He Directly Influenced Russia’s Conduct of WWI
Rasputin was strongly opposed to Russia’s entry into World War I, and to its continued participation in the conflict. He was convinced that the war would prove disastrous both for Russia and for his patrons, Russia’s ruling family. There were powerful motives driving Russia’s participation in the war, however, and it was one of the few instances when his recommendations to the Tsar and Tsarina carried little weight. As it turned out, his predictions of catastrophe for Russia and Russia’s rulers came true.
The Russian Empire was unprepared for war. It started off bad, with a humiliating defeat in the first month at Tannenberg, and things only got worse from there. When Rasputin expressed a desire to go to the front to bless the troops, Russia’s Commander-in-Chief, who was not taken in by Rasputin and viewed him as a loathsome charlatan, vowed to hang him if he came anywhere near the front.
Rasputin responded by bad-mouthing him to the Tsar, and claimed that he had a religious revelation that Russia’s armies would not be successful unless the Tsar went to the front and took personal command of his troops. In 1915, after a string of disasters, Tsar Nicholas relocated from Saint Petersburg to the front, appointed himself commander of the armed forces, and announced that he would hitherto assume personal command of the war.
It was a foolish decision: until then, Tsardom’s absolutist rule was made psychologically palatable to the Russian masses with the myth that whatever was going wrong in the Empire, the Tsar was not to blame. Bad or corrupt ministers and advisors were responsible, and they kept the Russia’s Holy Father, the Tsar, ignorant of what was going on. Once Nicholas announced that he was taking personal command of conducting the war, however, that myth became untenable. From then on, responsibility for defeat, mismanagement, and incompetence in conducting the war would be laid directly at the Tsar’s feet. As things turned out, there would be plenty of defeat, mismanagement, and incompetence in running the war, since the ill-prepared and untrained Nicholas was no general, and knew next to nothing about leading troops or running a war.