A people's tragedy

As Rasputin’s power grew so did the legends of his crimes and misdemeanours. There were damaging stories of his sexual advances, some of them unwanted, including rape. Even the Tsar’s sister, Olga Alexandrovna, was rumoured to have found herself the victim of his wandering hands. There were the drunken orgies, the days spent in bath-houses with prostitutes, and the nights spent carousing in restaurants and brothels. The most famous scandal took place at the Yar, a well-known gipsy restaurant, in March 1915. Rasputin had gone there with two journalists and three prostitutes. He became drunk, tried to grab the gypsy girls, and began to boast loudly of his sexual exploits with the Empress. ‘See this belt?’ he bellowed. ‘It’s her majesty’s own work, I can make her do anything. Yes, I Grishka Rasputin. I could make the old girl dance like this if I wished’ — and he made a gesture of the sexual act. By now, everyone was looking at Rasputin and several people asked if he really was the famous holy man. Rasputin dropped his pants and waved his penis at the spectators. The British agent, Bruce Lockhart, who was in the restaurant downstairs, heard ‘wild shrieks of women, broken glass and banging doors’. The waiters rushed about, the police were called, but no one dared evict the holy man. Telephone calls to increasingly high officials finally reached the Chief of the Corps of Gendarmes, who ordered Rasputin’s arrest. He was led away and imprisoned for the night. But the next morning orders came down from the Tsar for his release.34

What made these rumours so damaging politically was the widespread belief, which Rasputin himself encouraged, that he was the Tsarina’s lover. There were even rumours of the Empress and Rasputin engaging in wild orgies with the Tsar and Anna Vyrubova, her lady-in-waiting, who was said to be a lesbian. Similar pornographic tales about Marie Antoinette and the ‘impotent Louis’ circulated on the eve of the French Revolution. There was no evidence for any of these rumours. True, there was the infamous letter from the Empress to Rasputin, leaked to the press in 1912, in which she had written: ‘I kiss your hands and lay my head upon your blessed shoulders. I feel so joyful then. Then all I want is to sleep, sleep for ever on your shoulder, in your embrace.’35 But, given virtually everything else we know of the Empress, it would be a travesty to read this as a love letter. She was a loyal and devoted wife and mother who had turned to Rasputin in spiritual distress. In any case, she was probably too narrow-minded to take a lover.

Nevertheless, it was the fact that the rumours existed, rather than their truth, which caused such alarm to the Tsar’s supporters. They tried to convince him of Rasputin’s evil influence and to get him expelled from the court. But, although Nicholas knew of his misdemeanours, he would not remove Rasputin so long as the Empress continued to believe that he, and only he, could help their dying son. Rasputin’s calming effect on the Empress was too much appreciated by her henpecked husband, who once let slip in an unguarded moment: ‘Better one Rasputin than ten fits of hysterics every day.’ The Archimandrite Theophan, who had helped to bring Rasputin to St Petersburg, found himself expelled from the capital in 1910 after he tried to acquaint the Empress with the scandalous nature of her Holy Man’s behaviour. The monk Iliodor and Bishop Hermogen were imprisoned in remote monasteries in 1911, after confronting Rasputin with a long chronicle of his misdeeds and calling on him to repent. It was Iliodor, in revenge, who then leaked to the press the Empress’s letters to Rasputin. The Tsar stopped the press printing any more stories about Rasputin, in spite of the pledge he had given in the wake of the 1905 Revolution to abolish preliminary censorship. This effectively silenced the Church, coming as it did with the appointment of Vladimir Sabler, a close ally of Rasputin’s, as Procurator-General of the Holy Synod.36