Unobscured S4 – 6: Laying On of Hands

On March 8, 1912, Alexander Guchkov stood before the Russian Duma and thundered that a "vestige of the dark ages" had taken the Tsar into his hands. The imperial family was stained. The throne was in danger. The target of his fury was Grigori Rasputin, the Siberian peasant who had become the most infamous man in Russia. But Guchkov's speech was not the beginning of a reckoning—it was a turning point that backfired. Nicholas II took it personally, as a breach of trust. He had asked for secrecy; instead, he was openly attacked in parliament. The stitching that held Russia's young constitutional government together began to unravel.

The Miracle That Sealed a Bond

The relationship between the Romanovs and Rasputin had already survived years of scandal, but a crisis in the autumn of 1912 cemented it permanently. The imperial family was vacationing in Poland when their hemophiliac son Alexei, then eight years old, jumped into a boat and bashed his hip. The bleeding began. He seemed to recover, but Alexandra took him on a bumpy coach ride, and the jostling triggered a catastrophic internal hemorrhage. The doctors were helpless. The boy lay in excruciating pain. The family drafted official notifications of his death.