March The First, 1881.
(No self-respecting chronologist of Russian history would ever dare to make a leap from the reign of Ivan III the Great into the reign of Emperor Alexander II, overshooting her universally-acknowledged giants such as Ivan IV Grozny, Peter I the Great, and Catherine II the Great, not to mention the lesser luminaries.
But this is exactly what I am doing here and for a very good reason at that. I am not playing the chronologist here, and those who are looking for the missing greats and notables of Russian history will find them both in the Russia section and later in this section, when I am talking about them in their connection to Stalin.
The general purpose of this section is to present to the reader history unknown, ignored and misunderstood, and my secondary effort to do this with some semblance of a chronological order ought not to be mistaken for a standard chronology of any kind. Please do keep this in mind.
And now my final comment, more specific to the content of this entry, and also others, wherever there might be an impression that an outlandish accident could have the power to change the course of history.
On 1 March 1881, the great Emperor-Liberator, Emperor-Reformer Alexander II of Russia was assassinated after several previously unsuccessful attempts, by a group of demonstrably incompetent conspirators. Under the circumstances, it was clear that the killers were incredibly lucky and the Emperor’s guard was incredibly careless, the combination of which two factors resulting in the success of the otherwise objectively botched attempt, which somehow went through… Now, was it an incredible confluence of unrelated circumstances? Was it an accident of history?
I do not think so. As Comrade Stalin used to say, no incident which has the power to change history is an accident. A different sort of power is at work here, which makes such incidents happen. If these incidents fail to become accidents, that power sends a host of others, at least one of whom is sure to succeed. This is what I call “La Forza Del Destino,” and it is not some “blind force of nature.” There is a very special, extremely vaguely defined group of exceptional people in Russia, whom I have called “the keepers of the faith” (or, also, “the keepers of the nation”). This group is charged with making sure that the Force of Russia’s Destiny meets no impenetrable obstruction. It is, therefore, the force which makes sure that such accidents as March the First, 1881, do happen.
Thus, that fateful day of Emperor Alexander’s assassination was not a history-changing event, but a part of the plan to keep Russian history on the right track. Russia was destined to follow the course taking her to an experience of baptism by fire, as pre-ordained by the Russian Holy Scripture, and that would be the ordeal, which started with the abdication of the Russian Emperor Nicholas II, through the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Civil War, the persecution of Russia’s Orthodox Faith, all the way through the Soviet period and another Time of Troubles, which was the Yeltsin era, and so on. To be sure, Russia’s tribulations are by no means over yet, as her destiny has not yet been fulfilled.
For which higher purpose, Russia’s great Emperor-Liberator, Emperor-Reformer Alexander II was destined to die. Not necessarily on 1 March 1881, but sooner or later within a fairly narrow chronological window, la forza del destino had to be satisfied.)
…Nicholas II of Russia was a weak, reckless man, and even his highly intelligent advisers, such as Stolypin and Witte, could not stop Russia’s accelerating slide toward the precipice. But it would be foolish to blame either the Emperor or any of his advisors for what happened to Russia in the fateful year 1917: the slide had already started long before Nicholas’s accession to the throne, and, no matter what bright genius might have come to power, the slide was irreversible.
The best approximation of a bright genius had in fact come to rule over Russia in the person of Alexander II (son of Emperor Nicholas I). Known as the Tsar-Reformer for his numerous progressive reforms, and as the Tsar-Liberator for his abolition of serfdom in 1861, many historians have lamented that, had it not been for the tragic assassination of Alexander II on March the First, 1881 (by the old Julian Calendar, used in Russia prior to 1918, thus separating her from the “apostatic” Gregorian Calendar, used elsewhere, which states the date of the Emperor’s assassination as March 13th, 1881), Russian history would have been totally different, and the events of 1917 would never have taken place.
I can perhaps stretch my agreement with this opinion, but only to the point of accepting the semi-truistic fact that if Alexander’s life had not been cut short by the assassination , thus precluding him from introducing an even more radical set of reforms than those which Russia had seen so far, but it is the if, which makes all the difference. It is my assertion as a historian that by the time of the Emperor’s tragic death Russia had already made up her mind that the slide toward the precipice was indeed the necessary course (see my Stalin book, and other entries in the Lady section, for a further clarification of my perspective on Russia’s realization of her historical destiny), and that was the reason why the genius of enlightened statesmanship, Tsar Alexander II, was “required to be assassinated,” either on that fateful day of the First of March, 1881, or on a different day in close proximity. It is surprisingly easy to establish the trustworthiness of my “conspiracy theory” just by looking at the circumstances of the case, to see that, after several previous attempts on his life had failed, mainly by accident, rather than due to the helpfulness of the Tsar’s protectors, Alexander II found himself exposed to his ultimate mortal danger either through a glaring ineptitude of his guard, or, much more likely, through malicious and willful foul play. (I am particularly knowledgeable about the circumstances of that case as I had the published proceedings of that strange case (under the title Process of 1 March 1881) in my home library in Moscow.)
Some Royal Superstitions.
Curiously, I never read the following in any book, but this was my maternal grandmother Nadezhda’s eerie tale, and I have much more reason to trust it, than any critical historian might have to dismiss it out of hand. Generally speaking, it makes a lot of sense, and the fact that Emperor Nicholas II of Russia had made these two egregious exceptions to the deeply mystical protocol of Russia’s royal superstition is mind-boggling, to say the least…
It is however a known fact that dark superstition had been surrounding the reign of Nicholas II and haunting his German wife ever since the mass celebrations of his May 1896 coronation had produced the horrendous Khodynka tragedy when thousands were trampled to death or badly injured. The tragedy was seen as an evil omen, and the Russian royal family was doomed to be treated with extreme prejudice ever since.
Despite the mildly entertaining and seemingly lightweight character of the content of this entry, dealing with superstition, I advise the reader to treat it with utmost seriousness. It is one thing to be “above superstition,” as if it doesn’t exist, but quite another to spit in its enormous face as it is staring right at you within the close confines of a notoriously superstitious society. Something must really be wrong with this picture…
After the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, Tsarism in Russia was doomed, with everybody, except the Tsars themselves, realizing it. The condition of a revolutionary situation was now much stronger than what Lenin would later describe. (For this, see my entry Comrade Putin’s Party.) In Lenin’s formula, the haves can no longer maintain the old order. In Russia, they did not want to maintain the old order, and neither did the have-nots, thus making it a lethal double-whammy.
In the last days of the weary Romanov Empire a lot of end-of-days legends were roaming all across Russia, using the dark force of superstition to substantiate their apocalyptic self-fulfilling prophesy.
"Why, do you think, was it that after Peter the Great no other Tsar would ever again name his heir Alexei?"-- people were asking each other in 1904, shaking their heads in shock and deepest disapproval of what they had just been witness to. It was virtually a rhetorical question, as they knew that Peter’s hapless son Alexei Petrovich, the weakling traitor, tortured to death by his own father, had been the reason for this unwritten, but (until 1904!) religiously enforced prohibition. In fact, my grandmother Nadezhda solemnly assured me that long before the reckless Tsar Nicholas II had named his son and heir born in 1904 Alexei, Russian royal families had been explicitly warned under no circumstances to name the heir to the Russian Throne by the name of Peter’s son, as this would surely bring a ghastly curse upon their house. If that was indeed so, how come, I wonder, was Nicholas, a highly superstitious man, compelled to go against the fateful prophesy in such a flagrant way, whereas a measly thirteen years later he would be quite easily swayed by yet another dire prophesy (see my next entry Rasputin’s Prophesy!) to commit the unthinkable act of abdication of his Throne? Perhaps, he had been deliberately misled about the prophesy by those around him who wished him and the Romanov dynasty brought to a shattering end?!! (Read more on this in the story of Lenin’s brother Alexander Ulyanov, later in this section.)
But Nicholas wasn’t quite done yet, symbolically inflicting another irreparable damage on his family and on Russia, by breaking yet another taboo. For, another prophesy of the same superstitious nature had allegedly foretold three centuries prior to the time discussed how the Romanov dynasty would come to its bitter end.
“With a Mikhail does it start,” it purportedly said, “and with a Mikhail shall it end.”
Imagine how badly jinxed one man could be, who, in the course of his doomed reign, had broken both these solemn prohibitions no other monarch before him had dared to violate, with such unforgivable carelessness! In addition to giving his heir the taboo name Alexei, in 1917 he abdicated his Throne in favor of yet another taboo first name: Grand Prince Mikhail Alexandrovich who thus technically had become the last Romanov! (And again, see my next entry Rasputin’s Prophesy, where more of this much-ignored, but instructive story will be told.)
…Now, was that yet another coincidence?
No way! If you ask me, the hapless Emperor Nicholas II of Russia did not jump off the bridge of history. He was pushed!
…La forza del destino…
Rasputin’s Prophesy.
Even in his lifetime, Grigori Rasputin was known as a prophet, as in his actual published writings he likes to present himself as a prophet and adopts the distinctive prophetic style. Some of his published prophesies are interesting, but none of them are the subject of this entry. I am rather interested in what is known as his “last prophesy,” his ominous testament to Russia and to the royal family. Needless to say, this letter, purportedly written shortly before his death in December 1916 was never reliably published, and the existing versions of it are undoubtedly spurious, as evidenced by the fact that they all differ in their content. In this entry, I have chosen the less extravagant text of the Russian version (in my verbatim translation) which seems to me more reliable than the English-language versions available on the Internet. What gives this version some measure of credence is the fact that the legend of Rasputin’s last prophesy (according to my grandmother Nadezhda) had preexisted the Bolshevik Revolution and the tragic death of the Russian Imperial family and had caused great anxiety among the Russian nobility well before the reason for such anxiety had become apparent.
Now, as promised, here is the text of Rasputin’s last prophesy in my scrupulously crude translation---
"I write this letter and leave it in Peterburg. I have a premonition that before the first of January [1917] I am to leave life. To the Russian People, to papa [Emperor Nicholas II], to Russian mama [Empress Alexandra], to the children and to all Russian land, I wish to bequeath what they are to undertake. If I am to be killed by hired killers, Russian peasants, my brothers, then you, Russian Tsar, have no one to fear. Stay on the throne and reign. And you, Russian Tsar need not worry about your children. They will rule Russia for hundreds of years more. But if I am murdered by the boyars and noblemen and they spill my blood, then their hands will be stained with my blood and for twenty-five years they will not be able to wash it off their hands. They will flee from Russia. Brothers will rise against brothers, and will be killing each other, and for twenty-five years there will be no persons of nobility left in Russia. Tsar of the Russian land, when you hear the tolling of the bells telling you about the death of Grigori, then know this, that, in case my murder had been committed by your relatives, then not one of your family, that is, not one of your children and your kin shall live for even two years. They shall be killed by the Russian people. I am departing, and I feel inside me God’s command to tell the Russian tsar how he must live after my demise. You must think, weigh all, and act carefully. You must worry about your salvation, and tell your kin that I have paid them with my life. I am to be killed. I am no more among the living. Pray, pray. Be strong. Worry about your chosen lineage."
(Having disposed with these important formal preliminaries, what follows is the main text of this entry.)
Historians and history buffs have an undying fascination for the clad-in-black figure of the mystical starets Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin. Who was this sinister man-- they ask--a brazen charlatan, or a natural-born parapsychological healer and miracle worker? They all agree of course that, regardless of the answer to the first question, Rasputin was a malfeasant manipulative monster, and also the man largely responsible for the fall of the Romanov dynasty.
Rasputin was known at the royal court as starets, the holy man, in the Schopenhauerian sense, which was of course far from making him a ‘saint.’ Many of the historically “registered” holy men were clever charlatans, and very often the only criterion to put them in this exalted category, as opposed to “fraud,” was the level of their success in bamboozling other people.
The story of how the Tsarina of Russia, Alexandra Fedorovna Romanova (nèe Alix von Hessen) succumbed to Rasputin’s spell on account of his apparently proven success in stopping the episodes of hemorrhaging in the young Tsarevich Alexei, suffering from inherited hemophilia, and how his royal father, Tsar Nicholas II, was too weak to curb Rasputin’s rude ambition to meddle in the affairs of the state, is well-known. But what is less known however and what, as it turns out, has had a much greater impact on Russian history, is the so-called Rasputin prophesy made by him to the royal family, as well as to all to whom it may concern. (See its text in the red-and-blue-fonted preamble above.)
The ingenious scoundrel certainly realized that his unprecedented power over the royal family had deeply shocked and disaffected practically all of Russia, which included the most prominent names of the time, and only the Tsar’s personal protection had so far prevented his political and physical demise. But he also knew that sooner or later (in 1916 he already “knew” that it was to be sooner, rather than later), he was doomed to fall, and he must have been desperate trying to postpone the inevitable. The story of how he intimidated the royal couple of Russia, by prophesying the fall of the Romanov dynasty and a national catastrophe in Russia in the unfortunate event of his violent death has been given little attention in history books, although the fact that Nicholas II’s abdication of the Crown just two months after Rasputin’s death, that is in March 1917 was largely precipitated by the effect that this prophesy must have had on him, should have made it more salient in the annals of history.
Nicholas was indeed so deeply disturbed by Rasputin’s assassination in December 1916 that he immediately started contemplating his abdication, in the hope that this desperate move on his part would avert the holy man’s curse from Russia and from the rest of the Romanov dynasty. Alas, when he did indeed abdicate, soon thereafter, he managed to compound the mischief he had already done by making Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich his successor to the Throne (see the previous entry). Terrified of playing the role of the last Tsar of the Romanov dynasty (from Mikhail to Mikhail), the Grand Duke hastily refused the Crown, but the symbolic harm had been done, and it was already too late.
Russia was in a state of shock at the news of Nicholas’s abdication, and even in a greater state of shock, if that were possible, on learning the name of his successor. One of the preeminent figures of the Provisional Government of Russia, the renowned historian and politician Pavel Milyukov, was originally enthralled by the idea of smooth continuity provided by Mikhail’s succession, which Milyukov chose to interpret only as Mikhail’s regency, while the Tsar’s son and heir Alexei was still a minor, but he was utterly devastated by Mikhail’s refusal to accept the responsibility of government, which Milyukov equated to stupidity.
The poor Anglophile Milyukov was a learned man in many respects, but he demonstrated his estrangement from his native Russia by such ignorance of her deepest superstitions. And this man, demonstrably unfit to govern, had the governing responsibility, yet, without much authority, thrust upon him nevertheless. There was no way for Russia to get out of this dire mess, except by total and complete destruction of all this mess and a new creation ex nihilo.
Coming back to Rasputin’s fateful prophesy, historians and history buffs have been asking the question as to who exactly starets Rasputin was. My more incisive question is not about Rasputin, but about the venerable confessor of Tsarina Alexandra and of the whole royal family, archbishop Theophan Bystrov, who allegedly introduced Starets Rasputin to the royal family, giving his wholehearted endorsement to the man he should have known to be a “dirty rotten scoundrel.” Why did he do it? And why were the people around the royal family keeping their distance from the unraveling disaster until even Rasputin’s assassination would become too little too late?
My answer ought to come as no surprise to anybody who has been reading me with some attention. Russian monarchy had long been doomed, and la forza del destino (or, more accurately, the conspiracy to cooperate with destiny) was already vigorously at play.
(No self-respecting chronologist of Russian history would ever dare to make a leap from the reign of Ivan III the Great into the reign of Emperor Alexander II, overshooting her universally-acknowledged giants such as Ivan IV Grozny, Peter I the Great, and Catherine II the Great, not to mention the lesser luminaries.
But this is exactly what I am doing here and for a very good reason at that. I am not playing the chronologist here, and those who are looking for the missing greats and notables of Russian history will find them both in the Russia section and later in this section, when I am talking about them in their connection to Stalin.
The general purpose of this section is to present to the reader history unknown, ignored and misunderstood, and my secondary effort to do this with some semblance of a chronological order ought not to be mistaken for a standard chronology of any kind. Please do keep this in mind.
And now my final comment, more specific to the content of this entry, and also others, wherever there might be an impression that an outlandish accident could have the power to change the course of history.
On 1 March 1881, the great Emperor-Liberator, Emperor-Reformer Alexander II of Russia was assassinated after several previously unsuccessful attempts, by a group of demonstrably incompetent conspirators. Under the circumstances, it was clear that the killers were incredibly lucky and the Emperor’s guard was incredibly careless, the combination of which two factors resulting in the success of the otherwise objectively botched attempt, which somehow went through… Now, was it an incredible confluence of unrelated circumstances? Was it an accident of history?
I do not think so. As Comrade Stalin used to say, no incident which has the power to change history is an accident. A different sort of power is at work here, which makes such incidents happen. If these incidents fail to become accidents, that power sends a host of others, at least one of whom is sure to succeed. This is what I call “La Forza Del Destino,” and it is not some “blind force of nature.” There is a very special, extremely vaguely defined group of exceptional people in Russia, whom I have called “the keepers of the faith” (or, also, “the keepers of the nation”). This group is charged with making sure that the Force of Russia’s Destiny meets no impenetrable obstruction. It is, therefore, the force which makes sure that such accidents as March the First, 1881, do happen.
Thus, that fateful day of Emperor Alexander’s assassination was not a history-changing event, but a part of the plan to keep Russian history on the right track. Russia was destined to follow the course taking her to an experience of baptism by fire, as pre-ordained by the Russian Holy Scripture, and that would be the ordeal, which started with the abdication of the Russian Emperor Nicholas II, through the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Civil War, the persecution of Russia’s Orthodox Faith, all the way through the Soviet period and another Time of Troubles, which was the Yeltsin era, and so on. To be sure, Russia’s tribulations are by no means over yet, as her destiny has not yet been fulfilled.
For which higher purpose, Russia’s great Emperor-Liberator, Emperor-Reformer Alexander II was destined to die. Not necessarily on 1 March 1881, but sooner or later within a fairly narrow chronological window, la forza del destino had to be satisfied.)
…Nicholas II of Russia was a weak, reckless man, and even his highly intelligent advisers, such as Stolypin and Witte, could not stop Russia’s accelerating slide toward the precipice. But it would be foolish to blame either the Emperor or any of his advisors for what happened to Russia in the fateful year 1917: the slide had already started long before Nicholas’s accession to the throne, and, no matter what bright genius might have come to power, the slide was irreversible.
The best approximation of a bright genius had in fact come to rule over Russia in the person of Alexander II (son of Emperor Nicholas I). Known as the Tsar-Reformer for his numerous progressive reforms, and as the Tsar-Liberator for his abolition of serfdom in 1861, many historians have lamented that, had it not been for the tragic assassination of Alexander II on March the First, 1881 (by the old Julian Calendar, used in Russia prior to 1918, thus separating her from the “apostatic” Gregorian Calendar, used elsewhere, which states the date of the Emperor’s assassination as March 13th, 1881), Russian history would have been totally different, and the events of 1917 would never have taken place.
I can perhaps stretch my agreement with this opinion, but only to the point of accepting the semi-truistic fact that if Alexander’s life had not been cut short by the assassination , thus precluding him from introducing an even more radical set of reforms than those which Russia had seen so far, but it is the if, which makes all the difference. It is my assertion as a historian that by the time of the Emperor’s tragic death Russia had already made up her mind that the slide toward the precipice was indeed the necessary course (see my Stalin book, and other entries in the Lady section, for a further clarification of my perspective on Russia’s realization of her historical destiny), and that was the reason why the genius of enlightened statesmanship, Tsar Alexander II, was “required to be assassinated,” either on that fateful day of the First of March, 1881, or on a different day in close proximity. It is surprisingly easy to establish the trustworthiness of my “conspiracy theory” just by looking at the circumstances of the case, to see that, after several previous attempts on his life had failed, mainly by accident, rather than due to the helpfulness of the Tsar’s protectors, Alexander II found himself exposed to his ultimate mortal danger either through a glaring ineptitude of his guard, or, much more likely, through malicious and willful foul play. (I am particularly knowledgeable about the circumstances of that case as I had the published proceedings of that strange case (under the title Process of 1 March 1881) in my home library in Moscow.)
Some Royal Superstitions.
Curiously, I never read the following in any book, but this was my maternal grandmother Nadezhda’s eerie tale, and I have much more reason to trust it, than any critical historian might have to dismiss it out of hand. Generally speaking, it makes a lot of sense, and the fact that Emperor Nicholas II of Russia had made these two egregious exceptions to the deeply mystical protocol of Russia’s royal superstition is mind-boggling, to say the least…
It is however a known fact that dark superstition had been surrounding the reign of Nicholas II and haunting his German wife ever since the mass celebrations of his May 1896 coronation had produced the horrendous Khodynka tragedy when thousands were trampled to death or badly injured. The tragedy was seen as an evil omen, and the Russian royal family was doomed to be treated with extreme prejudice ever since.
Despite the mildly entertaining and seemingly lightweight character of the content of this entry, dealing with superstition, I advise the reader to treat it with utmost seriousness. It is one thing to be “above superstition,” as if it doesn’t exist, but quite another to spit in its enormous face as it is staring right at you within the close confines of a notoriously superstitious society. Something must really be wrong with this picture…
After the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, Tsarism in Russia was doomed, with everybody, except the Tsars themselves, realizing it. The condition of a revolutionary situation was now much stronger than what Lenin would later describe. (For this, see my entry Comrade Putin’s Party.) In Lenin’s formula, the haves can no longer maintain the old order. In Russia, they did not want to maintain the old order, and neither did the have-nots, thus making it a lethal double-whammy.
In the last days of the weary Romanov Empire a lot of end-of-days legends were roaming all across Russia, using the dark force of superstition to substantiate their apocalyptic self-fulfilling prophesy.
"Why, do you think, was it that after Peter the Great no other Tsar would ever again name his heir Alexei?"-- people were asking each other in 1904, shaking their heads in shock and deepest disapproval of what they had just been witness to. It was virtually a rhetorical question, as they knew that Peter’s hapless son Alexei Petrovich, the weakling traitor, tortured to death by his own father, had been the reason for this unwritten, but (until 1904!) religiously enforced prohibition. In fact, my grandmother Nadezhda solemnly assured me that long before the reckless Tsar Nicholas II had named his son and heir born in 1904 Alexei, Russian royal families had been explicitly warned under no circumstances to name the heir to the Russian Throne by the name of Peter’s son, as this would surely bring a ghastly curse upon their house. If that was indeed so, how come, I wonder, was Nicholas, a highly superstitious man, compelled to go against the fateful prophesy in such a flagrant way, whereas a measly thirteen years later he would be quite easily swayed by yet another dire prophesy (see my next entry Rasputin’s Prophesy!) to commit the unthinkable act of abdication of his Throne? Perhaps, he had been deliberately misled about the prophesy by those around him who wished him and the Romanov dynasty brought to a shattering end?!! (Read more on this in the story of Lenin’s brother Alexander Ulyanov, later in this section.)
But Nicholas wasn’t quite done yet, symbolically inflicting another irreparable damage on his family and on Russia, by breaking yet another taboo. For, another prophesy of the same superstitious nature had allegedly foretold three centuries prior to the time discussed how the Romanov dynasty would come to its bitter end.
“With a Mikhail does it start,” it purportedly said, “and with a Mikhail shall it end.”
Imagine how badly jinxed one man could be, who, in the course of his doomed reign, had broken both these solemn prohibitions no other monarch before him had dared to violate, with such unforgivable carelessness! In addition to giving his heir the taboo name Alexei, in 1917 he abdicated his Throne in favor of yet another taboo first name: Grand Prince Mikhail Alexandrovich who thus technically had become the last Romanov! (And again, see my next entry Rasputin’s Prophesy, where more of this much-ignored, but instructive story will be told.)
…Now, was that yet another coincidence?
No way! If you ask me, the hapless Emperor Nicholas II of Russia did not jump off the bridge of history. He was pushed!
…La forza del destino…
Rasputin’s Prophesy.
Even in his lifetime, Grigori Rasputin was known as a prophet, as in his actual published writings he likes to present himself as a prophet and adopts the distinctive prophetic style. Some of his published prophesies are interesting, but none of them are the subject of this entry. I am rather interested in what is known as his “last prophesy,” his ominous testament to Russia and to the royal family. Needless to say, this letter, purportedly written shortly before his death in December 1916 was never reliably published, and the existing versions of it are undoubtedly spurious, as evidenced by the fact that they all differ in their content. In this entry, I have chosen the less extravagant text of the Russian version (in my verbatim translation) which seems to me more reliable than the English-language versions available on the Internet. What gives this version some measure of credence is the fact that the legend of Rasputin’s last prophesy (according to my grandmother Nadezhda) had preexisted the Bolshevik Revolution and the tragic death of the Russian Imperial family and had caused great anxiety among the Russian nobility well before the reason for such anxiety had become apparent.
Now, as promised, here is the text of Rasputin’s last prophesy in my scrupulously crude translation---
"I write this letter and leave it in Peterburg. I have a premonition that before the first of January [1917] I am to leave life. To the Russian People, to papa [Emperor Nicholas II], to Russian mama [Empress Alexandra], to the children and to all Russian land, I wish to bequeath what they are to undertake. If I am to be killed by hired killers, Russian peasants, my brothers, then you, Russian Tsar, have no one to fear. Stay on the throne and reign. And you, Russian Tsar need not worry about your children. They will rule Russia for hundreds of years more. But if I am murdered by the boyars and noblemen and they spill my blood, then their hands will be stained with my blood and for twenty-five years they will not be able to wash it off their hands. They will flee from Russia. Brothers will rise against brothers, and will be killing each other, and for twenty-five years there will be no persons of nobility left in Russia. Tsar of the Russian land, when you hear the tolling of the bells telling you about the death of Grigori, then know this, that, in case my murder had been committed by your relatives, then not one of your family, that is, not one of your children and your kin shall live for even two years. They shall be killed by the Russian people. I am departing, and I feel inside me God’s command to tell the Russian tsar how he must live after my demise. You must think, weigh all, and act carefully. You must worry about your salvation, and tell your kin that I have paid them with my life. I am to be killed. I am no more among the living. Pray, pray. Be strong. Worry about your chosen lineage."
(Having disposed with these important formal preliminaries, what follows is the main text of this entry.)
Historians and history buffs have an undying fascination for the clad-in-black figure of the mystical starets Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin. Who was this sinister man-- they ask--a brazen charlatan, or a natural-born parapsychological healer and miracle worker? They all agree of course that, regardless of the answer to the first question, Rasputin was a malfeasant manipulative monster, and also the man largely responsible for the fall of the Romanov dynasty.
Rasputin was known at the royal court as starets, the holy man, in the Schopenhauerian sense, which was of course far from making him a ‘saint.’ Many of the historically “registered” holy men were clever charlatans, and very often the only criterion to put them in this exalted category, as opposed to “fraud,” was the level of their success in bamboozling other people.
The story of how the Tsarina of Russia, Alexandra Fedorovna Romanova (nèe Alix von Hessen) succumbed to Rasputin’s spell on account of his apparently proven success in stopping the episodes of hemorrhaging in the young Tsarevich Alexei, suffering from inherited hemophilia, and how his royal father, Tsar Nicholas II, was too weak to curb Rasputin’s rude ambition to meddle in the affairs of the state, is well-known. But what is less known however and what, as it turns out, has had a much greater impact on Russian history, is the so-called Rasputin prophesy made by him to the royal family, as well as to all to whom it may concern. (See its text in the red-and-blue-fonted preamble above.)
The ingenious scoundrel certainly realized that his unprecedented power over the royal family had deeply shocked and disaffected practically all of Russia, which included the most prominent names of the time, and only the Tsar’s personal protection had so far prevented his political and physical demise. But he also knew that sooner or later (in 1916 he already “knew” that it was to be sooner, rather than later), he was doomed to fall, and he must have been desperate trying to postpone the inevitable. The story of how he intimidated the royal couple of Russia, by prophesying the fall of the Romanov dynasty and a national catastrophe in Russia in the unfortunate event of his violent death has been given little attention in history books, although the fact that Nicholas II’s abdication of the Crown just two months after Rasputin’s death, that is in March 1917 was largely precipitated by the effect that this prophesy must have had on him, should have made it more salient in the annals of history.
Nicholas was indeed so deeply disturbed by Rasputin’s assassination in December 1916 that he immediately started contemplating his abdication, in the hope that this desperate move on his part would avert the holy man’s curse from Russia and from the rest of the Romanov dynasty. Alas, when he did indeed abdicate, soon thereafter, he managed to compound the mischief he had already done by making Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich his successor to the Throne (see the previous entry). Terrified of playing the role of the last Tsar of the Romanov dynasty (from Mikhail to Mikhail), the Grand Duke hastily refused the Crown, but the symbolic harm had been done, and it was already too late.
Russia was in a state of shock at the news of Nicholas’s abdication, and even in a greater state of shock, if that were possible, on learning the name of his successor. One of the preeminent figures of the Provisional Government of Russia, the renowned historian and politician Pavel Milyukov, was originally enthralled by the idea of smooth continuity provided by Mikhail’s succession, which Milyukov chose to interpret only as Mikhail’s regency, while the Tsar’s son and heir Alexei was still a minor, but he was utterly devastated by Mikhail’s refusal to accept the responsibility of government, which Milyukov equated to stupidity.
The poor Anglophile Milyukov was a learned man in many respects, but he demonstrated his estrangement from his native Russia by such ignorance of her deepest superstitions. And this man, demonstrably unfit to govern, had the governing responsibility, yet, without much authority, thrust upon him nevertheless. There was no way for Russia to get out of this dire mess, except by total and complete destruction of all this mess and a new creation ex nihilo.
Coming back to Rasputin’s fateful prophesy, historians and history buffs have been asking the question as to who exactly starets Rasputin was. My more incisive question is not about Rasputin, but about the venerable confessor of Tsarina Alexandra and of the whole royal family, archbishop Theophan Bystrov, who allegedly introduced Starets Rasputin to the royal family, giving his wholehearted endorsement to the man he should have known to be a “dirty rotten scoundrel.” Why did he do it? And why were the people around the royal family keeping their distance from the unraveling disaster until even Rasputin’s assassination would become too little too late?
My answer ought to come as no surprise to anybody who has been reading me with some attention. Russian monarchy had long been doomed, and la forza del destino (or, more accurately, the conspiracy to cooperate with destiny) was already vigorously at play.
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