Yet for the majority of Russians, Rasputin was an intensely controversial figure. Although almost no one knew the truth of his relationship with the royal family, still everyone had an opinion. To most, Rasputin was a conniving fake, a bogus holy man, a dangerous sectarian and vul- turine womaniser craftily using his influence at court to enrich himself and destroy his enemies. In a word, he was an unforgivable stain on the Romanov throne.6
Guseva's attempt on the life of Rasputin was international news. The story was followed by papers across Europe and Britain; the New York Times carried the story on its front page.7 In Russia, the attack filled the papers for weeks and, for a time, even eclipsed the story upon which all of Europe was focused, namely the assassination on 28 June of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo by the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip.
The closeness of the attacks on Rasputin and the archduke has created a good deal of regrettable confusion and outright mendacity among historians and biographers. At first glance it does seem odd that both men were attacked only a day apart - 28 and 29 June. But any chronological (or other) connection is a mirage, for the archduke was murdered on 28 June of the Gregorian (New Style) calendar, then used in the West, which was a full thirteen days ahead of the Russian (Old Style) Julian calendar. Thus, Franz Ferdinand died on 15 June in Russia, exactly two weeks before Guseva's attack on Rasputin.
But this hasn't stopped conspiracy theorists from seeing some larger international plot. To contemporary Russian nationalist historians the attacks were part of a conspiracy by international 'Jew-Masonry' to kill the only two men who could have prevented war, the goal being to push the world into a war that would destroy the Christian empires of Europe and Russia and ignite world revolution. (Others add a third figure: the French socialist and leading anti-militarist Jean Jaures, assassinated in Paris at the Cafe du Croissant on 31 July [New Style].8) Indeed, some of the more extreme proponents of this notion go so far as to claim (against all reason and facts) that the two attempts on the men's lives happened not only on the same day but at the same hour. In his 1964 biography of Rasputin, Colin Wilson, claiming to be the first person to notice the suspicious timing of the attacks, wrote: 'Ferdinand's death made war probable; Rasputin's injury made it certain, for he was the only man in Russia capable of averting it.'9
In fact, Rasputin was still in Petersburg at the time of Franz Ferdinand's assassination. Asked his thoughts about it by a reporter for the Stock Exchange News, he said:
Well, brothers, what can Grigory Efimovich say? He's dead. Cry and shout as much as you want, it won't bring him back. Do what you will - the result will always be the same. It's fate. But our English guests in Petersburg can't help but be glad. It's good [for them]. My peasant mind tells me it's a big event - the beginning of friendship between the Russian and the English people. It's a union, my dear, of England with Russia, and if we find friendship with France as well, that's no trifle but a powerful force, really good.10
Rasputin, however, did have his worries. He told an Italian journalist: 'Yes, they say there will be war, and they are getting ready for it. May God grant that there will be no war. This troubles me.'11 On 1 July, the newspaper Day published an article by Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, an expert on Russian sects as well as a Bolshevik and future secretary of Lenin, titled 'On Rasputin':
'It's easy for you to talk,' he once, being genuinely angry, scolded a person of high position, 'if you're killed, you'll have a funeral with music, newspapers will praise you, your widow will get a pension of thirty thousand, your children will be married to princes or counts, but look here: They must go to beg for minuscule alms, their land has been taken away, their house has been emptied, tears and woe, and if you're alive but have lost your legs, you'll limp along Nevsky on your hands or crutches and listen to every street cleaner telling you off: 'You, this and that, go to hell, get out of here! Out to the lane with you!' ... I've seen how Japanese war heroes are scared away off Nevsky. Have you? This is it, this is war! But you can't be bothered! You'll wave your handkerchief to the train taking the soldiers off to war, you'll prepare lint, you'll make five new dresses ... but you should see what terrible wailing there was in the village when the husbands and sons were taken off to war ... Remember that and even now there is sadness and a burning feeling here,' and he pressed as if he wanted to pull the heart out of his chest. 'There will be no war, no war, right?'12
Whatever his faults, Rasputin was a man of peace. He had an innate antipathy to bloodshed and his devout Christian faith taught him that war was a sin.
At times he spoke like a pacifist, as in this interview for Smoke of the Fatherland, again published before the war in 1914:
The Christians are preparing for war, preaching it, tormenting themselves and everyone else. War is a bad thing, and Christians instead of practicing humility are marching right into it. [.] In general, people shouldn't fight, shouldn't deprive each other of their lives and life's pleasures, one shouldn't violate Christ's testament and so destroy one's own soul prematurely. What will I get if I destroy you, enslave you? I would need to guard you and be afraid of you after that, and you will still be against me. That's when I use the sword. But with godly love, I will take you and will fear nothing. Let the Germans, the Turks fight each other - it's their misfortune, their blindness. They will find nothing and would sooner do each other in. But we shall act with love, peacefully, looking inside ourselves, and so shall we raise above them all.13
For this he was attacked on the pages of Responses to Life, the publication of the rabidly anti-Rasputin archpriest Vladimir Vostokov:
Gr. Rasputin, judging from his publication Smoke of the Fatherland, is the worst enemy of Christ's holy Church, the Orthodox faith, and the Russian state. We don't know what influence this traitor of Christ's teaching has on Russia's foreign policy, but during the war of liberation of the Balkan Christians against Turkey [in 1912] he did not support Christ but instead the pseudo-prophet Mohammed. [...] He preaches non-resistance to evil, advises Russian diplomacy to make concessions in every issue, being fully convinced, as a revolutionary, that the lost prestige of Russia and the refusal to perform her age-old tasks will cause the destruction and decay of our country. [...] Rasputin is not only a sectarian, a crook and a charlatan, but a revolutionary in the full sense of this word, working to ruin Russia. He does not care about Russia's glory and might, but aims to diminish its dignity and honour; he is fine with betraying our spiritual comrades and leaving them to the Turks and Swabians. He is prepared to welcome various misfortunes brought upon our fatherland through the disposition of Godly Providence because of the betrayal of our ancestor's legacy. And yet this enemy of God's ultimate truth is hailed as a saint by some of his followers.14
The mention of Rasputin's opposition to the Balkan Christians' 'war of liberation' refers to his position during the Balkan crisis of 1912, specifically the war launched by Montenegro and Russia's other client states in the region (Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece) against the Ottoman Empire in October of that year. As the armies of these 'small nations' marched on Constantinople, war hysteria swept across Russia. Demonstrators marched through the streets of Petersburg under the banner 'A Cross for Holy Sophia'. The Russian press called for war in defence of their fellow Slavs against the infidel, as did Mikhail Rodzyanko, president of the Duma, who told the tsar in March 1913, 'A war will be joyfully welcomed and it will raise the government's prestige.'15