The Minister of Evil: The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia

"Do not fail to impress upon both Sukhomlinoff and Miassoyedeff the necessity for the utmost caution. Till we meet."

When I had typed this at his dictation I handed it to him, and he managed painfully to append his illiterate signature.

Then I placed the sheets in an envelope and gave them to Hardt to convey in secret to the headquarters of the German Secret Service in the Königgrätzerstrasse in Berlin.

"And, friend Hardt," Rasputin said, as the Kaiser's emissary placed the letter carefully in his wallet, "please impress upon Number Seventy what I have said about money. All this costs much. Tell him that sometimes when inordinate demands are made upon me—as you know they are often are—I have to use my own funds in order to satisfy them. Smith in London receives unlimited funds through the Deutsche Bank, I know, so please tell our friend from me that I expect similar treatment in future."

The Starets was one of the most far-seeing and mercenary scoundrels. He had accounts in different names in half-a-dozen banks in Petrograd and Moscow, into which he constantly made payments as the result of his widespread campaign of espionage and the blackmailing of silly women who fell beneath his uncanny spell.

When Hardt had left, the saint opened another bottle of champagne and drank it all from a tumbler, afterwards consuming half a bottle of brandy. I was busy with three days' accumulation of letters, and did not notice it until, an hour later, I found him dead asleep on the floor of the dining-room—a pretty spectacle if presented to the millions of our patriotic Russians who believed in the Tsar as their "Father" and in the divinity of the "holy man" who directed the Empire's affairs.

The saint filled me with increasing disgust, yet I confess I had become fascinated by the widespread and desperate conspiracies which he either engineered himself or of which he pulled the most important strings.

In the plot against Stolypin, though none dreamed of it, he had been the most active agent. Stolypin, a purely honest and loyal Russian, who, on taking office as Prime Minister, was actuated by a firm determination to do his level best for the Empire, was an unwanted statesman. He was too honest, and, therefore, dangerous to the Court camarilla set up and paid by Potsdam.

As the days passed the monk frequently referred to him as a thorn in the side of the Empress.

"The fellow must be got rid of!" he declared to me more than once. "He suspects a lot, and he knows too much. He is dangerous to us, Féodor—very dangerous!"

One night, when we were together in his room at Tsarskoe-Selo, after he had been dining en famille with the Imperial family, he remarked:

"Things are going well. I saw the lawyer Altschiller to-day. All is prepared for the coup against Stolypin, who is still ignorant that Vera Baltz is in Petrograd."

I knew Altschiller, who often called at the Poltavskaya. He was a close friend of Monsieur Raeff, whom Rasputin, when all-powerful a little later on, actually appointed as Procurator of the Holy Synod, having placed the appointment upon the Emperor's desk to sign!

The law case was, however, delayed. Hardt was on one of his frequent absences—in Germany, no doubt—and matters did not move so rapidly as to satisfy the Empress. The whole plot was to keep the Prime Minister in the dark until the moment when the skeleton of his past should be dragged from its cupboard.

As announced by Rasputin, the Emperor and Empress had visited Denmark and Norway on board the Standart, and were back again at Peterhof, when one day Rasputin received his friend Boris Stürmer, the bureaucrat, at that time struggling strenuously for advancement. In the monk's den Stürmer, chatting about Stolypin and the vindictive woman who had come to Petrograd to destroy him—for he was one of the paid servants of Potsdam, and in consequence knew most of the secrets—said:

"Have you, Father, ever met a Jew named Bagrov?"

"Never to my knowledge. Why?"

"Because I know from my friend Venikoff, one of the assistant-directors of Secret Police, that the man, a discharged agent-provocateur and incensed at the way he has been treated by Stolypin, has joined forces with some mysterious young woman named Baltz. There is a whisper that between them they are engineering a plot to assassinate the Prime Minister!"

Rasputin's strange eyes met mine. Both of us knew more than this struggling sycophant.

"Bagrov?" the saint repeated. "Who is he?"

"Oh! A fellow who was assistant to Azeff in some disgraceful matters in Warsaw—an agent-provocateur who lived afterwards for some time in Paris and on the Riviera. He attributes his downfall to Stolypin, and hence is most bitter against him. He has, I hear, fallen in love with the woman Baltz, who hails from Samara."

"Well?" asked the saint.

"Well?—nothing," laughed the man with the goat-beard. "I simply tell you what I know. There is a plot—that is all! And as far as I can discern the swifter Stolypin leaves the Court, the easier it will be for Her Majesty and ourselves—eh? While Stolypin is daily with the Emperor there is hourly danger for us."

"In that I certainly agree," declared Rasputin. "We must be watchful—very watchful."

We remained alert—all of us. That same night Rasputin informed the Empress of the secret plot of the black-haired Vera and her lover Bagrov.

The Court left for the Crimea next day, and Rasputin travelled with the Imperial family. Stolypin, in ignorance of what was in progress, was of the party, I being left in Petrograd to follow three days later.

On arrival at Kiev, where the Emperor had arranged to review the troops, a gala performance was held in the theatre that night. Opposite the Imperial box sat Stolypin, with two other high officials of the Court, when, during the entr'acte, a man dashed in, and in full view of the Emperor and Empress fired a revolver at the Prime Minister.

The confusion this caused was terrible. Her Majesty fainted and was dragged out of the box by Mademoiselle Kamensky, while the Tsar swiftly jumped to his feet and regarded the scene calmly.

"I'm done!" gasped the patriotic and honest Stolypin, as those present seized the assassin, who was none other than the ex-agent-provocateur Bagrov.

Six hours later the Prime Minister breathed his last, a victim of the Empress and her Potsdam camarilla, while Vera Baltz fled to Switzerland.

Rasputin afterwards told me that he urged the Court to leave Kiev at once, adding:

"It was far best for Alix and Nicholas to pretend horror of the tragedy than to offer condolences."

And so ended another chapter of Russia's underground history.

CHAPTER V

THE POWER BEHIND THE THRONE

The murder of Stolypin, though unsuspected by the chancelleries of Europe, was, as I have explained, the work of the Hidden Hand of Germany. Stolypin had suspected the true state of affairs at the Russian Court, therefore the success of Germany in the coming war depended upon closing his mouth; so Potsdam, using the erotic monk Rasputin as its catspaw, effected a coup which had, alas! sad result to Holy Russia.

Stolypin was but one of many persons of both sexes who, because they knew too much of Germany's secret propaganda in Russia, fell victims in those constant conspiracies whereby they were swept either into the net of the corrupt police or into their graves.

As servant of the head of Russia's "Dark Forces"—as Rasputin and Protopopoff were afterwards denounced in the Duma—I was compelled to be ever at the saint's elbow; hence I saw and heard much that was astounding.

One night, a few months after Stolypin's assassination, we had been bidden to dinner by the great Polish landowner Ivan Volkhovski, who had a beautiful villa outside Petrograd. There I met a smart, middle-aged Russian officer, who, over our champagne, declared to me that things were growing critical in Europe over the Balkan question, but that France and Russia were united against any attack that Germany might secretly engineer.

"Then you think that war is really coming?" I asked him in surprise.

"Think!" he echoed. "You are a cosmopolitan, surely! Don't you know? Are you really blind?"

"Well, I am blind politically," I replied with a wink. "I see that on all sides people are getting rich quickly and receiving ironmongery—as I call the tin decorations from the Sovereign—as reward for closing their eyes to the true facts."

"Ah! I see that you are quite wideawake, my dear Rajevski," said the officer, whose name was Colonel Dubassoff. "Our friends here in Petrograd will continue to remain asleep, for they have every incentive, thanks to the great pro-German propaganda and the generous distribution of German gold. To-day our enemies in Berlin have their hands outstretched and clutching upon Paris, New York, Rome and London, just as they have here in Petrograd. War must come—depend upon it. The English Lord Roberts has forecast it. He knows!"

"Then you believe that Germany is at work actively arming in preparation for war?"

"Most certainly I do," replied the colonel. "Only a month ago I was in London and afterwards in Paris. In London the authorities are not so entirely asleep as we are in Russia."

Suddenly, as he spoke, I noticed that Rasputin, who was in whispered conversation with Bishop Theophanus, a fellow-guest, had been listening very attentively.

Two hours later, when I returned home with Rasputin, he ordered me to sit down and write a note, which the scoundrel dictated as follows:

"Please listen to N.N. Colonel Paul Dubassoff, of the Préobrajensky Regiment, has expressed in my presence to-night disloyalty to the Sovereign, and he is a serious danger to the State. He should be suppressed."

To this lie the monk scrawled his initials, and next morning the letter was sent to the Chief of the Secret Police. Within twelve hours the unfortunate colonel who had dared to pronounce his opinion concerning Germany's activities was already lodged in the fortress of Peter and Paul, where, I believe, he remained until the Revolution of 1917.

At that moment, however, the German propaganda in Russia found itself in an extremely critical state. By Stolypin's murder a new difficulty had arisen. All the colleagues of the late Prime Minister believed themselves entitled to become his successor, and as each had his own particular circle of friends, each naturally pulled all the political wires possible. Intrigues arose on every hand, and though everybody realised the personal danger of anybody appointed to the dead man's position, yet ambition was apparent everywhere.