Rasputin brought an unknown woman back to the house; she spent the night with him.… Rasputin brought a prostitute back to the flat and locked her in his room. The servants, however, afterwards let her out.… Vararova, the actress, slept at Rasputin’s.”
Sometimes when Rasputin had been aroused but left unsatisfied by his female visitors, he wandered up and down the stairs, pounding on doors:
May 9: “Rasputin sent the concierge’s wife for the masseuse but she refused to come. He then went himself to Katia, the seamstress who lives in the house, and asked her to ‘keep him company.’ The seamstress refused.… Rasputin said ‘Come next week and I will give you fifty roubles.’ ”
June 2: “Rasputin sent the porter’s wife to fetch the masseuse, Utilia, but she was not at home.… He went to the seamstress Katia in Flat 31. He was apparently refused admittance, for he came down the stairs again, and asked the porter’s wife to kiss him. She, however, disengaged herself from his embrace, and rang his flat bell, whereupon the servant appeared and put Rasputin to bed.”
In time, Rasputin became friendly with the detectives. As his door opened and his powerful figure and weather-beaten face appeared, the detectives would bow, lift their hats and wish him good morning. Often, they were able to be of service to him. One night, two gentlemen with drawn revolvers dashed up the stairs, declaring that their wives were spending the night with Rasputin and that they had come to avenge the dishonor. While one group of agents staved off the angry husbands, others raced up the stairs to give warning. In haste, Rasputin managed to bundle the ladies down the back stairs before their husbands burst in the front door.
Late at night, Rasputin thundered down the stairs, jumped into his car and drove off to carouse until dawn. The police, stuffing their pencils and notebooks into their pockets, scurried to follow:
December 14: “On the night of 13th to 14th December, Rasputin, accompanied by the 28 year old wife of … Yazininski, left … about 2 a.m. in a car for the restaurant Villa Rode.… He was refused admittance on account of the lateness of the hour; but he began to hammer on the doors and wrenched the bell off. He gave five roubles to the police officer on guard, not to annoy him. Then he went off with his companion to the Mazalksi gypsy choir at Number 49 and remained there until 10 a.m. The pair, in a very tipsy state, then proceeded to Madame Yazininskaia’s flat, from which Rasputin did not return home until midday. In the evening, he drove to Tsarskoe Selo.”
April 15: “Rasputin … called on the honorary burgess Pestrikov.… As Pestrikov was not at home, he took part in a drinking party which Pestrikov’s son was giving to some students. A musician struck up and there was singing and Rasputin danced with a maidservant.”
His revels ended, Rasputin staggered home, still accompanied by the exhausted but dogged detectives:
October 14: “Rasputin came home dead drunk at 1 a.m. and insulted the concierge’s wife.”
November 6: “Rasputin … came back drunk … as he went up to his flat he inquired if there were any visitors for him. On hearing that there were two ladies, he asked ‘Are they pretty. Very pretty? That’s good. I need pretty ones.’ ”
January 14: “Rasputin came home at 7 a.m. He was dead drunk.… He smashed a pane of glass in the house door; apparently he had had one fall already, for his nose was swollen.”
Day after day, these reports piled up in huge bundles on the desks of the police. From there, they were passed to some whose duty it was to read them, and to many who, although unauthorized, paid handsomely to savor their lusty flavor. Ministers, court officials, grand dukes, countesses, foreign ambassadors, great industrialists, merchants and stockbrokers all pored over them. The talk of Petrograd, they titillated or outraged every important citizen. Marye, the American Ambassador, wrote breathlessly in his diary: “Rasputin’s apartments are the scene of the wildest orgies. They beggar all description and from the current accounts of them which pass freely from mouth to mouth, the storied infamies of the Emperor Tiberius on the Isle of Capri are made to seem moderate and tame.” The notes convinced all who read them that the man they described was coarse, unscrupulous, a satyr. Only one person, offered the chance, refused to read them. The Empress was convinced that the senior officials of the police hated Rasputin and would do what they could to blacken his name. For her, the famous “staircase notes” were only fiction.
The sheer, blind obstinacy of Alexandra’s refusal to see the truth was never more dramatically displayed than in the notorious incident of the Yar in April 1915. Rasputin had arrived in Moscow, supposedly to pray at the tombs of the patriarchs in the Ouspensky Sobor inside the Kremlin. At night, however, he decided to visit the popular Yar restaurant, where he soon became roaring drunk. Bruce Lockhart happened to be present. “I was at Yar, the most luxurious night haunt of Moscow, with some English visitors,” he wrote. “As we watched the music hall performance in the main hall, there was a violent fracas in one of the private rooms. Wild shrieks of women, a man’s curses, broken glass, and the banging of doors. Headwaiters rushed upstairs. The manager sent for policemen.… But the row and the roaring continued.… The cause of the disturbance was Rasputin—drunk and lecherous, and neither police nor management dared evict him.” Eventually, a telephone call reached the Assistant Minister of Interior, who gave permission to arrest him, and Rasputin was led away “snarling and vowing vengeance.” According to witnesses, Rasputin had exposed himself, shouting boastfully that he often behaved this way in the company of the Tsar and that he could do what he liked with “the Old Girl.”
A report including every detail of Rasputin’s behavior was drawn up and personally submitted to the Tsar by General Dzhunkovsky, an aide-de-camp who was commander of all the police in the empire. It was assumed by those who knew its contents that this time Rasputin was finally finished. Nicholas summoned Rasputin and angrily asked for an explanation. Rasputin’s excuse was ingenious and contained at least a kernel of truth. He explained that he was a simple peasant who had been lured to an evil spot and tempted to drink more than he should. He denied the grosser parts of the report and swore that he had never made any statement about the Imperial family. Nevertheless, without showing the report to Alexandra, the Tsar ordered Rasputin to leave Petrograd for a while and return to Pokrovskoe.
Later, the Empress read the report and exploded with wrath. “My enemy Dzhunkovsky has shown that vile, filthy paper to Dmitry [Grand Duke Dmitry, later one of Rasputin’s assassins]. If we let our Friend be persecuted, we and our country will suffer for it.” Dzhunkovsky’s days were numbered. From that moment, the Empress’s letters were filled with a stream of pleadings to “get rid of Dzhunkovsky,” and in September 1915 he was dismissed.*
Whatever else he might be doing, Rasputin always took exquisite care to preserve the image of piety he had created at Tsarskoe Selo. It was the keystone of everything, his career and his life, and he protected it with cunning and zeal. Sometimes, an unexpected telephone call from Tsarskoe Selo would break in and upset his evening plans. He growled, but even when thoroughly drunk, managed to sober himself immediately and rush off to consult with “Mama,” as he called the Empress, on matters of state.
Alexandra’s disbelief in the evil half of Rasputin’s nature was considerably more complicated than a simple, prudishly Victorian blindness to that side of life. She was certainly moralistic, but she was not ignorant or squeamish about sex and vice. She had heard most of the stories about Rasputin’s villainous behavior and she had consciously rejected them as false and slanderous. For this fateful misjudgment on her part, Rasputin himself was shamefully —and yet, as an actor, brilliantly—responsible.
Gregory Rasputin was one of the most extraordinary and enigmatic men to appear on earth. He was an overwhelming personality and a superbly convincing actor. He had prodigious physical strength and caroused night and day at a pace that would kill a normal man. His physical presence projected enormous magnetism: prime ministers, princes, bishops and grand dukes as well as society women and peasant girls had felt his powerful attraction and, when the relationship soured, had been as powerfully repelled.
Now, all of the terrible power of this remarkable personality was concentrated on a single objective: convincing the Empress that he was as she saw him, the pure, devoted Man of God, sprung from the soil of peasant Russia. Because of his painstaking care, Alexandra never saw him as anything else. His superb performance was strongly enhanced by the miracles she had seen take place at the bedsides of Alexis and Anna. Whenever he felt himself threatened, Rasputin skillfully played on the Empress’s fears and her religious nature. “Remember that I need neither the Emperor or yourself,” he would say. “If you abandon me to my enemies, it will not worry me. I am quite able to cope with them. But neither the Emperor nor you can do without me. If I am not there to protect you, you will lose your son and your crown within six months.” Even had she begun to doubt the
