Confessions of the Czarina

by Princess Catherine Radziwill

What followed upon the first convocation of the first Parliament Russia was to know is already a matter of history. It did not live for more than a few weeks, and very probably the Czar had never intended it to exist for any length of time. What he wished was to appear before the eyes of Europe as a Sovereign who had been willing to make any amount of sacrifices in order to insure the welfare of his subjects, who, instead of showing themselves grateful to him for his good intentions, had rewarded him with the basest ingratitude. He thought this a clever piece of policy, forgetting that any politician worthy of the name could see at once through his game, and that this game could have only one result—that of inspiring an utter contempt for his person as well as for his moral character.

Therein lies the great, the supreme, fault of Nicholas II. He never could bring himself to act frankly in regard to any serious matter in which his people were concerned. The Empress, in her strange way, was far more honest, because she did not hesitate to follow the instincts of her heart, and in her most mistaken actions she was at least sincere.

During the years that followed upon the insurrectionary movement of 1905 Alexandra Feodorowna was in such a state of health that it was almost impossible for her to take any part in what went on around her. Her reason had been seriously compromised by the shock caused by the tragical ending of the only romance she had known in her life, and she used to spend hours weeping in her room, absorbed in the contemplation of her own grief. It was in vain that Anna Wyrubewa, who had become more intimate with her than had even been the case before, had tried to induce her to fight the morbid ideas which were torturing her. The Empress would not listen to her friend, and insisted on secluding herself from the world and even from her own daughters, whose presence irritated her and made her give way to fits of impatience that were very nearly akin to madness. The girls were perfectly charming and had the luck to have an excellent governess, who tried to give them the love their own mother refused or was unable to award them; nevertheless their lives were blighted by the illness of the Empress, and it is not extraordinary that they came to care for their father more than for her, whom they were always more or less afraid to approach, whom they were constantly told they must not bother by questions of any kind or manifestations of affection.

It was only the little Cesarewitsch who was allowed to share his mother’s solitude, whom she would never let out of her sight. He was the only preoccupation her diseased mind would admit, and when she saw that his state of health did not improve she became more and more desperate, until one day she confided to Anna Wyrubewa that she was sure God was punishing her for the affection which she acknowledged now that she had borne for Orloff, and that her boy would never get well. Her despair was so evident, and her mind was getting so unhinged, that at last the question of putting her in some retreat where she could be under a doctor’s continual care was seriously considered by her medical attendants, who even informed the Czar of their fears in regard to the sanity of his Consort. Of course the fact that they had done so reached the knowledge of Madame Wyrubewa, and it was then that the latter began to consider whether it would not be possible to restore by some way or other the equanimity of Alexandra Feodorowna and to procure for her some kind of consolation for the seemingly incurable grief which was destroying her life and her reason. Unfortunately for all parties concerned, she was to make at that time the acquaintance of the notorious Raspoutine, whom she introduced, under the circumstances which I am going presently to relate, to the miserable, half-demented Empress, an introduction which was to prove so fatal not only to the unhappy Sovereign, but also through her to the whole of Russia.

XV
A PROPHET OF GOD

ANNA WYRUBEWA had always been inclined toward religious exaggeration, and this was perhaps one of the reasons why the Empress, who for years had buried herself in the exercise of all kinds of devotional practices, had taken to her so quickly. They were both of a mystical turn of mind, and never so happy as when enabled to spend long hours absorbed in prayer before some icon or other. And besides this, Anna was in the habit of frequenting certain circles of St. Petersburg society that were considered as the supporters of orthodoxy in its most rigid form, where all questions concerning the discipline of the Church were discussed and in some cases decided.

Such, for instance, was the house of the Countess Sophy Ignatieff, where the higher clergy used to meet at weekly assemblies, during which the laxity of the younger generation in regard to religious matters was discussed with many a sigh and many a shaking of wise heads, disposed to admit that this religious indifference, which was getting stronger and stronger every day, was bound to bring Russia to the brink of terrible misfortunes. Countess Ignatieff had traveled all over her native country in search of its sacred shrines and places, and was very well known personally in almost all the principal convents in the Empire. She had been suspected at one time of sympathies with dissenters, but this has never been proved; on the contrary, in her old age she gained the reputation of being fanatically orthodox, one who saw no salvation outside the fold of her own creed, who favored persecution of all others on account of her conviction that people ought to be brought back to the bosom of the Greek Church by any means, even through violence if other ones failed.

During one of the yearly pilgrimages in which so much of her time was spent she had had occasion to meet a kind of vagrant preacher whose wild eloquence had captivated her fancy and her imagination, and she had been partly instrumental in his coming to St. Petersburg, where she had arranged for him to hold religious meetings in her house, to which she had invited prominent church dignitaries, together with a few ladies of an enthusiastic turn of mind whom she believed would be inclined to listen to the wild ravings, for they were nothing else, of her new protégé.

At first people laughed at her, as well as at the uncouth appearance of the “Prophet of God,” as she called him, who, while not blessed with the eloquence of a Savonarola, yet possessed sufficient persuasive gifts and talents to shake the equanimity of the hysterically inclined women who listened to him. This “Prophet” was none other than Grigory Raspoutine, who later on was to become such an important personage in Russia.

Madame Wyrubewa had heard about Raspoutine a long time before she ever came to hear him. But after she had had the opportunity of meeting him she thought that it would not be a bad thing to bring him to Tsarskoye Selo, where the poor Empress was eating away her heart in her grief at the loss of all that she had cared for in life, and to try to induce Alexandra to listen to him, and to pray together with him. He was supposed to perform wonders by the intensity and the fervor of his prayers, and it might just be possible that the very fact of his being a complete stranger to her, and moreover a man totally outside Court circles and Court intrigues, would influence the Czarina to give him her confidence and to permit him to cheer her up. At all events, she spoke about him several times, and pleaded hard with the Empress to allow him to be brought to her. This Alexandra Feodorowna absolutely refused, but she was induced at last to consent to see him at the house of Anna Wyrubewa, and thither came one winter evening the adventurer who was in time to become the Cagliostro of a reign which was not even worthy to have any one else but a common, uncouth peasant for its jester.