by Cook, Andrew
This gypsy music, in fact, is more intoxicating, more dangerous, than opium, or women, or drink, and although champagne is a necessary adjunct to the enjoyment, there is a plaintiveness in its appeal which to the Slav and Celtic races is almost irresistible. It breaks down all reserves of restraint. It will drive a man to the moneylenders or even to crime… It is very costly. It has been responsible for the bulk of my debts. Yet tomorrow, if I had thousands and the desire to squander them, there is no entertainment in New York, Paris, Berlin or London or indeed, anywhere in the world, which I should choose in preference to a gypsy evening…49
The British diplomat is unconsciously describing a shared passion, for Rasputin, whom he despised, was as much addicted to gypsy music as he was.
As for the deals and favours, Rasputin was in a position to provide plenty of those. Yusupov, who is not to be trusted in these matters, wrote about seeing a chest full of little parcels wrapped in newspaper in the flat on Gorokhovaya Street in 1916.
‘Surely that isn’t all money?’ I asked.
‘Of course it is – nothing but bank-notes; I got ’em today,’ he answered without hesitation.
‘Who gave them to you?’
‘Various kind people. I just fixed up a little affair, and out of gratitude they made a donation to the Church.’50
It is plausible enough. For as long as Rasputin dominated the Tsar and Tsarina, placemen appeared at the head of the Synod, and later in key positions in government, and money certainly changed hands. Bruce Lockhart saw the result:
From time to time… I saw the mark of the beast at Chelnokov’s house, where the Mayor would show me a short typewritten note requesting him to fix up the bearer in a safe and comfortable job in the Cities Union. The note was signed in an illiterate scrawl ‘GR’ – Grigorii Rasputin. The requests were invariably turned down by the sturdy Chelnokov.51
Rasputin was not necessarily directly in contact with the supplicants. He was not interested in money, just in having enough of it to do what he wanted and to help others when he wanted to. From early in 1914 his long-time mistress, Akilina Laptinskaya, who had once been a nurse at Verkhoturye Monastery, acted as his ‘secretary’ and passed on to him the cash inducements provided by those who wanted favours. His friend Filippov, a banker and publisher, testified to the Extraordinary Commission in 1917:
Laptinskaya, being a person of exceptional intelligence and perseverance, was guided exclusively by mercenary considerations; various people made presents to her of specific sums on the occasion of Rasputin’s arrival or for Rasputin. And Rasputin threw her out a couple of times… on suspicion of stealing sums in the thousands.52
There must be a go-between. Rasputin himself had to be careful because there were people watching him; Rodzyanko and most of the Okhrana were out to get some dirt on him and Djhunkovski, Head of Police at the Ministry of the Interior, was quietly employing Okhrana surveillance teams. With a rather different agenda, the Tsar still expected the Okhrana to guard Rasputin round the clock because of numerous threats to his life. One of these almost succeeded.
In 1913, Iliodor, now excommunicated from the Orthodox Church and living under his original name of Sergei Trufanov, concocted a plot. A number of prostitutes were to seduce Rasputin and castrate him. This came to nothing, because Rasputin got wise to it before it happened, but Trufanov did not give up.53 He knew that Rasputin was in Yalta, in the Crimea, advising ‘the tsars’ in the spring of 1914. Everybody knew – people were selling photos of him outside his hotel. Vyrubova visited him constantly (she was staying at the royal household’s summer palace at Livadia) and he boasted to the hotel staff about his hold over the imperial couple. In the end, Rasputin became such a tourist attraction that Nicholas had to send him away. He collected his wife and daughter, who were visiting St Petersburg, and travelled home with them to Pokrovskoe; and Iliodor knew about this, too. One of the women who had been involved in the castration plot was Khiona Gusyeva, ‘a once good-looking exprostitute now seriously disfigured by syphilis’.54 She followed Rasputin to Pokrovskoe.
On 28 June 1914, the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife were shot in Sarajevo, and Rasputin came face to face with Gusyeva, in Pokrovskoe, disguised as a beggar-woman
…who asked him for money. As he put a hand in his pocket she pulled out a knife and stabbed him in the stomach, driving the blade up to the rib cage and wounding him badly. Yet as she pulled the knife back for a second blow Rasputin had strength enough left to hold her off with his stick until an angry crowd grabbed her and allowed the starets to collapse.55
The nearest doctor was a six-hour ride away, but he came as fast as he could, and got Rasputin back over the agonising six-hour journey on bumpy roads to the hospital in Tyumen. Thanks to his sturdy constitution he survived, although he was in hospital until late August 1914. Russia by then had declared war. It is quite likely that the Tsar would have vacillated, or even kept his country out of the war, had Rasputin been around to advise him. As it was Rasputin sent telegrams – indeed, prophecies of doom: he said that if Russia entered the war the autocracy would be finished; there would be untold misery and loss of life. He was right on both counts, but his was an emotional appeal innocent of the counter-arguments: the defence of resources, and the honour of Russia, which would be forfeited if the Tsar broke promises. Grand Duke Nikolai understood these points rather better, and was there in person to present them forcefully. Popular sentiment supported war in any case. At first there was an upsurge of support for the fight and the monarchy. It did not survive Tannenberg.
Back in St Petersburg – renamed Petrograd at the start of hostilities in August 1914 – Rasputin rented a new apartment. Akilina Laptinskaya found the one in Gorokhovaya Street, which was comfortable enough to live in with his daughters and Katya, the maid, and to use for entertaining.
Rasputin drank more after the stabbing. He had sipped Madeira or champagne before. Now he turned to vodka and was visibly drunk during the day, not just after an evening’s carousing. Probably vodka helped dull the pain and the fear of another assassination attempt. He was soon a notorious drunkard. This was particularly scandalous because prohibition was in force, as a wartime measure. For those who could afford it, illicit alcohol simply cost more. Night clubs resorted to serving vodka out of teapots.
Alcohol was an expensive habit, and the Tsarina was still mean with money. Rasputin had long ago become reconciled to Akilina’s acceptance of bribes. Soon he had a friend, Rubinstein the banker, who managed his financial affairs and another friend, Aron Siman-ovich, who acted as secretary, agent and gatekeeper.
All observers agree that Rasputin was able to sober up remarkably quickly if he had to. The years of fasting and self-denial had taught him a rare self-mastery, and now, if he was called unexpectedly to Tsarskoye Selo when in his cups, he was able somehow to control himself and appear steady and coherent.
Although the Tsarina was as dependent on the starets as ever, there was a coolness in Nicholas. Despite all Rasputin’s predictions, cheering crowds had greeted the Emperor when war was declared in 1914, and he loved adulation. Also, he was probably fed up with the endless intriguing of Vyrubova, Alexandra and Rasputin. As tends to happen in these small cliques, there had been an internal cataclysm: Vyrubova and Alexandra had gone off each other, while Rasputin was still friendly with both. Vyrubova was reinstated to best friend status, however, after injuries sustained in a railway accident made Nicholas and Alexandra fly to her side. She was given the last rites, but recovered when Rasputin revived her on her deathbed in the royal presence. This made even Nicholas soften towards him – which was fortunate, because Rasputin was soon to disgrace himself more outrageously than ever before.
The incident took place in Moscow. Bruce Lockhart came across Rasputin on the fateful evening in the first half of 1915:
One summer evening I was at Yar, the most luxurious night-haunt of Moscow, with some English visitors. As we watched the music-hall performance in the main hall, there
was a violent fracas in one of the neighbouring kabinets. Wild shrieks of women, a man’s curses, broken glass and the banging of doors raised a discordant pandemonium. Head-waiters rushed upstairs. The manager sent for the policeman who was always on duty at such establishments. But the row and the roaring continued. There was more coming and going of waiters and policemen, and scratching of heads and holding of councils. The cause of the disturbance was Rasputin – drunk and lecherous, and neither police nor management dared evict him. The policeman telephoned his divisional inspector, the inspector telephoned to the Prefect. The Prefect telephoned to Djhunkovski, who was Assistant Minister of the Interior and head of all the police. Djhunkovski, who was a former general and a man of high character, gave orders that Rasputin, who after all was only an ordinary citizen and not even a priest, should be arrested forthwith. Having disturbed everyone’s enjoyment for two hours, he was led away, snarling vengeance, to the nearest police station. He was released early next morning on instructions from the highest quarters. He left the same day for St Petersburg, and within twenty-four hours Djhunkovski was relieved of his post.56
It was said that Rasputin had hit a woman and exposed himself. The Tsar would not listen to such stories. Not long afterwards, Samarin, a loyal and honest man in charge of Church affairs, was sacked at Rasputin’s behest; murmurs of protest grew louder.
Rasputin was accepted by nearly everyone in Moscow as a complete proof of the Tsar’s incompetence. ‘Down with the autocracy!’ cried the Liberals. But even among the reactionaries there were those who said: ‘If the autocracy is to flourish, give us a good autocrat.’57
In other words, everyone wanted change, but not the changes they were getting. Urged on by his wife and Rasputin, the Tsar took over from Grand Duke Nikolai as Supreme Commander of the Russian Armies, and with Nikolai’s departure, despair grew deeper. More plots seethed around the starets, and anti-Semitism too, because Simanovich (who had, as it happened, been baptised) and Rubinstein were his friends.
From here on in, the Tsarina kept up an endless stream of wifely notes to her husband, which frequently cited ‘Our Friend’ and his opinions. To many others, Rasputin was seen as the evil genius in a triumvirate, the other pillars of which were Vyrubova and the Tsarina. By the time Romania entered the war in August 1916, Rasputin was widely supposed to be running the country.
SIX
ON THE BRINK
With the approach of midsummer in 1916, Sir George Buchanan’s struggle to keep Russia in the war was getting harder. Russia’s infrastructure was as hopelessly underdeveloped as ever and the haemorrhage of men, weaponry and equipment was disastrous. By mid-1916 Russia was calling up her thirteenth million.1 Help had to come from the Allies if Russia were to keep fighting.
Traditionally, finance for Russia’s big projects had been raised in the City of London, but British financiers were in no position to help and money must be got from America, where the British had useful contacts. So, in the first week of June 1916, a few months after his first personal audience with the Tsar (‘I was summoned by an attendant in the livery of an 18th-century courier, wearing a flat hat with a huge bunch of red and yellow ostrich feathers on the left side’), Albert Stopford was cutting a deal. He noted in his diary:
Monday June 5th
To the Embassy, to speak to His Excellency about an American loan offered to Russia by the National City Bank, which had got hung up and seemed more than likely to fall through. Without hesitation he said he would do all he could for it. The Bank representatives who had come from New York wanted him to say a word to Sazonov. The matter was in the hands of Bark, Minister of Finance.
Returned to the hotel to tell the financiers, who asked if I thought the Ambassador would receive them before speaking to Sazonov. I immediately wrote to him and took the letter myself.
Tuesday June 6th
Met the Ambassador on the quay. He stopped me and said he had seen the financiers and agreed with all they said, and had laid the position before Sazonov, who was going that night to Stavka. At the hotel dined on the roof with the Americans, and afterwards went to their apartments to play bridge.2
Sazonov, the Foreign Minister, was tremendously useful to the British, for the Tsar was rarely willing to listen to Allied advice direct; he thought the British were much too pushy. Sir George ‘ventured to suggest’ change in a way that he resented and was forever nagging him to let the Duma make more decisions about which Ministers should be in charge. The French Ambassador was just as bad. Both despaired of the inadequacies of Russia as an ally, and privately recognised that these arose inevitably from a creaking political system which placed so much responsibility on the shoulders of one person – who might, as in this case, prove inadequate to bear it, and who was too stubborn to take their advice, preferring to listen to his wife.
As the war on the Eastern Front went from bad to worse, the British government’s concern about a possible Russian collapse heightened. Such a collapse would be fatal for the Western Front, as the Germans would then be able to direct their full military might in the west instead of fighting a war on two fronts. Britain’s Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, was only too painfully aware of this impending danger, and sought Prime Minister Asquith’s approval for an urgent initiative in the form of a special mission to Russia. Asquith gave his consent and agreed that Kitchener himself was the best man to lead it, for he believed that he was possibly the only British figure the Tsar might listen to. Kitchener, more than most, had always taken a particular interest in Russian affairs, and as a consequence had long foreseen the upshot of a Russian collapse. He was convinced that the fate of Russia was of overriding importance to Britain’s interests, and had spoken in Cabinet on several occasions during the spring of 1916 warning of the forces within Russia trying to bring about an armistice with Germany and consequently a separate peace treaty. Furthermore, Kitchener’s stock in Russian military circles was high and his opinions and reputation carried much weight with the Tsar personally.
As a result of secret diplomatic overtures, the Tsar indicated that he would welcome a delegation led by Kitchener. A secret invitation formally inviting Kitchener to visit Russia and meet with Nicholas was therefore sent in early May 1916. While the supply of munitions was high on Kitchener’s agenda, he particularly wished to impress on the Tsar the destructive effect Rasputin’s influence was having on Anglo-Russian relations and to urge the appointment of a genuinely national government that would draw together Russia’s most able and effective politicians. In light of the fact that the supply of munitions would be one of the mission’s major priorities, Asquith envisaged Lloyd George accompanying Kitchener. However, after the restoration of order in Dublin following the Easter Rising the previous month, the Prime Minister
went over to Dublin to examine the situation on the spot. Martial law was still in force, and the three principal officers of the crown – the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Wimbourne, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Mr Birrell, and his Under-Secretary, Sir Matthew Nathan – had all resigned their posts.3
Lloyd George recalled that on his return
Mr Asquith approached me with the suggestion that I should take up the task of trying to negotiate a settlement with the Irish revolutionary leaders. The request came at an awkward moment… Lord Kitchener was to proceed to Russia via Archangel to consult with the military authorities there about closer co-operation in the field, and it had been arranged that I should go with him to find out for myself the truth about the appalling shortage of equipment of which we had heard, and see in what way the Ministry of Munitions could best help remedy it. These were the matters in which I was for the moment far more closely interested than I was in the pitiable and rather squalid tragedy which had overtaken our lack of policy in Ireland. But my plans were upset by Mr Asquith’s proposal.4
In fact, Asquith wrote a personal, handwritten letter to Lloyd George on 10 Downing Street notepaper on 22 May:
SECRET
My
dear Lloyd George,
I hope you may see your way clear to take up Ireland; at any rate for a short time. It is a unique opportunity and there is no one else who could do so much to bring a permanent solution.
Yours very sincerely
H.H. Asquith5
Although Lloyd George felt he could not refuse the Prime Minister’s request, he obeyed him with some reluctance. In fact, this decision saved his life, for on 5 June HMS Hampshire, which was taking Kitchener and his mission to Russia, was sunk by a German mine off the Orkney Islands. Kitchener and most of the crew drowned (only twelve of some 200 crew survived). A month later, On 6 July, after some deliberation, Asquith appointed Lloyd George Secretary of State for War, a post that in wartime was second only to that of Prime Minister.
While Lloyd George and Kitchener certainly had very different views about the virtues of the Russian imperial system, they were at one on the issue of Rasputin. When Lloyd George took over the War Office, he urged on the Prime Minister the formation of another British mission to Russia, but for months nothing happened. Without a solid Allied-approved agenda for his conduct of the war, the Tsar would not be able to get finance from America or Britain, and would ultimately have to seek peace with Germany.
