The Last Tsar: Emperor Michael II (15 page)

Having underlined the fact that he was speaking from his own experience, not merely repeating what Natasha and her ‘bad set’ had told him — though he could have no doubt that Alexandra would blame her anyway — he did not mince his words thereafter:

‘I have come to the conviction that we are standing on a volcano, and that the least spark, the least incorrect step could provoke a catastrophe for you, for us all and for Russia…it seems to me that, by removing the most hated persons and replacing them with unblemished people, towards whom there is no evident mistrust on the part of society (which now means Russia as a whole), you will find a good way out of the situation in which we now are; and for such a decision you will certainly find support both in the Council of State and the Duma…It seems to me that the people who are urging you to follow an opposite course are concerned far more with keeping their own posts than with protecting you and Russia. Half-measures in this case are only prolonging the crisis and thus making it more acute.

‘I am deeply confident that everything that is said in this letter will be confirmed by all those among our relatives who are at least slightly familiar with the moods pervading the country and society. I am afraid these moods are not so strongly felt and perceived at
Stavka
…the majority of those who come with reports will never tell you the unpleasant truth, for they are protecting their own interests…I cannot help feeling that if anything happens inside Russia, it will be echoed with a catastrophe as regards the war. That is why, painful as it is for me to do it, my love for you has urged me to share all my worries with you without keeping anything back.’
²⁹

He could hardly be clearer; and it was not necessary to mention Alexandra. He had done that often enough before. Would Nicholas pay any heed? Everything Michael had written was true, his advice sound, and his forecast of the catastrophe which awaited if nothing was done was to prove tragically accurate. In the event, Nicholas never replied.

Six days later, on November 17, Michael and Natasha set off to stay at his sister Xenia’s house on the shores of the Black Sea, twelve miles from Yalta. They would be there a month, before returning to Brasovo for Christmas and a houseful of guests invited to join them. They arrived in Brasovo on December 20, shortly before the children, staff and their house party arrived from Petrograd.

Of their guests, only one — Grand Duke Dimitri — failed to turn up. As they would discover, he had been arrested.

MICHAEL’S warning letter to his brother came at what proved to be the beginning of the end for Nicholas and Alexandra. On the battlefield the summer offensive had produced only stalemate at the cost of horrific casualty figures. Industrial and politically-motivated strikes had been almost unknown in the first months of the war, but by the end of 1916 the number of strikes would reach a million, double the number in the previous year. Facing their third winter of war, Russians now looked inwards and not outwards. Talk of betrayal was commonplace, with many convinced that the source of that treachery lay in the boudoir of the German-born Empress in the government she had largely created, and which did her will.

Alexandra was no traitor, but what was true was that she and Rasputin now dictated political affairs almost without hinder from the Tsar at Stavka. Two of the best ministers who had survived her original purge were now dismissed. The first to go was the effective war minister Polivanov, ludicrously described by Alexandra as ‘simply a revolutionist.’
¹
The shrewd British military observer, Colonel Alfred Knox, judged him to be the ‘ablest military organiser in Russia’ and his departure ‘a disaster’.
²

The second to be shown the door was the long-serving and respected foreign minister Sergei Sazanov. He had long been in her sights — why is he ‘such a pancake?’ she had asked Nicholas — after he complained to the Tsar about ‘the dangerous part that the Empress had begun to play since Rasputin gained possession of her will and intellect.’
³
There was no replacement; the obsequious prime minister Boris Stürmer now became his own foreign minister in a government which had fallen into the hands of men who, in the majority, were appointed simply because they had been approved by ‘our Friend’.

On the front-line, Michael was appalled. ‘We were all greatly surprised here’, he wrote to Natasha. ‘I did not know Sazanov well but it was apparent that he was trusted and now with Stürmer, I am afraid we are in for some rotten business…such unsuitable people are chosen for such responsible posts, it’s too awful for words.’
⁴

One such appointee he had in mind was the new 50-year-old interior minister Aleksandr Protopopov, who had been a vice-president in the Duma, and who overnight became a convert to Alexandra’s mystical autocracy; increasingly deranged, he was destined to become as hated as his mentor Rasputin.

Michael was not the only one in the Romanov family to despair at Alexandra’s disastrous conduct of government. His warning letter of November 11 was echoed by others two weeks later, to no greater effect. Grand Duke George Mikhailovich and his brother Nicholas —known as ‘Bimbo’— both wrote to the Tsar supporting Michael’s views in similar terms.

George, reporting that the ‘hatred for Stürmer is extraordinary’, begged the Tsar to ‘form a responsible ministry’, for only that ‘can avert a general catastrophe’.
⁵
Bimbo was even more outspoken about the empress. ‘You trust her’, he wrote, ‘but what she tells you is not the truth; she is only repeating what has been cleverly suggested to her…You are on the eve of new troubles…Believe me, if I insist so much on your freeing yourself from the chains that have been forged, I do so…only in the hope of saving you and saving the throne of our dear country from the most serious and irreparable consequences.
⁶

By chance, this letter fell into the hands of Alexandra, unread by the Tsar. Her response was a furious attack on Bimbo — ‘am utterly disgusted…He has always hated & spoken badly of me…he is the incarnation of all that’s evil. Sweety mine, you must back me up for your and Baby’s sake…We must show that we have no fear & are firm. Wify is your staunch One & stands as a rock behind you.’
⁷

Unfortunately, Alexandra was not a rock but a millstone. Her elder sister Ella was among those who knew it. After the assassination of her husband Serge in 1905 she had retreated from the world and had set up her own order of nuns. Alarmed by the mounting public outcry against the empress, she had gone to Tsarskoe Selo from her convent in Moscow intent on making Alexandra see reason. However, as soon as she mentioned Rasputin, Alexandra coldly cut her short. Rising, the empress called a servant and ordered her sister to leave.

On reaching Petrograd a shaken Ella went to the Yusupov palace on the Moika; Prince Felix Yusupov, son-in-law of Michael’s sister Xenia, was waiting for her with his wife Irina, eager to hear how her meeting had gone. She came into their private drawing room trembling and in tears. ‘She drove me away like a dog!’ she cried. ‘Poor Nicky. Poor Russia!’
⁸
The two sisters would never see each other again.

Yet none of this served to penetrate the calm of Nicholas, who ignored it all, and who appeared helpless against the tirades of his wife. Dimitri told Felix Yusupov that while at the Stavka he had become convinced that ‘the drugs administered to the Tsar were paralysing his will power and were given with this intention.’
⁹

Rasputin seemed to confirm this, telling Yusupov that ‘the Emperor is given a tea which causes Divine grace to descend on him. His heart was filled with peace, everything looked good and cheerful to him.’ The ‘tea’ was provided by a quack doctor called Badmaev, using ‘herbs provided by nature herself…God makes them grow, that’s why they have Divine properties.’
¹⁰

Paléologue, the worldly French ambassador in Petrograd, who knew Badmaev as ‘an ingenious disciple of the Mongol sorcerers’, concluded that judging by its effects, the ‘tea’ must be a mixture of henbane and hashish for ‘every time that the Tsar has used this drug…he has not only recovered sleep and appetite, but experienced a general feeling of well-being, a delightful sense of increased vigour and a curious euphoria.’
¹¹

Given that, it was clear that whatever the protests to him, the Tsar would never assert himself against his wife, and would never get rid of Rasputin — ‘the principal scoundrel’, as Michael put it. In which case, he would have to be removed by others. He would have to be killed.

FOR most of Russia’s élite, the death of Rasputin was the best news of the year. He was murdered in the early hours of Saturday, December 17, at the Yusupov’s magnificent palace on the Moika, which among other things boasted a theatre which could seat 1,000, as was to be expected in a family which was richer than any of the Romanovs. Apart from Prince Felix Yusupov and his co-conspirator Grand Duke Dimitri, three others were involved — Vladimir Purishkevich, a right-wing member of the Duma, Dr Lazovert, an army doctor, and Captain Serge Sukhotin, a friend of Yusupov.

As a preliminary to the murder, Yusupov cultivated Rasputin’s friendship, and in so doing found him boastfully frank. Alexandra ‘has a wise, strong mind, and I can get anything and everything from her’. Nicholas was ‘a simple soul...he is made for family life, to admire nature and flowers, but not to reign’. As for the ministers, ‘all owe their positions to me...they know very well that if they don’t obey me, they’ll come to a bad end...All I have to do to enforce my will is to bang my hand on the table.’
¹²

He also told Yusupov about the future. ‘We’ll make Alexandra regent during her son’s minority. As for him, we’ll send him to Livadia for a rest. He’ll be glad to go, he’s worn out and needs a rest...The Tsarina is a very wise woman, a second Catherine the Great. Anyway, she’s been running everything lately and, you’ll see, the more she does, the better things will be. She’s promised to begin by sending away all those chatterboxes at the Duma.’
¹³

Rasputin condemned himself. The plan was to poison him, lacing cakes and drink with cyanide potassium provided by Dr. Lazovert. The bait they offered Rasputin was Yusupov’s wife Irina — she was eager to meet him, he was told; in truth, she had gone off to the Crimea for Christmas.

A basement was hurriedly converted into a dining room. Yusupov collected Rasputin from his apartment on Gorokhovaya Street on Friday evening, December 16, and drove him to the Moika. Taking him into the basement dining room he told Rasputin that Irina would join him as soon as she could get rid of her last guests upstairs; to keep up the pretence of a party, the other plotters were talking noisily in the room above and playing ‘Yankee Doodle’ on a gramophone.
¹⁴

Yusupov handed out cakes, which Rasputin devoured with obvious relish, while drinking glass after glass of poisoned wine, firstly Crimean then Madeira. To Yusupov’s horrified amazement, neither the cakes nor the wine had any apparent effect. Two hours after his arrival, Rasputin appeared no worse than before. Making an excuse that he wanted Irina to come down, Yusupov hurried frantically upstairs to report that the poison had failed entirely. Aghast, the plotters swiftly decided that the only alternative now was to shoot him. Dimitri offered to do it, but when Yusupov insisted that this was his task, he handed him his revolver.
¹⁵

Yusupov went back downstairs, gave Rasputin another glass of Madeira and, after suggesting that they look closely at a crucifix on a cabinet, shot him through the chest. Rasputin gave ‘a wild scream’ and crumpled onto the bearskin rug. When the others rushed down at the sound of the shot, they found Rasputin lying on his back, his blouse bloodstained, and his face twitching. In a moment he was motionless; the doctor examined him and pronounced him dead.

The plotters went back upstairs, leaving the body in the basement. Dimitri, the doctor and the captain then drove off to Gorokhovaya Street, the captain in Rasputin’s overcoat and cap, so as to pretend that Rasputin had returned home safely. Dimitri then went to collect his closed car in which the body was to be taken away to be dumped in the frozen Neva. It was reasoned that the corpse, weighted down with chains, would stay hidden under the ice until the spring thaw. It would be at least three months before he could possibly be found.

While Yusupov and Purishkevich were waiting for Dimitri to return, Yusupov went back to the basement to check on the body. As he bent over him he was horrified to see an eye open, and then with a violent effort the ‘dead man’ leapt to his feet and grabbed at Yusupov, his hands reaching out to strangle him. Yusupov desperately struggled to free himself, then rushed upstairs to Purishkevich.

The two men came back just in time to see Rasputin, ‘gasping and roaring like a wounded animal’,
¹⁶
stumbling out through a side door in the basement to the courtyard outside. Running after him, Purishkevich fired two shots, and then two more. The fleeing Rasputin collapsed into the snow. This time he must be dead. Although he had clearly survived the first bullet, he could not survive four more.