Sir Bernard Pares, "Rasputin and the Empress," Foreign Affairs, 6, no. 1 (Oct. 1927), 140-155.

The publication of the letters of the Tsaritsa to her husband for the first time showed in black and white Rasputin's enormous political significance. But those who took the trouble to wade through that mass of loose English were probably too overcome by the sweep of the vast tragedy to realize at first the unique importance of the letters as historical material. It is to this aspect of the subject that this article is devoted. . . .

Rasputin, who was under fifty at the time of his death, was born in the village of Pokrovskoe on the Tura, near Tobolsk in Siberia. Like many peasants he had no surname; Rasputin, which means "dissolute," was a nickname early given him by his fellow peasants. He suddenly went off to the Verkhne-Turski Monastery near his home, where were several members of the Khlysty, a sect who mingled sexual orgies with religious raptures and who were emphatically condemned by the Orthodox Church. On his return he became a strannik, or roving man of God, not a monk, not in orders, but one with a self-given commission from heaven, such as have often appeared in Russian history, especially at critical times. Meanwhile, he lived so scandalous a life that his village priest investigated it with care. That he habitually did much the same things as the Khlysty is conclusively proved; but that he was actually one of the sect has not been definitely established. Certainly to the end of his life he alternated freely between sinning and repenting, and professed the view that great sins made possible great repentances. He seduced a large number of women, several of whom boasted of the fact, or repented and confessed it to others. The village priest reported him to Bishop Antony of Tobolsk, who made a more thorough enquiry and found evidence which he felt bound to hand over to the civil authorities. During the enquiry Rasputin disappeared. He went to St. Petersburg, and as a great penitent secured the confidence of Bishop Theophan, head of the Petersburg Religious Academy, and Confessor to the Empress, a man whose personal sanctity has been recognized by everyone. He secured also the patronage of the Grand Duchess Militsa, daughter of King Nicholas of Montenegro, a lady with a strong taste for the sensational, and also that of her future brother-in-law, the Grand Duke Nicholas. It was these who introduced him to the Palace.

The Empress Alexandra, formerly Princess Alix of Hesse Darmstadt, was a daughter of the English Princess Alice and a favorite granddaughter of Queen Victoria, from whom she may be said to have taken all the ordinary part of her mental environment. The unusual feature in her character was her strong mysticism. Her family was scourged with the haemiphilic ailment; all the male children of her sister Princess Irene of Prussia suffered from it. It does not appear in females, but is transmitted by them to males. Its effect is that the slightest accident may set up internal bleeding, which there is no known way of arresting. Children suffering from it may die at any moment, and on almost any occasion, though if they live to the age of 13 they may in some measure overcome it; Rasputin prophesied such an issue for the Tsarevich Alexis. Much of the tragedy in the position of the Empress lay in the fact that after she had given birth to four charming and healthy daughters, her only son, the long desired heir to the throne, suffered from this scourge, and that she well knew that his disease came through herself.

In every other domestic respect the family was ideally happy. Husband and wife literally adored each other; the children were equally united with them and with each other. The Empress was the pillar of the house, their actual nurse and attendant in time of sickness. She brought them up entirely in English ideas; they had cold baths and slept on camp beds; they talked largely in English. The family as a whole, in its clean-minded life, represented a veritable oasis in the corruption which was so prevalent in higher Russian society, and we may imagine that with that world this aspect of their isolation was one of their chief offenses. They lived almost as much apart from it as if they were settlers in Canada. . . .

Rasputin at first kept quiet and studied his ground. He saw the Imperial family infrequently, and his presence was sought only to comfort the nerves of the Empress and her husband, and to re-assure them as to the health of their son. M. Gilliard, who was nearly all day with his charge, saw him but once. The meetings ordinarily took place at the little house of Madame Vyrubov outside the Palace. Soon, however, Rasputin went on openly with his earlier scandalous life. Towards the end of 1911 sensational happenings attracted public attention to him. Among his former supporters had been the robust Bishop of Saratov, Hermogen, a very strong monarchist, and the Monk Heliodor, a notable and popular preacher, also very conservative. An attempt was made to push through the Synod an authorization to ordain Rasputin a priest. This was defeated in view of his well-known dissoluteness. Hermogen was one of its most vigorous opponents. Direct interference from the Court obtained at least a partial reversion of the decision of the Synod. Hermogen again was most vigorous in his protests. He and Heliodor, acting together, arranged a meeting with Rasputin which resulted in threats on both sides; Rasputin threw himself on the Bishop as if to strangle him, and when pulled off departed threatening vengeance. Hermogen was than banished to his diocese by order of the Emperor and, as he still refused to submit, both he and Heliodor were ultimately relegated to monasteries. The Emperor had acted illegally in imposing such a sentence on a bishop without trial by a church court.

This was not the end. Shortly afterwards one Novoselov, a specialist on Russian sects who lectured at the Religious Academy near Moscow, issued a pamphlet giving full details of Rasputin's seductions, which seemed to be numberless. The book was immediately suppressed, but was widely quoted by Russian newspapers beginning with "The Voice of Moscow," the organ of Guchkov. He was leader of the Duma, and for a short time its President, and he had at first hoped to play the part of tribune of the people at the palace and to carry the Emperor with him for reform. But he had been severely rebuffed, and chose this ground for attack. The papers were now forbidden to speak of Rasputin. At this time the preliminary censorship no longer existed, and such orders by the government were therefore illegal. Fines could be imposed after publication, but fines in this case the newspapers were ready to pay. Guchkov led a debate in the Duma on this infraction of the law. Rodzianko, who tried to limit and moderate the debate as much as possible, obtained an audience from the Emperor, and speaking with absolute plainness laid a number of data before him. "I entreat you," he ended, "in the name of all that is holy for you, for Russia, for the happiness of your successor, drive off from you this filthy adventurer, disperse the growing apprehensions of people loyal to the throne." "He is not here now," said the Emperor. Rodzianko took him up, "Let me tell everyone that he will not return." "No," said Nicholas, "I cannot promise you that, but I fully believe all you say. I feel your report was sincere, and I trust the Duma because I trust you." Next day he authorized Rodzianko to make a full investigation, and the plentiful material in the possession of the Synod was handed over to him. The Empress tried to get these papers back, but Rodzianko gave a stout refusal to her messenger, saying that she was as much the subject of the Emperor as himself. When he was ready with his conclusions he asked for another audience, but Nicholas put him off. He threatened to resign, and was invited to send in a report. Later he heard that it had been studied by Nicholas and the Grand Duke of Hesse, brother of the Empress, while they were together at Livadia in Crimea. The Grand Duke, as is known, in no way supported the attitude of the Empress.

When war broke out, Rasputin was lying dangerously ill at Tobolsk, where one of his female victims had tried to assassinate him. He sent a telegram to Madame Vyrubov, "Let Papa (the Emperor) not plan war. It will be the end of Russia and of all of us. We shall be destroyed to the last man." The Emperor was very annoyed at this, and never was he more at one with his people than when he appeared on the balcony of the Winter Palace and the vast crowd kneeled in front of him. For the first period of the war the Empress devoted herself to hospital work, and spared herself no labor or unpleasantness in the care of the sick; on matters of administration she only ventured tentative and timid opinions.

The discovery of gross munition scandals in the early summer of 1915 roused a wave of national indignation, and seemed at first to bring Russia nearer to an effective constitution than ever before. It must be understood that the constitutional question was still unsettled. The Duma had come to stay, as even the Empress at this time admitted. In spite of a manipulated and limited franchise, it had more and more come to represent the nation. The limits on its competence, however, remained; it had once succeeded by moral pressure in removing a Minister (Timiriazev), but the Ministers were not responsible to it. As is clear from the Emperor's talks with Rodzianko, he certainly did not recognize his famous edict of October 30, 1905, which gave full legislative powers to the Duma, as the grant of a Constitution, and the Duma's rights had been whittled down since then both by limitations imposed at the outset in the fundamental laws of 1906, and also in practice ever since.

The Emperor was in entire agreement with his people as to the needs of his army. He appealed for the utmost efforts, and at Rodzianko's request he established a War Industries Committee on which the Duma was to be represented. The Alliance itself worked in the same direction, for democratic France and England desired to see as hearty as possible a cooperation of the Russian people in the prosecution of the war. The War Minister, Sukhomlinov, who had been at least criminally negligent, was dismissed; the Emperor also got rid of those of his Ministers who were at best half-hearted about the war, Nicholas Maklakov, Shcheglovitov and Sabler, and replaced them by men who had the confidence of the country. It looked as if the movement would go a good deal further. The bulk of the Duma, containing nearly all its best brains, had practically formed into one party under the name of the Progressive Bloc, and it asked for the definite adoption of the principle that the Ministry as a whole should be such as to possess the public confidence. Those of the Ministers who were of the same view, at this time a majority in the Cabinet, went even further; they wrote a letter to the Sovereign asking that the aged and obviously incompetent Prime Minister should be changed. If things had not stopped here, Russia would have done what all her Allies were doing at the same time, namely have formed a national and patriotic Coalition Ministry; but, beyond that, she would also have completed the process towards a Constitution which, though often interrupted, had been going on since the Emancipation of the Serfs in 186I.

It was here that the Empress intervened, with the assistance and advice of Rasputin. She got the Emperor back to Tsarskoe Selo for several weeks and persuaded him to dismiss from the Chief Command the Grand Duke Nicholas, who was popular with the Duma and the country. This both she and Rasputin regarded as the most essential victory of all. She then obtained the prorogation of the Duma, and its President and the delegates of other public bodies who begged the Emperor to reverse this decision were met with the most chilling refusal. She then persuaded her husband that all the Ministers who had, so to speak, struck work against Premier Goremykin should be replaced as soon as possible. We thus enter the critical period which changed the war from being an instrument for producing a Russian Constitution into the principal cause of the Russian Revolution. From now till the final collapse Russia was governed by the Empress, with Rasputin as her real Prime Minister.

Two incidents in the summer and autumn sharpened the conflict between the Court and the public over the influence of Rasputin. In the summer Rasputin varied his dissolute orgies with a severe course of repentance and visited the tombs of the Patriarchs in Moscow. Presumably he overdid the repentance, for he followed it up with a visit to a notorious resort, the Yar, where he got drunk and behaved in the most scandalous way. His proceedings were recorded in detail by the police, who were present, and were reported by them to one of the most loyal servants of the Emperor, General Dzhunkovsky, at this time Commander of the Palace Guard. Dzhunkovsky presented the report without comment to the Emperor. Next day he was dismissed from all appointments, and the protest of another intimate friend of the Emperor, Prince Orlov, had the same result. The Empress flatly refused to believe such reports and persisted in regarding them as machinations of the police. . . .

In going to the front the Emperor had ipso facto more or less abandoned the administration to his wife, who definitely describes herself as his "wall in the rear," speaks even of "wearing the trousers" in the struggle against internal enemies, recalls the time when Catherine the Great (who had much more drastically disposed of her husband) received the Ministers, and in the end is absolutely certain that she is "saving Russia." Rasputin who had on several occasions pushed suggestions as to the war, gradually became the ultimate factor in all decisions. Practically no Minister could be appointed except on his recommendation or after accepting allegiance to him.

But there was hardly any other department of administration with which he did not interfere. He settles at various times and in various ways the administration of the food supply; he orders an absurdly simplified way of dealing with the question of rations; he confers repeatedly with the Minister of Finance, whose resignation he at first demands and then defers, and he insists on the issue of an enormous loan. He secures that the whole passenger transport of the country should be suspended for six days for the passage of food-a measure which is made futile by the failure to collect the food supplies at the proper places for transport. He repeatedly interferes both in military appointments and in military operations; he secures the suspen sion of Sukhimlinov's trial; he secures the dismissal of his successor, Poli vanov, who according to all military evidence, including that of Hinden burg, in his few months of office brought about a wonderful recovery of the efficiency of the Russian army; he orders an offensive; he countermands an offensive; he dictates the tactics to be followed in the Carpathians; he even demands to be informed in advance of all military operations, and to know the exact day on which they are to begin, in order that he may decide the issue by his prayers; he arranges the details of the future military entry into Constantinople. He removes the Foreign Minister, Sazonov, who in Russia was the main arch of the alliance, the trusted friend of the British and French Ambassadors. He adjourns and opposes any execution of the Em peror's promise to give autonomy to Poland. He dictates telegrams to the King of Serbia and to the King of Greece.

While the Empress's letters wipe clean away all the scandalous charges made against her personal character, while they show that up to Rasputin's death she was a fervent Russian patriot who had no thought of a separate peace with Germany, they also prove that she and, through her, Rasputin were the prime authors of the collapse of the Empire and of Russia.

The Boshevist leaders were far away in Switzerland or Canada, and their not numerous followers were out of the picture. The leaders of the Duma, largely in answer to the pressure of Russia's Allies, were doing all that they could to postpone the explosion till after the War. Up to the intervention of the fatal pair in the late Summer of 1915, it seemed that the war itself was only bringing nearer what practically all Russia desired. Apart from the terrible depression that followed on the disillusionment of 1915, Russia was then confronted with a monstrous regime which would have seemed impossible in some small duchy in the Middle Ages. In the midst of a world-wide struggle, in a time of the closest collaboration with the best brains of Western statesmanship, the Russian Ministers were selected by an ignorant, blind and hysterical woman on the test of their subservience to an ignorant, fantastic and debauched adventurer, a test which they could only satisfy by open-eyed self-abasement or at the best by cynical passivity, and the supreme commands of the adventurer permeated every detail of government in every branch of the administration. . . .

It was under the leadership of such a government that the lives of millions of peasants were thrown into the furnace of the World War.