boastful; all an agent would have had to do was sit and listen carefully.
There is some evidence that this is exactly what happened. Every Wednesday night, Rasputin was invited to dinner by Manus, a Petrograd banker. A number of charming and attractive ladies always were on hand. Everybody drank a great deal and Rasputin talked indiscriminately. Manus, Rasputin’s host for these evenings, was openly in favor of reconciliation with Germany. Paleologue, whose own local intelligence service was efficient, believed that Manus was the leading German agent in Russia.
On far flimsier evidence, the Empress was accused of treason. When Alexandra sent prayerbooks to wounded German officers in Russian hospitals, it was taken as evidence of collusion. Knox, at the front, met a Russian artillery general who shrugged his shoulders and said, “What can we do? We have Germans everywhere. The Empress is a German.” Even at Headquarters, Admiral Nilov, the Tsar’s devoted flag captain, cursed the Empress in violent language. “I cannot believe she is a traitoress,” he cried, “but it is evident she is in sympathy with them.”
Alexandra’s support of Rasputin seemed to confirm the worst. Most people took it for granted that the connection was sexual. In society drawing rooms, municipal council meetings, trade-union conferences and in the trenches, the Empress was openly described as Rasputin’s mistress. Alexeiev even mentioned the prevalence of this gossip to the Tsar, warning him that censorship of the soldiers’ letters revealed that they were writing continuously of his wife and Rasputin. As these rumors flew and feeling against Alexandra rose higher, many of the outward signs of respect in her presence were discarded. In the summer and fall of 1916, in hospital wards she was treated by some surgeons and wounded officers with careless disrespect and sometimes with open rudeness. Behind her back, she was referred to everywhere simply as
By the end of 1916, some form of change at the top was regarded as inevitable in Russia. Many still hoped that the change could be made without violence, that the monarchy could be modified to make the government responsive to the nation. Others felt that if the dynasty was to be preserved, it had to be brutally purged. One group of officers revealed to Kerensky their plan to “bomb the Tsar’s motorcar from an aeroplane at a particular point on its route.” A famous fighter pilot, Captain Kostenko, plotted to nose-dive his plane into the Imperial car. There were rumors that General Alexeiev was plotting with Guchkov to force the Tsar to send the Empress to the Crimea. Alexeiev, however, came down with a high fever, and it was he who went to the Crimea to rest and recover in the sun.
The growing peril was obvious to other members of the Imperial family. In November, after his return from Kiev, the Tsar received a visit from his cousin Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich, a well-known historian who was President of the Imperial Historical Society. The Grand Duke, a wealthy man-about-town and a habitue of Petrograd clubs, was an outspoken liberal; already he had written the Tsar a number of letters stressing the importance of broadening the government’s support in the Duma. At Headquarters, he had a long talk with Nicholas and then handed the Tsar a letter. The Tsar, believing that he already had fully understood his cousin’s views, forwarded the letter to the Empress without reading it. To her horror, Alexandra found in the letter a direct and scathing accusation against herself: “You trust her, that is quite natural,” the Grand Duke had written to the Tsar. “Still what she tells you is not the truth; she is only repeating what has been cleverly suggested to her. If you are not able to remove this influence from her, at least protect yourself.” Indignantly, the Empress wrote to her husband, “I read Nicholas’s [letter] and am utterly disgusted … it becomes next to high treason.”
Despite this setback, the family persisted. At a meeting of all the members in and near Petrograd, Grand Duke Paul, the Tsar’s only surviving uncle, was chosen to go to the Tsar and ask that he grant a constitution. On December 16, Paul had tea with Nicholas and Alexandra and made his request. Nicholas refused, saying that he had sworn at his coronation to deliver his autocratic power intact to his son. While he was speaking, the Empress looked at Paul and silently shook her head. Then the Grand Duke talked openly of the damaging influence of Rasputin. This time, Nicholas remained silent, calmly smoking his cigarette, while the Empress earnestly defended Rasputin, declaring that in his own time every prophet was damned.
The most poignant of all the warning visits was that of Grand Duchess Elizabeth. Dressed in the gray-and- white robes of her religious order, Ella came from Moscow especially to speak to her younger sister about Rasputin. At the mention of his name, the Empress’s face grew cold. She was sorry, she said, to find her sister accepting the “lies” told about Father Gregory; if that was all she had to discuss, her visit might as well end immediately. Desperate, the Grand Duchess persisted, whereupon the Empress cut off the conversation, rose and ordered a carriage to take her sister to the station.
“Perhaps it would have been better if I had not come,” said Ella sadly as she prepared to leave.
“Yes,” said Alexandra. On this cold note, the sisters parted. It was their last meeting.
On one matter, grand dukes, generals and members of the Duma all agreed: Rasputin had to be removed. The question was how. On December 2, a stinging public denunciation was delivered by Vladimir Purishkevich in the Duma. Then in his fifties, a man of sparkling intelligence and wit, the writer of brilliantly satiric political verse, Purishkevich was an orator of such renown that when he rose to speak the entire Duma, including his enemies, beamed in anticipation of what they were about to hear. Politically, Purishkevich was on the extreme Right, the most ardent monarchist in the Duma. He believed in absolute autocracy and rigid orthodoxy, in the Tsar Autocrat as the emissary of God. A fervent patriot, Purishkevich had thrown himself into war work, going to the front to organize a system of relief for the wounded and personally administrating a Red Cross train which traveled back and forth from Petrograd to the front. Invited to dine with the Tsar at Headquarters, Purishkevich had left a highly favorable impression: “wonderful energy and a remarkable organizer,” wrote Nicholas.
Devoted to the monarchy, Purishkevich stood before the Duma and for two hours thundered his denunciation of the “dark forces” which were destroying the dynasty. “It requires only the recommendation of Rasputin to raise the most abject citizen to high office,” he cried. Then in a ringing finale which brought his audience to a tumultuous standing ovation, he roared a challenge at the ministers who sat before him. “If you are truly loyal, if the glory of Russia, her mighty future which is closely bound up with the brightness of the name of the Tsar mean anything to you, then on your feet, you Ministers. Be off to Headquarters and throw yourselves at the feet of the Tsar. Have the courage to tell him that the multitude is threatening in its wrath. Revolution threatens and an obscure
Amid the storm of cheers which rolled through the Tauride Palace when Purishkevich had finished, a slender young man sitting in the visitors’ box remained utterly silent. Staring at him, another visitor noticed that Prince Felix Yussoupov had turned pale and was trembling.
* Buchanan and Paleologue, as representatives of Russia’s allies, were naturally the preeminent members of the Petrograd diplomatic corps, but American representation was unusually and unnecessarily weak due to President Wilson’s appointment of nonprofessionals to the post. From 1914 to 1916, the U.S. Ambassador was George T. Marye, a San Franciscan who had little contact or interest in Russia and got most of his information from the newspapers he received from Paris. At his farewell audience with the Tsar, Marye mentioned that he hoped that after the war American businessmen would flock to invest in Russia. “Russia needed American energy, American money and the Americans who engaged in business in Russia would find the field immensely profitable. No one, of course, is in business for his health—the Emperor smiled slightly as I indulged in this somewhat homely expression,” reported Marye. Marye’s successor was David R. Francis, a wealthy businessman and former Governor of Missouri who arrived in Russia with a portable cuspidor with a foot-operated lid.
* Fifty years later, struggling to convey his strong impression of the Empress, Balanchine said, “Beautiful, beautiful—like Grace Kelly.”
