The Rasputin File (57 page)

Once he had given an account of the disorders, Dzhunkovsky planned to turn to Rasputin. And, after explaining that ‘the conduct of this man has facilitated negative feelings in society’, to show the tsar the reports of the scandal at the Yar, as well as all the material on Father Grigory gathered by the external surveillance agents over the preceding year.

From Dzhunkovsky’s testimony: ‘The sovereign received me at 10:00 p.m.’ Everything had gone as planned. After giving his account of the Moscow events, Dzhunkovsky had turned to Rasputin.

The sovereign… listened very attentively, but did not utter a single word during my report. Then he extended his hand and asked, ‘Is it written out?’ I removed the memorandum from the folder, the sovereign took it, opened his desk, and put the memorandum inside. Then I told the sovereign that
in view of the seriousness of the issue, and of the fact that I considered Rasputin’s actions extremely dangerous and had to suppose that he could become a tool of any organization bent on destroying Russia, I said I would ask the sovereign’s permission to continue my investigation of Rasputin’s activities and to report on them to him. [This was naturally an innuendo that there were German spies in Rasputin’s circle, a favourite topic of the day.] In reply the sovereign said, I not only grant my permission, I even request that you do that. But, please, so that only you and I will see the reports — let them remain between ourselves.’ I thanked the sovereign very much for his confidence in me. The sovereign kept me for another half an hour or hour, while we talked about various matters, and then he let me go. It must have been around 12:30 a.m. when I left the sovereign … The memorandum I had left with him contained the most detailed description of what had taken place at the Yar, and everything that had happened there was, moreover, described in the most candid way — that it had not been the first instance, that it was all a kind of crescendo and had cast an unattractive shadow, and that I therefore considered it my duty as a loyal subject to report it, believing that it posed a threat to the dynasty.

The day after Dzhunkovsky’s report, the tsar received the commander-inchief.

In the tsar’s unbearably stuffy sun-baked railway car, the ‘dread uncle’ yelled once again in his commander’s voice what Dzhunkovsky had said — the drinking bouts at the Yar, and the fact that all the military secrets entrusted to the tsarina were becoming known to a drunken, debauched peasant, around whom suspicious individuals had been gathering, some of them German agents, for sure. The grand duke suggested deciding the question without delay ‘within the Family’ by bringing Alexandra Fyodorovna to Headquarters away from Vyrubova and Rasputin’s circle, and showing her Dzhunkovsky’s report. The sovereign expressed no objection. And the grand duke would afterwards be certain that the tsar had agreed. That was a mistake.

The grand duke had merely confirmed for the tsar what Alix had written about him: subjects do not understand the modesty of tsars. And the commander-in-chief, accustomed to the tsar’s diffidence at Headquarters regarding tactical matters, forgot himself. That was his first irreparable blunder. There had been another: talking about Rasputin. Nikolai Nikolaevich and Dzhunkovsky had not said anything new. It was the same thing that society people had said about the behaviour of holy fools. And as for German spies, the tsar knew they were accusing everyone, even poor Alix.
In short, he now wanted only one thing: to leave those people who grasped nothing and return to Tsarskoe Selo.

The day after his report to the tsar, an exultant Dzhunkovsky told Grand Duke Dmitry about his gracious reception by the tsar, and gave him a copy of the ‘candid memorandum’. And that was yet another blunder of the crudest variety, for the tsar had requested that all reports ‘remain between ourselves’. And of course no sooner did Dmitry get back to Petrograd than he started telling his father and the other members of the great Romanov family about what had happened, along with the happy news of the tsar’s anger and the certain end of the nefarious peasant. However his father, Pavel, knew the tsar too well to doubt how that ‘anger’ would end. And since at the time he was trying to secure the title of princess for his wife, Olga, he preferred to remain in Alix’s good graces.

So he warned her about the rumours.

And Alix wrote to Nicky:

22 June…my enemy Dzhunkovsky…has shown that vile, filthy paper (against our Friend) to Dmitri who repeated all to Paul & he to Alia. Such a sin, & as tho’ you had said to him, that you have had enough of these dirty stories & wish him to be severely punished.

You see how he turns your words & orders round — the slanderers were to be punished & not he — & that at the Headquarters one wants him to be got rid of(this I believe) — ah, it’s so vile…

If we let our Friend be persecuted we & our country shall suffer for it…

Ah my Love, when at last will you thump with her hand upon the table & scream at Dzhunkovsky & others when they act wrongly — one does not fear you —…they must be frightened of you.

‘Rumours reached me of some scandal in Moscow connected with Rasputin’s name,’ Vyrubova subsequently testified. ‘I ascribed no significance to those rumours.’

The Bomb Explodes

In fact, as soon as the sovereign returned from Headquarters with the report of Rasputin’s spree at the Yar, the Friend had taken a vigorous part in exposing the liars who were slandering the elder. She was presumably aware of the dirty trick that had been prepared for his persecutors either by the sly elder himself or by the skilled provocateur Manasevich.

It was stated in Dzhunkovsky’s report and Martynov’s memorandum that
Rasputin had gone to the Yar with Anisia Ivanovna Reshetnikova, the widow of a respected citizen’.

And Vyrubova at once triumphantly announced that Rasputin did indeed know well the said Anisia Ivanovna Reshetnikova. But that Anisia Ivanovna not only could not have been drinking with them, she could not even have gone with them to the Yar! From Vyrubova’s testimony: I sometimes … dropped by for tea at … Anisia Reshetnikova’s, an old woman of ninety who never left her house except to go to church, a typical Moscow merchant’s wife who had endless tea and little things to eat at her house along with constant visits from the clergy. Grigory Efimovich Rasputin always stayed at her home.’

The old woman’s home with its old-fashioned furniture, dusky icons, and dependants in dark kerchiefs, was located on Devichy Field. And Rasputin had stopped there often on his visits to Moscow.

From Vyrubova’s testimony: ‘I regard it as absolutely impossible that such an old woman could have been drinking with Rasputin at the Yar, since she could not even move from one chair to another without help.’

Vyrubova lied very effectively. She knew perfectly well that Rasputin really had been at the Yar with a Reshetnikova. Anisia Ivanovna’s unmarried daughter. Who had the same initials and patronymic as her mother: Anna Ivanovna Reshetnikova. And who had evidently been identified to the police by her mother’s first name.

It was the same Anna Ivanovna Reshetnikova who had been represented in the famous photograph of Rasputin ‘surrounded by his devotees’, who had seen the tipsy Rasputin off to Moscow in March, and who had, in his words, made him the gift of a ‘thousand-rouble fur coat’. Vyrubova was very well acquainted with Anna Ivanovna and knew she had participated in all of Father Grigory’s escapades, just as she was perfectly well acquainted with Reshetnikova’s brother, Nikolai Ivanovich. That Reshetnikov, who had formerly served as one of Rasputin’s ‘secretaries’, had by then become the builder and director of her infirmary.

This was the bomb that, in the eyes of the ‘tsars’ (who so wanted to believe the elder had been slandered), would ultimately destroy the entire Yar investigation.

When Nicky returned from Headquarters, Alix was in a virtual delirium of anxiety. She begged not to be shut up a nunnery — to at least be allowed to see her husband and the Little One. One may imagine the tsar’s fury upon seeing what she had been driven to. But, as usual, he concealed his emotions behind a mask of silence and imperturbable courtesy. When he heard the story about Reshetnikova, the tsar presumably came to the
conclusion that Dzhunkovsky, like everyone else, had out of hatred of the peasant presented him with a lie. And he must have been very disappointed. He had trusted the former Preobrazhensky Guards officer. And soon afterwards, Dzhunkovsky, as he himself recalled, ‘sensed a change’. Now ‘it was very hard for me to operate. I ran into an invisible but very powerful rebuff.’

A Torrent of Telegrams

While passions blazed, Rasputin was in Pokrovskoe leading his now customary life, and one that Dzhunkovsky’s agents continued to describe just as conscientiously as before.

24 June. In his own home … he played the gramophone, danced, sang along disconnectedly, and related how he had released three hundred Baptists from punishment. They had promised a thousand each, but only gave a total of five thousand.

26 June. Some woman came to see Rasputin’s neighbour Natalia and asked questions about Rasputin, who, as soon as he heard about it, immediately sent the peasant constable to look for her, although he didn’t find her. Rasputin was very scared and remembered women he had been acquainted with in Tsaritsyn.

On 27 June the agents recorded a telegram from Vyrubova. After which they noted that the ‘Dark One has been receiving a mass of telegrams and sending numerous letters’, but ‘has not been handing them over for posting’.

Now he knew all about it. Soon he could start to get ready. He had not been mistaken: those pitiful wolves had broken their teeth on him. Excitement. Nerve refining.

11 July. The officer’s wife Patushinskaya arrived. The Shady One went outside … and took hold of her by the lower part of her torso … He was very gay and had been drinking wine.

13 July. After bathing he went to see the wife of the sexton Ermolai…. He goes to her almost daily for intimate purposes…Patushinskaya went to Yaluturovsk, summoned by her husband. On leaving she voluptuously kissed the Dark One on the lips, nose, beard, and hands.

The agents precisely described it all to Dzhunkovsky. But their descriptions were no longer needed.

The Happy Author’s Arrival

Alix had by then discovered a pretext for Our Friend’s return. Surviving in the files of the Department of Police is an advertisement clipped from the newspaper
Evening Times
for 24 July 1915: ‘Just from the printer: Grigory Rasputin’s “Thoughts and Reflections”. Copies limited. The publisher, A. F. Filippov, is the managing director of a banking house, the editor and publisher of a variety of stock-exchange newspapers, and a well-known admirer of Rasputin.’

After distancing himself from the dangerous elder, Filippov had brought some earlier business to a conclusion. From Filippov’s testimony: ‘Rasputin’s pamphlet “My Thoughts and Meditations” was published by me with an introduction written by me. The picture of Rasputin was taken in Siberia after he was wounded by Guseva and was still half-forgotten. The pamphlet was published at Vyrubova’s insistence. The proofs were corrected by the empress.’

Thus, a pretext had been found: the happy author needed to come back for the new publication. Our Friend was essential to her in those decisive days of the palace coup.

From the surveillance log summaries: ‘Rasputin left for Petrograd on 28 July. He arrived in Petrograd on 31 July.’ And the very same day a car took Grigory to chasten his enemies. On 31 July and 1 August, according to the external surveillance log, ‘the Dark One visited Tsarskoe Selo.’

A Trial In Tsarskoe Selo

The meeting in Tsarskoe Selo on ‘what is to be done’ lasted two days. The matter under discussion was the commander-in chief. Alix indicted the grand duke. Cited were the appeals made during the recent disorders in Moscow. Alix was sure that they had been the grand duke’s own doing. She recalled all that she had written about in her letters: the grand duke was behaving like an autocrat. And then the time came for the prophet to have his say in court.

He played his part. Rasputin asserted what she was so eager to hear. And afterwards (on 10 September 1915) she would write to Nicky, ‘our Friend read their cards in time, and came to save you by entreating you to clear out Nikolasha and take over the Command yourself.’

As befitted a prophet, Rasputin had foretold and forewarned. ‘If the tsar had not taken N. N.’s place, he would have been thrown off the throne,’
Lili Dehn said later, citing words presumed to have come from the tsarina. But the words had not been the tsarina’s.

On 9 December 1916, Alix would write to Nicholas, ‘Our Friend says “that … if he (you) had not taken the place of Nikolai Nikolaievitch, he would now be thrown off the throne.”’

Yes, on that fateful day Rasputin had demanded that the tsar remove the grand duke and become commander-in-chief himself, lest there be a coup d’état. Once again, he had echoed her desires. Did the tsar believe that the ‘dread uncle’s’ intent had been malicious? I don’t think so. But he liked the idea that the sovereign was obliged in times of defeat to assume responsibility for the war. He could no longer resist the temptation that had held him in its grip since the war began. He wanted to be commander-in-chief.

The File, from the testimony of Prince Scherbatov: ‘Rasputin had come to Petrograd for three days just before the dismissal of Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, so that I saw him once at the Tsarskoe Selo train station.’

The ‘tsars’ did not want Our Friend linked to the impending decision that would be certain to shock the country and enrage the opposition. The peasant therefore had to go back home. And wait there while the tsar’s decision was announced in his absence.

In the meantime all that had been decided was held in the strictest secrecy.

The previous commander-in-chief was finished. Thus had Rasputin once again tested the rule: it was enough for them to speak out against him to bring about their downfall.