Catherine Radziwill - Rasputin and the Russian Revolution

“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.