Once it became clear that his telegram had failed, Rasputin made one last attempt to stop Nicholas. He requested pen and paper and from his hospital bed wrote a remarkable and prophetic letter:
Dear friend I'll say again a menacing cloud is over Russia, lots of sorrow and grief, it is dark and there's not a ray of hope. A sea of tears, immeasurable, and as to blood? What can I say? There are no words, indescribable horror. I know they all want war from you, evidently not realizing that this means ruin. Hard is God's punishment when he takes away reason, it's the beginning of the end. You are the Tsar, Father of the people, don't allow the madmen to triumph and
destroy themselves and the people. Yes, they'll conquer Germany, but what of Russia? If one thinks then truly never for all of time has one suffered like Russia, drowned in her own blood. Great will be the ruin, grief without end. Grigory32
Remarkably, the letter has survived. Although it may well not be true that Nicholas carried the letter on his person through the war, as has been asserted, nonetheless he most definitely placed great value on it, and for this reason took it with him into exile in August 1917 when the entire family was sent away from Tsarskoe Selo. It was while the Romanovs were being held in Tobolsk in early 1918 that Nicholas managed to secretly pass the letter on to Matryona Rasputin's husband, Boris Soloviev, then in Siberia trying to organise a plot to save the family. Later, after fleeing Russia, Matryona ended up in Vienna, where she apparently sold the letter to a Prince Nikolai Vladimirovich Orlov in 1922. It then changed hands at least two more times (including those of Nikolai Sokolov, investigator of the murder of the Romanovs in Ekaterinburg) before coming into the possession of one Robert D. Brewster, who donated it to Yale University in 1951.33
Rasputin's letter makes for one of those powerful 'What if ...?' moments. What if Nicholas had heeded Rasputin's words, what if the image Rasputin presented with these few charged words had opened the tsar's eyes to the horror and great danger facing Russia in the summer of 1914? Had Nicholas followed Rasputin's advice, the course not only of Russian history, but indeed world history would have been radically different. Had Russia stayed out of the war, it is hard to imagine there would have been a revolution or at least one so violent and catastrophic. The suffering that would have been avoided is unimaginable. And without the Russian revolutions of 1917, it is difficult to conceive of the rise of Hitler's Nazi Germany. But again, Nicholas ignored Rasputin's words, words that would have saved his reign, and his life and those ofhis family, and words that more than compensated for the harm Rasputin had caused, and would later cause, the prestige of the throne.
Later, once he was healed and back in Petersburg, Rasputin liked to say that had he been in the capital at the tsar's side he would have been able to convince him not to go to war.34 Count Witte, repeating his comments on the Balkan crisis, said nearly the same thing.35 It is impossible to know whether this was indeed the truth. It makes for a nice story, but ultimately it doesn't seem convincing, for as of 1914 Nicholas had rarely ever taken Rasputin's advice on important matters and when he did, it was restricted to religious affairs. It was not until much later, after Nicholas had taken up supreme command of the armed forces in 1915 and was away at Stavka, that he showed any willingness, and then reluctantly and rarely, to follow Rasputin's advice communicated to him via Alexandra's letters, the best example of this being the appointment of Alexander Protopopov as minister of the interior in September 1916.
It must also not be forgotten that Rasputin's was not the lone voice for peace. Former ambassador to the US Baron Roman Rosen, Prince Vladimir Meshchersky (publisher of The Citizen and a long-time friend of both Alexander III and Nicholas), and Witte, all spoke out against the war. After Rasputin, no one was as explicit with the tsar about the catastrophes certain to befall Russia should the country go to war than Pyotr Durnovo, former minister of the interior, which he laid out in a famous memorandum in February 1914.36
While Rasputin was writing to Nicholas, the press was wildly speculating on just what he was making of the international situation. The St Petersburg Courier, for example, noted on 16 July how Rasputin was 'extremely depressed' upon receiving a telegram from the capital about Austria's declaration of war against Serbia the day before.37
As it had during the Balkan crisis, the European press, too, ruminated on just what Rasputin was thinking. Axel Schmidt of the Hamburger Fremdenblatt wrote on 21 June 1914 (New Style) that the 'former apostle of peace' was now supposedly speaking the language of the pan-Slavists and calling for the unification of all Slavs and Orthodox believers under the Russian sceptre. If this were indeed true, he noted, this would present a great danger to peace in Europe, for it was only religion that could get the Russian masses to go to war. 'Whatever the case,' he concluded, 'it is simply ridiculous to think that peace in Europe now depends on the murky wishes and the will of a cunning mystic or a simple adventurer. But in the land of unlimited impossibilities all is possible.'38
The speculation ran wild. A newspaper in Toulouse expressed the view that Witte had been able to use Rasputin to convince the tsar to align Russia with Germany against that 'godless country' of France.39 German papers (Vossische Zeitung, Berliner Tageblatt) opined that whereas in the past Rasputin had been powerful enough to keep the tsar from going to war, he could just as easily now use this same power to make him go to war. And yet another German paper - Deutsche Warte - wondered (when in the first days after Guseva's attack it was believed that Rasputin had been killed) whether he had been assassinated by those very forces in Russia who had opposed his politics of peace and now wanted to push Russia to war.40
Back in St Petersburg, Nicholas was inclined not to make too much of events unfolding in the capitals of Europe. He sent his condolences to Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria upon learning of the assassination and then moved on to other matters. Even after Austria delivered its humiliating, and unacceptable, ultimatum to Serbia on 10 July (23 July New Style), Nicholas described the development as nothing more than 'disturbing'. But several of his ministers were a good deal more animated by events. 'C'est la guerre europeenne,' foreign minister Sazonov remarked. The following day at a meeting of the Council of Ministers, Sazonov stressed upon the tsar the need to defend Russia's honour in the Balkans and to boldly respond to Austria's threat of invading Serbia. Not to act forcefully, he warned, would reduce the country to a second-rate power in Europe. The other ministers fell in behind the bellicose Sazonov.
Nicholas, however, refused to be pushed into going to war. He reached out to Kaiser Wilhelm, begging him in a number of telegrams to stop Austria from going to war and stressing the necessity of a peaceful resolution of the crisis. The signals coming from the Germans were contradictory, and the tsar's ministers continued to press the case for war. Adding their voices to Sazonov's were now General Vladimir Sukhomlinov, minister of war, General Nikolai Yanushkevich, chief of the general staff, minister of agriculture Alexander Krivoshein, as well as Duma president Rodzyanko. Eventually the tsar broke down and gave in. On 17 July, he ordered full mobilisation of the Russian army for the following day. War was now inevitable. When Alexandra learned of this she rushed to Nicholas's office, where they argued for half an hour. The empress had been caught off guard by the move and was beside herself. She raced back to her room, threw herself on to her couch and started to cry. 'It's all over,' she said to Vyrubova, 'we are now at war.' As for Nicholas, Vyrubova noticed he seemed at peace. The agonising question that had been hanging in the air had now been answered.41