Date
Author
Анатолий Берштейн; Дмитрий Карцев
Source
Preserved copy
Translated material
The appearance of the "old man"
One of the most significant places among those subjected to revision in recent years is occupied by Grigory Rasputin, who was killed 90 years ago, in mid-December 1916.
In 1991, he was even “canonized” at the Consecrated Council of Bishops of the Catacomb Russian Church of True Christians. Who was Grigory Rasputin really? What is his real role? Why did “Rasputinism” develop in Russia? And did it end with the death of the “elder”? Historians are still arguing.
It is not difficult to establish when the imperial couple saw Rasputin for the first time: on November 1, 1905, Nicholas II wrote in his diary: “We met the man of God Gregory from the Tobolsk province.” He was brought to court by the rector of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, Bishop Feofan. Rasputin did not make much of an impression then. Similar entries can later be found in Nikolai’s diary. For example, from January 14, 1906: “At 4 o’clock the man of God Dmitry came to us from Kozelsk near Optina Hermitage. He brought an image painted according to a vision he had recently had. We talked with him for about an hour and a half.” The royal couple loved to talk with ordinary Russian people, especially with wanderers and the blessed.
But at the end of 1907, an event occurred that largely influenced the relationship between the monarchs and Rasputin. During one of the attacks of Tsarevich Alexei, who suffered from hemophilia inherited from his mother, Rasputin, who was nearby, helped stop the bleeding. No one could say why this happened. But subsequently, the interventions of the “old man,” as this strange man was called, repeatedly changed the course of the heir’s illness for the better. Actually, this “miraculous” power was the essence of the phenomenon of Rasputin, the reason for his influence on the Tsar and especially the Tsarina. The Empress, tormented by feelings of guilt and compassion, did everything possible and impossible to save the prince. The teacher of little Alexei II, Gilliard, wrote in his memoirs: “The mother grabbed the hope that was given to her, like a drowning man grabs the hand that is extended to him, and she believed in him with all the strength of her soul. For a long time, however, she was convinced that the salvation of Russia and the dynasty would come from the people, and she imagined that this humble man was sent by God... The power of faith did the rest and, thanks to self-hypnosis, which was facilitated by random coincidences, the empress came to the conviction that that the fate of her son depends on this man. Rasputin understood the state of mind of this desperate mother and fully understood what he could learn from it.” In her testimony to a special commission of the Provisional Government in 1917, the Empress’s favorite and especially close to Rasputin, maid of honor A. Vyrubova also noted that Nikolai and Alexandra Fedorovna “believed in him terribly; and when they had grief, when, for example, the heir was sick, they turned to him with a request to pray.”
At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, interest in all kinds of astral knowledge and table-turning grew sharply in Russia. It was fashionable. E. Blavatsky, G. Gurdjieff, and P. Badmaev were especially popular. The last Romanovs were pious people, and Alexandra Fedorovna was still passionately interested in mystical teachings. Both Alexander I and Nicholas I had a similar inclination, Alexander II was engaged in astrology and spiritualism, his son, Alexander III, and his wife, the mother of Nicholas II, were also interested in the occult.
Even before Rasputin, the palace was visited by “people of God”, bewitching the queen with their tongue-tied prophecies, and all sorts of magicians from Europe. The list of these people is quite long: they name the epileptic Pasha, the barefoot Vasily, the prophetess Daria Osipovna, the mad wanderer Anthony, the feeble-minded stutterer Mitya Kolyaba. Of the foreigners - primarily the French hypnotist Philippe Encausse and his student Papus. But after the latter were repeatedly accused of quackery, fraud and Freemasonry, they had to be removed from St. Petersburg, which the Empress extremely regretted. She was so susceptible to the influence of all kinds of mysticism, belief in miracles, that even the elderly Prime Minister I. Goremykin, in a private conversation with the Chairman of the State Duma M. Rodzianko, called it a “clinical case.”
The emperor’s attitude towards both overseas mediums and Rasputin was more complex than that of the empress, who grabbed him as a saving straw: Nicholas’s admiration for the “old man” was combined with caution and even doubts. But, being a loving husband and father, he fell into a trap. Gilliard writes: “The emperor was afraid to remove Rasputin, because if Alexei Nikolaevich died, then the emperor, in the eyes of his mother, would undoubtedly be the murderer of his child.” Nevertheless, Nicholas II also became attached to “dear Gregory.” He once told Prince V. Orlov, the commander of one of the guards regiments, with whom the empress was at one time platonically attracted, that he found in Rasputin “a man of pure faith.” Rodzianko, he also characterizes Rasputin as “a good, simple Russian man.” “In moments of doubt and mental anxiety, I love to talk with him, and after such a conversation my soul always feels light and calm,” said the king.
The impression that Rasputin made on those around him was almost the same: he evoked disgust and fear, and at the same time some kind of hypnotic power was felt in him. Even his outspoken enemies spoke about this: P. Stolypin, V. Kokovtsev, F. Yusupov. But they all noted that Rasputin was, first of all, a cunning and calculating man, skillfully manipulating the royal faith and using it for his own purposes.
Many have tried and are trying to find the answer to Rasputin’s secret in that two principles seemed to be fighting within him, and in the end the dark one won. The same Zhilard wrote with bitterness: “Fate wanted the one who was seen in the halo of a saint to be in reality an unworthy and depraved being... the wicked influence of this man was one of the main reasons for the death of those who believed that they would find in him salvation". Rasputin was “a man of God possessed by the devil.”
Rasputin’s main “merits” still corresponded to his well-known surname. Back in 1907, an investigation was launched into Rasputin’s membership in the “Khlysty” sect, which practiced purifying orgies. And already in 1909 he found himself at the center of one of those high-profile metropolitan scandals of an alcoholic and erotic nature, which, with minor interruptions, accompanied him until his death in 1916.
These orgies, obscene, scandalous behavior of his, which became the talk of the town, were constantly reported to the royal family. But all attempts by her closest relatives, friends, and church hierarchs to warn Alexandra Fedorovna from the influence of Rasputin ended in a break, resignation, and complete isolation.
Former admirers and patrons of Rasputin, Saratov Bishop Hermogenes and Hieromonk Iliodor, who largely contributed to his appearance in St. Petersburg, also fell into disgrace. Having learned about the dissolute life of their protégé, they specially arrived in the capital to force him to leave St. Petersburg, retire to his native village of Pokrovskoye, Tobolsk province, and no longer discredit Their Majesties. What happened next? (the same Kokovtsev, Rodzianko and Rasputin himself tell differently): either the monks attacked Rasputin and wanted to castrate him, or he attacked them in a rage. As a result, the priests were removed from church posts and exiled, and Rasputin was sent on a pilgrimage to holy places - Athos and Jerusalem.
This event happened at the beginning of 1912, when the story of Rasputin’s connection with the Khlysty resurfaced. The only thing that could reject, as many believed, the pious Tsar and Tsarina from Rasputin was accusing him of sectarianism. And here, Lenin’s friend V. Bonch-Bruevich unexpectedly played a big role in the whitewashing of Rasputin. Considered a specialist and authority in the field of religious sects, he met and talked with the “elder” several times, after which he wrote the following conclusion in the left-wing magazine Sovremennik: “Regarding the sectarianism of Rasputin G.E. I declare that Grigory Efimovich Rasputin is a type of Orthodox peasant from a remote backward province of Russia and has nothing to do with sectarianism.” It is noteworthy that A. Guchkov in his memoirs reports that at the same time Bonch-Bruevich wrote him a letter, “in which he informed him of his assessment of Rasputin not just as a swindler who put on the mask of a sectarian, but as an undoubted sectarian who, of course, never ceases to be a swindler ; in essence of his teaching, he is closer to the “Khlysty” sect, but is not formally a member of it and is a sectarian in his own right.” Such a difference in public and private assessment only indicates that it was unprofitable for the Bolsheviks: the more Rasputin at court, in power, the better - the autocracy continued to rot.
If before the war Rasputin was more visible in orgies and unscrupulous affairs, then from 1914 he began to increasingly interfere in politics. True, many doubted that he did this on his own initiative. It seemed that he was incapable of this kind of intrigue and shunned politics. “All politics is harmful,” he often repeated. Some believed that Rasputin fell a victim of St. Petersburg society and did not pass through the copper pipes, so to speak. The simple-minded dark peasant could not cope with the temptations, although he himself was completely disinterested, distributed money to the poor and the like. More and more publications are appearing, which note that his role and influence on the imperial couple are greatly exaggerated. As an example, the fact is given that during the war, when he tearfully asked to accept his son into the Consolidated Regiment, which was directly in charge of the Tsar’s security, he was refused and the young man was taken onto the imperial ambulance train.
What came first: Rasputin led and ruled his camarilla, or clever rogues and adventurers of all stripes manipulated the “man of God”? Whether the dog wagged the tail or the tail wagged the dog is irrelevant in the context of historical consequences. It was with the name of Rasputin that all sorts of political intrigues and the “ministerial leapfrog” that began, as V. Purishkevich aptly called it, were associated. It was Rasputin, with the help of the empress, who forced Nicholas to make a disastrous decision and become commander in chief himself. Ministerial posts largely depended on him, which were given to dubious personalities: the Minister of Internal Affairs A. Protopopov, by the way, who was fond of the occult, another minister A. Khvostov, whose cynicism and unprincipledness were legendary, and a completely comical figure of an elderly and dishonest man Prime Minister B. Stürmer, whom Rasputin called “the old man on a string.”
Rasputin’s close contacts with the adventurer and intriguer Prince M. Andronnikov, whose profession was “meeting with ministers”, with the doctor of Tibetan medicine P. Badmaev, as well as with famous bankers, businessmen and swindlers I. Manus, D. Rubinstein and I. Manasevich- Manuilov, who carried out “major transactions and contracts” through him, discredited the supreme power.
There was a war going on. And rumors of betrayal began to circulate. At the same time, taking advantage of the fact that Nikolai was constantly at Headquarters, his wife essentially ran the capital. And her almost official mentor was Rasputin.
The Empress interfered more and more zealously in state affairs, bombarding her husband with demands: to show resilience, bend everyone to the ram’s horn, send them to prison, exile, shoot, and at the same time do not forget to listen to the advice of a Friend (that’s what the Empress called Rasputin) and comb his hair every day with the comb he gave him. . She truly believed in her mission. The Empress wrote to her husband in December 1916: “Remember the words of Monsieur Philippe when he gave me an icon with a bell: since you are very condescending and trusting, I should play the role of your bell so that people with bad intentions cannot approach you.”
Her letters were passionate, apparently sincere, but one-sided and aggressive. “Show them your fist, show yourself as a Sovereign, you are an autocrat - and they don’t dare forget it.” But if anyone forgot this, it was the empress herself, with whose name “Rasputinism” and the weakening of the authority of Nicholas II were associated.
While Russia was suffering painful defeats at the front, parliamentary and radical opposition intensified within the country.
“What is happening?.. Is this stupidity or treason?..” asked the leader of the liberals P. Milyukov. He was echoed, only even more sharply, by the right. Especially V. Purishkevich. The entire royal family and the majority of the courtiers spoke out against the “dark forces around the throne,” in the figurative expression of the same Purishkevich. The eldest in the family, Grand Duke Pavel, whose son would soon be an accomplice in the murder of the “old man,” and other uncles, and Princess Elizaveta Feodorovna, who even then enjoyed the reputation of a saint, even the Empress Mother spoke to the emperor about Rasputin - all in vain. They say that, leaving the court, Elizabeth said to her younger sister: “Remember the fate of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.”
But Nikolai did not want to delve into the essence of these warnings. He didn't like to get involved at all. Moreover, this was his credo. Nikolai explained to his Foreign Minister Sazonov: “I try not to think about anything and find that this is the only way to rule Russia.” He, like a child, was offended that everyone allowed them to discuss their personal relationship with Rasputin. “But this is our completely private matter. It’s amazing how people like to interfere in everything that doesn’t concern them,” the king was indignant.
The culmination of the protest against such non-interference in the private life of the Russian monarch was Purishkevich’s speech on November 19, 1916. In particular, accusing those same “dark forces”, he said: “We are not talking about little people, without state horizons, who have soared to the top... We are talking about those dark forces, about those influences that move certain individuals on the ground and force their rise to high positions, people who cannot occupy them.” And he finished: “In past years, in past centuries, Grishka Otrepiev shook the foundations of the Russian state. Grishka Otrepiev was resurrected in Grishka Rasputin, but this Grishka, living under different conditions, is more dangerous than Grishka Otrepiev. May Grishka Rasputin not be the leader of Russian internal thought.”
In his memoirs, the future leader of the conspirators F. Yusupov claimed that it was after Purishkevich’s speech, which he listened to on the sidelines of the Duma, that he decided to kill Rasputin.
The cup of patience was full. In conditions of the deepest political crisis and discredit of the monarchical power, a group of people close to the court and sincerely devoted to the tsar committed the murder of G. Rasputin on December 17, 1916. Five years earlier, after the assassination of Stolypin, the tsar did not consider it possible to stay and attend his funeral, but here he came, leaving Headquarters, despite the most important meeting on the strategy of military operations for 1917.
Almost the entire imperial family actually supported the murderers, among whom was Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich. And although Nicholas II stated that “no one is allowed to engage in murder,” he still did not allow the criminals to be prosecuted. Purishkevich left Petrograd for the front with a medical train, and no one interfered with him. Yusupov was sent to his parents’ estate in the Kursk province. But the fate of Grand Duke Dmitry developed in a special way. Nicholas sent him to Persia, to join the active army. But this is precisely what saved Dmitry’s life. Once outside his homeland, he avoided the fate of most of the Romanovs. It is further known that in the early 1920s he had an affair in Paris with the famous Gabrielle Chanel, then he married a rich American woman and lived the rest of his life in America, in Ohio, where he was buried in 1942.
The rest of the family was not so lucky. They say that shortly before Rasputin’s death, the Tsar showed the Empress his letter, in which it was written: “Russian Tsar! Know that if your relatives commit murder, then not one of your family, relatives and children will live longer than two years...” This will was more like a curse to the Romanov house. It came true.