Rasputin and the Russian Revolution

by Princess Catherine Radziwill

Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

Foreign Minister Leon Trotzky

On the 1st of November, 1916, one of the cousins of the Czar, the Grand Duke Nicholas Michaylovitsch, who was perhaps the cleverest member of the Imperial family, a man wonderfully well learned, and who had acquired the reputation of an excellent historian, thanks to the remarkable studies which he had published on the life and times of Alexander I., and the Napoleonic wars, made another effort to shake the influence of Rasputin, Protopopoff and the Empress. He asked the Czar to receive him, and during a long and heated conversation which he had with the latter, he read to him a letter which he had prepared beforehand, in which were exposed not only the political, but also the private reasons, which made it an imperative necessity to remove Rasputin from Tsarskoie Selo. As the Grand Duke told his friends later on, there were in this letter some passages that might have wounded Nicholas II. in his feelings as a husband, not only as a sovereign. But the Czar did not reply one single word, only went to fetch the Empress, and in his turn read to her the incriminating epistle. When he reached the passage in which remarks were made concerning her, Alexandra Feodorovna rose up in a passion, and snatching the document out of her husband’s hands, she tore it up into a thousand small pieces. In the course of this memorable conversation, the Grand Duke asked the Emperor whether he knew that the appointment of Protopopoff was the work of Rasputin, with whom the former had become acquainted at the house of one of their common friends, a certain Badmaieff.

“Yes,” replied the Czar, “I know it.”

“And you find this a matter of course,” exclaimed his cousin.

Nicholas II. replied nothing.

In spite of the angry tone which the discussion had assumed, the Emperor remained perfectly civil to the Grand Duke. The latter afterwards remarked that he had been more than surprised to meet with such utter indifference, and at the same time such kindness, in appearance at least, from his cousin. It seemed as if nothing that he could say could move the Czar, who, during the most heated moments of this interview, handed the matches to his kinsman, when he noticed that the cigarette of the latter had gone out. At last the Grand Duke exclaimed: “You have got Cossacks here, and a great deal of room in your gardens. You can have me killed and buried without any one being the wiser for it. But I must tell you the truth, and say to you that you are going to your ruin.”

The Czar continued to be silent, and his cousin had to take his leave, without having been able to obtain one single word from him by which he might have guessed whether he had been believed or not.

The confessor of the Imperial family, Father Schabelsky, was induced to interfere in his turn, and to warn the Emperor of the ever increasing unpopularity of his consort, advising him at the same time to send her somewhere for the benefit of her health, until the storm had abated which everybody except the few people who surrounded the Sovereign saw was on its way. His advice also was disregarded. A lady belonging to the highest social circles, whose family had always been upon terms of intimacy with that of Nicholas II., the Princess Vassiltschikoff, bethought herself to write to the Empress, and to entreat her to save the country and the dynasty, and to induce her husband to call together a responsible ministry, in possession of the confidence of the Duma and of the nation. The only reply which she received was an order commanding her to leave the capital immediately for her country seat, with a prohibition to return to it again. Alexandra Feodorovna remained the only person the Czar would listen to, and Alexandra Feodorovna was but the mouthpiece of people like Rasputin, Sturmer, and Protopopoff, who kept telling to her that she must not yield, and that the only thing capable of restoring peace to Russia was to subdue the rebellious spirits who dared talk about the necessity of making concessions to public opinion, coupled with the firm determination to crush, even by force, any manifestations which might be made in that direction. Acting upon this advice, the Empress assumed a power which had never belonged to any consort of a sovereign before. In the absence of Nicholas II. at the front, it was she who gave out orders, not only to the different ministers, but also to the troops composing the garrison of Petrograd; she had people arrested according to her fancy, she caused the houses of others that had displeased her to be searched by the numerous police agents whom she had at her disposal, ready to execute any of her caprices; she showed herself the absolute master in her consort’s dominions, and she held everybody, including himself, in a firm grasp, which (this must be added) was more the grasp of Rasputin and Protopopoff, than her own.