Andrew Cook - To Kill Rasputin

From 1907 Militsa, Anastasia and Grand Duke Nikolai were the ‘out-crowd’. Rasputin and Anna Vyrubova were in.

Vyrubova had been an unmarried girl called Anna Taneev when she became intimate with the Tsarina. Her father was a court official and she had never been far from the inner circle – Yusupov remembered loathing her at school. She and the Tsarina were already inciting gossip about a lesbian affair when she married in 1907. Her husband, a nonentity who owned a large estate, proved significant only as provider of a name and a marital status; after a few years they divorced. She accused him of impotence and sadism, and it was true that the marriage had never been consummated. He married again quite soon, was perfectly happy with his new wife and lived quietly on his country estate. Vyrubova and the Tsarina, however, caused talk by sharing a bed. 38

One of the most complicated issues in Rasputin’s story is the relationship of the Tsar and the Tsarina. It appeared to be cloyingly affectionate, yet one partner constantly dominated. This is usually a dysfunctional arrangement for both parties. Their religious beliefs would have made it difficult for either of them to admit to marital problems, even to one another, and it seems that they found, over the years, a modus vivendi.

The trouble was, nobody quite believed in it. In 1909 the royal family’s appointed religious advisor, Father Ioann, died. Rasputin, although unqualified as a priest, effectively took his place. By 1910 he was often mentioned in society, and not in flattering terms.

People assumed he was an adventurer, lining his own nest. He complained that the Tsarina paid him hardly anything, yet expected him to be at her beck and call. He was living in modest circumstances in St Petersburg – in fact, in other people’s apartments – and it seemed that all the Tsarina donated was a few roubles and some hand-embroidered silk shirts. But he had always scorned money, and gave generously what little he had; perhaps nice clothes and important friends mattered more.

However, money was being sent home, so other admirers must have given him some. In Pokrovskoe a comfortable two-storey house was being built, the better to accommodate his lady visitors from the capital. Now that he was nearly forty, and those three of his five children who had lived were growing up, Rasputin may have recognised that soothsaying and healing might as well provide a living.

He made new friends. Among them were Bishop Hermogen of Tobolsk and the notorious Orthodox preacher Iliodor. It was the latter who introduced Rasputin to crowds of new followers and, in gratitude, Rasputin invited Iliodor to Pokrovskoe. There he showed him letters he had received from the Tsarina and her daughters; and there, in 1910, Iliodor stole one or two.

Particularly shocking, after 1910 especially, were persistent stories that Rasputin took his St Petersburg ladies to public bathhouses. He freely admitted to this and explained that the Tsarina knew all about it. ‘I don’t go with one person… but with company’, he told his publisher, Sazonov. 39He insisted that it was good for these women to reduce their pride by accompanying a peasant to a bath-house; pride was a sin. He was notoriously promiscuous. Two years later, watchful Okhrana agents would note Rasputin and Mrs Sazonov visiting a bath-house together.

By the end of 1910 Rasputin’s friends were having second thoughts. Bishop Feofan, Bishop Hermogen and, thanks to them, the entire Synod wanted to keep Rasputin in check. The sly Iliodor already supported them, though he remained friendly with Rasputin. There were articles about Rasputin in the newspapers, none of them flattering to him or the Tsar and Tsarina. The imperial couple had not the wit to understand that public opinion mattered. Stolypin, Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, thought Rasputin was a scoundrel; but Rasputin was like a lightning conductor, deflecting anger from its true target.

In 1909 Rasputin and Stolypin had been briefly on the same side. In a kind of dress rehearsal for 1914, the Orthodox Serbs in the Balkans asked for Russia’s protection from the Austro Hungarians. The Orthodox Synod wanted the Tsar to send troops to defend the Serbs; so did Grand Duke Nikolai and the Montenegrin princesses; so did all the young officers who had been humiliated when Russia lost the war against Japan. Only Stolypin talked sense, and pointed out that Germany would attack if the Tsar tried to defend Serbia, and Russia was unprepared to resist. So Serbia was occupied, and Russia humiliated, but the threat of war was allowed to subside. Not because of Stolypin, or even the elder statesman Count Witte, but because Rasputin had advised the Tsar to keep out of it.

The Tsarina

…was grateful to Rasputin, and happy, for it had turned out that her own wishes were remarkably consistent with the commands of Father Grigori and heaven. 40

This was the key to his influence. Pierre Gilliard, the Tsarevich’s tutor who saw Rasputin often and was part of the imperial household from 1904 onwards, wrote in his memoir:

Cunning and astute as he was, Rasputin never advised in political matters except with the most extreme caution. He always took the greatest care to be very well informed as to what was going on at court and as to the private feelings of the Tsar and his wife. As a rule, therefore, his prophecies only confirmed the secret wishes of the Tsarina. In fact, it was almost impossible to doubt that it was she who inspired the ‘inspired’, but as her desires were interpreted by Rasputin, they seemed in her eyes to have the sanction and authority of a revelation. 41

Stolypin, like everyone else, blamed Rasputin rather than the Tsarina for a whole series of decisions, especially the one that placed a Rasputin loyalist called Sabler at the head of the Synod. He also loathed him for his association with the right-wing Iliodor. And now it came to his notice that Rasputin and Witte were getting quietly friendly, and that Count Witte wanted Stolypin’s job as Prime Minister while he, Stolypin, was losing the Tsar’s support for his reformist policies.

He began making his resentment public. He refused to censor articles appearing in the press condemning Rasputin. In his joint capacity as Minister of the Interior, he had already ordered Okhrana surveillance in order to gather evidence of Rasputin’s behaviour, which he knew to be inappropriate for a person employed as imperial advisor. Rasputin must have been wary of snoopers, because Alexandra found out about the Okhrana operation almost at once and got her husband to put a stop to it. Stolypin was nonetheless able to report to the Tsar about Rasputin’s

…private life, a series of drunken and sometimes scandalous sexual liaisons and recently, dealings with dubious entrepreneurs and backers trying to turn his influence to advantage.

This is an anonymous description of Stolypin’s report from a book about Nicholas II, published in 1917. Its significance is that it places his drunkenness, and alleged venality, as early as 1910 or 1911, while other writers – relying on the testimony of Rasputin’s friends to the Extraordinary Commission of 1917 – say that his corruption and drunkenness developed later. Jaundiced observers were more impatient. One such was Vladimir Nikolaivich Kokovtsov.

I served eleven years in the Central Prison Administration… and saw all the convict prisons, and… among the Siberian vagrants of unknown ancestry, as many Rasputins as you like. Men who, while making the sign of the cross, could take you by the throat and strangle you with the same smile on their faces. 42

Not long after Stolypin’s allegations, Rasputin was advised to make himself scarce for a while, and decided to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

He stayed away for four months, returning in the summer of 1911 and publishing a short memoir of his travels. This was dictated to, and written down by, Lokhtina. Rasputin had learned to read and write by now, but not very well. Lokhtina made his ramblings readable, and captured what was inspiring in them.