appeal from his relatives on behalf of Dmitry. Almost fifty years later, the Tsar’s sister Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna still showed the same shame and scorn for her family’s behavior: “There was nothing heroic about Rasputin’s murder,” she said. “It was … premeditated most vilely. Just think of the two names most closely associated with it even to this day—a Grand Duke, one of the grandsons of the Tsar-Liberator, and then a scion of one of our great houses whose wife was a Grand Duke’s daughter. That proved how low we had fallen.”
Soon after Nicholas’s return to Petrograd, enough evidence had been amassed to incriminate the three leading conspirators. Grand Duke Dmitry was ordered to leave Petrograd immediately for duty with the Russian troops operating in Persia; the sentence undoubtedly saved his life, as it put him out of reach of the revolution which was soon to follow. Yussoupov was banished to one of his estates in the center of Russia; a year later, he left his homeland with Princess Irina, taking with him, from all his vast fortune, only a million dollars in jewels and two Rembrandts. Purishkevich was allowed to go free. His part in the murder had placed his prestige at a peak. To strike down a member of the Duma who had also become a hero was no longer possible even for the Autocrat of all the Russias.
In secrecy, Rasputin’s body was taken to the chapel of a veterans’ home halfway between Petrograd and Tsarskoe Selo, where an autopsy was performed and the body was washed and dressed and laid in a coffin. Two days later, on January 3, Rasputin was buried in a corner of the Imperial Park where Anna Vyrubova was building a church. Lili Dehn was present: “It was a glorious morning,” she wrote. “The sky was a deep blue, the sun was shining and the hard snow sparkled like masses of diamonds. My carriage stopped on the road … and I was directed to walk across a frozen field towards the unfinished church. Planks had been placed on the snow to serve as a footpath, and when I arrived at the church I noticed that a police motor van was drawn up near the open grave. After waiting several moments, I heard the sound of sleigh bells and Anna Vyrubova came slowly across the field. Almost immediately afterwards, a closed automobile stopped and the Imperial family joined us. They were dressed in mourning and the Empress carried some white flowers; she was very pale but quite composed although I saw her tears fall when the oak coffin was taken out of the police van … the burial service was read by the chaplain and after the Emperor and Empress had thrown earth on the coffin, the Empress distributed her flowers between the Grand Duchesses and ourselves and we scattered them on the coffin.”
Inside the coffin, before the lid was sealed, the Empress had two objects placed on Rasputin’s breast. One was an icon, signed by herself, her husband, her son and her daughters. The other was a letter: “My dear martyr, give me thy blessing that it may follow me always on the sad and dreary path I have yet to follow here below. And remember us from on high in your holy prayers. Alexandra.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
DURING the dreary weeks of winter that followed Rasputin’s murder, the Tsar of all the Russias suffered something close to a nervous collapse. Utterly weary, craving only tranquillity and rest, he remained secluded at Tsarskoe Selo. There, in the bosom of his family, surrounded by a narrow circle of familiar figures, he lived quietly, avoiding decisions that affected ministers, munitions, his millions of soldiers and tens of millions of subjects. Rodzianko, who saw him twice during this period, recalled the audience in which Nicholas got up and went to the window. “How lovely it was in the woods today,” he said, looking out. “It is so quiet there. One forgets all these intrigues and paltry human restlessness. My soul felt so peaceful. One is nearer to Nature there, nearer to God.”
Nicholas remained all day in his private quarters. He converted his billiard room into a map room, and there, behind a door guarded by his motionless Ethiopian, he stood for hours over huge maps of the battlefields spread out on the billiard tables. When he left the room, he carefully locked the door and carried the key in his own pocket. At night, he sat with his wife and Anna Vyrubova in the Empress’s mauve boudoir, reading aloud. His public utterances were vague. He issued a manifesto to the army which, although written for him by General Gurko, was molded of Nicholas’s own continuing patriotic dream: “The time for peace has not yet come.… Russia has not yet performed the tasks this war has set her.… The possession of Constantinople and the Straits … the restoration of a free Poland.… We remain unshaken in our confidence in victory. God will bless our arms. He will cover them with everlasting glory and give us a peace worthy of your glorious deeds. Oh, my glorious troops, a peace such that generations to come will bless your sacred memory!” Paleologue, reading the manifesto and wondering at Nicholas’s meaning, decided that it “can only be … a kind of political will, a final announcement of the glorious vision which he had imagined for Russia and which he now sees dissolving into thin air.”
Visitors were shocked by the Tsar’s appearance; there were wild rumors that Alexandra was giving him drugs. On the Russian New Year, the diplomatic corps arrived at Tsarskoe Selo for its annual reception. Nicholas appeared, surrounded by his generals and aides, to exchange handshakes, smiles and congratulations. “As usual,” wrote Paleologue, “Nicholas II was kind and natural and he even affected a certain care-free air; but his pale, thin face betrayed the nature of his secret thoughts.” A private audience left the French Ambassador filled with gloom. “The Emperor’s words, his silences and reticences, his grave, drawn features and furtive, distant thoughts and the thoroughly vague and enigmatical quality of his personality, confirm in me … the notion that Nicholas II feels himself overwhelmed and dominated by events, that he has lost all faith in his mission … that he has … abdicated inwardly and is now resigned to disaster.”
Nicholas made a similar impression on Vladimir Kokovtsov, the former Prime Minister. Kokovtsov had always had a high regard for Nicholas’s quick, intuitive grasp of most subjects and his exceptional memory. Entering the Tsar’s study on February 1, Kokovtsov was deeply alarmed by the change in his sovereign: “During the year that I had not seen him, he became almost unrecognizable. His face had become very thin and hollow and covered with small wrinkles. His eyes … had become quite faded and wandered aimlessly from object to object.… The whites were of a decidedly yellow tinge, and the dark retinas had become colorless, grey and lifeless.… The face of the Tsar bore an expression of helplessness. A forced, mirthless smile was fixed upon his lips and he answered, repeating several times: ‘I am perfectly well and sound, but I spend too much time without exercise and I am used to much activity. I repeat to you, Vladimir Nicolaievich, I am perfectly all right. You have not seen me for a long time, and possibly I did not have a good night. Presently I shall go for a walk and shall look better.”
Throughout the interview, Kokovtsov continued, “the Tsar listened to me with the same sickly smile, glancing nervously about him.” Asked a “question which seemed to me perfectly simple … the Tsar became reduced to a perfectly incomprehensible state of helplessness. The strange, almost vacant smile remained fixed on his face; he looked at me as if to seek support and to ask me to remind him of a matter that had absolutely slipped his memory.… For a long time, he looked at me in silence as if trying to collect his thoughts or to recall what had escaped his memory.”
Kokovtsov left the room in tears. Outside, he found Dr. Botkin and Count Paul Benckendorff, the Grand Marshal of the court. “Do you not see the state of the Tsar?” he asked. “He is on the verge of some mental disturbance if not already in its power.” Botkin and Benckendorff both said that Nicholas was not ill, merely tired. Nevertheless, Kokovtsov returned to Petrograd with the strong impression “that the Tsar was seriously ill and that his illness was of a nervous character.”
Alexandra was bowed by Rasputin’s murder, but, drawing on the same reserves of inner fortitude which were to sustain her during the pitiless months ahead, she did not break. Rasputin had often told her, “If I die or you desert me, you will lose your son and your crown within six months.” The Empress had never doubted him. Rasputin’s death removed the savior of her son and her link with God. Without his prayers and counsel, any disaster was possible. The fact that the blow had come from within the Imperial family did not surprise her. She knew their feelings and understood that she had been the real target of the assassins.
After the murder, she sat quietly for a number of days, with tear-stained face, staring in front of her. Then, she rallied, and the face she showed even to those in the palace was calm and resolute. If God had taken her Friend, she was still on earth. While life remained, she would persevere in her faith, in her devotion to husband and family, in her resolve, sealed now by Gregory’s martyrdom, to maintain the autocracy given to Russia by God. Touched by the same sense of earthly doom that afflicted the Tsar, she steeled herself for the shocks to come.
