in the Russian
capital. What the newspapers are forbidden to mention is told by one
person to another, whispered from one ear to another and discussed
everywhere, in clubs, drawing rooms, restaurants, in the houses of
the proudest aristocrats as well as in the dwellings of the humblest
citizens. Nowhere does, or rather, did, because I believe this has
become impossible nowadays, the telephone contribute more to relate
all kind of gossip concerning both private people and public matters.
Of course, as there existed no possibility of controlling all that
was being related under the seal of secrecy all over St. Petersburg,
the most improbable rumours were put in circulation and were carried
about not only in the town itself, but in the provinces, where the
travellers returning from St. Petersburg were but too glad to repeat
with considerable additions all that they had heard in the capital.
The very secrecy which was enjoined by the authorities in regard to
Rasputin added to the latter’s importance and transformed him into
a kind of legendary personage, either too holy or too bad to be
mentioned. Soon all kinds of things in which he had had absolutely
no part began to be attributed to him, and many persons, earnestly
believing him to be all-powerful, took to asking his help not only in
the matter of their administrative careers, but also in questions where
their private life and private interests were involved. It happened
every day that a man who had a lawsuit of a doubtful character sought
out Rasputin, hoping that he might be able to put in a word capable
of influencing the judges before whom the case was to be tried. As
it was absolutely impossible for any one to approach him without
passing through an intermediary of some kind, it was generally this
intermediary who began the regular plundering of the pockets of all the
unfortunate petitioners who had hoped to retrieve their fortunes by an
appeal to the “Prophet’s” protection. This plundering went on as long
as the victim had a penny to spare and a hope to live upon.
On the other hand, the liberal parties in the country began to be
seriously alarmed at the importance which this uncouth peasant was
assuming, and they it was who helped by the anxiety which they openly
manifested to set the general public thinking about him more than it
ought to have done. In the Duma the name of Rasputin was mentioned
with something akin to horror, and allusions without number were made
concerning the “Dark Powers,” as they were called, who were grasping
in their hands the conduct of public affairs. The “Prophet” began to
be mentioned as the scourge of Russia long before he had become one.
His followers, on the contrary, made no secret of his ever-growing
importance, and invented on their side any number of tales absolutely
devoid of truth and tending to prove that nothing whatever was done
in regard to the management of state affairs without his having been
previously consulted. Who consulted him no one knows, and no one could
tell. Certainly it was not the Emperor, who had, when the “Prophet”
once or twice had attempted to touch upon this point in his presence,
rebuked him most sharply; certainly it was not the Empress, who at that
time had never yet cared for politics, whether foreign or domestic. It
was also not the ministers, and most certainly it was not the leaders
of any party in the Duma, because all parties there were agreed as to
one thing, and that was a thorough detestation of Rasputin and of the
whole crew which surrounded him and without which he could not exist.
Who consulted him, then? No one knew, and very probably no one cared to
know. But the fact that he was consulted was an established one, most
probably due to the efforts of those persons in whose interests it lay
to represent him as the deus ex machina without whom nothing could be
done in general, and upon whom everything more or less depended.
It was even related in St. Petersburg that one day, during an audience
which he had had with the Czar, Mr. Rodzianko, the President of the
Duma, had attempted a remonstrance on the subject of Rasputin for
which he had been severely reproved by the Sovereign. Personally,
I do not believe for one single instant that such an incident ever
took place. For one thing, no one, not even Mr. Rodzianko, would have
dared to talk to the Emperor about such an unsavoury subject as that
of the “Prophet,” even if he had been endowed with a moral courage
far superior to that of the President of the Duma. Then, again, the
well-informed were, at the time I am referring to, far too cognisant
of what was going on in the way of court intrigues not to understand
that all protestations against the constant presence of Rasputin
in the vicinity of the Imperial family would have led to nothing,
for the simple reason that those upon whom it depended did not and
could not even recognise the danger that it presented, because they
simply looked upon him as upon a holy man. He soothed the anxieties
of the Empress in regard to her small son, promising her that the day
would come when, thanks to his prayers, the child would outgrow his
delicacy. He amused the Emperor by talking to him in a rough but bright
language, describing bluntly all the incidents that had reached his
knowledge generally through the channel of those interested in having
them conveyed to the Sovereign in the way that best served their own
interests. But Nicholas II. never took him seriously into account, and
therefore could hardly have been brought to think that others were
doing so, and doing it with a vengeance into the bargain.
Rasputin, however, was of a different opinion, and in his desire that
others should share it he liked to boast in public of the things which
he had not done and of the words which he had not spoken. He was upon
excellent terms with some of the palace servants, in whom he had found
comrades and with whom he felt more at his ease than with any one else.
He got them to relate to him all that was going on in the family of
the Czar. He very cleverly made use of this knowledge later on. It is
well known in Russia that the Emperor himself was watched by the secret
police, not only in view of his personal safety, but also because it
was to the interest of the police to be thoroughly acquainted with all
that he did and with the remarks it pleased him to make. And the secret
police were working hand in hand with Rasputin. Their provocative
agents, of which there existed considerable numbers, were everywhere
talking about the “Prophet’s” influence and ever-growing importance,
as well as relating in all the restaurants and public places in the
capital wonderful and improbable tales concerning him and his doings.
From these they were spread among the public and penetrated to people
who otherwise would never have had the possibility of hearing anything
about them. Among those who showed themselves the most active and the
most eager to talk about Rasputin and about the influence which he
was acquiring were persons well known for their German sympathies and
others suspected of being German agents in disguise.
At that period the great aim of the German Foreign Office was to bring
about the collapse of the Franco-Russian alliance, and it set itself
most cleverly to try to bring it about. Among the persons whom it
employed for the purpose was Rasputin, perhaps unknown to himself, but
led by men like Count Witte, who had always been pro-German in sympathy
and who had almost engaged himself to bring about a rapprochement
between the St. Petersburg and the Berlin Court. Working with Witte was
Mr. Manusevitsch Maniuloff, one of the most abominable secret agents
the world has ever known, who in his unscrupulousness would have done
anything he was asked, provided he were paid high enough. For years
he had been in receipt of German subsidies. By dint of blackmailing
he had contrived to maintain himself in the capacity of one of the
editors of the _Novoie Vremia_, where he wrote all that was asked of
him for a consideration, the extent and nature of which depended
upon circumstances. He was also on the staff of the Russian political
Intelligence Department, to which he rendered such services as he
considered to be advantageous to himself without the least thought of
the use these might be to the State which employed him.
Mr. Maniuloff was a spendthrift who never could deny himself any of
the good things of life. These are always considered to be expensive
ones, and consequently he had expensive tastes. His capacity of police
agent had allowed him to blackmail to advantage people against whom
he had discovered, or thought he had discovered, something in the way
of dangerous political opinions. One of his favourite occupations
consisted in going about among these people and hinting to them that
unless they showed themselves willing to minister to his numerous wants
they might find themselves one day in a very tight corner. Generally
these tactics proved successful, until he was caught red-handed in
Paris, where he had been sent on a special mission, tampering with
the funds of which he had control. This accident caused him to be
dismissed. But the man knew far too much and had been far too advanced
in the confidence of his superiors for them to be able to do without
his services, so he was allowed to return to Russia and enroll himself
in journalism, thus to make himself useful again. He had a wonderful
intelligence and was an excellent worker and talked fluently in most of
the European languages. He therefore made his way up the ladder once
more, until at last he became the private secretary to Mr. Sturmer when
the latter was Prime Minister, an advancement that proved fatal to
him because it brought him to prison. But of this I shall speak later
on when touching upon the events which culminated in the murder of
Rasputin.
Such were the men who virtually controlled every action of the
“Prophet,” and it is no wonder if guided by them he sometimes contrived
to influence never the Czar himself, but the latter’s Ministers and
officials who had been told, they did not even know by whom, but
probably by the loud voice of the public, that to do anything to please
Rasputin was to secure for oneself the good graces of the highest
people in the land. As time went on the “Prophet” showed himself less
and less in public, remaining among a small circle of personal friends
whose interest it was to represent him as a kind of Indian idol,
unapproachable except to his worshippers.
And in the meanwhile the ladies who had been the first artisans of
Rasputin’s favour were still holding religious meetings under his
guidance and still seeking inspiration from his teachings. They
believed him to be a real saint, refused to admit that he could do
anything wrong and refused to accept as true the rumours which went
about and which, unfortunately for the “Prophet’s” reputation, were but
too exact, that he was fond of every kind of riotous living, that he
spent his nights in drunken revels and that he gave his best attention
to brandy mixed with champagne. His admirers persisted in seeing in him
the prophet of the Almighty and believed that they could never be saved
unless they conformed to all the directions which it might please him
to give them.
The Rasputin craze became more violent than ever during the few months
which immediately preceded the war, and it very nearly verged upon
complete fanaticism for his personality. Everything that he did was
considered to be holy. His insolence and arrogance, displayed with
increasing violence every day and hour, were almost incredible. This
illiterate peasant dared to send dirty little scraps of paper on which
he had scribbled a coarse message to ministers and public men ordering
them to do this or that according to his pleasure, and presuming to
give them advice, which was never his own, in matters of the utmost
public importance. At first people had laughed at him, but very soon
they had discovered that he could revenge himself on them quickly
and effectively, and this had led to the general determination not
to interfere with him any more, but to leave him severely alone, no
matter what extravagance he might commit or say. And when it came to
the extortion of large sums of money, those who were challenged to pay
them generally did so with alacrity, as happened in the case of several
banks to which Mr. Maniuloff applied for funds, with the help of these
illiterate scraps of paper upon which Rasputin had scribbled his desire
that the money should be put at the disposal of his “protégé.”
What I have been writing is fact, which has been proved publicly, and
never contradicted by so much as one single word of protestation. It
accounts for the hatred with which the “Prophet” came to be viewed.
As time went on it was felt that something ought to be attempted
against the imposter who had contrived to break through barriers one
could have believed to be absolutely impregnable. But no one knew how
this was to be done, and at the time I am referring to the idea of a
political assassination of Rasputin had not entered into the people’s
heads. It was a woman who was to bring it before the public in the
following circumstances:
During the spring of the year 1914, Rasputin, to the general surprise
of everybody, declared to his friends that he intended to leave the
capital and to return for a few months to his native village of
Pokrovskoie in Siberia to rest from his labours. Strenuous efforts were
made to detain him in Petrograd, but he remained inflexible and rudely
thrust aside those who would fain have kept him back. He declared that
he was tired and weary of the existence which he had been leading the
last year, and that the various annoyances and difficulties that had
been put in his way by his numerous enemies had quite sickened him.
Such, at least, was the explanation which he chose to give and to
which he stuck. Others, it is true, declared that the real reason for
his departure was that he had been given to understand that he would
do better to absent himself from St. Petersburg during the time when
the visit of the President of the French Republic was expected, as his
presence there might prove embarrassing from more than one point of
view. The hint had enraged him, and he had determined to go away for
a much longer time than he had been told to do. He had even declared
to a few of his closest friends that he was not going to return to the
capital any more, but that he would remain in Siberia, where, as he
graphically put it, “there was a great deal more money to be made than
anywhere else in the world.”
Whether the above is strictly true or not, I am not in a position to
say, but it does not sound improbable. The fact remains that Rasputin
left St. Petersburg for Pokrovskoie, where he arrived in the first days
of June, 1914, accompanied by the “Sisters,” who were his constant
companions. He was received with such honours that he might have been
the Sovereign himself instead of the simple peasant he was. A crowd
composed of several thousand men and women met him at the gates of
the village and threw themselves at his feet imploring his blessing
and calling upon him to pray with them, and to show them the real way
to God which he was supposed to be the only one in Russia capable of
indicating. For a few days this kind of thing continued, and Rasputin’s
house was literally besieged by crowds of people who had gathered at
Pokrovskoie from all parts of Siberia eager to pay homage to their
national hero, for such he was considered to be. Rasputin smiled and
chuckled and rubbed his hands, as was his wont in those moments when
he allowed his satisfaction at anything to overpower him. If in St.
Petersburg he had been considered as a prophet, here in this remote
corner of Siberia he was fast becoming a kind of small god at whose
shrine a whole nation was worshipping. This was just the sort of thing
to please him and to make him forget any small unpleasantnesses he
might have experienced before his departure from the capital.
One morning, it was the 13th of July, 1914, Rasputin was leaving his
house on his way to church, whither it was his custom to repair every
day. On the threshold of his dwelling a woman was awaiting him. She had
her face muffled in a shawl in spite of the warm weather. When she saw
him she threw herself on her knees before him, as persons of her kind
invariably did when they met him. The “Prophet” stopped and asked her
what it was she wanted from him. Her only reply was to plunge into his
stomach a large kitchen knife, which she had held the whole time hidden
under her shawl.
Rasputin uttered one cry and sank upon the ground. The crowd which was
always following him rushed toward him and lifted him up, while two
local policemen who had been set by the authorities to protect and
guard him threw themselves upon the woman and seized her violently by
both arms. She remained perfectly quiet, declaring that they need not
hold her as she had not the slightest intention of running away. She
knew very well what she had done, and she had meant to do it for a long
time. When asked what had been her motives, she declared that she would
speak before the magistrates, and only asked to be protected in the
meanwhile against the fury of the mob that was threatening to tear her
to pieces in its rage. She did not seem to be in the least disturbed
by what she had done and throughout she showed the most extraordinary
coolness and self-possession.
Very soon it was ascertained that she was a native of the government
of Saratoff, and that her name was Gousieva. When Rasputin had been
preaching in Saratoff she was among the women who had been taken in by
his speeches, and though married she had left her husband and family
to follow the “Prophet.” He very soon proceeded to “cleanse her from
her sins,” according to his favourite expression. We know, of course,
what this meant, and Gousieva, who at that time was young and pretty,
only shared the fate of so many other women, deluded by the mealy
mouthed utterances of the “new Saviour,” that it was only by means of
a complete union with himself that they could be saved and their sins
forgiven them. The unfortunate Gousieva had been only one of many.
When she had found it out an intense rage had taken hold of her, which
had been further enhanced and strengthened by the monk Illiodore, to
whom she had related her misfortune. He had already at the time she
sought him out become the deadly enemy of his former friend Rasputin.
The miserable woman had lost everything--home, children, husband,
relatives--on account of her mad infatuation for the deceiver who had
made her forget her duties by the fascination which he had exercised
over her weak mind. She swore that she would revenge herself and kill
the “Prophet,” so that at least other women could be saved from the
awful fate which had befallen her.
After Rasputin had dismissed her she had been compelled to lead a
dreadful kind of existence in order to obtain a piece of bread. At
last she had become attacked by an awful disease, which had already
eaten away a part of her nose and completely disfigured her face.
This, too, she attributed to the “Prophet.” In her despair she decided
that as she had nothing to lose the best and only thing left for her
to do was to try and rid the world from the awful impostor who had
caused so much misery, brought about such abominable misfortunes and
occasioned so much distress to such a number of innocent women. She
had followed Rasputin for a long time in St. Petersburg, but had never
been able to approach him near enough to execute her design. But when
it had come to her knowledge that he was returning to Pokrovskoie she
had taken it as an indication that the Almighty would be with her in
the deed which she was contemplating, and she, too, started for the
distant Siberian village. There she had spent three days waiting for a
favourable opportunity until the morning when she had at last succeeded
in getting close enough to him to plant in his body the knife which she
had carried about with her for more than two years.
This whole story was related by Gousieva with the utmost composure,
and without any hesitation at all. She considered Rasputin as the
incarnation of the devil, and she had thought it a good deed to put
him out of the way of committing any more evil. For the rest, she did
not care what was to become of her. As it was she knew that she had
not long to live, and with the illness with which she was afflicted
existence in itself was not so sweet that she should sacrifice her
revenge in order to retain it. She had had no accomplices, and she had
consulted no one. In spite of the efforts which were made to induce her
to say that she had acted under the directions and the inspiration of
Illiodore, she denied it absolutely, adding that had she spoken to him
about her intention she knew that he would have dissuaded her from it
and that he might even have warned the police so as to frustrate her
design.
In the meanwhile, Rasputin had been carried back to his room and
telegrams dispatched everywhere for a doctor. The wound, though deep,
was not a serious one and it had not attacked any vital organs. The man
was in no danger, but his disciples chose to say that it was a miracle
of Providence that he had not succumbed at once under the blow which
had been dealt at him. The “Prophet,” when he had felt himself stabbed,
had cried out that some one was to “arrest that b----h who had hit
him.” Then he caused several telegrams to be sent to his friends in
St. Petersburg in which he described the attempt against his life as
the work of the devil, who had inspired the woman Gousieva and induced
her to commit her abominable action. He added that at the moment when
her weapon had touched him he had seen an angel descend from Heaven,
stop her arm, and then put a hand on his wound so as to stop it from
bleeding, and that it was only due to this direct intervention of the
Almighty that he had escaped with his life. Of course, the story was
believed by the credulous people who accepted every one of his words as
a manifestation of the will of the Lord, and he became more than ever a
saint, to whom the people began to raise altars, and to regard in the
light of another Saviour come to redeem mankind from the terrors of sin.
In St. Petersburg the news of the attempted assassination of Rasputin
had produced an immense impression, and had been commented upon in
different ways. Some people saw in it an intervention of the secret
police, who had been told to get rid in some way or other of a man who
was fast becoming a public nuisance and embarrassment for everybody,
even for those who had benefited through their acquaintance with him.
Others declared that it was a just punishment for his evil deeds,
and that the woman Gousieva had not been badly inspired when she had
tried to revenge herself on him for the terrible wrong which he had
done to her. Every one was anxious to learn how the news would be
received in certain quarters and among the bevy of feminine worshippers
whose existence was wrapped up in that of Rasputin. Public curiosity,
however, was not destined to be satisfied, because nothing was heard
concerning the feelings of these adepts of his on this remarkable
occasion.
The only thing which one learned in regard to the whole affair was that
two ladies who figured among his most prominent supporters had started
at once for Pokrovskoie, and that a celebrated surgeon from Kazan had
also been requested to go to see him regardless of what his journey
might cost.
The care that was taken of Rasputin soon restored him to his usual
health, and he became at once a martyr. When the first moment
of fright--and, being a great coward, he had been thoroughly
frightened--had passed away, he felt rather satisfied at the fuss which
was made about him, and more grateful than anything else to the woman
Gousieva for having given him such a splendid opportunity to recover
some of his popularity, which he had feared might decrease during his
absence from St. Petersburg. The fact that his attempted assassination
had brought his name and his person once more prominently before the
public pleased him, and his natural cunning made him at once grasp
the whole importance of the event and the capital that might be made
out of it. He was the first to plead for indulgence for his would-be
murderess, perhaps out of fear of the scandal which a trial might
produce, a trial during which a lawyer might be found daring enough and
enterprising enough to speak openly of the reasons which had driven the
accused woman to this act of madness, and to disclose certain episodes
in the past existence of the “Prophet” which the latter would not have
cared at all to become the property of the public. On the other hand,
the authorities, too, felt that a public trial would only cause a most
painful sensation, by the mention of names which it was of the highest
importance to keep outside the question. The culprit herself insisted
upon being brought before a jury, declaring that she had sought
publicity and that she would not rest until she had it; that, moreover,
she did not intend to be cheated out of her revenge or prevented from
exposing the man in whom she saw the most flagrant and daring impostor,
a creature for whom nothing in the world was sacred and who would not
hesitate at anything in order to come to his ends. She insisted on the
fact that she would have rendered a public service to the country had
she killed him, and that, whatever happened to her personally, the
vengeance of God would one day overtake “Gricha” and his wickedness,
and that others would be found who would follow the example which she
had given to them and not fail as she had failed.
Gousieva told all this to the examining magistrate to whom had
been intrusted the preliminary inquest, and she persisted in her
allegations, notwithstanding all the efforts and even the threats which
were made to her to induce her to retract her first deposition. The
authorities found themselves in a dilemma from which they did not know
how to extricate themselves, when Rasputin himself came to their rescue.
“The woman is mad,” he said. “All that she relates is but the ravings
of a madwoman. Lock her up in an asylum, and let us hear nothing more
about her!”
This piece of advice was considered to be the best possible under
the circumstances, and Gousieva was placed first in a hospital for
observation and then a few months later adjudged insane by order.
She was removed to a madhouse, no one knows exactly where, and there
she probably is locked up to this day unless death in some shape or
form has overtaken her and removed her forever out of a world which
certainly had never proved a kind one for her.
In the meanwhile her victim was mending rapidly, and three weeks
after his accident he was removed first to Tobolsk and then to St.
Petersburg. His disciples were preparing a great reception for him, and
he himself was openly talking of all that he would do on his return
and of the revenge which he was going to take on the people to whose
influence he attributed the “mad” act of the woman who had attacked
him. He made the greatest efforts to connect Illiodore with the attempt
of Gousieva, and he was quite furious to see them fail, declaring that
when he was once more in the capital he would make it his business
to find out whether it was not possible to discover some points of
association between the unfrocked monk and the woman whose knife had
been raised against him. He further made no secret of his intention
to obtain the proofs which he needed, thanks to the intelligence and
with the help of his friend Mr. Manassevitsch-Maniuloff. Whether he
would have succeeded or not, it is difficult to say, because when
Rasputin returned to St. Petersburg and was enabled to visit his
friends at Tsarskoie Selo once more, there were other preoccupations
which were troubling the public more than anything connected with his
individuality. War had broken out with Germany.
CHAPTER VI
It was perhaps a fortunate thing for Rasputin that he was not in St.
Petersburg when Germany attacked us so unexpectedly. It is quite
probable that if he had found himself in the capital at the time he
would have intrigued in so many ways that he might have put even the
Sovereign in an embarrassing position, for any hesitations in the
decisions of the Government would have been attributed to the influence
of the “Prophet.” At this time of national crisis, it certainly would
have been a misfortune if anything had occurred likely to endanger
the prestige of the dynasty. But in regard to Rasputin himself, it is
likely that his absence delayed the conspiracy which resulted in his
death, as he was forgotten for the moment, so intensely was public
opinion preoccupied with the grave events that were taking place.
Later on, after the disaster of Tannenberg, the friends of the
“Prophet,” in order to win back for him some popularity, spread the
rumour that he had from his distant Pokrovskoie written to one of his
warmest patronesses, Madame W, that he had had a vision during which
it had been revealed to him that the Russian armies were to march
immediately upon eastern Prussia, where it would be possible to deal
a decisive blow at the enemy, and to do so with all their strength.
Now this is precisely what was not done, owing to the military
misconception of the Russian General Staff, which for political reasons
started to proceed to the conquest of Galicia, that could have been
delayed with advantage until after the Prussian monster, if not killed,
had been at least seriously injured.
The enemies of the Grand Duke Nicholas, of whom there were plenty,
seized hold of this rumour, and rallied themselves round Rasputin,
declaring that once more God had intervened in favour of Holy Russia,
in blessing it with a prophet whose clear glance and visions could
be relied upon far better than the strategical combinations of the
Grand Duke that had proved such a complete failure. The Grand Duke was
accused of having despatched two army corps into the Mazurian region
without having taken sufficient precautions to insure their safety,
and it was said that the only one who had seen clearly the disaster
which had overtaken these corps had been Rasputin, and that it had been
revealed to him direct from Heaven even before it had taken place.
All this was great nonsense, of course, but nevertheless it did a
considerable amount of harm. One must not lose sight of one fact when
one judges the whole history of the impostor who for so many years
contrived to occupy with his personality the attention of the Russian
public, and that is that his sermons and utterances appealed to that
mystical side of the Slav character which in all hours of great
national crises and misfortunes asserts itself a manner which to the
Occidental mind seems quite incomprehensible. It is sufficient to have
looked upon the crowds kneeling in the streets of St. Petersburg, and
of Moscow, during those eventful August days which saw the breaking
out of the catastrophe, to become persuaded of the fact that they
reckoned more on God’s intervention on their behalf than on the
efficacy of any guns or soldiers to insure a victory for the Russian
arms.
Rasputin, for a short period, became once more a national hero, at
least in the eyes of the select circle that had first brought him
prominently before the public, and they began to say among this circle
that until one followed his directions and gave oneself up entirely
to the service of God in the manner it pleased him to recommend, the
campaign that had just begun would never be won. For other people, too,
the return of the “Prophet” to Petrograd, as St. Petersburg had been
rechristened, was also a boon. All the speculators, army purveyors and
persons interested in army contracts awaited him with an impatience
which surpassed every description, and they surrounded him at once and
laid siege, not so much to his person as to the influence which he was
supposed to possess.
There are innumerable anecdotes about this agitated period in the
career of Rasputin, each more amusing and each more incredible than the
others. I shall here quote a few:
A Danish gentleman had arrived in Petrograd from Copenhagen with a load
of medicines and different pharmaceutical products which he wanted to
sell to the Red Cross. He brought excellent credentials with him, and
he imagined that the business would be a relatively easy one. But to
his surprise he found that this was not at all the case. Though the
prices which he asked for his goods were not at all high compared with
those current in the Russian capital, he could not get rid of them,
and he was always put off until the next day. At last he became quite
discouraged and was already thinking of returning home when he met in
the lounge of the principal hotel of Petrograd (famed for the financial
transactions which were regularly taking place under its roof) a Jew
who, seeing him looking worried and annoyed, asked what was the matter.
The Dane then related his story, adding that he failed to understand
why at a time when the things which he had brought with him were in
great demand he could not sell them, though he had lowered his prices
to a point below which it was quite impossible for him to go. The Jew
looked at him for some minutes, then asked him whether he would feel
inclined, if he could help him to dispose of his wares at a profit, to
give a large commission in exchange. The Dane of course assented, and
the Jew took him the next day to Rasputin, to whom he told a long story
of which the seller of the articles in question understood nothing at
all, but which culminated in the “Prophet” scribbling something in
pencil on a dirty scrap of paper, and handing it to his visitors. The
same afternoon the two men went to the head offices of the Red Cross,
accompanied by another gentleman, who introduced himself as Rasputin’s
secretary. To the intense surprise of the Dane, the medicines which he
had been trying uselessly to sell for three weeks were at once accepted
on the producing of the “Prophet’s” note, and sold at such an enormous
profit that he remained absolutely astounded. The contract was signed
there and then, and a cheque handed to the happy seller. His two
companions then accompanied him to the bank, where he handed over to
them their share in the transaction, Rasputin’s representative taking
the lion’s share of course, but whether for his master or for himself
has never been ascertained.
Another example is still more typical. There existed in Petrograd a
German who had lived there for years, and who had acquired considerable
property, among other things several houses in Petrograd, bringing
him a large income. Very soon after the breaking out of the war the
properties belonging to the enemy were sequestrated, and German
subjects sent away from the capital to live out the war in some
northern government. The same fate overtook our friend. But he was a
man of resources, and he immediately proceeded to pay a visit to Mr.
Manassevitsch-Maniuloff. The latter was about the last man capable
of allowing such a wonderful chance to escape him. How he managed he
did not say, and the German never cared to learn, but he was allowed
not only to remain in Petrograd, but also to sell his houses to a
personage occupying such a very important administrative position that
no one cared or dared to inquire of him whether he paid into the bank,
as he ought to have done, the price of his acquisitions, or whether
he gave it in the shape of a cheque on a foreign bank to the seller.
And to crown the whole matter, the German in question was allowed
to leave Russia with all due honours, and received the position of
official buyer of different military goods for the Russian government
in Scandinavia. He soon managed to indemnify himself to the full for
the loss he had incurred in parting from his property for a mere song,
and in paying the three hundred thousand rubles commission which Mr.
Manassevitsch-Maniuloff and Rasputin had together obtained from him.
Such things were of daily occurrence, known to the general public, and
of course commented upon in terms which were anything but favourable to
the “Prophet.” The latter, however, did not mind and seemed absolutely
convinced of immunity in regard to the different transactions in
which he indulged and which increased in importance every day. He
began to give his special attention to the interesting matter of army
contracts, and there he found a very rich field to explore. All the
different agents and intermediaries who constituted such a notable
element in Petrograd crowded around him, offering him their services,
or imploring his help in all kinds of shady business, out of which no
one with the exception of Rasputin himself got a single penny. Thanks
to him, bad cartridges were delivered to the army; rotten meat, or meat
at a fabulous price, was sold for its wants, and not only sold once,
but several times over. No matter how strange this last assertion may
sound, it is absolutely true. If at the beginning of the war people
were afraid to indulge in that kind of sport, they became adepts at
it later on, and the only art which was practised in regard to it
consisted in bribing an official not to put the Government stamp on
the goods which were delivered to the Red Cross or to the Commissariat
Department, an omission which allowed them to be returned to those who
had already once disposed of them, and thus become the object of a new
transaction, perhaps even more profitable than the first.
In regard to important matters, Rasputin did not disdain occasionally
to play the spy. I remember a curious instance which during the first
five or six weeks of the war greatly amused those who became aware of
it. The whole incident is most characteristic of the business methods
then in vogue in Russia, which are at present dying out fast, thanks
to the co-operation of the English and French authorities with the
Russians in all questions connected with army contracts.
When war was declared the military administration proceeded to
requisition numerous things which it required in the way of war
material. Among others were sand bags for the trenches. Now there
happened to be a Jew in Petrograd who had about 50,000 of them. He
did not care to declare them as he ought to have done, knowing very
well that he was not in a position to obtain from the Commissariat
Department the price which he wanted. He therefore sold them to another
Jew, who gave him a certain sum on account, stipulating that he would
take the delivery of the goods in the course of the next week or so.
But in the meanwhile prices went down, and the unlucky buyer found that
he had indeed made about as bad a bargain as possible. While he was
thus lamenting his bad luck, he happened to meet one of the secretaries
of Rasputin to whom he related his misfortune.
“Is this troubling you?” exclaimed the latter. “This is nothing, and
we shall soon set it all right.” He took him to the “Prophet,” where
the trio came to the following arrangement: The Jew was to go forthwith
to the Commissariat Department and declare that he had so many thousand
sand bags to sell. Rasputin was to speak in his favour and to do his
best to obtain the highest prices possible. Rasputin’s secretary
proceeded then to denounce the first Jew, who was the real owner of
the bags, as having neglected to declare their existence. Immediately
a requisition was made in the latter’s store, where the bags of course
were found. Then the Jew who had given an account of them interfered,
and said that they were his property, and that he had fulfilled all
the formalities required by the law in regard to them. He forthwith
proceeded to take possession of the bags, laughing in the face of their
real owner whom he defied to claim the balance still due to him, well
knowing that the unfortunate victim could do nothing, because if he
had tried to complain he would inevitably have been condemned to pay a
heavy fine and to be imprisoned.
Then again there was a story of railway trucks in which the “Prophet”
also was mixed up in some unaccountable way. Some Jews, protected
no one knows to this day by whom or in what way, had obtained some
contracts from the Government for different goods which were to be
delivered to the army, together with the necessary numbers of railway
trucks to carry them to the front. They immediately proceeded to sell
these contracts at a fair price, though not an exaggerated one, to
other people, but with the clause that these other people were to take
upon themselves the care of forwarding the goods to their destination.
And they kept for their own use and benefit the trucks which had been
allotted to them, hiring them afterward to whoever wanted to have them
for as much money as they could get. One Jew, a certain Mr. Bernstein,
thus obtained control over more than 500 trucks, out of which he drew
during six months an income amounting to something like 250,000 rubles
a month. And this occurred while everybody was complaining of the
impossibility of forwarding anything anywhere, owing to the total lack
of railway material. It is related that in this little business, too,
Rasputin was mixed up, and that without him the military contracts
which the heroes of the anecdote I have just related obtained would
never have been granted.
These stories, scandalous though they were, are well known. There were
others of which it is hardly possible to speak in a language fit for
a drawing room. Such, for instance, is the sad case of a young girl,
the daughter of a rich merchant in Moscow, who travelled all the way
to Petrograd, to see the “Prophet” and implore his prayers for her
fiancé who was at the front. Rasputin received her, and forthwith
proceeded to tell her that the young man for whom she felt so anxious
was doomed and could be saved only if she consented to unite herself
with him, Rasputin, and to be cleansed by him of all her sins. The poor
child, frightened out of her wits and fascinated by the terror which
the dreadful creature inspired in his victims, allowed him to do what
he liked with her. But she afterward became mad, on hearing that in
spite of her sacrifices her lover had fallen at Tannenburg, during the
terrible battle which took place in that locality.
All these things were whispered from ear to ear with horror and
disgust, but they did not harm in the least the impostor who was
pursuing his career of wickedness, deceit and crime. As time went on,
he got more and more insolent, more and more overbearing, so that at
last even some of his former protectors found that he was going rather
too far, and he was no longer received at Tsarskoie Selo with the same
kindness that had been shown to him previously.
He did not care for this, nor did those with whom he was working care
either. They were all unscrupulous, daring people, determined to make
hay while the sun was shining, and careless as to what others might
think of them. Count Witte, who saw further and understood better than
most of the public the hopeless muddle into which the administration
had fallen, felt sure that sooner or later the country would demand an
explanation for the many mistakes and errors which had been committed,
and that a change in the Government was bound to take place. He fully
meant this change to affect his own prospects in so far that it would
put him again at the head of affairs, and he was helping Rasputin as
hard and as well as he could to discredit the Cabinet then in power,
and to show it up as being thoroughly incapable of managing the country
at this moment of grave crisis.
It was about that time that the Massayedoff incident took place, about
which such a lot has been written, and which deserves a passing
mention in this record. Massayedoff was a colonel who had already given
some reasons to be talked about for misdeeds of a more or less grave
nature. General Rennenkampf, when he had received the command of the
Kovno Army Corps, had energetically protested against his appointment
on his staff, but headquarters ignored his representations and
maintained the colonel in his functions.
After the disaster of Tannenberg and the loss of two Russian army
corps in the swamps of the Mazurian region, it was discovered that
some spying of a grave nature had been going on and that the principal
spy was Colonel Massayedoff, who had kept the enemy informed of the
movements of the Russian troops. He was tried and condemned to death,
which sentence was duly executed. Together with him several individuals
compromised in the same affair, mostly Jews connected with questions of
army purveyance, were also hanged. Among these last was a man called
Friedmann, who had been one of the parasites who were perpetually
crowding around Rasputin. The latter, however, when asked to interfere
in his favour had refused to do so, but whether this was due to the
desire to get rid of a compromising accomplice or the dread of being
mixed up himself in a dangerous story, it is difficult to say or to
guess. But others talked, if the “Prophet” himself remained silent, and
soon it began to be whispered that he was also, if not exactly a German
agent, at least a partisan of a separate peace with Germany.
There certainly exist indications that such was the case. In spite of
the strong character upon which Rasputin prided himself, it is hardly
possible that he could have escaped the influence of the people who
were constantly hanging about him, and who were all partial to Germany.
This was due to the fact that they hoped, if the latter Power triumphed
and vanquished the Russians, to obtain from the German Government
substantial rewards for their fidelity, in the shape of some kind of
army contracts, for the time that the Prussian troops remained in
occupation of some Russian provinces. It is quite remarkable that while
the nation in general was all for the continuation of the war, and
would have considered it a shame to listen to peace proposals without
consent of its Allies, commercial and industrial people were always
talking about peace to whomever would listen. And Rasputin had now more
to do with that class of individuals than with the nation.
It was at that time that he suddenly imagined himself to be endowed
with perspicacity in regard to military matters, and that he attempted
to criticise the operations at the front, and especially the leadership
of the Grand Duke Nicholas, whom he hated with all the ferocity for
which his character had become famous. He was known to be absolutely
without any mercy for those whom he disliked. He disliked none more
than the Grand Duke, who had, on one occasion when the “Prophet”
had tried to discuss with him the conduct of the campaign and even
volunteered to arrive at headquarters, declared that if he ever
ventured to put in an appearance there he would have him hanged
immediately from the first tree he could find. Rasputin was prudent,
and moreover he knew that Nicolas Nicolaievitsch was a man who always
kept his word, so he thought it wise to leave a wide berth between
him and the irascible commander-in-chief. But he applied himself with
considerable perseverance to undermine the position of the latter,
and especially to render him unpopular among the people, accusing him
openly of mismanagement in regard to military matters and of want of
foresight in his strategical dispositions.
In the beginning this did not succeed, partly because the staff did
not allow any news of importance to leak out from the front and partly
because the country believed so firmly in a victory over the Prussians
that it was very hard to shake its confidence in the Grand Duke’s
abilities. The early successes of the first Galician campaign had
strengthened this confidence, and no one in Petrograd during the first
months of the year 1915 ever gave a thought to the possibility of our
troops being compelled to retreat before the enemy, and no one foresaw
the fall of Warsaw and of the other fortresses on the western frontier.
Rasputin, however, knew more than the public at large. He had his
spies everywhere, who faithfully reported to him everything that was
occurring in the army. He was well aware that the army was suffering
from an almost complete lack of ammunition, and that it would never be
able to hold against any offensive combined with artillery attacks on
the part of the enemy. This knowledge, which he carefully refrained
from sharing with any one, enabled him to indulge in prophesies of
a more or less tragic nature, the sense of which was that God was
punishing Russia for its sins, and that with an unbeliever like the
commander-in-chief at the head of its armies it was surely marching
towards a defeat which would be sent by God as a warning never to
forget the paths of Providence, and never to disdain the advice of the
one prophet that He had sent in His mercy to save Russia from all the
calamities which were threatening her.
He used to speak in that way everywhere and to everybody, even at
Tsarskoie Selo, not to the Emperor and Empress, of course, but to all
those persons surrounding them who were favourably inclined toward
himself and likely to spread abroad the prophecies which he kept
pouring into their ears.
But, in spite of all this, he was not quite so successful as he had
hoped, because owing to the ignorance which prevailed as to the real
state of things in the army, few people believed him, and fewer still
would own that they did so. Once more Rasputin’s star was beginning to
wane, and even the Empress began to think him very wearisome with his
perpetual forebodings concerning misfortunes which seemed to be far
away from the limits of possibility.
Then suddenly things changed. Mackensen began his march forward, and
the Grand Duke, with his heart full of rage and despair, was compelled,
owing to the mistakes, the negligence and the crimes of others, to make
the best out of a very bad job, and to try at least to save the army
confided to his care. Even if he had to sacrifice towns and fortresses,
he had declared he would never, and under no conditions whatever,
surrender to the enemy. The great retreat began, and proved to be one
of the most glorious pages in the history of Russian warfare, a deed
the gallantry of which will live in the military annals of the world
as almost as grand a one as the famous retreat of Xenophon and his
10,000 warriors. Russia appreciated its importance; the world admired
it; the Czar, though he may have shed bitter tears over its necessity,
felt grateful for the talent which was displayed in such a terrible
emergency; but people in Petrograd began looking for those upon whom
they could fix the responsibility for this awful disappointment which
had overtaken them. This was the moment for which Rasputin had been
waiting with the patience of the serpent watching for its prey, and
of which he hastened to make use with the infernal cunning he usually
displayed in all the evil deeds with which he was familiar.
The secret police agents, who were working with him, and thanks to whom
he had been enabled to make the enormous profits that had added so many
millions to his fortune since the war had started, began to spread the
rumour that the Grand Duke was plotting against the Czar, and wanted
to usurp the latter’s throne and crown, out of fear of being called
upon to render an account of his activity during the nine months of the
campaign. Though it was quite evident that the responsibility for the
lamentable want of organisation which had culminated in the momentary
defeat of the Russian troops lay upon the War Office and the Artillery
and Commissariat Departments, and though the War Minister, General
Soukhomlinoff, had been dismissed in disgrace before being sent to the
fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul to await there his trial; though
strenuous efforts had been made to punish those to whose carelessness
this mass of misfortunes had been due, yet Rasputin and his friends
applied themselves to the task of representing the Grand Duke as being
more guilty than any one else, and of having on purpose kept secret
the real state of things, out of fear that he would be called upon,
if he revealed the truth, to surrender his command. There was not one
word of truth in these accusations, because Nicholas Nicholaievitsch
had, on the contrary, worked harder than any one to repair the blunders
of others, and had never shared the blind confidence in victory which
so many people who knew nothing about the real condition of affairs
professed to nurse. He had done all that it was humanly possible to do,
in order to save a situation which had been doomed from the first day
that it had begun to develop. If he had failed, this had been in no way
his fault, but that of circumstances and of fate which had proved too
strong for him.
The public, however, thought differently, and Rasputin’s numerous
supporters helped it to come to the conclusion that the Grand Duke
ought to be deprived of his command by some means or other. This,
however, was not such an easy thing to do, because the Emperor had a
sincere esteem and respect for his uncle, and understood better than
all those who criticised the latter the extent of the difficulties
against which he had had to fight. He refused to listen to those who
tried to shake his confidence in the commander-in-chief. He might have
gone on for a long time doing so had not Rasputin succeeded in winning
over to his point of view several high ecclesiastical dignitaries, who
took it upon themselves to speak to the Sovereign of the desire and
wishes of the nation to see him assume himself the supreme command over
his armies. They assured him that it was quite certain that the armies
would fight ever so much better under the personal leadership of their
Czar than under any other commander-in-chief, no matter how high might
be his military reputation, or how elevated might be his rank. This
was quite a new point of view, and Nicholas II. had to examine it with
attention, the more so as the Empress, too, had been won over to the
idea, and was pressing him to give to his subjects this satisfaction
for which they craved.
The military situation was then recognised, even by the most
optimistically inclined people, to be very serious, and it was
generally felt that something had to be done to excite the enthusiasm
of the troops, which had lately begun to wane. The assumption by the
Czar of the supreme command seemed to present itself almost in the
light of an absolute necessity. Perhaps from some points of view
Rasputin was not so very wrong to urge it, as it most certainly
produced a salutary effect on the whole situation. But it is to be
doubted whether the “Prophet” had ever looked at it in that light. It
is far more likely that his only aim had been the displacing of the
Grand Duke Nicholas, who had begun to look too closely into all that
was going on around Rasputin, and to watch the different intrigues in
which the latter was taking part with an attention that did not promise
anything good for him, or for the further development of his career as
an adventurer.
When the Grand Duke had been appointed Viceroy of the Caucasus, and
had left for his new residence, Rasputin breathed freely once more.
For one thing, this incident had given him a greater confidence in his
own strength than he had even possessed before. Now that he had been
able to remove the commander-in-chief of the Russian armies from his
post, it seemed to him that it would be a relatively easy thing to push
forward, and to appoint to the most important functions in the State
people indoctrinated with his view and ready to help him in keeping
undisturbed and unchallenged the position into which he had glided so
naturally, and as now appeared to him, so simply--a position which
he was absolutely determined not to lose. With a Prime Minister at
his command, he would become the real master of Russia, and the Czar
himself would be compelled to take him into account, a thing which up
to then he had refused to do, much to the distress of the “Prophet.”
Though he repeated everywhere, and to whomsoever wished to listen to
him, that he could do all he liked at Tsarskoie Selo, he knew very
well in his inmost heart that such was not the case, and that in the
Imperial Palace Rasputin was nothing but Rasputin, an ignorant peasant,
endowed sometimes with gifts of second sight and always with religious
fervour, but a peasant all the same, with whom one might pray, but whom
one would never dream of appointing to any responsible position.
The knowledge that such was the case, and that his so-called influence
existed mostly in the imagination of the people who spoke about it,
worried Rasputin. Though he dictated to ministers his will, though he
decided together with them more than one important matter, yet he felt
that there was a flaw in the edifice of his fortune, and that this flaw
consisted in the fact that the Sovereign did not share the feeling of
reverence with which the Russian nation, as the “Prophet” flattered
himself was the case, experienced for his person and for his teachings.
This was what tormented him, and he spent the whole time thinking how
it might become possible to put in the place of Mr. Goremykine another
Prime Minister more ready to enter into his views, and to follow his
advice in regard to matters of state. This the then President of
Council, in spite of his deference for Rasputin, had refused to do,
preferring to discuss the affairs of the Government alone with the
Emperor, without any interference of the former.
Rasputin spoke of his wishes to some of his confidants, and even
mentioned the subject to several of the high-born ladies who formed
the great bulk of his “clientele.” These entered into his views with
alacrity, the more so as he developed them in a pathetic tone, which
appealed to their feelings of “patriotism.” They would have given much
to be able to help him, but they did not very well know how this was
to be done. This was due to the sad fact that there seemed to be no
one available. The unexpected and sudden death of Count Witte, which
had occurred in the meanwhile, removed the only person whom they could
suggest as a candidate for the functions of Prime Minister. All those
whose names might have been mentioned as fit individuals for the post,
such as Mr. Krivoscheine for instance, were people who would, with a
greater energy even than Mr. Goremykine had ever displayed, oppose any
interference of Rasputin into the conduct of the Government. Their
perplexity might have lasted a long time if Providence, in the shape
of Mr. Manassevitsch-Maniuloff, had not interfered in their favour,
and had the latter not suggested the advisability of entering into
negotiations with Mr. Sturmer.
CHAPTER VII
Mr. Sturmer was not a novice in politics and he was known to be a
reactionary of the deepest dye. It is likely that even Rasputin’s
friends would never have given a thought to the possibility of his
becoming Prime Minister if Count Witte had still been in the land of
the living. With the latter’s death the sort of coalition or secret
society that had hoped through the occult influence of the “Prophet”
to rise to power had lost its best head. There was no one to take his
place, officially at least, because with the best will in the world it
was impossible to suggest as a candidate for a ministerial portfolio
Mr. Manassevitsch-Maniuloff. The past record of this man did not permit
him to play any rôle but that of the Père Joseph of a minister who was
not a Richelieu. And though the secret position of principal adviser
to a personage of the importance of Rasputin had its advantages, it
nevertheless precluded the possibility of becoming a candidate for the
place of a statesman.
The next best thing, therefore, was to find some one who would be
willing to become consciously what the “Prophet” was unconsciously,
the instrument of the vile crew whose ambition was to make money by
all means out of the terrible situation into which the country was
plunged. These unscrupulous people all felt that they would never again
in the whole course of their life have another such opportunity of
becoming rich beyond the dreams of avarice, and they were not the kind
of people to allow it to escape them. Every effort was therefore put
forward to bring Mr. Sturmer to the notice of the Emperor, and to the
attention of all those capable of suggesting to the latter the choice
of this functionary to replace Mr. Goremykine, who had openly declared
that he could not any longer go on fighting against the subterranean
forces which were slowly but surely working against him, and making his
position more unbearable every day. The candidate who would have been
the most welcome to public opinion was Mr. Krivoscheine, but he was the
last man whom Rasputin’s friends would have cared to put forward.
On the other hand, Mr. Sturmer, for personal reasons into which it is
useless to enter here, when approached by Manassevitsch-Maniuloff, had
not hesitated a single moment in promising to indorse the purposes of
the small group of persons who had made up their minds to become the
real rulers of the State. As soon as he had declared his willingness to
join with them in the future an energetic campaign was started in his
favour, not in the press nor in the Duma, nor even among the public,
but in the immediate vicinity of the Sovereign, a campaign in which
some of the highest authorities in the Greek Church were enrolled, and
in which the Empress herself was persuaded by some of her personal
friends to take part. The expected then occurred. The Czar was finally
persuaded that in Mr. Sturmer he would find a faithful servant, which
in a certain sense he did, and also a minister determined to govern
according to the old principles of autocracy with an utter disregard
for the liberal parties, as well as for the Duma. The Duma had not
spared the Government during the whole summer, and its activity had
been viewed with dismay by certain members. Yet the country was glad
to find that at last there existed among its representatives men
courageous enough to say what they thought, and to try to save Russia
from the abyss into which it was felt that she was falling through the
influence not so much of Rasputin himself as of those who surrounded
him and who used him for their own ends.
This campaign succeeded and Mr. Sturmer was appointed. His selection
caused an outcry of indignation throughout the whole country, and
distressed its best friends for more than one reason. But even among
the functionaries of the Ministry, which had to accept him as its
chief, there were found some rebellious spirits, among whom was the
then Minister of the Interior, Mr. Chvostoff, who made up their minds
that it was at last high time to get rid of Rasputin in some manner
or other. He was also a reactionary, like Mr. Sturmer, and even a
furious one. When he was still a deputy in the Duma he had been one of
the leaders of the faction of the right and before that time had made
for himself the reputation of being an ultraconservative in all the
different administrative posts which he had occupied. Among others, he
had been Governor at Nijni Novgorod for a short period. He belonged to
the number of persons who held the opinion that Rasputin ought to be
removed. But whether he was really a party to the extraordinary story
I am going to relate is a matter about which I shall abstain from
expressing an opinion.
The fact is that about the beginning of the year 1916 people were
startled by hearing of a new conspiracy against Rasputin, in which it
was rumoured that the Minister of the Interior himself was a party.
Things stood thus: A secret agent of the Russian police called Rgevsky,
a man about as unscrupulous as Manassevitsch-Maniuloff but not so
clever, who had already figured more than once in occasions when the
need for a provocative agent had been felt, arrived in Christiania,
in Norway, where the unfrocked monk Illiodore was living, and sought
him out. His journey had been undertaken without the knowledge of the
chief of the secret police, Mr. Bieletsky, but on the express orders of
Mr. Chvostoff, the Minister of the Interior. Bieletsky, however, had
suspected that some underhand game was going on, and had caused Rgevsky
to be watched. When the latter had crossed the frontier at Torneo, he
had been thoroughly searched and examined by special orders received
from Petrograd, without, however, anything suspicious being found on
him. When he was questioned as to the reasons for his journey abroad he
had, in order to be allowed to proceed, to own that it was undertaken
by command of the Minister of the Interior.
On his return from abroad Rgevsky was at once arrested under the
pretext of having blackmailed another police agent. Furious at what he
considered to have been a breach of faith, he contrived to apprise
Rasputin of the position in which he found himself placed, and revealed
to him that the object of his mission had been to see and speak with
Illiodore to try to persuade the latter to organise a conspiracy with
the help of the many followers he still had in Russia. The object of
this plot was to be the murder of the “Prophet.” Illiodore had been
considered ever since his quarrel with Rasputin one of the latter’s
worst enemies, and it was felt that he would enter with alacrity into
the plot which it was proposed to engineer. But to the stupefaction of
the persons who had thus applied to him in the hope of finding in him
the instrument which they required, Illiodore went over to the enemy.
On the advice of Rgevsky he telegraphed to Rasputin, asking the latter
to send some one whom he could trust to Norway, and telling him that he
would deliver into the hands of that person the proofs of the plot that
was being hatched against his, Rasputin’s, life.
Mr. Chvostoff, when taken to task for the affair, of course, denied
it in its entirety. He declared that he had given quite different
instructions to Rgevsky, and that he had sent the policeman to Norway
to buy the memoirs of Illiodore, which he had heard the latter was
about to publish abroad. But at the same time Chvostoff made no secret
of his feelings of repugnance to Rasputin, and declared that he
considered him a most dangerous and mischievous man, whose presence
at Petrograd was exceedingly harmful for the prestige of the dynasty,
as well as for the welfare of the State in the grave circumstances in
which the country was finding itself placed.
According to Mr. Chvostoff, Rasputin was surrounded with individuals
of a most suspicious character, who spent their time in concocting
any amount of shady affairs and transactions, and who had organised
a regular plundering of the public exchequer. He did not dare to do
anything directly against the “Prophet,” but he tried to get at him
through the arrest of several of his adepts and friends. He caused the
houses of a considerable number of these to be thoroughly searched for
compromising documents. Among other places searched was the flat of
a Mr. Dobrovolsky, who held the position of a school inspector. This
search gave abundant evidence by which he might have been incriminated
in more than one dirty transaction. But he was not immediately arrested
and contrived to make his escape. Another of the Rasputin crew, a
certain Simanovitsch, was arrested at the very moment when he returned
to his home in the private automobile of Mr. Sturmer, one of whose
familiar friends he happened to be.
At the request of the “Prophet” an inquest into the denunciation of
Rgevsky was ordered by Mr. Sturmer, and a certain Mr. Gourland, whose
name had often been mentioned as that of a rising secret agent, was
entrusted with it. But Manassevitsch-Maniuloff contrived to oust him
and to get himself appointed in his place. At the same time it was
decided to send some one to Norway to interview Illiodore, and to try
thus to come to the bottom of the whole business. A certain General
Spiridovitsch, who had already more than once been entrusted with
missions of a delicate character which he had always accomplished to
the satisfaction of those who had employed him, was selected for
the task. The General had several interviews with Mr. Chvostoff, but
they all came to nothing, and he did not go abroad as it had been
rumoured that he would do. At last both the Minster of the Interior
and the chief of the secret police, Mr. Bieletsky, had to resign their
functions, and Rasputin found himself delivered from two of his most
dangerous enemies.
The next question which arose was that of the appointment of
Chvostoff’s successor. The post which he had vacated was such a
difficult and responsible one that several persons who were sounded as
to their readiness to accept it refused the offer in a most categorical
manner. The story which I have just related died at last a natural
death. Rgevsky disappeared, no one knew where, but the difficulties out
of which it had arisen were still there. They could hardly be set aside
by any minister, unless some radical measures were adopted, such as the
exile of Rasputin, a thing which no one dared to propose, and which no
one would have dared to enforce even if some one else had proposed it.
After the resignation, or rather the dismissal, of Mr. Chvostoff,
his post was finally offered, by the advice of Rasputin and at the
suggestion of Manassevitsch-Maniuloff, to Mr. Protopopoff, a rich
landowner of the Government of Simbirsk, who for some time had occupied
the position of vice president of the Duma of the Empire.
Just before his appointment to what is the most important and
responsible function in the whole Russian Empire, there was much talk
of an interview which he had had at Stockholm with Mr. Warberg, a
representative of the German Government, during which the conditions
at which a separate peace might come to be concluded between Russia
and the Central Empires had been discussed. Later on, when this
meeting, which had been arranged through the good offices of a Jew, Mr.
Maliniak, became the subject of general knowledge in Stockholm, and
details concerning it had found their way into the Russian press, Mr.
Protopopoff was violently attacked by the liberal parties in the Duma,
which accused him of treason, and refused even to listen to the clumsy
explanations which he attempted to give of the affair.
It was then generally believed that the political career of this
gentleman was at an end, and it was assumed that he would have to
resign his vice presidency in the House. Certainly no one ever thought
that he would suddenly develop into a minister. And yet, this is the
very thing which happened, thanks to the Rasputin crew, which persuaded
Mr. Sturmer to present Mr. Protopopoff to the Emperor as the best
candidate for the place vacated by Mr. Chvostoff. In the meanwhile,
Manassevitsch-Maniuloff, who had been the moving spirit in this whole
intrigue, had been appointed private secretary to Mr. Sturmer, and at
his instigation there began dissipation of public funds such as Russia
had never seen before, and such as, let us hope, she will never see
again.
There are many more things than I could possibly relate in regard
to the incidents of which I have given the outline here, but these
could hardly be published at present. The only thing which I can do
is to try to make my readers understand the general position as it
presented itself before the murder of Rasputin by quoting some speeches
which were delivered in the Duma as far back as the year 1912. They
were reproduced in the Russian Liberal organ, the Retsch, on the day
following the assassination of the “Prophet.” The Russian censor
offered no opposition to this republication.
The first of these speeches was made by Mr. Goutschkoff, one of the
most enlightened men in the whole of the Russian Empire, whose liberal
opinions and sound political views had won for him the respect of all
parties, even those who were opposed to them. The occasion upon which
it was pronounced was that of the discussion of the budget of the Holy
Synod, a discussion during which for the first time the personality of
Rasputin, together with his activity, was publicly denounced as one of
the greatest sources of danger that had ever threatened the country as
well as the dynasty.
“You all know,” said Mr. Goutschkoff in this memorable address, “what a
terrible drama Russia is living through at present. With sorrow in our
hearts and with terror in our souls we have followed its developments,
and we are dreading its consequences. Standing in the very heart of
this drama we see a mysterious, enigmatical, tragi-comical figure, who
seems to have come out of the dark ages, which we believed had passed
away forever, into the full light of the twentieth century. Perhaps
this figure is that of a sectarian of the worst kind who is trying to
popularise amongst us his mystical rites; perhaps it is that of an
adventurer seeking to hide under the cloak of religious fanaticism and
superstition his numerous swindles. By what means has this individual
succeeded in rising to such a prominent position and in acquiring such
an influence which even the dignitaries of our church, together with
the highest functionaries in our State, acknowledge and which they seek
to propitiate?
“If we had had to do with only this one figure which had made its way
on the field of religious superstition and which has thriven, thanks
to an exalted spirit of mysticism, a state of mind which, though not
perhaps bordering on insanity, is yet not quite normal, then we should
have said nothing. We might have regretted the fact; we might even have
wept over it, but we would not have spoken about it.
“But unfortunately this figure is not standing alone. Behind it there
is a whole crew, strong and varied, unscrupulous and grasping, which is
taking advantage of its position and of the talents of persuasion which
it may possess. Amongst this crew there are to be found journalists in
want of copy, shady business men, adventurers of every kind and sort.
It is they who are the moving spirits in all this sad history, it is
they who inspire it, they who tell it what it is to do. They constitute
a kind of commercial enterprise, and they understand how to play their
game in the most clever manner.
“Before such a spectacle it is our duty to cry out as loud as we can
that one ought to beware of all those people, and that the church--our
church, and the country--our country, find themselves in imminent
danger, because no revolution and no anti-Christian propaganda have
ever done them more harm than the events which are daily taking place
under our eyes for the last twelve months.”
Two years later, in 1914, a few weeks before the breaking out of the
present war, another deputy, this time a clergyman, Father Filonenko,
spoke about Rasputin in the Duma, and did so in the following strong
terms:
“As a faithful and devoted son of our Holy Orthodox Church, I consider
it my painful duty to mention once more what has already been discussed
here, by so many orators better than myself, and to recur to a subject
which is at present talked of at the corner of every street, in every
town and in every village, no matter how distant and how far from
any civilised centre in our vast Empire. We find ourselves compelled
to look upon this unexplainable influence of a common adventurer,
belonging to the worst type of those sectarians, whom until now we have
known by the name of Khlystys, and despised accordingly. We are obliged
to reckon with this influence of a man upon whom all the sane elements
in our society look with contempt.”
On that same day another deputy belonging to the group of
Ultra-Conservatives, Prince Mansyreff, also spoke about Rasputin, with
perhaps even more energy than any one had ever done before in the Duma.
Said the Prince:
“The adventure of Illiodore ended in ridicule, but we have now in his
place another adventurer, with the personality of whom are connected
the most nefarious and disgusting rumours, the most unnatural and
contemptible crimes. It is useless to mention his name; every one
knows who he is, and of whom I am talking. He has been let loose
on our society to acquire some influence over it, by men even more
shameless than he is himself; he has been used to terrorise all those
who have dared to express their opinions against the currents which
prevail at present in our administrative circles. This adventurer,
whenever he travels and whenever he arrives in St. Petersburg, is
met at the railway station by the highest dignitaries of the church;
before him pray, as they would do to God, unfortunate hysterical ladies
of the highest social circles. This individual, who only seeks the
satisfaction of the lowest instinct of a low nature, has introduced
himself into the very heart of our country and of our society, and we
find and feel everywhere his disgusting and filthy influence.”
A few days after this memorable sitting of the Duma the Government
issued instructions to the press never to mention Rasputin’s name or to
speak of any subject connected with him in the newspapers. As soon as
this became known the Octobrists put down on the order of the day in
the Duma an interpellation on the matter, and Mr. Goutschkoff in moving
it exclaimed:
“Dark and dangerous days have arrived, and the conscience of the
Russian nation has been deeply moved by the events of the last few
months, and is protesting against the appearance amongst us of symptoms
proving that we are returning to the darkest periods of the middle
ages. It has cried out that things are going wrong in our State, and
that danger threatens our most holy national ideals.”
Prince Lvoff seconded the motion, and asked the Government to explain
who was this “strange personality who had been taken under the special
protection of the administration, who was considered as too sacred to
be subjected to the criticism of the press, and who had been put upon
such a pedestal that no one was allowed to touch or even to approach
him.”
I would not have quoted these speeches but for the fact that they
all bore on the same point, the one that I have tried to make clear
to the mind of my readers. This point is that the danger which
Rasputin undoubtedly personified in Russian society at large did not
proceed from his own personality, but from the character of the men
who surrounded him, who had made out of him their tool and who were
trying through him to rule Russia and to push it into the arms of
Germany. There is no doubt that Germany had been carefully following
all the phases of the drama which culminated in the assassination of
the “Prophet” and had been helping by her subsidies the underhand
and mysterious work of men like Mr. Manassevitsch-Maniuloff and his
satellites, and like Mr. Sturmer. Sturmer believed quite earnestly
that he would secure immortality for his name and for his work if
he contrived to conclude a peace which every one knew that Russia
required, but which no one except himself and the adventurers to whom
he owed his elevation thought of making except in concert with Russia’s
Allies, and only after Germany had been compelled to accept the
conditions of her adversaries.
The whole Rasputin affair was nothing but a German intrigue which
aimed at discrediting the dynasty and perhaps even at overthrowing the
sovereign from his throne.
Thanks to the infernal cunning of the people who were its leaders, the
Imperial circle and even some of the Imperial family were represented
as being entirely under the “Prophet’s” influence. And thanks to the
solitary existence which the Emperor and Empress were leading, and to
the small number of people who were allowed to see them, these rumours
gained ground, for the simple reason that there existed no one capable
of contradicting them or of pointing out their absurdity. Calumnies
as stupid as they were degrading to the authors of them were set in
circulation, and the revolutionary movement which Germany had been
fomenting grew stronger and stronger every day, until it reached the
lower classes. These classes by a kind of miracle were also kept very
well informed as to everything that was connected with Rasputin or
with the subterranean work performed by his party, a work which tended
to only make the House of Romanoff unpopular, and to represent it as
incapable of taking to heart the interest of the country over which it
reigned.
If we consider who were the people at the side of the “Prophet,” and
who inspired all his actions as well as his utterances we find police
agents, adventurers who had been sometimes in prison, and sometimes in
exile; functionaries eager to obtain some fat sinecure in which they
might do nothing and earn a great deal; stock exchange speculators
of doubtful morality and still more doubtful honesty; women of low
character and army purveyors, mixed up with an innumerable number of
spies. Most of these last were in the German service and were working
for all that they were worth to bring about some palace conspiracy or
some popular movement capable of removing from his throne a Czar whose
honesty and straightforwardness of character precluded the possibility
of Russia betraying the trust which her Allies had put in her.
Yet this was precisely what these people wanted, and what they had
made up their minds to force through, thanks to the indignation which
the various stories which were being repeated every day concerning
Rasputin and the favour which he enjoyed was arousing all over Russia.
The Emperor, of course, knew nothing of all this; the Empress even
less. There was no one to tell them the truth, and they would have been
more surprised than any one else had they suspected the ocean of lies
which had been told concerning themselves, and concerning the kindness
with which they had treated a man whom they considered as being half
saint and half mad, but of whom they had never thought in their wildest
dreams of making their chief adviser.
In this extraordinary history there is also another point which must
be noticed. When the first deceptions produced by the disasters of the
beginning of the campaign had thrown public opinion into a state of
mind which was bordering well nigh upon despair, and before it had had
time to recover from the shock of the fall of Warsaw and the line of
fortresses upon which they had relied to protect the western frontier,
people had begun to seek for the cause of the great disillusion they
had been called upon to experience. It was very quickly discovered,
partly through the revelations that had been made in the Duma, that
the real reason for all the sad things which had happened lay in the
systematic plundering of the public exchequer, that had been going on
for such a long time and which even the experiences of the Japanese war
had not cured. When the fierce battle against Germany began in grim
earnest, the first thought of the Emperor had been to try to put an end
to these depredations that had compromised the prestige and the good
name of Russia abroad as well as at home. Great severity was shown to
the many adventurers who had enriched themselves at the expense of the
nation. When it had come to the fabrication of the necessary ammunition
required by the army, then the help of Russia’s Allies--England and
France--had been sought. Thanks to the efforts of these two Powers,
something like order was re-established in the vast machine of the War
Office.
The fabrication of shells of a size that could not fit any gun was
stopped. The army at the front got clothes and food of which it
had been in want at the beginning of the campaign. Ammunition was
despatched where it was required, and not in the contrary direction
as often had been the case before. The Allies helped Russia to the
best of their ability, and Russia, at least the sane and honest part
of Russian society, felt grateful to them for their co-operation in
the work of their common defence against a foe which it had become
necessary to defeat so thoroughly that civilisation could no longer be
endangered by its existence and activity.
But the people who surrounded Rasputin and with whom he was working
were not grateful for the labour of love which Great Britain and France
had assumed. They began to complain of the so-called interference
of foreign elements with the details of the Russian administration.
Some went even so far as to say that Russia was becoming an English
colony. All the plunderers, all the thieves who had had their own way
for so many months, perceiving that they would no longer have the
opportunities which they had enjoyed before to add to their ill-gotten
gains, tried by all means in their power to discredit the Sovereign
whose firmness they had found in their way. They joined all the
pro-Germans of whom, alas, there existed but too many in the country,
in an effort to bring about a peace, the shame of which would have been
quite indifferent to them.
It is not at all wonderful if those shameless adventurers started the
conspiracy for the success of which they required the moral influence
of Rasputin and the authority of his person. It was, after all, such
an easy matter to say that in such and such a case he had been acting
in conformity with the Imperial will. No one could disprove the truth
of the assertion, and in that way the Emperor was made responsible
for all the unavowable things which were going on. He was supposed
to have given his sanction to all these things simply because it
had pleased, not even Rasputin himself, but individuals like Mr.
Manassevitsch-Maniuloff, to declare that they had been done with his
knowledge and approval.
Can one feel surprised if in the presence of this artificial
atmosphere, and still more artificial position, an intense feeling of
disgust took hold of real patriots, and made them contemplate seriously
the possibility of trying at least to unmask Rasputin and his crew and
bring to the ears of the Czar all the different rumours which were in
circulation concerning the “Prophet” and what was going on around him?
Men of experience and of weight seriously thought how this could be
done. They made no secret of the fact, unfortunately for themselves as
well as for the success of their plans. What was going on very soon
came to the knowledge of Manassevitsch-Maniuloff and made him more
frantic than he had ever been to overthrow what he called “foreign
influences” in Russia. He applied himself with renewed energy to bring
about, by fair means or foul, the conclusion of a peace on which
depended his whole future destiny. And he might perhaps have succeeded
if circumstances had not turned against him and put an end to his
machinations, at least for a time.
Mr. Sturmer was but a tool in the hands of this artful, clever private
secretary whom he had been persuaded, or rather compelled, to take.
Manassevitsch-Maniuloff had managed to get hold of him and to keep him
securely bound to his own policy. He was the man who had contrived
to put him into the position of authority which he enjoyed, and Mr.
Sturmer, whatever may have been his other defects, had a grateful
nature. Besides, Maniuloff amused him, and took an immense amount
of trouble off his hands. He could rely on his never doing anything
stupid, even when he did something very dishonest. Mr. Sturmer was
absorbed in great political combinations and was looking toward a long
term of office. He felt absolutely safe in the situation which he
occupied, where at any moment he liked he could speak with the Czar and
explain to him what he thought to be most advantageous to the interests
of his party, or the events of the day as they followed in quick
succession.
Alas for this security! An unexpected incident was to destroy it in
the most ruthless manner. Rasputin, together with Mr. Maniuloff, went
too far in the system of blackmailing which they had been practising
with such skill for so many long months. For once they found their
master in the person of one of the directors of a large banking
establishment in Petrograd, who, upon being threatened with all kinds
of unpleasantness unless he consented to pay a large sum of money, did
not protest as others had done before him in similar cases, but gave
it immediately, first having taken the numbers of the banknotes which
he had handed over to Mr. Maniuloff. He went with these numbers to the
military authorities and lodged with them a formal complaint against
the blackmailers. The result was as immediate as it was unexpected. The
General Staff had been waiting a long time for just such an opportunity
to proceed against Rasputin and the members of his crew. That very
same night, in obedience to orders received from the military commander
of Petrograd, Mr. Manassevitsch-Maniuloff’s house was searched from top
to bottom, and he himself conveyed to prison, without even having been
allowed to acquaint his chief, Mr. Sturmer, with what had happened to
him.
CHAPTER VIII
The arrest of the Prime Minister’s private secretary produced, as
may well be imagined, an immense sensation in Petrograd and intense
consternation among the friends of Rasputin. They were thus deprived
of the one strong ally capable of guiding their steps in the best
direction possible under the circumstances, and, moreover, of the one
who was possessed of information which no one else could possibly get
at. Mr. Sturmer himself was more than dismayed at this step taken by
the military authorities without consulting him and resented it as a
personal affront. He tried to interfere in the matter and went so far
as to demand as his right the liberation of Manassevitsch-Maniuloff.
But his intervention, instead of helping the person in whose favour
it had been displayed, gave on the contrary the signal for a series
of attacks against Mr. Sturmer himself, attacks of which the most
important was the speech made by Mr. Miliukoff in the Duma, where he
publicly accused the Prime Minister of being in league with Germany and
of working in favour of a separate peace with that country.
Of course, the remarks of the leader of the opposition in the Chamber
were not allowed to be published, but so many persons had heard them
and so many others had heard of them that the contents of the address
of Mr. Miliukoff very soon became public property. No one had ever
cared for Mr. Sturmer, whose leanings had always been for autocracy.
While Governor of Tver he had distinguished himself by the zeal which
he displayed in putting down every manifestation of public opinion in
his government. In addition he had been connected with various matters
where bribery played a prominent part, a fact which had not helped him
to win any popularity in the province which he had administered. His
only merits lay in his ability to speak excellent French and in his
having very pronounced English sympathies. These sympathies, however,
by some kind of unexplainable miracle, died out immediately after
his assumption of office. He at once fell under the influence of a
certain party that clamoured for the removal of foreigners from the
administrative and political life of Russia. He was not clever, though
he had a very high idea of his own intelligence and knowledge.
Though he had never carried his knowledge beyond a thorough grasp
of the precedence that ought to be awarded to distinguished guests
at a dinner party (which he had acquired while he was master of the
ceremonies at the Imperial Court), yet he was convinced of his capacity
to fill the most important offices of the Russian State. These he
looked upon with the eyes of a farmer in the presence of his best
milking cow. He was not a courtier, but a flatterer by nature, and
an essentially accommodating one, too. There was no danger of his
ever turning his back on persons who he had reasons to think were in
possession of the favour of personages in high places. And he had a
wonderful faculty for toadying wherever he expected that it might prove
useful to his career.
For some years he had vegetated in a kind of semi-disgrace and fretted
over his inactivity. When he found himself able once more to make
a display of his administrative talents he took himself and these
talents quite seriously and imagined that perhaps he could become the
saviour of Russia, but surely a very rich man. This last idea had been
suggested to him by Mr. Manassevitsch-Maniuloff, who in conversations
with him had imbued Mr. Sturmer with the conviction that it would be a
proof of careless neglect on his part if he did not make the most of
the many opportunities his important position as Prime Minister put
in his way, and did not assure the prosperity of his old age, when he
had at his disposal all possible sources of information out of which
he might make a profit. Mr. Sturmer was no saint, and the weaknesses
of the flesh had always appealed to him. There is nothing wonderful in
the fact that he listened with attention, and even with satisfaction,
to the confidences which were poured into his ear by his private
secretary, of whose talents he had a most exalted opinion.
When his Fides Achates was arrested and thrown into a more or less
dark dungeon, Mr. Sturmer was so dismayed that he allowed himself to
be drawn into the mistake of identifying himself with the prisoner and
claiming his liberty as a right. It is related that when the object
of his solicitude heard of the various steps undertaken by the Prime
Minister on his behalf he gave vent to words of impatience at what he
considered an imprudence likely to cost a good deal to the guilty ones.
“Sturmer ought to have known that a man like myself does not allow
himself to be arrested without having taken the precaution to be
able to impose on those who had ventured to do so the necessity of
liberating him,” he had exclaimed.
The fact was that Manassevitsch-Maniuloff had put to profit the months
when, in his capacity as private secretary to the Prime Minister, he
had access to all the archives and secret papers of the Ministry of
the Interior. He had taken copies of more than one important document,
the divulging of which might have put the Russian Government in an
embarrassing position. Some persons even said that his zeal had carried
him so far as to make him appropriate to himself the originals of
these documents, leaving only a worthless copy in their place. True
or not, it is certain that the spirit of foresight that had always
distinguished him had induced him to take certain precautions against
any possible mishap capable of interfering with his career. He was
able to regard his imprisonment philosophically. This was more than
Mr. Sturmer could do. The latter had reason to fear that during the
police search of the flat occupied by Mr. Manassevitsch-Maniuloff some
compromising letters had been discovered. This fear did not add to his
happiness or to his equanimity. Besides, he was not strong enough to
resist the attacks which, dating from that day, were poured upon his
head. In spite of the assurances which Rasputin was continually giving
him that he had nothing to fear, he did not share the confidence of the
“Prophet.”
He had good reasons for this fear. In the Duma, in the Petrograd
drawing rooms, in the army and among the public, all had grown tired
of Mr. Sturmer, and all spoke of nothing else but of the necessity
of compelling him to resign his post. Among the different reproaches
which were addressed to him was that of being an enemy of England
and of trying to work against the Russo-English alliance. It was
very well known that his relations with Sir George Buchanan, the
British Ambassador, were not cordial. Sir George, in spite of all that
the pro-Germans liked to say about him, was a popular personage in
Russia, that is, among the sane portion of Russian society, which had
hailed with joy the initiative that he had taken in the great work of
reorganisation of the Russian administration.
Thanks to the English officers who had arrived in Russia with the aim
of bringing some kind of order out of the chaos that had prevailed not
only in the War Office, but in every other branch of the Government,
the military position of the Empire had considerably improved, and
the great work of national defence had been at last put upon a sound
basis. As a man occupying a very important position in Petrograd wrote
to me during the course of last summer: “There are some people here
who say that Russia is fast becoming an English colony, but I reply to
them that she might certainly do worse, if by that word is meant the
introduction of the English spirit of order and of English honesty in
our country.”
This was the opinion of a sincere Russian patriot. There is no doubt
that it was shared by all the best elements of the nation, who had
recognised that in the crisis through which their Fatherland was going
only one idea ought to dominate everything, and that was the necessity
of imposing upon Germany a peace that would at last give to the world
the assurance that it would never be called upon again to undergo
another such catastrophe as the one under which it was struggling.
Mr. Sturmer, however, was of a quite different opinion. This was well
known everywhere, especially in parliamentary circles. Mr. Miliukoff
made himself the echo of the popular voice when he delivered his famous
indictment of the Prime Minister. The latter retorted by issuing
against the leader of the Opposition a writ for libel, and applied
himself with renewed energy to the task of getting out of prison the
man who had been the prime mover in the dark and sinister intrigue of
which Rasputin was the principal figure. At last he succeeded, and
Manassevitsch-Maniuloff was released on bail. Among all the papers
which had been confiscated at his home not one incriminating document
had been found, and the only thing against him that could be proved
was the blackmailing scheme against the Bank whose director had had
him arrested. He threatened, in case he should be brought to trial, to
make certain revelations absolutely damaging for more than one highly
placed personage, and he contrived to inspire a great terror even among
those most eager to have him condemned for his numerous extortions and
other shameful deeds. As soon as he was at liberty he set Rasputin to
working in his favour, and made the latter display an activity that at
last exasperated the public against the “Prophet” to such an extent
that the first thought of organising a conspiracy to remove him was
started, and very soon became quite a familiar one with more than one
person.
To be quite exact, this thought had already existed for some time.
About a year after the beginning of the war some enterprising
individuals in Petrograd tried to get rid of the “Prophet” by
entangling him in some disgraceful escapade which would have made it
necessary for him to leave Petrograd. In accordance with this plan he
was invited one night to supper at some fashionable music hall, of
which there exist so many in the Russian capital. Bohemian singers were
called in and an unlimited amount of champagne provided. Rasputin,
who was rather fond of such adventures when he was not obliged to pay
for their cost in rubles and copecs, accepted with alacrity. He soon
became quite drunk. Then, at the invitation of one of the guests, he
proceeded to show them the manner in which the Khlistys, the religious
sect to which he belonged, danced around the lighted fire, which was an
indispensable feature of their meetings. As he was dancing, or rather
turning round and round a table that had been put in the middle of the
room, he took off some of his clothes, just as his followers used to do
when they were holding one of their assemblies in real earnest. Some
of the assistants seized hold of the opportunity and hid the garments
of which he had divested himself, then called in the police, requiring
them to draw up a report of what had taken place. On the next day this
report was taken to a high authority, in the hope that it would have a
damaging effect on the reputation of Rasputin. The result, however, was
quite different from that which had been expected, for the person who
had brought the report to the authority in question instead of being
believed was treated as a libeler and himself compelled to retire from
public life. After this it was generally recognised that nothing in
the world would be strong enough to bring about the downfall of the
“Prophet.”
In the meanwhile the efforts of the Opposition party in the Duma had
succeeded to the extent of forcing Mr. Sturmer to resign as Prime
Minister; but he had influence enough to secure his appointment as High
Chancellor of the Imperial Court, one of the most important positions
in Russia. He did not fall into disgrace, but remained the power
behind the throne whose existence, though not officially recognised,
yet was everywhere acknowledged. He had not been dismissed, he had
simply gone away--a very different thing altogether in the realm of
the Czar. Though no longer a Minister, he was still a personage to be
considered as capable of an infinitude of good or of harm, according
as it might please him to exert his influence. His successor, Mr.
Trepoff, an upright and fairly able man, did not long retain the office
he had accepted much against his will. With him departed one of the
most popular Ministers Russia had known for a long time, Count Paul
Ignatieff, the able son of an able father. He had for something like
two years held the portfolio of Public Instruction to the general
satisfaction of the public and had come to the conclusion that it was
useless to go on fighting against dark powers which were getting the
upper hand everywhere.
The resignation of these two statesmen was preceded by one of the
most scandalous incidents in Russian modern history, the trial of
Mr. Manassevitsch-Maniuloff. This had been put off from day to day
for a considerable length of time until at last it became impossible
to secure further delay. The culprit had taken good care, as I have
already indicated, to put in safety documents of a most incriminating
nature, implicating many persons whom the authorities could not afford
to see mixed up in the dirty business connected with the numerous sins
of Mr. Sturmer’s private secretary. When the latter was questioned by
the examining magistrate in regard to that last transaction which had
brought him into court, he declared that he had acted in accordance
with the instructions which he had received from his chief and that it
was not he himself, but the Prime Minister who had received the money
which the bank that had lodged a complaint against him had been induced
to pay in order to be spared certain annoyances with which it had been
threatened. He had insisted upon this version of the affair and warned
the magistrate that his counsel would develop it in all the details
before the jury.
In the meanwhile Rasputin was moving heaven and earth to get the trial
postponed and to get the charges against the prisoner quashed by the
Chamber of Cassation. He had long conferences with several ladies
having free entrance into the Imperial Palace and he put forward,
among other arguments, the one which had certain points in its favour:
that it would be detrimental to the public interest to have the
scandal of such a trial commented upon by the press of the whole of
Europe at a time when Russia was struggling against a formidable foe,
always ready to catch hold of anything that would discredit it or its
institutions. For a time it seemed as if the efforts of the “Prophet”
would be crowned with success. Then one fine day opposite currents
became powerful and Mr. Maniuloff was sent before a jury in spite of
his protestations and his threats of revenge upon those who had taken
upon themselves the responsibility of subjecting him to that annoyance.
On the fifteenth of December, the day appointed for the trial, the
halls and corridors of the law courts of Petrograd were filled with an
inquisitive crowd struggling to get access to the room where it was
to take place. The spectators waited a long time, watching curiously
the impassive face of the hero of the day, who had quietly entered the
hall and taken his place in the criminal dock. About 12 o’clock the
Judges, together with the public prosecutor, made their entrance, when
to the general surprise the latter rose and said that, owing to the
absence of several important witnesses for the prosecution, he moved
an adjournment of the proceedings until an indefinite time. What had
happened, what had brought about such an extraordinary change? This was
the question which one could hear everywhere after the Court had risen
and the assembly dispersed. Comments without number followed upon this
decision, which no one would have thought possible a few hours before.
In spite of the severe censorship over the press, the principal Liberal
organs of the capital published short commentaries which revealed
the feeling of intense indignation that prevailed in every class of
society. The words “Shame, shame!” were heard on all sides. It is not
at all wonderful that they found an echo among some determined spirits
who resolved at last to free Russia from the scourge of Rasputin, whose
hand was again seen in the whole disgraceful affair.
This, however, was not at all an easy matter, considering the fact
that the “Prophet” had become very careful and that his followers
had him watched wherever he went for fear of an attack which they
strongly suspected was being contemplated. The house where he lived,
64 Gorokhovaja Street, was always surrounded by policemen and secret
agents, who examined every person who entered or went out of it.
Rasputin himself had also grown suspicious, even of persons with whom
up to that time he had been upon friendly terms, and he avoided the
numerous invitations that began once more to be showered upon him. He
spoke again of returning to Siberia, which was always with him a sign
that he did not feel himself at ease in the capital.
I had an opportunity to observe this restlessness the second time
that I met him at the house of that Mr. De Bock whom I have already
mentioned, when he declared to us that he was sick of Petrograd and of
the many intrigues which were going on there. But that was before the
war, and it seems that after it began the ideas of Rasputin changed
and that he was always saying that he considered it his duty to remain
beside his friends at this hour of national peril. The fact that his
feelings had changed on the last point proves that he was aware of the
danger in which he stood, and of which it is likely that he had been
warned by the numerous spies who were but too ready to keep him well
informed of all that was to his interest to know.
One thing seems certain, and that is the activity which he began to
display during the last weeks and days of his evil life in favour of
the conclusion of a peace, which he now said Russia ought to make if
she wished to escape from further sin, as he termed it.
Why his feelings had undergone such a change it is impossible to say,
but one may make a pretty near guess. One of the principal motives
which actuated him undoubtedly was the idea that existed among a
certain circle of persons that if peace were made with Germany,
the English and French officials working with Russian officials in
perfecting the defence of the fatherland, and whose presence already
had prevented so many malversations, would depart. This would leave
once more a free field for the rapacity of all the civil and military
functionaries of the War Office and Commissariat Departments, who could
make a new harvest of rubles as a result of the unavoidable expenses
which the liquidation of the war would necessarily entail.
There were, however, some persons who, seeing the dangers in the path
in which this nefarious individual was leading Russia, decided that,
as nothing else could bring about his removal, it had to be effected
by violent means. I do not seek to excuse them, far less to take
their part. Murder remains murder, but if ever an assassination had
an excuse, this was the slaying of Rasputin, which also implied the
destruction of the crew of unscrupulous people of which he was the
tool. There was something of self-sacrifice in the conspiracy to which
he fell a victim, something of an intense love of the Fatherland in
the spirit that armed the hand of the man whose pistol sent him into
eternity. One may condemn the deed and yet excuse its motive. Though
I am not trying to do so, yet I shall not be the one to cry out for
vengeance against the over-excited young people who risked everything
in the world to deliver their country from evil.
Of the details of the murder we know very little, and even the
travellers who have gone abroad since it was committed could only
speak vaguely about the circumstances that attended it. It is certain,
however, that there was a deeply laid and well organised plot to kill
the “Prophet,” that about a dozen persons, some of them belonging to
the best and to the highest social circles, were concerned in it, and
that at last lots were drawn to select the man who was to execute the
victim. Among those persons were members of the Conservative faction
of the Duma, some officers of several guard regiments, and even ladies
of the smartest set of Petrograd. That something was known concerning
this plot in governmental circles can be seen from the fact that the
Minister of the Interior, Mr. Protopopoff, who had always been one of
the most ardent disciples of Rasputin and who had been working with
him for the conclusion of a peace which both considered to be useful to
their personal interests, hearing that he was going to have supper at
the house of Prince Youssoupoff, sent there the Prefect of Petrograd,
General Balk, with instructions to watch over the “Prophet.” When the
Prefect appeared upon the scene, he was politely asked by the master of
the house to withdraw, as his presence was not required.
Young Prince Youssoupoff, who, by the way, is well known in London, was
the husband of the Princess Irene of Russia, the first cousin of the
Czar. By virtue of his position he could be whatever he liked, even
to dismiss curtly the principal police official of the capital. At
the supper which he gave on the night when Rasputin was killed about
a dozen people belonging to the best circle of Petrograd society were
present. What passed during the meal and how the murder itself was
committed is not known even now, though several versions of the crime
are given. Some say that it was done during the meal, and that the
pretext for it was the conduct of Rasputin toward one of the ladies
present at the table. Other people relate that they waited until the
“Prophet” was on the point of departing, and that as he was putting on
his overcoat the young man who had drawn the lot designating him for
the deed shot him with his revolver at the foot of the stairs. The body
was then wrapped up in a blanket and put into the automobile of a very
high personage, which was waiting in the garden of the house where the
event took place, and driven to the Neva, where it was dropped under
the ice. It seems that after this had been accomplished one of the
conspirators went to Tsarskoie Selo and informed the Czar of what had
taken place, as well as of his own share in the deed.
In the meanwhile the authorities had become suspicious. At 3 o’clock in
the night screams had been heard by a policeman on duty at the corner
of the street in which was situated the house of Prince Youssoupoff.
He also noticed several persons coming out of the house, not by the
usual entrance, but by the garden, which had a door leading into
another street. After this, an automobile was seen driving out of that
same garden, an altogether strange circumstance. This automobile was
seen by another policeman about one hour later in the islands which
surround Petrograd, driving close to the Neva and not on the usual
road. The next day the garden of Prince Youssoupoff was searched by
Secret Service agents, who found some traces of blood on the snow, but
the servants of the Prince declared that it was that of a dog that had
been shot the day before. No one dared say or do anything more against
the supposed murderers, especially as the body of their victim had not
yet been found. The river was dragged, but it was not until twenty-four
hours after the event that the dead man was discovered under the ice in
a frozen condition, with the features so completely battered that they
could be recognised only with difficulty.
The curious thing is that, though it was known exactly where the body
had been dropped, it could not be found at once, having been carried
away by the current further than had been expected. This gave rise
to all kind of rumours, and the friends of Rasputin tried to spread
the news that he had escaped and was hiding away somewhere from his
persecutors. The tale, however, could not be kept up for any length
of time, as the whole capital with an unheard-of rapidity became
aware that the most detested man in the whole of Russia had at last
met with the fate which he so richly deserved. The joy of the public
could not be suppressed, notwithstanding the fear of the police. In
all the theatres and public places the national anthem was sung with
an immense enthusiasm. No one regretted what had happened, and the
people suspected of having had a hand in the murder received messages
of congratulation from every quarter. In fact, they became at once
national heroes. The murder so far has remained unpunished, and it is
more than likely that no one will be brought to account for it.
As for the body of Rasputin, it was at first kept in the hospital where
it had been taken after its recovery from under the ice. The police
received orders not to allow it to be seen by the crowds, which it was
feared would flock in numbers to have a last look at their “saint,” the
“Blessed Gregory,” as he was called. But to the general surprise these
crowds did not manifest any curiosity to view the mortal remains of the
man about whom so much fuss had been made in his lifetime, but after
whose death the whole Russian world seemed to breathe more freely than
it had been able to do for the last ten years or so. Among the clergy
satisfaction was openly expressed, and it was only a few hysterical
women who were found to weep over the end of the career of one of the
wickedest men who had ever lived.
The question most discussed in connection with the death of this
sinister adventurer was whether he was to be allowed a Christian
burial. He had been, after all, but a sectarian, a heretic, the
follower of a creed which was not only reproved by the orthodox church,
but also prosecuted by the law of the land. The synod was called upon
to pronounce itself on the subject when the advice of the Metropolitan
Pitirim of Petrograd, one of the personal friends of Rasputin, at last
prevailed, and he was buried with the rites of Holy Church. Some of
the ladies who had been the first cause of his having obtained the
importance which grew to be attached to his strange figure did not
wait, however, for the permission of the ecclesiastical authorities,
and a few hours after the body had been discovered Madame W., one of
the most hysterical among the many women followers of Rasputin, caused
solemn prayers to be celebrated in her apartments for the repose of
his soul. She went to fetch his two daughters, girls of sixteen and
fourteen years of age, who were living with him at Petrograd, taking
them to her house and declaring that she would henceforward consider
and treat them as her own children.
But apart from this small group of blind admirers no one regretted him,
not even the crew of parasites that had surrounded him and exploited
him. By one of those strange anomalies, such as can only take place in
Russia, Mr. Manassevitsch-Maniuloff, who had been the indirect cause of
his death, was appointed, together with other secret police agents,
to investigate the details connected with the murder of his former
friend and patron. Of course, the inquest led to nothing. No one had
any wish to see it end otherwise than in oblivion. Every political
party in Russia was agreed in thinking that with the disappearance of
this dangerous man the dynasty had won a battle just as important for
the safety of its future existence as would have been a victory on the
battlefield against a foreign foe. The names of the murderers, though
pronounced nowhere, were blessed by all sincere Russian patriots, who
cried out when they heard that Rasputin was no more, “Thank God that
this adventurer is dead and long live the Czar!”
CHAPTER IX
Rasputin, taken individually, did not deserve any notice. He was
never in possession of the influence which was attributed to him,
and his voice was never preponderant in the councils of the Czar. It
served the interests of those whose tool he had become to spread the
notion that he had acquired it, and that, thanks to the religious
enthusiasm which he had contrived to arouse among a certain small
circle of influential men and women, he had installed himself in the
confidence of his Sovereign. Unfortunately for Russia, these people not
only had accomplices in their evil deeds, but also had the means to
spread their opinions among the public and the ability to make these
opinions penetrate into all the different classes of the nation. They
discredited the Imperial family; they discredited the Government of the
day; they discredited the monarch, until it became at last a political,
and I shall even say a national, necessity to suppress them, together
with the adventurer whom they had put forward and thanks to whom they
had been able to play unmolested for so many years the most nefarious
of games.
Unfortunately, the slaying of Rasputin did not destroy the persons
who had used him. It did not put an end to the many abuses which had
brought Russia to the sad state of chaos in which it found itself at
the moment of its great trial. The man himself was but an ensign, and
the loss of an ensign does not mean that the regiment that carried it
about has shared its fate.
Rasputin was the last representative of the old régime. His appearance
on the horizon of Russian social life was but the last flicker of a
detestable past. During his time of favour and of success the two
forces that struggled for supremacy in the land of his birth fought
their last battle, in which he was the stake. We must rejoice that it
was not the force which he was supposed to incarnate in his enigmatical
and mysterious person that remained master of the field. Whether he
would have been killed under different circumstances is a question to
which it would be very difficult to find a reply. Most probably the
spirit of mysticism which lies at the bottom of the Slav character
would have prevented even his worst enemies, let alone his simple
adversaries, from trying to remove him from the position into which he
had been thrust. They would most likely have shrugged their shoulder
and waited for that intervention of St. Nicolas, who, according to
Russian traditions, always arrives at the right moment, to put straight
everything that has gone wrong.
The peril in which Russia found herself placed gave energy even to
those to whom that quality had hitherto been unknown, and it was felt
everywhere that, together with the Fatherland, the Czar ought to be
saved from a danger of which, perhaps, he did not himself realise the
real importance. Rasputin, and especially Rasputin’s followers, had
worked as hard as they could to make Russia’s Allies, and especially
England, unpopular with the Russian nation. He paid with his life for
the attempt, and one can only rejoice that such was the case. As things
stand at present, it is principally toward Great Britain and America
that Russia must look for its salvation. What I am writing to-day
has been my earnest and deep conviction for long years, and I have
preached it not only since the beginning of this war in all the books
and articles which I have written, but also long before any one ever
thought or suspected that the day would come when the English Union
Jack and the Stars and Stripes would float beside the Russian flag and
the French Tricolor on the same battlefields, united against one common
enemy. I have always considered that in human life, as well as in the
existence of nations, it is essential to recognise the superiority
of others where this superiority exists, and that true civilisation
consists in assimilating to oneself with gratitude the virtues of
other nations, whose example one ought to follow instead of trying to
ridicule. Russia, with all its vast resources and with its immense
territory, would do well to imitate England and the United States in
their immense work of culture and to call the latter countries to her
help in developing her own national existence on proper and useful
bases. In doing so she would not abase herself; she would only prove
that she was great enough to admire the greatness of others.
It is certain that if Anglo-Saxon influence had been so dominant in
Russia in the past as it is to be hoped it will remain in the future,
we should not have seen occur in Petrograd incidents like those
connected with the career of Rasputin. We should not have witnessed all
these perpetual changes of Ministers, over which Germany has rejoiced
with such evident relish. We should not have heard people defy the
authority of the Czar, as unfortunately has been the case.
We former monarchists, who have been brought up in the old traditions
of loyalty to bygone days, have often been accused by this crew of
adventurers of harbouring revolutionary ideas. They have reproached us
with the spirit of criticism that has sometimes induced and prompted
us to speak out what we thought and to lay blame where blame was due;
to criticise where criticism was almost a national necessity. Time
shall prove whether we have been mistaken. It seems to me, however,
that as English ideals and English respect for individual liberty and
individual opinions become more and more familiar to Russians and
penetrate into the Russian mind, the public, will acknowledge that we
have not been so very wrong when we have raised our voices against
the importance which individuals such as Rasputin have been allowed
to take in our society and in our governmental circles, and against
this corrupt system of administration, which, thanks to its crawling,
flattering propensities, caused our people to kneel at his feet with
the idea that by doing so they were pleasing the higher authorities,
who most of the time knew nothing about the developments for which this
intrigue was responsible. Russia has still something oriental about
her, and in some respects she resembles the Greek empire which fell
under the blows dealt at it by the power of Islam. It needs new life
and new blood in its veins. It requires the support of this strong,
earnest British civilisation, which is, perhaps, the most beautiful the
world has ever known.
I have always been accused of being too pro-English in my ideas and
opinions. If being pro-English means the wish to see my country
freed from the abuses, the existence of which has prevented her from
developing herself on the road of a progress embodied in the respect of
the individual, together with the institutions that rule him, such as
Great Britain has known for so many centuries, then I will willingly
confess it, I am pro-English. I feel sure that all good Russians share
my feelings. We have had enough of the German Kultur and of German
intrigues. They it is that have brought my beloved Fatherland to the
brink of ruin. The whole sad incident of Rasputin’s rise and fall
has been the result of German interference, and it would never have
assumed the proportions to which it rose if the German press had not
exaggerated it and German spies spoken about it, not only abroad, but
also in Russia itself.
When thinking about this story, which savours in some of its details
of superstitions of the Middle Ages, one must always remember what
I said at the beginning of this sketch of the career of a man whom
circumstances and the hatred of our enemies transformed into a kind
of monster devouring all that it touched. This fact is that Russia
is still the land of many surprises, because of its tendency toward
mysticism, always so strong in all the Slav races. Before Rasputin
appeared there had been other sectarians who had drawn thousands of
men and women around them and who had inspired crowds with feelings
of fanaticism in no wise different from the ones which the modern
“Prophet,” as some called him, the modern Cagliostro, as others had
nicknamed him, had evoked in the breasts of the simple-minded people
whose confidence he had abused and whose spirit of superstition he had
impressed. But these had remained strictly in the field of religion and
had not meddled with any other questions. They had grouped around them
only persons convinced of the truth of their teachings, while Rasputin
had gathered about him men determined to use him for the benefit
of their money-seeking, money-grubbing schemes; men who saw in the
misfortunes that had fallen upon their Fatherland only the possibility
to enrich themselves at her expense. They would not have sacrificed the
smallest things for her welfare; far less would they have given up the
chance to add to the ill-gotten gains they were daily accumulating.
Without those persons the whole story of Rasputin would have ended in
ridicule. Thanks to them and to their rapacity, it finished in blood.
It was, after all, the aristocracy that finally got rid of Rasputin,
perhaps to the great relief of many persons who out of weakness, or
let us say kindness, had hesitated before taking the strong measure
of sending him away where it would have been difficult for him to do
any more mischief. And it is doubtful whether his removal anywhere
than to a place whence there existed no possibility for him to return
would have stopped the evil which the very mention of his name alone
was sufficient to cause. Credulous persons exist everywhere and will
always exist; timorous ones also abound in the world. Even if Rasputin
had been exiled it would have been relatively easy for those who
reaped such a rich harvest out of the blood and the tears of the whole
Russian nation to attribute to him powers which he did not possess,
to threaten with his vengeance the persons who might refuse to lend
themselves to their dirty schemes. He would have been a perpetual
menace suspended over the heads of those who would have tried to rebel
against the directions issued by the enterprising scoundrels who abused
the prestige which his so-called holiness had won for a man who in
other times and in another country would not have arrested for a single
moment the attention of any one, let alone the crowds.
Rasputin is dead! Let us hope that his former supporters have lost,
together with him, their audacity and their power of doing mischief.
But to say that he was ever a paramount strength in Russian politics is
an error which I have tried to correct as far as lay within my power.
Rasputin’s story is simpler than many persons think, and perhaps the
best explanation that can be given of it is to be found in the Book of
Esther in the Bible, a careful perusal of which is recommended to those
who are interested in the character of Rasputin.
PART II
THE GREAT REVOLUTION
CHAPTER I
On the 15th day of May, 1896, Moscow was celebrating the Coronation
of the Czar Nicholas II. of Russia. In the large courtyard inside the
Kremlin, an immense crowd was gathered, awaiting the moment when the
Sovereign together with his Consort would come out of the Cathedral of
the Assumption, to make the customary round of the different shrines
and churches, which according to the ancient custom, they had to visit
after they had assumed the old Crown of the Russian Autocrats. Among
this crowd, there were persons who remembered having witnessed the same
kind of ceremony thirteen years before, when Alexander III. had been
standing in his son’s place. What a splendid apparition it had been
that of this Czar, gigantic in stature, whose quiet and strong features
seemed in their placidity to be a true personification of the might of
that Empire at the head of which he stood. One had hoped at that time,
that he would preside over the destinies of his Realm for long years to
come, and no one had given a thought to the possibility that he would
so soon be lying in his coffin. Now it was with mixed feelings of pity,
combined with a sympathy which already was no longer so strong as it
had been when he had ascended the throne, that all were awaiting the
new Monarch, who had become in his turn the chief of the old House of
Romanoff, so that when the golden gates of the Assumption were thrown
open to give passage to the procession which was escorting Nicholas
II. all the heads of the numerous people gathered in honour of the
occasion, under the shade of the ancient belfrey of Ivan Weliky, turned
with an anxious curiosity towards the Sovereign about to show himself
for the first time before his people, in the full pomp of his Imperial
dignity.
What did one see? A young man thin and slim, who seemed to be entirely
crushed under the weight of the massive crown which was reposing on his
head, and of the heavy robe of cloth of gold, lined with ermine, which
was thrown upon his shoulders. He was tottering as he walked along,
and his pale, tired face, together with his uncertain steps, bore no
resemblance whatever to the firm and superb countenance of his father
thirteen years before. As he reached the door of the Church of the
Holy Archangels, one noticed that he suddenly stopped, as if unable to
proceed any further, completely worn out by the fatigue of the long
ceremony that had come to an end a few moments before, and the hand
which was holding the sceptre, enriched with precious stones, which
the Metropolitan of Moscow had just handed to him, dropped down at his
side, whilst the symbol of might and of power which it was holding,
escaped from its grasp. Chamberlains and lords in waiting hastened to
pick it up, and the crowd never noticed what had occurred, but those
who had witnessed the incident, were deeply impressed by it, and
different rumours began to circulate in regard to it, rumours which
would have it that it was a bad omen, whilst persons well up in the
study of history, and especially in that of foreign countries tried to
find an analogy between it, and the remark made by Louis XVI. on the
day of his Coronation at Rheims, when he had complained that his crown
was hurting him, and felt too heavy for his head.
A few days later there happened another event, which reminded one of
a similar coincidence between the life of the unfortunate King whose
head was to fall on the scaffold of the Champs Elysées, and that of
Nicholas II. It occurred during the popular feast which is always
given in Moscow after the Coronation of a Czar. A crowd amounting to
several thousands of men and women, some say three hundred thousand,
had gathered together on a field known by the name of Khodinka Plain,
in the immediate neighbourhood of the town, to be present at it, when
suddenly a panic which was never accounted for nor explained, seized
this multitude, and about twenty thousand human creatures were crushed
to death in the short space of a few minutes. The emotion produced by
this disaster among all the different classes of society was very deep
and terrible. The only person who accepted it with calm and even with
indifference, if the reader will forgive me for this expression, was
the Czar himself, who, however, and this is a justice which I must
render to him, only heard much later the whole extent of the disaster,
but who at the same time, did not try to learn anything definite about
it, on the day when it took place, and who, under the direct influence
of his Consort, gave directions to reply to the French Ambassador, the
Comte de Montebello, who had enquired whether he ought to postpone the
ball he was giving that same night, that “he did not see any necessity
for doing so.”
This answer became known at once, and it traced between the Monarch and
his subjects one of these white lines which in a tennis ground marks
the antagonistic camps, and out of two players makes two enemies ...
and this line went on getting wider and wider as time went on. It still
existed when Nicholas II. abdicated, but it had then become an abyss.
In general there is nothing sadder in the world than a misunderstanding
between two people both possessed of good intentions towards each
other. It is something worse than a discussion, worse than a quarrel,
and even worse than hatred, because it is the only thing which sound
reasoning cannot conquer, and which is bound to go on aggravating
itself from day to day. How much worse therefore is a thing of the kind
when it has established itself between a nation and those who rule it.
The great, the supreme misfortune of Nicholas II. consisted in the
fact that he never could understand his people or their wants, whilst
Russia on the other hand was, through circumstances independent of its
will, brought to distrust the real feelings harboured by the Czar in
regard to its welfare, and to indulge in comparisons which certainly
were not to his advantage, between him and the Sovereign to whom he had
succeeded, who had possessed the full confidence of his subjects.
This fatality which has dogged all the footsteps of the Emperor who
abdicated a year ago, from the very first moment that he had ascended
his Throne, can be partly attributed to the defective education
which he had received, together with the deplorable weakness of his
character; and partly to the state of absolute subjection in which
he had been kept first by his father, during the whole time of the
latter’s life, and later on by his wife, together with the complete
ignorance in which he remained in regard to the wants, the aspirations,
needs and character of his people. He was a despot by temperament,
perhaps because he had never seen anything else but despotism around
him, and perhaps because he had got a mistaken idea in regard to the
duties which devolved upon him. He had always been told that he ought
to uphold intact the principle of autocracy, thanks to which his
predecessors had maintained themselves upon the throne. He had seen
Alexander III. adopt him with these principles with success, and he
had forgotten, or rather he had never known, that in order to be a
successful autocrat, one must neither prove oneself a tyrant, nor an
oppressor of people’s consciences and opinions. His first steps as a
Sovereign had hurt all the feelings of loyalty of his subjects. Among
the many addresses of congratulation that had been presented to him on
the occasion of his marriage and of his accession to the Throne, there
had been one from the Zemstvo or local assembly of the government of
Tver, a town which was known to be very liberal in its opinions, in
which was expressed the hope that the Monarch would try to govern his
people with the help and with the co-operation of these same Zemstvos
or local assemblies, the aim of which was the improvement of the local
conditions of existence of the population of the different governments
or provinces of the Russian Empire. There was absolutely nothing that
was revolutionary in this address. Unfortunately there happened to
be in the vicinity of the young Empress a person whose influence had
always been perniciously exercised, whenever it had manifested itself:
the Princess Galitzyne, her Mistress of the Robes. Out of a feeling of
personal dislike, or rather hatred, against one of the signatories of
this document, which, on account of the consequences that followed upon
its composition, became historical, Princess Galitzyne explained to the
Sovereign at the head of whose household she stood, that this appeal
in favour of a liberal system of government ought to be discouraged,
if not crushed, at once. Alexandra Feodorovna was then beginning to
acquire the absolute power over her consort’s mind, which she was never
to lose in the future, and she spoke to him of the matter suggested by
the Princess, on the very day that different deputations, coming from
all parts of Russia to express their good wishes to the young Imperial
couple, were about to be received by them in the Winter Palace.
Nicholas II. has never in his whole life had an opinion of his own,
but he has shown himself enthusiastic for all those that have been
suggested to him. He promised his wife “to say something,” which would
put into their proper place the people daring enough to dream of
anything likely to diminish his own power or prerogatives. He forgot,
however, one thing, perhaps the most important one, and that was
that these persons he was about to see, were not at all those who had
signed the unlucky address, of which it would have been far better for
everybody to forget the text as soon as possible. The result of this
first intervention of the Empress in affairs of State which did not
concern her is but too well known. The Czar instead of thanking the
people who had come to lay at his feet the expression of their loyalty,
declared to them that they ought never to “indulge in any senseless
‘dreams.’” The words were repeated everywhere, and ran from mouth to
mouth in the whole of Russia. They inflicted on the young popularity of
Nicholas II. a blow from the effects of which it never recovered.
This was the prologue of the tragedy which came to an end, if it has
done so, with the signature of the Manifesto of Pskov. After this rise
of the curtain was to begin a drama, all the different acts of which
appear to us shrouded in bloody clouds.
One questions at present whether this drama could have had a different
end from the one which we are witnessing, or whether the historical
evolution that has been accomplished in the course of the last few
months in Russia could have been avoided, or at least otherwise
directed. Personally I believe it to have been unavoidable, but it
could have unfurled itself with dignity, if the Crown had consented
to concessions which would have taken nothing away from its greatness
or importance, but which would on the contrary have lent to it a new
lustre. In any case it would have been possible for autocracy to
die, or better still, to live otherwise. No matter what reproaches
could have been addressed to the Romanoffs in the past, no matter the
injustices and the cruelties they had committed in the course of their
family history, there is one thing which cannot be taken away from
them, and that is that they have all of them been strong and courageous
men, incapable of trembling before the attacks of any enemies, however
powerful, or before the fury of a revolted mob. Nicholas II. was the
first one among them who proved himself unable to inspire either love
or hatred in his subjects, and for whom they held nothing but contempt,
because they very quickly grasped the fact that he would never be able
to give to himself or to others an account of the position he stood in,
or to realise the tragedy of his own fate.
People who knew him well have wondered whether he ever understood what
his duty really meant. I think, however, from the personal knowledge
which I have of his character, that in a certain way he wished to do
what was right, but I doubt whether he knew the responsibilities of
his position, and the fact that he ought to put the interests of the
State before those of his own family. For him his wife and children
held the first place, and were the first objects of his consideration.
This would have been a virtue in a private person, but it could easily
assume the proportions of a crime in a sovereign.
[Illustration:
_Copyright, International Film Service, Inc._ (_Courtesy
Seattle Times._)
THE FIRST BOLSHEVIKI CABINET]
His father had left to him a splendid inheritance, which he might
have kept intact with a little care, and very small trouble. Before
the Japanese war it might have been still possible for him to rule
his country autocratically, though not despotically; but after
Moukhden and Tschousima, and especially after the revolution which
followed upon these two catastrophes, and which would have been hardly
possible, had they not occurred, the thing became more difficult,
if not impossible, because the Russian nation had begun to wonder
at the causes that had brought about these terrible disasters, the
consequences of which had been the loss of Russian prestige in the Far
East, and even in Europe. It would, however, still have been possible
to save something out of the former form of government, if a serious
and honest appeal had been made to the nation to help to consolidate
its strength, and if an attempt had been made to modify it according
to the exigencies of the times and of the moment. But after the famous
day which saw rivers of blood flow in the streets of St. Petersburg,
and the wholesale slaying of thousands of innocent workmen, whose only
crime had consisted in wishing to lay their grievances before their
Czar, every attempt to keep up the old order of things was bound to
fail. Something else had to be tried to save the dynasty together with
the country, but not the granting of a so-called Constitution, which
it had been determined beforehand to leave a dead letter. If on the
occasion I have just referred to, Nicholas II. had found sufficient
courage to meet his people face to face, and to speak with them as
his great grandfather had done on an occasion far more critical even
than the ones which prevailed in 1905, it is likely that the divorce
which finally separated him from his subjects would never have taken
place. But he went to Tsarskoie Selo as soon as he heard there was
likely to be trouble in his capital, forgetting everything else but
his own personal safety, which, by the way, had never been seriously
threatened. He proved himself to be a coward, and cowardice is the
last thing which a nation forgives in those who rule it. The Czar lost
in consequence of his conduct every prestige he had left. And he also
lost the respect of Russia, owing to the shameless corruption which
established itself everywhere during his reign, when at last everything
under the sun could be bought or sold in the country, to begin with, a
Court appointment, and to end with, the highest functions in the State.
The Emperor was unable to refuse anything to those whom he liked, and
he never grasped this essential fact, that when one gives too easily
and without discernment, it inevitably follows that one also allows
people to take what perhaps one would never have granted, had one
thought about it.
Alexander III. had been just as generous as his son showed himself
to be later on. But his generosity was only exercised in regard to
what belonged to him personally, whilst no one was more careful than
this sovereign of the public exchequer. He had seen what corruption
meant during his own father’s reign, when abuses had also prevailed,
which though in no way comparable to those that established themselves
towards the close of the one which has come to an end a year ago,
were still sufficiently grave and serious to cause anxiety to a
Monarch eager and anxious for the welfare of his State. He therefore
had applied himself to put an end to them, and knowing as he did,
admirably well the character of the Russian nation, he took up morally
the famous stick of Peter the Great, with which he dealt at times
most severe blows to those whom he believed to be in need of them.
The result of this system made itself felt within a very short time,
and when Alexander III. died, the old custom of taking bribes, which
had been formerly so prevalent in Russia, had nearly died out, or at
least existed upon such a small scale that it could no longer do any
harm. But under Nicholas II. the old evil was revived, and finding no
obstacle in its path, it soon assumed most unheard of proportions,
and became at last a regular institution. Soon everything in the vast
Empire of the Czars was put up at public auction, everything could be
purchased or sold, and everything became buyable, provided a sufficient
price was offered for it. The Emperor knew nothing, and saw nothing,
and no one dared to tell him anything, whilst many unscrupulous persons
found it to their advantage to profit by the changes that had taken
place to enrich themselves quickly and with very little trouble. The
whole country was seized with a perfect fever of speculation, and with
the frantic desire to win millions as rapidly as possible. When I say
the whole country, this is not quite exact, because it was not the
country, but only some people in it, who, thanks to the position which
they occupied, or to their relations in influential circles, found
themselves able to take a part in this general plundering. The Japanese
war which was to have such a sad end, was entirely brought about
through certain concessions being granted by the Russian government on
the River Yalou which never belonged to the Russian State, to a number
of persons who hoped to transform them into shareholders’ companies,
and to make money out of them. They had bribed officials who persuaded
the Emperor to sign the decree which was presented to him, of which
he failed to see the importance or the meaning, or the strange light
in which it put him, to distribute thus what he did not possess, and
what had still to be taken away from the Japanese government before
it could be disposed of. This war, one cannot sufficiently repeat it,
was brought about willingly and knowingly, by people who saw in it an
opportunity to enrich themselves at the expense of their fatherland,
thanks to the ammunitions and provisions they would be able to deliver
for the use of the army in the field, and which that army never got at
all. The system of an organised plundering which in the present war has
had such mournful and such tragical consequences, was then inaugurated
with a success that went far beyond the most sanguine expectations of
those who indulged in it. Huge fortunes were made in the space of a few
months whilst our troops were in want of everything, and enduring cold,
hunger and thirst. The Czar remained in utter ignorance of all that was
being done in his name. He never suspected anything. But his people
never forgave him for this indifference to its fate. One sees it to-day.
One wonders what was in the mind of this Sovereign, who having ascended
the throne amidst so many sympathies, had contrived to lose them within
the space of a few months! Did he ever realise the importance of the
ocean of unpopularity which was submerging him slowly, and the waves
of which were rising higher and higher, with each day that passed? One
would like to know it now, when one tries to go back to the sources of
the tragedy to which he has fallen a victim. Or was his character so
shallow and so careless, that he only looked at the outside of things,
and could not appreciate their real depth? He was of a very reticent
nature and disposition, and rarely confided in any one, not even in
his wife, whose inspiration and advice he was nevertheless to follow
so blindly. And the tastes for solitude which he was to develop so
strongly later on soon brought him to lead a kind of existence that can
be compared only to that of the Mikado of Japan, before the reforms
that were to change everything in that country.
That he was surrounded by flatterers goes without saying, but he could
nevertheless have manifested some desire to learn the truth, and not
have been so continually busy with the exclusive wish to maintain his
own authority, which in spite of his efforts to the contrary, no one
in the whole of Russia either respected or feared. All the concessions
which politically were squeezed out of him, came too late, or else
were accepted by him at the wrong time. Even when he seemed in the
eyes of the public to be following the advice which was given to him
by disinterested and honest persons, he tried in an underhand way to
counteract the efficacy of the measures he had himself ordered to be
taken, and whenever he resigned himself to the inevitable, he did not
understand the reason why he was so doing.
With it all he was in some respects an intelligent man. He cared for
good reading, for arts, for music, for all the things which help to
make out of life a pleasant thing for irresponsible individuals. He was
fond of study, very painstaking, but ignorant, and doing all that was
required of him, in an almost automatic manner; kind, it is true, but
incapable of coming to any serious resolution or determination of his
own accord; devoid of political sense, occasionally most obstinate,
and, unfortunately for him as well as for his country and dynasty, he
had the misfortune in all the circumstances when a sacrifice of some
fraction of his Imperial prerogatives came into question, not to be
able to understand either his people or the times he was living in, and
to have no thought for anything else but the safety of his own family,
forgetting utterly that his country and its welfare ought to have come
before them.
When he resigned himself to grant that shadow of a constitution, the
advent of which was hailed with such enthusiasm by the whole of Russia,
he might still, had he liked, have regained some part at least, of
his lost popularity. His personal prestige, or rather that of the
position he stood in, was still so great among the nation, that it
would have felt gratitude toward him, for every favour he would have
chosen to confer upon it, if only he had not taken back all that he
had given, almost immediately after he had awarded it. It is quite
certain that the first Duma committed many errors, but it should have
been remembered that no human achievement can reach perfection at
once; and the excitement and effervescence that had followed upon the
opening of the first Russian Parliament ought to have been allowed to
cool down, and been given sufficient time to make an honest trial of
its rights and privileges. At the period I am referring to, and this
notwithstanding all that was said to the contrary, a revolution like
the one which took place the other day, would have been an impossible
thing, because the Sovereign could still rely upon the army, and it
would have been better for him had he always leant upon it rather than
upon the low crowd of state functionaries with which he was exclusively
surrounded and out of which his wife had picked her favourites. He
might have checked the then rising tide of radicalism with which he
found himself unable to cope later on, and in the strength of which he
was to remain to the end mistaken, because he dreaded it when it was
not dangerous, and imagined that he had subdued it, at the very moment
when it had become, thanks to his own errors, and to his own faults,
sufficiently strong to carry him away on its waves.
Such a thorough weakness of character was bound to bring about the most
serious consequences, and these did not fail to produce themselves. If
Nicholas II. had had beside him a wife able to lead him, to advise him,
to open his eyes which perhaps he did not quite close, but which he
was never to succeed in keeping sufficiently open, and to show him not
only the perils which surrounded him (these she never forgot to point
out to him in an exaggerated manner), but also to bring to his notice
his duties towards his subjects, he might have become a Sovereign like
any other, neither better nor worse, insignificant perhaps, but never
really dangerous for his country or for his dynasty. Even if that wife
he was so devoted to had wished not to identify herself with State
affairs, had kept outside them, and not surrounded herself with people
lost to every sense of shame, he might have come out of the numerous
difficulties with which he found himself confronted, if not exactly
to his honour and credit, at least without losing too much of his
prestige. But Alexandra Feodorovna was the fatal and dissolving element
which destroyed, thanks to her attitude and conduct, every scrap of
respect for the Sovereign, and who inspired in the whole of the nation
the desire to get rid of an authority in which it believed no longer,
and in which it saw only an obstacle in the way of its development and
of its historical evolution. The Empress understood even less than her
husband the state of mind of his subjects; she raised between him and
them a barrier which nothing could destroy, because it was made out of
the contempt which they both inspired in the whole of Russia.
There is one curious thing contrasting with the facility with which
Nicholas II. accepted the opinions of others, and with his total
absence of personal initiative; and that is the persistence with which
he maintained himself during the whole time that his reign lasted, in
one line of conduct which never varied in regard to the determination
to govern his country in a despotic sense, and which was the more
singular that he never knew the meaning of real authority. He always
kept listening to those who represented to him that the first duty of
a Russian Emperor consisted in keeping up the prestige of the police
before the mass of the citizens. Under no reign in Russia, if we
except the dark period of the Opritschnikys under Ivan the Terrible,
did the police play such an important part in public life, or become
guilty of more abuses and of more malversations of every kind. I
will not mention here the horrors which took place during and after
the revolution of 1905, when no one felt secure against an anonymous
denunciation, the consequences of which might be that one saw oneself
exiled in Siberia, simply because one had not sufficiently bribed
the police officer in charge of the district where one lived; but
later on, even after things had calmed down, the might of what was
called the Okhrana, remained just as formidable as it had been before.
Literally no one could feel safe under this so-called liberal Czar,
whilst under the reign of his father everybody possessed of a good and
clear conscience could rest peacefully in the certitude that neither
the security of his domicile or his personal safety would ever be
threatened or infringed upon by the caprice of this secret power called
by the vague name of “administration.”
But after all was he really liberal, this Czar who had so little
known or understood how to endear himself to his subjects, or did he
merely say that such was the case, in order to dissimulate despotic
leanings which were the more dangerous that they exercised themselves
without any judgment or without any justification for their explosion?
A considerable number of persons have wondered about it, and have
found themselves unable to solve this riddle. To hear him speak,
one would have thought that such was the case, whilst it was hardly
possible to talk with him for any length of time, without finding him
a sympathetic, kind personality, curious mixture of totally different
elements in a character that was chiefly remarkable for its weakness.
One could like him, one could even admire some of the qualities which
he undoubtedly possessed, but it was utterly impossible to respect
in him the Monarch, or to esteem the man, so strange did his conduct
sometimes appear, a conduct which finally dragged him into an abyss,
together with his family and with his dynasty. Physically, he had a sad
and kind face, affectionate and clear blue eyes, a charming voice, much
affability in his manners; a wonderfully bright smile, reminding one of
his mother’s, a most cordial manner of shaking hands that went straight
to the heart and made one suspect a lot of things which in reality did
not exist; a rapid and quick walk, a certain hesitation in his speech,
and in the expression of his face at times; such was the man. Morally,
he was possessed of honesty of purpose to such an extent that he could
realise its absence in others; he had no will of any kind, but a good
deal of obstinacy; principles which were always forgotten when they
interposed themselves between his personal welfare and his duty; no
sense of responsibility, but a very exalted opinion of his own rights,
and especially of his might; the conviction that autocracy ought to be
maintained at any cost, and simultaneously the sincere desire, during
a short while, to govern according to the change of system to which
he had been compelled to submit, more by the force of things and of
events, than through his personal opinions; absolutely no consciousness
of the great events with which he found himself mixed up, or of the
wants of the country over which he ruled; no conception of the aims
he ought to have had in view; no real sympathy for his people, but a
vague wish to help them; an unacknowledged dread of finding himself
thrown into any intimate contact with the mob, combined with the hope
that this feeling would not be noticed by the public at large; far too
much confidence in incapable advisers; an exaggerated mistrust of the
persons courageous enough to tell him the truth, an absolute incapacity
to resist bad influences; sometimes considerable dignity, and often
useless haughtiness; a good deal of superstition combined with
religion; a deep conviction that his own person was something so sacred
that though it might come to be attacked and criticised, yet nobody
would be daring enough to lay a sacrilegious hand upon it; a complete
incapability of making any distinction between his friends and his
foes, and such a persuasive manner that no one could ever contradict
or resist him, so that the Revolution in which he lost his Crown must
have surprised him to the extent of paralysing all his faculties of
realising its importance and its extent; such was the Sovereign.
CHAPTER II
By the side of this Monarch in whom his subjects at last lost every
vestige of confidence, there stood a sinister figure, the bad genius
of a reign that would most probably have been far more peaceful if
it had not been there: the figure of his wife, the Empress Alexandra
Feodorovna, “the German,” as she had been called even long before the
present war broke out. It was undoubtedly to her that were due, at
least to a considerable extent, the various misfortunes which have
assailed the unfortunate Nicholas II., and it was also she, who, in the
brief space of a few short years, discredited him together with the
throne to which he had raised her. It was she who destroyed all the
prestige which the Monarchy had retained in Russia, until the day when
she tarnished it. She was another Marie Antoinette, without any of the
qualities, or the courage that had distinguished the latter, who had
become the object of the hatred and furious dislike of her subjects,
more on account of the vices which were attributed to her, than of
those which she really possessed. In regard to the Consort of the Czar
Nicholas II., it was just the contrary that occurred, because the
general public never became aware of all the strange details concerning
the private life of this Princess, who compromised by her conduct the
inheritance of her son, together with the Crown which she herself
wore. On her arrival in Russia she had been met with expressions of
great sympathy, and it would have been relatively easy for her to
make herself liked everywhere and by everybody, because the peculiar
circumstances which had accompanied her marriage had won for her a
sincere popularity all over Russia. At the time she arrived there as
the bride of the future Sovereign there existed in the country a strong
current of anglomania, which disappeared later on, to revive again
during the last year or two. The Princess who came to Livadia from
Darmstadt was the granddaughter of Queen Victoria of Great Britain, by
whom she had been partly brought up, a fact which spoke in her favour
because it was supposed that her education would have developed in her
liberal opinions, love for freedom, and the desire to make herself
liked as well as respected by her future subjects, who received her
with the more enthusiasm that they all hoped she would influence in the
right direction her husband, whose weakness of character was already
at that time known by those who had had the opportunity of becoming
acquainted with him. One felt therefore inclined to forgive her any
small mistake she might be led into committing during those first days
which followed upon her arrival in her new Fatherland. One pitied
this young bride, whose marriage was to follow so soon the funeral of
the monarch whose untimely death was lamented so deeply by the whole
of Russia, and one felt quite disposed, at least among the upper
classes of St. Petersburg society, as well as in court circles, to
show oneself indulgent in regard to the almost inevitable errors into
which she might fall, at the beginning of her career as an Empress.
This feeling was so strong that during the first months which followed
upon her marriage, the popularity of her mother-in-law, who had been
so sincerely loved before, suffered as a consequence of this general
wish to make an idol of Alexandra Feodorovna. The eyes of everybody
were turned towards the new star that had arisen on the horizon of the
Russian capital.
Amidst this general concert of praise which arose on all sides in
honour of the newly wedded Empress, there were a few persons who,
having had the opportunity to listen to some discordant notes, kept
aloof and waited for what the future would bring. At the time of the
death of Alexander III., a man belonging to the prominent circles of
Russian society, who had been for a long period of years upon terms of
personal friendship with the German Royal Family, happened to be in
Berlin, and during a visit which he paid to the Empress Frederick, the
aunt of the future wife of the new Czar, he told her how many hopes
were set in Russia upon her young niece. He was very much surprised to
hear the Empress express herself with a certain scepticism in regard
to the bride, and finally say that she felt afraid the Princess Alix,
as she was still called at the time, would not understand how to make
herself beloved by her subjects, or how to win their hearts. Seeing the
astonishment provoked by her remark, she added that the character of
the girl about to wear the crown of the Romanoffs, was an exceptionally
haughty and proud one, and that as in addition to this defect she was
possessed of an unusual amount of vanity, she would most probably have
her head turned by the grandeur of her position, and would put forward,
in place of the intelligence which she did not possess, an exaggerated
feeling of her own importance. The gentleman to whom I have referred
returned therefore to Russia with fewer illusions concerning Alexandra
Feodorovna than the generality of his compatriots indulged in.
I must give the latter their due, they did not keep these illusions
for any length of time, because from the very beginning of her
married life the new Czarina contrived to wound the feelings and the
susceptibilities of all those with whom she was thrown into contact.
She had absolutely no tact, and she fancied that if she allowed herself
to be amiable in regard to any one, she would do something which was
below her dignity. She applied herself to treat everybody from the
height of her unassailable position, and she took good care never to
say one word that might be interpreted in the light of a kindness or
amiability towards the people who were being presented to her, so that
though they tried hard to attribute her utter want of politeness to
a timidity which in reality did not exist, yet they felt offended at
it. Russian society had been used to something vastly different, and
to a certain familiarity in its relations with its Sovereigns. The
mother of Nicholas II., the Empress Marie, had been worshipped for the
incomparable charm of her manners, and the simple kindness with which
she received all those who were introduced to her, asking them to sit
down beside her, and talking with them in a charming chatty way,
full of sweet and unassuming dignity. Her daughter-in-law abolished
these morning receptions which had brought the Sovereign into close
intercourse with so many different people. She received the ladies who
had asked to be presented to her, standing, surrounded by her court,
with two pages behind her holding her train, and she merely stretched
out her hand to be kissed by those whom she condescended to admit
into her august presence, without speaking one single word to them.
Of course the people whom she treated with such rudeness felt hurt
at it, and it began to be said among the public that the Empress was
not at all amiable, and people abstained from seeking her presence
or appearing at Court, unless it was absolutely necessary to do so,
leaving thus the field free to people devoid of self respect, to whom
one impoliteness more or less did not matter. The balls at the Winter
Palace, which formerly had been such brilliant ones, became dull and
monotonous. The smile of the Empress Marie was no longer there to
enliven them. At last the Czarina left off giving any, and no one
missed them, or felt the worse for their absence. One felt rather
relieved than otherwise not to be compelled any longer to appear in the
presence of the Empress.
As time went on, an abyss was formed which divided the Consort of
Nicholas II. from her subjects, whose feelings manifested themselves
quite openly on the day of the solemn entry of the Imperial Family into
Moscow, on the eve of the Coronation of the new Sovereigns. The golden
carriage that contained the Dowager Empress was followed all along its
way by the cheers of the population of the ancient capital, whilst a
tragic silence prevailed during the passage of the coach in which sat
her daughter-in-law. The contrast was such a striking one that it was
everywhere noticed and commented upon.
This latent animosity, the first signs of which manifested themselves
on this memorable occasion, became even more acute after the
catastrophe of Khodinka. Russia did not forgive its Empress for having
danced the whole of the night that had followed upon it, and for
having given no sign of regret at a disaster that had cost the life
of more than twenty thousand people, who had perished in the most
awful manner possible. The divorce between her and her subjects was
accomplished definitely after that day, and without any hope of a
future reconciliation coming to annul its effects.
This unpopularity, and let us say the word, this hatred of which she
became the object, did not remain unknown to the Empress, who either
noticed it herself, or else was enlightened on the point by her
German relatives, with whom she had remained upon most intimate and
affectionate terms. She attributed it at first to the fact that she had
not during many years given a son to her husband and an heir to the
Russian Throne, but later on she was compelled to acknowledge that the
dislike which she inspired was due to other causes which were dependant
on her own self. The discovery angered and soured her, and made her
nasty and ill natured. She tried to avenge herself by the assumption
of an authority in the exercise of which she found a certain pleasure,
because it procured her at least the illusion of an absolute power,
allowing her, if the wish for it happened to cross her mind, to crush
all those who were bold enough to criticise any of her actions or her
general demeanour.
Her character was obstinate without being firm. She believed herself
in all earnestness to be the equal of her husband, and did not think
of herself at all as his first subject, so that, instead of giving to
others the example of deference towards their Sovereign, she applied
herself to lower him down to her own level, to diminish his importance,
and to show quite openly that she did not in the very least respect
either him or the throne which he occupied. One heard a number of
anecdotes on the subject, among others one to the effect that during
a regimental feast, at which the Imperial Family was present, the
Empress, who had arrived a little in advance of the Czar, did not rise
from her seat when he entered the riding school in which the guests
were assembled to receive him. This want of deference was commented
upon in unfavourable terms, and caused such a scandal that Alexandra
Feodorovna was taken to task for it by her mother-in-law, with the only
result that she impertinently told the latter to mind her own business
and to hold her tongue. The Dowager Empress did not allow her to repeat
such a remark, and withdrew herself almost entirely from the Court,
much to the regret of all her admirers. All these things were perhaps
not important ones, at least from other points of view than the purely
social one, but they constituted this drop of water, which by its
constant and continual dripping ends in attacking the solidity of the
hardest granite. Very soon it became a subject of general knowledge
that no one cared for the Empress, and one came to the conclusion
that this initial want of sympathy would easily become very real and
implacable hatred.
The woman who had become the object of it, instead of trying to fight
against the general dislike which she inspired, did absolutely nothing
to try to persuade her subjects that she was not the detestable being
she had been represented to be, but that she cared for their welfare,
in spite of her cold appearance. The haughty and mistaken pride which
was one of the chief features in her strange character, led her to
retire within herself and to try to avoid seeing the people, who by
that time had grown to meet her whenever she appeared in public, with
angry and unpleasant expressions in their faces. The Imperial Court
under her rule was quickly transformed from the brilliant assemblage
it had been into a desert--a solitude no one cared to disturb. The
Empress amused herself chiefly in turning tables and in evoking spirits
from the other world, in company with mediums of a low kind who abused
the confidence that she so unwisely and unnecessarily placed in them,
and predicted for her (as it was to their interest to do) a happy and
prosperous future.
Then came the war with Japan, together with the disasters which
attended it, a war that shook most seriously the prestige of the throne
of the Romanoffs. It brought to light all the defects, the disorder,
and the inefficiency of the War Office; it enlightened the nation as
to the real worth of the people who were standing at the head of its
government, and it sounded the first knell of the Revolution which
was at last accomplished. This war afforded another pretext to the
public for attacking the personality of the Empress, who according
to the rumours which circulated at the time, had only looked upon it
from the joyous and glorious side, and never noticed its earnest and
sad one. It is a fact that neither disasters like those of Moukhden
and Tschousima, nor even the revolutionary movement that broke out in
consequence of them, affected her equanimity. She remained absolutely
cold in presence of these grave events and was absorbed in the joy of
the new maternity, which just at that time was granted to her--the
birth of the long expected and hoped for Heir to the Russian Throne,
which occurred in the very midst of the Japanese campaign. This event
certainly did not contrive to make her more popular among her subjects,
whilst on the other hand it increased considerably her importance, so
that after the appearance in the world of the son she had so ardently
wished for, she began to display more independence in her conduct than
had been formerly the case, and to discuss more eagerly, and more
authoritatively than she had ever been able to do before, matters of
State which her position as the mother of the future Sovereign gave her
almost a right to know, and to interfere with. She brought forward her
own opinions and judgments, which never once proved in accord with the
real needs of the Russian people. The Empress was neither good, kind,
nor compassionate. Her nature was cold, hard and imperious, and she
had never been accessible to the divine feeling which is called pity
for other people’s woes. She would have signed a death warrant with
the greatest coolness and indifference, and more than once her husband
decided, thanks to her intervention, to confirm those submitted to his
consideration. This last fact became known, and, as may be imagined, it
did not procure her any sympathy among her subjects.
[Illustration:
_Copyright, International Film Service, Inc._
THE BOLSHEVIKI HEADQUARTERS IN PETROGRAD]
It was about that time, that is just before the birth of the Heir to
the Throne, and whilst the war with Japan was being fought, that people
began to spread dark rumours concerning the private life of Alexandra
Feodorovna. A most extraordinary friendship which she contracted with
a lady whose reputation left very much to be desired, and who had been
divorced from her husband under circumstances that had given rise to
much talk, Madame Wyroubieva, was severely criticised. The Empress
remained deaf to all the hints which were conveyed to her on the
subject. She kept the lady in question beside her, gave her rooms in
the Imperial Palace, and took her about with her wherever she went,
without minding in the least the impression which this bravado of
public opinion produced everywhere. Another friendship for a certain
Colonel Orloff, an officer in her own regiment of lancers, also gave
rise to considerable gossip, which increased in intensity when after
the death of the latter, who committed suicide under rather mysterious
circumstances, the Empress repaired every afternoon to the churchyard
where he was buried, prayed and laid flowers upon his grave. One
wondered why she did such strange things, and of course persons were at
once found to explain her motives in a manner which was the reverse of
charitable.
The Emperor knew and saw all that was going on, but said nothing. His
wife by that time had acquired over his mind quite an extraordinary
influence, and either he did not dare to make any remarks as to the
originality which she displayed in her conduct, or else he imagined
that her position put her so much above criticism that it was useless
to interfere with what she might feel inclined to do in the matter of
eccentricity. A legend soon established itself in regard to Alexandra
Feodorovna. She was said to suffer from a nervous affection, which
obliged her at times to keep to her own apartments, and not to appear
in public. People tried, thanks to this pretext, to explain her absence
on different occasions when her position would have required her to
show herself to her subjects. But the truth of the matter was that
the Empress did not wish to see anybody, outside the small circle of
people before whom she need not constrain herself to be amiable or
pleasant; and that utterly forgetful of the duties entailed upon her
by her high rank and great position, she wanted only to live according
to her personal tastes, surrounded by flatterers or by people resigned
beforehand to accept and bow down before her numerous caprices, and to
fulfil with a blind obedience all the commands it might please her to
issue to them.
She mixed openly in public affairs, and began to play a leading part
in the conduct of the State. Her husband never dared to refuse her
anything, and the Empress attempted to lead the destinies of Russia in
the sense which she had the most at heart, that is in one corresponding
to the interests of her own native country. She had remained entirely
German in her tastes and opinions, and her English education had
had absolutely no influence on her character. Thanks to an active
correspondence which she kept up with her brother, the Grand Duke of
Hesse, she was able to acquaint the Emperor William II. with a good
many things that he would never have learned without her. This is the
more curious, if one takes into account the fact that during the first
years which had followed upon her marriage, and especially after the
different journeys which she had made in France, Alexandra Feodorovna
had expressed great sympathy and admiration for everything that was
French, perhaps on account of the great enthusiasm with which she had
been received by the French population. But later on, thanks to the
influence of the unscrupulous people into whose hands she fell, her
ideas became transformed, and she boldly tried to fight against the
French leanings of her husband, and to lead him towards an alliance
with Germany, in which she thought that she saw the advantage, and even
the safety of her throne, and of the son she loved above everything
else in the world.
All these facts could not long remain unknown, and soon the public
began to discuss them, together with the story of the different
intrigues of which the Palace of Tsarskoie Selo became the centre.
Thanks to the friends whom she had chosen for herself, the ante-chamber
of the Empress was transformed into a kind of annex to the Stock
Exchange, where all sorts of people, honest or dishonest, used to meet,
in order to obtain through her intercession more or less extravagant,
if not dangerous, favours. Thanks to Madame Wyroubieva, there were
introduced into the intimacy of the Czarina certain members of the
orthodox clergy recommendable only by their love for money and for
lucrative employments, or rich dioceses and monasteries. The Empress
together with her sister, the Grand Duchess Elisabeth, who after the
murder of her husband had become a nun and the superior of a cloister
which she had founded in Moscow, and to whom one might have applied
with success the remark of Marie Antoinette in regard to her aunt
Madame Louise of France, “she is the most intriguing little Carmelite
in the whole of the kingdom,” tried to mix themselves up in every
important matter in the State, and to lead it according to their
own lights and aims, making use of the Emperor as of an instrument
of their own private ambitions and desires. They were both fierce
reactionaries, who from the first day that Nicholas II. had promulgated
the Constitution of the 17th of October, had tried to persuade him to
recall it. It was thanks to the initiative of the Empress that the
first Duma was dissolved, and that the government began to exercise
considerable pressure over the elections in order to prevent the
candidates whom it believed it could not trust from being chosen by
their constituents. One Minister after another of those whom the
Czar appointed in rapid succession, resigned their functions, until
at last it was an acknowledged fact in Russia that no honest trial
of constitutional government could or would be attempted so long as
Alexandra Feodorovna would be there to counteract its existence. When
the Revolution broke out in the year 1905, and especially at the time
of the disturbances which took place in Moscow, it was the Empress
who excited her husband to adopt rigorous measures in order to crush
it, measures which led to nothing, and which only made Nicholas II.
a little more unpopular than he already was among his subjects. It
was related, whether true or not I cannot say, that when the famous
Semenovsky Regiment was sent to Moscow to reduce into submission the
insurrection which had broken out there, Alexandra Feodorovna had
desired to say good-bye to the officers before their departure, and
that the only recommendation which she had made to them had been not to
show any mercy to the insurgents. She had read without understanding it
in the very least, the history of the French Revolution in 1789, and
one had often heard her say that to show any weakness or compassion in
times of danger was equivalent to signing one’s own death warrant. Her
friends were nearly all of them men and women with a bad reputation,
and amidst the circle of her own immediate family she had only
contrived to make herself enemies. Thanks to her influence, and to her
petty personal spite, the young Grand Duke Cyril, the son of the Grand
Duke Vladimir, was deprived of his titles and dignities and exiled from
Russia for having dared to marry his first cousin, the divorced wife of
the Empress’s brother, the Grand Duke of Hesse, the Princess Victoria
Melita of Edinburgh. This punishment, however, was promptly cancelled,
thanks to the numerous protests which followed upon it from all
quarters, but the two people concerned never forgave the Empress her
attitude in regard to their union, and we saw an echo of this hostility
the other day when the Grand Duke Cyril on the outbreak of the
Revolution tried to play the part of Philippe Egalité in the Romanoff
family, and went with his regiment to put himself at the disposal of
the new government appointed by the Duma.
The only brother of Nicholas II., the Grand Duke Michael
Alexandrovitsch, saw the influence of the Empress exercised against
him in a manner which was even more odious, because she contrived to
deprive him of the control not only of his fortune, but also of his
personal liberty to manage his estates. With her mother-in-law, the
Dowager Empress Marie, Alexandra Feodorovna showed herself absolutely
abominable in her disdain, haughtiness and pride. With the persons
composing her court and household, she was unpleasant and bitter. Even
in regard to her own daughters she proved herself heartless, and she
never once during the twenty-three years which followed her arrival
in Russia until the day of her downfall, tried to do any good around
her or induce her husband to accomplish one of those actions full of
generosity and mercy which unite a nation with its Sovereign, and make
their hearts beat together for some noble cause or other. Then again
there occurred the Rasputin incident. I have discussed it at length in
the first part of this book, and shall therefore not enter here into a
second description of the career of this strange personage, this low
Cagliostro of a reign that did not deserve to have any great nobleman
or even gentleman for its favourite. The only thing which I want to
point out to the reader, is the responsibility which devolves upon the
Empress in this disagreeable story, which more perhaps than anything
else hastened the fall of the old Romanoff monarchy. Whether she was
really persuaded of the holy character of the sinister adventurer who
had contrived so cleverly to exploit her credulity, or whether there
was in this curious infatuation for an unworthy object a question of
hypnotism, combined with the extravagance of a badly balanced mind
and imagination, it is difficult to say, especially when one has not
followed otherwise than by hearsay the different incidents of this
almost unbelievable tragedy. It is probable that the mystery, such as
it was, will never be quite explained, but one may reasonably suppose
that the perpetual invocations to spirits of another world, which
Alexandra Feodorovna had practised for so many years, have had a good
deal to do with the obstinacy with which she insisted upon imposing
this personage upon all those who surrounded her, and with which
she allowed him to interfere with the details of her family life, a
thing which went so far that one day the governess of the young Grand
Duchesses, Mademoiselle Toutscheff, a most distinguished lady, went to
seek the Emperor, and told him that she could no longer be responsible
for the education of his daughters if Rasputin was allowed to enter
their apartments at every hour of the day and night. The only reply
which was made by Nicholas II. to this communication was that the
Empress ought not to be crossed, on account of the state of her nerves.
He seemed to approve of everything that was going on in his house,
and, this is the point which has always seemed so incomprehensible in
his character, he even appeared to view with a certain pleasure the
admittance into the intimacy of his home life of this uncivilised and
uncouth creature called Rasputin, whose hand Alexandra Feodorovna bent
down to kiss with a reverence that she had never before in the course
of her whole life shown to any one else, not excepting Queen Victoria
of England, whom she had tried to snub during the official visit which
she had paid to her after her marriage.
The complete indifference of the Czar as to what was going on around
him and under his own roof, combined with his weakness of character
and his unreasonable love for his wife, did not add to the feelings
of respect that his subjects ought to have entertained for him. In a
very short time extraordinary rumours began to circulate concerning
all that was supposed to take place at Tsarskoie Selo, rumours
which, disseminated as they were among the population of Petrograd,
contributed in no small degree to the promptitude with which it
rallied itself to the cause of the Revolution that put an end to the
reign of Nicholas II. It was related amongst other things that the
Commander-in-Chief of the Army, the Grand Duke Nicholas, had one
day told his Imperial nephew that if he did not lock up Alexandra
Feodorovna in a convent, he would come himself at the head of his
troops, to carry her away, and confine her within the walls of the
monastery of Novodievitvchy. True or not, the story was repeated
everywhere, and it procured for the Grand Duke a considerable number of
friends and sympathisers.
Soon after this it was related that the Empress was in connivance
with the numerous people who had made it their business to plunder
the national exchequer, and that she looked with indulgence upon the
malversations from which profited the partisans and the accomplices,
for one could hardly call them by another name, of Rasputin. She began
to be hated even more ferociously than had been the case before, and
at last the police had to let Nicholas II. know that his Consort would
do better not to show herself too often in public, because an attempt
against her life might easily come to be made, under the influence of
all the stories which one heard right and left concerning her private
conduct and her affection for a being who was accused by the whole
nation of being fatal to Russia’s prosperity at home and good renown
abroad. The Czar listened to all this, as he was to listen later on to
the remonstrances of his own family, but he did not act on all that he
had been told. He continued to see Rasputin, partly because, according
to the tales of those who were in the secret of what really went on
in that strange Imperial household, the frank way of speaking of this
uncouth peasant amused him and pleased him, being something so totally
different from the language which he was accustomed to hear. But
contrary to what was generally believed, he did not discuss with him
matters of State, any more than did the Empress. It is to be hoped that
this last assertion is correct, and that Rasputin in regard to Nicholas
II. only played the part sustained by Chicot at the court of Henri III.
of France, that of the King’s Jester, capable occasionally of telling
some truths to his master. But during the last months which preceded
the removal of this sinister figure from the horizon of Tsarskoie Selo,
no one in Russia would believe in such a version, seeing that this
Jester could dispose according to his pleasure of all the high places
in the State, that he had created ministers, functionaries of paramount
importance, church dignitaries, and that whoever addressed himself to
him generally got what he wanted, whilst it was his friends who were
controlling the government of the vast empire of the Czars. One did not
realise that this had become possible only because all persons endowed
with the slightest independence of character, had gradually become
estranged from their Sovereign, and had come to the decision to abandon
him to his fate, disgusted as they were by his weakness in regard to
his wife, and being moreover unwilling to accept the responsibility
of duties which they were not allowed to fulfil according to the
dictates of their conscience. One after another the Ministers, who
at the beginning of the reign of Nicholas II. had helped him to rule
Russia, had been dismissed by him, or retired of their own accord,
and their places had been taken by simple subaltern functionaries,
preoccupied only with that one single thought of remaining as long as
possible in possession of the places which they had been called upon
by a caprice of destiny to occupy, and for which they knew at heart
that they were not fit. Everybody who had a sense of decency left,
had fled from Tsarskoie Selo, not caring to enter into conflict with
the mysterious and subterranean powers, which, to repeat the words
used by Professor Paul Miliukoff in his famous speech in the Duma
a few days before the Revolution, alone decided the most important
questions in the State. The whole country was disgusted at the conduct
of those who ruled it, and this disgust was soon to change into an
absolute contempt. The unpopularity of the Empress had extended itself
to the person of the Czar himself, whom one was beginning to render
responsible for the different things going on under his roof and to
accuse of seeing, without any emotion, the Imperial prestige and honour
sullied, and this autocracy for which he cared so much dishonoured.
This unfortunate Emperor did not find anywhere a support. His mother
had been estranged from him; his whole family had turned against him,
after numerous and useless attempts to open his eyes as to the dangers
which surrounded him and the position in which he stood before his
subjects. His brother had been systematically kept away from him by the
Empress, who did not care to have in her vicinity a man in whom she
saw an eventual pretender to the throne of her son. His sisters tried
to remove themselves as far from him as possible. He was longing for
disinterested affections, and there is therefore nothing wonderful or
surprising that he sought them from the wife whom fate had associated
with his existence, whom in spite of everything he continued to
love tenderly, and whose nefarious influence was to lead him to his
destruction.
[Illustration:
_Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._
THE BOLSHEVIKI GENERAL STAFF]
And she, this woman who alone stands responsible for all this ruin that
has overtaken her consort, and his dynasty, did she ever understand
the terrible responsibility that she had assumed? Did she ever try
to be for her husband the faithful companion whom he required, and on
whom he might have leant in the hour of danger and of peril? Did she
attempt to develop in him those strong and virile qualities a sovereign
conscious of his might requires to be able to handle it wisely? Did
she ever enter into the needs of her people, or identify herself with
the interests of the nation whose Empress she happened to be? Alas!
Alas! history has already replied to those questions, and it is history
which tells us that, thanks to Alexandra Feodorovna, the inheritance
bequeathed by Peter the Great to his posterity has been squandered and
lost. If there has ever existed a woman who has proved fatal to all
those with whom her lot has been thrown, it is this little Hessian
Princess, whom fate or chance associated with one of the greatest
political crises of which Russian history will keep the record and the
remembrance, and for whose tears no one will find any pity, even when
her sorrows will need it most.
CHAPTER III
In one of her letters addressed to her daughter Marie Antoinette, the
Empress Marie Therese wrote: “I am glad to hear that you have decided
to re-establish the old etiquette and representation of Versailles.
However tiresome it may be, its inconveniences are still far less than
those which arise out of its absence. A Court must learn to know well
its sovereigns.” These words of a woman who knew better than any other
queen had ever known how to uphold the prestige of her crown, ought
to have been remembered by the Czar Nicholas II., because it is an
undoubted fact that the custom which was established during his reign
to keep the Emperor and his family isolated from the nation over which
he ruled, had a good deal to do with the change that established itself
gradually in the ideas of the people, as well as in the minds of the
aristocracy, in regard to the reigning house. One forgot that there
existed in Russia an Emperor, and one only remembered the manifold
abuses which were the consequence of the detestable government to
which the nation was subjected. All the personal ties that might have
bound the monarch with those who could in an emergency have defended
him against danger, had been snapped asunder by that monarch himself.
St. Petersburg, which formerly (I have now in mind only the upper
classes) had converged towards the sun represented by the Imperial
Palace and its inhabitants, learned how to do without it, and it was
no longer considered to be an honour to have relations, no matter of
what nature, with any member of the House of Romanoff. The Imperial
Family, in imitation of the conduct pursued by its Chief, seemed as
if it wished to efface itself and to lead the existence of common
mortals, which it did not succeed in doing, because it had been brought
up too far from the world in general, represented by that portion
of humanity which suffers and which works in silence, to be able to
enter into its interests, and to make them its own. On the other
hand that same family gave the first signal of rebellion against the
system represented by the masters of the Palace of Tsarskoie Selo,
whom it applied itself to discredit with an energy which was the more
tenacious that it would have liked to be in their place. The Grand
Duchess Vladimir, especially, together with her two sons, who had never
cared for the Head of their dynasty, were the first ones to greet in
their house all the discontented people who abounded in the Russian
capital, and to deplore in their presence the scandal occasioned by
the strange conduct of the Empress. The Revolution which was to come
later on was prepared silently in the palaces of the very persons who
ought to have fought against it, as well as in the homes of those old
servants of the monarchy, who would have wished to save it from the
disaster, which they saw but too well, was fast overtaking it, but who
had to own themselves powerless to do so, and had to acknowledge with
sorrow and with shame that it was discrediting itself a little more
with each day that was passing. The nation, on its side, was preparing
itself for the impending struggle. The systematic manner in which the
labour party in Russia organised itself in view of the approaching
Revolution, has never been sufficiently known or appreciated abroad.
It has constituted for those who have followed the slow evolution
which was the consequence of the premature revolutionary movement that
had failed in 1905, one of the most interesting political problems
of the twentieth century. I have lived in Russia during the years
which have immediately preceded the war, and I have been in personal
relations with some of the leaders of this party. I can therefore
write about it from the point of view of a witness eager to watch the
slow transformation, which out of a party essentially violent in its
view and aspirations had produced a political faction, sufficiently
ripened and saddened by the unsuccesses of its first fight not to seek
elsewhere than in a too rapid solution the end of the difficulties
under which it had been condemned to develop itself. It was quite
sufficient to have witnessed the manifestations that used to take place
each first of May, to come to the conclusion that the workman who was
walking the streets, singing and carrying revolutionary flags, in 1906,
was quite a different man from the one who indulged in manifestations
of the like kind in 1913 and 1914. The general strike which preceded
the war by a few weeks upon which the Germans founded so many useless
hopes was, notwithstanding its revolutionary character, rather an
expression of opinion on the part of a powerful and perfectly well
organised party than a rebellion against authority. The workman had
at last realised that he had got the future for him, provided he did
not allow his natural impatience to carry him too far, and that he
could resist the temptation to proceed too quickly with the plans
which he had formed. He had also realised another thing, and that was
that neither the liberals nor the octobrists, nor the party called
that of the cadets, nor even the revolutionary socialists, were strong
enough to constitute a government, and that all the plans they were
continually talking about, would only end in speeches more or less
empty and devoid of practical common sense. The workman applied himself
to avoid mistakes, which perhaps he had noticed before he had quite
grasped their importance. He understood on the other hand perfectly
well the fact that the immense industrial movement, which had developed
itself during the years that had followed immediately upon the war with
Japan, was bound to increase still further in importance, and that the
future belonged to those who would be able to profit by it, to guide
it, and to direct it in the sense of a great and general reform of the
different abuses which had corrupted all the higher classes of the
nation. The number of factories which suddenly arose everywhere, the
speculation that followed upon the rise in the value of all kinds of
industrial securities, and the knowledge that the workman very quickly
acquired as to the different means thanks to which the fortunes of
so many people come, no one knew from whence, had been edified, gave
him a strength which became the more formidable that he was compelled
to remain silent in presence of so many spectacles that revolted
his sense of integrity. In regard to this particular point, the
impossibility to hold public meetings proved a blessing in disguise for
the development of the activity of the labour party, because it allowed
it to proceed in secret to a propaganda that became the more dangerous
for the security of the government in that there existed no one able
to point out to those among whom it flourished its perilous, and even
to a certain extent, its disastrous sides. Under the very eyes of the
police, the mass of the workmen employed in the different factories
scattered all over Petrograd, prepared itself for the mission which it
felt but too well was bound sooner or later to devolve upon it; so that
whenever it allowed its voice to be heard, it was always with prudence,
and even with a certain amount of cautious wisdom that prevented the
general public and the authorities noticing how strong and powerful it
was getting, and what a wonderful instrument it would prove later on,
in the hands of those who in the meanwhile were leading it in secret,
until the day when, thanks to their help, it would be able in its turn
to lead others.
It must here be remarked that the Russian government of that time
never understood the wants of the labour party. It is sufficient to
recall the terrible drama which was enacted in the Lena gold fields
of Siberia, when the troops, called to the help of the owners of the
works, fired on the mass of workmen who were simply asking for some
legitimate improvements in their conditions of existence, to come
to the conclusion that, according to the words of Hamlet, “there
was something rotten in that state of Denmark.” Only, neither the
government nor the upper classes of society, who were all of them, or
nearly all, in the dependence of a few lucky speculators in stocks and
shares, nor these speculators themselves, whose number was getting
larger and larger every day in St. Petersburg, cared to remember that
such was the fact.
During the years which immediately preceded the great war, the whole
of Russia had become one vast Stock Exchange, the securities of which
were quoted at every street corner, where the only things that had any
value, were those which could be turned into a shareholder’s company.
The Emperor Alexander III. had tried, during the whole time of his
reign, to improve agriculture in his land, and he had tried to bind
together the different social classes of the nation, by a common love
for their native soil. It had been told at that time that he had been
wrong in looking upon Russia exclusively from the agricultural point of
view, but in presence of the things which have happened recently, one
may wonder whether after all he had not been right, because it is quite
certain that the change of system that had followed upon his death, and
the exclusive protection which to the detriment of everything else,
industry was awarded, during the twenty-two years of Nicholas II.’s
administration, and especially during the time that Mr. Kokovtsoff
remained at the Treasury, darkened the judgment of the people who
under different circumstances, and if they had made less money, would
have probably noticed the progress made by socialism, and the growing
influence of the labour party over its adherents, who from the outset
had been determined to break this might of capital which was of no good
to the country, and simply added to the importance of lucky speculators.
[Illustration:
_Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._
SOLDIER AND SAILOR CITIZENS’ DUMA]
As for the Emperor, he had ceased to count for anything in Russia,
after the failure of the so-called Constitutional government, which
he had inaugurated rather out of caprice than because he had become
convinced that it was indispensable to the welfare of Russia to see it
ruled by a responsible Cabinet. At the time I am referring to, it was
an acknowledged fact in the whole of Russia that it was governed by
some mysterious and dark powers which in secret were proceeding to any
amount of malversations, most harmful for the prosperity of the nation,
as well as for its prestige in Europe. The one general feeling which
prevailed everywhere was one of immense lassitude at a state of things
one knew but too well could not last, but which no one yet felt strong
enough to try to ameliorate, change, or overturn. If the war had not
broken out, it is likely that this condition, which hovered between
a dream and a nightmare, might have gone on for a long time, because
though the public realised perfectly well that the Throne, as well as
the man who occupied it, represented only a dead thing, yet it appeared
still so immense that no one dared to touch it, but continued looking
upon it, with the same eyes one would have done had it remained the
great one it had been formerly.
The war broke out and awakened the nation out of the state of marasm
into which it had fallen. During the first weeks which followed upon
its declaration there took place in Russia an explosion of enthusiasm
such as had never been witnessed before. It did not, however, last
any appreciable length of time, and collapsed together with the news
of the reverses that attended the Polish campaign. Nowhere were these
reverses felt more than amidst the ranks of the labour party, which,
as a direct consequence of them, acquired all at once an importance it
had hardly dared to hope it could win so soon. Factories became the
principal organ of the national defence, and the word “ammunition” was
transformed into the flag under which all those who were dissatisfied
with the government then in power enrolled themselves as well as the
people who longed for the end of an order of things the faults and
mistakes of which were known in Russia long before they came to be
recognised abroad. The workman suddenly became the individual to whom
was awarded the greatest importance, there where the question of the
salvation of the Fatherland came to be raised. He was the one to whom
everybody said aloud what he had been himself aware of long before,
that it was from him, and from his efforts, that depended victory over
the enemy who had audaciously invaded Russian territory. This workman
(this must never be lost sight of) was intimately connected with the
army in which he had served, with the army that had far more confidence
in him, and in his knowledge and efforts, than in the incapable
government that had sent it to be slaughtered without providing it
with any means to fight its foes. The workman became thus conscious
of his extreme importance, and he aspired to be awarded the place in
society which he imagined that he had the right to pretend to. He
raised his voice, and insisted upon its being listened to. Perhaps
Nicholas II. would still be in possession of his throne had he had
sufficient common sense to do so. There were at this juncture people
who tried to make the Sovereign understand that it was not enough for
him to have assumed the supreme command over his troops in order to
win back the popularity he had so completely lost, and that he would
do well, in the interest of his dynasty as well as in his own, to show
himself more frequently to the population of Petrograd, and to try
to get into direct touch with it otherwise than through his official
visits to the factories where ammunition was prepared for the army;
visits during which he was escorted with great pomp and ceremony by his
usual cortège of attendants and in the course of which he had never
found one single word of encouragement to say to those who were toiling
for the welfare of the Fatherland. The Emperor failed to grasp the
wisdom of this piece of advice, nor did he realise the importance of
another one, which proceeded from the few friends he had still left to
him, the advice to call together a national and responsible Ministry,
composed of men chosen among the representatives of the country in the
Duma, and in possession of the confidence of the latter. He understood
even less the necessity, recognised everywhere outside the gates of his
Palace, to try and raise the prestige of the Crown, by getting rid of
the compromising personalities, whose presence at his side dishonoured
him as a man, and discredited him as a sovereign. He did not see,
and perhaps no one dared to point out to him, the shameless money
speculations which were taking place everywhere in Russia, and even
under his own roof; the bargaining of everything that there was to sell
or to buy in the country; honours, dignities, distinctions, places,
and the Fatherland itself, by a gang of shameless adventurers, who had
found the protection which they needed to carry on their plunder within
the walls of the Imperial residence. He believed what his wife kept
repeating to him, that once he had declared such was not the case, no
one would dare to think that he consulted Rasputin or the metropolitan
Pitirim in regard to State affairs, and he simply laughed at those
who pretended that he was doing so. He was blind until the end. He is
perhaps blind still, and it is quite possible that he will persist in
remaining so until the day when his revolted subjects will come and
claim his life, after having compelled him to surrender his throne.
Unconscious creature, unable to notice the dangers amidst which he had
been living, or the abyss that was already swallowing him up.
It is when considering this point that one feels tempted to ask what
would have become of Nicholas II. had he had beside him one of these
intelligent women, endowed with a strong character, and understanding
the nature of her duties as a wife, as a mother and a sovereign. It is
likely that if he had found such a help he might have prevented or at
least have contrived to give a different shape to the crisis through
which Russia had to pass. The war was an unavoidable misfortune, owing
to the firm determination of Germany to provoke it, no matter in what
way, or under what pretext, but it would have been possible to conduct
it differently than was the case. One could also have been prepared
for it, and one ought to have realised that the old and superannuated
system of government so utterly rotten, where everything was left in
the hands of corrupt functionaries, who had never learned anything
out of the book of history, for whom the intellectual development
of nations meant nothing at all, and who did not look beyond their
personal advantages in all the great crises which might come to shake
the equanimity of the country, that this system had served its time,
and was bound to collapse under the weight of the universal contempt.
But Nicholas II. called together a Duma which he had determined
beforehand to deprive of every initiative, and of the liberty to say
what it wished concerning the needs of the country that had entrusted
it with the defence of its interests. He made many fine promises which
he never intended to keep, and when he spoke about the necessity of
bringing about a close union between the Czar and the representatives
of his people, he never wished to give to the latter the possibility
to approach him, or to lay their grievances at his feet. Had there
been in Russia an Empress worthy of the name, and competent to fill
the position she occupied, she would have told her husband that the
duty of them both consisted in remaining loyal towards their subjects.
She would have exposed her person, and risked her life if necessary,
in the accomplishment of the task which had been allotted to her
by Providence. She would have spent her time otherwise than in the
practices of a piety that was nothing else but superstition mingled
with erotic tendencies.
What did Alexandra Feodorovna do during those solemn hours of a
supreme crisis? I do not wish to be hard on her now that misfortune
has overtaken her, but the truth must be told, and it is necessary to
point out that her principal preoccupation during the months which
preceded the Revolution consisted in defending Rasputin against the
attacks directed against him from all sides, and in isolating the
Emperor from all the people capable of enlightening him in regard
to the conduct and the character of the sinister personage whom her
imagination had transformed into a Saint, and to whose presence at
her side she attributed a miraculous power, capable of protecting her
and her family, against every kind of danger. Under his influence
and thanks to the impulse which he gave to her activity, she applied
herself to persuade the Czar to conclude a separate peace with Germany,
working upon the humanitarian feelings of Nicholas II., and repeating
constantly to him that he owed it to his subjects to put an end to a
useless effusion of blood, and not to go on with a perfectly hopeless
struggle. If the Revolution had not taken place it is most probable
that a separate peace would have been signed between Russia and Germany
during the course of the next few months, and it is also likely that
if this intention of the Empress had not transpired outside the gates
of her Palace the Revolution would not have broken out when it did,
because all the different political parties in the Duma were agreed
as to the advisability of putting it off so long as the enemy was in
occupation of a part of the country. But Alexandra Feodorovna poured
the last drops into a glass which was ready to overflow, and the hatred
which the Russian nation bore her found at last its justification in
the general opinion which suddenly exploded like a barrel of powder in
the whole of the country, that she also was a traitor, who had been
won over to the German cause, and who was ready to give up into the
hands of the adversary against whom one had been fighting for so many
long and anxious months of a struggle during which so much blood had
flown, this Russia that had offered her the Imperial diadem, which she
had found nothing better to do than to sully with the mud of the dirty
roads whither her steps had taken her.
Here I must make a pause, and try to analyse the real part played in
the drama by the unfortunate Sovereign on the head of whom so many
curses have been showered. I do not believe that it was in order to
hand over to her own native country, the one which had become hers by
marriage, that Alexandra Feodorovna lent herself to the intrigue in
which it is unfortunately an uncontested fact that she took an active
share. It seems to me, so far as I can judge of things which did not
take place in my presence, that her intentions were sincere according
to her lights. She was not an intelligent woman by any means, and what
she possessed in the way of intellect had disappeared in a vanity
and haughtiness of which it is hardly possible to form an adequate
idea. She cared only for her crown, and for autocratic power over
her subjects, and under the influence of those who represented to her
that the least concession to the spirit of the times was bound to
further the cause of a revolution which she abhorred, she had awarded
her protection to this reactionary party represented by men like
Sturmer, Protopopoff, and others of the same kind. She had preached
to her husband whenever she had had the opportunity for doing so, the
necessity to stand firm, and never to sacrifice one fraction of the
principle of absolute power over his subjects. She had pointed out
to him on every possible occasion the example of Louis XVI., who had
been beheaded, because he had not had sufficient courage to resist
to the pressure exercised over him by the revolutionary elements in
the French monarchy. She did not grasp in the very least that times
were different, that ideas as well as men had changed, and that a
sovereign who in a moment of danger does not seek help from his people,
or try together with them to find a solution to the difficulties of
a threatening situation, courts an inevitable ruin. The Empress has,
without any doubt being allowed as to this point, been the direct cause
of the misfortunes as well as of the fall of her husband, and probably
when history will be called upon to judge her, it will show itself even
more severe in regard to her and to her conduct than her contemporaries
have been, because she has certainly done more to destroy the respect
of Russia for the throne to which she had been raised than the most
violent revolutionary attacks that were ever directed against it.
Instead of trying to bring her consort nearer to the nation at
whose head he stood, she only inspired him with suspicions and even
with dislike for this nation, or at least for the best among its
representatives.
There happened circumstances when the Empress interfered directly
in the affairs of the State, and persuaded the Czar to do what she
required of him; as, for instance, the exile in Siberia, this Siberia
whither she was to be sent herself, and the arbitrary arrest of several
leaders of the labour party, whom, under some futile pretext or other,
the government threw into prison a few weeks before the outbreak of the
Revolution, in spite of the indignant protestations made by the Duma
on the subject. It was also Alexandra Feodorovna, who, on the advice
of the metropolitan Pitirim, a creature of Rasputin, who had caused
him to be appointed to the See of Petrograd, the most important one in
the Empire, persuaded the Emperor to follow the advice of the minister
Protopopoff to prorogue the Duma, and to arm the police with machine
guns, in view of a possible revolt of the inhabitants of the capital
against the government, a fatal and most imprudent measure, if there
ever was one, which decided the fate of the Romanoff dynasty.
In this last occurrence, it was less out of fear of the debates that
might take place in the Duma, than because he wanted to have his
hands untied in regard to the conclusion of peace for which he had
been working ever since he had been called to the ministry of the
interior, that Protopopoff induced his Sovereign to resort to a measure
absolutely devoid of common sense, and the only effect of which could
be to add fuel to a fire that had been smouldering for months, if
not years. It proved fatal for everybody, and it is still a question
whether it was not to be more fatal for Russia than anything else which
Nicholas II. had ever done, because it has thrown her into an era of
revolution and of trouble, for which she was neither prepared nor ripe.
At that time I am writing about, the members of the Imperial family
together with the aristocracy were beginning to get more and more
alarmed at the manner in which events were unfolding themselves, and
were wondering as to what could be done to put an end to the influence
of the Empress and of her favourites. One of the oldest, and the only
surviving personal friend of the late Czar Alexander III., Count
Vorontzoff Dachkoff, when he visited the Emperor to take leave of him,
on his resignation of the functions of Viceroy of the Caucasus, had
tried to remonstrate with him on the subject, and to point out to him
the necessity of getting rid of Rasputin and of the followers of the
latter. He had known Nicholas II. as a child, and he could therefore
talk with him more familiarly than any one else in Russia: “I must tell
you the truth,” he said. “Do you know that, thanks to your Rasputin,
you are going to your ruin and endangering the throne of your son?”
The old soldier, who had served under four sovereigns, became quite
eloquent in his speech. The Czar listened to him in silence, and at
last exclaimed almost with a sob: “Why did God lay upon me such a heavy
burden?”
After Count Vorontzoff, the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna tried
to do something to save her son. She had left Petrograd months
before, not caring to live in the vicinity of her daughter-in-law,
whom she disliked as much as did the other members of the Imperial
family. When Nicholas II. visited Kieff in October, 1916, where his
mother was residing, the latter had a long conversation with him, in
which she pointed out to him the peril which threatened him and the
dynasty, unless he decided upon an energetic step, and removed from
her side the favourites of his wife. But even Marie Feodorovna was
powerless in presence of the dark and occult powers that held her son
in their trammels, and nothing followed upon her remonstrances or
her adjurations that he might consider the dangers with which he was
surrounded, and try at least to conjure them.
After this interference of the widow of Alexander III., some of the
members of the Cabinet who were not of the same opinions as Messrs.
Sturmer and Protopopoff, attempted to reason with their Sovereign,
among others Count Ignatieff and Mr. Bark, but they were also not
listened to, and the former at last handed in his resignation which was
accepted with alacrity, Alexandra Feodorovna not trying even to hide
the extreme satisfaction she felt at its having taken place.
Count Ignatieff had been the most popular minister of public
instruction Russia had ever known, and his departure was looked upon
in the light of a national misfortune, adding to the dislike with
which the Empress was viewed everywhere. Mr. Bark did not feel himself
at liberty to abandon the department of finances of which he had
the charge at the very moment when a new loan was being floated, but
he avoided seeing the consort of his Sovereign, and only appeared at
Tsarskoie Selo, when he could not help doing so.
[Illustration:
_Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._
FOREIGN MINISTER LEON TROTZKY]
On the 1st of November, 1916, one of the cousins of the Czar, the
Grand Duke Nicholas Michaylovitsch, who was perhaps the cleverest
member of the Imperial family, a man wonderfully well learned, and who
had acquired the reputation of an excellent historian, thanks to the
remarkable studies which he had published on the life and times of
Alexander I., and the Napoleonic wars, made another effort to shake
the influence of Rasputin, Protopopoff and the Empress. He asked the
Czar to receive him, and during a long and heated conversation which
he had with the latter, he read to him a letter which he had prepared
beforehand, in which were exposed not only the political, but also
the private reasons, which made it an imperative necessity to remove
Rasputin from Tsarskoie Selo. As the Grand Duke told his friends later
on, there were in this letter some passages that might have wounded
Nicholas II. in his feelings as a husband, not only as a sovereign. But
the Czar did not reply one single word, only went to fetch the Empress,
and in his turn read to her the incriminating epistle. When he reached
the passage in which remarks were made concerning her, Alexandra
Feodorovna rose up in a passion, and snatching the document out of
her husband’s hands, she tore it up into a thousand small pieces. In
the course of this memorable conversation, the Grand Duke asked the
Emperor whether he knew that the appointment of Protopopoff was the
work of Rasputin, with whom the former had become acquainted at the
house of one of their common friends, a certain Badmaieff.
“Yes,” replied the Czar, “I know it.”
“And you find this a matter of course,” exclaimed his cousin.
Nicholas II. replied nothing.
In spite of the angry tone which the discussion had assumed, the
Emperor remained perfectly civil to the Grand Duke. The latter
afterwards remarked that he had been more than surprised to meet
with such utter indifference, and at the same time such kindness, in
appearance at least, from his cousin. It seemed as if nothing that he
could say could move the Czar, who, during the most heated moments of
this interview, handed the matches to his kinsman, when he noticed
that the cigarette of the latter had gone out. At last the Grand Duke
exclaimed: “You have got Cossacks here, and a great deal of room in
your gardens. You can have me killed and buried without any one being
the wiser for it. But I must tell you the truth, and say to you that
you are going to your ruin.”
The Czar continued to be silent, and his cousin had to take his leave,
without having been able to obtain one single word from him by which he
might have guessed whether he had been believed or not.
The confessor of the Imperial family, Father Schabelsky, was induced to
interfere in his turn, and to warn the Emperor of the ever increasing
unpopularity of his consort, advising him at the same time to send her
somewhere for the benefit of her health, until the storm had abated
which everybody except the few people who surrounded the Sovereign saw
was on its way. His advice also was disregarded. A lady belonging to
the highest social circles, whose family had always been upon terms
of intimacy with that of Nicholas II., the Princess Vassiltschikoff,
bethought herself to write to the Empress, and to entreat her to
save the country and the dynasty, and to induce her husband to call
together a responsible ministry, in possession of the confidence of
the Duma and of the nation. The only reply which she received was an
order commanding her to leave the capital immediately for her country
seat, with a prohibition to return to it again. Alexandra Feodorovna
remained the only person the Czar would listen to, and Alexandra
Feodorovna was but the mouthpiece of people like Rasputin, Sturmer,
and Protopopoff, who kept telling to her that she must not yield, and
that the only thing capable of restoring peace to Russia was to subdue
the rebellious spirits who dared talk about the necessity of making
concessions to public opinion, coupled with the firm determination to
crush, even by force, any manifestations which might be made in that
direction. Acting upon this advice, the Empress assumed a power which
had never belonged to any consort of a sovereign before. In the absence
of Nicholas II. at the front, it was she who gave out orders, not
only to the different ministers, but also to the troops composing the
garrison of Petrograd; she had people arrested according to her fancy,
she caused the houses of others that had displeased her to be searched
by the numerous police agents whom she had at her disposal, ready to
execute any of her caprices; she showed herself the absolute master in
her consort’s dominions, and she held everybody, including himself, in
a firm grasp, which (this must be added) was more the grasp of Rasputin
and Protopopoff, than her own.
It was evident that such a state of things could not go on
indefinitely. There were still some persons left who hoped to be able
to save the dynasty by removing its principal enemy, the unscrupulous
peasant who had tarnished its prestige. A plot, into which entered
different persons belonging to the highest aristocracy of the land
as well as some members of the Imperial family, was arranged, and
culminated, as I have already related, in the murder of Rasputin. All
this has been told, but what has not yet been written is the manner
in which the news of the assassination of her favourite was received
by the Empress. At first her despair was pitiable to behold, then she
quickly rallied, and getting back her energy, proceeded to avenge her
murdered friend. The Czar was at Headquarters, and she happened to find
herself alone with her children at Tsarskoie Selo. She sent for one of
her husband’s aide de camps, General Maximovitsch, and commanded him to
proceed immediately to Petrograd, and to arrest the Grand Duke Dmitry
Pavlovitsch, allowing him, however, to remain in his own palace, but
with strict orders not to leave it, even for a short walk. The whole
Imperial family protested, but it was of no avail. Mr. Protopopoff
was on the side of the Czarina, and he alone was in command of the
police forces of the capital. Any thought of resistance was out of
the question. The hated minister would not have hesitated to proceed,
even against the relatives of his Sovereign, to gratify the revengeful
feelings of Alexandra Feodorovna.
How vindictive the latter showed herself to be can be seen out of the
severity of the punishments which, at her instigation, were showered
upon all those who had taken part in the conspiracy to which Rasputin
had fallen a victim. Prince Youssoupoff, with his wife, was exiled in
one of his properties in the government of Koursk, and the young Grand
Duke Dmitry was ordered to proceed to the front in Persia, which,
considering his delicate state of health, was tantamount to a death
sentence. When this became known, the whole of the Imperial family
wrote to the Czar in the following terms:
“May it please Your Majesty, we, whose signatures you will find at the
bottom of this letter, urgently and strongly beg of you to reconsider
your decision in regard to the Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovitsch, and show
him some leniency. We know for a fact that he is physically ill, and
morally broken down. You have been his guardian in his youth, and you
are aware of the deep feelings of affection and of respect that he has
always entertained in regard to you, and to our Fatherland. We implore
Your Majesty in view of his youth, and of the precarious state of his
health, to allow him to repair either to his own estate of Oussoff, or
else to Vilensky.
“Your Majesty is probably aware of the terrible conditions in which
our army finds itself placed in Persia at the present moment, and of
the many illnesses and epidemics of all kinds that are raging there.
To expose the Grand Duke to those dangers is simply compassing his
ruin, because he can only come out of such a trial a physical and moral
wreck, and surely the kind heart of Your Majesty will take pity on a
youth for whom you have had some affection in the past, and in regard
to whom you have always shown yourself a kind father. We pray to God to
soften the feelings of Your Majesty, and to induce you to alter your
decision, and to show some mercy to your own kinsman.”
To this letter was received on the next day the following reply:
“No one has the right to commit a murder. I am aware that many people
are suffering now from qualms of conscience, because it is not only
Dmitry Pavlovitsch who is mixed up in this business. I am surprised at
your daring to address me in such terms. Nicholas.”
The Grand Duke had to submit. He departed for the Persian front,
accompanied by an officer who had received strict orders to oppose any
attempt that he might feel tempted to make, in order to escape his
doom. A curious incident, very characteristic of the state of mind
prevailing in the capital at that time, then occurred. The comrades of
this officer, upon hearing of his appointment, obliged him to resign
his commission, considering that he had disgraced himself by accepting
such a mission.
In the meanwhile the body of Rasputin was taken at night to Tsarskoie
Selo and buried in a small chapel which had been erected some years
before by the Empress, quite close to the palace which she inhabited.
Troops surrounded it so as to prevent any one getting near to it,
whilst the ceremony lasted, and the funeral was attended by the
Emperor, the Empress, and the intimate friend of the latter, Madame
Vyroubieva. Alexandra Feodorovna used to go every afternoon to pray on
the grave of the man whose influence had proved her bane, until at last
the Revolution imprisoned her, and threw to the winds the ashes of the
greatest enemy that the dynasty of the Romanoff’s had ever known. When
the body was exhumed by the angry populace, one found on its breast
a sacred image, bearing the names of the Empress, and of her three
daughters, last memento of an affection which had proved so fatal to
those who had nursed it.
The murder of Rasputin had one very clear and definite object, that of
ridding the Czar of an individual who had sullied his honour. Those who
were courageous enough to send him into eternity had nursed the hope
that once this evil influence had disappeared, the counsels of wisdom
would prevail, and Nicholas II. might be at last brought to understand
that his duty required of him to look bravely into the face of the
situation in which he had been thrown together with the Empire over
which he ruled. Until that time, no one had been able to talk seriously
with him, with hopes of being listened to. The Emperor had acquired
the habit of never giving an immediate reply to any proposition that
was submitted to him, but deferred his decisions, in order to discuss
them first with the Empress, who in her turn consulted her favourites
Sturmer and Protopopoff, who had taken to a certain extent the place
left empty by Rasputin’s disappearance. They were all of them working
together towards the conclusion of a separate peace with Germany,
because they believed that if once this were achieved they would be
able to recall the army from the front, and to use it against the Duma
and the nation, establishing with its help upon a sounder and firmer
base their own power and might. None among them gave a thought to the
possibility that the troops might practise with the people, and work
together with it towards the downfall of the government and of the
dynasty.
This desire of the Empress to bring about, no matter at what cost,
the ending of the war, was suspected by a good many people. A few
officers in possession of important commands had an inkling of it,
and the leaders of the labour party had also heard about it. The last
named, who had worked more than any other class of the nation for the
continuation of the struggle in the material sense of the word, and who
wanted to avenge their sons fallen before the enemy, became anxious
at the possibility of such a peace being concluded; and very distinct
threats were uttered not only in Petrograd, but all over Russia,
against the Ministers, the Emperor, and especially the Empress. This
explains, apart from other reasons, why the murder of Rasputin was
hailed with such joy. One hoped that his removal would put an end to
a state of things out of which could only result disaster, shame and
misfortune.
Unfortunately things turned out quite differently. Alexandra Feodorovna
declared that she considered it her duty to go on doing exactly what
her dead and gone friend had advised her to do, and the partisans of a
separate peace with Germany found in her a more solid protection than
the one they had enjoyed before. She pursued unmercifully all those
who had tried to open the eyes of the Emperor, and the first thing she
did, after having seen the Grand Duke Dmitry sent to Persia and Prince
Youssoupoff exiled, was to cause the Czar to write to the Grand Duke
Nicholas Michaylovitsch, who had addressed to him the letter which had
incensed her so terribly, and command him to leave Petrograd and repair
for two months to an estate which he owned in the South of Russia, in
the government of Kherson. This order was brought to the Grand Duke
by an Imperial messenger, on the last day of the year 1916, at half
past eleven o’clock at night. It was written entirely in the Emperor’s
hand, and was couched in the following terms: “I command you to start
at once for Grouchevka, and to remain there two months. Nicholas.” But
there was added a postscript that had been probably written without the
Empress’s knowledge, under the vague feeling of remorse for such an
unjustifiable action, and which said: “I beg you to do what I ask you.”
Other Grand Dukes attempted in their turn to shake the influence of
Alexandra Feodorovna, and to point out to the Czar the peril which it
represented for the dynasty. Many angry scenes took place at Tsarskoie
Selo, between them and the master of this Imperial place, but they
all led to nothing, and when the wife of the Grand Duke Cyril, the
Grand Duchess Victoria Feodorovna, sought the Sovereign on her own
initiative, and tried to make him realise the great unpopularity of
his consort, Nicholas II. interrupted her with the exclamation: “What
has Alice got to do with politics? She is only a sister of mercy, and
nothing else. And in regard to her so-called unpopularity, what you say
is not exact.”
He then proceeded to show his cousin any amount of letters emanating
from wounded soldiers, who thanked the Empress for the care which she
had taken of them, letters of which not a single one was genuine,
and which had been manufactured at the instigation of Sturmer and
Protopopoff. The truth of the matter was that the wounded and sick
in the different hospitals visited by Alexandra Feodorovna, did not
at all harbour kind feelings in regard to her, as they reproached
her with giving all her care and attention to the German prisoners,
to the detriment of her own soldiers. And among other stories which
were related concerning those visits of hers, there was one which had
obtained a wide circulation. It was related that one day the Empress,
talking to a wounded officer who had been brought to her own hospital
at Tsarskoie Selo, had asked him the name of the German regiment
against which he had been fighting. The officer had replied that it was
a Hessian regiment, upon which Alexandra Feodorovna had turned her back
upon him, and had left the room in a violent rage which she had not
even tried to control or to dissimulate.
The Grand Duchess Victoria was not discouraged by the manner in
which her disclosures had been received by Nicholas II., and she had
attempted to discuss the subject with the Empress, but the latter, at
her first words, had stopped her with the remark: “The people whom you
advise us to take into our confidence, are the enemies of the dynasty.
I have been for twenty-two years upon the throne, and I know Russia
well. We are beloved by the nation, and no one will ever dare raise
his hand against us. All this opposition about which you are talking
proceeds from a few aristocratic bridge players, and is devoid of any
importance.” After this, there was nothing to be done but to allow
events to take their course, and to proceed.
[Illustration:
_Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._
MEETING ADDRESSED BY NIKOLAI LENINE IN FRONT OF WINTER PALACE,
PETROGRAD]
They were to develop far quicker than one could have imagined. The
army had begun to discuss the position, and to comment upon it. Every
one who had watched the march of affairs during the last months, felt
that something was going to happen, but no one knew what it would be,
or wished even to know it, so general was the discouragement that had
taken hold of the public mind. There was, however, one factor left,
which towered over the whole of the situation; that was the sincere
desire on the part of the different political parties to try and keep
back as long as possible a crisis which was recognised to have become
inevitable, but which no one wished to see hastened. This feeling was
such a general one that a member of the Duma, who for family reasons
had come for a few days to Stockholm where I was residing at the time
just before the Revolution, told me that no one had been more surprised
than he when the news had reached him that it had broken out, because,
though he had been convinced it was going to produce itself, yet he
had never believed that it could take place so soon.
Whilst this fearful storm was brooding on the horizon and getting
nearer and nearer to him with each day that passed, Nicholas II.
refused to listen to the thunder which was already resounding close
to his ears, and was getting more and more determined to persist in
the fatal resolution of holding his own against the tempest, and if
necessary of using force in order to conjure and to subdue it. If ever
the old Latin proverb, “Quod Deus vult perdere, prius dementat,” has
ever been realised, it was in the case of this unfortunate Sovereign,
who had fallen into the hands of an ambitious, cold woman, devoid
of intelligence and of scruples, and incapable of appreciating the
character of the people over whom she had been called upon to reign,
and of whom she had been unable to conquer either the esteem, the
respect or the affection, during the quarter of a century that she had
lived in its midst.
CHAPTER IV
This discredited Monarch, and his hated and despised Empress, by
whom were they surrounded during those eventful days which preceded
their fall? Who were the people whom they trusted, and on whom they
relied? Whom do we see advising them? Only a handful of flatterers,
of sycophants, always ready to turn against him and to betray them at
the first opportunity, together with Ministers devoid of any political
sense, and without any knowledge or comprehension of the position
into which the country had been allowed to drift; without any courage
or energy, incapable of imposing themselves or their opinions upon
the masses, and of convincing them of the soundness of their views;
incapable even of subduing these masses by the use of sheer force.
Apart from these flatterers and these weak advisers, whom could
Nicholas II. and his Consort trust and believe in? Whom had they got
beside them? A discontented army, that was too thoroughly weary of
seeing itself neglected and passed over like a negligible quantity,
whilst it was fighting for dear life on the frontiers, and who had lost
all wish to go on with what appeared to it to have become a hopeless
struggle; a few functionaries who cared for nothing but their own
advantage or advancement; a handful of adventurers in quest of places,
influence and riches, especially of the latter; a police always ready
to listen to every kind of low denunciation; that had abused its power,
that had destroyed, thanks to its criminal activity, every sense of
personal security in the nation, and that prosecuted only those who
did not pay it sufficiently to leave them alone. Blackmailers, spies,
and valets; this was all that was left to the Czar of All the Russias,
to watch over him. They were the only people on whom he could rely,
and even they would only remain faithful to him as long as the supreme
power would remain, at least nominally, in his hands. His family, as
we have seen, detested the Empress, and was ready and prepared to side
against him on the first notice of his downfall, which it effectively
did. What was left in Petrograd of aristocracy had withdrawn itself
from him, lamenting over evils which it knew itself powerless to allay,
and had come to the sad conclusion that the further it kept from
Tsarskoie Selo the better it would be for everybody. The Emperor stood
alone, forsaken by all those who under different circumstances would
have considered themselves but too honoured to die for him, let alone
defend him against his foes. Alexandra Feodorovna had created a desert
around her husband, and, thanks to her, there was hardly a Russian left
in the world who did not for some reason or other curse the Sovereign
whom Providence had destined to become in all human probability the
last of the Romanoff’s crowned in Moscow. Nicholas II. imagined that
he could rely on the devotion and the loyalty of his army. He forgot
that this army was no longer the one that had acclaimed him with such
enthusiasm at the beginning of the war. Most of the officers who had
been in command of it at the time had fallen on some battle field or
other; the soldiers too had disappeared, and the young recruits who had
taken their place had been reared in different ideas, and were ignorant
of the old discipline which had inspired the former regiments whose
original contingents had been slain. The army had become a national
one from the Imperialist it had been before; it was composed of the
same elements of discontented minds who before they had been called
to the colours had freely discussed the conditions under which the
war was being fought, and who had noticed better than it would have
been possible for them to do at the front, the mistakes of those in
command, the remorseless dilapidation of the Public Exchequer which was
going on everywhere, together with all the faults and the carelessness
that had brought about all the disasters which had fallen upon the
nation. This army could no longer nurse, in regard to the Czar, the
veneration and almost religious respect which had animated it in
earlier days. It had perceived at last that he was not at the height
of the duties and responsibilities which had devolved upon him, and as
a natural consequence of the fall of the scales from its eyes it had
sided against him, together with the Duma, from which it was hoping
and expecting the salvation which its masters of the present hour were
unable to procure for it.
But whilst the whole of Russia was aware of this state of things,
Nicholas II. alone refused to see it. He felt afraid of appearing as
the weak man that he really was; he refused all the urgent entreaties
which were addressed to him, to appeal to his people, and to appoint
a popular and responsible Ministry, capable once he had called it to
power of requiring from him the fulfilment of his former promises,
which he had determined beforehand never to keep. He threw himself from
right to left, and from left to right, in quest of councillors after
his own heart, or rather after the heart of the Empress, because it was
she who finally decided everything; and he changed his Ministers with
a facility which was the more deplorable that those of the morrow did
not differ from the ones whom he had dismissed the day before, until at
last, thanks to his irresolution and to his obstinacy, he contrived to
discredit, not only in Russia, but also abroad and among his Allies,
the government of which he was the head, together with his own person
and the great Imperial might which he personified. At last even the
extreme conservative parties, who until then had been on his side,
joined the ranks of his enemies, and this defection of theirs made the
disaster an irremediable one, and the fatal catastrophe inevitable.
England at this moment made an effort to save the Czar, together with
his dynasty. Lord Milner, who had repaired to Petrograd to attend the
conference of the Allies which was being held there, tried to open
the eyes of Nicholas II. as to the dangers which surrounded him, and
to persuade him to grant at last a constitutional government to his
people, and to entrust the interests of the country to a Cabinet in
possession of its confidence. His representations proved absolutely
useless. The Emperor replied to him that if the troubled state of
public opinion persisted, he would establish a military dictature. He
forgot in saying so that in order to carry an attempt of the kind it
is indispensable to have at one’s hand a man strong enough to accept
the responsibility of such a post, and an army faithful and loyal
enough to back him up. Protopopoff, whom the Empress consulted as to
the wisdom of the decision which Lord Milner had implored the Czar to
take, declared that he thought it would be an extremely dangerous one
to adopt, and that the only thing which could and ought to be done,
in the present circumstances, was to resort to rigorous measures; to
prorogue the Duma and the Council of State; and to repress without
the least mercy every demonstration against the government. He added
that he was quite ready to assume the responsibility of the repression
which he advised, and if the necessity for doing so presented itself,
to give orders to the police to fire on the crowds. At the same time
he inundated the capital, and even the provinces, with a whole army of
spies, whose only occupation consisted in denouncing to him all the
people who did not pay them sufficiently well to leave them alone. A
kind of committee of public safety, such as had existed in France at
the time of the Terror, became, thanks to Mr. Protopopoff, the sole
master of the Russian Empire, and it disposed, according to its fancy,
of the existence as well as of the property and liberty of the most
peaceful citizens. During one night, fifty workmen belonging to the
group that was sitting in the industrial war committee, entrusted with
the fabrication of ammunitions, as representatives of the labour party,
were arrested, without any other apparent reason than the fact that
they had allowed themselves to discuss in public the debates which had
taken place in the Duma, and had been overheard by some spy or other.
This Assembly had met on the 27th of February, 1917, as had already
been settled before the resignation of Mr. Sturmer, and the appointment
of Prince Galitzyne as Prime Minister in his place. It became evident
from the very first day the Session was opened that most violent
discussions were about to take place, and that the government
would never be able to command a majority, because even the ultra
Conservatives who had backed it up before had forsaken it. One more
reason for discontent with it had arisen: the almost total lack of food
in Petrograd, where, thanks to the mismanagement of the railways and
the lack of tracks, no provisions of any kind could arrive. Riots of
a more or less serious character took place in different quarters of
the town; the population clamoured for bread, and broke the windows
in the bakers’ and butchers’ shops, wherever it could do so. This
was one more complication added to all those already existing. The
Duma thought it indispensable to make an energetic manifestation of
its want of confidence in the government’s power to grapple with the
difficulties of the situation. The parties composing the moderate left,
together with the Cadets that had recently united themselves into one
group denominated the “Bloc,” declared by the mouth of their leader,
Mr. Chidlovsky, that it was indispensable to call together a Cabinet
comprising really national elements, in possession of the confidence
of the country as well as that of the Sovereign, because the one in
existence was entirely discredited, even among its former supporters.
During the debates which followed upon this motion, the socialist
deputies, among others Mr. Tcheidze, expressed themselves in most
violent terms, and said, among other things, that the government then
in power would never understand the wishes or the needs of the nation,
or become reconciled with it, and that between it and the country there
existed an abyss which nothing in the world could ever fill. It had
against it the whole of Russia, and it had done nothing and was doing
nothing to smooth over the difficulties which it had itself created,
and for which it was alone responsible. And Mr. Tcheidze concluded his
speech by expressing his conviction that a compromise was no longer
possible, and that only a great national movement of revolt could
overturn the Cabinet and replace it by another one better able to
understand the needs of the country and of the army.
One of the leaders of the extreme right who, up to that time,
had been famous for his reactionary opinions and sympathies, Mr.
Pourichkievitsch, went even further than his socialist colleague,
and proceeded to sketch the character of Mr. Protopopoff, accusing
him of spending his time in suspecting everybody (the zemstvos, the
aristocracy, the Duma, and even the Council of State) of conspiracies
against his person, and of meditating the suppression of these two
institutions within a short time. Mr. Pourichkievitsch added that in
what concerned the Duma he was personally convinced that it would
prefer a dissolution to the alternative of a blind submission to a
tyrant like the Minister of the Interior, and of keeping silent when it
knew that the Fatherland was in danger.
Another speaker of great talent, Mr Efremoff, said that he had come
with great regret to the conclusion that all means at the disposal of
a parliamentary assembly to fight the government had been exhausted,
and that the whole country was a prey to deep dissatisfaction with the
existing order of things. It was high time, he added, that the system
which had ruled Russia for such a long time should give way before a
responsible cabinet, the constitution of which was claimed imperatively
by public opinion. It was only such a cabinet that would be able to
encourage the country to go on with the struggle in which it found
itself engaged, against a foe who had obtained so many advantages over
it, thanks to the mistakes and to the crimes of the administration
represented by Mr. Protopopoff, and by his friends.
But it was the leader of the Cadets, Mr. Miliukoff, the greatest
statesman that Russia possesses at the present moment, who dealt the
last blow to the Ministry, thanks to the acerb criticisms which he
addressed to the Sovereign and to the latter’s advisers, and to his
indignant protest against the arbitrary imprisonment of the delegates
of the workmen of Petrograd, who had been chosen by them to represent
their interests in the industrial war commission. The vice president
of this commission, Mr. Konovaloff, joined him in this protest, whilst
another deputy belonging to the extreme left, whose name was to become
famous very soon, Mr. Kerensky, in language of a violence such as had
never been heard before in the Duma, prophesied that the time would
soon come when this Duma would find itself compelled to fight for its
rights and for the liberty of the nation, and would adopt decisive
measures to put an end to the danger which was threatening the great
work of the national defence, if it was allowed to remain in the hands
and under the control of people who had so badly understood its claims
and its necessities.
After these debates, during which had been voted by an immense majority
the immediate release of the arrested workmen, Mr. Protopopoff rushed
to Tsarskoie Selo, the metropolitan Pitirim, and Mr. Sturmer (who had
remained a persona grata at Court, notwithstanding the fact that he
had been compelled to resign his former functions of Prime Minister)
accompanied him. A conference took place between them and the Empress,
towards the close of which Nicholas II. was asked to come in and
to listen to the decisions that had been arrived at, which he was
requested to sanction. This conference decided that the negotiations
already engaged with Germany in view of the conclusion of a separate
peace should be hastened; that the Duma should be prorogued for an
indefinite period of time, and the police armed with machine guns, in
order to be able to crush at once, by a display of its forces, every
popular manifestation that might be attempted in favour of a change of
government, should such manifestation take place in the capital.
Here I am touching in this short sketch of the Russian Revolution
upon a point which is still dark, the point concerning this separate
peace with Germany, about which there arose at that time so much
talk in Petrograd. The idea of a step of that kind, which would have
constituted an arrant treason in regard to the Allies of Russia, had
been conceived first in the brain of Mr. Sturmer, to whom most probably
it had been suggested by his confidential friend and secretary, Mr.
Manassevitsch-Maniuloff, about whom I have already spoken in the first
part of this book, and who, after the murder of Rasputin, had been
finally brought to trial and sentenced to eighteen months hard labour
for blackmail. He had always been in the employ of Germany, and he
had spoken to his patron of the necessity for putting an end to a war
which, if it went on much longer, might endanger the very existence of
the dynasty. Mr. Sturmer had also sympathies for the “Vaterland,” and
he was but too glad to act according to the hints which were given to
him by a man in whom he had every confidence. He found an unexpected
ally in Rasputin, who in his turn induced the Empress through Madame
Vyroubieva to rally herself to his opinion, which was a relatively easy
thing to do, considering the fact that she had been already, of her
own accord, working towards a reconciliation between the Romanoffs and
the Hohenzollerns, the only people whom she thought of any consequence
in the whole affair. The difficulty consisted, however, in finding
a person willing and disposed to act as intermediary in so grave a
matter. Rasputin knew Protopopoff, discussed the subject with him, and
found him quite ready to enter into the views which he expounded to
him.
At that time Mr. Protopopoff was vice president of the Duma. No
one knew exactly how he had contrived to secure his election as
such, considering his reputation of reactionary and especially of
opportunist. He had, however, succeeded in getting himself appointed,
and the fact that he held this position gave him a certain weight and
prestige abroad. He was given very precise instructions as to what he
was to do, and started with several of his colleagues of the Duma for
England, under the pretext of returning the visit which some members
of the English House of Commons had paid to Petrograd a few months
earlier. On his way back, he stopped at Stockholm as I have already
related, conferred there with an agent of the German Foreign Office
called Mr. Warburg, and settled with him the conditions under which an
eventual peace could be concluded. After this Protopopoff returned to
Russia, where, however, the story of his Swedish intrigues had already
become known so that he was awarded a very poor welcome by his friends.
People believed then that his political career had come to an end,
when, just at this juncture, the most important post in the Russian
Empire, that of Minister of the Interior, became vacant, thanks to the
dismissal of Mr. Chvostoff who had tried to get rid of Rasputin with
the help of the monk Illiodore, and, to the general stupefaction of the
world, the place was offered to Mr. Protopopoff by the Empress herself.
By that time one had become used in Russia to every possible surprise
in regard to the appointment of Ministers, and nothing that could
happen in that line astonished those (and they were legion) who knew
that it was a gang of adventurers that was ruling the country. The rise
of Mr. Protopopoff was not therefore considered by them as something
out of the way, but in parliamentary circles it gave rise to deep
indignation; an indignation which eventually found its way into the
press, where, however, it was very quickly suppressed by the censor,
and also in the various speeches uttered in the Duma, during which
allusions were made for the first time to the unhealthy influence
exercised by the Empress over her husband.
The former was triumphant. As soon as she became aware of the
conditions under which the German government would consent to conclude
peace with Russia, she set herself, in conjunction with her friends,
to try to persuade Nicholas II. that his duty in regard to his people
required him to put an end to a hopeless conflict during which the best
blood in Russia was being spilt for a cause doomed beforehand. She made
him observe that if the war went on much longer, the revolutionary
elements in the country would wax stronger, in proportion to the
sacrifices entailed upon the nation, and that it was quite possible,
the latter, exasperated by their magnitude, would attempt to get
rid of a government that had not succeeded in restoring to it the
tranquillity which it so sorely needed. It did not take her a long
time to convert the Czar to her point of view, and the negotiations
officiously inaugurated by Mr. Protopopoff were officially continued by
him together with Mr. Sturmer, whom Alexandra Feodorovna personally
entreated to assume their direction in conjunction with her own self.
In spite of the extreme secrecy which had presided at these different
conferences between the Empress and her favourites, something of their
purport had transpired among the general public, and threats had been
proferred against those who had accepted to play the sad part of Judas
in regard to their country. These threats had been whispered in the
corridors of the Duma, and Mr. Protopopoff had been informed of their
purport by his spies. It became therefore one of his principal aims
to get rid of an opposition which, he knew but too well, would only
increase in violence as well as in importance as the sorry work he was
bent upon performing would come out in the light of day and become
known to his numerous adversaries. Apart from this, he thought it
would be better to present himself later on before the Duma with an
accomplished fact behind him. He therefore persuaded the Empress that
whilst he would be pressing with the utmost speed the negotiations
with the Kaiser, begun already, it would be advisable to bring from
the front a considerable number of troops to Petrograd, so as to be
able with their help to crush any effort at resistance attempted either
by the population of the capital or by its garrison, about whose
state of mind the minister did not feel quite sure. The Cabinet was
so badly informed, in spite of its numerous spies, of what was going
on in the army that it imagined the latter would only feel grateful
and happy to see the campaign come to an end and be able to go back
to its homes, and that in consequence it would lend itself with the
greatest pleasure to any attempt made by the Monarch and the government
to put an end to a struggle for which it did not feel any longer any
enthusiasm at heart.
The men who reasoned thus were absolutely mistaken. The army had made
up its mind to win the war; the workmen whose importance was increasing
with every day that went by, also wished it, because they hoped that
out of this victory they were longing for might result a radical change
in the form of the administration they had begun to despise more and
more as its incapacity became more and more apparent. The person of
the Czar did not inspire respect or enthusiasm any longer, but on the
other hand love for the Fatherland had made considerable progress
since the beginning of the war, and the national sentiment which, up
to that time, had only existed in the state of an Utopia had become a
reality, especially since one had perceived the great strength which it
had communicated to Russia’s allies, to France among others, where the
Republic, which many people were already seeing loom in the distance as
a possibility in the land of the Czars, had inspired so much patriotism
to its citizens.
Neither Mr. Sturmer, nor Mr. Protopopoff, nor those who shared their
opinions and their views, were able to understand what was going on
in the heart and in the soul of the Russian nation. They were far
too much absorbed in their own petty, personal interests, to be able
to give a thought to such a subject. For them the conclusion of a
peace with Germany meant the strengthening of their influence and of
their power, together with honours, dignities, and the possibility
to enrich themselves, and to have a few more stars attached to the
golden embroideries of their uniforms. It meant also the possibility
of getting rid once for all of this spectre of a responsible ministry,
of which they stood in such dread. They therefore threw themselves in
the struggle against the Duma with an ardour that grew as they saw the
increasing difficulties with which the accomplishment of their designs
was going to encounter in that Assembly, and, as a first step in the
course of action they had determined to follow, they submitted to the
signature of Nicholas II. the fatal decree which prorogued the Duma
together with the Council of State, and which was to give the signal
for the conflagration of which they were to become themselves the first
victims.
Traitors are always to be found in hours of great national peril. Among
the people who resided in the palace of Tsarskoie Selo, there was a
person who, becoming acquainted by chance of what was going on there,
rushed to communicate the news which he had heard to Mr. Kerensky, the
leader of the extreme left party in the Duma. The latter did not lose
one moment in communicating to his colleague the news which had come to
his knowledge, and also to the president of the Assembly, Mr. Rodzianko.
[Illustration:
_Photograph, International Film Service, Inc._
ALEXANDER KERENSKY]
Mr. Rodzianko was about the last man whom one would have suspected of
being possessed of the necessary determination to resort to a “Coup
d’Etat.” He was a Chamberlain of the Czar; he had been brought up in
monarchical traditions, and during his whole life he had submitted
to the one which, in Russia, placed the Sovereign in the light of
something holy and sacred before his subjects. He was respected but
did not enjoy an immense authority in the Chamber that had never
taken quite kindly to him, not thinking him possessed of sufficient
courage to fight its battles with efficiency. It is probable that
he felt terrified rather than anything else, at the prospect which
the communication of Mr. Kerensky opened before him, but things
had advanced too far for him to be able to withdraw. There was no
alternative left but to perish oneself, or to destroy others. Mr.
Rodzianko called together a meeting of several deputies belonging to
the moderate parties, with whom he discussed the situation. They very
quickly came to the conclusion that if one entered into a struggle
with the government in this all important question of war and peace,
one would be backed up by the whole country, which did not wish to see
the war come to an end until the enemy had been driven out of Russian
territory. There was also another thing which added itself to all the
different questions roused by the discovery of the intentions of the
Court. It was the determination of the radical groups of the Duma to
proceed to the “Coup d’Etat” on their own accord, and no matter under
what conditions, with or without the help of the moderate elements
in the Assembly. This might have become extremely dangerous, as they
had behind them the whole mass of the working population of the
capital. The question had therefore to be considered as to whether
the Revolution was to be made with the concurrence of all the parties
represented in the Duma, or by the radical socialists alone, who,
in the latter case, would have become the absolute masters of the
situation, and might have pressed for the immediate proclamation of
a Republic which could easily have degenerated into an anarchy, and
which in the best of cases would have lacked the necessary dignity,
capable of giving it prestige and authority at home and abroad. Mr.
Rodzianko found himself placed in the presence of a dilemma of a most
difficult kind and nature. He took the only decision possible under the
circumstances, he boldly placed himself at the head of the movement
and constituted a provisional government, in place of the one that had
foundered under the weight of the contempt of the whole nation.
The first thing that was done by the Duma was to refuse to disperse and
to resist the ukaze of the Czar that had prorogued its debates for an
indefinite time. The socialist deputies went about trying to get the
population of Petrograd to join in the vast movement of revolt they
meant to bring about. The latter was but too willing to do so, and the
want of provisions was the pretext which the people took to organise
vast meetings, and a strike in all the factories. Great masses of men
and women paraded the streets, and were dispersed by a formidable
police force which had been assembled by Mr. Protopopoff and armed with
machine guns that were used against the crowds, whenever these did not
obey immediately the injunctions to disperse given to them by special
constables and Cossacks gathered together in all the principal streets
and squares of the capital. The regular troops had been consigned in
their barracks and ordered to keep themselves ready to lend a hand
to the police. But the unexpected happened. The soldiers had been
worked upon by delegates from the workmen, and they declared that they
would not obey orders, should any be given to them, to fire upon the
populace assembled in the streets. The latter seemed quite sure of
impunity, because notwithstanding the preparations made by the police
to quell the revolutionary movement, the existence of which was already
recognised everywhere, it refused to disperse, and on the contrary
proceeded to commit the only acts of violence which were performed
during the course of the mutiny. It threw itself on the prisons where
political offenders were confined, plundered and burned them, and
liberated their inmates. A few other excesses were performed, upon
which the Duma constituted itself an executive committee, which assumed
the task of restoring order in Petrograd.
In the meanwhile, the Czar who had been kept in total ignorance of what
was going on in the capital, had left Tsarskoie Selo for headquarters,
after having signed the prorogation of the Chambers. In his absence,
it was the Empress who was left sole mistress of the situation, and
it is to her and to Protopopoff that were due all the attempts at
repression which happily for all parties concerned were not allowed to
be executed, at least not in their entirety.
Mr. Rodzianko telegraphed to the Czar. He informed him that the
position was getting extremely serious, that the population of
Petrograd was absolutely without any food, that riots were taking
place, and that the troops were firing at one another. He implored
the Sovereign in the interests of the dynasty to send away Protopopoff
and his crew, and he drew his notice to the fact that every hour was
precious, and that every delay might bring about a catastrophe. At the
same time he telegraphed to the principal commanders at the front,
asking them to uphold his request for a responsible government capable
of putting an end to the complete anarchy that was reigning in the
capital, an anarchy which threatened to extend itself all over the
country. The commanders replied that they would do what he asked them
to perform. Nicholas II. alone made no sign. It was related afterwards
that he had telegraphed to the Empress, asking her what she advised
him to do. But it is more likely that the telegram of the President of
the Duma was never handed to him. Mr. Rodzianko, however, sent another
despatch to headquarters which contained the following warning: “The
position is getting more and more alarming. It is indispensable to take
measures to put an end to it, or to-morrow it may be too late. This
is the last moment during which may be decided the fate of the nation
and of the dynasty.” To this message also no reply was received. The
Czar seemed unable to understand the gravity of the situation. Others
did, however, in his place, and on that same day, the 12th of March,
the troops composing the garrison of Petrograd went over to the cause
of the Revolution. They marched to the Duma in a long procession,
beginning with the Volynsky regiment, one of the crack ones in the
army, to which joined themselves almost immediately the famous
Preobragensky Guards, and they declared themselves ready to stand by
the side of the new government. The President of the Duma received
them, and declared to them that the executive committee which had been
constituted was going to appoint a provisional government; of the Czar,
there was no longer any question. It had become evident that his army
would no longer support his authority or fight for him and for his
dynasty. Soon the troops composing the garrisons of Tsarskoie Selo,
Peterhof, and Gatschina left their quarters and joined the mutineers.
The Revolution had become an accomplished fact.
[Illustration:
_Copyright, International Film Service, Inc._
REVOLUTIONARY CROWD IN PETROGRAD]
The new executive committee displayed considerable patriotism at this
juncture. It might have provoked enormous enthusiasm in its favour had
it revealed what it knew concerning the peace negotiations entered into
by the Empress, but this might have given a pretext for explosions
of wrath on the part of the mob, which could easily have ended in
excesses, compromising the dignity of the Revolution. It therefore
decided to keep back from the public its knowledge on this subject, and
contented itself with arresting the ministers, and all the persons whom
it suspected of having lent themselves to this intrigue, and it simply
empowered two members of the Duma, Mr. Goutschkoff and Mr. Schoulguine,
to proceed to Pskov, where it was known that the Emperor had arrived
the day before, to ask the latter to abdicate in favour of his son.
Nicholas II. in the meanwhile had arrived at headquarters which were
then in Mohilev, and where no one seemed to know anything about what
was going on in Petrograd. None of the people about him even suspected
that a storm was brewing which would overturn in a few hours a power
which they considered far too formidable for anything to be able to
shake. The only person who was kept informed of the course which events
were taking was the head of the Staff, General Alexieieff, who had
been won over from the very first to the cause of the Revolution, and
who, if one is to believe all that one hears, played all the time a
double game. It was he who received all the telegrams addressed to
the Emperor, and who communicated them to him. The latter at last was
shaken out of his equanimity, and gave orders to prepare his train
to return to Tsarskoie Selo. He took this decision in consequence
of a message from the commander of the Palace, addressed to General
Voyeikoff the head of the Okhrana, where the latter was advised that
the presence of the Sovereign was necessary, because the troops of the
garrison in the Imperial residence had mutineed, and the safety of the
Empress and of her children was endangered. But in spite of the orders
given to press the departure of the Imperial train it somehow could not
be got ready as quickly as was generally the case, so that it was only
during the night from the 12th to the 13th of March, that it started
at last. It went the usual route as far as the station of Lichoslav,
where it was met with the news that a revolutionary government had been
formed at Petrograd which had seized the railway lines and appointed
a deputy to take them in charge. Another telegram from the military
station master of the Nicholas station in Petrograd instructed the
officials at Lichoslav to send the Imperial train to Petrograd, and not
to Tsarskoie Selo. This was communicated to General Voyeikoff, who,
however, gave directions not to heed this warning, but to proceed to
Tsarskoie Selo, as had been arranged at first. At twelve o’clock at
night the Imperial train reached Bologoie. There a railway official
informed the persons in charge of it that Tosno and Lioubane were in
possession of the troops which had mutineed against the government, and
that it might be dangerous to proceed any further. General Voyeikoff
would not listen to this advice, and the train went on to the station
of Vichera, where it had perforce to stop. The General was told that
the first train which always preceded the one in which the Sovereign
was travelling had been seized by the insurgents, and the members of
the Imperial suite who were travelling in it had been arrested and
conveyed under escort to Petrograd.
The Czar was awakened. General Voyeikoff informed him that it was
impossible to proceed to Tsarskoie Selo, because the railway line was
in the hands of the revolutionaries. It was then decided to go to
Pskov, where commanded General Roussky, on whose fidelity the Sovereign
believed that he might rely.
But Roussky had been won over to the cause of the Duma, notwithstanding
the fact that he had been loaded with favours by Nicholas II. When the
latter reached Pskov, where the General met him at the railway station,
the troops there had already been sworn over by their commander
in favour of the Revolution, and were quite ready to enforce its
decisions. The Czar knew nothing about this, and after a few moments’
conversation with Roussky, who acquainted him superficially with the
spirit reigning in the army, he declared to him that he consented to
call together a responsible Cabinet chosen out of the principal leaders
of the different parties in the Duma. But the General replied that
he feared this concession came too late, and that it would no longer
satisfy the country or the army.
On the 15th of March, Roussky succeeded in talking over the telephone
with Rodzianko, whom he informed of the details of his conversation
with Nicholas II. The president of the Duma then told him that the
former must decide to abdicate in favour of his son. They spoke for
more than two hours, and before their talk had come to an end, Roussky
had promised to do all that lay within his power, even to resort to
violence if need be, to further the views of the new government that
had taken up the supreme authority in Russia. He went then to make his
report to the Emperor, after which the latter signified his intention
to resign his throne to his little boy. The telegram announcing
this resolution, however, was not sent to Petrograd, because in the
meanwhile there had reached Pskov the news that the two delegates sent
by the Executive Committee, Mr. Goutschkoff, and Mr. Schoulguine, had
started on their way thither, in order to confer personally with the
Czar.
At ten o’clock in the evening of that same day, the 15th of March, they
reached Pskov. Their intention had been to confer at first with General
Roussky, but an Imperial aide de camp met them on the platform, and
asked them to follow him immediately into the presence of Nicholas
II. The latter received them in his railway carriage. With him were
old Count Fredericks, the Minister of his household, and a favourite
aide de camp, General Narischkine. Nothing in the appearance of the
Emperor could have led any one to suppose that something extraordinary
was happening to him. He was as impassible as was his wont in all the
important occasions of his life, and he shook hands with the delegates
as if nothing whatever was the matter, asking them to sit down. He
motioned Goutschkoff to a chair beside him, and Schoulguine opposite.
Fredericks and Narischkine stood at some distance from the group, and
Roussky, who came in uninvited at that moment, placed himself next to
Schoulguine.
Goutschkoff was the first one to speak. He was extremely agitated
and could only control his feelings with difficulty, keeping his
eyes riveted on the table and not daring to lift them up to the face
of the Sovereign whose crown he had come to demand. But his speech
was perfectly correct, and contained nothing that could have been
interpreted in an offensive way. He exposed the whole situation, such
as it was, and concluded by saying that the only possible manner to
come out of it would be the abdication of the Czar in favour of his
son under the regency of the former’s brother, the Grand Duke Michael
Alexandrovitsch.
At this juncture Roussky could not restrain his impatience, and,
bending down towards Schoulguine, murmured in his ear: “This is already
quite settled.”
When Goutschkoff had finished his speech, Nicholas II. replied in a
perfectly quiet and composed tone of voice:
“I thought the matter over yesterday, and to-day, and I have made up my
mind to abdicate. Until three o’clock I was ready to do so in favour of
my son, but then I came to the conclusion that I could not part from
him.”
He stopped for a few moments, then went on:
“I hope that you will understand this,” and after another pause he
continued:
“On that account, I have decided to abdicate in favour of my brother.”
The delegates looked at each other, and Schoulguine remarked that they
were not prepared for this complication, and that he begged permission
to consult with his colleague. But after a short conversation they
gave up the point, as Goutschkoff remarked that he did not think they
had the right to mix themselves up in a matter where paternal feelings
and affection came into question, and that besides a regency had also
much to say against it, and was likely to lead to complications. The
Emperor seemed satisfied that the delegates had conceded the point, and
then he asked them whether they could undertake to guarantee that his
abdication would pacify the country and not lead to any disturbances.
They declared that they could do so. Upon this he got up and passed
into another compartment of his railway carriage. In about half an hour
he returned, holding in his hand a folded paper, which he handed over
to Goutschkoff, saying as he did so: “Here is my abdication, will you
read it?” After which he shook hands with the delegates and retired as
if nothing unusual had happened, perhaps not realising that with one
stroke of his pen he had changed not only his own life, but the course
of Russian history, and, in a certain sense, destroyed the work of his
glorious ancestor, Peter the Great.
It is difficult here not to make some remark on the part played by
General Roussky in this tragedy which without his interference would
probably have taken a different course. It is impossible not to come to
the conclusion that the unfortunate Czar whom he induced to abdicate,
might have found better and more faithful servants than the people who
forsook him in the hour of his peril. Very probably Roussky believed
that he was acting in the interests of his country, which in a sense
he was also doing, because something had to be attempted in order to
stop the nefarious work of Alexandra Feodorovna, and it is certain
that her husband would never willingly have consented to be parted
from her. Killing a woman would have been disgracing oneself, together
with the Revolution which had been accomplished under such exceptional
circumstances; but still one would have preferred that the man who was
instrumental in the destruction of the Romanoff dynasty should not have
been one who wore on his epaulettes the initials of the Sovereign he
was helping to dethrone. One would have liked him to feel some pity for
the master whose hand he had kissed a few days before he presented to
him the pen with which he ordered him to sign his own degradation. In
spite of the impassibility preserved by Nicholas II. during the last
hours of his reign, it is likely that the tragedy which took place at
Pskov must have been one of the most poignant that has ever assailed
a Sovereign, who, after having reigned for twenty-two years, found
himself, in the course of a few hours, reduced to utter powerlessness
and compelled to give up of his own accord the crown which his father
had bequeathed to him, and which he had hoped to leave in his turn to
the son, whom fate and perhaps a mistaken feeling of affection had made
him despoil. He was not a bad man after all, although he had done many
a bad action; he was a tender father, and the thought of his child must
have added to the moral agony of his soul. By what means he was induced
to put his name at the bottom of the document which snatched away from
him the sceptre which he had dropped on his coronation day in Moscow,
remains still a mystery. Whether violence was used, or whether he was
persuaded by the eloquence of Roussky alone to give up the inheritance
of his race, is a thing which the future alone will reveal to us. It
is probable that he found himself compelled to come to his decision in
some way or other, and perhaps the threat to reveal the treason against
his allies in which he had participated, and which had been the work of
the Empress, was the most powerful argument which was used to oblige
him to sign his abdication. It was after all better to fall as a weak
man than to be covered with shame in the eyes of the world. He was
perhaps told to choose between degradation and dishonour, and he cannot
be blamed if he refused to resign himself to the latter.
CHAPTER V
The abdication of Nicholas II. was but one of the acts of a drama the
end of which is awaited with anxiety not only in Russia, but in the
whole of the world. Like everything else that he had ever done, it was
not performed in time, and it was badly executed. His own selfishness,
together with that of his wife, had brought about catastrophes which it
would have been relatively easy to avoid, by displaying a small amount
of political tact, good sense, and knowledge of the real requirements
of the Russian people. If the Czar had only been able to render to
himself an account of all that was going on around him, he would in
the interest of his dynasty have given up his son to the care of the
nation, and allowed him to take his place under the regency of the
Grand Duke Michael. This would have left Russia with a Czar, and not
allowed the people to see that they could very well exist without
one, which, as events have proved, has not been a particularly lucky
experience for them. This would also have ensured to Nicholas II. his
own liberty, because it is not likely that the Grand Duke Michael
would have had his brother and sister-in-law imprisoned. But neither
the dispossessed Monarch nor Alexandra Feodorovna were characters able
to rise to any heights of unselfishness. She had not the faintest
knowledge of the duties imposed upon her by her position as Empress
of Russia, and when she was placed between the alternative of seeing
her husband dethroned, or being compelled to give up his crown to their
child, she suggested a third one; that of substituting for the latter
his uncle, because she thought it would be easier for her later on
to overturn him than an Emperor who owned her for a mother; and that
she already contemplated the eventuality of a protest on the part of
Nicholas II. against the abdication to which he had been compelled is a
fact that can hardly be denied.
[Illustration:
_Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._
BOLSHEVIKI SAILORS BURIED AT MOSCOW]
On the other hand the Grand Duke Michael could not have refused to act
as Regent for his nephew, though it was, in a certain sense, natural
for him to show some hesitation in accepting over the head of his
brother, and of his brother’s son, the crown of their common ancestors.
Personally the young Grand Duke did not care for power or for honours,
and the fact that he was married to a lady not belonging to any royal
house made it easier for him to resign himself to go on for the rest
of his existence living as a very rich private gentleman, which he had
done for a number of years. Pressure was also brought to bear upon
him, in the sense that he was told by persons interested in his not
accepting the throne that if the Constitutive Assembly which it was
proposed to call together, would elect him as Emperor, it would put
him later on in an easier position in regard to his nephew, the little
Grand Duke Alexis, and perhaps even allow him to secure the possession
of his empire to his own children after him. All these considerations
put together decided him not to avail himself of the immediate
opportunity which lay before him, of becoming the Czar of All the
Russias, and his proclamation on the subject may have been a wise one
from a personal point of view; it was, however, disastrous as regarded
the future fate of the dynasty, and it is doubtful now whether it will
ever be possible for a Romanoff to reign again in Russia.
The men who had made the Revolution were but too well aware of this
fact, and they proceeded, immediately after this act of Renunciation,
to organise the government of the country on the new lines which they
hoped and wished to follow in the future. Their lead was followed
by the nation with an enthusiasm which was so intense that it is no
wonder it came to collapse so soon as was the case. Russia seemed to
have been seized with a perfect frenzy; she was like a man who after
having been unjustly imprisoned for years does not know what to make
of his newly acquired freedom. People were literally mad with joy, and
inclined to find that everything their new government wished to do was
right. Hardly a voice of discontent arose during these first weeks that
followed upon the abdication of Nicholas II., and this absolution,
which was granted beforehand to the Ministry that had taken into its
hands the direction of the affairs of the country, allowed the men at
the head of it to decide the fate of the Sovereign whom they had helped
to overthrow, in a manner perhaps different from what would have been
done under other circumstances.
The Czar, after having parted from Mr. Goutschkoff and Mr. Schoulguine
at Pskov, and seen them leave with his abdication for Petrograd,
proceeded himself in his own special train to Mohilew, where the
headquarters of the army were established. It is not easy to understand
the reasons which induced him to do it. Perhaps he thought he would
be in greater safety among the troops that had owned him as a chief
but the day before than anywhere else. At that time he had not the
slightest inkling of the treason of General Alexieieff, and he might
have nursed the vague thought that the latter might lend himself to
another effort to subdue the revolutionary movement which had seized
hold so rapidly of the whole country. Others say that he wished to bid
good-bye to his army before returning to Tsarskoie Selo to join his
wife and family. The real motive of his determination has, however,
not been ascertained so far, though the rumours going about at the
time would have it that he had been invited to repair to headquarters
by Alexieieff, who thought that it would be easier for him to keep his
former Sovereign a prisoner there than anywhere else, until the moment
when the new government should have decided as to what was to be done
with him. That something of the kind must have been in his mind can
be deduced from the fact that from the day of the return of Nicholas
II. at Mohilew he was no longer allowed to see any of the officers
of the Staff, or those attached to headquarters, and that the only
person who visited him twice a day, as if to assure himself that he was
still there, was General Alexieieff himself, and this only for a few
minutes. It was also the general who insisted on both Count Fredericks,
formerly Minister of the Imperial household, and General Voyeikoff,
the head of the Okhrana, or personal police guard of the Czar, being
sent away from Mohilew. He explained his request by saying that these
two gentlemen were looked upon with such inimical feelings by the
garrison and officers stationed at Mohilew, that he could not answer
for their safety were they to remain near the Emperor. In consequence
of this warning both of them left for Petrograd, but on their way
thither were arrested, and conveyed under escort to the fortress of
St. Peter and St. Paul, from whence Count Fredericks in view of his
advanced age (he is over eighty), and of the precarious state of his
health, was transferred to the Evangelical hospital. General Voyeikoff
having been invited to tear off the initials of Nicholas II. from his
epaulettes, proudly refused to do so, and declared that he had rather
take off these epaulettes altogether. He was the only one who did not
consent to submit to the orders of the government in that respect, all
the other members of Nicholas II.’s military household having shown
themselves but too eager to do it, General Roussky divesting himself
of his aiguillettes five minutes after the Emperor had handed over his
abdication to the Delegates sent by the Duma to require it from him.
The unfortunate Monarch returned to Mohilew from Pskov on the 17th
of March. On the next day arrived there by special train his mother,
the Dowager Empress Marie, who, upon hearing of the misfortunes that
had befallen her son, had hastened to his side. Their relations had
been more than strained for a long time, thanks to the intrigues of
the Empress Alexandra, but in those moments of agony the mother’s
heart forgot aught else save that her child was in trouble, and she
rushed to him to try at least to help him by her presence to bear it.
Nicholas II. felt the nobility of this conduct, and the few days which
he spent with Marie Feodorovna did away with much of the bitterness
that had presided at their intercourse with each other for some time.
But what they must have been for the widowed Empress it would be hardly
possible to imagine. She understood but too well, if he did not, the
perils which awaited her son in the future, and the contrast which his
reign had presented with that of his father must have filled her soul
with agony and distress. Fate proved itself indeed hard for this noble
woman, because it inflicted upon her that last, supreme sorrow, of
seeing, before her train carried her back to this town of Kieff which
she had made her home for the last two years, Nicholas II. taken away a
captive to that palace that was to know him no longer for its master.
If one is to believe all that one hears, it seems that it was General
Alexieieff, together with General Roussky and a few socialist leaders,
who insisted on the provisional government ordering the arrest of the
former Czar and of his Consort. They represented to Mr. Miliukoff and
to his colleagues, that it would be the height of imprudence to allow
the Empress to remain at liberty and able to go on intriguing, as was
her wont, against the new administration. On the other hand sending the
Imperial family immediately abroad had also its inconveniences, because
their presence in Denmark or in England would only have been a cause of
embarrassment to the Allies. Then again, the hatred of the population
of Petrograd for Alexandra Feodorovna had reached such immense
proportions that it was feared it would give way to excesses against
her, and even attempts to murder her, if some kind of satisfaction
were not given to its incensed feelings in respect to a woman who was
considered everywhere in the light of the worst of traitors. For this
reason or for another, it is not quite clear, but most likely because
of the representations made by Roussky and by Alexieieff, the Executive
Committee of the Duma, which was then the highest authority in Russia,
decided to arrest Nicholas II. together with his Consort.
Four members of the Duma, Messrs. Boublikoff, Gribounine, Verschinine
and Kalinine, were commanded to repair to Mohilew, and to signify to
the ex-Emperor the decision of the government. It seems that what had
hastened it had been the discovery of a correspondence between the
Empress and Protopopoff, which the latter, in abject fear for his
life, had himself given up to the Duma, hoping that he would thus be
able to drive away from his own person the responsibility for the
conspiracy which had been going on at Tsarskoie Selo, under the plea
that he had been compelled to obey the orders which had been given to
him. Apart from this correspondence, other things had come to light;
amongst others the part that a Thibetan doctor, who had been a friend
of Rasputin, and whom Madame Vyroubieva had introduced to the Empress,
had played in the private life of the Imperial pair. It seems that he
had given to Alexandra Feodorovna certain drinks and drugs, which,
unknown to him, she had administered to Nicholas II., with the result
that the latter had been completely stupefied, and had become a tool
in the hands of his enterprising wife. The fact sounds incredible,
and I would not have mentioned it here had it not been that young
Prince Youssoupoff, one of those who had executed Rasputin, publicly
spoke about it during an interview which after his return to Petrograd
from the exile whither he had been sent by the Czar, he awarded to
a correspondent of the Vovoie Vremia, where the account of it was
published. Both these incidents gave a free hand to those who, from the
very first day of the Revolution, had insisted upon the Empress being
put under restraint, and once this measure was adopted, it was hardly
possible not to extend it also to Nicholas II.
The Commissioners started on March 20th for Mohilew. General Alexieieff
had been privately informed as to the reason of their arriving there,
and, unknown to others, gave orders for the Emperor’s train to be
prepared to carry him away at a moment’s notice. At four o’clock of the
afternoon of March 21st, the Commissioners reached their destination,
and they sent at once for the General, with whom they held a conference
of about twenty minutes. He assured them that he had already made full
preparation for the departure of the Monarch. They asked him for a list
of the people in attendance on the latter, and noticing thereon the
name of Admiral Niloff, who was considered to be one of the staunchest
supporters of the Empress, they said at once that he could not travel
in the Imperial train, and sent for him to acquaint him with the fact.
Niloff asked only if he was to consider himself as being under arrest,
but the commissioners assured him that they had received no orders to
that effect.
Whilst this was going on, Nicholas II. was lunching with his mother in
the latter’s special train, which all the time of her stay in Mohilew
had remained at the station, and which she had not left during these
days. General Alexieieff was the one who took it upon himself to tell
the Czar that he had been made a prisoner. He boarded the train of the
Empress, pushed himself most unceremoniously into the carriage where
she was sitting with her son, and acquainted the latter with his fate.
Neither the deposed Sovereign nor the widowed Empress said a word.
She simply got up and went to the window. She saw a crowd of people
standing around her train, and the one that was about to carry away her
son, then she turned back, and folded him in one long embrace. Speech
was impossible to either of them and Marie Feodorovna remained tearless
all through this tragedy.
On the platform were standing several officers who had formerly been
attached to the person of the Emperor, whilst he had been in command of
the army. They were waiting to say good-bye to their former chief. A
guard, no longer of honour alas! was also standing at the door of the
railway compartment assigned to him, who a few days before had been the
Czar of All the Russias, together with the commissioners of the Duma,
into whose hands Alexieieff delivered his prisoner. Nicholas II. passed
on from his mother’s train to his own. Every head was uncovered; he
spoke to no one, and no one spoke. A silence akin to that of the grave
prevailed. Standing at the window of her carriage could be seen the
figure of the Empress Marie watching this sad departure. A few minutes
later the train started on its mournful journey. Another act in this
drama had come to an end.
Whilst this was going on at Mohilew, the officer in command of the
garrison of Petrograd, General Korniloff, had repaired to Tsarskoie
Selo. From the station he telephoned to Count Benckendorff, the head
of the Imperial household, asking him when he could see the Empress.
The Count asked him to wait a few minutes at the instrument, and then
told him that Alexandra Feodorovna would be ready to receive him in
half an hour. At the appointed time the General was introduced into the
presence of the Sovereign who entered the room dressed in deep black,
but as haughty as ever, and asked him in ironical tones to what she was
indebted for the honour of his visit. Korniloff got up, and briefly
communicated to her the decision of the government in respect to her
person, and warned her that the Palace would be strictly watched, and
all communications between her and the outside world forbidden. The
Empress then enquired whether her personal servants and those of her
children would be left to her, and after having been reassured as to
that point, she withdrew as impassible as ever, though strong hysterics
seized her as soon as she was once more alone in her private apartments.
The guard in charge of the Palace was changed; the telephone and
private post and telegraph office were taken over by a staff which
General Korniloff had brought over with him from Petrograd, and the
Empress was informed that she could not leave her rooms, even for a
walk, without the permission of the officer in charge of the troops
quartered in the Imperial residence. Though no orders had been issued
in regard to her personal attendants, yet the proud Princess was to
find that most of them had left her of their own accord. Her children
were all ill with a severe attack of measles, but this did not prevent
the salaried domestics who up to that moment had been so happy and
eager to be allowed the privilege of serving her, deserting her in the
hour of her need. The few friends she thought she could rely upon were
in prison. She was alone, all alone; and so she was to remain until the
end. The devotion with which Marie Antoinette was surrounded during the
tragedy of her existence was not known by Alexandra Feodorovna in the
drama of her life. She had made far too many enemies during the time
of her splendour and prosperity to find any one willing to cheer and
comfort her in the hour of her misfortune.
And the next day her husband was brought back to that Palace of
Tsarskoie Selo they had both liked so much, brought back a prisoner to
find her captive. What did she think when she saw him again? Did she
realise at last all the evil which she had done, all the misery, which,
thanks to her influence, had overtaken the Emperor whose crown she had
shared? How did she feel in presence of this catastrophe, of this wreck
of all her ambitions, plans and hopes? Outwardly she made no sign that
she understood the full significance of the events that had swallowed
her up in their depths, together with her pride and haughtiness. She
only manifested some emotion when told that the body of Rasputin had
been exhumed and burned publicly by exasperated crowds. Otherwise she
remained silent and if not resigned at least disdainful, even when she
was subjected to a close interrogation by General Korniloff, who was
deputed to examine her as to certain points in the correspondence which
Mr. Protopopoff had surrendered to the Duma. She denied to every one
the right to question her; she proudly refused to reply to the demands
addressed to her, and it was only when she was alone in her rooms that
she used to give way to terrible fits of despair at the loss of that
grandeur by which her head had been turned. Her children were so ill
that they could not even be told of the change that had taken place in
their existences and destinies. Her husband was too much crushed by the
weight of all the calamities which had fallen upon him to be able to
comfort her in any way. Her friends had left her, her attendants had
forsaken her, her family had abandoned her.... And it was thus, amidst
the stillness of sorrow and of anxiety, that the curtain was to fall
upon the tragedy of Nicholas II. and of Alexandra Feodorovna, or at
least upon one of its principal acts....
PART III
THE RIDDLE OF THE FUTURE
CONCLUSION
More than one year has gone by since the events narrated in this book,
and it is possible now to throw a retrospective glance on them, as well
as on all the tragedies that have followed the fall of the Romanoffs.
It has been proved beyond doubt that it is not sufficient to destroy
a political system and to overturn a monarchy. These must be replaced
by something else, and it is this something else which Russia has been
vainly looking for during the last twelve months. After the abdication
of Nicholas II., successors had to be found to take up the power which
had been snatched out of his hands owing to the clamours of public
indignation at his weakness of character and want of comprehension of
the needs of his people. These successors, who were taken here and
there in the hazards of an adventure brought about by the intrigues
of a few and by the cowardice of many, who were they? What did they
represent? And what elements of strength did they possess? They were
called upon to take the direction of the destinies of their Fatherland
in an hour of national crisis, such as it had never known before in
the whole course of its history, and to try to save a situation which
had become already so entangled that it had almost reached the limits
of desperation. It is possible to-day to pass judgment on the first
government that assumed authority after the fall of the unfortunate
Czar. And, much as one would like to think well of it, it must be
admitted that though it was composed of men of great talent and
integrity, it did not possess one single character determined enough
and strong enough to deliver it from the demagogues who had secured an
entry into it, and from the anarchist elements that had tried from the
very outset to impose themselves upon it and their doctrines. Moreover
these men were devoid of experience, and they believed sincerely (there
can be no doubt as to this point) but absolutely erroneously, that it
was sufficient for them and their party to come to the foreground in
order to bring about in Russia an era of bliss such as exists only in
fairy tales. Among them was found Alexander Kerensky, a Socialist, one
of the leaders of the Labour Party, an indifferent lawyer but a most
eloquent speaker, who, better than any one else in Russia, understood
the art of stirring the souls and appealing to the passions of the
crowds upon which he relied to keep him in power; and who by his
wonderful speeches could easily lead these crowds upon any road he
wished to have them follow, though it might not land them where they
imagined they were going. Kerensky imposed himself upon the Revolution
in the same way he imposed himself upon a jury, and he treated it as
he would have treated a jury during a criminal trial. Of politics he
had but a hazy idea; of the art of government he understood nothing. He
believed in the value of words, and imagined that he could establish
in Russia an ideal State, living upon ideal principles. But at
one time he was popular, and people thought him a strong man, whilst
he was only an eloquent demagogue. With this he had an overbearing
character, would not admit contradiction, and soon was at variance with
his colleagues in the ministry, who, unfortunately for Russia, were
as weak as he was himself but with less tyrannical dispositions; they
retired when they found that they could not prevent him from carrying
out his plans of reforming the army and of abolishing its military
discipline, without which no troops in the world could be expected
to stand bravely in presence of an attacking foe. It is a thousand
pities that men like Paul Milyukoff, Prince George Lvoff, Rodzianko
and others, to whose initiative was due the success of the Revolution,
allowed themselves to be overruled by Kerensky, until he was left alone
to bear upon his shoulders the whole burden of the government and the
whole responsibility of the war, when he collapsed like a weak reed at
the first real attack directed against him.
[Illustration:
_Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._
KERENSKY INSPIRING TROOPS TO SUPPORT REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT]
Another misfortune connected with the government that replaced that
of Nicholas II. was that it failed to recognise the terrible German
propaganda that was carried on with renewed energy in Russia after the
Revolution. It would not believe in its danger, and it could not bring
itself to employ violence to put an end to the Socialist or, rather,
anarchist agitation fomented by German intrigues and kept up by German
money, which alone has rendered possible the triumph of Bolschevikism
and the seizure of supreme power by people such as Lenine, Trotzky,
Kameneff, and other personalities of the same kind, and the same
doubtful or, rather, not doubtful reputation.
And yet it would have been relatively easy to put an end to the career
of these men, had one only applied oneself to do so in time and
bravely faced the criticisms of the people who were in their pay, or
in their employ. The whole story of the Lenine-Trotzky intrigue has
not yet been told, at least not here in America; and it may not be
without interest to disclose some of its details. When Milyukoff and
Prince Lvoff proceeded to form a government after the overthrow of the
Monarchy, they offered the portfolio of Justice to a Moscow lawyer
called Karensky (nothing to do with Alexander Kerensky) who enjoyed the
reputation of being one of the most eloquent, and, at the same time,
honest members of the Moscow Bar. They called him to Petrograd, where
they held several consultations with him. Karensky declared himself
ready to accept the position offered him, but only on one condition:
that he would be given an absolutely free hand to proceed with the
greatest energy and vigour against all the German spies and agents with
which the Capital was infested, and that he would also be allowed the
same free hand in his dealings with the anarchists who were beginning
to make themselves heard. Neither Prince Lvoff nor Milyukoff would
agree to give him these powers he demanded. They feared that if they
did so they would be reproached for doing exactly the same as the
government that had crumbled down a few days before; and they also
objected to allowing a member of the cabinet to dispose at his will and
fancy of such grave questions as those involved in repression exercised
against any political party, no matter of what shade or opinion.
Karensky thereupon refused the position offered to him, but accepted
the post of State Prosecutor under Alexander Kerensky at first, and,
afterwards, when the latter had been transferred to the war office,
under Mr. Pereviazeff. This allowed him to watch the growing German
agitation, connected with anarchist conspiracies, which was beginning
to feel its way previous to its explosion. He had heard about Lenine
and Trotzky, and was from the first convinced that they were both in
the employ of the Kaiser either directly or indirectly, and he set
himself to obtain proof that such was the case. He had wondered at
the easiness with which Lenine had been able to obtain a passport
from the German government authorising him to cross the dominions of
William II. on his way from Switzerland to Russia. He, therefore, had
the correspondence of both Lenine and Trotzky watched, and very soon
his attention was attracted by the fact that they were both sending
and receiving constantly telegrams to and from Sweden and Finland, all
of which were deeply concerned with the health of a certain “Kola”
who seemed to be always getting ill, and then better, in a sort of
regular way which appeared more than strange. This was the first remark
which led to the result that at last, it was established, to the
absolute satisfaction of Karensky and of others, that Trotzky, Lenine,
Kameneff, a certain Zinovieff, a lawyer called Kozlovsky, a lady going
by the name of Madame Soumentay, and the wife of Lenine, had received
not less than _nineteen millions of rubles_ from the German government.
This money had been sent through so many different channels that it was
next to impossible to discover its origin. It had passed through eight
banks, and, I do not now remember, through how many private hands. But
the people whose names I have just mentioned had received it, partly
in Russian banknotes, and partly in banknotes printed in Berlin, which
were supposed to be Russian, of a new type with which the German
government was beginning to meet its obligations so as not to make them
too heavy for its own Exchequer.
Karensky sought Prince Lvoff, who was still Prime Minister at the time,
and asked him to sign an order for the arrest of Trotzky and Lenine.
The Prince had not the courage to do so, and the State Prosecutor had,
perforce, to wait. But in July the first insurrectionary movement,
engineered by the Bolscheviki, broke out, and then Karensky thought
that his duty obliged him to assume the responsibilities which the
ministry did not care to face. By that time Prince Lvoff, Milyukoff
and others had resigned, and Kerensky was virtually master of the
situation. But he was weak, weaker perhaps than any of his colleagues
had been, and he openly declared to the State Prosecutor that he felt
afraid to arrest the two men who were ultimately to lead Russia to
her destruction. Karensky, however, was made of sterner stuff, and he
bravely decided to act for himself, and signed alone the order for
the incarceration of both Lenine and Trotzky. But the former had been
warned, and had fled to Finland. A thorough search was made of the flat
which he occupied, where the sum of one million and a half of rubles
was found in possession of his wife, who could not explain whence she
had this money. Trotzky at the same time was incarcerated and brought
before the State Prosecutor. The latter, in order to justify the course
of action he had taken, had caused to be published in all the Petrograd
and Moscow newspapers an account of the discoveries which he had made,
together with the names of the people who had participated in the work
of treason he was determined to suppress. A curious thing in the story
is that none of the papers that printed it (and they all did with the
exception of the Bolschevik organ _Prawda_), was allowed to get abroad,
which accounts for the fact of no publicity having been given to the
story. Petrograd then was exasperated against Trotzky to such an extent
that Karensky feared he would be lynched, and caused him to be conveyed
to the prison called “Kresty” in an automobile driven by his own son,
as no chauffeur would undertake to drive him there. What happened
later on remains to this day a mystery. The Minister of Justice, Mr.
Pereviazeff, resigned his functions two days after the arrest of
Trotzky, and his place was taken by Nekrassoff, who, when asked by
the Committees of soldiers and peasants who had begun by that time to
be all powerful, to give the reasons which had induced the government
to resort to this measure, became so embarrassed in his replies that
these Committees insisted on Trotzky being set at liberty, which was
done three days afterwards. Karensky then resigned his functions, and
returned to Moscow whence, however, he was obliged to fly and seek a
refuge in Kharkov, as soon as the Bolscheviki seized the government.
The latter inaugurated a system of terrorism that claimed more victims
than is known abroad, completed the disorganisation of the army, and
at last started the negotiations which culminated in the shameful
peace signed at Brest Litovsk. After three and a half years’ war and a
Revolution, Russia as an independent nation ceased to exist, and became
virtually, and to all appearance, a German province.
[Illustration:
_Copyright, International Film Service, Inc._
PEACE DOCUMENT OF DELEGATES AT BREST-LITOVSK CONFERENCE]
This is the story as it reads, and sad enough it sounds. Germany can
look triumphantly on the success of her work and glory in it. Happily
for Russia, for the world and for the cause of civilisation, it is only
one chapter of it that has come to an end. Russia, the great Russia
of the past, is not dead. She possesses far more vitality than she is
given credit for, and she still has sound, true, and honest elements
amidst her citizens. When attempting to judge her, one ought to think
of the great French Revolution, and to remember that in France, also,
it took years before its work was at last consolidated and set upon a
sound basis. One must bear in mind that in France, too, a period of
terrorism made people despair of the future and fear that the end of
their Fatherland had come. Our Russian Revolution is hardly one year
old, and though perhaps one will be aghast at what I am going to
say, I think that she has not yet passed through that phase of real
terror which is always a symptom of great upheavals such as Russia
has undergone and is undergoing. We may see worse things yet; we may
live to look upon the erection of a scaffold on one of the squares of
Petrograd or of Moscow. But this will not mean that the end of Russia
has come, nor that she has become, or will remain, a German province.
The hatred of the Teuton, on the contrary, will grow as events progress
and the great disillusion arrives. A few more months, and the peasants
whom Trotzky, Lenine and their crew have lured with false promises will
perceive that these demagogues have been unable to fulfil all that they
had sworn to them they would do. They will realise that their lot has
become under the rule of these new masters ten thousand times harder
than was the case before, and they will be the first to rise against
these deceivers. If we are to believe all that we hear from people
who have arrived here from Russia recently, this movement of reaction
has already started, and it is bound to grow stronger with every day
and hour which goes by. The peace signed at Brest Litovsk will remain
verily a “scrap of paper” which will end by being thrown into the
waste-paper basket. Not one Russian will recognise it, not one Russian
will accept it; the Germans feel it themselves, and are preparing for
a new struggle which may have a far different conclusion from the one
which they are now trying to persuade the world has come to an end.
What has helped them, apart from the treason of Trotzky, Lenine and
their followers, who have only had one idea in heart and brain, that of
enriching themselves at the expense of the country for which they feel
neither affection nor pity, has been the state of confusion into which
Russia was thrown by the Revolution that broke up so unexpectedly--a
confusion which can only be compared to that which prevails in the
house of a man whom sudden ruin has overtaken, when every servant or
menial in the place tries to steal and take something in the general
disaster or to profit out of it in some way or other. In Petrograd, in
Moscow, as well as all over the country, looting took place, not only
of private property, but also of the Public Exchequer, especially of
the latter, and the Russian officials, who had always been grasping,
became all at once bandits after the style of Rinaldo Rinaldino, or
any other brigand illustrated by drama or comedy. They stole; they
took; they carried away; they seized everything they could lay their
hands upon. To begin with the silver spoons of the unfortunate Czar
and as many of the Crown Jewels as they could get hold of, down to the
paper money issued by the State Treasury, of which, as the Kerensky
government had to own before the so-called National Assembly at Moscow,
eight hundred millions were put into circulation every month after
the Revolution, in contrast with two hundred millions which were
issued formerly. I do not think that it is a libel on these officials
to suppose that part of this fabulous sum found its way into their
pockets, instead of being applied to the needs of the nation or of the
army.
This wholesale plundering, if I may be forgiven for using such a word,
was of course not the fault of Kerensky and of his colleagues, under
whose ministry it began, but whereas the latter realised immediately
that it was taking place and resigned rather than countenance it; the
former, though aware of it, found his hands tied in every attempt he
made to subdue it, by the fact that those who were principally guilty
were either his personal friends or his former partisans, or people
with whom he had associated in earlier times, and with whom he had
compromised himself to a considerable extent. With regard to those
associates of his former life, Kerensky found himself in the same
position as Napoleon III. after his accession, in presence of the
Italian Carbonari, who claimed from the Sovereign the fulfilment of
the promises made to them by the exiled Pretender. Kerensky had also
given certain pledges at a time when he never expected he might be
called upon to redeem them; and when he became a Minister he had to
give way to the exigencies of all the radicals, anarchists, and extreme
socialists among whom he had laboured, and with whom he had worked at
the overthrow of the detested and detestable government of the Czar. He
could not cast them overboard or set them aside. He had to listen to
them, and in a certain sense to submit to their demands. For example,
in the case of the exile to Siberia of the unfortunate Nicholas II.,
a measure which in the first days of the Revolution he had declared
that he would never resort to, but which he nevertheless executed
under conditions of the most intense cruelty, simply because it was
demanded from him by persons to whom he could not say no. People
who knew him well say that the fact of his powerlessness caused him
intense suffering, but he had neither the strength to assert himself in
presence of his former comrades, nor, perhaps, the will to do so.
In a certain sense, he was the man of the hour, “le maitre de l’heure,”
as the Franco-Arab proverb says. He was even to some extent the one
indispensable element without which it would have been impossible for
a Republic ever to become established in Russia. And everybody seemed
to agree, one year ago, that a Republic was the only form of government
possible after the fall of the Romanoffs. Of this Republic Kerensky
rapidly became the symbol and at the same time the emblem of a new
Russia; a regenerated and better one, in the opinion of his followers
of the moment; a worse one from what it had been formerly, in that of
his adversaries, but at all events of a different Russia from the one
previously known.
But, unfortunately, Kerensky was neither a statesman like Milyukoff
nor an administrator like Prince Lvoff, nor even a business man like
Konovaloff. He lacked experience and knowledge of the routine of
government. He had but a limited amount of education, no idea of the
feelings of people born and reared in a different atmosphere from that
in which he had grown up. He was only a leader of men, or rather of
the passions of men; and, unfortunately for him, what Russia required
was more a ruler than a leader, of whom she had more than she wanted,
though perhaps at that particular moment none so powerful as Kerensky.
He had emerged a Dictator out of a complete and general chaos; and
he was to add to it the whole weight of his unripe genius and of his
exuberant personality. After having been the Peter the Hermit of a new
Crusade, he was to become the false Prophet of a creed which he had
preached with an eloquence such as has been seldom surpassed, but in
which it is doubtful whether he himself believed. Had he consented,
or had he been able to work in common with more experienced men than
himself towards the triumph of the Republican cause, he would have
taken in the annals of his country the place of one of its greatest
men. As it has turned out, he will rank among its most interesting and
brilliant historical figures, but only as a figure. His disappearance
also has had something romantic about it, which will perhaps appeal to
certain people in Russia, and which will disgust others. The world is
wondering where he has gone and what has become of him; but everything
points to the fact that he has either done away with himself, as he
often said he would do in case of failure, or else that he has been
murdered by the Bolscheviki during those days when the Neva and the
different canals of Petrograd were carrying away to the sea hundreds of
dead bodies every day. At least this is the opinion of persons who were
in Russia at the time Kerensky vanished into space; and very probably
this opinion will prove to be a true one.
The moderate liberal parties in Russia, who are the really intelligent,
would, of course, wish their country’s future government to become a
Republic modelled after that of the United States. At the same time, if
we are to believe the rare news which reaches us from Petrograd, and
especially from Moscow, one hears people say now what they would never
have dared to mention a few months ago--i. e., that a constitutional
Monarchy, if it could be established, would offer certain advantages.
I hasten to say that, personally, I do not see where these advantages
would come in, unless they were associated with a new dynasty. But at
the same time, together with many others, when I look at all that has
taken place recently in my poor country, I cannot but feel sad at the
great uncertainty as to the morrow which the Revolution of last year
has opened, not only before Russia, but before the whole world, and I
would like to see this incertitude come to an end in some way or other.
I have but little more to add. It is difficult even to try to guess
what the future holds in store for the former realm of the Romanoffs.
The only thing which one can say at present with any certainty is
that Russia will never honour the signature of Trotzky in regard to
the peace treaty concluded with Germany. Any hesitation Russia might
have had as to this point in her moments of discouragement, that must
have made themselves felt at times, disappeared after the message sent
by the President of the United States to the Soviets in Moscow. This
message dispelled any fear the Russians might have had as to whether
their allies had abandoned her. At present the country knows that it
does not stand alone, and that any resistance it has to offer to its
foes will be appreciated and encouraged. This is much, indeed this is
the one thing which was capable of rousing the energies of the whole
of that vast land which the Teutons imagine that they have conquered.
I can but repeat: Russia is not dead yet. Russia shall show the world
that, betrayed as she has been, she can still lift the yoke put upon
her, save herself, and help to save the world for the great cause of
Democracy.
And the conclusion of this book? I do not pretend to offer any. I
simply invite my readers to draw the one they like best. I ask them
only to do so with kindness and an appreciation of the difficulties of
the situation. I have not tried to write a volume of controversy; I
have merely attempted to describe, as well as I could, the Revolution
and the events which preceded it, among which the extraordinary story
of Rasputin figures so curiously.
I have given the narrative as it was related to me by people whose
veracity I have no reason to challenge. It is certain, however, that
many of its details are still unknown, and it is doubtful whether
they will be revealed before the end of the war. At present there are
too many persons interested in dissimulating the part which they have
played in the drama, either out of fear, or because they do not think
the time opportune. It seems sometimes as if there exists a tacit
understanding among the actors of the tragedy to hide the details of
the conspiracy which came to an end by the signature of the Manifest
of Pskov. This signature was wrenched, no one knows yet by just what
means, out of the weakness of Nicholas II!--that unfortunate Monarch
who has never realised the obligations and duties he owed to the
nation that dethroned him. The last crowned Romanoff had never had,
unfortunately for him, and still more unfortunately for his subjects,
a sense of appreciation of the real value of facts or of events, which
sometimes is even more useful than a great intelligence, to those whom
destiny has entrusted with the difficult task of ruling over nations.
He believed that his duty consisted in upholding the superannuated
traditions of autocracy, and he did not perceive that these traditions
had been maintained so long only because there had existed strong men
to enforce them. Honest and kind of heart though he was, at least in
many respects, he had contrived in spite of these qualities to rouse
against him from the very first days of his accession to the Throne all
the social classes of his country. He had irritated the aristocracy,
wounded the feelings of the army and of the people, and excited against
himself the passions of the proletariat and of the peasantry, by his
weakness of character and his obstinacy in surrounding himself with
the most hated and most despised elements in Russia. A few days before
his fall he might still have made a successful effort to save himself
and his dynasty, had he only followed the disinterested advice which
was forwarded to him by his Allies and consented to the establishment
of a responsible Ministry. He preferred to listen to his wife and
to the people she kept around her. Instead of trying to conciliate
his subjects, he threatened them, until the expected occurred, and
he lost not only his crown but also his liberty; and has perhaps
forfeited his life and that of his family.
But the future, the future, my readers will ask me, What will be the
future, what shall it bring forth for Russia? The only reply possible
to this eager question is to quote the words of Victor Hugo in his
wonderful Ode to Napoleon: “The future belongs to no one, it is
controlled by God alone.”
[Illustration:
_Copyright, 1918, International Film Service, Inc._
THE HOUSE AT BREST-LITOVSK WHERE PEACE NEGOTIATIONS BETWEEN THE RUSSIAN
BOLSHEVIKI AND THE AUSTRO-GERMANS WERE CONDUCTED]
Transcriber’s Notes
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unbalanced.
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