The Rasputin File (90 page)

Sergei Witte, perhaps the most influential politician of Nicholas’s reign, although he was only intermittently a minister and prime minister (1905–6).The tsarina hated him for creating the 1905 constitution that limited the tsar’s powers and the future powers of her son — that had ‘robbed the Little One’ of his legacy. And however useful the brilliant prime minister might have been, she had never been able nor did she wish to overcome her feelings.

The monarchist Purishkevich, whose bald head and pointed moustache were as well-known throughout Russian from newspaper portraits as his right-wing views, was Rasputin’s implacable enemy and in November 1916, ‘heavily breathing, with a thundering voice’, he spoke publicly of ‘the tsar’s ministers who have been turned into marionettes, marionettes whose threads have been taken firmly in hand by Rasputin and the Empress Alexandra’.

Alexander Guchkov, son of a wealthy Moscow merchant and one of the most brilliant and adventurous people in the Duma, had helped defend the Armenians during their slaughter by the Turks, had supported the Boers in Africa, and during the Russo-Japanese War, had been captured by the Japanese. He was well-known in the Duma for fist-fights during the sessions. On taking the post of Speaker in 1905, he spoke for the first time of certain mysterious ‘dark forces’ in the highest summits of society. Seven years later he distributed a private letter from the tsarina to Rasputin, which in the opinion of many was proof that the peasant was sleeping with the tsarina.

P. S. Stolypin, Prime Minister in 1909 was ‘hated by the left, for he had more than a few times ruthlessly suppressed their opposition in the Duma, once uttering the immortal words, “You, gentlemen, require great upheavals, whereas I require a great Russia.” ‘He had categorically opposed Russia’s participation in the Balkan conflict. He was hated by the right, for his reforms promised the victory of Russian capitalism: Moscow, the ancient ‘Tsargrad,’ was fated to become a Manchester. But Stolypin made a fatal move. A move that might at first have seemed quite auspicious and to even promise a return of popularity: he spoke out against Rasputin. He was, however, assassinated in 1911, in Kiev.

Four photographs of Rasputin taken between 1900 and 1916. His eyes attract, even in photographs, as witnesses testify: ‘the instantly blazing, magnetic gaze of his light-coloured eyes in which not merely the pupil but the whole eye stares’, ‘the hypnotic power shining in his exceptional eyes’, ‘deep-set, unendurable eyes’. The number of fingers used to cross himself was important: ‘Believers’ used three fingers instead of two.

Rasputin wearing a hospital smock recovering from an attempt on his life. The assailant, Khionia Guseva, later testified: “I had a dagger in a sheath under my skirt … and I pulled it out through a slit in my blouse. I stabbed him once in the stomach with the dagger after which Rasputin ran away from me while I rushed after him … in order to inflict a fatal blow.” They ran past houses and the petrified crowd. A small woman brandishing a dagger, and Rasputin pressing his shirt against his wound. But she failed to stab him a second time. “He picked up a shaft on the ground and hit me on the head with it, at once knocking me down…. It was afternoon and people came running from all directions and said, ‘Let’s kill her,’ and picked up the shaft. I quickly got to my feet and said to the crowd, ‘Hand me over to a constable. Don’t kill me.’ They tied my hands and took me to the regional office, and on the way they … kicked me, but they didn’t beat me.”

‘She explained her action as her own decision after reading about Rasputin in the newspapers: “I consider Grigory Efimovich Rasputin a false prophet and even an Antichrist…. I decided to kill Rasputin in imitation of the holy prophet who stabbed four hundred false prophets with a knife.”

‘Rasputin lay between life and death for several days. All his admirers and the Royal Family together sent him telegrams with best wishes for his recovery.’

Anna Vyrubova, who became the tsarina’s companion, was ‘sly, secretive, cunning, and smart. A dangerous woman.’ Sergei Witte, sometime prime minister, wrote, ‘All the courtiers close to the royal family cater to Anna Vyrubova…. Anna arranges various favours for them and influences the closeness to the sovereign of one group of political figures or another.’

Anya Vyrubova was a second mother to the grand duchesses: Olga, Tatyana, Maria and Anastasia.

Nicholas and Anna Vyrubova on the beach at Livadia in the Crimea. ‘The last powerful Tartar khanate had been there, and then the divine peninsula had come to be ruled by the ancestors of Felix Yusupov. Now along the sea there stretched a band of golden sand. And above the sea stood the royal family’s white palace of Livadia and the palaces of the grand dukes and the Crimean palace of the Yusupov family.’