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Updated: June 1, 2025
Only the other day he telegraphed to Downing Street that you Russians would never agree to a separate peace to isolate Britain. This is most annoying." "Thou art misled, as is all the world," replied the monk with a meaning smile. "That telegram was sent to London only after many conferences, in which Alexandra Feodorovna took part with Nicholas, Stürmer, Fredericks, and Protopopoff.
The premier, Trepov, who though a mere figurehead, was still loyal to Russia and secretly an enemy of Rasputin and Protopopoff, allowed all the details of the assassination to be published in the papers, even to the names of those concerned in the actual killing. These latter were of too high a rank to be punished, besides which popular sentiment stood solidly behind them.
As servant of the head of Russia's "Dark Forces" as Rasputin and Protopopoff were afterwards denounced in the Duma I was compelled to be ever at the saint's elbow; hence I saw and heard much that was astounding. One night, a few months after Stolypin's assassination, we had been bidden to dinner by the great Polish landowner Ivan Volkhovski, who had a beautiful villa outside Petrograd.
Protopopoff now began persecuting the members and the leaders of the social forces as though they were the veriest street agitators for Socialism. Next he endeavored to have Paul Milukov assassinated, but the assassin repented at the last moment and revealed the plot.
The reply, of course, arranged by the Empress and her friends, was something as follows: "Thou hast done well, my son, and thou art worthy the throne of the Romanoffs. Continue to defend our beloved land. Trust in the counsels of those about thee, of thy wife, of thy Ministers, especially Stürmer, Protopopoff and Soukhomlinoff, as well as the advice which the holy Father is ever giving thee.
Protopopoff wanted revolution, but he did not mean to allow it to succeed. All he wanted was a few days of violent disorder, a prolonged Red Sunday, during which a separate peace with Germany and Austria might be proclaimed. But the violence did not break out so soon as he desired. The strike was spreading; by the 10th it had become practically universal.
This was the man who was finally to kick aside the last wedge shoring up the tottering walls of the Russian autocracy. Protopopoff, who had for the first time entered politics in 1908, being a cloth manufacturer of Simbirsk, was in that year elected a deputy to the Duma by the moderate Octobrists, a conservative body which usually sided with the Government.
The result was that not only did Rasputin obtain possession of the concession for Otchakov, but he sold it a month later for a huge sum to a syndicate of bankers in Vienna, who still hold it. The monk, after paying a dole to the ex-agent of police, divided up the spoils with Protopopoff, Stürmer and Soukhomlinoff, and, in addition, he bought a very valuable diamond necklace for Anna Vyrubova.
Then came the final dramatic coup. Of its exact details I have no knowledge. I give as I have given all through this narrative of fact only what I know to be actual truth. On December 29th, at eleven o'clock, I left the palace to take a message to Protopopoff, and to interview the much-travelled Hardt, who was coming to Petrograd from Stockholm with his usual fortnightly dispatch from Berlin.
Late that night I went back to the palace, where I found Madame Vyrubova much perturbed. "It is strange, Féodor!" she exclaimed. "He never leaves Petrograd without first informing me." I set her mind at rest by suggesting that, as affairs were so critical, he was probably with Stürmer and Protopopoff plotting further manoeuvres.
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