Rasputin the Rascal Monk

As chamber-confidante of both Emperor and Empress she had for a long time assisted in the spiritualistic séances which were given in private at Tsarskoe-Selo by a Russian monk named Helidor and his French friend, known as “Philippe.” The young Tsarevitch was in a state of fast-declining health, and Helidor, as a “holy man,” had, at Madame’s suggestion, been called in to pray for him. Spiritualistic practices followed in strictest secrecy, and the credulous Empress first believed that the “holy man’s” dealings with the unseen were resulting in a beneficial effect upon the weakly lad.

At last, however, owing to. Court intrigue, Helidor fell out of favour. It was just after this when Anna Vyrubova first met and fell beneath the evil influence of Rasputin. Grichka was a “miracle-worker,” and might, she thought, perhaps restore the Tsarevitch to health! She knew that the Empress, a shallow-minded, ephemeral woman, lived for one object alone, namely, to secure for her son the crown of Romanoff. But the physicians gave but little hope of this. In a year – perhaps before – he must die, they had whispered. Helidor had been dismissed. Would Rasputin be more successful?

Madame sought out the charlatan who was busy with many “cures,” and suggested that he should accompany her to the Palace, but with lordly disdain the drunken fisherman from Pokrovsky declared that to him all men and women were equal.

To a friend, a certain Madame Kovalenko, wife of one of the high Court officials, Madame Vyrubova described this interview. It took place in Petrograd at the house of a rich merchant living in the Tavritsheskaya, opposite the gardens. When the lady-in-waiting, who had, like so many others, fallen beneath his spell, had made the suggestion that the master should be introduced to the Court circle, he placed his left hand behind his back, a favourite attitude of his, drew himself up and began to address her in that strange jargon which she hardly understood – quotations from the “Lives of the Saints” jumbled up with lewd suggestions, high phrases, and meaningless sentences. As conclusion to this speech, however, the wily fellow added:

“I care nothing for the rulers of earth, but only for the Ruler of Heaven, who has bestowed upon me His blessing, and has led me into the path of honour, righteousness and peace. The rulers, of earth worship in their chapels and their tinsel cathedrals, but I worship everywhere, in the air, in the woods, in the streets, and you, lady, worship with me in body and in soul.” And he raised his cold eyes upward, his right hand with its bulgy joints and broken dirty finger nails being placed across his breast. Then he sighed, as he added: “Ah! you do not yet understand! God has placed within me the power to smite – as well as to heal.”

Madame Vyrubova, fascinated by his strange hypnotic glance, fell upon her knees before the “Saint,” and kissing his bulgy unclean hand begged of him again and again to see the Empress.

But the artful scoundrel remained obdurate. He knew of Helidor’s disgrace, and did not intend to hold himself at all cheaply.

The result was that Madame Vyrubova sought him next day and, handed him an autograph note from the Empress inviting him to come to the Winter Palace and see the Grand Duke Alexis. He read it, secretly much gratified, for he knew that not only had his latest devotee prevailed upon the Empress to seek the aid of another Russian monk to succeed the degraded Helidor, but that the Pravoslavny Church, the most powerful influence of State governance, had also been responsible for the invitation he held within his dirty fingers.

From that moment Rasputin’s power became assured – a power he wielded for evil from that hour until the day of his well-deserved end.

When that grey afternoon the unkempt libertine was introduced to the small white-and-gold private salon of the Empress, which overlooks the gardens and the Neva on the northern wing of the palace, the Princess Obolensky, Princess Orbeliani and Countess Hendrikoff, maids-of-honour, were with Her Majesty, curious to see what manner of man it was who could perform miracles, and whom so many of the Society women in Petrograd and Moscow now acknowledged and addressed as “Master.”

Upon the threshold the mock-monk halted, and in that dramatic attitude, struck in order to impress his hearers, he stood with his left arm behind him, erect, with his unkempt head thrown back, his face stern and relentless, his grey eyes sharp and piercing.

For some moments he remained there in statuesque silence, well-knowing how women were impressed by that pose. The hypnotism of those grey eyes few of the opposite sex could withstand. His conquests, or “conversions” as he termed them – were in every direction, and in every city. The Cult of the Naked Believers had rapidly spread everywhere. He was besieged by female disciples eager to hold meetings, for without the actual presence of the Saint true worship of the erotic could not take place.

“Great Lady!” he exclaimed at last in his deep, heavy voice, still that of the Siberian mujik, “you desire me here? I have come!”

The Empress rose and stretching out her hand eagerly welcomed the unholy charlatan into the Court circle, and half-an-hour later introduced him to fully a dozen of the highest-born women of the Empire, all of whom were at once impressed by his affected piety and humility. But a “dark force” had now entered the very heart of Russia, and later that afternoon, in a luxuriously furnished bedroom the miracle-worker was shown the poor little Heir to the Throne lying upon his sick couch, he placed hands upon him, and Her Majesty herself fell victim to that strange spell which other women had found so indescribable and so inexplicable.

“I will cure your son,” said Rasputin slowly, after he had knelt beside him and looked long and earnestly into his eyes without uttering a word.

Madame Vyrubova was present and exchanged glances of relief with the Empress. To the latter, easily impressionable as she was, though all believed her to be a staid mother of a family, Rasputin became at once a Saint, a Divine agent, a miraculous guide. He had cured the poor; why could he not, if he willed it, cure her son?

Then in the days that followed “incidents” occurred in the Palace. At select assemblies of one or two of the Empress’s confidantes – parties, of course, arranged by Madame Vyrubova, Rasputin expounded his shameless “religion.” His jargon, the jumbled phrases of an illiterate peasant who knew not the meaning of what he uttered, his exhortations to commit sin so that it might be forgiven, his declaration of self-divinity, and his odds and ends of scripture mixed with the foulest vocabulary of Russian, was listened to with bated breath. Why?

Because, strange though it may seem, the health of the young Grand Duke Alexis had taken a sudden turn for the better. Even his physicians were compelled to acknowledge it!

Whether the latter were in any way under the influence of Rasputin by means of money-payment – for the fellow had by this time acquired a considerable fortune from his dupes – has not yet been ascertained. One thing, however, is shown in the documents before me, namely, that the mock-monk’s “miracles” were often effected by means of secret drugs of which he had quite a curious extensive knowledge. How this was acquired is again a mystery, save that he was very friendly with a certain student of Chinese and Thibetan medicine, named Badmayeff, and that this person regularly furnished him at high prices with certain little-known drugs from the Far East.

With the gradual improvement of the health of the poor little Grand Duke, Rasputin’s ascendancy over the Empress rapidly increased. He had been introduced to the Emperor, who, though regarding him with askance, tolerated him merely because his beloved son was improving beneath his daily prayerful treatment. Meanwhile, the canker-worm of Rasputin’s religion had, fostered by the Empress’s favourite lady-in-waiting, entered into the Court circle, and many secret meetings were held in the Palace where under the pseudo-religious cloak certain ladies of the Russian Court became devotees of the “Holy Father,” and practised abominations absolutely incredible.

Official reports contain both dates and names of those who gave themselves into the unscrupulous hands of this man who claimed the Divine right and thus worshipped as “Believers.”

Rasputin was too clever a scoundrel to allow matters to proceed quite smoothly. Several chance conversations with the Emperor and with Stolypin convinced him that he might ultimately share the same obscurity as Helidor. He therefore one day pretended to be offended at some words of the Empress – whom he now addressed by the familiar terms of “thee” and “thou” which he used to his disciples, though even the Grand Dukes and Duchesses would have hesitated so to address the Empress – and after a dramatic farewell, he took himself off to the wonderful and luxurious monastery which, according to his statement to the Empress, he had built at his native Pokrovsky with the money he had collected upon his various pilgrimages.

To the female section of Petrograd society he had been never tired of describing the beauties of this monastery where his fellow-monks lived a life of severe asceticism and constant prayer, therefore at his sudden resolve to leave, the capital – or the better-class women of it – grew tearful and the Empress most of all.

Within four days of his departure for Siberia the little Tsarevitch was taken suddenly ill, and the Empress, beside herself at having expressed any words of doubt concerning the unkempt Saint who had so entirely entered into her life, telegraphed wildly to him. This message, since unearthed by the Revolutionary Party, which ran as follows: —

“I cannot bear your absence. Life is so grey and hopeless without you, my dear comforter, my master. Alexis has been taken ill. Do not take any notice of Kokovtsov. He is responsible for my hasty words to you and shall suffer for it. Forgive me. Return – for my sake and for the life of Alexis-Alec.”

But the crafty mujik was not to be thus entrapped. He had been guest of the Minister Kokovtsov, a week before, and his host and his friends had made him roaring drunk. In his cups he had made certain revelations. What they were the Saint could not recollect. Hence he had absented himself from Court, in order to maintain his Divine dignity – and to plot further.

At this point it is necessary to make a critical remark.

For two years Rasputin had been speaking of his monastery at Pokrovsky. In the salons and boudoirs of Moscow and Kiev as well as in Petrograd, society spoke of the institute, discussed it and declared that indeed Grichka was a holy man. The Metropolitan with his rich robes and jewels, and all the bishops were as common clay in comparison with the “Holy Father” who could cure by the laying-on of hands, who walked in humility and who devoted himself to good works. Curiously enough it had occurred to nobody, not even to the ever-ubiquitous police of Petrograd, to investigate the story told by Rasputin regarding his monastery at far-off Pokrovsky.

The world of Russia did not, of course, know that in that Siberian village there still lived Rasputin’s peasant-wife with her children, or that his life had been so evil, a career of drink and profligacy which even in Siberia stood out in letters of scarlet in the police dossiers of Tobolsk. It, however, remained for a female spy of the Revolutionary Party – a certain lady named Vera Aliyeff, from whose report I am writing – to travel to that sordid Siberian village and watch the Court charlatan in his home. I may here say that to the untiring efforts of Mademoiselle Aliyeff is in a great measure due the downfall and assassination of the terribly sinister influence which cost the Tsar Nicholas his throne, and hundreds of women their good name – as I shall afterwards show.

But to relate matters in their proper sequence as history I may here quote from the report of this patriotic woman-revolutionary who travelled to Rasputin’s home in disguise, because he knew her, and as she was good-looking, he had already endeavoured to induce her to join the Cult of the Naked Believers. She reports: —

“I found the great monastery of Pokrovsky to be a dirty repellent hamlet of mujiks of the worst and most illiterate type. There was no trace of the marble palace which Rasputin had described as having erected as the main building of the monastery. The latter was, I found, a large, cheaply built, ordinary-looking house, three rooms of which were given up to the ‘Saint’s’ peasant-wife, his son Dmitri and the younger of his two daughters, while in the other part of the house lived twelve women of varying ages – the youngest being sixteen – who were his fascinated devotees and who had given up their lives in Europe to enter the seclusion of that sordid home and become his spiritual brides.”

Here Mademoiselle Aliyeff had an interview with the woman Guseva, and later on after an inspection of the police records at Tobolsk and Tyumen, she returned to Petrograd and reported the result of her visit to the Right Party in the Duma.

Meanwhile, the Empress and also her favourite lady-in-waiting telegraphed to Rasputin urgently imploring him to return to Petrograd. But the verminous libertine was in too comfortable quarters with his dozen devotees to stir out far from his nest, and while going about the village standing drinks to all and sundry and ingratiating himself everywhere, he at the same time treated his old and ugly wife with brutal unconcern, and refused even to reply to the Imperial demand.

At last he grew weary of his retirement – for, truth to tell, he usually retired there whenever he disappeared upon his many pretended pilgrimages in Russia – whereupon he one day sent a telegram to the Empress saying that he had at last been directed by a Divine call to again return to the bedside of the Tsarevitch. This message was received with the greatest joy at Tsarskoe-Selo, where it set a-flutter hearts in which beat the noblest blood of Russia.

“The Holy Father is on his way back to us!” Such was the message whispered along the long stone corridors of the Winter Palace, the many windows of which look out upon the grey Neva. The Empress went to her son’s bedroom and told him the glad news, laying a tender hand upon the poor lad’s brow.

And Madame Vyrubova meeting the Emperor as he came out of his private cabinet chatting with the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and the Minister Protopopoff, whispered the news into his ear.

The Tsar smiled happily. Little did His Majesty dream that by that return of the unwashed scoundrel whom the most delicately nurtured women worshipped, he was doomed to lose his throne.

On Rasputin’s arrival some intensely dramatic scenes ensued – scenes that would be deemed fantastic if any modern novelist had dared to describe them even as fiction.

But from these voluminous reports and the dossier before me I shall attempt to describe them.

Chapter Two

Scandals at the Winter Palace

The rascalities of Rasputin were unparalleled, even in Russia.

The mock-monk, much against his will, returned to the Winter Palace where the Court had gone for a few days and only because of the Divine call, as he pretended. He treated the distracted Tsaritza with utter disdain when early one wintry morning he drove in from the Dvortsovy Square, passed the Palace Guards, and ascended the wide black-and-white marble staircase of the Great Hall, where she stood eager to receive him.

“Ah! Forgive me! Forgive me, my Master!” implored the Empress in a low agonised tone. “I was thoughtless and foolish.”

“Take me to Alexis,” said the charlatan roughly interrupting her. “He is ill – very ill – and God has sent me to him.”

Eagerly the Empress conducted him to the bedside of her son, the little Tsarevitch. Madame Vyrubova, the mistress of Rasputin, was awaiting him, together with two nurses and a physician named Letchitzki.

With rough deep-voiced dismissal the unkempt profligate sent everyone from the room, including the Empress herself. He wished to pray by the sick lad’s bedside, he explained.

This he did, Madame Vyrubova alone remaining. When the door was closed the blasphemous rascal quickly bent over the Heir to ascertain that he was sleeping, then he raised his own dirty hands for Madame to kiss, crossing himself at the same time, and whispering “The drug? It seems to have acted well – eh? Where is it?” She slipped a tiny green-glass phial from her cream silk blouse and handed it to him, saying: “Yes, Badmayeff was right! Each time I gave it to him in his milk, he grew worse.”

“Ah!” laughed the verminous fellow, his sensuous face bearded and blotchy with drink. “Now that I have returned Divine Providence will restore him. He will not get his six drops each day!” The dastardly charlatan and poisoner of Russia’s heir concealed the Thibetan drug in the folds of his ample habit, and whispering in his rough uncouth peasant way, “Now let the fools in again!” he threw himself upon his knees by the bedside commencing a fervent prayer.

“O God – the Great! the Merciful! the Giver of all Bounties, the Creator, and the Death-giver – the Maker of Kings and the Destroyer of Nations – to Thee we pray – and of Thee we ask – ”