Rasputin was a natural target of right-wing critics because of his influence on the Imperial couple and through them, on ministerial appointments. Stürmer, Protopopov, and Shuvaev, holders of the most important posts in the administration, owed their positions to him. True, his protege Stürmer was replaced by an enemy, Trepov, but even so it was widely believed that crossing Rasputin’s path meant a broken career. Rasputin was even suspected of meddling in military operations. Indeed, in November 1915 he had given, through the Empress, strategic advice to headquarters. “Before I forget,” Alexandra wrote Nicholas on November 15, 1915,
I must give you a message from our Friend, prompted by what he saw last night. He begs you to
Neither Nicholas nor his generals paid attention to such counsel. Rasputin was strictly forbidden to come near headquarters. Still, the fact that this semi-literate peasant felt free to give advice on military matters incensed the conservatives.
At Tsarskoe Selo, his word was law. Rasputin frequently prophesied that should any harm befall him, Russia would go through another Time of Troubles. He had visions of rivers of blood, of fire and smoke, an uncanny and rationally inexplicable foreboding of what would soon, in fact, occur.101 His predictions alarmed the Empress and made her more than ever anxious to protect him from his enemies, who, in her eyes, were also the enemies of the dynasty and of Russia.
Rasputin basked in his power. His drinking bouts, his boasting and insolence, grew more scandalous with each day. Ladies of high society were fascinated by the brute with the hypnotic eyes and gift of prophesy. Rasputin belonged to the sect of Khlysty, who preached that sinning reduced the quantity of sin in the world. At his private villa, with the ever-present gypsies, liquor flowed freely. Whether Rasputin really possessed the sexual prowess with which he was credited is more than questionable. A physician named R. R. Vreden, who examined him in 1914 after he had been knifed by a jealous mistress, found Rasputin’s genitals shriveled, like those of a very old man, which led him to wonder whether he was even capable of the sexual act: he ascribed this to the effects of alcohol and syphilis.*
Rasputin could behave so scandalously because he felt above the law. In March 1915, the chief of the Corps of Gendarmes, V. F. Dzhunkovskii, had the courage to inform the Tsar that his agents had overheard Rasputin boast at a dinner party in Moscow’s Praga Restaurant that he “could do anything he wanted” with the Empress. His reward was to be sacked and sent to the front. After this incident, the police thought it prudent to keep to itself adverse information on Rasputin. Sycophants and aspirants to office fawned on him; honest patriots risked disgrace if they dared to incur his displeasure. Guchkov and Polivanov, who had done the most to revitalize Russia’s war effort after the debacle of 1915, were kept at arm’s length and, in the case of Polivanov, fired because of Rasputin’s enmity. That such a charlatan had a hold on the monarchy offended the monarchists most of all.
Nicholas’s attitude toward Rasputin was ambivalent. He told Protopopov that while he had not cared for Rasputin at first, in time he had grown “accustomed to him.”102 He rarely saw the
By the end of 1916, the Imperial couple had concluded that the opposition, determined to unseat them, attacked their appointees and friends as a matter of principle: every choice of the monarchy, whatever his merits, was bound to come under fire. The true target of these attacks was the dynasty. That this was so Nicholas and Alexandra concluded from the example of Protopopov, who had been named to placate the opposition but upon assuming office became the target of its abuse. Alexandra wrote Nicholas:
