The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order: 1905-1922

by Edmond Taylor

Rasputin, whose own lust for power was the most unbridled of his passions, told the Czar exactly what he wanted to hear. Speaking as a man of God, he declared that the autocracy — just as Pobedonostev had taught — was a Divinely ordained institution for whose maintenance Nicholas would be held accountable before the Supreme Judge. Speaking as a man of the people, he affirmed that the muzhiks revered their autocrat and were unconditionally devoted to the autocracy, while they had nothing but loathing or contempt for the revolutionaries and reformers of every stripe. Consequently it was expedient as well as lawful for the Czar to disregard the constitution and put the clock back to the untrammeled absolutism of his father’s day. This doctrine of despotic populism, or progress through reaction — the political analogue of Rasputin’s private dogma of salvation through sin — had a tonic effect on Nicholas’ morale, but it was the most dangerous intellectual drug that could have been prescribed for him.