The Romanovs
Page 81
* The War Industries Committee had long lobbied for the wider distribution of war contracts. The elected provincial and district assemblies joined in, forming a volunteer Zemstvo Union led by a liberal aristocrat Prince Georgi Lvov that aimed to provide hospital services and involve private enterprise in war industry. It was popularly believed that these organizations saved the war effort – but this was a myth. It was actually the government that turned around war production.
* A popular military dictator was no panacea. The evidence of Germany, where the kaiser and his civilian chancellor did hand over to military dictators Hindenburg and Ludendorff in 1916, shows that there is no guarantee this would have worked: they led the country to defeat and revolution. Nor would the Duma have proved any more competent: when the parliamentarians did form a government in 1917 under Prince Lvov, it was a poorly managed disaster. In Britain and France, however, in 1916 and 1917, Lloyd George and Clemenceau did provide fresh leadership. It is worth remembering, too, that in the different circumstances of the early defeats of the Nazi invasion of June 1941, Stalin, after a personal crisis, also assumed the post of supreme commander, a decision that could have been catastrophic but ultimately allowed him to claim credit for victory.
* Anna wrote romantic notes to the emperor. ‘I’m sending you a very fat letter from The Cow,’ wrote Alix on 6 October, 1915, ‘the lovesick creature couldn’t wait any longer, she must pour out her love otherwise she bursts.’ Anna called the emperor her ‘Lovebird’ – much to Alexandra’s exasperation. As for her enemies, she was unforgiving. When Montenegro faced annihilation: ‘well now the king, sons and Black daughters here who wished so madly for this war are paying for their sins towards you and God as they went against Our Friend. God avenges himself,’ she wrote to Nicky on 5 January 1916. ‘Only I am sorry for the people.’
* Rasputin ran through the candidates for the job with witty fatalism: ‘Shcheglovitov wants it but he’s a rogue; Kryshanovsky’s pushing me to have dinner – but he’s a swindler. And Beletsky wants it. If I haven’t been murdered yet he’ll be the one to do it for sure.’
† This allowed Sazonov to negotiate the Sykes–Picot–Sazonov treaty in Petrograd that May, carving up the Near East, granting Palestine and Iraq to Britain, and Syria and Lebanon to France. Russia was promised not just swathes of eastern Anatolia, Armenia and Kurdistan but also, in an embarrassment of Holy Cities, a share in an internationalized Jerusalem and Constantinople.
* He was taking cocaine for his colds, a usual prescription in those days, but it was said he was also taking an elixir of henbane and hashish in tea to calm his nerves, prescribed by the Buriat healer Badmaev, but these may have only increased his apathy. Badmaev, Yusupov reflected, had ‘such herbs that act gradually and reduce a man to complete cretinism’. As for Alexandra, she was now ‘saturated’ with Dr Botkin’s Veronal and other opiates, which he was too weak to refuse her. She may have been addicted but, in any case, her regular use of barbiturates, opium, cocaine and morphia can only have exacerbated her hysteria.
* Boris, decadent son of Uncle Vladimir and Miechen, asked to marry Olga, eighteen years his junior. Alix was horrified by this ‘well-used half-worn-out blasé young man’. But there was another candidate: the Brusilov offensive had persuaded Romania to enter the war on the Allied side and Olga’s marriage to Prince Carol was again seriously considered. Missy, now Romanian queen, wrote to Nicky to negotiate vast territorial gains, to which the tsar replied in English, ‘I must frankly own we were deeply amazed by your country’s enormous demands’, but if Romania joined the war, Russia would sign a treaty immediately. But the Romanians proved a military liability. The Germans took Bucharest. Missy wrote to Nicky begging for help. Meanwhile the tsar’s sister Olga, unhappily married to Peter of Oldenburg, had long ago found love with Guards officer Nikolai Kulikovsky. Now she demanded permission to divorce and marry Kulikovsky, which provoked a rant from Alexandra: ‘What would your father have said?’ The tsar approved the marriage.
* One of those who cooked for Rasputin during the Great War was a chef at Petrograd’s luxurious Astoria Hotel who went on, after the Revolution, to cook for Lenin and Stalin. He was Spiridon Putin, grandfather of President Vladimir Putin.
SCENE 6
Emperor Michael II
CAST
NICHOLAS II, emperor 1894–1917, ‘Nicky’
Alexandra Fyodorovna (née Princess Alix of Hesse), empress, ‘Alix’, ‘Sunny’
Olga, their eldest daughter
Tatiana, their second daughter
Maria, their third daughter
Anastasia, their youngest daughter
Alexei, caesarevich, tsarevich, their son, ‘Tiny’, ‘Baby’
THE ROMANOVS
Maria Fyodorovna, dowager empress, widow of Alexander III, ‘Minny’
MICHAEL II, emperor 1917 (for one day), inspector-general of cavalry, ‘Misha’, ‘Floppy’, married Natasha, Countess Brassova
Miechen, widow of Uncle Vladimir
Ella, widow of Uncle Sergei, sister of the tsarina, abbess
Uncle Paul, ‘Pitz’, married Olga Pistolkors, Princess Paley
Dmitri Pavlovich, son of Uncle Paul, murderer of Rasputin, friend of Yusupov
Nikolai Nikolaievich, viceroy of Caucasus, ‘Nikolasha the Terrible’, married Stana, daughter of King Nikola of Montenegro, one of the ‘Black Women’, ‘the Crows’
Nikolai Mikhailovich, ‘Bimbo’
Alexander Mikhailovich, his brother, ‘Sandro’, married the tsar’s sister Xenia
Prince Felix Yusupov, married Irina, daughter of Sandro and Xenia, murderer of Rasputin
Marie, queen of Romania, married to King Ferdinand, Nicky’s first cousin, ‘Missy’
COURTIERS: ministers etc.
Count Vladimir Frederiks, court minister
Anatoly Mordvinov, aide-de-camp to Nicholas II
Anna Vyrubova (née Taneeva), Alexandra’s friend, ‘Ania’ ‘Lovesick Creature’, ‘Cow’
General Mikhail Alexeev, chief of staff
Alexander Trepov, prime minister
Alexander Protopopov, last interior minister
Prince Nikolai Golitsyn, last prime minister of imperial Russia
Mikhail Rodzianko, president of the Duma, ‘Fatso’
General Sergei Khabalov, military governor of Petrograd
General Nikolai Ruzsky, commander of the northern front
Vladimir Purishkevich, member of Duma, murderer of Rasputin
Prince Georgi Lvov, prime minister of the Provisional Government
Alexander Kerensky, member of Soviet Duma, justice minister in the Provisional Government, later prime minister
Alexander Guchkov, member of Duma, war minister in Provisional Government
THE HIEROPHANT
Grigory Rasputin, Siberian holy man, ‘Our Friend’
Romanovs, generals and parliamentarians* were all simultaneously hatching plots against the sovereign. On 7 November 1916, Nikolasha, wearing a Caucasian cherkeska coat, arrived at Stavka and told the tsar, ‘It would be more pleasant if you swore at me, chased me out of here rather than say nothing. Don’t you see you will lose your crown? Install a responsible ministry.’ Then he said, ‘Aren’t you ashamed to have believed that I wanted to overthrow you?’ When he pointed to Alexei and said, ‘Take pity on him,’ the tsar kissed him.
Then Bimbo arrived and gave the tsar two letters, directly attacking Alexandra, Rasputin and their government. Nicholas sent them on to the tsarina. Incoherent with rage, she was ‘utterly disgusted’, she wrote on 4 November. ‘Had you stopped him . . . and told him if he only once touched on that subject or me, you will send him to Siberia as it becomes next to high treason. He’s always hated me since 22 years . . . He’s the incarnation of all that’s evil . . . grandson of a Jew!’ It is hard to disagree with Missy who reflected that Alexandra ‘allowed hatred to enter her heart . . . behaving like tyrants of old.’ But Nikolasha and Bimbo failed to dislodge Alexandra. There wou
ld have to be a harsher solution. Princess Zinaida Yusupova, ‘whose tall slim figure, blue eyes, olive complexion and dark hair made her the most beautiful woman at court’, criticized Rasputin to Alexandra, who threw her out: ‘I hope I never see you again.’1 Yusupova and her son Felix agreed that Rasputin had to die.
Prince Felix Yusupov had sought out Rasputin in 1909, when he was just twenty-two and back from Oxford. Rasputin was taken with the effete aristocrat, who consulted him about his own sexual ambiguity. Rasputin tried to seduce him. Yusopov was repelled. He thought that the starets possessed ‘a power you find only once in a hundred years’ and concluded that only death could stop him.
By the winter of 1916, there was probably scarcely a salon or club in Petrograd that did not resound with such intrigues. ‘All classes speak’ as if Rasputin’s murder would be ‘better than the greatest Russian victory in the field’, reported Lt-Colonel Samuel Hoare, head of the British secret service in Petrograd.
The prince decided to recruit from the dynasty, from the Duma and from among Russia’s allies. On 19 November he attended a Duma debate and saw Vladimir Purishkevich, a thuggish demogogue from Bessarabia, call for action against ‘Dark Forces’. Purishkevich joined the conspiracy along with his sidekick, Dr Stanislas Lazovert, a doctor on his medical train.
Its other leader was the debonair Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, who ‘made no secret of the fact that [the idea of] killing Rasputin had haunted him for months’. They agreed on murder, ‘true monarchists for the salvation of the monarchy’. Dmitri’s involvement was useful because, as a grand duke, he was above the law. Only the tsar could punish him. ‘If it hadn’t been for my presence,’ Dmitri later told Yusupov, ‘you would probably have been hanged.’*
Yusupov consulted the British, who were determined to keep Russia in the war. Rasputin had always opposed the war and he possessed an influence that could conceivably accelerate revolution and a separate peace. Hoare was informed of the plot by Purishkevich. But he probably already knew, since three young men on his staff, Stephen Alley, John Scale and Oswald Rayner, were close to Yusupov. Rayner had known him at Oxford. The embassy chauffeur drove Rayner to the Yusupov Palace six times between late October and mid-November, usually accompanied by Scale. The extent of British involvement may never be known, but a letter from Captain Alley to Scale, written nine days after Rasputin’s killing, suggests that the British may have been party to the ‘plan’ – ‘our object’ being the ‘demise of Dark Forces’.
On 20 November, Yusupov met Rasputin and asked for help with his health. When Yusupov arrived at Rasputin’s apartment, he found himself mesmerized by ‘his enormous hypnotic power. I grew numb; my body seemed paralysed. Rasputin’s eyes shone with phosphorescent light.’
Yusupov wavered.
*
The emperor was back at Tsarskoe Selo. On 2 December 1916, ‘We spent the evening at Anna’s talking to Grigory.’ When the tsar asked for Rasputin’s blessing, the starets replied, ‘This time, it’s for you to bless me,’ he answered, ‘not I you.’
The next day, Ella visited her sister and Nicky and ‘pointed out that Rasputin was leading the dynasty to disaster. They replied Rasputin was a great man of prayer and asked me not to touch on the question.’
‘Perhaps it would have been better if I hadn’t come,’ said Ella.
‘Yes,’ said Alexandra.
‘She drove me away like a dog,’ Ella reported to her friend Zinaida Yusupova, who, ‘suffocating with hatred, could not take it any longer’. Both women, one a nun and future saint, sanctioned the killing: ‘peaceful means’ Zinaida told her son, ‘won’t change anything’.
Yusupov chose the next evening when Dmitri would be in Petrograd, and invited Rasputin to meet his wife, Irina, the tsar’s niece – at midnight on 16 December.2
On 4 December, as the emperor and Alexei returned to Stavka, Alexandra rejoiced, ‘I am fully convinced that great and beautiful times are coming.’ She asked proudly, ‘Why do people hate me? Because they know I have a strong will and when I am convinced of a thing being right (when besides blessed by Grigory) don’t change my mind and that they can’t bear.’
‘You are so staunch and enduring – I admire you more than I can say,’ Nicholas wrote from the train. He too was convinced: ‘The great hardship is over.’
As Yusupov prepared to kill Rasputin, the starets was seeing the empress to advise against Prime Minister Trepov’s plan for a responsible government. ‘My angel, we dined at Ann’s with our Friend,’ she reported on 13 December. ‘He entreats you to be firm, to be the Master and not always to give in to Trepov . . . Be firm . . . Russia loves to feel the whip – it’s their nature – tender love and then the iron hand.’ The next day, she delivered a Lady Macbeth rant: ‘Be Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Emperor Paul – crush them all under you – now don’t laugh, naughty one.’
‘Loving thanks for your strong reprimanding letter,’ replied Nicky on 14 December. ‘I read it with a smile because you speak like to a child.’ As for his prime minister, ‘It’s a rotten business to have a man whom one dislikes and distrusts like Trepov.’ But the emperor had a sly plan: ‘First of all one must choose a new successor and kick him out after he has done the dirty business – shut up the Duma. Let all the responsibility fall on his shoulders.’ He signed off, ‘Your little huzy with no will.’
On 16 December, the day set for Rasputin’s murder, the tsar lunched at Stavka with ‘lots of foreigners’ and in the evening presided over the daily briefing. In Petrograd, his daughter Olga attended a charity committee at the Winter Palace, but now even the friendliest committee members ‘avoided her eyes and never once smiled’, reported Alexandra. ‘You see our girlies have learned to watch people and their faces – they have developed much interiorly through all this suffering . . . They are happily at times great ladies but have the insight of much wiser beings. As our Friend says they have passed heavy schooling.’ The girls and Rasputin were ‘full of Petrograd horrors and rage that nobody defends me’.
In the mauve boudoir, the empress craved vengeance after the war: ‘Many will be struck off future court lists, they shall learn . . . what it was in time of war not to stand up for one’s Sovereign.’ And she was furious with gaga Count Frederiks: ‘why have we got a ramolic [weak] rag as Court Minister? Only my Nicky ought to really to stick up a bit for me . . .’
In the afternoon, while Yusupov and two servants arranged a basement storeroom at the Yusupov Palace, the empress sent Anna Vyrubova to see Our Friend at his apartment. He boasted that he was off to see Irina Yusupova at midnight, an hour chosen so that Felix’s parents would not learn about his visit from the servants. As Anna left he asked, ‘What more do you want? Already you’ve received all?’
A little later, at 8 p.m., Interior Minister Protopopov called at Rasputin’s place to warn him: ‘They’ll kill you. Your enemies are bent on mischief.’ The syphilitic minister ‘made me promise not to go out for the next few days’, Rasputin later told Yusupov.
Anna rushed to report all this to Alexandra. ‘But Irina is in the Crimea and neither of the older Yusupovs are in town,’ said Alix. ‘There must be some mistake.’
At the Yusupov Palace, the conspirators, supervised by Dr Lazovert, sprinkled cyanide on to cream cakes and into wine. Dressing in uniform, Yusopov climbed into a limousine driven by Lazovert disguised as a chauffeur and headed for Rasputin’s.
At 11 p.m., Rasputin washed with unusual thoroughness and, watched by his anxious daughters Maria and Varvara, dressed in a light-blue silk shirt embroidered with cornflowers, a corded belt, dark-blue velvet trousers and leather boots, sporting a gold chain with a cross and a bracelet engraved with the Romanov double-headed eagle. His fretting daughters hid his galoshes to stop him going out but just after midnight, when the police guards had gone off duty, Yusupov rang the back-entrance bell. Joking that his daughters ‘don’t want me to go out’ and that Protopopov had warned of danger, Rasputin said, ‘Come on, let’s go
,’ and, as Yusupov helped him don his fur coat, they set off into the night. ‘A feeling of great pity for the man’, recorded Yusupov, ‘swept over me.’
As Dmitri, Purishkevich and the others waited nervously upstairs, Yusupov led Rasputin into a vaulted basement decorated with a dining table, arranged to look as if a party had recently taken place. The gramophone played ‘Yankee Doodle’. Rasputin waited for Irina to turn up – and ate the poisoned cakes. But he did not collapse, instead asking Yusupov to sing songs on his guitar. After two hours, Yusupov retired to consult the other conspirators, who agreed that Rasputin would have to be shot. Yusupov returned with Dmitri’s Browning pistol.
‘My head is heaving and I’ve a burning sensation in my stomach,’ complained Rasputin. ‘Give me another glass of wine.’ Rasputin suggested visiting the Gypsies and admired a crystal crucifix on an exquisite ebony cabinet.
‘Grigory Efimovich,’ said Yusupov, ‘you had best look at that crucifix and say a prayer.’ Drawing the Browning from behind his back, he shot Rasputin in the chest. Rasputin screamed. The bullet, passing through his stomach and liver and out of his back, was not instantly fatal, found the pathologist, but would probably have killed him within twenty minutes. As he collapsed ‘like a broken doll’, the conspirators burst in and looked down at the body with blood spreading across its blouse. Yusupov sent two of the conspirators, one dressed as his chauffeur, the other as ‘Rasputin’, to pretend to take the starets home. Nervously checking on his victim in the now silent palace, Yusupov claimed he shook the body which suddenly stirred. One ‘greenish and snake-like’ eye opened. Then the other. Foaming at the mouth, snarling furiously and oozing blood, Rasputin sprang up and seized Yusupov, ripping off an epaulette in ‘the ferocious struggle . . . this devil who was dying of poison, who had a bullet in his heart, must have been raised from the dead by the powers of evil. There was something appalling in his diabolical refusal to die.’ Rasputin collapsed again, then struggled to his feet as the prince ran screaming upstairs, ‘Purishkevich, shoot, shoot, he’s alive! He’s getting away!’ Rasputin staggered out into the snowy courtyard, roaring ‘Felix! Felix! I’ll tell the tsarina everything!’