The nobility and the bourgeoisie are in an uproar. Because of the blind faith and unshakable devotion the tsarina and her doting husband extend to Rasputin, the people have lost all respect for the royal couple. There are even rumors-ill-founded, I would hope-that he has bedded the tsarina herself.
Much to my frustration, Rasputin doesn’t seem to care. While I toil away in secret at perfecting my device and exploring the extent of its powers, he spends his time seducing and partying with the gypsies. He parades his women without shame and flaunts his lecherous ways without apology while the tsar and tsarina reject any criticism of him and shut down any investigation that threatens to give credence to what they deem as nothing more than malicious lies or misinformed ramblings.
There is also a lot of contempt at Rasputin’s meddling in high political affairs. He is openly interfering, going so far as to dictate appointments at the highest level of government and in the Holy Synod.
And then there is his stance against war.
It first flared up when the Austro-Hungarian monarchs, backed by their German protectors, decided to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Russian bourgeoisie and the nobility were enraged and demanded war to defend their Slav brethren. The press was also calling for it. The military, eager for a chance to avenge their defeat in the Russo-Japanese war, wanted it. The tsar himself, educated in a military school and keen to endear himself to Russian society, was also on a war footing.
The tsarina, however, was against it. She hadn’t forgotten the bloody revolution that followed the defeat against the Japanese. She is half-German-the kaiser, Wilhelm II, is her uncle-which made her position even more difficult.
Rasputin stepped in to help. He was passionately against war. As a man of God, it was natural for him to be in favor of peace, but as the empress’s miracle worker, it became a mission at which he couldn’t fail.
He spoke to the tsar repeatedly, warning him of defeats and revolution. The tsar listened-and backed off. War was averted.
I was delighted by this, of course. It was a noble, glorious achievement. Others were not as pleased. In the corridors of power and in the salons, all of St. Petersburg was incensed at how an uneducated and degenerate peasant had blocked a just war and brought down humiliation on their great nation. Powerful voices rose up against Rasputin-first the prime minister, Stolypin, then the Church’s hierarchs, Feofan, Hermogen, and Iliodor.
Stolypin, infuriated by Rasputin’s inexorable influence over the royal couple, unleashed a relentless persecution campaign against him. He spoke out against him in the Duma. He got the newspapers to run vicious stories about his scandalous behavior. He had him followed by agents of the Okhrana secret police, making our meetings more difficult to arrange. The surveillance men even gave Rasputin’s women code names: Winter Woman, Dove, Owl, Bird, and so on. They were only too happy to leak their findings to the reporters who were on Rasputin’s trail.
I was greatly worried by these developments, but Rasputin was unperturbed.
“Do not worry, Misha,” he assured me. “He’ll be out of our hair before long.”
“But he’s the prime minister,” I replied.
“Yes,” Rasputin agreed, his tone flush with conviction. “Which is why the tsar will listen when I warn him that this man has seized too much power.”
And so it happened, as he had said it would. The insecure tsar did listen, and his self-esteem was immediately threatened. When Stolypin went to see him, armed with a thick dossier on Rasputin and demanding he be exiled, the tsar rejected the findings and told Stolypin his agents were too simple-minded to understand what they had witnessed. Rasputin’s true motives, he told his prime minister, were beyond their grasp. Then he threw the dossier into his fireplace.
Reports of Stolypin’s being reassigned to the Caucasus didn’t come to fruition. He was assassinated by a known leftist radical at the Kiev Opera House a month after his fiery meeting with the tsar. Rasputin was rumored to have had a hand in arranging the murder. A year earlier, I would have said that was a blatant lie. Today, I am no longer sure what to believe. I do know two things for certain: Rasputin was in Kiev on the day of the killing, and the tsar did put a stop to the investigation into his prime minister’s murder.
Stolypin’s death, and the rumors of Rasputin’s involvement, made things worse. Attacks rained down on him from all corners, including one that would prove far more vicious.
It all came to a head on a moonless night, that of the sixteenth of December. Rasputin told me his friend, the monk Iliodor, whom he’d met when we first arrived in St. Petersburg, would be picking him up and taking him to an evening gathering at the Yaroslav Monastery with Bishop Hermogen and a handful of his friends.
It all went horribly wrong from the moment he set foot in the cloister.
Rasputin told me they were barely inside and taking off their coats when one of the assembled guests, the publicist Rodyonov, started mocking him openly.
“Look at the starets’s humble rags,” he scoffed to the others. “What’s that fur coat worth? Two, two and a half thousand rubles? And that hat. It must be worth at least four hundred.”
“A true testament to self-denial,” Hermogen answered before leading them into the monastery’s reception room.
Rasputin, unsettled by their open taunts, took a seat. Hermogen launched into a demented tirade almost immediately.
“You are a godless scoundrel,” he lambasted Rasputin. “You have offended countless women and cuckolded their husbands. You’re even sleeping with the tsarina. Don’t deny it. We know you are.”
The others joined in, jabbing him angrily in the chest and shouting, “You are an agent of evil, peasant. You are an Antichrist.”
Rasputin was frozen in his chair, stunned and surprised by this unexpected outburst. Then the bishop grabbed Rasputin by his hair and started punching him savagely across his face. “In God’s name, I forbid you to touch any more women,” he barked at him. “And I forbid you to see the tsar or the tsarina. Do you understand me, you scum? I forbid it.” His blows kept raining down on Rasputin, who was too shocked to try to defend himself. “The rule of the tsars is sacred, and the Church will not sit back and allow you to destroy it. You will not set foot in the royal palace again, do you understand? Never again.”
Hermogen let go of the bloodied Rasputin and nodded to Rodyonov. The nobleman unsheathed his sabre. With its blade pressed against Rasputin’s neck, they forced him to swear on a big bronze cross that he would never set foot in the palace again, bashing him on the head with the cross as he made his oath.
I could not believe my eyes when I saw him bruised and battered like that. I have never seen him as shaken-and as enraged. He was livid with anger. He refused to see anyone until his wounds had healed, but he did dictate a telegram that I sent to the royal palace.
The tsar and the tsarina were furious. Not only had the bishop threatened the life of their special friend; he had insulted the tsarina by accusing her of committing adultery.
Hermogen and Iliodor were exiled from St. Petersburg, but they refused to leave. The tsar balked at removing them forcibly, not wishing to turn them into heroes. And so their sniping continued. Pressure was mounting against Rasputin from all sides. We needed a miracle.
True to his wily nature, Rasputin devised one.
IT HAPPENED IN AUTUMN, when the prince fell ill again.
The royal family were vacationing at their hunting reserve at Spala, in the Belovezh forests of Poland. The prince slipped in his bathroom and knocked his thigh. The injury caused him internal bleeding, which spread through his groin and developed into blood poisoning.