This they did, and in consequence a great sensation was caused in society, both in Petrograd and in Moscow. In the Duma, Rasputin was openly denounced by M. Goutchkoff, a man of large experience and who had worked in the Manchuria campaign and done much to assist the Grand Duke Nicholas and General Alexeieff in the munition crisis of 1915. He was Director of the Committee of War Industries, and had, introduced into this committee some highly capable Labour delegates, who were now no longer blinded by the halo of sanctity which Rasputin had assumed for himself.
Thus a storm suddenly burst over the head of the holy rascal who had practised his abominations under his pseudo-religious cloak, and who was at the same time secretly plotting for the triumph of Germany.
But so cleverly did he juggle with the future of the Russian Empire that he went post-haste across Europe, down to Yalta in the Crimea, and on arrival drove through the pine woods to the Imperial Palace. He arrived there at six o’clock in the morning, after a long and fatiguing journey. But such was his iron nerve and strong constitution that he was as fresh as when he bade farewell to his clinging devotees in Petrograd who had so fervently kissed his dirty hands.
He had the audacity to go straight to the Tsar’s dressing-room, and there met His Majesty as he was coming from his bath. Naturally Nicholas II was surprised, and on inquiring the reason of his unexpected visit, the “Saint” exclaimed:
“They have driven me, the man of the Lord, from Petrograd! I go back to Siberia to dwell there in peace. But God will now assuredly weak vengeance upon Russia, and all that she holds most dear – as well as upon thy son and heir.”
“But, Holy Father!” gasped the Emperor, “what has happened? Tell me.”
As the Tsar sat in his red bath-wrap, the unwashed “Saint” made explanation that both the Church and the Duma had declared him to be an impostor, adding:
“I will not trouble myself over those who defame me. They are as dust. God has sent me to Russia, and the Russians have despised me.”
“But who are your enemies?” asked His Majesty anxiously.
That was the question which Rasputin intended that the Emperor should ask. At once he explained that the Archbishop Teofan and Bishop Hermogène had both turned against him, and in consequence the Tsar called his servant to bring him a telegraph-form at once.
“Whither shall I send those persons?” asked His Majesty.
“Nowhere. Let them work their evil will against thy Empire. God will himself punish them!” replied the fakir and ex-thief who had self-assumed the title of “Father.”
“I shall leave to-night for Siberia, and shall not return.”
“No. Forgive them, Holy Father,” urged the Emperor apprehensively. “For my sake and for Russia’s sake forgive them. I will send Teofan, your false friend, to the Taurida, and Hermogène shall retire to the monastery of Tobolsk. Helidor, too, is no friend of yours. He shall be sent to prison.”
“Thy will shall be done regarding the two first, but spare Helidor. He may yet be useful unto thee,” was the crafty mujik’s reply.
“Is there any other enemy who should be removed?” inquired the Emperor. “Tell me, Holy Father – and I will deal with him if you will still remain with us. If you leave, poor little Alexis will die.”
The mock-saint, sprawling his legs in the Emperor’s dressing-room, reflected for a few moments. He knew that by his own hand Russia was ruled.
“Yes,” he said presently. “God has told me to forgive my enemies. I will do so if thou wilt assist me. Too little consideration is given to our friends.”
“All consideration shall be given them. To whom do you refer?”
The monk drew from beneath his, long black habit a scrap of paper already prepared, and consulting, it, said:
“I wrote down here yesterday certain appointments which should be given to those who support thee, against thy enemies.” It was a list of favours which the rascal had promised to women for their male acquaintances, and from each he would receive a generous douceur, according to the means of the person indicated.
“You will note Ivan Scheveleff, of the Imperial chancellerie. He has served thee well for the past five years, and should have the title of Excellency, and consequent promotion,” said the religious rascal. “Again, there is Sergius Timacheff, of the Imperial printing works, who should be appointed a privy councillor; and Madame Grigoiovitch, who is in the Peter-and-Paul prison, should be released and amends made to her for the false charge upon which she was convicted at the instance of Michael Alexandrovitch.”
“I will telegraph orders in each case,” was the Emperor’s reply, as he lit a cigarette prior to his valet entering.
“And the salary of the Minister Protopopoff is far too little. It should be increased by at least one-half. He is thy most devout and devoted friend and servant of Russia.”
“That shall be done,” was the monarch’s weak reply. Little did His Majesty dream that Protopopoff was one of Russians traitors.
“Brusiloff should be watched, as there is evidence of treachery against him. Before the war he was friendly with a man named von Weber, an agent of Germany. Nekrasov, Minister of Communications, is also a traitor, and should be dismissed,” said the monk, thus denouncing two of Russia’s strongest and most patriotic fighters, who were perfectly innocent.
“It shall be done,” replied the Emperor quietly. “Father, I am glad you have, told me.” Indeed, owing, to the false statements of pro-German police officials, General Brusiloff was within an ace of arrest a week later. The Minister Nekrasov, however, received his dismissal, Protopopoff being one of his enemies, and in that manner was the monk playing Germany’s game.
Thus the evil power of this arch-scoundrel was paramount. By his influence men were made and broken daily. Indeed, to-day dozens of men who because of their suspicion of the saint’s “divinity,” incurred the blasphemer’s displeasure are, languishing in gaol in various remote parts of the Empire, while German agents occupied some of the “highest offices in Russia,” while the head of the Church of holy Russia had been appointed by the unwashed blackguard himself.
As proof of this interview at Livadia, the dossier of Gregory Rasputin, the Siberian Cagliostro, which is before me, contains the following letter:
“Rizhsky Prospect, 37.
“My dear Father, – I have heard that you have left upon a pilgrimage to your own monastery in Siberia. May God be with you, and bless you. To-day my title of Excellency is officially announced. My bankers have passed to yours the sum of 30,000 roubles. There will be a further sum of 10,000 roubles passed if you will kindly send me, under cover, those two letters of the Countess Birileff. I await your reply. – Ivan Scheveleff.”
Rasputin’s mania for filing his correspondence is the basis of our true knowledge of his astounding career and activity, for the next folio in the dossier is a copy of a blackmailing letter he wrote a few weeks after his visit to the Crimea, to the man Sergius Timacheff. It reads as follows:
“Friend, – It is now many days since His Majesty appointed you Privy Councillor of the Empire, but I have received no word from you or from your bank as we arranged. If I receive nothing by next Thursday, the facts concerning your son’s implication in the Platanoff affair (the blowing up of a Russian battleship in the Baltic by German agents) will be passed on to the Admiralty. If double the sum we arranged passes to my bank before the date I have named, I shall remain silent. If not, I shall take immediate action. – G.”
The “holy” blackmailer was becoming more and more unscrupulous. Behind him he had the Emperor and Empress, soothed to sleep by his marvellous cunning and his mock miracles. Incredible as it seems, he was able to evade all the many pitfalls set for him by his enemies, because he swept them all from his path by Imperial orders and stood forth alone as the “Holy Father,” sent by Providence to create a new and prosperous Russia.
He had no fear of death. He wore a shirt of mail, and the Palace police, the same ever-alert surveillance as that placed upon the person of the Tsar himself, kept a watchful eye upon him, though through Protopopoff they had orders to relinquish their watchfulness at any moment the “Saint” deemed it necessary.
He frequently deemed it necessary if he held his conferences with Stürmer, Protopopoff, Anna Vyrubova, and the small camarilla of persons who were being so richly rewarded by mysterious incomes from estates they did not possess – or, plainly speaking, by money from Berlin.
Rasputin saw that in order to keep faith with his “sister-disciples” in Petrograd, it was necessary for him to journey again to his Siberian village. He therefore declared to the Emperor that he had much business there, and promised that he would return to Peterhof as soon as the Imperial family arrived there.
When the Tsar of all the Russias had bent and kissed the monk’s filthy hands, and promised that his orders should be despatched at once by telegram to Petrograd, the monk sought the Empress, told her what had occurred, explaining how his enemies had denounced “the man sent by God.” The Tsaritza sat appalled. Could the Russian people have denounced her “Holy Father”? To her it seemed impossible. She bent before the rascal and wept bitterly.
“Oh, Sister!” he said in his deep voice, “I will retire to Pokrovsky until these enemies of Russia have been discomfited and defeated. Then, verily, I will return to stand beside thee and fight as thy friend, as God has commanded me.”
Then he took his leave and travelled to the so-called “monastery” he had established in his far-off Siberian village – the big house in which a dozen of his female devotees were so eagerly awaiting him.
Chapter Six
Rasputin’s Secret Instructions from Berlin
Now that Rasputin’s amazing career is being here investigated, chapter by chapter, the facts disclosed seem almost incredible, but, of course, such a situation could only have occurred in a country where nearly ninety per cent, of the priest-ridden inhabitants are unable to read or write, and which is in most things a full century behind the times.
Surely in no other country in all the world to-day could an illiterate, verminous mujik, who had actually been convicted and punished for the crimes of horse-stealing, falsely obtaining money, and assaulting two young girls, be accepted as a Divine healer, a “holy” man, and the saviour of Russia. Here was a man whose whole life had been one of scandalous ill-living, a low drunken libertine of the very worst and most offensive class, actually ruling the Empire as secret agent, of the Kaiser!
By the clever ruse of establishing his cult of “sister-disciples” he had so secured the ears of the weak-kneed Emperor and his consort, that whatever views he declared to them they at once became law. So amazingly cunning was he that he realised that the only way in which to retain the hold he had established at Court was now and then to absent himself from it, first making certain “prophecies,” the fulfilment of which could be effected by his secret friends.
As often as he uttered a prophecy and left Petrograd upon one of his erotic adventures – to found provincial circles of the cult of Believers – so surely would that prophecy come true. He foretold the downfall of one official, the death of another upon a certain date, a further relapse of the Tsarevitch, and so on, until their Majesties held him in awe as heaven-inspired. In the high Court circle of which he was the centre, this “Holy Father” could do no wrong, while his most disgraceful exploits, scandals unprintable, were merely regarded as mundane pleasures allowable to him as a “saint.”
No reign since the days of the Caesars was more fraught by disgraceful scandals than those last days of the régime of the ill-fated Romanoffs. The Roman empresses were never traitors as the Tsaritza most certainly was. Can any one have sympathy with the once-Imperial, afterwards exiled to Siberia – that same zone of that illimitable tundra to which the Tsar of all the Russias had exiled so many of his innocent and patriotic subjects, men and women who fought for Russia’s right to live, to expand, and to prosper? Let us remember that in Siberia to-day lie the bones of a hundred thousand Russian patriots, persecuted under the evil régimes of Alexander and of Nicholas. In the days of the ex-Tsar’s father I went to Siberia, and I visited the convict prisons there. I saw convicts in the mines chained to wheelbarrows by forged fetters, and I saw those poor tortured wretches who worked in the dreaded quicksilver mines of Nertchinsk, their teeth falling out and their scalps bare. Of what I myself witnessed, I years ago placed on record in black and white. Those reports of mine will be found in the public libraries of Great Britain. But to-day they do not concern the reader of this book only inasmuch as they furnish proofs, with others, of the oppressive hand of the Romanoffs upon the devoted and long-suffering people of Holy Russia – “Holy” – save the mark! The erotic rascal Rasputin was in himself a striking example of the men who control the Paroslávny Church.
This mock-pious blackguard, to whose artful cunning and clever cupidity has been due the death of hundreds of thousands of brave Russians of all classes in the field, held the fortunes of the great Empire within the hollow of his dirty paw.
The contents of the big dossier of his private papers disclose this satanic scoundrel’s double-dealing, and the true terms in which he stood with the Wilhelmstrasse.
To me, as I study the documents, it is astounding how accurately the Germans had gauged who were their actual friends in Russia and who were their enemies. Surely their sources of information were more astounding and more complete than even the great Stiebur, the King of Spydom, had ever imagined.
It sterns that while Rasputin was living a dissolute life at the “monastery” he had established in his far-off native village of Pokrovsky, he received many telegrams from Tsarskoe-Selo, both from the Emperor and Empress, urging him to forgive his traducers and to return. To none of these he responded. One day, however, he received a telegraphic message which came over the wires as a Government one, marked “On His Imperial Majesty’s Service,” from Madame Vyrubova. Its copy is here before me, and reads:
“Return at once to Petrograd. A dear friend from afar, awaits you. It is most urgent that you should come back at once. There is much to be done. – Anna.”
Such an urgent summons showed him that his presence was required. He knew too well that the “dear friend” was a German agent sent in secret to see him.
Therefore he bade farewell to his dozen “sister-disciples,” the head of whom was the opulent “Sister Vera,” sister of the dissolute Bishop Teofan whom Rasputin himself had created. Teofan was a fellow-criminal of his who had been imprisoned for horse-stealing in Tobolsk, and now he wore richly embroidered ecclesiastical robes and bent the knee before the altar daily.
In consequence of this message from his friend Anna, Rasputin hastened back to Petrograd.
Now Madame Vyrubova was Rasputin’s tool throughout. Hers had been a strange history. Her past had been shrouded in mystery, yet I here disclose it for the first time. As Mademoiselle Tanéieff, daughter of the director of the private chancellerie of the Tsar, she became five years before one of the maids-of-honour of the Empress. A pretty, high-spirited girl, she at first amused and afterwards attracted the neurotic spouse of the stolid, weak-minded Autocrat. In due course she married a rather obscure but good-looking naval officer named Vyrubova – a lieutenant on board the cruiser Kazan. The husband, after a year at sea, learned certain scandals, and therefore he went one night boldly to the Emperor – who happened to be at Peterhof – and asked that he might divorce his wife.
His Majesty was both surprised and angry. He made inquiry, and discovered a very curious state of affairs – a scandal that had been hushed up and is now revealed by the new light shining upon Russian Court life and the internal scandals of the Empire.
Briefly put. His Majesty found that his wife the Empress had fallen in love with a certain General O – . The dark-haired Madam Vyrubova had acted as go-between for the couple – a fact which her husband knew, and threatened to expose as a vulgar scandal if the Emperor did not allow his divorce! It seemed that General O – had rather slighted the Empress, and had taken up with a certain Princess B – , who had been on the stage, and who was declared to be one of the prettiest women in all Russia. The General had followed the beautiful princess to Cairo. A week later at Assouan, in Upper Egypt, he had been seized by a mysterious illness and died. The explanation given to the Emperor by the husband Vyrubova was that the General had fallen a victim to the jealousy of his wife the Empress.
The Tsar made secret inquiry, and to his surprise found that all the officer had asserted had been correct. Madame Vyrubova had at the Empress’s orders followed the General and arranged his death. Therefore His Majesty could do nothing else than allow the officer to divorce his wife, who, truth to tell, was the catspaw of the poisoner Rasputin, who held her in his grip.
These widespread ramifications of the mock-monk’s influence and his power created by the judicious expenditure of German palm-oil are utterly astounding. The more deeply one delves into this voluminous dossier, the more amazing does it become, until the enemy’s wicked attempts to undermine Russia, our ally, almost stagger belief.
When Rasputin at last returned to Petrograd, in response to the orders of the handsome Anna, he was handed a secret communication from Germany.
This confidential despatch, as it lies here before me, speaks for itself. It is in a German letter-cipher, different from all the others, and for a considerable time it defied all efforts, to decipher it. At last it was accomplished by the Russian Secret Police, and it certainly reveals a most dastardly series of amazingly cunning plots. Here it is:
“Memorandum 26874.327.
”‘Number 70’ is sending to you Sister Molfetta, of the Italian Red Cross, whose number is 168. She will leave Berlin on the 3rd prox, and travel by way of Gothenburg. Please inform P. (Protopopoff) and request him to give her his protection and prepare her dear passport. She will stay at the house of B. (Bukoff, a furrier in the Vereiskaya, who was a German agent and assistant to Rasputin); you will call upon her there.
“The object of her mission is to cultivate friendly relations with the barrister Alexander Kerensky, who, though at present obscure, will, it is here believed, shortly make his influence felt very strongly against us. The woman 168 has orders to compromise him, and afterwards create a public scandal in order to discredit him in the eyes of the public.
“Further, we seriously view the strength of Kerensky and the influence he may exert in the prosecution of the war, therefore we leave it to your personal discretion whether or not he should be removed. Number 168 possesses the means, and will act upon your orders.
“Secret Instructions. – You are to inform His Majesty in confidence that M.I. Tereshchenko (now Minister for Foreign Affairs) is dangerous, and should be arrested. If his house in Kiev is searched, compromising papers which have been placed there by S. (a German agent named Schumacher) will be discovered. Tereshchenko is threatening to expose your friend S. (Stürmer, Prime Minister), and should it once be suppressed by imprisonment.
“The letter herewith enclosed please give into the hands of Her Majesty the Empress in secret. Also inform her that the wishes she has expressed in her last letter to His Majesty shall be carried out.
“You are to inform S. and P. (Stürmer and Protopopoff) that the shortage of food in Russia is, owing to Birileff’s indecisive policy, not sufficiently marked. He must be dismissed upon grounds of incompetence, and they must appoint a new Food Controller who will, connive, by holding up supplies, to create a famine. An epidemic, if spread in Moscow, Kazan, Kharkow, Odessa, and other cities at the same time as the famine, would greatly contribute towards Germany’s success. The matter has already been discussed, and an outbreak of cholera suggested. You should consider the suggestion at your end, and if you decide upon it, the necessary steps can easily be taken, though we consider nothing should be done in Petrograd, because of yourselves and the Imperial family.
“The bearer of this will remain in Petrograd four days, and then bring back any news you can send regarding the future situation. Matters are now becoming desperate with us. Hindenburg has decided that at all hazards we must withdraw troops from your frontier, and send them to the west. We rely upon you and your friends to create a famine, for which you will receive increased gratuities, as in the case of the retreat from Warsaw.”
Thus will it be seen that the “holy” blackguard, the right-hand and adviser of the Emperor Nicholas, was posing as the saviour of the great Russian Empire, whom Great Britain was supplying with munitions of war, and while he was everywhere declaring that Brusiloff’s strategy would wreck the German offensive, yet at the same time he was plotting famine and pestilence in the very heart of the Empire!
None knew this secret – except the German-born Tsaritza. From her, Rasputin held back nothing. In secret he showed her all the despatches he received from the Königgratzer-strasse. His influence upon Her Majesty at this stage is made vividly apparent by significant remarks which he made to Stürmer on the night after his return to Petrograd, and the delivery into his hands of that cipher despatch from Berlin as revealed above.
“My dear Excellency!” he said, tossing off a glass of vodka and eating some caviare at the great carved sideboard in his own room before sitting down to dinner, “you have been speaking of the Tsar and the Tsaritza. To the Tsar I am Christ, the saviour of Russia and the world! Their Majesties salute me; they bow to me and they kiss my hand. What higher sphere can I achieve? The Imperial children prostrate before me; they kiss my hands. Ah! my dear Excellency, I could disclose to you things which – well, which I could not relate without blushing!”
It was at this period, when a friend of the “holy” peasant, Striaptcheff, a fellow-thief of Pokrovsky and a man convicted of burglary, pressed his attentions upon the “Holy Father” and demanded an appointment. Incredible as it may appear, yet the criminal in question was six days later appointed as a bishop of the Russian Church, with the usual fat emoluments, and he could scarcely read or write. Truly Holy Russia was progressing beneath the Rasputin régime. She had a burglar as bishop.
Meanwhile, the monk proceeded at once to carry out his secret orders from Berlin.
We know that the camarilla held council a week later, and that Stürmer, Protopopoff, Striaptcheff – who had now become inseparable from Rasputin – as well as Manuiloff, an ex-journalist who conducted the secret police under Stürmer, were present at the monk’s house. At the meeting the false Red Cross sister from Berlin was also present.
It was agreed that it would be best to remove Kerensky, who, though a headlong enthusiast, would be a very difficult man for a woman to compromise. It was known that he possessed secret sources of knowledge regarding the intention of the camarilla to betray Russia into Germany’s hands, therefore the woman Molfetta was given orders to carry out her plot, to secure his assassination at the hands of a renegade Jew of Warsaw named Levinski, who was ready to commit any crime if paid for it.
The attempt was made three weeks later. While Kerensky, who lived to become afterwards Prime Minister of the new Government, was turning the corner by the Alexandra Hospital to cross the Fontanka to the Sadovaya, late one night, on his way home to the Offitzerskaya, he was shot at three times by the fellow Levinski. Each shot happily went wide, and as a result Alexander Kerensky still lives to pilot Russia to her freedom.
The manner in which the traitorous camarilla brought about a famine in the capital, and in certain districts in the Empire, until the people of Petrograd paraded the city crying “Give us bread, or end the war!” is well known to all. But how they attempted to carry out the dastardly orders of Berlin to create an epidemic of cholera at the same time, I will reveal with quotations from official documents in the next chapter.