To Kill Rasputin: The Life and Death of Grigori Rasputin (Revealing History)

by Cook, Andrew

  The firm in Glasgow was also undergoing great changes at the end of the century. In 1898 his uncle Stephen of Alley and McLellan died, and his son, Stephen’s cousin Stephen Evans Alley (who was only twenty-six), took over his share of the business. McLellan retired in 1903 and Stephen Evans Alley absorbed a rival firm, starting to develop the Sentinel Steam Wagon in Glasgow: it would eventually be used in road vehicles as well as railway locomotives.

  With the new regime came the inevitable family dispute.

  I disagreed with my cousin as to commissions and started my own office in Westminster.

  He also joined the Surrey Imperial Yeomanry, whose ‘A’ Squadron was conveniently close to Victoria Street in Pimlico. The following year, with the Russo-Japanese War in progress, he translated the Japanese sappers’ secret manual (obtained in Russian) into English for the War Office.

  But there were business problems.

  Whilst I was on my own I represented Hodgkinson, Stokers’ tyre lever which I had patented and started pushing, but… the business went wrong and I got into debt. For the time being, I had a partner who helped me and took over my affairs. I went abroad in order to repay my debts.13

  In 1910 he went to Russia for three years to help build the first heavy oil pipeline to the Black Sea. This was the period of the Caspian oil boom; the Nobels and the Rothschilds were backing the Russian endeavour to transport oil out of Baku, then part of the Tsar’s empire. Huge fields lay beneath the Caucasus, and Russian oil transported by Shell already accounted for about a third of the world’s production.

  On the outbreak of war in 1914, having the rare advantage of being truly bilingual, Alley was recruited by the Military Intelligence Department and sent to Petrograd. On a brief period back in London on leave, he attended a Secret Service course in Russell Square where he was ‘taught the art of counter-espionage and many other things’ by former Scotland Yard Superintendent William Melville, by then MI5’s Chief Detective. Back in Petrograd as part of the British Intelligence Mission, he:

  …collected a lot of suitable officers in Russia, all who really could speak the language, and popped them about to keep me informed as to what was happening. Folks at home were apparently not satisfied with the information they were getting and they sent out Sam Hoare.

  At the outbreak of war Sir Samuel Hoare was a Conservative MP. He later recalled that in August 1914 he knew nothing of military matters and had no interest in them:

  Army affairs I had particularly neglected. Never even a territorial… year by year I had sleepily heard the debates on Army Estimates.14

  Although initially commissioned in the (territorial) Norfolk Yeomanry, he had, at the end of 1914, been declared unfit for active service and faced the prospect of being invalided out of the army. During 1915 he was running a recruitment office in Norwich Cattle Market, growing increasing restive and depressed at his misfortune. He therefore sought to pull political strings and find himself a job on ‘one of the remoter fronts where an Englishman might still be required’. In February 1916 a friend at the War Office told him of a possible post in Petrograd. After taking a course of Russian lessons in Norwich, Hoare arranged, through his friends and contacts in government circles, an interview with ‘C’, Captain Mansfield Cumming, the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service:

  I had expected to be put through an examination in the Russian language, and a questionnaire as to what I knew about Russian politics and the Russian army… instead, there were a few conventional words… a searching look and a nod to say that while it was not much of a job, I could have it if I wanted it.15

  The job firstly involved going out to Petrograd to review the working of the British Intelligence Mission there, which was then being run by Major C.J.M. Thornhill, and secondly to assess the effectiveness of the Russian blockade on trade with Germany. After undertaking the usual intelligence course, Hoare left London for Russia in March 1916 and eagerly set about his task. Although his verdict on Thornhill’s stewardship of the Mission was hardly a flattering one, it seems clear that he was completely unprepared for the inevitable consequences that would follow C’s receipt of his report. Not only did C decide to dismiss Thornhill as Head of the Mission, he chose Hoare to succeed him, granting him the rank of temporary lieutenant-colonel in recognition of his new posting.

  Hoare’s appointment clearly created friction within the Intelligence Mission. It would seem that many of the officers under his command not only resented the appointment of a man who was seen as being responsible for the removal of the universally popular Thornhill, but more to the point was perceived as a politician with neither the military nor the intelligence expertise for the job in hand.

  Alley, Thornhill’s second in command, was in many ways the obvious person to step into his shoes, but he was overlooked on this occasion, although he was to remain as deputy to Hoare. Perhaps he was considered rather a loose cannon. He had certainly offended the Ambassador, as a terse note dated 15 March 1915 indicates. It is an explanation, point by point, to a third party of an internal row. (It may well be, in view of the style, that the third party was C in England; it reads like a telegram.) He and a Captain Simpson had been hauled over the coals by Sir George Buchanan one Friday afternoon. ‘We were both rather hurt unsympathetic attitude which however caused us show extra deference. Ambassador requested me bring copy my instructions certain hour Saturday afternoon.’ He goes on:

  d) Saturday I was several hours Russian War Office renewing acquaintance various officers expecting finish in time appointment; but Chief of General Staff suddenly fixed unexpected hour receive myself Major Ferguson clashing Embassy hour. Telephones temporarily out of order sent deferential letter fully explaining asking Ambassador if he would postpone appointment until later hour but leaving barely time ensure punctuality.

  e)Interview Chief of General Staff closely followed by General Leontieff unavoidably kept us until few minutes past our appointment. This was less than 15 minutes appointment. Meanwhile greatest possible speed I fetched my instructions drove to Embassy.

  f) Near Embassy caught sight Ambassador excitedly hailing from pavement. Sprang out and ran towards him. Without waiting to hear any expression of regret, loudly assailed me with great violence action and with imprecation. Starting apologise he cut me short exclaiming he did not care damn what I had to say. Asking what I should do with paper in my hand I obtained no comprehensible reply. Then with further strong language he upbraided me for chucking appointment with Ambassador for Chief of Staff. Then he turned his back on me and walked away.

  If Alley was in any way put out by Hoare’s appointment, he never showed it. In fact, in another sense, the newcomer’s appointment was tantamount to giving him a free rein, because Hoare was not worldly enough to perceive the subtleties of which some of his staff were capable.

  Major Stephen J. Alley MC, as he later became, gets just one mention in Hoare’s account of his year in Petrograd. Sir Samuel and Lady Hoare had a female cook who went berserk in their flat and held up Sir Samuel’s soldier-servant at knifepoint. Hoare was bedridden, at the time, with a fever. (Never a well man, he would live to be seventy-nine.) The Hoares gave the cook notice, but she refused to leave, as under wartime regulations she was entitled to do. They must get rid of her, but could only shudder and discuss legal action until Stephen Alley introduced a visitor: the local Police Commandant. The policeman, who in the nature of his work had grasped the principle of direct action, unceremoniously booted her out of the back door in return for a twenty-rouble note. Local understanding had its uses.

  Alley was a military man, not a socialite, but he understood the Russian ruling class because he had known them since he was born. Bruce Lockhart would probably have said he was ‘incapable of forming a reliable political judgement’, but his upbringing and experience of work in Russia would have helped him to recognise the disaster that Russia’s war effort was fast becoming. Even Hoare, whose local knowledge was so much more superficial, could see the prob
lems of social injustice and failing morale that had been intensifying since the war began. And even Hoare heard the stories of dark forces around the imperial household, misguiding them in the direction of defeat.

  The Tsar and Tsarina believed ‘the people’ were fired with personal loyalty to them – naturally, for were not the Romanovs rulers by divine right? The Tsar believed so, and this self-righteousness was at once his only strength and his greatest weakness. With Western Europe becoming increasingly secular, Russia – and the imperial couple in particular – clung to the medieval religious outlook of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church. Its political expression was feudal. The Tsar, not by nature a tyrant, had been brought up to believe that the vast mass of his subjects were a resource, like his land and rivers and mines, to be used for the benefit of Russia. And as his wife said ‘The Tsar is Russia’.16 The peasants were out there like fish in the sea. If men were lost in war, there were always more men, and in the Tsar’s mind they so loved the monarchy and all it stood for that they would feel honoured to serve.

  He persisted as far as he could in ignoring change. Perhaps change was easy to ignore because it had been so very slow. The serfs had been liberated in the nineteenth century. There had been some land reform. Soldiers and sailors had mutinied after the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, and revolution had threatened to spread; in October of that year the Tsar had been forced to grant Russia a constitution in order to pre-empt it. A constitution meant an elected government, the bi-cameral Duma. That had been instituted over a decade ago. But there was no universal suffrage and ministers were appointed by the Tsar. To a great extent government still operated by petition and dispensation, like a tribal society in which petitioners must queue for days to ask favours of a potentate.

  Rasputin understood the system. He was the arch-fixer, and when, from 1915 onwards, the Tsar was at the Stavka, far from the capital, it was Rasputin, in his stuffy apartment in Gorokhovaya Street, whom people would queue to see, and Rasputin who would listen, and scrawl a note to whoever could give them what they wanted.

  That the Duma had been emasculated, and that the workers were discontented and always striking, that there was a new urban middle class they did not understand at all and that soldiers at the front were deserting in droves, did not shake the imperial couple in their belief that the Tsar knew best. The Tsar’s reaction to constructive criticism was not to listen or even to confront but to shut out challengers; to send them out of the room as would a vexed schoolmaster. Right-wing aristocrats would have had him do a lot worse, but he was temperamentally inclined to avoid confrontation.

  Still worse, he was impressionable. Orders were issued and countermanded, ministers arrived and departed, with disconcerting frequency, as new arguments won him over.

  His most obvious defect was his inability to form his own judgement; it was this trait which made his Generals contemptuous of him.17

  Back in 1905 only Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaivich, the most famous of Tsar Nicholas’s uncles, had been able to persuade him to sign the October Manifesto and grant a constitution. The Grand Duke was older, more belligerent, and a lot taller; he was six feet six, and his physical presence alone carried authority. And the soldiers respected him, so the Tsar had made him Supreme Commander of the Russian Armies at the start of hostilities in August 1914.

  Russia had been bound by treaty to join France and Britain and its old enemy Japan (the Allies) in fighting the expansionist Germans, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and later, the Turks (the Central Powers).18 So the Tsar had had to go to war; a Romanov could not break his word. Unfortunately, Russia was unprepared for war in any respect other than manpower. They began with a massive 102 regular land divisions (each of between 12,000 and 20,000 men), where the British began with six. At the very beginning Grand Duke Nikolai, with 1.6 million men at his disposal, sent several divisions to East Prussia, thus gallantly diverting German forces from France and Belgium. The German army was better supplied and vastly better prepared for war than the Russian rabble, and although Russia probably saved the British and French from an ignominious rout, the Russians were easily outmanoeuvred, and tens of thousands killed. This was the battle of Tannenberg, and a great deal of outmoded but useful matériel was gained from it by the Germans.

  Before the end of 1914 Turkey had joined the Central Powers. So in 1915, besides trying to defend its western borders, Russia had to prevent Turkey from grabbing the oil fields of Azerbaijan or shoving Russia out of the way right across Central Asia and sneaking into British India. (Persia remained nominally neutral, but unfriendly.) At Grand Duke Nikolai’s request, the British and French deflected Turkish aggression by opening the Dardanelles campaign, which failed.

  The Russians were beaten steadily backwards in the west. Morale sank as the German front advanced east along a line approaching Riga in the north, and south to Czernowitz on the border with Romania. Around 750,000 Russians were captured in the summer of 1915 alone. Lines of defence simply crumbled. In Petrograd, Stopford confided to his diary:

  It will indeed be a tragedy if the enemy comes here, with all the factories and powderies and cannonries. At Riga there is sixty million pounds’ worth of timber, and more than double that value here.19

  At Tsarskoye Selo, the Tsar wrung his hands and did nothing. He and his family were self-contained to the point of isolation. From the Tsarina, he received a constant chiding stream of advice, usually presented as the thoughts and insights of their spiritual advisor, Rasputin. Society, liberal and otherwise, was appalled. Rasputin helpfully offered to come to the Stavka to give Grand Duke Nikolai the benefit of his wisdom. He got a telegram by return.

  Do come! I shall hang you.

  It was never a good idea to offend Rasputin. Already the Tsarina could not invite her beloved advisor to the Alexander Palace, because her husband knew that Uncle Nikolai would find out about it and kick up a row; but this was the final straw. On 28 August 1915, Albert Stopford, dining with the usual clutch of Grand Dukes, heard that Nikolai Nikolaivich was likely to be relieved of his command.20 He informed Buchanan on 1 September.

  On 5 September 1915 the news broke decisively: the Tsar in person was to take over as Supreme Commander. Grand Duchess Vladimir, rushing to her palace with this information, was late for dinner. (‘No Romanov is ever late for dinner,’ commented Stopford, appalled.) Forty minutes after her delayed arrival, suppressing his pique and ‘eating my lukewarm potage St-Germain’21 among an assortment of Romanovs, he found them dreadfully despondent. Unlike the Tsar, many of these nobles understood only too well the cost of military mistakes. They had seen the wrecked lives of the poor at first hand and they feared an uprising that might threaten the survival of the monarchy. They were aware of the hostile intelligentsia, whose criticisms they abhorred as inspired by alien ideas. Also, they could feel an icy blast from the German approach in the west, and they did not trust the soldiers, sailors or poorly fed people in the streets to cling to the Allied cause.

  We all expect the Germans here sooner or later. Till Riga falls no one will know whether their objectif is Petrograd or Moscow; if Petrograd, their fleet could co-operate with them. The major part of the artillery and munition factories are here.

  On the other hand… the winter begins in about 6 weeks’ time… If they come here, will there be a revolution? The fear is the people might rise and make peace to stop the German advance, feeling that the Romanovs have had their chance and been found wanting.22

  A separate peace, the British estimated, would release 350,000 German soldiers to fight on the Western Front: it would mean almost inevitable defeat. Refusing to submit to despair, Sir George Buchanan did his best to make the Tsarina reconsider the Tsar’s position.

  I took advantage… of an audience which I had early in September [1915] with the Empress to tell Her Majesty that I shared the apprehensions with which the Emperor’s decision was viewed by the Council of Ministers. Not only, I said, would His Majesty have to bear the whole responsibi
lity for any fresh disaster that might befall his armies, but he would, by combining the duties of Commander-in-Chief with those of an autocratic ruler of a great Empire, be undertaking a task beyond the strength of any single man. The Empress at once protested, saying that the Emperor ought to have assumed the command from the very first and that, now that his army had suffered so severely, his proper place was with his troops. ‘I have no patience,’ she continued, ‘with Ministers who try to prevent him doing his duty. The situation requires firmness. The Emperor, unfortunately, is weak; but I am not, and I intend to be firm.23

  Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaivich was despatched to defend Russia from the Turks in the Caucasus. Tsar Nicholas gritted his teeth and left Tsarskoye Selo to run the war from the Stavka at Moghilev. This, while several hundred miles from any front line, was distant from Petrograd and people said that Rasputin had got the Tsar out of the way in order to better influence policy through the Tsarina. The Tsarina showed Rasputin the maps and plans that her weak little husband had showed her; it was tantamount to treason. In intimate suppers in palaces and restaurants all over the capital and beyond, Grand Dukes and Duchesses began to talk about direct action.