Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [57]
“On March 26 of this year at about 11 P.M. the well-known Grigory Rasputin arrived at the Yar restaurant in the company of Anisia Reshetnikova, who is the widow of a man of a respected family, an associate of the Moscow and Petrograd newspapers, Nikolai Soedov, and an unidentified young woman. The entire party was already in high spirits. Once they had occupied a room, the arrivals called up the editor-publisher of the Moscow newspaper News of the Season, Semyon Kugulsky, and asked him to join them. They also invited a women’s chorus, which performed several songs and danced the matchish.… Drunk, Rasputin danced the russkaya afterward and then began confiding with the singers this type of thing: ‘This caftan was a gift to me from the “old lady,” she sewed it, too.’ Further, Rasputin’s behavior became truly outrageous, sexually psychopathic: he bared his sexual organs and in that state carried on a conversation with the singers, giving to some his own handwritten notes, such as ‘Love unselfishly.’”
What curious company Rasputin kept: to witness his binge, this cunning, cautious muzhik invited not one but two journalists! And in the presence of these journalists, one of whom worked for the tabloids, he orchestrated this obscene spectacle.
There is only one way a man would act like this: if for some strange reason he wanted everything that went on at the Yar to become common knowledge immediately.
Indeed, that is what he wanted—for everyone to know of his excesses. A sinister detail: at the Yar he told tales about the tsaritsa that they did not even dare include in the report.
“I do with her what I want,” he proclaimed in the journalists’ presence. This was not the only time such statements were heard during his public drinking bouts.
There was a paradoxical move involved in this as well that the clever muzhik had discovered. If Nicholas and Alexandra could not believe in his debauches in the palaces, then neither he nor she herself, of course, could believe those filthy words about the tsaritsa he idolized. As if the lips of the man whose devoted love for “Mama” they had known so many years could actually utter such a thing! In the family’s eyes, the mere recounting of such words immediately stripped the rest of its veracity. It all became yet another plot against the poor muzhik whom the devil had beguiled into drinking, a fact his enemies were exploiting.
One more thing: Rasputin knew that the tsaritsa could not get on without him. She would do anything not to believe his enemies. And to avenge him.
This was Rasputin’s mystery: his drunken orgies and dirty stories about the tsar’s family were wild provocations. He put a weapon into the hands of his own enemies, but as soon as they used it they inevitably disappeared from the palace. It was a paradox, but his debauches destroyed his influential enemies. Lady-in-waiting Tyutcheva, granddaughter of Feodor Tyutchev, the great nineteenth-century poet, and teacher to the grand duchesses, waged a war against the holy man. After yet another one of his escapades she demanded that Rasputin be forbidden to associate with the grand duchesses. As a result, Tyutcheva was forced to leave Tsarskoe Selo.
The all-powerful head of state Stolypin compiled a list of Grigory’s adventures and gave it to Nicholas. Nicholas read it, made no comment, and asked Stolypin to proceed to current affairs. Soon the minister found himself preparing for retirement.
Finally, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, Rasputin’s former admirer, who understood the terrible danger looming over the dynasty, came out against Rasputin. So, the man the tsar had named commander-in-chief at the outset of the war, the man closest to the tsar, and the Siberian muzhik.… The muzhik won out.
Until Rasputin’s murder, his enemies would continue to fall into his trap each time they brought out the usual