Nor did Trepov obtain countervailing support from the Court. Alexandra intrigued against him out of fear of losing influence. In letters to Nicholas she branded him a liar who deserved to be hanged.98 Nicholas for once ignored his wife’s advice and agreed with Trepov that Protopopov had to go. On November 11, he informed Alexandra that Protopopov was unwell and would be replaced: he asked her not to involve Rasputin in this matter because the responsibility for the decision was entirely his. Alarmed, Alexandra requested Nicholas by telegram not to act until they had had a chance to talk, and the next day departed with the children for Mogilev. Face to face, she promptly turned her husband around. When Trepov arrived in Mogilev to have the Tsar approve Protopopov’s successor, Nicholas curtly informed him that Protopopov would stay, after all. Not even Trepov’s threat of resignation would make him relent. A. I. Spiridovich cites this incident as the most glaring example of Rasputin’s influence.99
As 1916 drew to a close, all the political parties and groupings united in opposition to the monarchy. They agreed on little else. The extreme left would be satisfied with nothing short of a radical transformation of Russia’s political, social, and economic system. Liberals and liberal-conservatives would have been content with parliamentary democracy. Both, for all their differences, thought in terms of institutions. The extreme right, which by now had also joined the opposition, by contrast, dwelled on personalities. In its view, Russia’s crisis was the fault, not of the system, but of the individuals in charge, notably the “German” Empress and Rasputin. Once these two were out of the way, all would be well. It was not possible to get at the Empress directly, since this would have required a palace coup, but some monarchists believed they could attain the same end by isolating her from Rasputin. Alexandra’s well-known emotional attachment to the starets suggested that separation from him would induce in her a psychic breakdown. Freed from his wife’s baneful influence, Nicholas would come to his senses and yield power to the Duma. Should he fail to do so, he could be replaced with a regent chosen from among the grand dukes, most likely Nikolai Nikolaevich. Such talk was common in November and December of 1916 in the capital’s highest social circles: at the Yacht Club, frequented by the grand dukes, in the halls of the Duma and the State Council among monarchist deputies, in aristocratic salons, even at Army Headquarters in Mogilev. It was a repetition of February 1801 when the plot against Paul I, which ended in his murder, was the talk of St. Petersburg society.
Rasputin was a natural target of right-wing critics because of his influence on the Imperial couple and through them, on ministerial appointments. Stürmer, Protopopov, and Shuvaev, holders of the most important posts in the administration, owed their positions to him. True, his protege Stürmer was replaced by an enemy, Trepov, but even so it was widely believed that crossing Rasputin’s path meant a broken career. Rasputin was even suspected of meddling in military operations. Indeed, in November 1915 he had given, through the Empress, strategic advice to headquarters. “Before I forget,” Alexandra wrote Nicholas on November 15, 1915,
I must give you a message from our Friend, prompted by what he saw last night. He begs you to order that one should advance near Riga, says it is necessary otherwise the Germans will settle down so firmly through all the winter, that it will cost endless bloodshed and trouble to make them move.100
Neither Nicholas nor his generals paid attention to such counsel. Rasputin was strictly forbidden to come near headquarters. Still, the fact that this semi-literate peasant felt free to give advice on military matters incensed the conservatives.
At Tsarskoe Selo, his word was law. Rasputin frequently prophesied that should any harm befall him, Russia would go through another Time of Troubles. He had visions of rivers of blood, of fire and smoke, an uncanny and rationally inexplicable foreboding of what would soon, in fact, occur.101 His predictions alarmed the Empress and made her more than ever anxious to protect him from his enemies, who, in her eyes, were also the enemies of the dynasty and of Russia.
Rasputin basked in his power. His drinking bouts, his boasting and insolence, grew more scandalous with each day. Ladies of high society were fascinated by the brute with the hypnotic eyes and gift of prophesy. Rasputin belonged to the sect of Khlysty, who preached that sinning reduced the quantity of sin in the world. At his private villa, with the ever-present gypsies, liquor flowed freely. Whether Rasputin really possessed the sexual prowess with which he was credited is more than questionable. A physician named R. R. Vreden, who examined him in 1914 after he had been knifed by a jealous mistress, found Rasputin’s genitals shriveled, like those of a very old man, which led him to wonder whether he was even capable of the sexual act: he ascribed this to the effects of alcohol and syphilis.*
Rasputin could behave so scandalously because he felt above the law. In March 1915, the chief of the Corps of Gendarmes, V. F. Dzhunkovskii, had the courage to inform the Tsar that his agents had overheard Rasputin boast at a dinner party in Moscow’s Praga Restaurant that he “could do anything he wanted” with the Empress. His reward was to be sacked and sent to the front. After this incident, the police thought it prudent to keep to itself adverse information on Rasputin. Sycophants and aspirants to office fawned on him; honest patriots risked disgrace if they dared to incur his displeasure. Guchkov and Polivanov, who had done the most to revitalize Russia’s war effort after the debacle of 1915, were kept at arm’s length and, in the case of Polivanov, fired because of Rasputin’s enmity. That such a charlatan had a hold on the monarchy offended the monarchists most of all.
Nicholas’s attitude toward Rasputin was ambivalent. He told Protopopov that while he had not cared for Rasputin at first, in time he had grown “accustomed to him.”102 He rarely saw the starets, however, leaving him to Alexandra, who always received Rasputin in company, usually that of Vyrubova. Nicholas told Kokovtsov in 1912 that “personally he hardly knew ‘this peasant’ [muzhichek], having met him, in passing, no more than two or three times, and, moreover, at considerable intervals.”103 Even so, the Tsar would not listen to any criticism of Rasputin, treating him strictly as “une affaire de famille,” as he told Stolypin, requesting him never again to allude to this matter.104 Rasputin was a “family affair” in the sense that he had the unique ability to stop the bleeding of the tsarevich, whose illness never left the family’s thoughts. The imperial children adored the old man. But Nicholas insisted Rasputin stay out of politics.105
By the end of 1916, the Imperial couple had concluded that the opposition, determined to unseat them, attacked their appointees and friends as a matter of principle: every choice of the monarchy, whatever his merits, was bound to come under fire. The true target of these attacks was the dynasty. That this was so Nicholas and Alexandra concluded from the example of Protopopov, who had been named to placate the opposition but upon assuming office became the target of its abuse. Alexandra wrote Nicholas:
Remember that the question is not Protop[opov] or X, Y, Z. The question is the monarchy and your prestige.… Don’t think that it will end with this. They will remove one after another all who are devoted to you, and then, ourselves.106
When Rodzianko assured Nicholas that Protopopov was mad, the Tsar responded, smiling: “Probably from the time I appointed him minister.”107 The same held true for Rasputin. Alexandra, and to some extent her husband, came to believe that enemies abused their “Friend” only to get at them.