political distinction, his smooth and ingratiating air made him thoroughly popular. “He was handsome, elegant, captivating in a drawing room, moderately liberal and always pleasant.… There was a slightly cunning air about him but this seemed very innocent and goodnatured,” wrote Kerensky, who also sat in the Fourth Duma.
Protopopov’s charm and his membership in the large, moderately liberal Octobrist Party saw him repeatedly elected to the Duma vice-presidency. Rodzianko, as President, respected his deputy’s abilities. In June 1916 he suggested to Nicholas that Protopopov would make a good minister. “For the post [of Minister of Trade] he proposed his
All of the ingredients necessary for Protopopov’s elevation to the Ministry now were present: he had charmed the Tsar with his manner, he had been recommended as a solid worker by Rodzianko and, most important of all, he had the sweeping endorsement of Rasputin and therefore of the Empress. Protopopov’s acquaintance with Rasputin stretched back over several years. The prospective Minister was not in good health. He suffered from a disease variously described as progressive paralysis of the spine or advanced syphilis, depending on the informant’s feelings about Protopopov. When doctors were unable to help, Protopopov went to Badmayev, a quackish Siberian herb doctor then fashionable in Petrograd. Badmayev knew Rasputin, and Protopopov, who was fascinated by mysticism and the occult, was introduced into an outer ring of the
“Gregory earnestly begs you to name Protopopov,” Alexandra wrote in September. “He likes our Friend for at least 4 years and that says much for a man.” Two days later, she repeated: “Please take Protopopov as Minister of Interior. As he is one of the Duma, it will make a great effect and shut their mouths.” Nicholas balked and chided his wife for accepting every one of Rasputin’s whims: “This Protopopov is a good man.… Rodzianko has for a long time suggested him for the post of Minister of Trade. [But] I must consider this question as it has taken me completely by surprise. Our Friend’s opinions of people are sometimes very strange as you know yourself—therefore this must be thought out very carefully.” Nevertheless, a few days later the Tsar gave in and telegraphed, “It shall be done.” In a letter, he added, “God grant that Protopopov may turn out to be the man of whom we are now in need.” Overjoyed, the Empress wrote back, “God bless your new choice of Protopopov. Our Friend says you have done a very wise act in naming him.”
The appointment caused a sensation. In the Duma, Protopopov’s acceptance of office under Sturmer was regarded as a scandalous betrayal. When an old friend in the Duma bluntly told the new Minister that his appointment was a scandal and that he ought to resign immediately, Protopopov, bubbling with excitement over his promotion, replied candidly, “How can you ask me to resign? All my life it was my dream to be a vice-governor and here I am a minister.”
Rodzianko was angriest of all. Shaking with rage, he confronted the turncoat and lambasted him for his treachery. When, in servile tones, Protopopov explained, “I hope I shall succeed in bringing about some changes,” Rodzianko replied scornfully, “You haven’t sufficient strength for the fight and will never dare to speak outright to the Emperor.” Soon afterward, Protopopov returned to Rodzianko, hinting that, with his help, the Duma President might be appointed Premier and Foreign Minister in place of Sturmer. Rodzianko, fully aware that neither Nicholas nor Alexandra would dream of such an appointment, stated his terms: “I alone shall have the power to choose the Ministers … the Empress must remain … at Livadia until the end of the war.” Hastily, Protopopov suggested that Rodzianko speak to the Empress herself.
Once he was in office, Protopopov’s behavior became wholly eccentric. Although a minister, he kept his seat in the Duma and appeared at meetings wearing the uniform of a general of gendarmes, to which, as head of the police, he was entitled. Beside his desk he kept an icon which he addressed as a person. “He helps me do everything; everything I do is by His advice,” Protopopov explained to Kerensky, indicating the icon. Even more astonishing was the sudden transformation of Protopopov the Duma liberal into Protopopov the arch-reactionary. He was determined to become the savior of tsarism and Orthodox Russia. Not only was he not afraid of revolution; he hoped to provoke it in order to crush it by force. At meetings, Rodzianko wrote, “he rolled his eyes repeatedly, in a kind of unnatural ecstasy. ‘I feel that I shall save Russia. I feel that I alone can save her.’ ”
In addition to controlling the police, Protopopov also assumed responsibility for the most critical problem facing Russia, the organization of food supplies. The idea was Rasputin’s. Not without logic, he proposed that authority should be transferred from the Ministry of Agriculture, which was floundering, to the Ministry of Interior, which had the police to enforce its orders. Seizing the idea, the Empress issued the transfer command herself. It was the only episode in which Alexandra did not bother first to get the Tsar’s approval. “Forgive me for what I have done—but I had to—our Friend said it was absolutely necessary,” she wrote. “Sturmer sends you by this messenger a new paper to sign giving the whole food supply at once to the Minister of Interior.… I had to take this step upon myself as Gregory says Protopopov will have all in his hands … and by that will save Russia.… Forgive me, but I had to take this responsibility for your sweet sake.” Nicholas acquiesced, and thereby, as Russia moved into the critical winter of 1916–1917, both the police and the food supply remained in the trembling, ineffectual hands of Alexander Protopopov.
Although her informal mandate from Nicholas was only to oversee internal affairs, Alexandra also began to trespass on the area of military operations. “Sweet Angel,” she wrote in November 1915, “long to ask you heaps about your plans concerning Rumania. Our Friend is so anxious to know.” That same month: “Our Friend was afraid that, if we had not a big army to pass through Rumania, we might be caught in a trap from behind.”
With supreme self-confidence, Rasputin soon passed from asking questions about the army to transmitting instructions as to the timing and location of Russian attacks. His inspiration, he told the Empress, had come to him in dreams while he slept: “Now before I forget, I must give you a message from our Friend prompted by what he saw in the night,” she wrote in November 1915. “He begs you to order that one should advance near Riga, says it is necessary, otherwise the Germans will settle down so firmly through all the winter that it will cost endless bloodshed and trouble to make them move … he says this is just now the most essential thing and begs you seriously to order ours to advance, he says we can and we must, and I was to write to you at once.”
In June 1916: “Our Friend sends his blessing to the whole orthodox army. He begs we should not yet strongly advance in the north because he says if our successes continue being good in the south, they will themselves retreat in the north, or advance and then their losses will be very great—if we begin there, our losses will be very heavy. He says this is … [his] advice.”
At Headquarters, General Alexeiev was less than charmed to hear of this new interest in the army. “I told Alexeiev how interested you were in military affairs and of those details you asked for in your last letter,” Nicholas wrote on June 7, 1916 (O.S.). “He [Alexeiev] smiled and listened silently.” Alexeiev’s silence concealed his worry over the possible leakage of his plans. After the abdication, he explained, “When the Empress’s papers were examined, she was found to be in possession of a map indicating in detail the disposition of the troops along the entire front. Only two copies were prepared of this map, one for the Emperor and one for myself. I was very painfully impressed. God knows who may have made use of this map.”
Although the Tsar thought it quite natural to admit his wife to military secrets, he did not want them passed to Rasputin. Repeatedly, after giving her a number of military details, he would write, “I beg you, my love, do not communicate these details to anyone. I have written them only for you.… I beg you, keep it to yourself, not a single soul must know of it.” Almost as frequently, Alexandra ignored her husband’s request and told Rasputin. “He won’t mention it to a soul,” she assured Nicholas, “but I had to ask his blessing for your decision.”
Rasputin’s intervention in military affairs appeared most conspicuously during the great Russian offensive of 1916. Following Polivanov’s miracles in supply and manpower, wrought during the winter of 1915–1916, the Russian army erupted in June 1916 with a heavy attack on the Austrians in Galicia. The Austrian line sagged and broke. Brusilov, the Russian commander, inflicted a million casualties, took 400,000 prisoners, pulled 18 German divisions
