Rasputin (9 page)

The smart house in Pokrovskoye which Rasputin occupied intermittently from the early 1900s until his death. The house and its lavish furnishings were largely gifts from the Grand Duchess Militza.

Rasputin with followers in Pokrovskoye

With Maria, Varya and Dmitri

After his stay, Iliodor claimed that two of Rasputin's servants had tried to get into bed with him. Rasputin, in turn, accused Iliodor of ogling his devoted maid, Dounia, while she undressed for a wash. Despite their arguments, at the end of 1909 Rasputin accompanied Iliodor to his home town of Tsaritzyn. Here he blotted his copy book by failing to cure a holy fool called Nastya, who threw the contents of a chamber pot at him. But he had more success with other inhabitants and, when he left, was presented with a 160-rouble tea set.

I
f Rasputin could shrug off the misgivings of Feofan and Iliodor, he soon found himself facing an altogether fiercer enemy: the bullet-headed Peter Stolypin, Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior. Stolypin had not been impressed by the Tsar's fulsome letter to him about Rasputin in 1906. He set no store by the Man of God's attempt to help his daughter and was outraged when Rasputin tried to hypnotise him.

Ignorant of the most important reason for Rasputin's visits to the Palace, Stolypin thought he could simply use his powers of persuasion to keep the Man of God at bay. He succeeded in making the malleable Tsar promise, in 1908, to stop seeing Rasputin, but within weeks the Tsar had broken his word.

In desperation, Stolypin decided to ban Rasputin from St Petersburg for five years. But when attempts were made to pin the banning notice on him, Rasputin
could not be found. He had, in fact, taken temporary refuge at his enemy Grand Duchess Militza's house, where he would have had an uncomfortable time of it.

Visits from her sister, Anastasia, may have been some consolation: Rasputin was in good odour with Anastasia after giving his blessing to her unpopular second marriage to the towering Grand Duke Nicholas. Now both Black Sisters were married to Romanov brothers, Peter and Nicholas. ‘The marriage of the brother [Nicholas] will be the salvation of Russia,' gushed Rasputin.

But he would later change his mind about the marriage, making enemies of both Black Sisters. They in turn would go to the palace in Tsarskoye Selo to complain about Rasputin to the Tsarina, who received them coolly, discounting their tales out of hand.

Years later, in 1911, Stolypin would put together a damning report on Rasputin, but the Tsar simply threw it into the fire. He refused to discuss the subject: ‘I can do nothing about it.' He gave a clue to the nature of his hesitation with one overheard remark: ‘Better one Rasputin than ten fits of hysterics a day.' Rasputin was not comforted when he heard of the Tsar's stand against Stolypin. Instead, he growled to Anna Vyrubova that the Prime Minister still had too much power. But it turned out that, during these early days of Rasputin's rise, Stolypin actually had very little power. The Man of God's visits to Tsarskoye Selo carried on continuously through 1908 and 1909.

Though ‘the Tsars' never granted Rasputin the ultimate honour of kissing his hand, they would readily peck a hairy cheek. The Tsarina frequently received
Brother Grigory at Anna Vyrubova's house, the ‘portico to power', as Protopopov called it. She would enter followed by a footman with cakes and sandwiches. Yussoupov later wrote that Anna Vyrubova, as hostess, was ‘intoxicated with playing the role of an influential person'. By the end of 1908 the Tsar was writing appreciatively in his diary that Rasputin had helped decorate Anna's Christmas tree.

Throughout 1909, the Tsar makes references to Rasputin's visits in his diary: ‘4 February… At 6.00 o'clock the Archimandrate Feofan and Grigory came to see us. He also saw the children.' ‘29 February… At 2.30 Grigory came to see us, and we received him with all the children. It was so good to hear him with the whole family.' ‘29 March (the Day of Christ's Joyful Resurrection)… After tea upstairs in the nursery I sat for a while with Grigory, who had come unexpectedly.' ‘26 April… From 6.00 to 7.00 we saw… Grigory… I also sat with Grigory a little while in the nursery this evening.' On August 15 1909, he wrote: ‘I talked with Grigory a long time this evening.'

B
ut for all the Tsar's buoyant diary entries, the Imperial couple recognised the growing opprobrium attached to the visits. The tutor, Pierre Gilliard, noted that the children had been instructed by the Tsarina never to mention Rasputin's name. He himself saw Rasputin only once, in an anteroom of the Palace, as he
was preparing to leave. He recalled: ‘I had the distinct impression I was in the presence of a sinister and evil being.' Mossolov seconded Gilliard's view, making reference to ‘Rasputin the Sinister'.

The servants who spotted Rasputin at the Palace were equally disparaging. As early as the winter of 1908, a maid, Sophia Tyutcheva, was disconcerted to see a ‘peasant in tight-fitting coat' in the darkened corridors. In the spring of 1910, Tyutcheva reported, with dismay, that Rasputin was visiting the Grand Duchesses at bedtime, when the girls were in their nightclothes.

The stolid Mossolov thought well of Tyutcheva, regarding her as a good influence on the sometimes unruly Imperial children: ‘Their manners at once showed great improvement.' He set store by her sense of propriety and now reported her views with approval: ‘Tyutcheva's opinion was that the unsavoury
muzhik
[peasant] should not be allowed at night among the children.' But when Tyutcheva complained to the Tsar, she found him unreceptive, replying dramatically: ‘I am alive only thanks to his prayers.' Tyutcheva was duly fired.

Another maid from the Court, Maria Vishnyakova, had an altogether more serious complaint. She claimed she had been assaulted and raped during a visit to Pokrovskoye. She said that Rasputin had ‘started kissing me. I was in hysterics, he took my virginity'. When she complained, the Tsarina dismissed her testimony, insisting that everything about Rasputin was holy. The impasse was broken only when Vishnyakova lost her credibility after being found in bed with a cossack. She, too, was sacked.