3. The Holy Man Wrecks an Empire
Rasputin’s worst advice came during the First World War. 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 Emperor, and claimed that he had a religious revelation that Russia’s armies would not succeed until Nicholas II went to the front and took personal command. So in 1915, the Emperor appointed himself commander of the armed forces, and announced that he would assume personal command of the war. It was a disastrous decision. Absolutist imperial rule was made psychologically palatable to the Russian masses with the myth that whatever was going wrong, the Emperor was blameless. Corrupt officials were responsible, and they hid the truth from the Emperor.
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 Emperor’s feet. Since Nicholas knew next to nothing about running a war, there was bound to 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 Empress 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.
