Andrew Cook - To Kill Rasputin

In the autumn he went to Kiev, where the Tsar and Tsarina were to attend the opening of a new regional Duma. Stolypin would be there too, because it was thanks to his reforming zeal that regional government had at last arrived.

It is apparent from the evidence of an extreme right-wing politician called Khvostov (a fierce opponent of the progressive Stolypin) that Rasputin had something to do with Stolypin’s assassination at Kiev. Ten days before the Kiev ceremonies, Rasputin travelled to Nizhni Novgorod to pay Khvostov an unexpected visit. Khvostov had never met him before, and when Rasputin offered him Stolypin’s job as Minister of the Interior he thought the man was mad. He pointed out that the position was already occupied. Ah, said Rasputin, but all the same, Stolypin would be leaving. Khvostov made some facetious remark and saw him off the premises.

…he departed angry. I didn’t invite him to dine and refused to introduce him to my family, even though he asked me to do so. 43

Ten days later, Stolypin was shot at the Kiev Opera. The assassin had warned the local Okhrana of the time and place of the shooting the night before, but they still let him into the Opera House, complete with revolver.

From the first, Rasputin was named in connection with the assassination. It was all too much for Bishop Hermogen and even Iliodor. On 16 December 1911 (a date that would prove fatal five years later) they tricked Rasputin into visiting the Yaroslav Monastery. There, in front of a kind of clerical kangaroo court, he was tried, found guilty and badly beaten up by the assembled holy men before being threatened at sabre-point, bashed over the head with a crucifix and sent packing.

Hermogen did not stop there, but publicly insisted to the Synod that Rasputin was a Khlyst and privately accused him of adultery with the Tsarina. This could not be allowed to go on, and both Hermogen and Iliodor were sent into exile. Defiantly, they refused to disappear, but holed up in St Petersburg, releasing snippets of scandal to the papers. Even now, Iliodor hung onto his secret weapon: the stolen letters. Meanwhile, the Minister of the Interior who replaced Stolypin was Makarov – and in January 1912 he ordered another Okhrana surveillance. He intended to bide his time and say nothing about what he discovered unless it should ever prove useful to do so. The Tsar agreed to Rasputin’s being watched for purposes of protection; and later events would show that he did indeed need protecting.

Now, in 1912, the Okhrana agents watched Rasputin’s comings and goings, his daily visits to the bath-house with prostitutes and followers, and his visits to the Golovinas’ house on the Moika (Mounya Golovina had been among the faithful since 1908). In her own drawing room Mounya had introduced Yusupov to Rasputin in 1909, before the young playboy left for Oxford. The current Rasputinists gathered there: Zinaida Manshtedt – a lover of his, if the sworn statement of the Tsar’s children’s nurse can be believed – and Lili Dehn, a well-known actress and close friend of the Tsarina. On most days he also saw Akilina Laptinskaya, a nurse he had been close to for years; she had worked at the Verkhoturye Monastery around 1903.

Rasputin would spend all day with one or several of these women, running around the city by cab or carriage, and when left alone, would find a prostitute and take her to a bath-house or, very occasionally, to a room somewhere. These episodes, if challenged, were explained away by his assertion that he must tempt himself, and resist, in order to score points towards his own redemption. If he had intercourse with them, and several women later testified that (with or without consent) he did, no resulting pregnancy was ever revealed.

Sometimes he saw Badmaëv. Badmaëv was a well-connected Asiatic from the Far Eastern steppe who manufactured and peddled herbal remedies to the great and good. He had been a protégé of Alexander III, the Tsar’s father. Mostly, his herbal remedies were prescribed as aids to potency, but he also sold happy pills: concoctions, maybe opiate-based, that made people calm, dreamy and dull-witted. Badmaëv was a friend of Rasputin’s, but was also close to Hermogen and other clerics. He cultivated Rasputin in the vain hope of one day being appointed Supplier of Herbal Cures to the Tsarevich. The connection never worked.

Hermogen and Iliodor were still wanted men, but Makarov knew the stolen letters existed and were Iliodor’s weapon for blackmailing the Tsar. He ordered an Okhrana search and they were found. They appeared to be (and were later confirmed by Alexandra as) perfectly genuine:

My much-loved, never to be forgotten teacher, saviour and instructor. I am so wretched without you. My soul is only rested and at ease when you, my teacher, are near me. I kiss your hands and lay my head upon your blessed shoulders. I feel so joyful then. Then all I want is to sleep, sleep for ever on your shoulder, in your embrace. It is such happiness to feel your presence close to me. Where are you, where have you run off to?… Come back soon. I await you and yearn for you. I ask you for your holy blessing and kiss your blessed hands. Your eternally loving Mama. 44

Like others before him, Makarov thought the Tsar would be appalled when he read this and would order Rasputin away from the court. Not a bit of it. Rasputin did leave St Petersburg for a while, but only because his presence was embarrassing; the Tsar was not at all angry (except with the unfortunate Makarov). A contemporary confided to her diary in despair:

The tsar has lost all respect and the tsarina declares that it is only thanks to Rasputin’s prayers that the tsar and their son are alive and well; and this is the twentieth century! 45

Nicholas was suspicious of the Duma. He had been gracious enough to permit its existence, but now it stood between him and ‘the people’. It loomed in the tall, fat form of the Speaker of the Duma, Rodzyanko. Behind him lurked all sorts of liberals. Guchkev was particularly odious, for he despised Rasputin. Nicholas told Rodzyanko and the Duma to mind their own business. His family’s relationship with Rasputin was a purely private affair. He was deeply offended; these people appeared to be challenging autocracy itself.

Within twelve months Rasputin was back in St Petersburg with his position consolidated, because he had effected an apparently miraculous cure.

Over the years, the Tsar and Tsarina had come to rely on him to relieve their son’s illness. He had always managed to do it. He talked to the boy, and prayed with him, sat with him and was generally so comforting that it has been suggested his tranquil presence could have encouraged the release of agents into the child’s body that constricted the blood vessels and staunched internal bleeding. In 1912, also, a cure took place that cannot be conclusively explained by science, since Rasputin was 1,000 miles from his patient when it happened. The royal family had spent most of the summer in the Crimea and now, as autumn began, were at their hunting lodge in Poland when the Tsarevich had a minor accident. Any other child would have had a nasty bruise. Surgeons rushed in from St Petersburg but had to give up; a great tumour had formed in his groin, threatening blood poisoning, but they dared not operate, for he would almost certainly bleed to death.

Rasputin had been in Pokrovskoe all summer. Djhunkovski, Head of the Okhrana, had been quietly keeping an eye on him. Rasputin got a telegram. He prayed. He prayed so intensely that his face was ‘grey and streaked with sweat’. 46He sent a telegram back: the doctors must not be allowed to tire the boy, who would recover.

Indeed he did. Nobody could explain it, but he did. After this, the Tsarina would never allow Rasputin to stay away so long. Soon he was back in St Petersburg, and more secure than before. He brought his two elder daughters to the city to be educated. There was not much money left over, because the Tsarina seemed unaware that he and his family needed money to live, but he rented his own apartment not far from the smart English Quay. He drank a little wine, only rarely too much. He still restrained himself in the matter of food, eating only vegetables and fish and avoiding sugar. Akilina Laptinskaya and young Katya Petyorkina kept house for him.