The Rasputin File (35 page)

A festive prayer service began in Kazan Cathedral. And those invited, the leading people of the empire, saw the hated peasant inside the cathedral. It would have been impossible not to: he stood among the most distinguished guests.

The File, from the testimony of Yatskevich, director of the chancery of the chief procurator of the Synod: ‘During the service…I saw a peasant next to the senators. I was told it was Rasputin.’

The peasant was striking for the magnificence of his ‘national dress’. ‘He was luxuriously clad in a dark raspberry silk peasant shirt, high patent-leather boots, wide black trousers, and a black peasant’s coat,’ recalled Rodzyanko, who had been astonished to observe Rasputin standing in front
of the members of the State Duma. And the Speaker of the Duma was seething. The huge, corpulent Rodzyanko strode over to Rasputin and ordered him to leave the cathedral at once. ‘If you do not leave, I shall order the ushers to carry you out,’ he recalled having said. And the peasant was afraid of a scandal. And he moved toward the doorway, saying, ‘O Lord! Forgive him his sin.’ Rodzyanko triumphantly escorted him to the doorway of the cathedral, where a Cossack gave Rasputin his fur coat and put him in a car. It is not difficult to imagine what Alix felt when she learned that Rasputin had been ejected from the cathedral, a place to which he had been summoned by the House of Romanov.

And then, in May, the centre of celebrations shifted to Kostroma, where three hundred years before the young boyar Mikhail Romanov had lived at the Ipatiev Monastery. And from which he had been called to take his place as tsar. It was to the Ipatiev Monastery (where the dynasty began) that the royal family went, a mere four years before their arrival at the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg (where the dynasty ended). The day before, an aide told Dzhunkovsky, who had come on ahead, that Rasputin was in town. And that he had been asking for a ticket to the Kostroma ceremonies. Dzhunkovsky happily ordered the aide to turn him down.

On 19 May crowds of people lined the banks of the Volga, and to a thunderous salute of cannon, the ringing of church bells and chants of ‘God save the tsar’, the royal flotilla docked at a special royal landing place near the Ipatiev Monastery.

From the landing, the royal family proceeded to the ancient Cathedral of the Assumption. And Dzhunkovsky entered the cathedral after them. What was Dzhunkovsky’s astonishment when next to the cathedral altar he saw … Rasputin, who, as it turned out, ‘had been escorted there … at the empress’s orders’.

Dzhunkovsky had occasion to be amazed the next day, too, when in Kostroma the foundation of a monument to the Romanov dynasty was to be laid.

The colourful gold and pink brocade of the choristers, the ancient vestments of the clergy, the military tunics, the swallow-tailed coats, the sovereign in the uniform of his own Erivan regiment, which had been founded by the first Romanov, the tunics of the grand dukes. And nearby the same Rasputin in a silk peasant shirt and wide pants. Before the laying of the monument, a prayer service had been conducted in the cathedral. And the peasant had been present for that, too!

Here it was Yatskevich who was indignant. ‘During the Kostroma ceremonies on the day the monument was to be laid, Rasputin followed close
behind the royal family as it came out of the cathedral, and I was once more astonished and indignant that Rasputin had been let into the cathedral, where the only others present were the royal family and Chief Procurator Sabler!’

And then, a few days later, the celebrations passed to Moscow, the ancient capital. And again there were lines of troops and a sea of people and a ringing of bells. The sovereign on a horse with a golden coat escorted by the grand dukes also on horseback, the empress and the heir in a calash, the grand duchesses in barouches, and Ella and the tsar’s daughters in another barouche.

From Xenia’s diary for 24 May 1913: ‘Everything went splendidly, thank God. At the [Kremlin’s main] Spassky Gate all dismounted and filed in a procession of the cross into the Cathedral of the Archangel.’ Nicky lit an icon lamp over the tomb of Mikhail Fyodorovich, and that lamp, fashioned of gold, in the shape of the hat of the twelfth-century Kievan prince Vladimir Monomakh, the ancient crown of the Muscovite tsars, burned over the tomb of the first Romanov. ‘Rasputin stood by the entrance, and everyone saw him but me … There was such displeasure and protest among the clergymen,’ Xenia wrote in her diary.

‘All that left its residue in me,’ Dzhunkovsky recalled. He did not realize that he had blundered badly. Alix now no longer trusted Dzhunkovsky and was afraid of his agents. And on 12 June 1913, Maklakov, the new minister of internal affairs, gave the order ‘to suspend the surveillance of Rasputin and to recall the agents now located in the province of Tobolsk’. The police were forbidden to follow him.

For a short time the peasant was without his regular chroniclers.

The ‘Moscow Clique’

Elizaveta Fyodorovna was not misled by the popular rejoicing of those days of celebration. She knew that the dynasty had been dealt a terrible blow by the disgrace of the Russo-Japanese War and the revolution of 1905–7. And what a danger was now therefore presented by the unknown peasant, about whose debauchery all the papers were trumpeting.

From the testimony of Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fyodorovna before the Extraordinary Commission: ‘When rumours started to reach me that Rasputin was conducting himself in his private life in a way that was quite different from his conduct at the imperial palace, I warned my sister about
it. But she did not believe the rumours and considered them slander of the kind that always haunts people devoted to holy life.’

The circle of Rasputin’s enemies that had gathered around Ella — the ‘Moscow clique’, as Alix called it — became ever more active. And Zinaida Yusupova, now one of the circle’s most intransigent members, at that time started to visit her Moscow palaces more often. Ella was a frequent guest at Arkhangelskoe, the renowned Yusupov estate near Moscow, which yielded nothing in luxury to the Romanov palaces. ‘To see the two of them together is satisfaction itself. They are both so impossibly fine,’ recollected the journalist D. Reginin.

‘The grand duchess [Elizaveta Fyodorovna] will be staying with us at Arkhangelskoe,’ Zinaida more than once wrote to her son Felix in the summer of 1912.

The alliance with Ella suited Zinaida very well in the period immediately following the jubilee celebrations. For it was then, just as Zinaida’s long pre-nuptial negotiations with Irina’s parents — Sandro and the tsar’s sister Xenia — were at last drawing to a close, that Grand Duke Dmitry obtruded himself.

The Battle Of The Princes

Dmitry, on learning about the wedding preparations, had suddenly fallen in love with Irina! In love with the future bride of Felix, his closest friend, whom he idolized! And for the sake of whom he had ruined his own marriage to the daughter of the tsar. And he had not just fallen in love with Irina. He wanted to marry her himself.

It was hard for Petersburg to believe that story. According to the actress Vera Leonidovna Yureneva, things looked much more complicated to society.

‘It was, to be blunt, Dmitry Pavlovich’s way of taking revenge. The grand duke had learned that Felix, for whose sake he had sacrificed his own marriage to the monarch’s daughter, was now calmly undertaking to wed the tsar’s niece. And that was the end of their relationship. Dmitry was in a rage. And he started courting Irina himself. He had, quite simply, decided to wreck that alliance.’

There is, however, a quite different possibility of the most ordinary sort. Dmitry at the time liked both the gentlemen and the ladies. The young man could simply have fallen in love with the frail beauty. But one way or another, Dmitry did ask Irina for her hand.

And the Romanov family was split in its sympathies. Zinaida described the situation in a letter to Felix.

28 May 1913. My dear boy. [Irina’s] parents have explained their position … Her mother does not deny that the grandmother [the dowager empress Maria Fyodorovna] is for Dmitry. But she says that she herself would have nothing against [you] if Irina will hear of no one else. We parted very touchingly…What I am also afraid of is what will happen to your relationship with Dmitry, since I am certain of his duplicity. He is doing everything he can to arouse Irina’s interest and is always by her side… I am frightened of him and the fatal military tunic. It is quite terrifying.

Her eldest son had been shot by an officer in military tunic because of love. But Felix was unconcerned. He knew his strength.

‘It was for Grand Duchess Irina to choose between us. We made a tacit decision to do and say nothing that might influence her choice,’ Felix recalled. ‘She answered that she had decided to marry me, and that no one could make her change her decision. Dmitry reconciled himself to her choice. But it had an effect on our relations. The shadow the marriage had cast on our friendship could never be dispelled.’

Yet not only did Dmitry acquiesce; he even helped Felix. For it was then that Irina’s parents obtained certain information about their future son-in-law that thoroughly frightened them. Alexander Mikhailovich heard about it in Paris and wrote to his wife, Xenia: ‘9 November 1913. I have been greatly disheartened all this time by rumours about Felix’s reputation … Do not be too quick to announce the wedding … If we hear these things again, we shall cancel the wedding.’

But Felix sped at once to Xenia’s palace. And prevailed! And Dmitry lent corroborating support. Dmitry nobly stood up in defence of his friend.

‘12 November … I knew they were talking about old stories,’ Zinaida wrote to Felix from Moscow. ‘Dmitry Pavlovich’s behaviour is most laudable. I never expected help from that quarter … But I look at his interference a little differently than you do. I do not think he is beyond reproach, and by acting in a comradely way was merely protecting himself.’

True, there did remain the question of who had taken the trouble to furnish the information to Irina’s family. Had the tsarina herself made that effort so that her husband’s sister would know everything about the person she was admitting into the great Romanov family? She certainly was capable of passionate dislike when it came to the enemies of the man of God. So that Dmitry, as a bystander, was obliged to invent an altogether different explanation for Felix’s ‘mistakes in grammar’. And in doing so he had, as Zinaida Yusupova very correctly observed, merely been protecting himself.

But the episode healed the rift between Rasputin’s murderers and brought them together again.

In that difficult time Zinaida’s friend Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fyodorovna had been on Felix’s side. And now, while getting ready for his marriage after deciding to change his life, the ‘bad boy’ confessed everything to Ella. ‘When I revealed to her what … she had not known about my private life, she heard me out and said, “I know more about you than you realize … He who is capable of evil may do much good once he has chosen the right path.”‘ She, who had been the wife of the homosexual Grand Duke Sergei, could understand and love her ‘little Felix’.

‘Allow Me To Get Rid Of Rasputin

In the autumn of 1913 Rasputin was once again living in Yalta from which, as in the previous year, he was driven to Livadia and the royal palace.

At this time a certain R. G. Mollov was the examining magistrate of the Odessa Judicial Chamber. As magistrate he lived for an extended period in Yalta, and his testimony has remained in the File. It was during that period in 1913 that the mayor of the city, a General Dumbadze, expressed a complaint to the magistrate. ‘Dumbadze said that a court automobile was frequently sent for Rasputin to take him back to Livadia. Dumbadze had reported to the emperor that the population of Yalta was quite stirred up against Rasputin. The emperor replied that he had the right to live as he wished and to receive whomever he wished, and asked others not to interfere in his family affairs.’

And then Dumbadze decided to rescue the family’s prestige on his own. He sent a telegram to Petersburg to the director of the Department of Police, Stepan Beletsky, offering to ‘kill Rasputin on one of his boat trips to Yalta’. The simple Dumbadze did not realize how many eyes would read the telegram before it landed on Beletsky’s desk. So Beletsky had to hurry. As he himself testified, ‘I sent a telegram marked “personal” to Maklakov,’ the minister of internal affairs. With the result that Rasputin’s next boat trip ‘took place without complications’.

‘Our Own’ Capture Georgia

This time Rasputin had come to the Crimea with obligations to fulfil.

The exarch of Georgia had died in August 1913. And Rasputin was now finally able to keep his promise of showing his gratitude to Bishop Alexis of Tobolsk.

The File, from the testimony of Molchanov: ‘In the autumn of 1913
Rasputin … was going back and forth to Livadia, and he promised to do what he could to get my father transferred to the south. My father’s wishes were no more ambitious than any city in the south, but then the exarch of Georgia suddenly died…I went to see Rasputin off… and asked about appointing my father to be exarch of Georgia.’ And Rasputin ‘definitely promised to ask the tsars’.

Well, of course! To get his own exarch of Georgia in the Synod. It was the fourth most important pulpit in Russia. And the peasant made an effort. It was complicated. A compromised bishop! But she trusted Our Friend. Trusted him, as a man of God, to be the main authority in church matters — to the horror of Chief Procurator Sabler of the Holy Synod.

As Sabler testified, when he came to Livadia to make his report to the tsar, ‘Nicholas said, “But all your candidates have fallen through, and the choice has come down to Bishop Alexis of Tobolsk” … I permitted myself to object firmly, declaring that he did not have the necessary moral qualities, that he was living with the teacher Elizaveta Kosheva, who went everywhere with him and would follow him to Tiflis and compromise him … But the appointment went through.’

The disgraced bishop from the back of beyond was made exarch of Georgia with a promotion to the rank of archbishop. One of ‘our own’, as the tsarina called the friends of Our Friend, stood at the head of the Georgian Church.