History Bookshelf:
Next book on the shelf is Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie. The story of the final Tsar and his wife. I’ve read a couple other books about the Romanovs but none so detailed, none so well-written. It’s kind of horrible to read it at times, because you already know the ending. I hate the thought of those children in that basement, with their jewels sewn into their corsets, trapped, being shot to death, the smoke filling the room. It’s also kind of creepy to read it because you just get the sense that history is marching towards these people – and it is about to march right on by them … WE know that, because we know the end, but Nicholas and Alexandra don’t. They behave in ways that seem almost willfully ignorant. I mean, Rasputin? Really?
I’m going to excerpt a bit from one of the chapters on Rasputin. I have a hard time believing that the dude actually existed. What a strange man. Alexandra got it into her head that Rasputin had, by sending a telegram at the perfect moment, put a mystical stop to her son’s hemophiliac attack. And for her? That was it. Rasputin was IN. He was a holy man, a healer, and he was somehow able to keep Alexis’ disease at bay. Alexandra didn’t CARE about the rumors, she didn’t care that many people thought Rasputin was a fraud, and a user. He was IN.
From Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie.
Gregory Rasputin was one of the most extraordinary and enigmatic men to appear on earth. He was an overwhelming personality and a superbly convincing actor. He had prodigious physical strength and caroused night and day at a pace that would kill a normal man. His physical presence projected enormous magnetism: prime ministers, princes, bishops, and grand dukes as well as society women and peasant girls had felt his powerful attraction and, when the relationship soured, had been as powerfully repelled.
Now, all of the terrible power of this remarkable personality was concentrated on a single objective: convincing the Empress that he was as she saw him, the pure, devoted Man of God, sprung from its soil of peasant Russia. Because of his painstaking care, Alexandra never saw him as anything else. His superb performance was strongly enhanced by the miracles she had seen take place at the bedsides of Alexis and Anna. Whenever he felt himself threatened, Rasputin skillfully played on the Empress’ fears and her religious nature. “Remember that I need neither the Emperor or yourself,” he would say. “If you abandon me to my enemies, it will not worry me. I am quite able to cope with them. But neither the Emperor nor you can do without me. If I am not there to protect you, you will lose your son and your crown within six months.” Alexandra — having been through Spala and the nosebleed on the train — was not willing to take risks. Rasputin must be what he said he was and he must stay with her or her world would collapse.
Shrewdly, Rasputin secured his position and enhanced his hold by meeting the Empress’s more prosaic need for constant reassurance and encouragement. His conversation and telegrams were an artful blend of religion and prophecy, often sounding like the gloriously meaningless forecasts which fall from penny machines at county fairs: “Be crowned with earthly happiness, the heavenly wreaths will follow … Do not fear our present embarrassments, the protection of the Holy Mother is over you — go to the hospitals though the enemies are menacing — have faith … Don’t fear, it will not be worse than it was, faith and the banner will favor us.” Blurred though these messages were, the Empress, weary and harassed, found them comforting.
Politically, Rasputin’s advice was usually confined to carefully endorsing policies which the Empress already believed in, making certain that the idea was rephrased in his own language so that it would seem freshly inspired. Where his ideas were in fact original and specific, they accurately and realistically represented peasant Russia. Throughout the war, he warned of the bloodletting. “It is getting empty in the villages,” he told the Tsar. Yet, when challenged by Paleologue that he had been urging the Tsar to end the war, Rasputin retorted, “Those who told you that are just idiots. I am always telling the Tsar that he must fight until complete victory is won. But I am also telling him that the war has brought unbearable suffering to the Russian people. I know of villages where there is no one left but the blind and the wounded, the widows and the orphans.”
Yeah, you know, that whole Alexandra/Rasputin thing has always kinda baffled me. To me, the photos of him show a blatantly creepy WEIRDO. I think you’re right with the phrase “willfully ignorant.” She was so fearful, so desperate about Alexei that she just saw what she wanted to see.
But any time I’ve read about them, I always find myself screaming at her, “C’MON! HE IS OBVIOUSLY A FREAKING’ NUTJOB!!”
Part of the Communist’s propaganda campaign against the Tsar during the war included cartoons alleging and affair between them. Given the Empress’s temperament, I think that unlikely, but in politics, preception is 80% of the battle.
John – right – and didn’t he have quite a reputation for seduction among the upper-class women of St. Petersburg anyway? Like, he was kind of a letch? He was so close to Alexandra – that it must have been quite easy for the rumors to catch on.