Rasputin and the Russian Revolution

by Princess Catherine Radziwill

Copyright, International Film Service, Inc.

Peace Document of Delegates at Brest-Litovsk Conference

This is the story as it reads, and sad enough it sounds. Germany can look triumphantly on the success of her work and glory in it. Happily for Russia, for the world and for the cause of civilisation, it is only one chapter of it that has come to an end. Russia, the great Russia of the past, is not dead. She possesses far more vitality than she is given credit for, and she still has sound, true, and honest elements amidst her citizens. When attempting to judge her, one ought to think of the great French Revolution, and to remember that in France, also, it took years before its work was at last consolidated and set upon a sound basis. One must bear in mind that in France, too, a period of terrorism made people despair of the future and fear that the end of their Fatherland had come. Our Russian Revolution is hardly one year old, and though perhaps one will be aghast at what I am going to say, I think that she has not yet passed through that phase of real terror which is always a symptom of great upheavals such as Russia has undergone and is undergoing. We may see worse things yet; we may live to look upon the erection of a scaffold on one of the squares of Petrograd or of Moscow. But this will not mean that the end of Russia has come, nor that she has become, or will remain, a German province. The hatred of the Teuton, on the contrary, will grow as events progress and the great disillusion arrives. A few more months, and the peasants whom Trotzky, Lenine and their crew have lured with false promises will perceive that these demagogues have been unable to fulfil all that they had sworn to them they would do. They will realise that their lot has become under the rule of these new masters ten thousand times harder than was the case before, and they will be the first to rise against these deceivers. If we are to believe all that we hear from people who have arrived here from Russia recently, this movement of reaction has already started, and it is bound to grow stronger with every day and hour which goes by. The peace signed at Brest Litovsk will remain verily a “scrap of paper” which will end by being thrown into the waste-paper basket. Not one Russian will recognise it, not one Russian will accept it; the Germans feel it themselves, and are preparing for a new struggle which may have a far different conclusion from the one which they are now trying to persuade the world has come to an end.

What has helped them, apart from the treason of Trotzky, Lenine and their followers, who have only had one idea in heart and brain, that of enriching themselves at the expense of the country for which they feel neither affection nor pity, has been the state of confusion into which Russia was thrown by the Revolution that broke up so unexpectedly—a confusion which can only be compared to that which prevails in the house of a man whom sudden ruin has overtaken, when every servant or menial in the place tries to steal and take something in the general disaster or to profit out of it in some way or other. In Petrograd, in Moscow, as well as all over the country, looting took place, not only of private property, but also of the Public Exchequer, especially of the latter, and the Russian officials, who had always been grasping, became all at once bandits after the style of Rinaldo Rinaldino, or any other brigand illustrated by drama or comedy. They stole; they took; they carried away; they seized everything they could lay their hands upon. To begin with the silver spoons of the unfortunate Czar and as many of the Crown Jewels as they could get hold of, down to the paper money issued by the State Treasury, of which, as the Kerensky government had to own before the so-called National Assembly at Moscow, eight hundred millions were put into circulation every month after the Revolution, in contrast with two hundred millions which were issued formerly. I do not think that it is a libel on these officials to suppose that part of this fabulous sum found its way into their pockets, instead of being applied to the needs of the nation or of the army.

This wholesale plundering, if I may be forgiven for using such a word, was of course not the fault of Kerensky and of his colleagues, under whose ministry it began, but whereas the latter realised immediately that it was taking place and resigned rather than countenance it; the former, though aware of it, found his hands tied in every attempt he made to subdue it, by the fact that those who were principally guilty were either his personal friends or his former partisans, or people with whom he had associated in earlier times, and with whom he had compromised himself to a considerable extent. With regard to those associates of his former life, Kerensky found himself in the same position as Napoleon III. after his accession, in presence of the Italian Carbonari, who claimed from the Sovereign the fulfilment of the promises made to them by the exiled Pretender. Kerensky had also given certain pledges at a time when he never expected he might be called upon to redeem them; and when he became a Minister he had to give way to the exigencies of all the radicals, anarchists, and extreme socialists among whom he had laboured, and with whom he had worked at the overthrow of the detested and detestable government of the Czar. He could not cast them overboard or set them aside. He had to listen to them, and in a certain sense to submit to their demands. For example, in the case of the exile to Siberia of the unfortunate Nicholas II., a measure which in the first days of the Revolution he had declared that he would never resort to, but which he nevertheless executed under conditions of the most intense cruelty, simply because it was demanded from him by persons to whom he could not say no. People who knew him well say that the fact of his powerlessness caused him intense suffering, but he had neither the strength to assert himself in presence of his former comrades, nor, perhaps, the will to do so.

In a certain sense, he was the man of the hour, “le maitre de l’heure,” as the Franco-Arab proverb says. He was even to some extent the one indispensable element without which it would have been impossible for a Republic ever to become established in Russia. And everybody seemed to agree, one year ago, that a Republic was the only form of government possible after the fall of the Romanoffs. Of this Republic Kerensky rapidly became the symbol and at the same time the emblem of a new Russia; a regenerated and better one, in the opinion of his followers of the moment; a worse one from what it had been formerly, in that of his adversaries, but at all events of a different Russia from the one previously known.

But, unfortunately, Kerensky was neither a statesman like Milyukoff nor an administrator like Prince Lvoff, nor even a business man like Konovaloff. He lacked experience and knowledge of the routine of government. He had but a limited amount of education, no idea of the feelings of people born and reared in a different atmosphere from that in which he had grown up. He was only a leader of men, or rather of the passions of men; and, unfortunately for him, what Russia required was more a ruler than a leader, of whom she had more than she wanted, though perhaps at that particular moment none so powerful as Kerensky. He had emerged a Dictator out of a complete and general chaos; and he was to add to it the whole weight of his unripe genius and of his exuberant personality. After having been the Peter the Hermit of a new Crusade, he was to become the false Prophet of a creed which he had preached with an eloquence such as has been seldom surpassed, but in which it is doubtful whether he himself believed. Had he consented, or had he been able to work in common with more experienced men than himself towards the triumph of the Republican cause, he would have taken in the annals of his country the place of one of its greatest men. As it has turned out, he will rank among its most interesting and brilliant historical figures, but only as a figure. His disappearance also has had something romantic about it, which will perhaps appeal to certain people in Russia, and which will disgust others. The world is wondering where he has gone and what has become of him; but everything points to the fact that he has either done away with himself, as he often said he would do in case of failure, or else that he has been murdered by the Bolscheviki during those days when the Neva and the different canals of Petrograd were carrying away to the sea hundreds of dead bodies every day. At least this is the opinion of persons who were in Russia at the time Kerensky vanished into space; and very probably this opinion will prove to be a true one.

The moderate liberal parties in Russia, who are the really intelligent, would, of course, wish their country’s future government to become a Republic modelled after that of the United States. At the same time, if we are to believe the rare news which reaches us from Petrograd, and especially from Moscow, one hears people say now what they would never have dared to mention a few months ago—i. e., that a constitutional Monarchy, if it could be established, would offer certain advantages. I hasten to say that, personally, I do not see where these advantages would come in, unless they were associated with a new dynasty. But at the same time, together with many others, when I look at all that has taken place recently in my poor country, I cannot but feel sad at the great uncertainty as to the morrow which the Revolution of last year has opened, not only before Russia, but before the whole world, and I would like to see this incertitude come to an end in some way or other.

I have but little more to add. It is difficult even to try to guess what the future holds in store for the former realm of the Romanoffs. The only thing which one can say at present with any certainty is that Russia will never honour the signature of Trotzky in regard to the peace treaty concluded with Germany. Any hesitation Russia might have had as to this point in her moments of discouragement, that must have made themselves felt at times, disappeared after the message sent by the President of the United States to the Soviets in Moscow. This message dispelled any fear the Russians might have had as to whether their allies had abandoned her. At present the country knows that it does not stand alone, and that any resistance it has to offer to its foes will be appreciated and encouraged. This is much, indeed this is the one thing which was capable of rousing the energies of the whole of that vast land which the Teutons imagine that they have conquered. I can but repeat: Russia is not dead yet. Russia shall show the world that, betrayed as she has been, she can still lift the yoke put upon her, save herself, and help to save the world for the great cause of Democracy.

And the conclusion of this book? I do not pretend to offer any. I simply invite my readers to draw the one they like best. I ask them only to do so with kindness and an appreciation of the difficulties of the situation. I have not tried to write a volume of controversy; I have merely attempted to describe, as well as I could, the Revolution and the events which preceded it, among which the extraordinary story of Rasputin figures so curiously.