“Without our weekly meetings all is gloom.
“Only the everlasting toll of war! Germany is winning – as she will surely win. But we must all of us maintain a brave face towards our Russian public. In you alone I have faith. May God bring you back to us very soon. Alexis is asking for you daily. We are due to go to Yalta, but shall not move before we meet here. I embrace you, and so do Nikki and Anna.
“Your devoted daughter, Alec.” Has history ever before recorded such an astounding letter written by a reigning Empress to a sham saint?
It must not be thought that Rasputin was without enemies. He had hosts of them, but in an almost incredible manner he seemed to scent danger wherever it lurked, and eluded the various traps set for him. This was probably because he had surrounded himself by creatures ready to do any evil work he ordered. Not only had he earned the most bitter vengeance of wronged husbands and fathers, but he had against him a small league of patriotic Russians, men and women, headed by a civil servant named Vilieff, who had banded themselves together with a view to tear away the veil and unmask the traitor. The rascal knew this, and was ever upon his guard, while Stürmer and Kurloff used their great influence for his protection. At the same time Rasputin had corrupted the Russian Church in its centres of power and administration until nearly half its high ecclesiastics were agents of Germany.
In order to exhibit a swift, relentless hand in dealing with any enemy who should arise against him, Rasputin one evening cordially invited Vilieff, who had sworn to open the eyes of the people to the mock-monk’s villainy. Indeed, he had travelled to far-off Pokrovsky and collected much damning evidence concerning Grichka’s past. Kurloff was at dinner to meet the young man, the bait offered by Rasputin being that the official of the Ministry of the Interior intended to promote him to a highly lucrative post in his department.
According to a statement made by the monk’s wily accomplice, Yepantchine, who afterwards came forward and made so many revelations, only the trio sat down to dinner, whereupon the traitorous bureaucrat openly suggested that the band he had formed against Rasputin should be betrayed to the Palace police, in return for which he had ready for him five thousand roubles in cash, and, in addition, would there and then appoint him to a lucrative position in the chancellerie of the Ministry.
On hearing this, the young man sprang up and angrily denounced both monk and minister as traitors, declaring that he would at once expose the effort to purchase his silence.
Without further ado Rasputin drew a revolver and, secretly approaching him, shot him dead.
His body was found in the snow near the corner of the Kazanskaya early next morning. The dead man’s friends, who knew of his visit to Rasputin that night, informed the police, but the monk was already before them.
At dawn he sought the Emperor at the Tsarskoe-Selo, and found him in his dressing-gown. To him he complained that enemies were making a disgraceful charge against him, and added: —
“I seek thy protecting hand, friend. Wilt thou give orders to the police to leave me unmolested?”
The Emperor, who believed in him as implicitly as his wife, at once gave orders over the telephone, and thus the murder was suppressed.
A week later a man named Rouchine, who had, with Yepantchine, assisted him in his mock-miracles, discovered him with a certain Swede named Wemstedt, who was chief of the German Secret Service in Stockholm, and who had come in disguise to Petrograd to obtain certain reports furnished by Stürmer. His secret visit to Rasputin’s house was to get the documents for transmission to Germany, and to make one of the large monthly payments to the monk for his services as the Kaiser’s agent.
Their meeting was watched by Rouchine, who overheard greater part of the conversation of the pair ere the “Saint” became aware there was an eavesdropper. Instantly he scented danger, for he trusted nobody; the monk made no sign, but when Wemstedt had gone he placed a bottle of vodka in a spot where he knew that Rouchine would find it.
As he expected, his servant drank a glass, and within half-an-hour he expired in terrible agony, with Rasputin jeering at him in his death-throes.
It is computed that during 1916 no fewer than twenty persons lost their lives in consequence of visits to that sinister house within the shadow of the Winter Palace. Armed with those secret Chinese drugs, the pious assassin could administer baneful doses which proved fatal hours afterwards, with symptoms which completely deceived the doctors.
Knowing his own danger, he one day hit upon a new plan for his own protection, and when at dinner at the Imperial table he, addressing the Empress, said:
“A vision of the fixture hath to-day been revealed unto me! It is a warning – one that thou surely shouldst heed! When I die, Alexis will live but forty days longer. Surrounded as I am by those who seek my downfall and death, I know not what plots may be formed against me. I only know that assuredly Alexis will only survive me through forty days. If God wills it, my end may be to-morrow!” he added, raising his eyes piously.
At this the Empress betrayed terrible distress. But the ruse of the wily scoundrel worked well, for the personal protection at once afforded him by order of the Tsar was as complete as the surveillance upon the Emperor himself.
Chapter Four
The “Hidden Hand” of Berlin
Rasputin, though revealing himself constantly as a blasphemous blackguard, had by the middle of 1916 become the greatest power in Russia. Through his good offices Germany hoped to crush the Empire.
Examination of the confidential reports concerning his scandalous activities here before me causes me to halt aghast that the Imperial Court, which I attended in peace time, Petrograd society, and the hard-working classes in Russia, should have become so completely and so utterly hypnotised by his disgraceful “religion.” The latter had eaten into the Empire’s heart, causing an outburst of open and disgraceful immorality in the higher circles – a new “sensation” that was appalling. In Moscow, Kazan, Tambov, and other cities, “circles” of the “Sister-Disciples” had been eagerly formed, together with a branch which were meeting in secret at a small old-world monastery called Jedelevo, in the Province of Simbirsk, and about whose doings many scandalous whispers reached Petrograd.
“Grichka” possessed the reputation of being a popular preacher. That was not so. He had never been ordained a priest; he was a pure adventurer, and did not belong to any ecclesiastical order. Therefore he had no licence to preach in a church. He was simply a Siberian peasant convicted of theft, blackmail, and outrage, who had set himself up to be a “holy man.” And as such, all Russia, from the Empress downwards, accepted him and swallowed any lie that he might utter. Truly the whole situation was amazing in this twentieth century.
He preached often to his “sister-disciples” in their salons, and sometimes at “At Homes,” where fast society women who had fallen beneath the pious scoundrel’s fascination hoped to make other converts. To such “At Homes” only young and pretty women were ever invited. Rasputin had no use for the old and angular.
One evening one of these reunions for recruiting purposes was held by the yellow-toothed old Baroness Guerbel, at her big house in the Potemkinskaya, and to it a young married woman, wife of an officer named Yatchevski, who was well-known in Petrograd, had been invited. Her husband, hearing of this, called three of his own burly Cossacks, and next night they concealed themselves close to Rasputin’s house. There they waited until the bearded “holy man” emerged to go upon his usual evening visit to the Winter Palace; when the men suddenly sprang upon him, and hustling him into a narrow side street, stripped him of his finely embroidered silk shirt, of the usual Russian model, his wide velvet knickerbockers, and his patent-leather top-boots. After that they administered to the fellow a sound and well-deserved thrashing, having first gagged and bound him. Afterwards they placed him, attired only in his underwear, upon a manure heap in a neighbouring stable-yard, while the clothes they had taken from him were packed in a big cardboard costume-box and delivered by special messenger privately to the Empress at the Palace.
Her Majesty was, of course, furiously indignant that her dear “Father” should thus be made, sport of. At once a rigid inquiry was ordered, but the perpetrators of the well-merited punishment were never discovered.
Rasputin was ever active as head of the camarilla. The attention of the Holy Synod had time after time been called to the amazing exploits of this pious charlatan, until at last it was deemed expedient to hold yet another inquiry, into the fellow’s conduct.
Supplied with German money, he employed spies on every hand to keep him informed of any untoward circumstances, or any undue inquisitiveness. So he quickly heard of this proposed inquiry and consulted Bishop Teofan, brother of one of his favourite “sister-disciples,” who lived in Siberia. That night both Monk and Bishop sought the Tsar and Tsaritza. Rasputin declared angrily that there was a most formidable plot against himself. He therefore intended to leave Petrograd, and return to Siberia for ever.
“Because by divine grace I possess the power off healing, thy Church is jealous of me,” he declared to the Emperor. “The Holy Synod is seeking my overthrow! Always have I acted for the benefit of mankind, and so through me thy dear son is under God’s grace. But the Russian Church seeks to drive me forth. Therefore, I must bow to the inevitable – and I Will depart?”
“No! No!” cried the Empress in despair. Then, turning quickly to her husband, who had left some important business of State, which he was transacting in his private cabinet with the War Minister, Her Majesty exclaimed:
“Nikki. This ecclesiastical interference cannot be tolerated. It is abominable! We cannot lose our dear Father! Order a list of his enemies in the Church to be made, and at once dismiss them all. Put our friends into their places.”
“If thou wilt leave matters entirely to me,” said the sham saint, addressing the feeble yet honest autocrat, “I will furnish the list, together with names of their successors.”
“I give thee a free hand, dear Gregory,” was the Emperor’s reply. Within twelve hours all those in the Russian Church who had sought to unmask the pious rascal found themselves dismissed, while in their places were appointed certain of the most drunken and dissolute characters that in all the ages have ever disgraced the Christian religion, their head being the arch-plotter Bishop Teofan.
About this time, after many secret meetings of the camarilla at Rasputin’s house, Protopopoff succeeded in bribing certain generals at the front with cash – money supplied from Germany, to prevent a further offensive. In consequence, at a dozen points along the Russian lines the troops were defeated and hurled back. This created exactly the impression desired by the camarilla, namely, to show to the Russian people that Germany was invincible, and that a separate peace was far preferable to continued hostility. It was to secure this that Rasputin and his gang were incessantly working.
Scandal after scandal was brought to light, and more than one officer of the high Russian command was arrested and tried by court-martial. Rasputin and Protopopoff had now become more than ever unscrupulous. Generals and others who had accepted bribes to further Germany’s cause were secretly betrayed to the Ministry of War, care, however, always being taken that they could produce no absolute evidence against those who had previously been their paymasters.
A notorious case was that of General Maslovsky, who, before the war, commanded the Thirteenth Army Corps at Smolensk. He, with General Rosen, commandant of the Twenty-third Army Corps at Warsaw, had been induced by a “sister-disciple” of Rasputin’s – a pretty young Frenchwoman – to accept a large sum paid into his account at the Volga Kama Bank in Moscow, provided that the Russians retreated in the Novo Georgievsk region. This they did, allowing great quantities of machine-guns, ammunition and motor lorries to fall into the enemy’s hands.
In order to create scandal and public distrust, the “holy man” secretly denounced these two traitors, who were arrested and tried by court-martial at Samara. The prisoners in turn revealed the fact that big payments had been made by the young Frenchwoman. So she, in turn, was also arrested. Rasputin, however, did not lift a finger to save his catspaw. She declared that she had simply been the tool of the mock-monk, but the latter privately informed the President of the Court that the young Frenchwoman was a well-known spy of Germany known to the Court, and whom he had held in suspicion for a considerable time.
No word against Rasputin’s loyalty was ever believed, for was he not the most intimate and loyal friend of both Emperor and Empress? Therefore the court-martial found the prisoners guilty, and the trio paid the penalty of all spies – they were shot in the barrack-square of Samara!
This is but one illustration of Rasputin’s crafty intrigue and cool unscrupulousness. Possessed of a deeply criminal instinct as he was, it was impossible for him to do an honest action. He never failed to betray his friends, or even send them to their graves upon false charges secretly laid, if by so doing he could further his own despicable ends.
The dissolute rascal, possessed of superhuman cunning, held Russia in the hollow of his hand, and aided by his fellow-scoundrel, Protopopoff, he could make or break the most powerful men in a single hour.
That he was in active communication with Germany, and that the vile plots against the Russian arms were being manufactured in Berlin, is plainly shown by the following letter, which after his death was discovered, together with a quantity of other highly incriminating correspondence – which I shall disclose later – in a small safe concealed beneath the stone floor of the well-stocked wine-cellar at the house in the Gorokhovaya.
It is in one of the sentence-ciphers of the German Secret Service, but fortunately in the same safe the de-cipher was found, and by it that communication as well as others is now revealed.
The letter is written upon thin pale-yellow paper, so that it might be the more easily concealed. It had probably been bound up in the cardboard cover of a book and thus transmitted. This letter before me reads as follows: —
“Number 70. August 16th, 1916.
“Your reports upon the activity of Krusenstern (Commander of the 28th Army Corps), and also upon the friendship of Sakharoff and Yepantchine (two prominent members of the Duma), is duly noted. The firm of Berchmann Brothers, of Kiev, are paying into the Crédit Lyonnais in Petrograd 120,000 roubles to your account, with a similar sum to your friend S. (Boris Stürmer, Prime Minister of Russia).
“Instructions are as follows: Suggest to S. this plan against the Duma. From the archives of the Ministry of the Interior he can obtain a list of the names and places of residence of thousands of Russian Revolutionists of the extreme school. These he can, if we order it, place in prison or have them tried by court-martial and shot. He will, however, act most generously and secretly. He will, under promise of protection send them forth as his agents, well supplied with funds, and thus arrange for a considerable number of pro-German Social Democrats to enter Petrograd and work alongside the Russian Anarchists, Tolstoyans, Pacifists, Communists and Red Socialists. With such a widespread propaganda of wild and fierce agitators in the munition factories, we shall be able to create strikes and commit outrages at any moment instructions are given. They should be ordered to continually urge the working men to strike and to riot, and thus begin the movement that is to make Europe a federation of Socialist republics. This plan attracts the working-class, and has already succeeded on the Clyde and in Ireland. Your only serious opponent is Gutchkoff, but you will arrange with the Empress that his activities be at once diverted into another sphere.
“Enlist on our side as many members of the Duma as possible. Furnish from time to time a list of payments made by you, and the firm of Berchmann will sustain your balance at the Crédit Lyonnais.
“We await the result of your good services, which are highly appreciated by His Majesty, and which will be amply and most generously rewarded when we have Russia in our hands, which will not be long.
“Messages: Tell S. (Stürmer, the pro-German Prime Minister and a creature of the Empress) to be extremely careful of the Grand Duke Dmitri. He holds a compromising letter written by Nada Litvinoff regarding her attempt to suborn Brusiloff. The woman Litvinoff is reported to be staying at the Regina Hotel in Petrograd. No effort should be spared to obtain and destroy that letter, as it is very compromising. Professor Miliukoff should be removed. Ten thousand roubles will be paid for that service. J. or B. might be approached. Both are in need of money.
“Instruct Anna (Madame Vyrubova) to tell the Empress to receive a woman named Geismann, who will demand audience at noon on August 30th. She carries a verbal message from the Emperor. It is important that you should know Countess Zia Kloieff, of Voronéje. She possesses influence in a certain military quarter that will eventually be most useful and highly essential.
“H – (a spy whose identity is up to the present unknown) has fixed August 29th, at 11:30 a.m., for the disaster at the shell-filling factory at Krestovsky. An electric line is laid beneath the Neva, and all is prepared.
“Salutations from all three of us. – N.”
Such were the secret instructions received from Berlin by the murderous charlatan who posed as one of the most loyal Russians in the Empire.
His reply, of which a copy is appended – for strangely – enough he was a businesslike rascal – is as follows. It is brief but to the point: —
“Yours and remittances received. S. already at work. Have informed Her Majesty. All is being prepared for our great coup. The more disasters and loss of life in munition factories the better the impression towards yourselves. S. has already sent four hundred extreme revolutionists to the front with money and instructions. Have noted all your points. Martos takes this to Helsingfors, and will await your reply with any further orders.
“Have had no instructions concerning the Englishman C. Please send. Suggest imprisonment upon false charge of espionage. If so, please send incriminating papers to produce as evidence. – G.”
The scoundrel’s reply here before me is, in itself, in his own handwriting, the most damning evidence against him.
That Stürmer and Protopopoff acted upon those instructions has since become apparent. Events have shown it. Puppets in the hands of the Emperor William, with money flowing to them in an ever-endless stream from businesslike sources entirely unsuspected by the highly patriotic banks handling those substantial amounts, they were swiftly yet surely undermining the greatness of the Russian Empire and seriously cutting the claws of the Russian bear. The “Russian steam-roller,” as certain English prophets – oh! save them! – were so fond of calling the Muscovite army in the early days of the war, was growing rusty for want of proper lubrication. Rasputin and his friends were placing its machinery in the reverse gear by their marvellously well-concealed intrigues, and their lavish distribution of money to those long-haired revolutionists who had honestly believed that by removing the autocrat they would liberate their dear Russia.
No plot more subtle, more widespread, or more utterly amazing has ever been conceived in the whole world’s history than the one which I am here disclosing.
A convicted criminal, a mere unmannered and uncouth peasant from far Siberia, held both Emperor and Empress of Russia beneath his thumb. He gave to both of them orders which they weakly obeyed. If one of the erotic scoundrel’s “sister-disciples” asked a favour – the appointment of lover or of husband to a lucrative post – he went at once to the Emperor, and actually with his own illiterate hand wrote out the orders for His Majesty to sign.
And to that unkempt blackguard, who seldom indulged in the luxury of a bath. Her Majesty the Empress bowed her knee, honestly believing that the Almighty had endowed him with powers superhuman, and that he could cause disaster or death whenever he willed it.
Further amazing and incriminating letters are before me as I write, and I shall print more of this secret correspondence in order that readers in Great Britain may know the depths of Germany’s villainy and the exact methods by which Russia has been betrayed.
The official dossier concerning the crimes and conspiracies of the arch-scoundrel is astounding. It becomes increasingly amazing as one turns over its voluminous pages, its confidential reports, its copies of telegrams dispatched under fictitious names, since obtained from the telegraph bureaux of Russia, and its originals of secret instructions from Berlin.
In the latter one finds the subtle hand of the notorious Steinhauer, the head of the Kaiser’s spy-bureau, the fair-bearded, middle-aged Prussian who accompanied the German Emperor to Buckingham Palace on his last visit to London, and who was one of the select party of German motorists who came to tour England with Prince Henry of Prussia at their head.
It devolved upon myself to accompany and watch that tour very closely. Even then one department in Whitehall had not been chloroformed by the dope of the Sleep-quietly-in-your-beds Party – a department in the formation of which I had had some hand. Steinhauer I had met in Germany, though he did not know me, and when he came to England with His Imperial Highness, as Herr Eschenburg of Stuttgart, driving his big red “Mercedes,” I considered that it was high time to keep a strict eye upon him – which I did. What I discovered of his movements and of his associates has been of greatest advantage since the outbreak of war.
No more expert spy exists in all the world today than “Herr Eschenburg of Stuttgart”, whose real name is Steinhauer, known in the German Secret Service as “Number Seventy.”
The dossier here placed at my disposal shows that Herr Steinhauer visited Rasputin in Petrograd four times before August, 1914, while his underlings arrived at the house in the Gorokhovaya many times after the two Empires had come to grips.
Rasputin, in his unique position as autocrat aver the Autocrat, felt himself the personal agent of the Kaiser, and as such seems to have somewhat resented Steinhauer’s rather arrogant orders. Indeed, he complained bitterly to the German Emperor, who, in reply, propitiated the Siberian peasant by explaining that he was so occupied by the campaign against his enemies that he left all matters of detail to “our trusted and loyal friend Steinhauer, whose actions and orders are as my own.”
On August 28th, 1916, there arrived in Petrograd a pretty dark-haired young Dutch woman named Hélène Geismann. She presented a letter of introduction to Rasputin that evening at his house, and was promised audience of Her Majesty the Empress at noon next day.
The monk was at Tsarskoe-Selo when the young woman called. It was a meeting day of the higher, or Court Circle of the “sister-disciples,” such séances being held at five o’clock each Friday afternoon.
Three new “disciples” had been initiated into the mysteries of the mock-pious rascal’s new “religion.” Their names were the Baroness Zouieff, and Mesdemoiselles Olga Romanenkoff and Nadjezda Tavascherne, the two latter being of the noblest families of Moscow, and all moving in the Court entourage.
Nicholas II was away at the front, therefore Rasputin on such occasions ruled the Empire, and actually signed with his own hand orders and appointments, as His Majesty’s representative. When the Emperor was absent the dirty, unkempt peasant, who called himself a monk, usurped his place in the Imperial household.
Through this unprincipled scoundrel and blackmailer Germany was cleverly working to undermine and effect the fall of the Muscovite Empire. No expense was being spared, nor were there any scruples. Germany intended that the Russian defensive should crumble.
When the Empress received the young woman Geismann, an emissary from Berlin and the bearer of several documents, including an autograph letter from the Kaiser, the “Holy Father” was also present. The superstitious, neurotic Empress could do nothing without the advice of the man who had by his mock-piety and his sensuous “religion” so completely entranced her. She, like her weak, narrow-minded husband, had become completely hypnotised by the dissolute charlatan, in whose hands lay absolute power.
When the Kaiser’s messenger presented the secret letter to the Empress, she also handed another to Rasputin.
This was found among the contents of the safe in the basement of “Grichka’s” house, and is in German, as follows: —
“Strictly private and confidential.
“General Headquarters in France, Montmedy, August 10th, 1916.
“Your excellent service to our Empire has been reported to me by Herr Steinhauer. I congratulate you, happy in the knowledge that the Empress Alexandra has, in yourself, such a good and wise counsellor. You have done much, but there is still more good work for you to accomplish.
“Your friends must see that there is an increasing lack of material and ammunition, that information reaches Berlin regarding orders for guns, explosives and automobiles placed in England, in order that we can watch for them near the Finland coast, and destroy them. Disasters on railways, in munition works and elsewhere are advisable. Steinhauer is sending you six trusted agents to effect these. Your friends must afford them official protection, and they must be also afforded opportunity.
“I have also sent certain suggestions to Her Majesty the Empress which she will discuss with you. Your two most dangerous enemies at the moment appear to be Prince Yuri Lvov, who has a great following, and the man from Tiflis, M. Cheidze. If their activities could be ended, you would be in far less danger. It may be possible for you to arrange this. Consult with the Empress. It is my Imperial will that the payment arranged between us shall be doubled from this date. Salutations.
“Wilhelm R. and I.”
Could any letter be more incriminating? The Kaiser, with his constant appeals to Almighty God, was suggesting outrage and assassination to his paid agent – the man who, aided by the Prime Minister Stürmer and the blackmailer Protopopoff, held the future of Russia in his unwashed hands!
For half-an-hour the young Dutch woman, the Kaiser’s secret messenger, was kept waiting in an ante-room while the Empress consulted with her “Holy Father.” Then at last Her Majesty handed the woman an autograph letter to take back to the Emperor William. All that is knows of the contents of that note is that it contained a promise that Germany should triumph.
What chance had poor suffering Russia against such crafty underhand conspiracy? Every one of her proposed military movements were being betrayed to Germany long before they were executed, and thousands of lives of her fine soldiers were daily being sacrificed, while the arch-traitor Rasputin continued his career of good-living, heavy-drinking, and bi-weekly “reunions.”
At these meetings the blackguard usually crossed his hands upon his breast, and with appalling blasphemy declared himself sent by the Almighty to deliver Russia from the invader.
Towards all – to society, to those of the immoral cult that he had founded, to Russia’s millions, he posed as a stern patriot. Every one believed him to be so. If not, surely, he would not be so closely intimate with their Majesties they argued. Nobody in Russia dreamed that he was the agent of the Kaiser, or that the Empress had full knowledge of the great plot in progress.
In the following month there occurred a number of mysterious disasters. Four explosions occurred in rapid succession; two at Petrograd, one at Moscow, and one at Kostrovna, all involving considerable loss of life, while troop trains were derailed at several important junctions, and other outrages committed, by which it was apparent that German agents were actively work. Yet the police were powerless to detect the perpetrators of these dastardly acts. Truly the black eagle of Prussia had struck its talons deep into Russia’s heart.
Late one night Rasputin was carousing at his house with the Prime Minister Stürmer and two “sister-disciples,” young married women whose names were Baroness Gliuski and Madame Pantuhine, well-known in Petrograd society for their loose living, and who were helping the plotters and receiving large sums from German sources for their assistance. The “Father” had only an hour before returned from Tsarskoe-Selo, where he had knelt at the bedside of the poor little Tsarevitch and then performed a pretended miracle. The truth was that Madame Vyrubova had administered to the boy in secret several doses of that secret drug with which the mock-monk had provided her. In consequence, he had become ill and his Imperial mother had once again called Rasputin to “heal” him. This the fellow did, for Madame Vyrubova withheld the dose, and within four hours of Rasputin placing his dirty hands upon the poor boy’s brow and uttering those cabalistic nine words of jargon from one of the blasphemous prayers which the scoundrel had written for use by the “sister-disciples,” the heir had recovered. And in that way, with his degenerate confederate, the rascal worked his “miracles.”