Russian Tsar Takes Advice of Illiterate Religious Charlatan
One of history’s worst decisions was that of Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra to believe in Grigori Rasputin, a religious charlatan. After gaining their confidence with his religious holy man act, Rasputin transformed Russia’s rulers, particularly the airheaded Tsarina Alexandra, into his puppets. He offered them advice on governance, which the royal couple accepted in the belief that Rasputin was blessed by God, and so would not lead them astray. He led them to disaster.
Rasputin kept up a pretense of being a humble and holy man in the royal family’s presence. Beyond their gaze, however, he was a depraved drunk who claimed that his body had holy healing powers and led a Christian sex cult that engaged in wild orgies. The Tsar and Tsarina were unwilling to hear any criticism of their pet holy man, however, and turned on those who spoke ill of Rasputin. Towards the end of his life, Rasputin was wielding such influence over the Tsar and Tsarina that ministers, high-ranking officials, and generals, were appointed and dismissed based upon his advice.
Rasputin’s worst advice came in WW1. When he sought to visit the front to bless the troops, Russia’s army commander, who viewed Rasputin as a charlatan, vowed to hang him if he came anywhere near the front. So Rasputin bad-mouthed him to the Tsar, and claimed that he had a religious revelation that Russia’s armies would not succeed until the Tsar went to the front and took personal command. So in 1915, Tsar Nicholas appointed himself commander of the armed forces, and announced that he would assume personal command of the war.
It was a disastrous decision. Tsardom’s absolutist rule was made psychologically palatable to the Russian masses with the myth that whatever was going wrong, the Tsar was blameless. Corrupt officials were responsible, and they hid the truth from the Tsar. That myth became untenable once Nicholas took personal command. From then on, responsibility for defeat, mismanagement, and incompetence in conducting the war would be laid directly at the Tsar’s feet. Since Nicholas knew next to nothing about running a war, there would be plenty of defeat, mismanagement, and incompetence to lay at his feet.
It was made worse by another decision, based on Rasputin’s advice, to place Alexandra in charge of running Russia while Nicholas was running the war. On the one hand, there was no doubt of her loyalty to the royal family. On the other, she was incompetent and stupid. And the worst kind of stupid: the kind in which the stupid person is too ignorant to even grasp the extent of said ignorance, and thus gets deluded into believing that he or she is intelligent.
It was not long before Tsarina Alexandra was soliciting the barely literate charlatan’s advice on matters of state and government. She then heeded his advice, or badgered her husband into carrying out Rasputin’s recommendations. Soon, officials were being hired and fired based on Rasputin’s say so, and those seeking to advance or secure their positions showered him with bribes. Others sent their wives and daughters to sexually seduce Rasputin into putting in a good word for them with the royal couple.
Rasputin’s influence during this period ranged from appointing high-ranking members of the church hierarchy to selecting cabinet members and high-ranking government officials, many of whom proved incompetent opportunists. On occasion, he intervened in the conduct of the war by writing the Tsar, offering him advice on this or that general or this or that plan, based on religious visions and holy dreams.
Rasputin’s influence was exploited by opponents of the Tsar to challenge his competence, the integrity of the imperial dynasty, and the very concept of absolutist rule. Rasputin helped his enemies and those of his royal patrons with scandalous behavior visible for all to see. In addition to his dissoluteness and licentiousness, Rasputin got in drunken public brawls with church officials, and bragged about his influence over the Tsar and Tsarina. While drunk, he even boasted of having slept with Tsarina Alexandra. Notwithstanding a mounting public clamor for his removal, Alexandra continued to fiercely defend Rasputin, insisted that he remain by her side, and compelled her husband to resist all calls for his banishment. That undermined public respect for Tsardom, and prepared the ground for the institution’s overthrow in the Russian Revolution of 1917.