Gregory Razputin was forty-five at the time of his death (1916). Till the age of thirty-four he had lived as an ordinary peasant in his native village of Pokrovskoe, between Tobolsk and Tiumen. He had a wife and three children, a comfortable home, and enough land to feed himself and family. Grishka—to use the familiar diminutive of his Christian name, as is customary in the villages—was a fair type of the Siberian peasant-farmer. They are endowed with an abundance of mother-wit, wield the vernacular with consummate skill, and are fine, upstanding fellows, able to do a day’s work or celebrate a festival equally well. Such was Gregory Razputin. Nothing indicated a future for him different from the rest. He might be expected to plough, drink vodka, beat his wife, trick his neighbours, and pray before the Holy Ikons in the usual sequence till one day the Voice or the Reaper gathered him in.
One day he heard the Voice. It happened to peasants now and then in youth, sometimes in the prime of life, and often in their old age. After that they left their mundane affairs, and prepared themselves for Eternity. Grishka had been “called” when he was fourteen, and in an ecstasy had tried to mutilate himself. But he had fallen from grace. Now twenty years later, the call came again. Grishka was “converted” by Dmitri Pecherkin, a strannik (wanderer), who had deserted his home in the same province of Tobolsk to pray at the Holy Places. In 1905 Razputin turned over his farm to his wife, son, and daughters, and joined Dmitri in his wanderings. Together they visited Mount Athos, Jerusalem, Kiev, Moscow, and Petrograd.
I have a copy of his work, “My Thoughts and Reflections” (published in Petrograd, 1915), describing his pilgrimages. It is an assortment of stereotyped phrases, texts from Scripture, homely proverbs—just the conversation of an ordinary strannik. One is struck with wonderment that the “author” of such utter commonplace should have influenced the destinies of a vast Empire, or could for one moment impose upon the cultured intellect of an Empress.
I believe that Razputin was quite sincere in following Pecherkin, and that during his earlier days in the capital he was still an earnest devotee. Bishop Feofan met him in Petrograd and was impressed by his sincerity. But even at this time (about 1907) he was already inclining once more towards worldly things. Pecherkin tried in vain to persuade him to take the vows and join him in a monastery. Razputin had a fancy for the drawing-rooms of the great city, where he was petted and paraded by hostesses in search of a sensation. And thus it came to pass that, with the help of Feofan and the Grand Duchesses Militza and Anastasia (the Montenegrin Princesses who had already introduced various “saints” to the mystically disposed sovereigns), Razputin came to the Court.
The diaries and depositions of his daughter Matrena form part of the dossier. Amidst a mass of verbiage one is able to discover here and there precise landmarks of the Razputin history. One sees the “saint” gradually drawn into the multiple cog-wheels of Court intrigue; bound firmly to the family chariot, as his daughters are put to fashionable schools; having to make money for the girls; obliged to remain a peasant in garb and language to please his protectress. But a peasant who is divorced from his normal occupation and has disobeyed the Voice takes to drink. There is no alternative.
The unhealthy life of the city set its mark on him. “Fish-soup, bread and kvass with onions, were his daily fare, but he drank red wine and Madeira ... always jolly in his cups, singing and dancing as the villagers do”; “whenever we remonstrated with him, he would say that he could never drink enough to drown the sorrow that was to come.” That is the description given by his daughter of Razputin “at home” in Petrograd. But these mild debauches were constantly supplemented by swinish orgies outside. Many a peasant, placed in the same position, would have acted in the same way.
Razputin was just an ordinary peasant, except for a certain pathological propensity, traceable to his attempted self-mutilation. He was rustic even in the measure of his “perquisites.” In his native Pokrovskoe it was not considered dishonourable to cheat one’s neighbour, but always in a small way, of course. So here, this man, who could have amassed a colossal fortune, contented himself with dabbling in small “affairs” that brought in a few hundred roubles. His whole estate at the time of his death did not much exceed £10,000. Matrena declares most positively that he never possessed or attempted to display at home any occult gift of mesmerism, healing, or clairvoyancy.
This drunken immoral peasant nevertheless played a political rôle. He gave advice to the Tsar on all sorts of important matters. He even had the audacity to stamp his foot at Nicholas for not heeding it. We know that at least on one occasion he directly influenced the Tsar to take a fatal decision. For the Imperial fête day, December 6/19, 1916, all political Russia, nobles, burgesses, and peasants, expected the Tsar to go to the Duma and announce the formation of a Ministry enjoying public confidence. Alexandra was, of course, violently opposed to any concession, but she feared the influence of the Army on Nicholas, and Razputin was produced for the occasion. He succeeded in dissuading the hapless Monarch, to his undoing and to the ruin of the Army and of Russia.
I do not propose to rehearse the well-known stories about Razputin’s influence on the dismissal or appointment of Ministers or prelates. Those stories are true only in so far as they represent Grishka acting as the instrument of another person’s will, in most cases Alexandra’s. He was too ignorant, too petty, to understand political questions. For instance, he was always urging the Emperor to come into direct contact with the people. “Get rid of the Ministers. They lie to you. Address yourself direct to the people. You will then know the truth and everything will right itself.” Nicholas became rather tired of this parrot-like repetition. He had heard it all so often from his wife. One day he told Razputin:—“It sounds very nice, but how is it to be done? You know quite well that if I took your advice I should very soon lose my life.” “No, never,” was the reply. “You will be killed by an intellectual, not by a peasant”—not a convincing or cheerful response.
On one point Razputin took what seemed to be a line of his own: he was against the war with Germany. “She is too strong. We must be friends,” he declaimed. This view did not reflect the mind of the Empress. Who had instilled it into him? It is not difficult to guess. His daughter and her husband are known to have been acquainted with one of the secret agents of Germany. Besides, there were also Badmaiev and a number of other doubtful personages around him. When war broke out Razputin was lying wounded at Pokrovskoe. The Tsar telegraphed to him about the war. Grishka fell into such rage that his wound reopened.