CHAPTER V
THE PART PLAYED BY A WOMAN
THE progress of events during the summer of 1914 is still fresh in our memories, though time is making it possible to arrive at a less passionate evaluation of motives than was possible during the heat of conflict. The perspective of years is enlarging certain happenings and figures and reducing others. Many competent historians are of the opinion that a historically complete and impartial version of the initial quarrel between Austria and Serbia—particularly of the ultimatum presented to Belgrade by Vienna after the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne—has not yet been written.
It so happened that the summer of 1914 found the author of this book in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where he had been living for a year. The consequent nearness to the sources of the avalanche that then swept over the face of Europe furnished a unique opportunity to view at first hand, as a neutral, impartial observer, the subsequent course of events. Appreciating full well the ambitious Teutonic programme elaborated during the preceding generation,—a programme clearly underlying the secret Treaty of Björkö between the Tzar and the Kaiser,—and disclaiming an intention of entering the perilous field of controversy now being revived by Professor Barnes and other Revisionists regarding the causes of the war, I still believe that the trail of guilt leads as fairly and directly to the then St. Petersburg as to Vienna or Berlin. The important disclosures resulting from the opening up of Russian, German, Austrian, and Allied archives indicate that Russia's historic folly reached its culmination in the diplomacy of Isvolsky, Sazonov, and Sukhomlinov. Of them may it truly be said, "The true author of a war is not he who declares it, but he who makes it necessary." Their categoric refusal to permit the Austro-Serbian conflict to be localized is of capital importance.
The text and context of the demands presented to the Serbian Government by Austria in her peremptory ultimatum of July 23, 1914, were read to the assembled students of the Austrian university with which I was then affiliated. The reply of the Serbian Government was likewise publicly read in the university courtyard. Exception was instantly taken by the Austrian press to the interpretation placed on the paragraph requiring the participation of Austrian officials in running down alleged Serbian conspirators on Serbian soil. This demand, it was then maintained, had been grossly misinterpreted,—obviously for political and nationalistic reasons,—and did not in fact imply surrender of her sovereignty on the part of Serbia. Such coöperation, Austria claimed, is not infrequent between sovereign states and has a distinct place in international relations. If that particular point had been yielded, Austria could not have invoked the refusal of it as legal pretext for war.
I shall not forget the pain and perplexity on the faces of intelligent and reasonable Austrians when the press of the world reported that Vienna was demanding participation in the judicial proceedings on Serbian soil, a thing clearly inadmissible. The Austrian Government replied—but indirectly to the Great Powers—that Serbia was deliberately falsifying and misinterpreting the Austrian demands. Count Berchtold pointed out that the paragraph in question meant participation in the recherches préliminaires (i.e., preliminary police investigations), as is frequently done between nations, and not in the enquête judiciaire (i.e., not in the judicial process, not in the actual trial). Austria charges that on this specific point Serbia took her stand and made, her successful bid for the sympathy of the Entente. A careful reading of the Serbian reply reveals no attempt at such evasion or distinction.
Moreover, the Serbian Government had included in its reply of July 25 a conciliatory offer to submit the dispute to the Hague Tribunal; but it was a futile gesture. Greater powers than the two prime belligerents were to play out the game of chess. As early as July 25— before Austria knew what the official Serbian reply would be—Russia had begun the mobilization of one million, one hundred thousand men. And mobilization, under existing conditions, was tantamount to a declaration of war.
The truth of the matter is that Russia was vitally concerned, and, as the protagonist of Pan-Slavism, felt obliged to support a weaker Slavic State against the obvious Germanic threat. Unprepared in 1908 when Austria violated the Treaty of Berlin by boldly annexing the provinces of Bosnia and Hercegovina, strangely enough, Russia felt prepared in 1914, though the sequel will show how tragically she erred in her estimate of national preparedness. There was open revolution in the streets of her capital, as we saw at the close of the last chapter, while Finland was dangerously disturbed over the curtailment of the constitutional rights her Diet. But Russian psychology is gloriously independent of realities when recourse can be had to emotions. Political, racial, and religious differences were buried under the tremendous outburst of patriotic sentiment and personal fealty to the Tzar that swept over the entire people. Barricades disappeared from the streets of Petrograd; Finland was placated, autonomy was promised to Poland, while discontented minorities such as the Jews, Catholics, and Lutherans were promised a removal of civic disabilities. The Declaration of War acted as a hot iron, fusing all classes and parties into a unified thunderbolt of war.
In marked contrast to the open hostility manifested at the outbreak of the Turkish War of 1871 and the Japanese War, the Russian capital now became brilliant with flags and excited, enthusiastic crowds. In front of the Winter Palace where, only nine years before, hundreds had been massacre and thousands wounded on Red Sunday, now knelt frequent thousands, chanting the Imperial Hymn and vowing allegiance to the Throne. The Emperor, in an address to the Duma, said:—
"We are not only defending the dignity and honor of our country, but we are also fighting for our Slavic brothers, the Serbs, our coreligionists and kinsmen, and at this moment I behold with joy how the union of all the Slavs with Russia is being strongly and unremittingly carried to consummation."
Russians amazed themselves in the capacity and will suddenly manifested for efficient service and helpful cooperation, thus duplicating that stiffening of the national will that defeated Napoleon in 1812. Foreigners, like Sir George Buchanan, the English ambassador, and Maurice Paléologue, the ambassador of France, are loud in their praise of Russia's initial effort in the war.
But the military disasters of 1915 followed close on the heels of the first victories over the Austrians in Galicia and the Germans in East Prussia. Hindenburg drove the loosely strung-out Russian army into the Mazurian Swamp of East Prussia, where 30,000 were killed and 90,000 surrendered. Once again Russian bureaucracy showed its utter incapacity to deal with a national crisis. Self-interest and class interest began to prevail over the common good. Now followed periods of economic and military demoralization. Transportation facilities, never abundant, became inadequate and hopelessly tangled; food supplies for the civil population ran dangerously low; and, more ominous still, food, equipment, and essential ammunition for the army were becoming scarcer and scarcer. Owing to reckless conscription of labor from industrial centres, steel, iron, and coal production fell continuously. The effects of this decrease in output were not felt during the first year of the war, as reserve stocks were substantial. But the decrease in the production of coal, for example, affected the production of metals, and decreased production of metals reacted on the railroads. Once these nerves and arteries of transportation became paralyzed, food supplies were endangered—and once food supplies are cut off, starvation drives men desperate; riots and disorders ensue, and unless speedy relief is provided disaster stands brooding on the threshold.
Through incompetency and blindness in high places Russian soldiers were actually sent to the front without rifles. The American ambassador, Mr. Francis, wrote to friends in the United States, on October 26, 1916:—
Dr. Hurd . . . an American doctor who had tendered his services to Russia and is now Surgeon General of an army corps of 40,000 men . . . told me that he had seen a Russian army advancing in which only every other man had a gun, and the men without guns were told to seize the guns of their armed comrades when they fell.
We know, too, that shells were manufactured in Russian factories that fitted no ordnance. Ammunition trains were often sent in a direction opposite the point where they were actually needed. Sukhomlinov, Minister of War, was accused of treason, tried, and found guilty. Russian representatives abroad played a similar treasonable rôle. The writer knows of a certain proving ground in Canada — where ammunition was being manufactured for the Russian army—which had to be guarded against the very Russian officers who came to inspect the work. The Canadian officer in charge had reason to believe that they intended to destroy the stores.
To this breakdown in the physical agencies of war must be added the far more disastrous demoralization of spirit that crept like a miasma into the heart of the nation. While men were dying by thousands on the battlefronts and freezing for Russia among the snows of the Carpathian Mountains, a misguided clique of fawning sycophants and court flatterers, lounging luxuriously in the gilded salons of Petrograd, was destroying, dissipating, and nullifying the fruits of those sacrifices. The Tzar had assumed personal command of the army on August 23, 1915, relegating the popular Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaievich to a command in the Caucasus, probably at the instigation of the Empress, who hated the Grand Duke for reasons which shall be set forth hereafter. The departure of the Tzar for the Stavka (general headquarters), at Mohilev, practically left Russia to governed by the Tzarina.(1) Dux femina facti.
No evaluation of the immediate causes which precipitated the Revolution would be complete without an analysis of the personal influence of an autocratic woman wielding uncontrolled power at the most critical moment in Russia history. To understand how completely the Tzarina came to hold Russia in the hollow of her hand, we must retrace our steps slightly. The catastrophes that crowd the fifth act of Hamlet are unintelligible without cognizance of the conflict of wills running through the first four; neither car the final Russian scene be appreciated without an understanding of the rôle and personality of the principal actors. We must face boldly the famous query of the Austrian ambassador: "Did Russia produce the autocrats, or the autocrats Russia?"
Although the part played by this unhappy woman can hardly be overestimated, it would be altogether unscientific and superficial criticism to lay the whole blame for Russia's downfall on her shoulders. The disintegrating process, as we have already seen, antedated her arrival in Russia, and revolutionary agencies were sapping the foundations of the Empire while she was as yet an unknown and insignificant princess of a little known and insignificant German principality. They would have brought the house of the Romanovs down had she never entered it. But the ruin and the form of the revolt might have been less sweeping, the end less shocking, had she not courted disaster by attempting to belittle it. Scorn is but poor poultice for hurt spirits.
A German princess of the House of Hesse, it would appear that she never completely won the sympathy and confidence of her adopted people, but, like her equally unfortunate prototype, Marie Antoinette, she was vaguely distrusted by the Russian people as a foreigner and a Germanophile. The official investigation instituted by the Provisional Government exonerates the Tzarina of the charge of treason, its conclusions show that she did nothing that a wife and mother might not have done in similar circumstances. The limited contacts she preserved with relatives in Germany were of a proper character, mostly of a private nature, and nothing was discovered to substantiate the belief that she exercised a pro-German influence. This vindication is particularly significant, as the new revolutionary government would naturally have been glad to discover additional reasons for their overthrow of the monarchy. This verdict frees the Empress of the capital charge; but history will never clear her name of tendencies, practices, and imprudences that contributed notably to Russia's ruin. The domination which this imperious, proud, aloof, and resolute woman exercised over her irresolute and impressionable husband became such a menace that more than one grand duke, duchess, and general cried out in warning against it. They were usually exiled to their estates, far from Petrograd.
Russia had touched the nadir of misfortune and corrupt administration; defeatists destroyed the morale and confidence of the people and evoked the gaunt spectre of national disaster. The treason of Sukhomlinov, Minister of War, was responsible for the inadequate organization of the rear and the demoralization of the front. General Denikin contributes a graphic picture of the situation in the army:—
I shall never forget the spring of 1915, the great tragedy of the Russian army—the Galician retreat. We had neither cartridges nor shells. From day to day we fought heavy battles and did lengthy marches. We were desperately tired—physically and morally. From hazy hopes we plunged in the depths of gloom. I recall an action near Przemysl in the middle of May. The Fourth Rifle Division fought fiercely for eleven days. For eleven days the German heavy guns were roaring and they literally blew up rows of trenches with all their defenders. We scarcely replied at all—we had nothing to reply with. Utterly exhausted regiments were beating of one attack after another with bayonets, or firing at close range. Blood was flowing, the ranks were being thinned, and graveyards growing. Two regiments were almost entirely annihilated by firing.
I would that our French and British friends, whose technical achievement is wondrous, could note the following grotesque fact which belongs to Russia's history:—
Our only six-inch battery had been silent for three days, when it received fifty shells. The fact was immediately telephoned to all regiments and companies and all the riflemen heaved a sigh of relief and joy.(2)
Intelligent ministers, who realized the gravity of both the internal and the external situation and dared to protest, out of loyalty to Russia, were summarily dismissed at the bidding of "dark forces" and "invisible influences," acting through the Empress. Twenty-one cabinet members followed each other to disgrace during the merry game of ministerial leapfrog." The head and front of the offending was the unspeakable Rasputin, whose sinister influence over the Tzarina gave rise to a mass of scandalous reports that discredited the monarchy, encouraged the enemies of the throne, and drove patriotic Russians to desperation.
Unsavory as this episode must ever be, it cannot be dismissed as a legend. Gregory Rasputin was one of the contributing causes of the Russian Revolution. On November 1, 1904, the Tzar made a simple note in his diary; the name he there entered was to be written across the entire history of his reign from that day forward:—
" To-day we made the acquaintance of Grigory, the Man of God, from the Province of Tobolsk."
This coarse and depraved adventurer was born a Siberian peasant. Rasputin was not his family name, but a title of reproach conferred on him by the peasants of his village, because of his public immorality and criminal record. It means, in Russian, " depraved," or "debauched." His family name was Novihh. While posing as one inspired of God, a staretz, as the type is called in Russia, he was "discovered" by the wife of a wealthy Moscow merchant during a pilgrimage to a Siberian shrine. Under her auspices he was introduced to the most exclusive circles of the capital. It should be noted at this point that Rasputin, though frequently called a monk, was not a priest of the Russian Church, nor was he even in holy orders at any time, but was one of the wandering pilgrims so frequently met in the country districts of Russia. As regards ecclesiastical jurisdiction, he was absolutely a free lance and the authorities found it impossible to control his actions. His chief title to preeminence seems to have been a certain power of healing the sick by the application of personal magnetism.
The possession of occult powers, and the mysticism of charlatans, never failed to exercise a fatal fascination for the intellectuals of Russia. Philippe, the butcher's boy Lyons, whose vogue at the Russian court ceased as Rasputin came on the scene in 1905, is a case in point.(3) And historians of the Russian Revolution will find a curious confirmation of the same psychic abnormality in the quacks, charlatans, spiritists and mesmerists, "table-rappers" and "table turners," who overawed French society with their dabbling in the supernatural on the very eve of the French Revolution. "They danced to death along a flowery way."
Isvolsky, in his Recollections of a Foreign Minister, recalls the influence of the Comte de Saint-Germain over the Landgrave of Hesse, of the "unknown Philosopher" over the Duchess of Bourbon, and of Cagliostro over Cardinal de Bourbon. Similarly, the influence of Rasputin over the Tzarina was based upon his mysterious but conceded ability to heal the young Tzarevitch by means which still remain an open question.
It is a matter of history that the Tzar and the Tzarina had been long disappointed in the birth of four daughters but of no male heir to the throne. This situation continued until 1904, when a boy was born. The Tzarevitch, Alexis was, consequently, the child of predilection on whom the affections of father and mother were unsparingly lavished. But the rejoicing at his birth soon turned into bitter grief and desperation, for it was found that the infant son suffered from the strange disease often found among royal children in Europe, known as hæmophilia.(4) Victims of this malady are known in medicine as hæmophilics, or "bleeders." It shows itself in a certain weakness of the veins and of the arteries of the skin, so that the sufferer is liable, at the slightest injury or contusion, to bleed profusely. The slightest scratch, or the bumping of a hand or an ankle against a projection, will cause either bleeding or a discolored swelling on the afflicted member, accompanied with the most excruciating pain. This mysterious disease is transmitted through the mother and only to the males. The sister of the Tzarina, Princess Henry of Prussia, had transmitted it to all three of her sons. One of the Tzarina's younger brothers also suffered from it, likewise her Uncle Leopold, Queen Victoria's youngest son. The oldest son of the King of Spain, the Prince of the Asturias, is likewise a sufferer, and grave doubt is now entertained if he will live to succeed King Alfonso.
Everything known to medical science was done for the precious heir to the Russian throne, in whom were concentrated all the hopes of the Romanov dynasty. In fact, the care lavished on her only son gave rise to the criticism at court that Alexandra was more of a nurse than an empress. It is at this point that Rasputin enters on the scene.
I consulted many persons in Moscow and Petrograd, among them physicians and scholars familiar with the current reports involving the Empress and Rasputin. I likewise discussed this and allied topics in London last July with Sir Bernard Pares, whose lifelong study of Russia and residence in Russia during the Revolution make him one of the world's leading scholars in the field of Russian history. Alexander Kerensky, former Premier of Russia in the Provisional Government, who personally visited and conversed with the Tzarina in her imprisonment, likewise gave me several hours on the same subject. The consensus of opinion is that Alexandra was, in point of morality, above reproach and cannot be accused of improper relations with the greasy moujik. She was neither his paramour nor his accomplice she was his victim. The same cannot be said of other high personages in her entourage.
Gregory Rasputin was simply a clever adventurer, a habitual drunkard, and a licentious roué who utilized for his purposes some hypnotic or mesmeric power not definitely catalogued. Whatever the explanation may be, the outstanding fact upon which all agree is that Rasputin could top the paroxysms of pain into which the young Tzarevitch was so often thrown by his dread affliction. The maternal love of the Tzarina for her boy and her terror when she realized the danger to his health, complicated by an emotional religious fervor, furnished the foundation for Rasputin's influence at court. On one occasion Rasputin was actually sent away from Petrograd by order of the Emperor. The Tzarevitch fell ill. The doctors tried every known remedy, but the hemorrhage grew steadily worse and death was expected at any moment. The distracted Tzarina had Rasputin recalled to his bedside. Over the blood-soaked bandages Rasputin made the sign of the cross, mumbled some incantations, laid his hand upon the still, white face, and the bleeding stopped. He was never again to leave the court, as he himself had prophesied on receiving the order of expulsion.
The manner and secret of his success are still debated. Out of the welter of hypotheses advanced by his contemporaries I select two as the most probable. The first group attributes his influence to a species memesmerism or personal magnetism, the application of which soothed and hypnotized the sufferer until nature itself was enabled to exercise its recuperative power. The second group advances a more complicated and more subtle explanation. They suspect that Madame Viroubova, one of Rasputin's admitted devotees and close friend of the Tzarina, administered an irritating Oriental drug to the Tzarevitch at stated intervals. This drug is supposed to have been supplied by a mysterious Badmaiev, a doctor of dubious origin, who flits in and out of the scene.
Maurice Paléologue, the versatile French ambassador in Petrograd during the Revolution, instituted an inquiry into the antecedents and character of this shadowy figure in the tragedy. He describes Badmaiev as a Siberian adventurer, a Buriat of Mongolian origin from Transbaikalia. Though never graduated from any accredited medical institution, he practised a sort of therapeutic medicine from an office in the Liteiny. Relying on the mystery that always enshroud the unknown, however ordinary and prosaic, he established a reputation as a successful quacksalver able to work astounding cures by the agency of exotic herbs, medicinal plants, and magic formulæ communicated secretly to him by sorcerers of the inaccessible Thibet. As a matter of fact, he purchased his drugs from an ordinary apothecary.
These simple elements he transformed into high-sounding nostrums: "Elixir of Thibet," "Powder of Nirvitti,' "Nyen-Tchen Balsam," "Essence of Black Lotus," "Flowers of Asokas," and so forth. He did a subterranean business supplying narcotics, aphrodisiacs, anæsthetics, and similar dangerous drugs, either stupefying or exhilarating,—take your choice—to a clientele composed largely of gullible neurotics and women suffering from female diseases. He did everything a soothsayer should do, except read the entrails of animals and divine the flight of birds. Badmaiev and Rasputin mutually recognized a brother at first glance. Cato mirari se aiebat, quod non rideret haruspex haruspicem cum vidisset.(5)
The potion was administered so as to coincide with the appearance of Rasputin, who timed his visits shrewdly. As the effects wore off, the impostor made it appear that the cure was due to the hocus-pocus which he pronounced over the suffering child.
The hypnotic explanation receives added force from the testimony of several Russian statesmen not likely to be influenced by romantic tales. Rodzianko, Speaker of the Duma,—a huge man, physically robust, and of demonstrated will power,—confesses that Rasputin, on one occasion, gave him a disconcerting exhibition of occult power. It was at the Tercentenary Celebration of the Romanov dynasty. Rasputin, uninvited, had wormed his way into the place for honor guests at a service in the Kazan Cathedral in Petrograd. Rodzianko ordered him out:—
"I drew quite close to him and said in an impressive whisper, 'What are you doing here ?' He shot an insolent look at me and replied, 'What's that to do with thee ?'
"'If you address me as "thou" I will drag you from the Cathedral by the beard. Don't you know I am the President of the Duma ?'
"Rasputin faced me and seemed to run me over with his eyes; first my face, then in the region of the heart, then again he stared me in the eyes. This lasted for several moments.
"Personally I had never yielded to hypnotic suggestion of which I had had frequent experience. Yet here I felt myself confronted by an unknown power of tremendous force. I suddenly became possessed of an almost animal fury, the blood rushed to my heart, and I realized I was working myself into a state of absolute frenzy. I, too, stared straight into Rasputin's eyes and, speaking literally, felt my own starting out of my head. Probably I must have looked rather formidable, for Rasputin suddenly began to squirm. . . ."
On another occasion, as far back as 1911, Stolypin, whom no one ever accused of being a weakling, had a similar encounter with Rasputin. Summoned to the Premier's study to answer to charges of notorious public immorality, the staretz attempted to hypnotize the statesman.
"He ran his pale eyes over me," said Stolypin, "mumble mysterious and inarticulate words from the Scriptures, mad strange movements with his hands, and I began to feel a indescribable loathing for this vermin sitting opposite me. Still I did realize that the man possessed great hypnotic power which was beginning to produce a fairly strong moral impression on me, though certainly one of repulsion. I pulled myself together and, addressing him roughly, told him. . . ."
It was said at Petrograd that Rasputin also made use of the Orlov affair to entrench himself. Among the officers of the Lancers of the Guard, the Empress's own regiment, was a clever and handsome young colonel of that name whose sympathetic and chivalrous nature distinguished him from his fellow officers. Alexandra found consolation and refuge in his company, giving rise thereby to much backstairs gossip. But a careful reading of the incident, as related by Count Paul Vassili, fails to reveal the slightest grounds for suspecting improper relations, though indiscretions and secret trysts are not to be denied. Finally, to stop slanderous whispering, the popular Orlov shut himself in his lodgings one day and blew his brains out. Rasputin, with his sensitive nose for discovering skeletons in closets, determined to rattle Orlov's bones—if ever so gently—within hearing of the Empress and observe the effect.
He found an apt accomplice in Manassavitch-Maniulov, another trickster, scarcely less odious than himself. Like Hamlet, Rasputin coached his confederate and laid the trap with consummate craft, though now the victim was not the King but the Queen:—
There is a play to-night. . . .
Even with the very comment of thy soul
Observe mine uncle. If his occulted guilt
Do not itself unkennel in one speech,
It is a damned ghost that we have seen,
And my imaginations are as foul
As Vulcan's stithy. Give him heedful note;
For I mine eyes will rivet to his face,
And after we will both our judgements join
To censure of his seeming.
Alexandra, though born a Lutheran, had become fully converted to the Orthodox faith, had even passed beyond sincerity to abnormality and exaggeration in her religious practices. Mindful of the hold which the pseudo-supernatural had over her, Rasputin imposed a fast of three days to ensure a state of grace and psychic receptivity. When the Empress had been reduced to a condition of nervous hysteria, the mummery began:—
The Empress had scarcely touched any food for three days; she had spent the time in long and almost continual orisons. She was just in a condition when any appeal to her superstition would be sure to meet with response. When she prostrated herself beside the "Prophet," she had reached a state of exhaustion and excitement which made her an easy prey to any imposture practised by the unscrupulous. For about an hour Rasputin kept praying aloud invoking the spirits of Heaven in an impressive voice, every word of which went deep into the heart of Alexandra Feodorovna. Suddenly he seized her by the arm, exclaiming as he did so: " Look! Look ! And then believe ! "
She raised her eyes, and saw distinctly on the white wall the image of Colonel Orlov, which, by a clever trick, had been flashed on it by a magic lantern held for the purpose by Manassavitch-Maniulov.
The Empress gave one terrible cry and fell in a dead faint on the floor. . . .
This was but the first scene of many of the same character. The Tzarina recovered her scared senses with the full conviction that she had really seen the spirit of the man she had loved so dearly; she was very soon persuaded that he had been allowed to show himself to her and that he would henceforward watch over her and guide her with advice and encouragement in her future life. She quite believed that Rasputin, whom she sincerely thought to be in total ignorance as to that episode in her life, was a real Prophet of God, and that, thanks to him, she would be able to communicate with the dead.
Under such auspices it is not surprising that Rasputin was enabled to exercise a powerful fascination over a certain group of influential Petrograd literati. He had divined the secret of the Russian soul, and his spatulate finger played on its every stop. He knew it to be a curious synthesis of contradictions, capable of soaring at one moment to the heights of spirituality, then sweeping, on the same wing, through a morass of lubricity. Those of us who had close contact with representative Russians often marveled at the versatility with which in one conversation they would range the full gamut of inquiry, from metaphysics to nymphomania, with an alert, restless curiosity that betokened something more than mere intellectual frivolity. Their souls seemed forever drifting, rudderless, in an immense sea of speculation, but grasping always at the infinite, searching everywhere for God. That is why their favourite mood was melancholy tempered by resignation. Bogoiskateli, "seekers after God," occurs often in their mouths to describe themselves. Their logos was podvig—some voluntary suffering accepted for its expiatory value. The mood was popularized in the favorite proverb:—
The darker the night, the clearer the stars;
The deeper the sorrow, the nearer to God.
Hearken to another of their poets:—
All earthly perishes, thy mother and thy boyhood.Thy wife betrays thee, yea, and friends forsake;But learn, my friend, to taste a different sweetness.Looking to the cold and Arctic seas,Get in thy ship, set sail for the far Pole,And live midst walls of ice. Gently forgetAnd to the shudderings of gradual cold
How there you loved and struggled;
Forget the passions of the land behind thee;Accustom thy tired soul,When thence to thee flood forth the beams of light celestial.
So that of all she left behind her here
She craveth nought whatever,
"Which is a beautiful poem," writes Stephen Graham "written for those who have become morbid."
"Oh, poor widowed country of the North," cries Maurice Paléologue, after long living in Petrograd, "who has never known the splendors of the South !"
Nor was this mournful mysticism confined to the intelligentsia alone. If anything, it was deeper and more elemental among the "black people" of the soil. The Russian moujik when steeped in vodka reveals a sordid grossness and a slumbering animality limited only by physical capacity. But, the orgy over, he will weep with you in brotherly understanding, condone thieves (was there not a good thief on the right hand of the dying Saviour?), shield murderers with compassion, and manifest instantaneous sympathy with all suffering fellow pilgrims in this vale of tears. He pities himself and you, and murmurs to the stubborn earth, as he ploughs and hoes it in his unending task of wringing a bare subsistence from the soil, "Gospodi pomilui ! . . . Gospodi pomilui!"—"Lord, be merciful!" Erected into a philosophy in the drawing-rooms of Petrograd, podvig runs through Russian psychology like an extra letter in the alphabet. "No nation," explains Dostoievsky, "has ever been founded on science and reason; it has always grown about some central idea."
Rasputin discovered the vulnerable spot and capitalized the emotional morbidity he found in high places and in low. "Repent, repent," he preached. "But there is no repentance without grave matter for regret." Coming out of a public bath one day with two young girls, one not sixteen, the other barely twenty, he was confronted by their distracted mother. "Be comforted," he said; "your daughters have found salvation."
Nekrassov's popular verses, "Who Can Be Happy Russia?" picture a band of rustics, roving about the country seeking an answer to the title of the poem. They return with the report that only drunkards can be happy in Russia—and they only when they are drunk !
Rasputin was but another link in the chain that has, from time immemorial, riveted the Russian people to some form of evil. In Under Western Eyes Joseph Conrad has told, as only Conrad can, how a chain became symbolic of Russia. He narrates the history of Peter Ivanovitch, the gloomy Russian exile, whose story was known not only along the Boulevard de Philosophes of Geneva, but in every capital of Europe. It has been translated into seven languages.
Imprisoned in a fortress by "administrative order," the convict had managed to escape, but could not rid himself of the fetters that had been affixed to his limbs by jailers; winding the loose end around his waist, he led an extraordinary existence in the endless forests of the Okhotsk Province.
He became very fierce. He developed an unsuspected genius for the arts of a wild and hunted existence. He learned to creep into villages without betraying his presence by anything more than an occasional faint jingle. . . . These links, he fancied, made him odious to the rest of mankind. It was a repugnant and suggestive load. Nobody could feel any pity at the disgusting sight of a man escaping with a broken chain. His imagination became affected by his fetters in a precise, matter-of-fact manner. It seemed to him impossible that people could resist the temptation of fastening the loose end to a staple in the wall while they went for the nearest police official. Crouching in holes or hidden in thickets, he had tried to read the faces of unsuspecting free settlers working in the clearings or passing along the paths within a foot or two of his eyes. His feeling was that no man on earth could be trusted with the temptation of the chain. . . . The sensational clink of these fetters is heard all through the chapters describing his escapes—a subject of wonder in two continents.
It is a wholly unnecessary hypothesis, therefore, to attribute Rasputin's power to German gold or Russian defeatism. He allied himself with both, but antedated them all. His influence and victims were public knowledge in 1910, and an official protest was lodged with the Emperor himself by Archbishop Anthony. The Emperor's brow darkened and he remarked coldly that the private affairs of the imperial family did not concern the Metropolitan.
"No, Sire," replied the Archbishop; "this is not merely a family affair, but the affair of all Russia. The Tzarevitch is not only your son, but our future sovereign, and belongs to all Russia." The Emperor silenced him a second time. "Sire, I obey your command," replied the retreating churchman, "but I may be permitted to think that the Tzar of Russia ought to live in a palace of crystal where his subject can see him."
The daily paper, Golos Moskvy, published a sensational series of charges against Rasputin in 1911, based on the confiscated pamphlet of Professor M. Novoselov. "Quousque tandem," began the article—and launched into a circumstantial and completely documented exposé of the menace to the throne. An interpellation was made in the Duma and a public debate ensued. At a Masonic Congress held in Brussels at this time, Rasputin was discussed as possible instrument for spreading the tenets of the order in Russia; it was thought that under his destructive influence the dynasty could be destroyed in two years.
Bishop Feofan, the Emperor's confessor, sought to open the eyes of his royal penitent. He was relieved of his post and transferred to the Crimea. Bishop Hermogen, once a supporter of the staretz, but now become a disillusioned crusader, precipitated a public scandal in the hope of atoning for his previous patronage of the impostor. Inviting Rasputin to his house, Hermogen fulminated in his face: "I adjure you in the name of the living God to depart and to cease from troubling the Russian people by your presence at the Imperial Court."
Instead of obeying, Rasputin flung himself on the prelate and nearly succeeded in murdering him outright; a Cossack officer named Rodionov drew his sword and the saved Bishop. "You wait a bit. I'll pay you back!" shouted Rasputin, as he escaped into the street.
A short time after, Bishop Hermogen was ordered to resign from the Holy Synod and leave Petrograd.
The Tzar's mother, the Dowager Empress Marie, arrived to protest. "Either he goes or I go." Rasputin stayed—and it was Marie who departed for her estates in the Crimea.
The Empress and her intimate coterie had their way; Rasputin was a saint, a prophet, and a healer sent by God ! The step from personal favor to political power was not difficult in a system of absolutism where all power emanated from the autocrat. Rasputin, it is claimed, made and unmade ministers of State, generals, and bishops. Heads of state departments received orders in scribbled notes: "Do this; do that; so-and-so is worthy of advancement; so-and-so should be dismissed." His lodgings were besieged by petitioners seeking favors at the court. But by the Russian people at large he was considered the evil genius of the hour, a licentious impostor, whose drunkenness and eroticism were masked under the fair mantle of religion. His hold became so powerful that any man who offended or ignored him ran the risk of being dismissed from office whether he was a cabinet minister or a doorkeeper. No public official was safe at his hands, nor any woman's honor. Among countless others, Sazonov, Minister of Foreign Affairs, was replaced by Stürmer, the pro-German, on the recommendation of the Rasputin clique. This is believed to have been the fate even of the Grand Duke Nicholas whose removal from the rank of Commander in Chief of All the Russian Armies followed an incident that has become classic in the writings of that period.
Rasputin telegraphed the Grand Duke Nicholas for permission to come to the front in order to bless the troops. The Grand Duke replied: "Do come, so that I may hang you." Mortally offended by this affront to her favorit, the Empress pursued Nicholas with implacable resentment and finally succeeded in having him transferred from the post of Commander in Chief of the Russian armies to innocuous desuetude in the Caucasus, on the Turkish front.
Why did not the Tzar have the courage to cut this Gordian knot that was slowly strangling Russia ? In answer to the protests and the warnings of one old general, Nicholas is reported to have said, "I prefer twenty Rasputins to one hysterical woman."
Nicholas II is also quoted as having said that there were two black-letter days in his life. The first was May 28, 1905, the date of the defeat of the Russian fleet in the Straits of Tsushima, between Japan and Korea. The second was October 17, 1906, marking the establishing of a Duma and the proclamation of a Bill of Rights. Shall not history add a third—August 23, 1915, the day on which he left Petrograd for the front, leaving the Tzarina to rule in his stead ?
1. To be strictly accurate, the term should be " Tsaritsa," which would correspond more nearly with the Russian equivalent. But " Tzarina" has become popularized in English-speaking circles and may be accepted as current. In general, the transliteration of Russian names has long been as baffling and elusive to translators as was the spelling of Arab names to Lawrence in that amusing foreword to Revolt in the Desert. The distinguished Russian scholar, Sir Paul Vinogradoff when asked if his name should be made to end in "off " or "ov," replied that it should strictly be "ov," but that the German influences under which he was educated had so popularized the "off " termination that he preferred to let it stand that way. Southey, in his bitingly satirical poem on Napoleon, " The March to Moscow," has a classic stanza on Russian patronymics.
2. " The shortage of munitions had long since become evident; but the War Minister, Sukhomlinov, refused to be disturbed out of his apathy and even declined offers of help from private factories. An officer in the Intelligence Service, Colonel Myasoyedov, detected in regular espionage before the war but saved from disgrace by personal guarantee from Sukhomlinov, had in the operations of the winter battle in Mazovia sent systematic information by airplane to the Germans, which had largely contributed to the Russian defeat. Myasoyedov's new treachery was discovered, and in spite of Sukhomlinov and even of Court connections he was hanged as spy."—Pares, History of Russia
3. The Empress cherished devoutly an ikon given to her by Philippe; it had a bell attached which, she firmly believed, would ring of itself whenever an enemy approached either herself or the Emperor. She refers to this bell in one of her letters to Nicholas while he was at the front.
4. The marriage of Nicholas and Alexandra was a consanguineous union; they were third cousins, having had a common great-grandfather, Louis II of Hesse.
5. " Cato used to say he wondered why one soothsayer did not laugh when he saw another."—Cicero, De Divinatione