With the personality of Grigory Rasputin, one of the most famous favorites of Nicholas II, many historians associate the fall of the Romanov dynasty. On the other hand, some historians say that its influence should not be exaggerated. If you look closely, Rasputin was far from the only and certainly not the first among miracle workers, holy fools and charlatans, whose opinion was listened to by the last tsar of the Russian Empire. There were quite a few of them near St. Petersburg in Tsarskoe Selo, where the emperor's residence was located, but the general public knew practically nothing about them. Historian Robert Wart tried to figure out why, being deeply Orthodox, the royal family trusted so much occultists and warlocks.
The main merit of Rasputin was the healing of Tsarevich Alexei from attacks of hemophilia. In contrast, his predecessors offered the emperor slightly different services. Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra in the first years of their reign did not show much interest in holy fools and prophets. However, everything changed dramatically when the fourth tsar's daughter was born, because it was then that it became obvious that the Russian throne could remain without an heir.
Beginning in 1900, strange people began to be brought to the territory of the royal residence in Tsarskoe Selo, some of them stayed for a long time. The first was the feeble-minded peasant woman Matronushka Barefoot, who was eighty years old and who had a reputation for predicting the future. The emperor sent for her. After the woman was found in the slums of St. Petersburg, she was taken to Tsarskoe Selo, and the imperial family, according to eyewitnesses, could listen for hours to what she said, in particular, that the heir to the throne would soon be born.
Something similar happened to the second favorite, a nun from the Tambov province Pasha of Sarov, who, according to some sources, turned a hundred years old. However, the woman rejected the hospitality of the royal family, so Nikolai, along with Alexandra, was forced to visit her in the monastery in 1901. But communication did not work out, because Nikolai could not understand anything from the words of the nun. Pasha gave Nicholas goodbye a bundle with a part of a sugar head, a few lumps of sugar and a few colored eggs. This bundle was later kept by the Empress Alexandra like a sacred relic.
The third tsarist favorite was Vasily Tkachenko, an illiterate soldier from the Kuban. Despite his peasant origin, Vasily enlisted the support of the Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich, who was the younger brother of Alexander II, who was known as a great lover of the supernatural. There were many other strange people, whose names have not survived to this day. One of them was also the monk Miron from the Ladoga monastery. He did not ask for anything, only prayed for the emperor, children and animals loved him, and in general he was an absolutely harmless old man.
For a certain time, a man named Demchinsky was at the court. He was a meteorologist who published his rather accurate forecasts on the pages of the Novoye Vremya edition. Emperor Nicholas II, who confused meteorology and astrology, even thought about making Demchinsky his political adviser. However, the meteorologist did not follow the instructions of the Grand Dukes and Vyacheslav Pleve, the Minister of Internal Affairs, which later cost him his career - he lost the tsar's favor in 1903.
Daria Osipova, who suffered from dementia and epilepsy, was a completely different person. In her native village, she showed all sorts of "prophecies" and "miracles". She was presented to the imperial court by one of the generals. The woman frightened the empress with her curses many times, shouting them out, being in a trance. Despite her inadequate behavior, the emperor respected her very much, since it was during her stay in Tsarskoe Selo that Alexandra gave birth to the heir to the throne, Tsarevich Alexei.
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Perhaps one of the most grotesque figures among the holy fools was Mitka Kolyaba. He was born in 1865 and lived in Kozelsk. From birth he was feeble-minded, lame, half-blind, deaf, almost dumb, and instead of hands he had stumps. This person communicated with people with the help of guttural sounds, growls, yells, screams and waving stumps.
He was considered a prophet by the monks, and therefore in 1901, together with a translator, he was sent to St. Petersburg, where he communicated with the royal family several times. Mitka never succeeded in predicting the birth of an heir to the empress. The only thing he managed to do was to bring Alexandra to hysteria with his inappropriate behavior. Historians cannot say for sure when he was at court, but it is known that over time he participated in a conspiracy against Rasputin, becoming his worst enemy.
Despite the fact that prophets and holy fools were constantly in Tsarskoe Selo, Emperor Nicholas II was also very interested in occult sciences and practices. Therefore, in addition to "God's people", there were several Frenchmen at the royal court, who were the authors of their own esoteric teachings.
Philip Nizier
Photo: Philippe Nizier family album / public domain
The first of these was Nizier Anthelm Philippe, known as "Doctor Philippe." He was born in 1849 to a French peasant family. Later he entered medical school in Lyons, from which he was soon kicked out for inventing so-called "sensational drugs", which, quite obviously, did not cure anything. Then Philip began to practice in occult medicine, using astral forces and psychic currents. He was fined many times for conducting medical practice in the absence of a license, but this did not really bother the doctor, since there was no end of clients.
Among his clients were Russian noblewomen, who introduced Philip to the imperial family. Nikolai and Alexandra were amazed at the magician's capabilities and invited him to Tsarskoe Selo. There, the doctor behaved very restrainedly and spent all the time engaged in scientific activities: he improved in hypnosis, predicted the future, was engaged in necromancy and reincarnation.
Periodically, the ghost of Alexander III, the father of Nicholas II, communicated with the emperor through the doctor. In addition, Philip allegedly worked other miracles: he could become invisible and controlled the weather.
Thanks to a rather close relationship with the emperor, the charlatan managed to get what he wanted. He was awarded the title of Doctor of Medicine in Russia, moreover, he was recognized by the French authorities, since Nikolai himself interceded for him.
The doctor claimed that thanks to his occult practices, he could determine the sex of the unborn child. And the empress, who by that time was sick with the mania for the birth of an heir, began a false pregnancy under the influence of Philip's words. However, soon everything was revealed, but the charlatan had never lost confidence at court. And only in 1903, when the head of the foreign police agency, Pyotr Rachkovsky, prepared a report in which he accused the doctor of charlatanism, on the basis of data received from Paris, did this happen. And then the emperor himself announced that Philip was used as an agent of influence by the court conspirators, and removed him from the thief, generously gifting him at the same time.
Gerard Anaclet Vincent Ancausse (Papus)
Photo: Deucaleon / Wikipedia
Dr. Philippe had a student - Gerard Anaclet Vincent Encausse, known as Papus. He was born in 1865 in Spain. In the life of the Russian imperial court, he played no less a role than his teacher. At the same time, he was much more popular in European occult circles. Papus came to Russia in 1901 in order to found a "school of psychophysiology." There is no evidence of the existence of such an institution in history, but it is known that Papus founded a lodge of the Martinist Order, of which not only Emperor Nicholas II himself became members, but also many of his entourage.
The new charlatan was introduced to the court by the Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, who met and befriended Papus in France. The imperial family was amazed at the abilities of Papus, he did not stay in Russia, but visited the country for the second time only in 1905, at the invitation of the tsar. It was on this visit that Papus summoned the spirit of Alexander III, who advised Nicholas to ruthlessly suppress the revolution.
The last visit to Russia fell in 1906, but later Papus maintained relations with the royal family through correspondence. This lasted at least until 1915. One of his letters to Alexandra contained a warning against Grigory Rasputin as an evil demon. According to Papus, Rasputin was something like a Pandora's box, containing all the evil and vices of the Russian people.
It should be noted that despite such a passion for the occult and spiritualism, Nikolai and Alexandra were deeply religious people. They constantly attended church services on Sundays, adhered to strict fasts. The emperor was a fatalist, and very often wrote about relying on God's will in times of turmoil.
At the time when the separation of church and state was taking place, the emperor's fascination with the supernatural looked a little strange, but at the same time it fully corresponded to the spirit of the people, which combined the Orthodox faith and practices, which, from the point of view of Christian morality, cannot be interpreted positively.
However, Russia was far from the only country in which occultism and religion coexisted. But the Russian Tsar Nicholas II stood out against the background of all the monarchs of that time for his naive belief in what could be called the "cult of irrationality." He was a relic of the past, whose lifestyle and point of view completely contradicted the economic and social realities of his time.
The Emperor firmly believed in the special purpose of Holy Russia. He even consulted in the spirit of his father, who was summoned by the necromancer, and recalled the "great past" with nostalgia. Industrial capitalism, which was beginning to gain momentum, social mobility, new technologies, the ever-growing role of national minorities - all this could not fit into the orderly picture of the world that was created by Nikolai's predecessors. Therefore, all the imperial quirks with magicians, preachers and "God's people", historians are sure, can be explained not by the desire to abandon the arguments of reason in the age of modernization, but only by nostalgia for the irrevocably gone past.