Nicholas and Alexandra

This was the Empress Alexandra. She believed that Rasputin was able to stop Alexis’s hemorrhages and she believed that he did it through the power of prayer. Whenever Alexis began to recover from an illness, she attributed it exclusively to the prayers of the Man of God.

^* Recently, over a three-year period, 1961–1964, at Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia, Dr. Oscar Lucas used hypnosis to extract 150 teeth from hemophilic patients without transfusing a single pint of blood or plasma. Normally, for hemophiliacs, tooth extraction means a major operation requiring the transfusion of dozens of units of plasma before, during and for days after an operation. Lucas uses hypnosis in his work primarily to dissipate the fears that hemophiliacs naturally suffer when faced with the prospect of surgery and the accompanying major bleeding. “An emotionally tranquil patient has less bleeding difficulty than one emotionally distressed,” Lucas has explained. “Bleeding engenders fear and fear of bleeding is considerably greater in the hemophiliac than in non-bleeders. The anxiety which results may be averted through hypnosis.” Generally, Lucas suppressed anxiety by asking patients to recall pleasurable experiences. One patient enjoyed himself hugely during surgery by returning himself to a baseball park for the climactic inning of a crucial game. Whether Rasputin actually hypnotized the Tsarevich or not, the distraction a contemporary American receives from watching an exciting baseball game cannot be far different from that a small Russian boy would find in hearing the dramatic stories and legends told by a mysterious wanderer. Interestingly, Oscar Lucas was inspired to begin his own work in hypnosis after reading about Rasputin.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Holy Devil

SUCCESS at Tsarskoe Selo ensured Rasputin’s success in society. As his social position improved, his wardrobe became more elegant. The rough linen shirts were exchanged for silk blouses of pale blue, brilliant red, violet and light yellow, some of them made and embroidered with flowers by the Empress herself. Black velvet trousers and soft kid leather boots replaced the mud-spattered garb of the peasant. The plain leather thong belted around his waist gave way to silken cords of sky blue or raspberry with big, soft, dangling tassels. On a chain around his neck, Rasputin wore a handsome gold cross. It too was a gift from Alexandra.

In his new trappings, Rasputin strode confidently into crowded parlors and became the immediate center of attention. His rich clothes were in striking contrast to his rude, open, peasant’s face with its unkempt hair, matted beard, broad, pockmarked nose and wrinkled, weather-beaten skin. Advancing on the guests, Rasputin seized the hands of every new acquaintance between his own wide, horny palms and stared fiercely into the other’s eyes. Holding them with his gaze, Rasputin began his familiar banter, studded with impertinent questions. Asked what she liked least about Rasputin, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna cited his “curiosity, unbridled and embarrassing.” Olga had a strong taste of this in her first meeting with Rasputin at Tsarskoe Selo.

“In Alicky’s boudoir,” Olga wrote, “having talked to her and Nicky for a few minutes, Rasputin waited for the servants to get the table for evening tea and then began plying me with most impertinent questions. Was I happy? Did I love my husband? Why didn’t I have any children? He had no right to ask such questions, nor did I answer them. I am afraid Nicky and Alicky looked rather uncomfortable. I do remember I was relieved at leaving the palace that evening and saying Thank God he hasn’t followed me to the station’ as I boarded my private coach in the train for St. Petersburg.”

Rasputin was always ready, even in public gatherings, to offer intimate personal advice. The Empress’s friend Lili Dehn first met Rasputin at a moment when she was wondering whether to go on a trip with her husband or stay behind with her infant son. “Our eyes met,” she wrote. “…  His eyes held mine, those shining, steel-like eyes which seemed to read one’s inmost thoughts. He came forward and took my hand.… ‘Thou art worried.… Well, nothing in life is worth worrying over—tout passe—you understand. That’s the best outlook.’ He became serious. ‘It is necessary to have Faith. God alone is thy help. Thou art torn between thy husband and thy child. Which is weaker? Thou thinks’t that thy child is the more helpless. This is not so. A child can do nothing in his weakness. A man can do much.’ ”

Beneath his new finery, Rasputin remained the moujik. He gloried in the fact that a peasant was accepted in the silken drawing rooms of the aristocracy and he strutted his origins before his titled admirers. Amid a stream of guests coming in from the street and divesting themselves of furs and velvet capes, Rasputin handed the footman his plain, long, black caftan, the age-old coat of the Russian peasant. In polite conversation, Rasputin used coarse barnyard expressions. It was not a matter of the words slipping out accidentally; Rasputin used them often and with gusto, and he enjoyed the little gasps they invariably produced. He liked to describe in detail the sexual life of horses which he had observed as a child in Pokrovskoe, then turn to a beautiful woman in a decollete dress and say, “Come, my lovely mare.” He found that society was as fascinated by his stories and tales of Siberia as the Imperial family. Frequently, seated in an elegant parlor, he would shake his head reprovingly and say, “Yes, yes, my dears, you are all much too pampered. Follow me in the summer to Pokrovskoe, to the great freedom of Siberia. We will catch fish and work in the fields and then you will really learn to understand God.” His table manners left people aghast. There is no more vivid image of Rasputin than that left by Simanovich, his aide and partner, who described Rasputin “plunging his dirty hands into his favorite fish soup.” Yet, this raw confirmation of Rasputin’s nature seemed to attract rather than repel. For a jaded, mannered, restless society, Rasputin was an exotic diversion.

At first, Rasputin walked carefully in this new world of the wealthy. He soon discovered, however, that to many of the women who thronged around him, his sensual side was as interesting as his spiritual nature. Rasputin responded quickly. His lusts flared up, his gestures became excited, his eyes and voice turned suggestive, lewd and insinuating. His first conquests were easy and those that followed even easier; talk of his amorous adventures only increased his mysterious reputation. Noble ladies, wives of officers on duty far away, actresses and women of lower classes sought the rough, humiliating caresses of the moujik. Making love to the unwashed peasant with his dirty beard and filthy hands was a new and thrilling sensation. “He had too many offers,” said Simanovich.

Rasputin made it easier for the ladies by preaching his personal doctrine of redemption: salvation is impossible unless one has been redeemed from sin, and true redemption cannot be achieved unless sin has been committed. In himself, Rasputin offered all three: sin, redemption and salvation. “Women,” says Fulop-Miller, “found in Gregory Efimovich the fulfillment of two desires which had hitherto seemed irreconcilable, religious salvation and the satisfaction of carnal appetites.… As in the eyes of his disciples, Rasputin was a reincarnation of the Lord, intercourse with him, in particular, could not possibly be a sin; and these women found for the first time in their lives a pure happiness, untroubled by the gnawings of conscience.”

For some, bestowal of this supreme honor by Father Gregory was a matter for boasting, not only by the ladies but also by their husbands. “Would you be ready to accede to him?” an outsider once incredulously asked one of Rasputin’s disciples. “Of course. I have already belonged to him, and I am proud and happy to have done so,” the lady supposedly replied. “But you are married! What does your husband say to it?” “He considers it a very great honor. If Rasputin desires a woman, we all think it a blessing and distinction, our husbands as well as ourselves.”

Every day, numbers of admiring women came to Rasputin’s apartment to sit in his dining room, sip wine or tea, gossip and listen to the Father’s wisdom. Those who could not come telephoned tearful apologies. One frequent visitor, an opera singer, often rang up Rasputin simply to sing to him his favorite songs over the telephone. Taking the telephone, Rasputin danced around the room, holding the earpiece to his ear. At the table, Rasputin stroked the arms and hair of the women sitting next to him. Sometimes he put down his glass of Madeira and took a young girl on his lap. When he felt inspired, he rose before everyone and openly led his choice to the bedroom, a sanctum which his adoring disciples referred to as “The Holy of Holies.” Inside, if necessary, he whispered reassurance into the ear of his partner: “You think that I am polluting you, but I am not. I am purifying you.”

Giddy at his success, not knowing where to stop, Rasputin even made advances to Grand Duchess Olga. One evening after dinner, Olga had gone with her brother and Alexandra to Anna Vyrubova’s cottage. “Rasputin was there,” she wrote, “and seemed very pleased to meet me again, and when the hostess with Nicky and Alicky left the drawing room for a few moments, Rasputin got up, put his arm about my shoulders, and began stroking my