RASPUTIN, taken individually, did not deserve any notice. He was never in possession of the influence which was attributed to him, and his voice was never preponderant in the councils of the Czar. It served the interests of those whose tool he had become to spread the notion that he had acquired it, and that, thanks to the religious enthusiasm which he had contrived to arouse among a certain small circle of influential men and women, he had installed himself in the confidence of his Sovereign. Unfortunately for Russia, these people not only had accomplices in their evil deeds, but also had the means to spread their opinions among the public and the ability to make these opinions penetrate into all the different classes of the nation. They discredited the Imperial family; they discredited the Government of the day; they discredited the monarch, until it became at last a political, and I shall even say a national, necessity to suppress them, together with the adventurer whom they had put forward and thanks to whom they had been able to play unmolested for so many years the most nefarious of games.
Unfortunately, the slaying of Rasputin did not destroy the persons who had used him. It did not put an end to the many abuses which had brought Russia to the sad state of chaos in which it found itself at the moment of its great trial. The man himself was but an ensign, and the loss of an ensign does not mean that the regiment that carried it about has shared its fate.
Rasputin was the last representative of the old régime. His appearance on the horizon of Russian social life was but the last flicker of a detestable past. During his time of favour and of success the two forces that struggled for supremacy in the land of his birth fought their last battle, in which he was the stake. We must rejoice that it was not the force which he was supposed to incarnate in his enigmatical and mysterious person that remained master of the field. Whether he would have been killed under different circumstances is a question to which it would be very difficult to find a reply. Most probably the spirit of mysticism which lies at the bottom of the Slav character would have prevented even his worst enemies, let alone his simple adversaries, from trying to remove him from the position into which he had been thrust. They would most likely have shrugged their shoulder and waited for that intervention of St. Nicolas, who, according to Russian traditions, always arrives at the right moment, to put straight everything that has gone wrong.
The peril in which Russia found herself placed gave energy even to those to whom that quality had hitherto been unknown, and it was felt everywhere that, together with the Fatherland, the Czar ought to be saved from a danger of which, perhaps, he did not himself realise the real importance. Rasputin, and especially Rasputin’s followers, had worked as hard as they could to make Russia’s Allies, and especially England, unpopular with the Russian nation. He paid with his life for the attempt, and one can only rejoice that such was the case. As things stand at present, it is principally toward Great Britain and America that Russia must look for its salvation. What I am writing to-day has been my earnest and deep conviction for long years, and I have preached it not only since the beginning of this war in all the books and articles which I have written, but also long before any one ever thought or suspected that the day would come when the English Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes would float beside the Russian flag and the French Tricolor on the same battlefields, united against one common enemy. I have always considered that in human life, as well as in the existence of nations, it is essential to recognise the superiority of others where this superiority exists, and that true civilisation consists in assimilating to oneself with gratitude the virtues of other nations, whose example one ought to follow instead of trying to ridicule. Russia, with all its vast resources and with its immense territory, would do well to imitate England and the United States in their immense work of culture and to call the latter countries to her help in developing her own national existence on proper and useful bases. In doing so she would not abase herself; she would only prove that she was great enough to admire the greatness of others.
It is certain that if Anglo-Saxon influence had been so dominant in Russia in the past as it is to be hoped it will remain in the future, we should not have seen occur in Petrograd incidents like those connected with the career of Rasputin. We should not have witnessed all these perpetual changes of Ministers, over which Germany has rejoiced with such evident relish. We should not have heard people defy the authority of the Czar, as unfortunately has been the case.
We former monarchists, who have been brought up in the old traditions of loyalty to bygone days, have often been accused by this crew of adventurers of harbouring revolutionary ideas. They have reproached us with the spirit of criticism that has sometimes induced and prompted us to speak out what we thought and to lay blame where blame was due; to criticise where criticism was almost a national necessity. Time shall prove whether we have been mistaken. It seems to me, however, that as English ideals and English respect for individual liberty and individual opinions become more and more familiar to Russians and penetrate into the Russian mind, the public, will acknowledge that we have not been so very wrong when we have raised our voices against the importance which individuals such as Rasputin have been allowed to take in our society and in our governmental circles, and against this corrupt system of administration, which, thanks to its crawling, flattering propensities, caused our people to kneel at his feet with the idea that by doing so they were pleasing the higher authorities, who most of the time knew nothing about the developments for which this intrigue was responsible. Russia has still something oriental about her, and in some respects she resembles the Greek empire which fell under the blows dealt at it by the power of Islam. It needs new life and new blood in its veins. It requires the support of this strong, earnest British civilisation, which is, perhaps, the most beautiful the world has ever known.
I have always been accused of being too pro-English in my ideas and opinions. If being pro-English means the wish to see my country freed from the abuses, the existence of which has prevented her from developing herself on the road of a progress embodied in the respect of the individual, together with the institutions that rule him, such as Great Britain has known for so many centuries, then I will willingly confess it, I am pro-English. I feel sure that all good Russians share my feelings. We have had enough of the German Kultur and of German intrigues. They it is that have brought my beloved Fatherland to the brink of ruin. The whole sad incident of Rasputin’s rise and fall has been the result of German interference, and it would never have assumed the proportions to which it rose if the German press had not exaggerated it and German spies spoken about it, not only abroad, but also in Russia itself.
When thinking about this story, which savours in some of its details of superstitions of the Middle Ages, one must always remember what I said at the beginning of this sketch of the career of a man whom circumstances and the hatred of our enemies transformed into a kind of monster devouring all that it touched. This fact is that Russia is still the land of many surprises, because of its tendency toward mysticism, always so strong in all the Slav races. Before Rasputin appeared there had been other sectarians who had drawn thousands of men and women around them and who had inspired crowds with feelings of fanaticism in no wise different from the ones which the modern “Prophet,” as some called him, the modern Cagliostro, as others had nicknamed him, had evoked in the breasts of the simple-minded people whose confidence he had abused and whose spirit of superstition he had impressed. But these had remained strictly in the field of religion and had not meddled with any other questions. They had grouped around them only persons convinced of the truth of their teachings, while Rasputin had gathered about him men determined to use him for the benefit of their money-seeking, money-grubbing schemes; men who saw in the misfortunes that had fallen upon their Fatherland only the possibility to enrich themselves at her expense. They would not have sacrificed the smallest things for her welfare; far less would they have given up the chance to add to the ill-gotten gains they were daily accumulating. Without those persons the whole story of Rasputin would have ended in ridicule. Thanks to them and to their rapacity, it finished in blood.
It was, after all, the aristocracy that finally got rid of Rasputin, perhaps to the great relief of many persons who out of weakness, or let us say kindness, had hesitated before taking the strong measure of sending him away where it would have been difficult for him to do any more mischief. And it is doubtful whether his removal anywhere than to a place whence there existed no possibility for him to return would have stopped the evil which the very mention of his name alone was sufficient to cause. Credulous persons exist everywhere and will always exist; timorous ones also abound in the world. Even if Rasputin had been exiled it would have been relatively easy for those who reaped such a rich harvest out of the blood and the tears of the whole Russian nation to attribute to him powers which he did not possess, to threaten with his vengeance the persons who might refuse to lend themselves to their dirty schemes. He would have been a perpetual menace suspended over the heads of those who would have tried to rebel against the directions issued by the enterprising scoundrels who abused the prestige which his so-called holiness had won for a man who in other times and in another country would not have arrested for a single moment the attention of any one, let alone the crowds.
Rasputin is dead! Let us hope that his former supporters have lost, together with him, their audacity and their power of doing mischief. But to say that he was ever a paramount strength in Russian politics is an error which I have tried to correct as far as lay within my power. Rasputin’s story is simpler than many persons think, and perhaps the best explanation that can be given of it is to be found in the Book of Esther in the Bible, a careful perusal of which is recommended to those who are interested in the character of Rasputin.