A peasant with an axe in her dreams: how Rasputin's rise unsettled the Russian court
Grigori Rasputin, one of the most distinctive figures to shake the Russian Empire in the early twentieth century, rose at the court of Nicholas II in a way that seemed to make material a nightmare his mother-in-law, Empress Maria Feodorovna, had described decades earlier. A new HistoryExtra essay examines how Rasputin's influence within the Romanov dynasty grew and what political opposition formed against him.
The nightmare Maria Feodorovna had in the 1880s, according to the records of royal biographer Helen Rappaport, was themed around 'a peasant entering the palace with an axe'. The empress was still referring to this dream in family letters years after her son Nicholas II had ascended the throne. In one letter to her son, Maria wrote that 'my eye expects to see only one peasant at every corner'.
After first meeting Empress Alexandra in 1905, Rasputin is known to have quickly entered the inner circle of the Romanov dynasty. Court diaries record that Rasputin was summoned during health crises affecting Empress Alexandra's only haemophiliac son, Tsarevich Alexei.
HistoryExtra essayist and Cambridge historian Simon Sebag Montefiore writes that 'Rasputin's rise was essentially fed by the despair surrounding Alexei's illness'. According to Montefiore, the empress's hope for her son to survive cemented Rasputin's position at court.
The opposition that finally formed within the remaining Romanov family to act against Rasputin intensified in late 1916. In family debates, Empress Maria Feodorovna's reported comment that 'my nightmare has come true' is said by the essay to have provided emotional ground for the initiatives of Prince Felix Yusupov and Prince Dmitri Pavlovich.
In the essay, Montefiore says Rasputin's assassination at Yusupov's palace in December 1916 was 'the culmination of long-running internal family friction'. The event has been interpreted as a turning point for the inner cohesion of the Romanov dynasty, but the internal decay had become the 1917 Revolution within the year.
Andrei Soroka of the Russian Imperial Historical Society told HistoryExtra that 'the Rasputin question is the most visible symbol of the Romanov dynasty's weakening from within'. Soroka said the family's internal debates had visibly affected the Tsar's health and political decisions throughout the period.
Montefiore's essay also flags a common bias of overstating Rasputin's personal influence on European politics. 'Rasputin played no direct role in foreign-policy decisions; but his influence on the empress's advice to the Tsar was indirectly reflected in First World War decisions,' Montefiore writes.
Royal Historical Society fellow Helen Rappaport, commenting on the frequency of the nightmare motif in the records, said 'in the internal tensions of the Romanov family, the belief in prophecy played a role as real as diplomacy'. According to Rappaport, the memory of Maria Feodorovna's nightmare is 'data not to be academically dismissed' in Russia's political climate of uncertainty.
The essay also notes that the historiographical tradition around Rasputin has tended towards myth-making rather than illuminating the inner working of the Romanov dynasty. Montefiore concludes that 'to study Rasputin is, in effect, to study the Romanov dynasty itself'. This piece is presented as historical analysis.