ON September 22 (October 6, New Style) I went in the evening to a lecture in a church. At that time every non-Bolshevist spent as many hours every day as possible in the churches, praying or listening to words of hope and comfort from the priests. The church was, in fact, the only home of peace and rest in the whole of the distracted country. That particular night in church I met some old friends who invited me to go home with them rather than walk the long and dreary, even the dangerous way back to my lodgings. I stayed with my friends that night, and the next morning early I went to mass in the little church where Father John of Kronstadt lies buried. I reached home about midday, and found the place in the possession of soldiers, two of whom had waited the entire night to arrest me, this time as a hostage, the White Army being reported within a few miles of Petrograd. My sick mother prepared me a little food, made a parcel of my scanty linen, and once more we bade each other the despairing farewell of two who knew that they might never meet again on earth. I was quickly conveyed to the headquarters of the Chekha where I was greeted with the exultant welcome: “Aha! Here we have the bird who has dared to stay out a whole night.”
Thrust into the old filthy, ill-smelling cell room I found a spot near a dirty window from which I couldget a far glimpse of the golden dome of St. Isaac’s Cathedral. During my whole term in this place I kept my eyes and my whole mind on that golden dome, trying to forget the hell that whirled around me. The woman in charge of the room was a Finnish girl who had committed the crime of trying to run away to Finland. She was a stenographer and clerk, and the Chekha used her by night as an office assistant. Whether by nature or by association she had become as hard and as ruthless as her captors, and her imprisonment had many mitigations. It was her pleasant duty to make out the lists of those who, twice a week, were taken to Kronstadt to be shot, and her reports on the subject which she confided regularly to her chosen comrade, a Georgian dancer named Menabde, were enough to sicken even those of us who had become accustomed to wholesale slaughter of unoffending human beings. We heard little else except death and threats of death in this place. There was an official named Boze in the prison, and often we heard him screeching through the telephone to his wife that he would be late to dinner that night because he had a load of “game” to get off to Kronstadt. Under such conditions pity and sympathy become strangely dulled. On occasions when I was sent to the kitchens for hot water I used to get glimpses of the “game,” huddled wretchedly in their seats or restlessly pacing their cells—waiting. Often when I returned with the water I found the seats and the cells empty, and although my heart sank and my senses swam, I never felt the screaming horror a normal person would have felt. This dulling of the emotions, I suppose, is nature’s way ofkeeping the mind from giving way entirely. Of course nature took away all human dignity and self-respect, this, too, in mercy. Any prisoner who went to the kitchens was greeted with jeers and foul abuse from the cooks who threw us handfuls of potato parings and withered cabbage leaves, quite as one would throw bones to dogs. Like dogs we eagerly snatched at these leavings, because the prisoners’ regular rations were nothing half as palatable, being mostly wormy dried fish and a disgusting substitute for bread.
One day I was called up for examination, and this time a real surprise awaited me. My judge was an Esthonian named Otto, not altogether a brutal man, as it turned out. As I approached his desk he regarded me grimly and without a word handed me a letter, unsigned, and reading about as follows: “To the Lady in Waiting, Anna Viroubova. You are the only one who can save us from this terrible Bolshevik administration, as you are at the head of a great organization fully equipped with guns and ammunition.” Sternly the Esthonian judge commanded me to tell him the truth about the organization of which I was the head. Of course I told him that the whole thing was an invention, and he astonished me by saying that although the letter had been posted to my address he had very much doubted its verity. Then he asked, almost gently: “Are you very hungry?” Taken off my guard as much by the kindness as by the prospect of food, I fell against the desk murmuring only half aloud: “Hungry? Yes, oh, yes.” Whereupon he opened a drawer of his desk and handed me a large piece of fresh, sweet bread. “Go now,” he said, “andI will discuss your case with my colleague Vikman. In the evening we will see you again.”
At eleven that night I was again summoned, this time before the two men. The Esthonian, still kind and courteous, gave me a glass of steaming tea, which did much to lend me courage. Both he and Vikman then put me through a searching examination especially about my relations, real and assumed, with the Imperial Family and with persons of the Court. At three in the morning they released me, more dead than alive with fatigue, Otto telling me heartily that he thought I would be set free within a few days. Vikman, however, declared that my case would have to be referred to Moscow and that I need not expect an early release. I went back to my evil cage expecting nothing. I knew, that the threat of the White Army advance filled with terror the whole Bolshevist population, and that in case of actual battle no life outside the slim Communist ranks would be worth the smallest scrap of their worthless paper money.
Very shortly after my return to the cell room I began to hear my name whispered from one wretched woman to another, and I accepted this without much emotion as a prelude to a boat journey to Kronstadt. Early on a certain morning a soldier approached the door and bawled out: “Tanieva, you to Moscow.” I happened to be exceedingly ill that day, but mechanically I picked up my little handkerchief containing my few possessions, including a Bible, and followed the escort of two soldiers down the steep steps, as I believed, to my death. Perhaps they had orders to take me to Kronstadt, I cannot be sure of that, but Ido know that the route we followed did not lead to the Moscow station. We had walked but a short distance when one of the soldiers said to the other: “What’s the good of two of us bothering with one lame woman? I’ll take care of her and you can go along. It will soon be over anyway.” Nothing loath the other soldier, glad to get out of anything resembling work, took himself off while I, in charge of one armed man, mounted the crowded tram and rode on toward an unknown destination. At a certain point we had to change trams, and here occurred an incident so extraordinary that I almost hesitate to strain the credulity of a non-Russian reader by relating it. The second tram had been delayed for some reason, and a considerable crowd of passengers was waiting for it on the street corner. My soldier stood at my side waiting with the rest, but soon he became impatient. Ordering me not to move an inch in his absence, he ran down the street a short distance to see if the tram were in sight. As soon as he turned his back, people in the crowd began to speak to me. A girl in whom I recognized a former acquaintance asked me where I was going, and when I told her she took a bracelet I gave her and promised to carry it, with news of my fate, to my poor mother. An officer of the old army came up to me saying: “Are you not Anna Alexandrovna?” And when I said yes, he too asked me where I was being taken. “Kronstadt, I think,” I answered, but he said: “Who knows?” and pressed into my hands a roll of bills saying that they might be of use to me.
Other people surrounded me, mostly strangers, buttwo of them women whom I had often seen at mass in the small church of Father John. They said: “Why should you be shot? The soldier has not come back. Run while the chance is yours. Father John will surely help you.” Encouraged by their sympathy, yet hardly knowing what I was doing, I limped off on my crutch much faster than I could have believed possible, the whole street-corner crowd spreading out to shield my flight. I limped and stumbled down Michel Street as far as the Nevski Prospekt weeping and praying all the time: “God save me! God save me!” until I reached the old shopping arcade known as the Gostiny Dvor. Here I caught sight of my soldier running in frantic pursuit of his escaped prisoner. It seemed all over with me then but I crouched in a corner of the deserted building and miraculously the soldier ran on without seeing me. As soon as I thought it at all safe I crept out of the old arcade and turned into the Zagorodny Prospekt, where I found a solitary cab. “Take me quickly,” I cried to the ischvostik. “My mother is dying.” The man replied indifferently that he had a fare waiting, but I thrust into his hands the entire roll of bills given me by the friendly officer, at the same time climbing into the drosky.
Said the ischvostik, “Where shall I drive you?” I gasped out the address of a friend in the suburbs of the city, and the man lashed his half-starved animal into a walk. After what seemed to me many hours we reached the place, I rang the doorbell and fell across the threshold in a dead faint.
My friend and her husband courageously took mein, fed, warmed me, and put me to bed. They even dared to send word to my mother that I was for the moment safe from pursuit, but they warned her not to come near the house as soldiers would certainly be watching her every movement. As a matter of fact my mother was visited by Red soldiers, arrested in her bed, and closely guarded for three weeks. Our maid also was arrested, as was everyone who came to the house. The old Berchick who had spent almost his entire lifetime in the service of our family was taken ill during this period and died. For five days his body lay uncoffined in the house, the Bolshevist authorities refusing him a burial permit. It was for my mother an interval of utter despair, since in addition to the death of Berchick she lived in constant fear of my rearrest. In the opinion of the Bolshevist soldiers, however, I had escaped to the White Army, and photographs of me were posted conspicuously in all the railway stations.
The kind friends who had taken me in dared not for their lives keep me long, and wishing them nothing of harm I set out on a dark night without a kopeck in my pockets and with no certain idea where I could find a bed. I had in mind a religious hostel, a place where a few students, men and women, lived under the chaperonage of an old nun. There I went, begging them for Christ’s sake to take me in, and there I was hidden for five perilous days. A girl student volunteered to go to see my mother, and go she did, but when hours passed, a day passed, and she did not return, a panic of fear seized all of us, and rather than expose these kind people to risk of imprisonment anddeath I voluntarily left the place. What else could I do?
How shall I describe the horrors of the next few months? Like a hunted animal I crept from one shelter to another, always leaving when it seemed at all possible that my protectors might be punished for their charity. Four nights I spent in the cell of an old nun whom I knew, but pitying her fears I put on the black head kerchief of a peasant woman and started in a cab, on borrowed money, for the house of a friend near the Alexandra Lavra on the outskirts of the town. All unknown to me a decree had that day been issued that no one could ride in a cab without written permission from the authorities. Consequently before we had traveled half the journey the cab was stopped by two women police, fierce creatures armed with rifles, who called out to the ischvostik: “Halt! We arrest you and your passenger.” Hastily I crammed all the money I had into the ischvostik’s hand and begged the women to let me go as I had just been discharged from hospital and knew nothing of the new rule. Oddly enough they let us drive on, but very soon the ischvostik, sick with terror, stopped his horse and told me that he would take me no further. I got out and staggered on through the muddy snow, for it was now late in the autumn of 1919. A former officer whom I had once known well met and recognizing me asked if he might not accompany me to my destination. “No, no,” I cried. “It would be madness for you to be seen with me. I cannot explain, only go, go, as fast as you can.” I staggered on, dripping with rain until I reached my friend’s house. To my nowcustomary greeting: “I am running away. Will you hide me?” she replied: “Come in. I have two others.” Thus did brave Russians in those days risk their lives to save those of others. Under her protection I lived ten days, and in her house I met a woman, a servant in one of the Communist kitchens, who having access to food and supplies, afterwards more than once saved me from starvation.
From one such kindly haven to another I fled in the dead of night. Once I was received in the home of an English woman who out of her scanty stores gave me warm stockings, gloves, and a sweater. Another day or two I spent in the rooms of a dressmaker whose husband was an unwilling soldier in the Red Army. Once I ventured back to the student hostel, where they welcomed me and fed me well, one of their number having just returned from the country with a stock of smuggled food. Here I had news from my dear mother from the girl who had gone to her on my behalf, and had, after ten days’ detention by the Chekha, got back to the hostel. Some members of the Chekha, she informed me, looked forward to shooting me instantly when I was caught, but others said that it was certain that I was with the White Army and would never be caught.
From the hostel I sought a paid lodging with the family of a former member of the orchestra of the Imperial Theater. These people, however, were very mercenary and would receive me only on advance payment of a large sum of money. Almost everything my mother and I had owned had been sold long before, but I retained a pendant of aquamarines and diamonds,a wedding present from the Empress, safely hidden in the house of a friend. This I had sold for fifty thousand rubles, giving half the money to the musician’s wife in return for a few days’ shelter in a wretchedly dirty, unheated room. Here I had to cut my hair short to get rid of vermin, and feeling unable to endure the hole I left it. Yet finding my next lodgings even worse, I returned, and here in the midst of discomfort and bitter cold, I had the joy of meeting my mother and also my aunt Lashkeroff, who brought me the welcome news that they thought they had at last found me a permanently safe retreat. It was miles from where I was staying, and I had to walk every step of the way, but when I arrived I found my hostess a lovely woman belonging to the Salvation Army. Gladly would I have stayed with her indefinitely but that was impossible as I had no passport and the police began to haunt the neighborhood. She did not abandon me for all that, but got me a new shelter in the home of a good priest and his wife. From here I was handed on from one to another of the priest’s parishioners to whom he confided the story of my harried career. Once an Esthonian woman told me that her sister had found a Finnish woman who, for a good price, was willing to take fugitives over the frontier, and she strongly advised me to attempt the flight. Some instinct forbade, and it turned out a good instinct, for the Finnish woman, after taking the money, had abandoned the Esthonian’s poor sister in the midst of a wood, from which she had to return, empty of purse and in deadly peril of arrest.
Cutting the story of my fugitive existence short, Ifinally found something like a permanent abode in the tiny and happily obscure woodland cottage of a working engineer, who kindly offered to take me in to his bachelor quarters a mile or two outside of Petrograd. Here I became once more the happy possessor of a passport, true not in my own name but perfectly legal otherwise. In Russia when a girl marries she gives up her passport to the priest, receiving a new one in the name of her husband. My kind old priest gave one of these maiden passports to the engineer, at the same time reporting to the Commissar of his neighborhood that such a passport had been lost. This was to prevent any possible trouble or inquiry. The Commissar obligingly gave the priest a duplicate, signed and sealed by Bolshevist authority. Now again I was a human being, for no one in Russia can be said to have any identity unless he is in possession of a passport. Mine described me as a teacher, and as such I was henceforth entitled to the Communist rations. For the time being I was less a teacher than an unskilled household servant, for naturally I wanted to do everything possible to repay the good engineer for affording me a safe shelter. I knew nothing whatever of cooking or housework, yet I attempted to do both. The engineer himself was absent all day, but when he returned at night he carried in wood enough to last twenty-four hours, and also water which had to be brought from a great distance. Food, of course, was very scarce. My mother and the friendly priest brought all they could, but even so I would often have suffered had it not been for my old acquaintance, the woman who worked in the Communist kitchen. Andhere I have to tell another incident which may seem impossible to some readers. One day I was sitting in the little house in the wood, feeling as secure as an escaped prisoner can feel, when I heard a sudden loud knocking at the door. There was no possible place where I could hide, but I sat absolutely still in my chair, hardly breathing for fear of disclosing the fact that the house was not empty. Again came the knocking at the door, this time louder and more peremptory than before. Realizing that it was useless to resist, I arose and with a prayer on my lips, I went to the door and opened it. No one was there. Nothing was in sight save the wintry trees and the frozen path that led to the highway. But yes! There almost at the end of the path stood the shivering figure of a little girl, the daughter of the woman in the Communist kitchen.
“Oh!” she cried, seeing me in the doorway. “I have been looking everywhere for your house and I could not find it.”
“But you knocked,” I said.
“No, I didn’t,” declared the child. “I haven’t been near the house. I just this minute turned into the pathway to get out of the wind. I’m so glad I’ve found you. Mother has sent you something.”
Who knocked at my door twice? The wind? It never did before or afterwards. If you believe in Providence, as I do, you may agree with me that God did not intend me at that time to starve in the depths of a desolate forest. If you prefer another explanation seek it.
In January, 1920, my kind friend the engineer told me reluctantly that he was about to marry and thatthe tiny room I occupied would have to be given up. I had not the remotest idea where I was to go. Above all things I desired to embrace a religious life, but in those perilous days no convent in Petrograd dared receive me. The convents were constantly being raided, and the younger nuns were frequently taken out and forced to work on the streets. No religious house could shelter a fugitive even though she possessed a false passport. Again I became a vagrant, spending a night here, a day there, sleeping in any refuge that opened to me. Towards the end of March I again found a home in the house of a priest and his wife who were as parents to me, and to whom I owe a lifetime of gratitude. Here I found not only safety but work, that blessed anodyne against all trouble. My passport, as I have said, described me as a teacher, and a teacher I now became, thanks to my new friends, who found me plenty of pupils among the working-class children of the neighborhood. I taught them the simple elements, and to children of the more intellectual classes languages and music. My pay was in food, but food in the Bolshevist paradise is worth much more than money, so I was completely satisfied.
By this time my appearance was so changed that I lost all fear of the police or the Chekha. One day when I was slowly walking the long distance across the river to my favorite church, the resting place of Father John, a motor car stopped in my path and I recognized as its occupant the Chekha inquisitor Boze, the man who had several times been my brutal jailer. “Grazhdanka (Citizeness),” he addressed me, “please tell me where to find ——” he named a street andnumber whither he was bound, doubtless on some errand of terror. Giving him the direction, I moved on as fast as my crippled legs could carry me, but I need not have been afraid for he did not know me at all.
So went the year 1920, my mother and I and the good priest’s family often discussing the possibilities of escape from the increasing starvation, death, and terror which everywhere surrounded us. People did escape, we knew, but how were we to do it—two women, one old and the other lame? It seemed altogether impossible. Besides, we had almost nothing with which to buy our way out of the country. My only shoes were homemade affairs of carpet, and I was so careful of them that often when walking I took them off and carried them in my hands to preserve them. Another thing, beset with dangers as we were in Russia we were no longer hungry, because I had an increasing number of pupils, and each one meant a tiny portion of food and firewood for my mother, my friends, and myself. But here is a strange and a universally human thing. Food and warmth do not bring content to prisoners, they create courage, and when one day in late October we received a letter from my sister, safe in a near-by country which I may not name, the flame of adventure blazed up in the soul of my brave little mother and in my own heart. My sister suggested the possibility of our getting out by one of the ways that persist in flourishing in spite of Bolshevism and the Chekha, and she offered us, if we succeeded in escaping, the shelter of her own home. I cannot reveal any detail of those secret ways of escape, because they still exist, and must not in any way be placed in jeopardy. Enough it is to say that Petrograd is separated from Finland by only a few versts of land, carefully guarded, and by a narrow arm of the Baltic Sea which cannot be quite as successfully guarded. In winter this water freezes, not as unsalted water freezes, smooth and thick and safe for passage, but in rough and treacherous hummocks of mixed ice and snow, with unexpected gaps of half-frozen water opening here and there between the ice masses. Still, the icy Baltic does at times admit of sledge passage, and there are men who make a business of taking over—for a price far beyond what most Russians can afford—refugees who have friends waiting for them in Finland or in countries to the west and south. Sometimes Red soldiers have to be bribed, and often they sell out the people whose money they accept. Sometimes also the men who contract to take refugees over the ice betray their passengers to the Bolshevik guards. Any way you look at it, escape from Bolshevik Russia is about as perilous as going unarmed into a tiger’s cage. Yet people dare it, and we did.
It was about the first of December in our calendar, in the year 1920, when we received a second smuggled letter from my sister: “Be ready whenever we send for you.” For that promised summons we waited in desperate suspense until two days after Christmas. Then to my mother’s lodging came a fisherman and his little boy with the whispered news that we were to go with them on the day following. My mother found means of sending the news to our friend the priest,and he brought it to me. “Tomorrow at four o’clock you go abroad.”
The next day at the appointed hour my mother and I, two shivering creatures facing death, but ready, met at a small railway station leading along the Baltic shores. The fisherman’s son was also at the station, but obeying instructions, we did not notice him but simply followed wherever he led. Our train journey was short, and at five o’clock, pitch dark in the Russian winter, we alighted at a poor village, following the boy who carried on his back a bag of potatoes. Alas! In the darkness and confusion we lost him, and stood in the icy cold like lost souls, not knowing where to turn. Suddenly out of the shadows a peasant woman approached us. “Are you looking for a boy with a bag of potatoes?” she said in a low voice, and to our frightened assent she murmured: “Follow me.” We followed, although, for all we knew, it was to a Chekha prison. Anybody in Russia may be Chekha, the friend who invites you to dinner, the man who buys your last jewel, the woman who offers to guide you over an unknown road. You can trust no one, consequently, when you must, you trust anyone. We followed the peasant woman into a dim hut, and there we found two fishermen who assured us that they were ready that night to take us across the frozen Baltic to a village on the Finnish side. Their horses and sledges, they told us, were safely hidden, but they would be ready to take us and three other fugitives, a lady, a child, and a maid, as soon as we could safely venture to leave the village. As luck would have it there was a festival and a dance going on that night,and we had to sit in that stifling hut in complete silence until two o’clock. Also we had to pay for our shelter and escape one hundred thousand rubles, which my mother had secured by selling her last treasure, a pearl necklace.
When the last peasant had gone to bed and silence wrapped the village, we stole out through the mud and the snow, and got into the rough sledge. Hardly had we struck the rough ice of the Baltic when the sledge overturned, waking the child who, silent before, now began to cry and to beg to go home. The little thing spoke only French and I can still hear him repeating over and over again in a high baby voice which he did not know imperiled the lives of all of us: “Maman, Maman, à la maison, à la maison.” For six hours we drove thus, slowly and cautiously over the rotten ice, one of the men driving, and the other running ahead with a long pole testing the ice for a safe pathway. Often we stopped to listen for possible sentinels, and once in the neighborhood of Kronstadt we had such a fright that I wonder the men dared go farther. Plainly to our ears came the grinding of machinery, and we knew that where there was machinery there were men. We stopped long and listened, until our driver suddenly remembered that the noise was that of an ice breaker several miles out of our highway. By this time I was so stiff and drowsy with cold, so nearly frozen, in fact, that I hardly cared what happened to us. Seeing my wretched state, one of the men took off an extra pair of woolen socks he wore and slipped them on my feet. The unknown lady who accompanied us also spared me a warm wrap, and by rubbing and holding me close to their bodies they kept me alive. At eight o’clock of a pale winter morning they lifted me out of the sledge and with the others I stood trembling on the snowy shores of Finland.
“Now you are out of Sovdepia” (Soviet land), said the fishermen cheerfully, “but we are not safe yet, for the Finnish police may catch us and send us back.” Hurriedly we climbed the hill to the cottage of one of the smugglers. Here we met his wife, who, gray with fear, came out to meet her husband after his night of peril on the ice. The woman gave us hot coffee, bread, and cheese, but she would not keep us long in her house. We knew that we must report as soon as possible at the quarantine station, and we knew, besides, that the sorely tried Finnish authorities would not be any too glad to see us coming. Do not blame the Finns for this. Every Russian refugee is a burden on their slender resources, and too often a pretended refugee is merely a Bolshevik agent sent to stir up trouble among disaffected workmen. However, on this occasion the Finns received our wretched group with infinite kindness, and made us comfortable during the required period we spent in the quarantine station. Then we went to our separate destinations, all of us to poverty, obscurity, homesickness, to that sunless clime which waits the exile wherever he may go. In the country where my mother and I finally arrived we found my sister, happier than ourselves, because she left Russia before the great horror began, thus saving part of her fortune. My sister gave us food, clothing, a lodging. Except for her bounty we had lost everything we ever owned, home, friends, possessions,country, for Russians now have no country, no flag, no place in the wide world. The best any of us can hope for is an obscure corner in some foreign land where we can earn enough to buy our daily bread, and a quiet place in which to pray every day of our lives: “God save Russia.”
I am told, although I can hardly believe it, that in other lands, even in free America, there are beings so deluded that they wish to bring about revolution and Bolshevism. I do not wish for any of them the long nightmare of suffering that I, one of millions, have suffered under revolution and Bolshevism. I pray only that there may be revealed to them the fate of the betrayed who have died and are dying under the criminal administration of the Provisional Government and, later, of Lenine and his fanatical followers. If they can be made to know only in part what my poor, ravished country is today, they will forget their delusions and pray with the exiles: “God save Russia.”
Statement of Vladimir Michailovitch Roudneff, appointed by Minister of Justice Kerensky Special High Commissioner for Revision and Investigation of the actions of Ministers and other High Personages of the Imperial Government.
Statement of Vladimir Michailovitch Roudneff, appointed by Minister of Justice Kerensky Special High Commissioner for Revision and Investigation of the actions of Ministers and other High Personages of the Imperial Government.
“I was acting as Procureur of the Court of Assizes of Ekaterinoslav when I received orders from Minister of Justice Kerensky to become a member of the High Commission of Inquiry charged with an examination of the acts and abuses of ministers and other high personages of the former Government. While working with this Commission in Petrograd I was especially assigned to examination of sources of secret influences at Court which were known as Dark Forces. My work with the Commission lasted until August, 1917, when I was forced to leave because the President, Mourvavieff, insisted upon my making reports of a plainly prejudicial character.
“As an Attorney General (juge d’instruction) I had access to all documents, and the right to be present at the examination of all witnesses, with the view of establishing impartially the part played by persons accused by society and the public press of exerting influence on foreign and domestic politics. I was assigned to read all the papers and letters found in the Winter Palace, the palace at Tsarskoe Selo, and at Peterhof, especially the personal correspondence of the Emperor and Empress, certain of the Grand Dukes, and also the correspondence seized in the course of examination of the house of Archbishop Varnava, also of Countess S. S. Ignatieff, Dr. Badmaeff, Voyeikoff, and Anna Viroubova, and also to the relationsexisting between the Imperial family and the German Imperial family. Being aware of the importance of my inquiry in throwing light on historical events preceding and following the Revolution, I made copies of all documents and letters,dossiers, and statements of witnesses. In leaving Petrograd I took with me all these copies, concealing them in my home in Ekaterinoslav, but it is probable that these documents were destroyed when the Bolsheviki raided my house. If by happy chance I find that they still exist I shall certainly publish them in full, without any comments of my own.
“In the meantime I consider it my duty to write a short account of the principal persons who were accused of being Dark Forces. I must, however, warn the reader that as I write from memory some details may escape my mind. When I went to Petrograd to begin my work with the High Commission I admit that I was influenced by all the pamphlets and newspaper articles on the subject of the Rasputine influence, and other rumors and gossip, and I began my work under the domination of preconceived prejudices. But careful and impartial investigation soon forced me to the opinion that these rumors and newspaper accounts were based on slender foundations.
“The most interesting person charged with exercising a malign influence on political affairs was Gregory Rasputine, therefore this person was the central figure of my investigations. The account of the surveillance under which he lived, up to the very day of his death, is of great importance. This surveillance was exercised by the ordinary as well as the secret police, special agents noting all his goings and comings, some of these agents being disguised as policemen or as servants. Everything concerning the movements of Rasputine was carefully recorded every day. If he left his house, even for an hour or two, the moment of his departure and his return was noted, and also every person he met on the road.
“The secret agents kept strict account of all people he metand of all who visited him. In cases where the names of these persons were not known their full descriptions were taken. After having read all papers and examined many witnesses I reached the conclusion that Rasputine was a person more complex and less comprehensible than had been previously represented. In studying his personality I naturally paid attention to the chronological order of circumstances which finally opened to the man the doors of the Tsar’s palace, and I discovered that the first preliminary was his acquaintance with the well known, pious, and learned churchmen Bishops Theofan and Hermogen. I noted also that it was afterwards due to the influence of Rasputine that these two great pillars of the Orthodox Church fell into disfavor. He was the cause of the relegation of Hermogen to the Monastery of Saratoff, and of the disgrace (demotion) of Theofan, after these two archbishops, discovering Rasputine’s low instincts, openly turned against him. All the evidence pointed to the conclusion that in the inner life of Rasputine, a simple peasant of the Government of Tobolsk, there occurred suddenly a complete change transforming him and turning him toward Christ. Only in this way can I explain to myself his intimacy with these two remarkable bishops. This hypothesis is moreover confirmed by Rasputine’s story of his journey to the Holy Land. This book is marked by extreme naïveté, simplicity, and sincerity. On the recommendation of the exalted churchmen mentioned, Rasputine was received by the Grand Duchesses Anastasie Nicholaevna and Melitza Nicholaevna, and it was through them that he made the acquaintance of Mme. Viroubova,néeTanieff, then maid of honor. He made a deep impression on this very religiously inclined woman, and gained at last an entry to the Imperial Palace. It was then that awoke in him his worst instincts, hitherto repressed, and it was then that he began adroitly to exploit the religious fervor possessed by very high personages. It must be admitted that he played his part withastonishing cleverness. Correspondence bearing on the subject and the testimony of various witnesses prove that Rasputine refused all subsidies, gratuities, and even honors which were freely offered him by their Majesties, indicating thus his integrity, his disinterestedness, and his profound devotion to the Throne, insisting that he was an intercessor for the Imperial family before God’s throne. He alleged that everyone envied him his position, that he was surrounded by intriguers and slanderers, and that therefore evil reports concerning him were unworthy of belief. The only favor he accepted was the rental of his lodgings, paid by the personal Chancellor of his Majesty. He also accepted presents made by the hands of the Imperial family, such as shirts, waist-bands, etc.
“Rasputine had free entry to the apartments of the Emperor, saying prayers, addressing the Emperor and Empress with the familiar ‘thou,’ and greeting them in the Siberian peasant manner (with a kiss). It is known that he warned the Emperor, ‘My death shall be thine also,’ and that at Court he was regarded as a man gifted with the power of forecasting events. His predictions were couched in mysterious phrases like those of the Pythons of antiquity.
“Rasputine’s income was derived from numerous persons who desired positions and money, and used Rasputine as their intermediary with the Emperor. Rasputine asked favors for his clients, promising, if these were granted, all kinds of blessings to the Imperial family and to Russia.
“To this must be added that Rasputine possessed within himself a strange power by which he was able to exercise hypnotic suggestion. I have been able to establish the fact that he cured by hypnotism the disease of St. Vitus Dance which afflicted the son of one of his friends, Simanovitch. The young man was a student in the College of Commerce, and his malady completely disappeared after two séances in which Rasputine plunged the patient into hypnotic slumbers.
“Another case establishing the hypnotic power of Rasputine may be noted. During the winter of 1914-15 he was called to the house of the superintendent of railways in Tsarskoe Selo where lay, entirely unconscious, Anna Alexandrovna Viroubova, who had been seriously injured in a railroad accident. She was suffering from broken legs and a fracture of the skull. Their Majesties were in the room when Rasputine arrived, and he, simply raising his arms, said to the unconscious woman: ‘Anushka, open your eyes,’ which she instantly did, looking intelligently around her. This naturally made a deep impression on everyone present, including their Majesties, and it served to increase the prestige of Rasputine. Although Rasputine could barely read and write, he was far from being an inferior person. He had a keen and observant intellect, and a rare faculty of reading the character of any person with whom he came in contact. The rudeness and exaggerated simplicity of his bearing, which lent him the appearance of a common peasant, served to remind observers of his humble origin and his lack of culture.
“As so much was bruited in the public press about the immorality of Rasputine, the closest attention was given to this phase of his question. From the reports of the secret police it was proved that his love affairs consisted solely in night orgies with music-hall singers and an occasional petitioner. It is on record that when he was drunk he sometimes hinted of intimacies in higher circles, especially in those circles through which he had risen to power, but of his relations with women of high society nothing was established, either by police records or by information acquired by the commission. In the papers of the Bishop Varnava was found a telegram from Rasputine as follows: ‘My dear, I cannot come, my silly women are shedding tears and won’t let me go.’ As for the accusation that in Siberia Rasputine was accustomed to bathe in company with women, and that he was affiliated with the ‘Khlysty’ sect, the Extraordinary Commission referred these charges to Gramoglassoff, professor in the Ecclesiastical Academy (of Moscow), who after examination of all the evidence, testified that among peasants of many parts of Siberia the common bath was a usual custom, and that he found no evidence in the writings or preachings of Rasputine of any affiliation with the ‘Khlysty’ doctrines.
“Rasputine was a man of large heart. He kept open house, and his lodgings were always crowded with a curiously mixed company living at his expense. To acquire the aureole of a benefactor, to follow the precepts of the Gospels according to which the generous hand is always filled, Rasputine took the money offered by his petitioners, but he gave generously to the poor and to people of the lower classes who begged his assistance. Thus he built up a reputation of being at once a generous and a disinterested man. Besides these alms Rasputine spent large sums in restaurants, cafés, music halls, and in the streets, so that when he died he left practically nothing. The investigation disclosed an immense amount of evidence concerning the petitions carried by Rasputine to Court, but all these, as has been said, referred merely to applications for positions, favors, railway concessions, and the like. Notwithstanding his great influence at Court not a single indication of Rasputine’s political activity was disclosed.
“Many proofs of his influence were found in the papers of General Voyeikoff, Commandant of the Palace, as for example the following: ‘My dear, Arrange this affair. Gregory.’ These letters were annotated by Voyeikoff, with the names and addresses of the petitioners, the nature of their demands, the results of their applications, and the date of the replies. Many letters of the same kind were found among the papers of President of the Council of Ministers, Sturmer, and of other high personages. All the letters concerned themselves exclusively with favors and protection for the people in whom Rasputine interested himself. He had special names for various persons with whom he was in frequent contact. Sturmer was called‘The Old Man,’ Archbishop Varnava ‘Butterfly,’ the Emperor ‘Papa,’ and the Empress ‘Mama.’ The nickname of Varnava, ‘Butterfly,’ was found in a letter to Mme. Viroubova.
“The inquiry into the influence of Rasputine on the Imperial family was intensive, but it was definitely established that that influence had its source in the profound religious sentiments of their Majesties, joined to their conviction that Rasputine was a saint, and was the sole intermediary between God and the Emperor, as well as of all Russia. The Imperial family believed that they saw proofs of his sanctity in his psychic power over certain persons of the Court, such as bringing back to life and consciousness the desperately injured Mme. Viroubova, whose case has been described; also in his undoubtedly benign influence on the health of the heir, and on a whole series of fulfilled forecasting of events.
“It is evident that sly and unscrupulous people did everything in their power to profit by Rasputine’s influence on the Imperial family, thus waking up in the man his worst instincts. This is particularly true of the former Minister of the Interior, A. N. Khvostoff and of Belezky, Director of the Police Department. To consolidate their position at Court they came to an understanding with Rasputine whereby they agreed to pay him, out of the private funds of the Police Department, the sum of three thousand rubles monthly, besides other sums, that he might require, provided he helped them to place candidates agreeable to them. Rasputine accepted these conditions, and for three months filled his engagements, but finding that the arrangement was not advantageous to himself, returned to his independent manner of work. Khvostoff, fearing that Rasputine would betray him, began openly to oppose him. He knew that he stood well with the Imperial family, and he counted also on the coöperation of the Duma, of which he was a member, and in which Rasputine was cordially hated. This put Belezky in a difficult position, because he doubted Khvostoff’s power at Court, and he had no doubt at all concerning Rasputine’s power. Belezky decided therefore to betray his chief, and range himself on the side of Rasputine. His object was, to use the words of Rasputine himself, to throw down the Khvostoff ministry. The struggle between these two officials culminated in the famous plot against the life of Rasputine, which created such a sensation in the press during the year 1916. The plot was laid by Belezky in the following manner. An engineer named Heine, owner of several private gambling houses in Petrograd, was hired to go to Christiania to meet the unfrocked monk Illiador Troufanoff, a former friend of Rasputine. The result of this journey was a series of telegrams addressed to Heine and signed by Illiador covertly alluding to a conspiracy against the life of Rasputine. In one of these telegrams it was stated that the forty men engaged in the conspiracy were dissatisfied to wait longer, and it was necessary to send them immediately thirty thousand rubles. These telegrams, coming in war time from a neutral country, were delivered to the police, only after having been read being passed on to the person addressed. Finally, after receiving all the telegrams, Heine presented himself to Rasputine in the guise of a repentant sinner, giving him full details of the plot, in which he owned himself concerned, but which he vowed Khvostoff to be the leading spirit. The result was that Rasputine took the story to the Imperial family, and the dismissal of Khvostoff quickly followed. It is an interesting fact that Heine’s telegrams from Christiania mentioned a number of names of persons living in Tsaritzine, former friends of Illiador, who were supposed to be in Christiania busy with the details of the plot. The evidence given at the inquiry proved beyond doubt that the persons concerned had never left their homes.
“Personally the official Khvostoff was highly esteemed by both the Emperor and the Empress, they believing him to be sincerely religious, and devoted to the interests of the Imperial familyand to Russia, but the evidence shows that he was really devoted only to his personal interests. He once invited the head of the Gendarmerie, General Komissaroff, to go with him in civilian dress, and to introduce Rasputine to the Metropolitan Pitirim. They were received by a novice who went to the Metropolitan’s study to announce them. When the Metropolitan appeared Rasputine introduced General Komissaroff, and disagreeable as it was to see a gendarme officer in his house, his Eminence invited the men to follow him into his study. There they discovered Khvostoff sitting on a sofa. Seeing Rasputine Khvostoff laughed rather nervously, but continued his conversation with the Metropolitan, then, rising to take his departure, asked General Komissaroff to drive home with him. Komissaroff found himself in an awkward position, and when Khvostoff suddenly asked him if he understood the affair he answered in the negative. ‘Well,’ said Khvostoff, ‘it is now clear in what relation Pitirim stands with Rasputine. When you were announced he was just telling me that he had nothing in common with Rasputine, and that the person who was waiting to see him was an eminent Georgian. “Permit me,” he said, “to leave you for a few minutes.” Now we see who the “eminent Georgian” really was.’ This was testified to by Komissaroff himself.
“Of all the ministers Khvostoff was the closest to Rasputine. Rumors of the intimate relations between Sturmer and Rasputine were found to be without foundation. There was between them, it is true, a friendship. Sturmer understood Rasputine’s great influence, and did what he could to advance the interests of his clients. He sent fruit, wine, and delicacies to Rasputine, but there is no evidence that he allowed him to influence political affairs. The relations between Rasputine and Protopopoff, who, for some reason, Rasputine called ‘Kalinine’ were no more intimate, although Protopopoff liked Rasputine, and it is certain that Rasputine defended Protopopoff when the position of the latter was menaced. This was done usually in theabsence of the Sovereigns, Rasputine addressing himself to the Empress, at the same time uttering predictions.
“Protopopoff distinguished himself by an extraordinary lack of will power, representing at different times quite opposing organizations. He was even at one time elected vice-president of the Duma. Protopopoff has publicly been accused of initiating and carrying out an attempt to put down the popular uprising of the first days of the Revolution. He is accused of having placed machine guns on the roofs of houses to shoot down the armed insurgents. However, thejuge d’instructionJousvik-Kompaneitz, after having interrogated many witnesses, and examining all the machine guns found in the streets of Petrograd in the first days of the Revolution, has testified that all the machine guns belonged to different regiments, and none, not even those found on the roofs of houses, to the police. Generally speaking, there were no machine guns on roofs, except those placed there at the beginning of the war as a defense against airplane attacks. It must be said that during the critical days of February, 1917, Protopopoff showed a complete incapacity, and from the legal point of view, his absolutely criminal weakness. Among his papers were found intimate and even affectionate letters from Rasputine, but not one letter contained anything more than recommendations in favor of his protégés. Nor in the papers of any other high personages were found letters of different tenor signed by Rasputine. Both press and public seem to have been persuaded that Rasputine was very intimate with two political adventurers, Dr. Badmaeff and Prince Andronnikoff, and that through him these men were able to exercise wide political influence. Evidence has established, however, that these rumors were without any foundation. The two adventurers were, in fact, nothing more than the hangers-on of Rasputine, glad to gather up the crumbs from his table, and falsely representing to their clients that they had influence over Rasputine, and through him influence at Court.”
(Here follows at some length the result of the High Commission’s inquiry into the activities of Dr. Badmaeff and Prince Andronnikoff, but as they have nothing whatever to do with this history they are omitted. A. V.)
“Badmaeff was the physician of Minister Protopopoff, but the Imperial family had no confidence in his methods—any more than had Rasputine—and in an examination of the servants of the Imperial household, it was demonstrated clearly that the Thibetan doctor had never been called in his professional capacity to the apartments of the Emperor’s children.
“General Voyeikoff, Commandant of the Palace, I examined many times in the Fortress of Petropavlosk where he was imprisoned. He did not play a very powerful rôle at Court, but according to letters from his wife, daughter of Court Minister Fredericks, covering the years 1914-15, and found in his house, he was esteemed by the Imperial family as a man devoted to the throne, an impression which I, after several interviews with him, did not share. From letters of Voyeikoff to his wife it is plain that he was hostile to Rasputine. In certain of the letters he calls Rasputine the evil genius of the Imperial family and of Russia, and he believed that his intimacy at Court discredited the throne and gave strength to humors and opinions and slanderous stories by which the anti-Government party profited. Nevertheless he took full advantage of the influence of Rasputine. He had not the courage to reject his petitions, which is proved by the annotations in his handwriting on the letters of Rasputine.”
(High Commissioner Roudneff adds that, in his opinion, Voyeikoff thought badly of Rasputine, and that his wife hated the man, but that neither of them communicated their views to the Imperial family. A. V.)
“Having heard a great deal of the exceptional influence at Court of Mme. Viroubova, and of her relations with Rasputine, and having read and believed what was said about her insociety and the press, I must admit that when I went to examine her in the Fortress of Petropavlosk I was frankly prejudiced against her. This hostility remained with me up to the moment of her entrance into the office of the Fortress under the escort of two soldiers. As she entered the room I was struck with the expression of her eyes, an expression of more than earthly gentleness and meekness. This first impression was confirmed in all my subsequent interviews with her. From the first conversation which I had with her I became convinced that, given her individuality and her character, she could never have had any influence on politics either foreign or domestic. I believe this in the first place because of the essentially feminine point of view shown by her on all political matters of which we talked, and in the second place because of her loquacity and her complete incapacity to keep secret even facts which might reflect on herself. I became convinced that to ask Mme. Viroubova to keep anything a secret was equivalent to proclaiming it from the housetops, because anything that she thought important she felt impelled to communicate, not only to friends but to possible foes. Noting these two characteristics of Mme. Viroubova, I asked myself two questions—why she stood in close relations with Rasputine, and what was the secret of her intimacy with the Imperial family.
“I found the answer to the first question in conversations with the parents of Mme. Viroubova, M. Tanieff, chief of the private Chancellory of his Majesty, and his wife,néeCountess Tolstoy. From them I learned of an episode in the life of their daughter which, in my opinion, explained why Rasputine obtained later such an influence over the will of the young woman. At the age of thirteen Mme. Viroubova fell gravely ill of typhus, the illness being complicated with peritonitis, and her condition, according to the physicians, was desperate. Her parents called to her bedside the famous priest, Father John of Kronstadt. Following his prayers the illness took a favorable turn, and the young girl was soon pronounced out of danger. This made a deep impression on her mind, and thereafter strongly inclined her to a religious life.
“Mme. Viroubova first met Rasputine in the house of the Grand Duchess Melitza Nicholaevna (wife of Grand Duke Peter), and that meeting was not a happy event. The Grand Duchess had prepared Mme. Viroubova for the meeting by conversations on the subject of religion, and had given her certain French books on occult subjects. Later the Grand Duchess invited Mme. Viroubova to her house, promising to introduce her to a great intercessor before God in favor of Russia, a man who possessed gifts of prophecy, and the faculty of curing the sick. This interview by Mme. Viroubova, then Mlle. Tanieff, made a great impression on the young woman who was then on the eve of marriage with Lieutenant Viroubova. Rasputine spoke only on religious subjects, and when the young girl asked him if he approved her marriage he answered allegorically saying that the pathway of life was strewn not only with roses but with thorns, and that man progressed towards perfection only through sufferings and trials.
“The marriage of Mme. Viroubova was from the first unhappy. According to the testimony of Mme. Tanieff, the man was completely impotent, addicted to perverted practices and saddistic habits, causing her daughter the most frightful moral sufferings and physical disgust. Nevertheless, believing in the Biblical injunction ‘Whom God hath joined let no man put asunder,’ Mme. Viroubova for a time kept her sufferings a secret even from her parents, and only after she had been nearly killed by her husband did she reveal to them the tragedy of her marriage. The result was, of course, a divorce. The testimony of Mme. Tanieff concerning the moral character of her son-in-law was confirmed by a medical examination of Mme. Viroubova, ordered by the Commission of Inquiry, and by which was established the virginity of the young woman. This examination was held in May, 1917. In consequence of her shocking marital experience the religious inclinations of Mme. Viroubova were increased and were developed into something approaching religious mania. She became the purest and most sincere admirer of Rasputine, who, up to the last day of his life, she considered a holy man, and one completely disinterested from every worldly point of view.
“In regard to the question of the intimacy of Mme. Viroubova with the Imperial family, I concluded that it had its roots in the wholly different mentalities of the Empress and Mme. Viroubova, that attraction of opposites which so often seems necessary to complete a balance. The two women were entirely different, and yet they had many things in common. Both, for example, were devotedly fond of music, and as the Empress possessed an agreeable contralto voice and Mme. Viroubova a good soprano, they occupied many leisure hours singing duets.
“Such were the conditions which produced in the minds of persons ignorant of the nature of the intimacy between the Empress and Mme. Viroubova, belief in the exceptional influence of Mme. Viroubova on Court affairs. As has been said, Mme. Viroubova possessed no such influence, nor could she have possessed it. The Empress dominated the intelligence and the will of Mme. Viroubova, but the attachment between the two women was very strong. The religious instincts deeply rooted in their two natures explains the tragedy of their veneration of Rasputine. The relations between the Empress and Mme. Viroubova could be likened to those of a mother and daughter, nothing more.
“My opinions regarding the moral qualities of Mme. Viroubova, resulting from interviews with her in the Fortress of Petropavlosk and in the Winter Palace were entirely confirmed by the forgiving and Christian spirit displayed by her towards those who had caused her, in the course of her imprisonment, the most horrible suffering. Of the insults and tortures towhich she was subjected in the Fortress I did not learn, in the first instance, from Mme. Viroubova herself, but from her mother. Only on direct examination did Mme. Viroubova confirm her mother’s testimony, and even then she spoke calmly and with astonishing meekness, saying that her persecutors should not be blamed too severely because they did not realize what they were doing. These tortures of the prison guards, such as spitting in her face, dealing her blows on the head and body, accusing her of being the mistress of the Emperor and of Rasputine, tearing off her clothes and threatening to murder a sick woman who could walk only with the aid of crutches, caused the Commission of Inquiry to transfer the prisoner to a house formerly occupied by the Director of the Gendarmerie (House of Detention). The testimony of Mme. Viroubova presented a complete contrast to that of Prince Andronnikoff. Her statements were all candid and sincere, and their truth was subsequently established beyond doubt by documentary evidence. The only fault I found with Mme. Viroubova was her tendency to wordiness, and her amazing habit of skipping from one subject to another, without regard to the fact that she might be hurting her own cause. Mme. Viroubova appears to have interceded at Court for various persons, but her petitions were received with a certain distrust because of her known goodness and her simplicity of mind.
“The character of the Empress Alexandra was shown clearly in her correspondence with the Emperor and with Mme. Viroubova. This correspondence, in French and English, is filled with sentiments of affection for her husband and children. The Empress occupied herself personally with the education of her children, and she often indicates in her letters that it is desirable not to spoil them or to give them habits of luxury. The correspondence reveals also the deep piety of the Empress. In her letters to her husband she often describes her emotions during religious services, and speaks of the peace and tranquillityof her soul after prayer. Hardly ever, in the course of this long correspondence, are any allusions made to politics. The letters concern intimate and family affairs only. In passages in which Rasputine is mentioned she speaks of him as ‘that holy man,’ and shows that she considers him one sent of God, a prophet, and a man who prays sincerely for the Imperial family. Through the whole correspondence, which covers a period of ten years, I found not one single letter written in German. According to the testimony of Court adherents I have proof that before the War German was never spoken at Court. Because of public rumors of the sympathy of the Empress for Germany and of the existence in the Palace at Tsarskoe Selo of private wires to Berlin, I made a careful examination of the apartments of the Imperial family, and I found no indications at all of communications between the Imperial household of Russia and the Imperial household of Germany. I also examined the rumors concerning the beneficence of the Empress towards the German wounded and prisoners of War, and I found that the Empress showed compassion for the sufferings of Germans and Russians alike, without distinction, desiring to fulfill the injunction of Christ who said that whoever visited the sick and suffering also visited Himself.
“For these reasons, and above all on account of the frail health of the Empress, who suffered from a disease of the heart, the Imperial family led a very retired life, which favored the development, especially in the Empress, of extreme piety. Inspired by her devotion the Empress introduced into certain churches attached to the Court a régime of monastic services, and followed with delight, in spite of her ill health, up to the very end, masses which lasted for hours on end. This same excessive religious zeal was the foundation for her admiration for Gregory Rasputine, who, possessing an extraordinary power of suggestion, exercised an undeniably salutary effect on the invalid Tsarevitch. Because of her extreme piety the Empresswas in no proper state of mind to understand the real source of the amazing influence of Rasputine on the health of the Heir, and she believed the explanation to be due, not at all to hypnotism, but to the celestial gifts which Rasputine owed to the sanctity of his life.
“A year and a half before the Revolution of 1917, the former monk, Illiador Troufanoff, sent his wife from Christiania to Petrograd with the proposal that the Imperial family purchase the manuscript of his book, which later appeared under the title of ‘The Holy Devil,’ in which the relations of the Imperial family with Rasputine were scandalously represented. The Police Department interested itself in the matter, and at its own imminent risk entered into negotiations with the wife of Illiador concerning the purchase of the manuscript for which Illiador demanded, I am assured, sixty thousand rubles. The affair was finally submitted to the Empress Alexandra who repudiated with indignation the vile proposition of Illiador, saying that ‘white could never be made black, and that an innocent person could never be assoiled.’
“In terminating this inquiry I believe it necessary to repeat that Bishops Theofan and Hermogen contributed importantly to the introduction of Rasputine at Court. It was because of their recommendations that the Empress, in the beginning, received Rasputine cordially and confidently. Her sentiments towards him were fortified only by the reasons indicated in the course of this document.”
Copy of certificate of acquittal of Anna Viroubova issued by the High Commission of Inquiry, August, 1917.