Nicholas and Alexandra

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“We Want a Great Russia”

IF any man outside of the Imperial Family could have saved Imperial Russia, it was the burly, bearded country squire who served as prime minister from 1906 to 1911, Peter Arkadyevich Stolypin. A man of the country with roots in the rural nobility, Stolypin had little in common with either the great figures of the princely aristocracy or the dry, professional civil servants who scrambled diligently up the ladders of promotion to the seats of power in the St. Petersburg bureaucracy. Stolypin brought to the Imperial government a clean, strong breath of youth and fresh country air. Direct, outspoken, brimming with impassioned patriotism and overwhelming in his physical energy, Stolypin grappled with the fundamental causes of Russia’s troubles. A passionate monarchist, he hated the revolutionaries and ruthlessly crushed the last outbursts of the 1905 Revolution. But Stolypin was also a realist who sensed that the monarchy would survive only if the government and the structure of society itself could adapt to the times. Accordingly, he reconstructed the system of peasant land ownership and began the transformation of an absolute autocracy into a form of government more responsive to the popular will.

No Russian statesman of the day was more admired. In the Duma, Stolypin’s big, bearlike figure attracted every eye. Dressed in a frock coat with a watch chain across his chest, he spoke with such eloquence and such evident sincerity that even his adversaries respected him. “We are not frightened,” he boomed at his enemies on the Left in the Second Duma. “You want great upheavals, but we want a great Russia.” His ministerial colleagues were unanimous in their praise. “His capacity for work and his moral power of endurance were prodigious,” wrote Alexander Izvolsky, the Foreign Minister. Vladimir Kokovtsov, the Finance Minister, declared that Stolypin’s “nobility, courage and devotion to the State were indisputable.” Sir George Buchanan, the British Ambassador, called him “an ideal man to transact business with … his promises were always kept.” Most important of all, Stolypin pleased the Tsar. In October 1906, after Stolypin had been in office for only three months, Nicholas wrote to his mother, “I cannot tell you how much I have come to like and respect this man.”

Peter Stolypin was born in 1863 while his mother rested at the Rhineland spa of Baden-Baden. He was educated in St. Petersburg, where his father had a position at court and his mother was in society. Stolypin himself preferred the country, and most of his career was spent away from the capital. In 1905, at the height of the first revolution, he was governor of Saratov province, charged with suppressing local peasant uprisings that were among the most violent in Russia. Stolypin accomplished his task with a minimum loss of life. Often, rather than ordering government troops to bombard an insurgent village, Stolypin himself would walk into the village alone to talk to the rebel leader and persuade him to have his men lay down their arms.

Because of his success in Saratov province, Stolypin was brought to St. Petersburg in 1906 to become Minister of Interior. He arrived as Witte was departing and took office under Witte’s successor, an elderly bureaucratic relic named Ivan Logginovich Goremykin. Goremykin conducted his office on the simple, undeviating principle that ministers were servants of the tsar, appointed to execute, not initiate, policy. Sir Arthur Nicolson, who preceded Buchanan as British Ambassador, called on Goremykin at this time, expecting to find a harried, overworked statesman. Instead, he found himself confronting “an elderly man with a sleepy face and Piccadilly whiskers” reclining on a sofa surrounded by French novels. Goremykin foundered after only three months in office, and before departing, he recommended to the Tsar that Stolypin be appointed in his place.

On the evening of July 7, 1906, Stolypin was summoned to Nicholas’s study at Tsarskoe Selo and asked to become Prime Minister. Kokovtsov wrote later: “Stolypin told us that he had attempted to point out his lack of experience and his unfamiliarity with the crosscurrents of St. Petersburg society, but the Tsar had not let him finish: ‘No, Peter Arkadyevich, here is the icon before which I often pray. Let us make the sign of the Cross over ourselves and let us ask the Lord to help us both in this difficult, perhaps historic, moment.’ Then the Tsar made the sign of the cross over Stolypin, embraced him and kissed him, and asked him on what day it would be best to dissolve the Duma.”

Once in power, Stolypin became a whirlwind of energy. He meant to attack root problems such as the peasants’ long-suppressed thirst for land of their own, but nothing could be done about these matters until the terrorist attacks on local officials and police had been suppressed. To restore law and order, Stolypin established special field courts-martial. Within three days of their arrest, assassins swung from the gallows. Before the end of the summer, six hundred men had been strung up and Russians had named the hangman’s noose “Stolypin’s necktie.” Yet, the number of men hanged by the government was smaller than the sixteen hundred governors, generals, soldiers and village policemen killed by terrorists’ bombs and bullets.

Inevitably, Stolypin himself became the assassins’ target. On a Saturday afternoon, scarcely a month after taking office, he was writing at his desk in his country villa outside St. Petersburg when a bomb exploded. A wall of the house collapsed and thirty-two people, including visitors and servants, were killed. Stolypin’s young son, playing on an upstairs balcony, was hurt, and his daughter, Natalia, was badly maimed. But Stolypin himself was merely splattered with ink. “A day and a half after the explosion, the Ministers’ Council resumed its work as if nothing unusual had happened,” Kokovtsov wrote. “Stolypin’s calm and self-control won the admiration of everyone.”

The government’s repression, to which the bomb plot was a reaction, was only a harsh preliminary to reform. While terrorists still dangled at the end of government ropes, the new Prime Minister attacked the basic problem of land. In 1906, three quarters of the people of Russia coaxed a living from the soil. Since 1861, when Alexander II freed the serfs, most of Russia’s peasants lived in village communes, made communal plans for the land and worked it in partnership. The system was ridiculously inefficient; within each commune, a single peasant might farm as many as fifty small strips, each containing a few thin rows of corn or wheat. Often, the peasant spent more time walking between his scattered furrows than he did plowing the earth or scything the grain. Stolypin overturned this communal system and introduced the concept of private property. By government decree, he declared that any peasant who wished to do so could withdraw from the commune and claim from it a share of ground to farm for himself. Further, the new plot was to be a single piece, not in scattered strips, and the peasant was expected to pass it along to his sons.

Nicholas strongly approved Stolypin’s program and, in order to make more land available, proposed that four million acres of the crown lands be sold to the government, which in turn would sell them on easy terms to the peasants. Although the Tsar needed the consent of the Imperial family to take this step, and both Grand Duke Vladimir and the Dowager Empress opposed him, eventually he had his way. The land was sold and Nicholas waited hopefully for members of the nobility to follow his example. But none did so.

The impact of Stolypin’s law was political as well as economic. At a stroke, it created a new class of millions of small peasant landowners whose future was tied to an atmosphere of stability which could be provided only by the Imperial government. As it happened, the most vociferous peasant troublemakers were often the first to claim land, and thus became supporters of law and order. By 1914, nine million Russian peasant families owned their own farms.

At bottom, political success or failure in Russia depended on the crop. For five fruitful years, nature smiled on Peter Stolypin. From 1906 to 1911, Russia was blessed with warm summers, mild winters and steady, gentle rain. Acre for acre, the crops were the best in Russia’s history. As food became plentiful, government tax revenues rose; the budget was balanced and even showed a surplus. With the help of large French loans, the railroad network expanded rapidly. Coal and iron mines broke records for production. American firms such as International Harvester and Singer Sewing Machine Company established offices in Russia. In the Duma, the government introduced and passed bills raising the salaries of primary-school teachers and establishing the principle of free primary-school education. Censorship of the press was lifted, and the government became more liberal in the sphere of religious tolerance. “It is all wrong,” said Stolypin, explaining these changes to Sir Bernard Pares, “that every proposal of reform should come from the opposition.”

Ironically, the fiercest opposition to Stolypin’s programs came from the extreme Right and the extreme Left. Reactionaries disliked all reforms which transformed the old, traditional ways. Revolutionaries hated to see any amelioration of a system which bred discontent. For Lenin and his dwindling band of exiles, the Stolypin era was a time of fading hope. Sadly convinced that a “revolutionary situation” no longer existed in Russia, Lenin wandered from library to library through Zurich, Geneva, Berne, Paris, Munich, Vienna and Cracow. Gloomily, he watched the success of Stolypin’s land reforms. “If this should continue,” he wrote, “it might force us to renounce any agricultural program at all.” For some dedicated Marxists, it seemed that the dream was entirely dead; in 1909, Karl Marx’s despairing daughter and son-in-law Laura and Paul Lafargue committed suicide. Lenin took the news with grim approval. “If one cannot work for the Party any longer,” he said, “one must be able to look truth in the face and die the way the Lafargues did.”

The appearance in May 1906 of the First Imperial Duma was so new, so alien to everything that had gone before in Russia, that neither the Tsar nor the members of the fledgling representative body knew quite how to behave. Everything had to be begun at the beginning and be constructed overnight: constitution, parliament and political parties. Before October 1905, there were no political parties in Russia other than the Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries, both revolutionary parties which had worked underground. Under the circumstances, it was remarkable that two responsible liberal parties sprang up quickly: the Constitutional Democrats or Cadets, led by the historian Paul Miliukov, and the Octobrists, who took their name from their adherence to the 1905 October Manifesto and were led by Alexander Guchkov.

Nevertheless, the gap in understanding between monarch and parliament remained too wide. The Duma was received by the Tsar in the throne room of the Winter Palace. It was not a promising occasion. Masses of police and soldiers waited outside in the palace square. The newly elected deputies, some in evening clothes, others in peasant blouses, stood on one side of the room, staring at the huge crimson-and-gold throne, at the court officials in gold braid, and at the Empress and her ladies in formal court dress. On the other side stood the court and the ministers, among them Count Fredericks. “The deputies,” he said. “They give one the impression of a gang of criminals who are only waiting for the signal to throw themselves upon the ministers and cut their throats. What wicked faces! I will never again set foot among those people.” Fredericks was not the only one who felt uncomfortable. The Dowager Empress Marie noticed the “incomprehensible hatred” on the deputies’ faces. Kokovtsov found himself staring at one of the deputies particularly, “a man of tall stature, dressed in a worker’s blouse and high oiled boots, who examined the throne and those about it with a derisive and insolent air.” Stolypin, standing near Kokovtsov, whispered to him, “We both seem engrossed in the same spectacle. I even have the feeling that this man might throw a bomb.”

The feelings of the Duma were quickly manifested. Scarcely had the 524 members taken their seats in a hall of the Tauride Palace when they formulated a sweepingly aggressive “Address to the Throne.” To Nicholas’s horror, it demanded universal suffrage, radical land reform, the release of all political prisoners and the dismissal of ministers appointed by the Tsar in favor of ministers acceptable to the Duma. At Nicholas’s command, old Goremykin tottered down to the Duma and, with trembling hands and in a scarcely audible voice, rejected everything the Duma had asked. When Goremykin sat down, there was a moment of complete silence. Then one member leaped to the rostrum and cried, “Let the executive power bow before the legislative.” He was greeted by deafening applause. Other speakers followed, each more stinging in his attack on the government. When those ministers who were present rose and attempted to speak, they were shouted down with cries of “Retire! Retire!”

Appalled by these scenes, Nicholas was eager to dissolve the Duma, but he recognized that Goremykin was not the man to ride out the turmoil which would follow dissolution. It was at this point, in July 1906, that Goremykin resigned and Stolypin was appointed. Two days later, Stolypin locked the doors of the Tauride Palace and posted the Imperial decree dissolving the Duma. That afternoon, a number of members took trains across the nearby border into Finland. Meeting in a forest, they declared, “The sessions of the Duma are hereby resumed,” and called on the nation to refuse to pay taxes and to send no recruits to the army until the Duma was restored. But this appeal, the famous Vyborg Manifesto, had no effect. Numbed by revolution, Russians were not willing to fight again to preserve their parliament.

Nicholas, disgusted by this experience, would have been happy to end the experiment in representative government. It was Stolypin who insisted that the Tsar’s signature on the October Manifesto constituted a solemn promise to the nation which must not be broken. Grudgingly, Nicholas abandoned his plans for eliminating the Duma altogether and gave permission for the election of a Second Duma.

As the Second Duma met for the first time, in February 1907, the ceiling of the hall caved in over their heads. It was an appropriate beginning for a Duma session which, in every way, was worse than the first. The Leftist parties, including the Social Democrats and the Social Revolutionaries, which had boycotted the First Duma, had won two hundred seats in the Second, more than a third of the membership. Determined to defy the government in every way, they turned the Duma into a madhouse of shouts, insults and brawls. At the other extreme, the reactionaries were determined to discredit and abolish the Duma once and for all. Police plots were arranged to incriminate the Leftist members, accusations were hurled, debates became violent and meaningless. At one point, Stolypin stood up amid a torrent of abuse and thundered, “All your attacks are intended to cause a paralysis of will and thought in the government and the executive; all these attacks can be expressed in two words which you address to authority: ‘Hands up!’ Gentlemen, to these words the government, confident in its right, answers calmly with two other words: ‘Not afraid!’ ”

Again, Nicholas waited impatiently to rid himself of the Duma. In two letters to Marie, he let his bitterness flow:

“A grotesque deputation is coming from England [to see liberal members of the Duma]. Uncle Bertie informed us that they were very sorry but were unable to take action to stop their coming. Their famous ‘liberty,’ of course. How angry they would be if a deputation went from us to the Irish to wish them success in their struggle against their government.”

A little later he wrote: “All would be well if everything said in the Duma remained within its walls. Every word spoken, however, comes out in the next day’s papers which are avidly read by everyone. In many places the populace is getting restive again. They begin to talk about land once more and are waiting to see what the Duma is going to say on the question. I am getting telegrams from everywhere, petitioning me to order a dissolution, but it is too early for that. One has to let them do something manifestly stupid or mean and then—slap! And they are gone!”

Three months later, the moment came. A deputy named Zurabov rose in the Duma and, in insulting and occasionally profane language, accused the army of training its soldiers exclusively for repressing civilians. Zurabov directly appealed to the troops to revolt and join the people in overthrowing the government. This insult to the Russian army was more than enough for Nicholas. He issued a manifesto accusing the Duma of plotting against the sovereign, troops were brought into St. Petersburg and the Duma was dissolved. Thirty Social Democratic members were exiled to Siberia and most other Leftist members were placed under police surveillance.

Stolypin followed this dissolution by publishing a new electoral law which abandoned all pretense of universal suffrage and concentrated elective power largely in the hands of the country gentry. As a result, the Third Duma, elected in the autumn of 1907, was a thoroughly conservative body; its membership even included forty-five Orthodox priests. With this carefully tailored representative body, Stolypin generally got along well. He did not share the innate dislike for any legislature expressed by Nicholas and by most of his fellow ministers. In debate in the Duma, Stolypin’s great voice allowed him to argue his policies effectively. Nevertheless, when the Duma remained hostile, Stolypin had no qualms about invoking Article 87 of the Fundamental Laws, which empowered the Tsar to issue “urgent and extraordinary” emergency decrees “during the recess of the State Duma.” Stolypin’s most famous legislative act, the change in peasant land tenure, was promulgated under Article 87.

Despite its prevailing conservatism, the Third Duma remained an independent body. This time, however, the members proceeded cautiously. Instead of hurling themselves at the government, opposing parties within the Duma worked to develop the role of the body as a whole. In the classic manner of the British Parliament, the Duma reached for power by grasping for the national purse strings. The Duma had the right to question ministers behind closed doors as to their proposed expenditures. These sessions, endorsed by Stolypin, were educational for both sides, and, in time, mutual antagonism was replaced by mutual respect. Even in the sensitive area of military expenditures, where the October Manifesto clearly had reserved decisions to the throne, a Duma commission began to operate. Composed of aggressive patriots no less anxious than Nicholas to restore the fallen honor of Russian arms, the Duma commission frequently recommended expenditures even larger than those proposed.

Sir Bernard Pares, who was on the closest personal terms with many members of the Duma, looked back on the period with nostalgia: “May an Englishman, bred in the tradition of Gladstone, to whom the Duma was almost a home with many friends of all parties, recall that vanished past? At the bottom was a feeling of reassurance, and founded on it one saw a growing courage and initiative and a growing mutual understanding and goodwill. The Duma had the freshness of a school, with something of surprise at the simplicity with which differences that had seemed formidable could be removed. One could feel the pleasure with which the members were finding their way into common work for the good of the whole country.… Some seventy persons at least, forming the nucleus of the most important commissions, were learning in detail to understand both each other and the Government. One could see political competence growing day by day. And to a constant observer it was becoming more and more an open secret that the distinctions of party meant little, and that in the social warmth of their public work for Russia, all these men were becoming friends.”

With the passage of time, Nicholas also began to have confidence in the Duma. “This Duma cannot be reproached with an attempt to seize power and there is no need at all to quarrel with it,” he said to Stolypin in 1909. In 1912, a Fourth Duma was elected with almost the same membership as the Third. “The Duma started too fast,” Nicholas explained to Pares in 1912. “Now it is slower, but better. And more lasting.”

Despite Stolypin’s successes, there were influences constantly working to poison the relationship between the Tsar and his Prime Minister. Reactionaries, including such powerful men at court as Prince Vladimir Orlov, never tired of telling the Tsar that the very existence of the Duma was a blot on the autocracy. Stolypin, they whispered, was a traitor and a secret revolutionary who was conniving with the Duma to steal the prerogatives assigned the Tsar by God. Witte also engaged in constant intrigue against Stolypin. Although Stolypin had had nothing to do with Witte’s fall or with Nicholas’s contempt for Witte, the former Premier blamed the incumbent. Witte himself had written the 1905 Manifesto creating the Duma, but now, overflowing with spite, he allied himself with the reactionaries and worked a gradual corrosion on Stolypin’s power.

Unfortunately, without intending it, Stolypin also had angered the Empress. Early in 1911, alarmed that a man such as Rasputin should have influence at the palace, Stolypin ordered an investigation and presented a report to the Tsar. Nicholas read it, but did nothing. Stolypin, on his own authority, then commanded Rasputin to leave St. Petersburg. Alexandra protested vehemently, but Nicholas refused to overrule his Prime Minister. Rasputin departed on a long pilgrimage to Jerusalem, during which he scrawled lengthy, flowery and mystical letters to the Empress.

Stolypin’s banishing of Rasputin was still another example of the tragic isolation and lack of understanding which surrounded the Imperial family. Stolypin was not a heartless man. Had he once been present when the Tsarevich lay in pain and observed the relief which Rasputin brought to mother and child, he would not have ordered this forcible separation. Yet, in political terms, the abrupt purging of this dangerous influence from the palace must have seemed the essence of wisdom. To Alexandra, however, it seemed that Stolypin had deliberately severed the bond on which her son depended for life, and for this she hated the Prime Minister.

Stolypin, meanwhile, was beginning to weary in office. Attempting to overturn the traditions of centuries in five years was more than even so robust a figure as Stolypin could manage. His health waned in repeated attacks of grippe and he became constantly irritable. For a man who preferred clear, decisive action, working with a sovereign who believed in fatalism and mysticism was frustrating. As an example, Nicholas once returned to Stolypin a document unsigned with the note: “Despite most convincing arguments in favor of adopting a positive decision in this matter, an inner voice keeps on insisting more and more that I do not accept responsibility for it. So far my conscience has not deceived me. Therefore, I intend in this case to follow its dictates. I know that you, too, believe that ‘a Tsar’s heart is in God’s hands.’ Let it be so. For all laws established by me I bear a great responsibility before God, and I am ready to answer for my decision at any time.”

In March 1911, Stolypin lost his temper when the State Council rejected a bill which Stolypin had ushered through the Duma. Stolypin concluded erroneously that the Council had acted as it did because Nicholas had been maneuvering behind his back. In a fit of anger, stating that he obviously no longer commanded the Imperial confidence, he asked to be relieved of his office. The move was unprecedented. Two years before, when Stolypin had casually mentioned resigning, Nicholas had written: “This is not a question of confidence or lack of it; it is my will. Remember that we live in Russia, not abroad … and therefore I shall not consider the possibility of any resignation.”

In the interim, Nicholas had not softened these views, and when Stolypin insisted, a heated argument took place. It was the Tsar who backed away. “I cannot accept your resignation,” he said to Stolypin, “and I hope that you will not insist upon it, for you must perceive that in accepting your resignation I not only should lose you but also should create a precedent. What would become of a government responsible to me if ministers came and went, today, because of a conflict with the Council, tomorrow, because of a conflict with the Duma? Think of some other way out and let me hear it.”

At this moment of impasse, the Dowager Empress sent for Kokovtsov to get his impressions. She took Stolypin’s part. “Unfortunately, my son is too kind,” she said. “I can well understand that Stolypin is almost in despair and is losing confidence in his ability to conduct the affairs of state.” Then Marie began a frank discussion of Nicholas’s problems: “I am perfectly sure that the Tsar cannot part with Stolypin.… If Stolypin were to insist, I have not the slightest doubt that in the end the Tsar would give in. He has not given his answer because he is trying to find some other way out of the situation. He seeks advice from no one. He has too much pride and, with the Empress, goes through such crises without letting anyone see that he is agitated.… As time goes by, the Tsar will become more and more rooted in his displeasure with Stolypin. I feel sure that Stolypin will win for the present but for a short time only; he will soon be removed which would be a great pity both for the Tsar and for Russia.… My poor son has so little luck with people.”

Marie’s prophecy was accurate. Nicholas arranged for Stolypin to stay by permitting him to suspend sittings of the Duma for three days to enact his law by decree in the interim. But a coolness sprang up between the two men. Stolypin, knowing how much encouragement the episode had given his enemies, lived in expectation of dismissal. He complained to his friends that he was being ignored at court, that petty slights such as forgetting to assign him a carriage or a place on an Imperial boat were being administered.

In September 1911, Stolypin and Kokovtsov accompanied Nicholas to Kiev to unveil a statue of Alexander III. As the procession wound through the streets, the Tsar was surrounded by guards and police, but the carriage in which the two ministers were riding was completely unprotected. “You see, we are superfluous,” Stolypin said to Kokovtsov.

By a startling but purely coincidental meshing of fates, Rasputin was in Kiev that day, standing in the crowd, observing the procession. As Stolypin’s carriage clattered past, Rasputin became agitated and began to mumble. Suddenly, he called out in a dramatic voice, “Death is after him! Death is driving behind him!” For the rest of the night, Rasputin continued muttering about Stolypin’s death.

The following day, before the eyes of the Tsar, Peter Stolypin was assassinated. The Imperial party was attending a performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Tsar Sultan at the Kiev Opera House. Nicholas was sitting with his two eldest daughters in a box overlooking the stage, while Stolypin and other officials were seated in the first row of the orchestra. During the second intermission, Stolypin rose and stood with his back to the stage. As he did so, a young man in evening clothes walked down the aisle from the rear of the house. The Prime Minister looked at him questioningly. In response, the man drew a Browning revolver and fired two shots which struck Stolypin in the chest.

From his box, Nicholas saw what happened next. He described the lurid scene in a letter to the Dowager Empress:

“Olga and Tatiana were with me at the time. During the second interval, we had just left the box as it was so hot, when we heard two sounds as if something was dropped. I thought an opera glass might have fallen on somebody’s head and ran back into the box to look. To the right I saw a group of officers and other people. They seemed to be dragging someone along. Women were shrieking and directly in front of me in the stalls Stolypin was standing. He slowly turned his face towards me and with his left hand made the sign of the Cross in the air. Only then did I notice that he was very pale and that his right hand and uniform were bloodstained. He slowly sank into his chair and began to unbutton his tunic. Fredericks … helped him. Olga and Tatiana … saw what happened.

“While Stolypin was being helped out of the theatre, there was a great noise in the corridor near our box; people were trying to lynch the assassin. I am sorry to say the police rescued him from the crowd and took him to an isolated room for his first examination.… Two of his front teeth were knocked out. The theatre filled up again, the national anthem was sung and I left with the girls at 11. You can imagine with what emotions.… Tatiana was very upset and she cried a lot.… Poor Stolypin had a bad night.”

The plot against Stolypin was intricate and sordid. The assassin, Mordka Bogrov, was a revolutionary and, at the same time, a police informer. Allowed to continue his underground work while making regular reports to the police, Bogrov apparently gave his primary allegiance to the revolution. The commonly accepted and most likely version of the plot is that Bogrov used his police connections to achieve a revolutionary goal. Before the Tsar and Stolypin arrived in Kiev, Bogrov had given the police detailed information about a plot against Stolypin’s life. The police followed the trail and discovered, too late, that it was false. Meanwhile, Bogrov, using a police ticket to gain admittance, was striding into the opera, where his mission, supposedly, was to guard Stolypin by spotting and pointing out potential “assassins” who might have slipped through the police net. Inside, Bogrov drew a revolver from under his cape and fired.

This was the official version and the one accepted by all of the Imperial family. “I cannot say how distressed and indignant I am about the murder of Stolypin,” wrote Empress Marie. “It is horrible and scandalous and one can say nothing good of the police whose choice fell upon such a swine as that revolutionary to act as informer and as guard to Stolypin. It exceeds all bounds and shows the stupidity of the people at the top.” Nevertheless, a question remains which this account does not answer: Why, if Nicholas was also present, did the assassin shoot the Prime Minister and not the Tsar? Although Bogrov was hanged and four officials of the police were suspended for negligence, the suspicion has always remained that Stolypin’s murder was the work of powerful reactionaries who had connections with the police.

Nicholas’s shock over the murder of his Prime Minister was genuine. Stolypin lived for five days after the shooting, and the Tsar, although urged by palace security officials to leave Kiev immediately for the safety of Livadia, remained in the vicinity. “I returned to Kiev in the evening of September 3rd, called at the nursing home where Stolypin was lying, and met his wife who would not let me see him,” he wrote to Marie. Nicholas continued his program, making a short trip down the Dnieper. “On September 6th at 9 A.M. I returned to Kiev. Here on the pier I heard from Kokovtsov that Stolypin had died. I went at once to the nursing home, and a memorial service was afterwards held in my presence. The poor widow stood as though turned to stone and was unable to weep.”

It was Kokovtsov who, on the night of the assassination, took the reins of government and averted a second disaster. Because Bogrov was a Jew, the Orthodox population of Kiev was noisily preparing for a retaliatory pogrom. Frantic with fear, the city’s Jewish population spent the night packing their belongings. The first light of the following day found the square before the railway station jammed with carts and people trying to squeeze themselves onto departing trains. Even as they waited, the terrified people heard the clatter of hoofs. An endless stream of Cossacks, their long lances dark against the dawn sky, rode past. On his own, Kokovtsov had ordered three full regiments of Cossacks into the city to prevent violence. Asked on what authority he had issued the command, Kokovtsov replied, “As head of the government.” Later, a local official came up to the Finance Minister to complain, “Well, Your Excellency, by calling in the troops you have missed a fine chance to answer Bogrov’s shot with a nice Jewish pogrom.” Kokovtsov was indignant, but, he added, “his sally suggested to me that the measures I had taken at Kiev were not sufficient … therefore I sent an open telegram to all governors of the region demanding that they use every possible means—force if necessary—to prevent possible pogroms. When I submitted this telegram to the Tsar, he expressed his approval of it and of the measure I had taken in Kiev.”

Nicholas also quickly confirmed Kokovtsov’s official position, naming him as Stolypin’s successor. One month later, the new Prime Minister visited the Tsar at Livadia to discuss future policy. “I … was accorded a most hearty welcome. The members of the court … vied with each other in their graciousness to me,” Kokovtsov wrote. “… The next day, after lunch, the Empress who found it painful to stand for any length of time, sat down in an armchair and called me to her side.… A part of this conversation impressed itself upon my memory because it … showed me the peculiar, mystic nature of this woman who was called to play such an extraordinary part in the history of Russia.…

“The Empress said … ‘I notice that you keep on making comparisons between yourself and Stolypin. You seem to do too much honor to his memory and ascribe too much importance to his activities and his personality. Believe me, one must not feel sorry for those who are no more. I am sure that everybody does only one’s duty and fulfills one’s destiny, and when one dies that means that his role is ended and that he was bound to go since his destiny was fulfilled. Life continually assumes new forms, and you must not try to follow blindly the work of your predecessor. Remain yourself; do not look for support in political parties; they are of so little consequence in Russia. Find support in the confidence of the Tsar—the Lord will help you. I am sure that Stolypin died to make room for you, and this is all for the good of Russia.’ ”

In 1911, when Stolypin ordered an investigation of Rasputin’s activities, the outcry against the starets was still a matter for private conversation. By 1912, when Kokovtsov inherited Stolypin’s office, the scandal had burst into the public arena. In the Duma, broad hints at “dark forces” near the throne began to creep into the speeches of Leftist deputies. Soon the “Rasputin question” dominated the political scene.

“Strange as it may seem,” wrote Kokovtsov, “the question of Rasputin became the central question of the immediate future; nor did it disappear during my entire term of office as Chairman of the Ministers’ Council.” Censorship had been abolished by the Manifesto, and the press began to speak openly of Rasputin as a sinister adventurer who controlled appointments in the Church and had the ear of the Empress. Newspapers began to print accusations and confessions from Rasputin’s victims and the cries of anguished mothers. Alexander Guchkov, leader of the Octobrists, obtained copies of Iliodor’s letters allegedly written by the Empress to Rasputin; he had them copied and circulated through the city. “Although they were absolutely impeccable, they gave rise to the most revolting comments,” said Kokovtsov. “… We [Kokovtsov and Makarov, the Minister of Interior] both believed that the letters were apocryphal and were being circulated for the purpose of undermining the prestige of the sovereign but we could do nothing.… The public, of course, greedy for any sensation, was according them a very warm reception.”

As the attack on Rasputin intensified, the Moscow newspaper Golos Moskvy denounced “that cunning conspirator against our Holy Church, that fornicator of human souls and bodies—Gregory Rasputin” as well as “the unheard-of tolerance exhibited toward the said Gregory Rasputin by the highest dignitaries of the Church.” Nicholas issued an order banning any mention of Rasputin in the press on pain of fine. But Rasputin made much too good copy for editors to worry about fines; they published and cheerfully paid. The unprintable stories, passed from mouth to mouth, were infinitely worse. The Empress and Anna Vyrubova, it was said, shared the peasant’s bed. He ordered the Tsar to pull off his boots and wash his feet and then pushed Nicholas out of the room while he lay with Alexandra. He had raped all the young Grand Duchesses and turned the nurseries into a harem, where the girls, mad with love, fought for his attentions. “Grishka,” the diminutive of Gregory, appeared in obscene drawings chalked on walls and buildings; he was the subject of a hundred smutty rhymes.

Nicholas was bitterly offended at the dragging of his wife’s name and honor through the mud. “I am simply stifling in this atmosphere of gossip and malice,” he told Kokovtsov. “This disgusting affair must be ended.” Neither Nicholas nor Alexandra understood the meaning of freedom of the press; they did not understand why the ministers could not prevent the appearance in print of what they both knew was inaccurate and libelous. On the other hand, for the ministers, the Duma and even the Dowager Empress, the solution lay not in repressing the newspapers, but in ridding the throne of Rasputin. Once again, Marie invited Kokovtsov to call on her, and for an hour and a half they discussed Rasputin. “She wept bitterly and promised to speak to the Tsar,” Kokovtsov wrote. “But she had little hope of success.” “My poor daughter-in-law does not perceive that she is ruining both the dynasty and herself,” said Marie. “She sincerely believes in the holiness of an adventurer and we are powerless to ward off the misfortune which is sure to come.”

Inevitably, the demand rose for an open debate in the Duma on the role of Rasputin. The Duma President, Michael Rodzianko, a massive figure weighing 280 pounds, was a former cavalry officer of aristocratic family whose political views were not much different from those of a Tory country squire in England. To him, the idea of a public debate in the Duma on Rasputin’s relations with the Imperial family seemed highly offensive. Seeking advice, he too visited Empress Marie and heard the same depressing views that Marie had addressed to Kokovtsov. “The Emperor … is so pure of heart,” she concluded, “that he does not believe in evil.”

Nevertheless, Rodzianko persisted and he was granted an audience with the Tsar. So important did he consider his mission that before going to the palace, he went to pray in the cathedral before the holy icon of Our Lady of Kazan. At the palace, Rodzianko bravely told the Tsar that he meant to “speak of the starets, Rasputin, and the inadmissible fact of his presence at Your Majesty’s Court.” Then, before going any further, he said, “I beseech you, Sire, as Your Majesty’s loyal subject, will it be your pleasure to hear me to the end? If not, say but one word and I will remain silent.” Nicholas looked away, bowed his head and murmured, “Speak.” Rodzianko spoke at length, reminding Nicholas of those such as Theophan and Iliodor who had condemned Rasputin and suffered for it. He mentioned the major charges against Rasputin. “Have you read Stolypin’s report?” asked Nicholas. “No,” said Rodzianko, “I’ve heard it spoken of, but never read it.” “I rejected it,” said the Tsar. “It is a pity,” said the Duma President, “for all this would not have happened.”

Moved by Rodzianko’s honest fervor, Nicholas gave way and authorized a new investigation of Rasputin’s character and activities to be conducted by Rodzianko himself. Rodzianko immediately demanded and received the evidence which had been collected by the Holy Synod and passed along to Stolypin to form the basis of his earlier report. The following day, an official of the Holy Synod appeared and ordered Rodzianko to hand the papers back. “He explained,” Rodzianko wrote, “that the demand came from a very exalted person. ‘Who is it, Sabler [Minister of Religion]?’ ‘No, someone much more highly placed.’ … ‘Who is it?’ I repeated. ‘The Empress, Alexandra Fedorovna.’ ‘If that is the case,’ I said, ‘will you kindly inform Her Majesty that she is as much a subject of her august consort as I myself, and that it is the duty of us both to obey his commands. I am, therefore, not in a position to comply with her wishes.’ ”

Rodzianko kept the papers and wrote his report, but when he asked for another audience to present it, the request was denied. He sent it to the Tsar, nevertheless, and Sazonov, the Foreign Minister, was present when Nicholas read it at Livadia. Afterward, Sazonov spoke to Grand Duke Ernest of Hesse, the Empress’s brother, who also was present. Sadly, the Grand Duke shook his head and commented, “The Emperor is a saint and an angel, but he does not know how to deal with her.”

Two years after his appointment as Prime Minister, Kokovtsov toppled from power. Once again, it was Rasputin who poisoned this political career. Upon appointing Kokovtsov Minister of Finance, Nicholas had told him, “Remember, Vladimir Nicolaievich, that the doors of this study are always open to you at any time you need to come.” When Kokovtsov sent the Tsar his proposed budget speech to the Duma in 1907, Nicholas returned it with a personal note reading, “God grant that the new Duma may study calmly this splendid explanation and appreciate the improvement we have made in so short a time after all the trials sent to us.” The Empress also was initially well disposed toward Kokovtsov. During their first interview after he became Finance Minister, she said, “I wished to see you to tell you that both the Tsar and I beg you always to be quite frank with us and to tell us the truth, not hesitating lest it be unpleasant for us. Believe me, even if it be so at first, we shall be grateful to you for it later.”

But Alexandra’s warmth and her desire to hear the truth faded quickly once the newspapers began their attack on Rasputin. Kokovtsov himself understood clearly what had happened and even sympathized with Alexandra:

“At first, I enjoyed Her Majesty’s favor,” he wrote. “In fact, I was appointed Chairman of the Ministers’ Council with her knowledge and consent. Hence, when the Duma and press began a violent campaign against Rasputin … she expected me to put a stop to it. Yet it was not my opposition to the Tsar’s proposal to take measures against the press that won me Her Majesty’s displeasure; it was my report to His Majesty about Rasputin after the starets had visited me. From that time on, although the Tsar continued to show me his favor for another two years, my dismissal was assured. This changed attitude of Her Majesty is not hard to understand.… In her mind, Rasputin was closely associated with the health of her son, and the welfare of the Monarchy. To attack him was to attack the protector of what she held most dear. Moreover, like any righteous person, she was offended to think that the sanctity of her home had been questioned in the press and in the Duma. She thought that I, as head of the government, was responsible for permitting these attacks, and could not understand why I could not stop them by giving orders in the name of the Tsar. She considered me, therefore, not a servant of the Tsar, but a tool of the enemies of the state and, as such, deserving dismissal.”

Despite his wife’s animosity, Nicholas retained his affection for Kokovtsov. Nevertheless, on February 12, 1914, the Prime Minister received a letter from the Tsar:

VLADIMIR NICOLAIEVICH:

It is not a feeling of displeasure but a long-standing and deep realization of a state need that now forces me to tell you that we have to part.

I am doing this in writing, for it is easier to select the right words when putting them on paper than during an unsettling conversation.

The happenings of the past eight years have persuaded me definitely that the idea of combining in one person the duties of Chairman of the Ministers’ Council and those of Minister of Finance or of the Interior is both awkward and wrong in a country such as Russia.

Moreover, the swift tempo of our domestic life and the striking development of the economic forces of our country both demand the undertaking of most definite and serious measures, a task which should be best entrusted to a man fresh for the work.

During the last two years, unfortunately, I have not always approved of the policy of the Ministry of Finance, and I perceive that this can go no farther.

I appreciate highly your devotion to me and the great service you have performed in achieving remarkable improvements in Russia’s state credit; I am grateful to you for this from the bottom of my heart. Believe me, I am sorry to part with you who have been my assistant for ten years. Believe also, that I shall not forget to take suitable care of you and your family. I expect you with your last report on Friday, at 11:00 a.m. as always, and ever as a friend.

With sincere regards,

NICHOLAS

Kokovtsov found little solace in Nicholas’s description of his successor as “a man fresh for the work,” especially when he discovered that this successor was to be Goremykin. Certainly Goremykin made no such estimate of his talents. “I am like an old fur coat,” he said. “For many months I have been packed away in camphor. I am being taken out now merely for the occasion; when it is passed I shall be packed away again till I am wanted the next time.”

After his dismissal, Kokovtsov was asked to call on the Dowager Empress. “I know you are an honorable man and I know that you bear no ill will toward my son. You must also understand my fears for the future. My daughter-in-law does not like me; she thinks that I am jealous of her power. She does not perceive that my one aspiration is to see my son happy. Yet I see that we are nearing some catastrophe and the Tsar listens to no one but flatterers, not perceiving or even suspecting what goes on all around him. Why do you not decide to tell the Tsar frankly all you think and know, now that you are at liberty to do so, warning him, if it is not already too late?”

Almost as distressed as Marie, Kokovtsov replied that he “could do nothing. I told her that no one would listen to me or believe me. The young Empress thought me her enemy.” This animosity, Kokovtsov explained, had been present ever since February 1912.

It was in the middle of February 1912 that Kokovtsov and Rasputin had met and disliked each other over tea.

When he first came to St. Petersburg, Gregory Rasputin had no plan for making himself the power behind the Russian throne. Like many successful opportunists, he lived from day to day, cleverly making the most of what was offered to him. In his case, the path led to the upper reaches of Russian society, and from there, because of Alexis’s illness, to the throne. Even then he remained indifferent to politics until his own behavior became a political issue. Then, with government ministers, members of the Duma, the church hierarchy and the press all attacking him, Rasputin counterattacked in the only way open to him: by going to the Empress. Rasputin became a political influence in Russia in self-defense.

Alexandra was a faithful patron. When government ministers or bishops of the church leveled accusations at the starets, she retaliated by urging their dismissal. When the Duma debated “the Rasputin question” and the press cried out against his excesses, the Empress demanded dissolution of the one and suppression of the other. She defended Rasputin so strongly that it became difficult for people to associate in their minds the Empress and the moujik. If she had determined to hate all his enemies, it was not surprising that his enemies decided to hate her.

Stephen Beletsky, Director of the Police Department, later reckoned that Rasputin’s power was firmly established by 1913. Simanovich, who worked with Rasputin in St. Petersburg, estimated that it took Rasputin five years, 1906–1911, to gain power and that he then exercised it for another five, 1911–1916. In both estimates, the turning point falls in the neighborhood of 1912, the year that the Tsarevich Alexis almost died at Spala.