Rasputin and the Russian Revolution

by Princess Catherine Radziwill

The war broke out and awakened the nation out of the state of marasm into which it had fallen. During the first weeks which followed upon its declaration there took place in Russia an explosion of enthusiasm such as had never been witnessed before. It did not, however, last any appreciable length of time, and collapsed together with the news of the reverses that attended the Polish campaign. Nowhere were these reverses felt more than amidst the ranks of the labour party, which, as a direct consequence of them, acquired all at once an importance it had hardly dared to hope it could win so soon. Factories became the principal organ of the national defence, and the word “ammunition” was transformed into the flag under which all those who were dissatisfied with the government then in power enrolled themselves as well as the people who longed for the end of an order of things the faults and mistakes of which were known in Russia long before they came to be recognised abroad. The workman suddenly became the individual to whom was awarded the greatest importance, there where the question of the salvation of the Fatherland came to be raised. He was the one to whom everybody said aloud what he had been himself aware of long before, that it was from him, and from his efforts, that depended victory over the enemy who had audaciously invaded Russian territory. This workman (this must never be lost sight of) was intimately connected with the army in which he had served, with the army that had far more confidence in him, and in his knowledge and efforts, than in the incapable government that had sent it to be slaughtered without providing it with any means to fight its foes. The workman became thus conscious of his extreme importance, and he aspired to be awarded the place in society which he imagined that he had the right to pretend to. He raised his voice, and insisted upon its being listened to. Perhaps Nicholas II. would still be in possession of his throne had he had sufficient common sense to do so. There were at this juncture people who tried to make the Sovereign understand that it was not enough for him to have assumed the supreme command over his troops in order to win back the popularity he had so completely lost, and that he would do well, in the interest of his dynasty as well as in his own, to show himself more frequently to the population of Petrograd, and to try to get into direct touch with it otherwise than through his official visits to the factories where ammunition was prepared for the army; visits during which he was escorted with great pomp and ceremony by his usual cortège of attendants and in the course of which he had never found one single word of encouragement to say to those who were toiling for the welfare of the Fatherland. The Emperor failed to grasp the wisdom of this piece of advice, nor did he realise the importance of another one, which proceeded from the few friends he had still left to him, the advice to call together a national and responsible Ministry, composed of men chosen among the representatives of the country in the Duma, and in possession of the confidence of the latter. He understood even less the necessity, recognised everywhere outside the gates of his Palace, to try and raise the prestige of the Crown, by getting rid of the compromising personalities, whose presence at his side dishonoured him as a man, and discredited him as a sovereign. He did not see, and perhaps no one dared to point out to him, the shameless money speculations which were taking place everywhere in Russia, and even under his own roof; the bargaining of everything that there was to sell or to buy in the country; honours, dignities, distinctions, places, and the Fatherland itself, by a gang of shameless adventurers, who had found the protection which they needed to carry on their plunder within the walls of the Imperial residence. He believed what his wife kept repeating to him, that once he had declared such was not the case, no one would dare to think that he consulted Rasputin or the metropolitan Pitirim in regard to State affairs, and he simply laughed at those who pretended that he was doing so. He was blind until the end. He is perhaps blind still, and it is quite possible that he will persist in remaining so until the day when his revolted subjects will come and claim his life, after having compelled him to surrender his throne. Unconscious creature, unable to notice the dangers amidst which he had been living, or the abyss that was already swallowing him up.

It is when considering this point that one feels tempted to ask what would have become of Nicholas II. had he had beside him one of these intelligent women, endowed with a strong character, and understanding the nature of her duties as a wife, as a mother and a sovereign. It is likely that if he had found such a help he might have prevented or at least have contrived to give a different shape to the crisis through which Russia had to pass. The war was an unavoidable misfortune, owing to the firm determination of Germany to provoke it, no matter in what way, or under what pretext, but it would have been possible to conduct it differently than was the case. One could also have been prepared for it, and one ought to have realised that the old and superannuated system of government so utterly rotten, where everything was left in the hands of corrupt functionaries, who had never learned anything out of the book of history, for whom the intellectual development of nations meant nothing at all, and who did not look beyond their personal advantages in all the great crises which might come to shake the equanimity of the country, that this system had served its time, and was bound to collapse under the weight of the universal contempt. But Nicholas II. called together a Duma which he had determined beforehand to deprive of every initiative, and of the liberty to say what it wished concerning the needs of the country that had entrusted it with the defence of its interests. He made many fine promises which he never intended to keep, and when he spoke about the necessity of bringing about a close union between the Czar and the representatives of his people, he never wished to give to the latter the possibility to approach him, or to lay their grievances at his feet. Had there been in Russia an Empress worthy of the name, and competent to fill the position she occupied, she would have told her husband that the duty of them both consisted in remaining loyal towards their subjects. She would have exposed her person, and risked her life if necessary, in the accomplishment of the task which had been allotted to her by Providence. She would have spent her time otherwise than in the practices of a piety that was nothing else but superstition mingled with erotic tendencies.

What did Alexandra Feodorovna do during those solemn hours of a supreme crisis? I do not wish to be hard on her now that misfortune has overtaken her, but the truth must be told, and it is necessary to point out that her principal preoccupation during the months which preceded the Revolution consisted in defending Rasputin against the attacks directed against him from all sides, and in isolating the Emperor from all the people capable of enlightening him in regard to the conduct and the character of the sinister personage whom her imagination had transformed into a Saint, and to whose presence at her side she attributed a miraculous power, capable of protecting her and her family, against every kind of danger. Under his influence and thanks to the impulse which he gave to her activity, she applied herself to persuade the Czar to conclude a separate peace with Germany, working upon the humanitarian feelings of Nicholas II., and repeating constantly to him that he owed it to his subjects to put an end to a useless effusion of blood, and not to go on with a perfectly hopeless struggle. If the Revolution had not taken place it is most probable that a separate peace would have been signed between Russia and Germany during the course of the next few months, and it is also likely that if this intention of the Empress had not transpired outside the gates of her Palace the Revolution would not have broken out when it did, because all the different political parties in the Duma were agreed as to the advisability of putting it off so long as the enemy was in occupation of a part of the country. But Alexandra Feodorovna poured the last drops into a glass which was ready to overflow, and the hatred which the Russian nation bore her found at last its justification in the general opinion which suddenly exploded like a barrel of powder in the whole of the country, that she also was a traitor, who had been won over to the German cause, and who was ready to give up into the hands of the adversary against whom one had been fighting for so many long and anxious months of a struggle during which so much blood had flown, this Russia that had offered her the Imperial diadem, which she had found nothing better to do than to sully with the mud of the dirty roads whither her steps had taken her.

Here I must make a pause, and try to analyse the real part played in the drama by the unfortunate Sovereign on the head of whom so many curses have been showered. I do not believe that it was in order to hand over to her own native country, the one which had become hers by marriage, that Alexandra Feodorovna lent herself to the intrigue in which it is unfortunately an uncontested fact that she took an active share. It seems to me, so far as I can judge of things which did not take place in my presence, that her intentions were sincere according to her lights. She was not an intelligent woman by any means, and what she possessed in the way of intellect had disappeared in a vanity and haughtiness of which it is hardly possible to form an adequate idea. She cared only for her crown, and for autocratic power over her subjects, and under the influence of those who represented to her that the least concession to the spirit of the times was bound to further the cause of a revolution which she abhorred, she had awarded her protection to this reactionary party represented by men like Sturmer, Protopopoff, and others of the same kind. She had preached to her husband whenever she had had the opportunity for doing so, the necessity to stand firm, and never to sacrifice one fraction of the principle of absolute power over his subjects. She had pointed out to him on every possible occasion the example of Louis XVI., who had been beheaded, because he had not had sufficient courage to resist to the pressure exercised over him by the revolutionary elements in the French monarchy. She did not grasp in the very least that times were different, that ideas as well as men had changed, and that a sovereign who in a moment of danger does not seek help from his people, or try together with them to find a solution to the difficulties of a threatening situation, courts an inevitable ruin. The Empress has, without any doubt being allowed as to this point, been the direct cause of the misfortunes as well as of the fall of her husband, and probably when history will be called upon to judge her, it will show itself even more severe in regard to her and to her conduct than her contemporaries have been, because she has certainly done more to destroy the respect of Russia for the throne to which she had been raised than the most violent revolutionary attacks that were ever directed against it. Instead of trying to bring her consort nearer to the nation at whose head he stood, she only inspired him with suspicions and even with dislike for this nation, or at least for the best among its representatives.

There happened circumstances when the Empress interfered directly in the affairs of the State, and persuaded the Czar to do what she required of him; as, for instance, the exile in Siberia, this Siberia whither she was to be sent herself, and the arbitrary arrest of several leaders of the labour party, whom, under some futile pretext or other, the government threw into prison a few weeks before the outbreak of the Revolution, in spite of the indignant protestations made by the Duma on the subject. It was also Alexandra Feodorovna, who, on the advice of the metropolitan Pitirim, a creature of Rasputin, who had caused him to be appointed to the See of Petrograd, the most important one in the Empire, persuaded the Emperor to follow the advice of the minister Protopopoff to prorogue the Duma, and to arm the police with machine guns, in view of a possible revolt of the inhabitants of the capital against the government, a fatal and most imprudent measure, if there ever was one, which decided the fate of the Romanoff dynasty.

In this last occurrence, it was less out of fear of the debates that might take place in the Duma, than because he wanted to have his hands untied in regard to the conclusion of peace for which he had been working ever since he had been called to the ministry of the interior, that Protopopoff induced his Sovereign to resort to a measure absolutely devoid of common sense, and the only effect of which could be to add fuel to a fire that had been smouldering for months, if not years. It proved fatal for everybody, and it is still a question whether it was not to be more fatal for Russia than anything else which Nicholas II. had ever done, because it has thrown her into an era of revolution and of trouble, for which she was neither prepared nor ripe.

At that time I am writing about, the members of the Imperial family together with the aristocracy were beginning to get more and more alarmed at the manner in which events were unfolding themselves, and were wondering as to what could be done to put an end to the influence of the Empress and of her favourites. One of the oldest, and the only surviving personal friend of the late Czar Alexander III., Count Vorontzoff Dachkoff, when he visited the Emperor to take leave of him, on his resignation of the functions of Viceroy of the Caucasus, had tried to remonstrate with him on the subject, and to point out to him the necessity of getting rid of Rasputin and of the followers of the latter. He had known Nicholas II. as a child, and he could therefore talk with him more familiarly than any one else in Russia: “I must tell you the truth,” he said. “Do you know that, thanks to your Rasputin, you are going to your ruin and endangering the throne of your son?” The old soldier, who had served under four sovereigns, became quite eloquent in his speech. The Czar listened to him in silence, and at last exclaimed almost with a sob: “Why did God lay upon me such a heavy burden?”

After Count Vorontzoff, the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna tried to do something to save her son. She had left Petrograd months before, not caring to live in the vicinity of her daughter-in-law, whom she disliked as much as did the other members of the Imperial family. When Nicholas II. visited Kieff in October, 1916, where his mother was residing, the latter had a long conversation with him, in which she pointed out to him the peril which threatened him and the dynasty, unless he decided upon an energetic step, and removed from her side the favourites of his wife. But even Marie Feodorovna was powerless in presence of the dark and occult powers that held her son in their trammels, and nothing followed upon her remonstrances or her adjurations that he might consider the dangers with which he was surrounded, and try at least to conjure them.

After this interference of the widow of Alexander III., some of the members of the Cabinet who were not of the same opinions as Messrs. Sturmer and Protopopoff, attempted to reason with their Sovereign, among others Count Ignatieff and Mr. Bark, but they were also not listened to, and the former at last handed in his resignation which was accepted with alacrity, Alexandra Feodorovna not trying even to hide the extreme satisfaction she felt at its having taken place.

Count Ignatieff had been the most popular minister of public instruction Russia had ever known, and his departure was looked upon in the light of a national misfortune, adding to the dislike with which the Empress was viewed everywhere. Mr. Bark did not feel himself at liberty to abandon the department of finances of which he had the charge at the very moment when a new loan was being floated, but he avoided seeing the consort of his Sovereign, and only appeared at Tsarskoie Selo, when he could not help doing so.