Rasputin Read online

  His first reaction was to hit his assailant on the shoulder, but he then found himself defending her as she was set upon by a lynch mob of his supporters. Maria remembered the crowd shouting: ‘Kill her, we’ll drown her in the Tura.’ His proud boast at the time was ‘Grishka stood up for her.’ But he soon reverted to hostility, referring to her as ‘the slut who stuck a knife up my arse’.

  His attacker, Khiona Guseva, was aged 33 and had no nose. Rasputin and his son, Dmitri, had noticed her at mass the preceding Sunday and Rasputin had reprimanded his son for pointing out how odd she looked. It was rumoured that, at 13, she had suffered a bad reaction to medicine and that her nose had become severely infected. There was another story that her nose had been lost, in adulthood, to syphilis.

  Whatever happened, she could not, like Gogol’s hero of ‘The Nose’, simply have woken up without one. Gogol’s hero addressed the shame of being noseless after tracking down a giant-size version of his nose, praying in the Kazan Cathedral: ‘You will agree that it’s not done for someone in my position to walk around minus a nose. It’s all right for some old woman selling peeled oranges on the Voskresensky Bridge…’

  But Rasputin was not interested in any poignant details: ‘If I had been stabbed by a beauty… But that noseless stinker!’ he would rant. The Pokrovskoye police description of Guseva was stark: ‘nose absent, irregular hole in place’.

  He would have been horrified to hear subsequent rumours that Guseva was his former lover. But then it was said that she had once been a milliner and nicknamed ‘little princess’ because of her elegant bearing and intellectual finesse. The truth was that she now lived in Tsaritzyn, home town of Rasputin’s staunchest current enemy, Iliodor. She was a devoted follower of Iliodor, who was convinced that she had lost her nose after nobly asking God to take away her beauty.

  At the beginning of that summer, Iliodor is said to have strung a knife around Guseva’s neck and ordered her to kill Rasputin. She had dutifully stalked her victim from Yalta to St Petersburg and finally to Pokrovskoye. There she had rented a room and kept watch over the lavish Rasputin house from a window. During the day, she had stationed herself strategically on a particular wooden bench. At her subsequent trial Guseva was invited to plead insanity or ‘religious ecstasy’. She refused, insisting she was sane, but still ended up, a mad hatter, in the Tomsk Regional Clinic for the Insane.

  After the stabbing, Rasputin was carried into his house. His devoted wife Praskovia sent plates crashing to the floor as she cleared the dining table. He was laid out and operated on by a doctor using just the light from a candle. Maria wrote proudly that her father refused any anaesthetic. A priest was called to hear his last confession and, according to Maria, the Rasputins’ lachrymose icon of the Virgin of Kazan wept again: a servant who was dusting the Virgin’s face spotted drops of water. Rasputin sent a lurid telegram to the Tsarina: ‘That hunk of carrion struck me with a knife.’ Her reply was equally passionate: ‘Our grief is beyond description, we hope for God’s goodness.’

  He had to be taken in a carriage to Tyumen for another operation. According to Maria, well-wishers gathered outside the house: ‘Peasants weeping and lamenting escorted the stretcher.’ Along the way, Maria and Dounia cushioned Rasputin’s body against Trakt 4’s infamous bumps.

  When they reached the hospital, Rasputin was robust enough to insist that he wanted no journalists within cannon shot. But one canny reporter, from the Stock Exchange News, managed to inveigle his way into Rasputin’s ward, reporting: ‘He sat worn out by ill health in a hospital smock.’ The doctor who operated on Rasputin received a gold watch from his grateful patient and orders were issued to female carers ‘not to wear corsets’. There was clearly life in the old dog. Among visitors during his 46-day stay, bringing gifts from the faithful, was his most voluptuous ‘little lady’, Akilina Laptinskaya.

  In August 1914, while Rasputin was still at State Hospital 649, war was declared. Rasputin was much upset, tearing his bandages and shouting: ‘Let Papa and Mama not plan war.’ He insisted he’d had a dream in which he saw the ‘Neva [river] full of the blood of Grand Dukes’. He apparently wrote with curious lucidity to the Tsar: ‘You are the Tsar, the father of your people. Don’t let the lunatics triumph and destroy you and the people. And if we conquer Germany, what, in truth, will happen to Russia? We all drown in blood: the disaster is great; the misery infinite.’ He dispatched a more characteristic telegram to the Palace, which was unfortunately leaked to the Duma: ‘Don’t declare war. Fire Nikolasha [Grand Duke Nicholas].’

  Rasputin had turned against Grand Duke Nicholas. He was no longer grateful for his generosity regarding Praskovia’s hysterectomy and made no secret of his new-found disapproval of the Grand Duke’s marriage to the Black Princess Anastasia. The Grand Duke had, in his turn, lost faith in the dog-healing Man of God. He had been shocked by Rasputin’s attacks on saints and churchmen, dismayed by his opposition to the war and mortified to hear of attacks upon himself. But at this early stage, the Tsar was in agreement with Grand Duke Nicholas, making one of his few, short-lived stands against Rasputin: ‘Our domestic affairs are not subject to the influence of others.’

  During his recuperation, Rasputin visited another of his controversial cleric friends, Bishop Varnava, in Tobolsk. Rasputin had been behind Varnava’s unpopular promotion to Bishop. The Bishop, in turn, had proved his own loyalty to Rasputin by joining the voluptuous ‘little lady’ Laptinskaya at his hospital bedside. Varnava’s eccentric tastes included a predilection for having photographs taken of himself in coffins. The Tsarina, however, found him decidedly unphotogenic, comparing him to a ‘rodent with bushy tail and fat body’.

  On his journey back to Pokrovskoye, Rasputin decided to protect himself from further attacks by dressing up in a white dress and bonnet. Coincidentally, at almost the same moment, the murderous Iliodor was fleeing across the Russian border, also dressed as a woman.

  When Rasputin returned to St Petersburg, he found it much changed. The city had been renamed the more Russian ‘Petrograd’. As the troops were mobilised, a wave of patriotism had swept throughout Russia, with daily demonstrations held to support the Tsar. ‘For Faith, Tsar and Country’ and ‘For the Defence of Holy Russia’ were the rallying calls from factories and villages.

  Upon his arrival at the flat, Rasputin phoned Anna Vyrubova and asked to see the Tsarina. Told he must wait a couple of days, he banged down the phone in annoyance. The ‘Tsars’ were reluctant to meet him because they knew of his opposition to the war. When they were all finally reunited, at Anna Vyrubova’s house, Rasputin wept, while predicting more tears and blood: ‘Dear friend, I will say again, a menacing cloud is over Russia… Lots of sorrow and grief, it is dark and there is no lightening to be seen.’ The Tsarina made no reply, while the Tsar continued sipping his tea.

  In the end Rasputin accepted that his opposition to the war would cost him vital support at Court. He performed one of his adroit about-turns and was soon confiding in the French Ambassador: ‘I am always telling the Tsar that he must fight until complete victory is won,’ adding hastily: ‘I’m also telling him that war has brought unbearable suffering to the Russian people.’

  However, he was not going to drop his stand against Grand Duke Nicholas. As the Tsarina wrote to her husband: ‘Grigory loves you jealously and can’t bear N taking a part.’ Grand Duke Nicholas, in turn, roundly vetoed Rasputin’s suggestion that he visit the battlefront: ‘Come and I’ll hang you.’

  The Tsarina soon found Rasputin indispensable as a war-time helpmeet, particularly valuing his endorsement of her gruelling hospital visits. She wrote giddily to her husband: ‘27 Oct. 1914, We are going to another hospital now directly… We shall go as sisters (our Friend likes us to) & tomorrow also.’ ‘21 November: this is the wire I just received from our Friend: “When you comfort the wounded God makes His name famous through your gentleness and glorious work”. So touching & must give me strength to get over my shyness.’ ‘28 November�
� At times I feel I can’t any more & fill myself with heart-drops & it goes again – & our Friend wishes me beside to go.’

  Rasputin himself would not have been so welcome. Many at the Imperial Court were put out by his burgeoning interest in the war wounded. Dr Botkin’s son, Gleb, imagined the shocked reaction of soldiers on the steps of a military hospital, upon hearing the words of the Palace Commandant: ‘The carriage for Mr Rasputin.’

  That autumn the Man of God was himself fighting battles on various fronts. Aside from dealing with a growing band of enemies, he was plagued by worries that his powers were failing. In the previous year he had, according to the secret police, been reduced to brushing up his techniques as a hypnotist. The Okhrana had found a letter from Rasputin asking for lessons in hypnosis. A surveillance agent reported that the teacher of hypnotism had a moustache and was ‘swarthy of face’.

  Neither of ‘the Tsars’, needless to say, had any inkling of Rasputin’s self-doubt. Shortly after their emotional tea, the Tsarina summoned him back to the Palace to help Alexis and pray by the boy’s bedside. The Tsarina wrote to the Tsar: ‘19 September… You, I know, notwithstanding all you will have to do, will still miss yr little family & precious agoo wee one [Alexis]. He will quickly get better now that our Friend has seen him & that will be a great relief to you.’

  The Tsarina met Rasputin regularly at Anna Vyrubova’s house during this period. But, for all her confidence in ‘our Friend’, she was still worried about being seen with him: ‘23 Sept… Ania [as she called Anna] was offended I did not go to her, but she had lots of guests, & our Friend for three hours.’ The following day they did meet. She wrote to the Tsar: ‘24 Sept… flew for half an hour… to Ania’s house, as our Friend spent the afternoon with her & wanted to see me. He asked after you… may God give you courage, strength & patience – faith you have more than ever and it is this wh. keeps you up… And our Friend helps you carry yr. heavy cross and great responsibilities.’

  Such was her faith in Rasputin as strategist that she was soon suggesting that she herself make contact with Nicholas Maklakov, the Minister of the Interior: ‘25 October… Our Friend came for an hour in the evening; he will await yr return and then go off for a little home… our Friend wishes me quickly to speak to Maklakov as he says one must not waste time until your return.’

  When the Tsar returned to the Palace, he too gleaned support from Rasputin, writing at the end of October: ‘Felt utter fury against the Germans and Turks for their foul attack in the Black Sea! Only in the evening, under the influence of Grigory’s soothing words, did my soul regain its equilibrium.’

  But the stabbing in Pokrovskoye had, according to several accounts, added five years to Rasputin’s age. He began taking opium frequently and an old friend, who saw him at the time, said: ‘He walked around hunched over in a gown.’ Rasputin was shaken when he found himself unable to heal an old woman: ‘The Lord has taken my power away from me.’

  It was not until his dramatic cure of his stalwart Anna Vyrubova that he felt his vitality returning. He was with Mossolov, Director of the Imperial Court, when he heard that Anna had been seriously injured in an accident. Mossolov had been trying to gain Rasputin’s support for a local government project and had already undergone one unproductive meeting: ‘I waited half an hour. At last he appeared, his face bloated, his hair unkempt.’ Following three bottles of wine, Mossolov appeared to carry the day as Rasputin said: ‘As for me, what can I do but give the idea my blessing.’

  ‘Russia’s Ruling House’ caricature by N. Ivanov. Cartoons were published of the Tsarina cavorting with Rasputin; schoolchildren sang lewd songs.

  Mossolov felt, understandably, that the drunken meeting had been inconclusive and arranged to see Rasputin again, for dinner, in the house of a mutual friend. But this second discussion also went awry when, just as Rasputin was licking the soup off his fingers, he received one of his urgent phone calls. Was it his fascination with gadgetry, an over-blown sense of his own importance or some vision of the future that made Rasputin behave, in early 1915, as though he already owned a mobile phone? Wherever he went, he left numbers: he could always be reached.

  On this occasion, he returned to the table white-faced and trembling: Anna, ‘Annushka’, had been in a train crash while travelling from Tsarskoye Selo to Petrograd. The train had come off the tracks in a heavy snowfall. He left for Tsarskoye Selo immediately, using a car belonging to another eminent supporter, Countess Witte, wife of the former Prime Minister. Upon his arrival, he discovered that Anna Vyrubova’s colossal legs had been irreparably crushed. He prayed for her before giving one of his bald but accurate pronouncements: ‘She will recover but she will always be a cripple.’ After praying he collapsed, as was his wont, but was furious to find himself ignored by ‘the Tsars’ and left to crawl back to Gorokhovaya Street under his own steam. He complained bitterly to Dounia.

  Hours after his return, however, the Tsarina telephoned, full of gratitude. She sent flowers and ‘a basket of fruit so heavy that it had to be carried by two people’. Rasputin was delighted to find himself so much in favour again. But, as always, it seemed that any increase in his popularity at Court was accompanied by a stepping up of hostilities beyond. Four days after his healing session with Anna Vyrubova, he was nearly run over by a sledge driven by ill-wishers from Tsaritzyn.

  Later that year, a young man, Simoniko Pahekadze, announced that he wanted to marry the 17-year old Maria, who now boasted ‘enormous bright-coloured lips’ and a flirtatious manner. ‘She would pass the tip of her tongue over her broad, bright red lips in a kind of predatory animal movement,’ reported a fascinated visitor. But shortly after the couple’s engagement, it emerged that Pahekadze was among Rasputin’s enemies and primarily interested in killing his prospective father-in-law. He drew a gun on Rasputin but then, apparently finding his fingers frozen on the trigger, ended up firing into his own chest. He survived and was thenceforth banished from Petrograd.

  In the last two years of his life, Rasputin found his wobbly ‘gift for knowing people’ taxed to the limit as murderous enemies vied with the favour-seekers and devotees for his attention. Despite his poor grasp of figures, he was now being courted by industrialists asking him to act as a business consultant. He developed a rudimentary taste for investments, toying with starting his own newspaper (‘they write such horrors about me’) and putting money into a newly emerging cinema with sound. Some of his actual, less ambitious enterprises included various forms of mild extortion. He would charge, for instance, 2,000 roubles (roughly £200) for keeping a soldier from the front. In a one-off deal, he agreed to spring 400 Baptists from prison for refusing military service, for 1,000 roubles each. He demanded 250 roubles from a convicted forger for his release from prison. How much success he had with these ventures cannot be known exactly. And inevitably there were deals that went awry. An elderly baroness claimed Rasputin had swindled her out of 270,000 roubles after summoning Jesus in a seance: the case was not pursued, although an early investigation unearthed the florist who supplied a crown of thorns.

  He was not short of income. On top of the government allowance of 10,000 roubles that he received each month, the syphilitic Protopopov paid him 1,000 roubles a month from his own pocket, for which doubtless he had his own mysterious political motivations.

  Such was Rasputin’s prestige that, in January 1915, he was visited by Countess Witte, seeking promotion for her grandson. ‘The Countess Witte visited the Dark One on 8 and 25 January, both times wearing a thick veil,’ reported a security branch agent. ‘On 25 January she asked the doorman to escort her by the back stairway and gave him a three-rouble tip.’

  It was in his role as businessman that Rasputin became embroiled in one of his worst scrapes. In March 1915 he arranged to meet prospective ‘clients’ at the Yar restaurant in Moscow. The meeting deteriorated when he began boasting that the Tsarina had sewn shirts for him. His bragging increased with drink, until he was roaring that ‘the old girl’
had slept with him. Asked if he really was Rasputin, he dropped his trousers and waved his penis. With his penis exposed, he carried on chatting with several female singers, while distributing notes saying: ‘Love unselfishly.’

  The eminent British diplomat, Robert Bruce Lockhart, who was attending an event at the Yar, later wrote in dismay: ‘As we watched the music hall performance in the main hall, there was a violent fracas in one of the private rooms. Wild shrieks of a woman, a man’s curses, broken glass and the banging of doors. Head-waiters rushed upstairs. The manager sent for the police… But the row and roaring continued… The cause of the disturbance was Rasputin – drunk and lecherous, and neither police nor management dared evict him.’

  The police eventually took Rasputin away at 2.00am. The following day he left Moscow in disgrace, doubtless consoled by a crowd of ‘little ladies’ who gathered at the station to see him off. The business project under discussion at the Yar, it emerged, would have been lucrative for Rasputin, but sadly fell through; it concerned outsize underwear for the military.

  The Assistant Minister of the Interior and Director of the Police, Vladimir Dzunkovsky, had already crossed swords with Rasputin. Now, following three months of inquiries into the incident, he handed a graphic report to the Tsar, who, somewhat at a loss, instructed Dzunkovsky to keep the report to himself. ‘The sovereign… listened very attentively, but did not utter a single word during my report,’ recalled the Assistant Minister. ‘Then he extended his hand and asked: “Is it written out?” I removed the memorandum from the folder, the sovereign took it, opened his desk and put the memorandum inside.’ Disobeying the Tsar, Dzunkovsky promptly showed a second copy of the report to Grand Duke Nicholas and also to Prince Yussoupov’s future fellow conspirator, Grand Duke Dmitri. For this he was fired.