Anna Vyrubova: Great sinner or great martyr? Dear Anya, Sinister Vyrubova, Mother Maria

At the end of 1920, her sister, who lived abroad, arranged for Anna and her mother to escape to Finland. They fled at night, on a sled across the ice across the Gulf of Finland. Finn the guide, seeing Vyrubova's bare feet, gave her woolen socks.

Near the king - near honor. Near the king - near death.

Russian proverb

In April 1926, in Vyborg, the Soviet magazine "Prozhektor" fell into her hands. Among the life-affirming chronicles, cheerful poems and essays signed by unknown worker correspondents and village correspondents, glorifying the new beautiful life in what seems to be Russian, but with some scratchy alien words, her photo was discovered.

“The picture on the right shows a portrait of the deceased Anna Vyrubova, a personal friend of Alexandra Feodorovna, one of the most ardent admirers of Grigory Rasputin. The last, darkest years of tsarism are connected with the name of Vyrubova. In the palace, she played a major role and, together with Rasputin, ruled the state. Protopopov was her henchman, many appointments were made with her help,” Anna read her own obituary.

Who knows what she felt at that strange moment. Devastation? How many times the bitterness of resentment for lies and slander? Burning pain from the injustice of your beloved homeland? Or the sudden lightness of the fact that the unfortunate Vyrubova, whom rumor endowed with all possible vices and made the embodiment of evil, is finally buried by this rumor, along with all the dirt that smeared her name? Vyrubova has died, and the magazine with her obituary on page 30 trembles slightly in the hands of Anna Alexandrovna Taneeva, a faithful and devoted friend of the last Russian empress.

It would seem that the daughters of the court secretary of state and the chief administrator of His Imperial Majesty's office, Chief Chamberlain A.S. Taneyev from the very birth was destined for a comfortable, comfortable and happy life. Father, a highly educated person, a wonderful composer, cousin of the composer S.I. Taneyev, who was friends with Chaliapin and Tchaikovsky, was deeply devoted to the royal family. After all, those duties that were assigned to him at the court of Nicholas II were honorably performed by his great-grandfather, grandfather and father since the reign of Alexander I.

On the maternal side, Anna was the great-great-great-granddaughter of Field Marshal M.I. Kutuzov, and on the family tree of her mother proudly intertwined the branches of many old noble families of the Kutaisovs, Bibikovs and Tolstoys who served for the benefit of Russia.

Grown up girls from noble families, whose parents served at court, received, as a rule, the title of honorary maid of honor of Her Majesty. And brought up in an atmosphere of reverence for the royal family, Anya, who admired Empress Alexandra from childhood, was looking forward to this event. A simple, open, beautiful girl with cornflower blue eyes on a simple-hearted childish face could not even imagine that, once at court, she would become the object of ridicule, dirty gossip and disgusting insinuations that would haunt her all her life.

Anna Taneeva was first introduced to the court in 1902, at her first ball. Very shy at first, but cheerful and lively by nature, seventeen-year-old Anna fell in love with the atmosphere of the holiday so much that she quickly got used to it and danced at thirty-two balls in her first winter. For the body, apparently, this was a serious test, because a few months later she became seriously ill and barely survived, having suffered the most severe form of typhoid fever, which was complicated by inflammation of the lungs and kidneys, meningitis and temporary hearing loss. Anya burned with fever in oblivion when Father John of Kronstadt visited her parents' house. Miraculously, he snatched the girl from the sticky paws of the disease. Then there was treatment in Baden, a slow blissful recovery in sunny Naples, but it was John of Kronstadt who from that moment on she considered her savior and turned to him in her prayers every time she was overcome by despair.

In January 1903, Anna received a "cipher" - initials adorned with diamonds, which gave her the right to be called the honorary maid of honor of Her Majesty. Soon one of the Empress's personal ladies-in-waiting fell ill, and Taneeva was invited to replace her. The replacement was temporary, but Alexandra became very attached to the new maid of honor, seeing in her a kindred spirit, which she so lacked in the palace teeming with gossip and intrigue.

Being happily married to the Russian autocrat, Alice of Hesse-Darmstadt, meanwhile, did not come to court at the court of the Romanovs. Petersburg light received the wife of Nicholas II wary and unfriendly.

Palace etiquette rules here. Pleasant appearance, impeccable manners, perfect French, the ability to behave in society - that's what the court nobility appreciated. The young empress made mistakes when speaking French, and often got confused in the intricacies of palace rules. She did not find a common language with her husband's mother, the Empress Dowager, who was in no hurry to retire. The imperial family observed with disapproval and jealousy the extraordinary tenderness in the relationship between the sovereign and the empress. And the natural shyness of Alexandra Feodorovna in the palace was taken for arrogance and arrogance. Artificial smiles, false reverence and the hiss of gossip crawling from all the palace corners ... For many years she yearned for simple human communication and was happy to suddenly feel her own soul in the new maid of honor, who charmed her with her sincerity and cheerful disposition.

Sitting on a sofa in a small, bright office in the Lower Palace, telling a friend about your past life, showing photos of your relatives, flipping through your favorite books, reading underlined lines that sunk into your soul. Returning from a walk, drink tea for a long time and talk about important and unimportant things. Feel the human warmth and friendly participation nearby. Simple, but precious things that can neither be bought nor received by the highest command. “God sent you to me, from now on I will never be lonely again!” - happy Anna heard on the last day of her first summer trip to the Finnish skerries with the royal family.

The court, of course, could not forgive the young maid of honor for such a sudden rapprochement with the empress. Aristocrats of the same age envied the attention that the queen paid to Anna, and did not skimp on caustic remarks. The personal ladies-in-waiting of the empress were indignant at the constant, contrary to etiquette, presence of the insufficiently noble Taneeva in the royal chambers. The court environment began to hate the upstart, who in an obscure way infiltrated into trust and, for sure, was pursuing his secret goals. It was impossible for people who had achieved virtuosity in the art of weaving intrigues to admit that there were no secret goals here. Taneeva sincerely admired Alexandra and did not want anything so much as to be with the unselfishly beloved empress next to her.

Her love was truly unselfish. Of course, the position of the ladies-in-waiting was very enviable. Each of them had their own housing in the palace, they received a servant, a cab driver and a cart with horses at their disposal, and the personal ladies-in-waiting of the Empress also received a large salary - 4,000 rubles a year. But all these benefits had nothing to do with Taneeva. At first, she was an honorary maid of honor, and this was a title without financial support. She happened to be the official maid of honor of the Empress for only a few months, and then Anna got married. Actually, this was another important advantage of the position of the maid of honor - the opportunity to get a profitable party. But for Anna Taneeva, marriage turned into a nightmare.

The naval officer A. Vyrubov, whom the empress considered a worthy match for her favorite, turned out to be a strange and dangerous person for Anna. Having miraculously survived during the death of the Russian squadron at Tsushima, he suffered from severe depression, his psyche was tormented by an exacerbated hereditary disease. A saving divorce was obtained only a year later. A whole year of constant fear.

After marriage and divorce, Anna Vyrubova no longer had the right to the title of maid of honor. But Alexandra Fedorovna, who became attached to her almost like a younger sister, did not want to leave. And Anna remained at court as a friend of the Empress. She was just always there. Nearby on anxious nights at the bedside of a sick heir and on summer days full of simple happiness in beloved Livadia and Finland. Among the pain and groans in the military hospital, where he and the empress worked tirelessly, fearing neither the horrifying sight of wounds nor blood. And for quiet embroidery, and for prayer, too, nearby. The royal family dearly loved her. For them, she was dear Anya, Anya, darling. Alexandra called her "Big Baby", "Little Baby" was Tsarevich Alexei.

Envy and hatred for the royal favorite among the courtiers grew like a snowball. Her ingenuousness, lack of stiffness and desire to impress were interpreted as stupidity and narrow-mindedness. And at the same time, Anna was accused of cunning and deceit, slandered about her enormous influence on the sovereign and empress. These rumors reached their apogee when Rasputin appeared at the court. They splashed out on the pages of tabloid newspapers, savored in aristocratic salons. Vyrubova was called an intriguer and a vile pimp, a concubine of an odious old man, the main culprit of his penetration into the palace. The fact that the royal family was introduced to Rasputin by their relative, the Grand Duchess Milica Nikolaevna, who was fascinated by mysticism and occultism, preferred not to remember.

The royal couple was ready to do anything to alleviate the suffering of the heir with hemophilia. In an incomprehensible way, Rasputin succeeded in this: he appeared, and the bleeding calmed down, the pains went away. For the sake of this, the parents were ready to endure the dirty fabrications of gossip about the relationship between the elder and the royal family. The slandered Anna also endured, not knowing that she would need infinitely more patience.

On January 2, 1915, the train that Anna Vyrubova was traveling from Tsarskoye Selo to Petrograd crashed. The consequences were dire. Vyrubova's spine was injured, both legs were seriously injured, her facial bone was broken with an iron beam, blood was flowing from her throat. In a hopeless state, she was left to die. For four hours she lay without medical attention in a small station gatehouse, praying to God only for death. When she was finally transferred to the Tsarskoye Selo infirmary, Rasputin was called, who, seeing Anna, said only: "She will live, but a cripple." To remain disabled at 31, move only in a wheelchair or with the help of crutches ...

Barely recovering from the disaster and having received a large compensation from the railway - 80 thousand rubles, Vyrubova spent all this money on the creation of an infirmary in Tsarskoe Selo. Knowing from her own experience what it is like to be a cripple, she also organized rehabilitation for the soldiers who remained disabled. In her Labor House, before they went home after treatment, they received a specialty that allowed them to earn a living without legs, arms, hearing or vision, and not become a burden to the family. She spent long hours in her infirmary, supporting the wounded, doing everything to alleviate their plight.

But Anna helped not only the wounded. Her pockets were always full of notes asking for help. Confident in her power, people asked for everything - from patronage in obtaining the governor's post to the purchase of a student overcoat. She was not omnipotent, on the contrary, with the hatred for her reigning in the palace, such patronage could only harm. But Anna did not refuse anyone, trying to help everyone even in the most insignificant and insignificant matter. She worked hard, did what she could. And she was still known as an intriguer.

Despite all the malicious slander, Anna Vyrubova called the twelve years spent with the royal family the happiest. And she was with her friends until the end. She supported her royal friend at the hour when Nikolai, who abdicated the throne, wrote bitter words in his diary: “All around is treason, and cowardice, and deceit!” To the sound of the boots of the new government, walking around the halls and rooms of the palace, Alexandra helped nurse children who were seriously ill with measles. She was there until she herself, having become infected from children, fell into unconsciousness.

They came for her on March 21, 1917. The provisional government, accusing Vyrubova of espionage and betrayal, imprisoned her in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Having not recovered from measles, moving with difficulty on crutches, she was thrown into a damp cell. They tore off all the decorations and scapulars, stripped naked and put on a prisoner's shirt. Twice a day they brought half a bowl of soup that smelled of rotten fish, into which the guards “out of mischief” spat and poured broken glass. At night, drunken soldiers tumbled into the cell. In the morning, getting out of bed, Anna fainted from weakness. She fell into a huge puddle that formed on the floor, and lay for hours unable to get up. From the cold and dampness, pneumonia began. And the prison doctor became the main tormentor of the unfortunate. He tore off her shirt in front of the soldiers, saying: “This woman is the worst of all, she has become dumb from debauchery,” asked cynical questions about “orgies” with the king and queen. He called me a pretender to any complaints and beat me on the cheeks. For daring to get sick, she was deprived of walks and rare meetings with loved ones. The commandant and head of security, threatening to kill the prisoner, extorted large sums of money from her parents.

In this endless nightmare, she tried to seize on any manifestations of the human in her jailers. I repeated to myself “I don’t blame them” and was grateful for any kind word and gesture.

Five months passed before, after lengthy interrogations and a humiliating medical examination, which showed that the “orgy participant” had never really had an intimate relationship, Anna was released.

They released him to be arrested again a month later. This time she was sent abroad, to Finland, imprisoned in the fortress of Sveaborg. The newspapers were full of the decisions of the regimental and ship committees sentencing Vyrubova to be shot. But in Helsingfors, they hated Kerensky, who arrested her, so they treated the prisoner with compassion.

A month later, Trotsky ordered the release of the prisoners of the Provisional Government. Vyrubova was taken to Petrograd, to Smolny, where the Kamenevs, who were imbued with sympathy for her, fed her dinner. The next day the papers were shouting that Vyrubova was sitting at the Smolny, that she was friends with Kameneva, that she was riding around with Kollontai and that she was hiding Trotsky. From a “German spy”, rumors quickly turned her first into a “counter-revolutionary”, and then into a “Bolshevik”.

In the winter of 1917-1918 and the summer of 1918, Anna lived quietly with her mother in a small Petrograd apartment and made every effort to establish contact with the royal family taken to Siberia. And when she succeeded, she sent letters full of love and anxiety and touching parcels to her friends. She was happy when the answer and modest gifts of the Tobolsk prisoners reached her. She met with Gorky several times, trying to work for the royal family.

Again arrest and imprisonment, ridiculous accusations, humiliation. Liberation and the exhausting hungry winter of 1919, in which Anna and her sick mother barely survived.

She was arrested for the last time on September 22, 1919. White troops advanced on Petrograd. They said that the Bolsheviks were nervous and that all the prisoners would be shot. And then the day came when Anna Vyrubova was taken to be shot. She was extremely weak, at night she began to bleed, bleeding, she could hardly move her legs. One soldier accompanied her. This terrible journey had to be made by tram, with a change. The bridges were drawn, and the tram, which should have been transferred, was delayed. The prisoner with the escort stood for a long time in a large crowd of people waiting. Soon the soldier got tired of waiting, and he ran away "for a minute." At this time, an officer, whom she once helped, approached Vyrubova and thrust 500 rubles into her hand. Immediately, a familiar woman appeared from the crowd, from the household of Father John of Kronstadt, and said: “Do not fall into the hands of enemies, go, I pray. Father John will save you.” And Vyrubova, straining her last strength, went. She went up to a cab driver standing on the corner, he shook his head. Then she handed him the money she had received from the officer and gave him the address of her friends beyond Petrograd.

When friends opened the door, Anna fell into a deep faint.

For a whole year she hid like a hunted animal. She searched and found shelter in the closets of the poor, whom she had once helped. It was dangerous to linger in one place for more than five days; She had to shave her hair, her shoes were worn out, and in December she went barefoot.

At the end of 1920, Anna's sister, who lived abroad, arranged for her and her mother to escape to Finland. They fled at night, on a sled across the ice across the Gulf of Finland. Finn the guide, seeing Vyrubova's bare feet, gave her woolen socks. She remembered this strange feeling for the rest of her life - warmth on her exhausted legs that had long forgotten him.

The Finnish authorities, remembering what place Vyrubova occupied at court, treated her with respect. She was interrogated by the criminal police. They asked about the attitude towards the tsar, towards Rasputin, about the reasons for the Bolsheviks to come to power. And the last question is whether she intends to stay in Finland. “If the Finnish government allows, I am very tired…”.

First, Anna and her mother settled in their dacha in Terijoki (Zelenogorsk), which keeps memories of happy days, then moved to Vyborg.

Life in Finland was not easy. Here one could not be afraid of persecution, but how to get used to someone else's way of life, an unfamiliar culture? How to understand it without knowing the language? Hard to make ends meet. Anna and her mother were denied citizenship, so they could not count on social assistance. Poverty, problems with completely undermined health, longing for the homeland and beloved friends. In these hopeless days, Anna Alexandrovna begins to write "Pages of my life." A book of memoirs in which the images of members of the royal family come to life, happy and bitter moments of their lives, tragic events of the recent past.

This book is the last thing Anna could do for her beloved friend. To tell posterity what a wonderful person the slandered Empress Alexandra Feodorovna really was - merciful, steadfast, selflessly loving Russia.

The book was published in Paris in 1923 and caused a powerful outbreak of anger both in emigre circles, many of whose representatives found themselves among the characters, and in Soviet Russia.

The country of the Soviets simply could not allow such a whitewashing of the royal family and the intriguing Vyrubova. And Anna dealt another vile blow. Suddenly, a falsified "genuine Vyrubova's diary" appeared, on the pages of which the problems of big politics alternated with greasy details of the intimate life of the court, and a retelling of gossip and rumors with quotations from documents. The fake was of very high quality, because professionals worked on it - the famous literary critic and historian P.A. Shchegolev and the "red count" A.N. Tolstoy. Vyrubova publicly refuted this forgery, but only people who knew her closely understood that Anna Alexandrovna could not be the author of these lines, saturated with rudeness and cynicism.

Former compatriots shunned her, and she did not seek meetings with them. She had always been very religious, and now she increasingly preferred prayer to communication with people. Disability did not allow her desire to serve God in the monastery to be realized. But in November 1923, with great difficulty, she reached Valaam, where she took monastic vows in the Smolensk skete of the monastery with the name Maria. The life of a secret nun began.

In 1939, when the war broke out between Soviet Russia and Finland, nun Maria, together with her companion Vera, left Vyborg, fearing the capture of the city by the Red Army and persecution by the Soviet authorities. Shelter was given to them by the Swedish Queen Louise, niece of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. Until the end of the war, mother Maria lived with her friend in a small boarding house near Stockholm at the expense of the Swedish royal court. Queen Louise, with whom Anna was friends back in St. Petersburg, paid her a small pension even after the war. This help made it possible for nun Maria to arrange her modest life in Helsinki.

She was also helped by another old acquaintance from Petersburg life at court, the general of the tsarist army, Baron Gustav Karlovich Mannerheim. The most influential Finnish politician, Field Marshal Mannerheim, at the request of Anna Taneeva, gave her a letter of recommendation, which actually served her as a safe-conduct from the hostility of the outside world.

With the help of this letter, she managed to get a small apartment on Topelius Street, where she lived with Vera until her death in 1964. She lived in poverty and seclusion. No one has been in her house, the light has never been turned on in the room. Outside the window of the apartment on the ground floor there is a bus stop, which is always full of people. People hurried about their business, and two steps away, in the twilight of a cramped room, the days of the faithful and devoted friend of the last Russian Empress passed in prayers and memories.

She was buried not far from this place, at the Ilyinsky Orthodox cemetery in Helsinki. On the stone tombstone there is an inscription "Anna Alexandrovna Taneeva (mother Maria) July 16, 1884 - July 20, 1964".

On a well-groomed grave, pansies bloom, a wooden Orthodox cross rises. You will not immediately notice that a box with a sign "Book of Admirers" is attached to the cross. Under the cover, unexpected for such a sad place, full of summer flowers, there are human pain and despair, desires and dreams. And on every page “Mother Mary, pray! Mariyushka, help!". Anna Taneeva, mother Maria, continues to receive notes similar to those that filled the pockets of her maid of honor... She is not omnipotent, but does not refuse anyone.

Anna Taneeva was the great-great-great-granddaughter of the great Russian commander Kutuzov. Her father, Alexander Sergeevich, for 20 years held the important state post of Secretary of State and Chief Executive of His Own Imperial Majesty's Chancellery - a position that was practically inherited in the Taneyev family. In January 1904, young Anna Taneeva was “granted by code”, that is, she received a court appointment to the post of maid of honor to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. The maid of honor cipher with a monogram was a brooch in the form of a monogram of the empress or two intertwined initials of the empress and the dowager. The picturesque composition was crowned with a stylized imperial crown. Receiving a maid of honor cipher for many young aristocrats was the embodiment of their dream of court service. Note that the tradition of presenting the maid of honor cipher by the ruling and dowager empresses with their own hands was strictly observed until the beginning of the 20th century - Alexandra Feodorovna renounced this right, which deeply offended the Russian aristocracy and completely undermined her reputation at court. By the way, until the beginning of 1917, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna conscientiously fulfilled this duty, which her daughter-in-law so frivolously refused.

On April 30, 1907, the 22-year-old maid of honor of Empress Taneyev is getting married. As a spouse, the choice fell on the naval officer Alexander Vyrubov. A week before the wedding, the empress asks her friend, the Montenegrin princess Milica, the wife of Grand Duke Peter Nikolayevich (grandson of Nicholas I), to introduce her maid of honor to the healer and seer Grigory Rasputin, who was then gaining popularity. Together with her sister Anastasia, with whom the Montenegrin friend was inseparable, Milica wanted to use the "old man" as an instrument of influence on Nicholas II to fulfill personal desires and help her native country. The first acquaintance with Rasputin makes a very strong impression on the girl, which later develops into real worship: “Thin, with a pale, haggard face; His eyes, unusually penetrating, immediately struck me.

The Empress called Vyrubova "big baby"

The wedding of the maid of honor Taneeva is played in Tsarskoye Selo, and the whole royal family comes to the wedding. The family life of a young couple is not immediately set: perhaps because, according to rumors, on their wedding night, the groom got very drunk, and the bride was so frightened that she tried to avoid intimacy by any means. According to Vyrubova's memoirs, her husband's experiences after the disaster in Tsushima left their mark on the unsuccessful marriage. Soon (probably not without the help of Alexandra Fedorovna), her husband leaves for Switzerland for treatment, and a year later Vyrubova asks him for a divorce. So, the 23-year-old maid of honor becomes the closest friend of the 36-year-old empress, her faithful adviser. Now it is she who will become the source of Alexandra Feodorovna's acquaintance with all the city's rumors and gossip: the empress was afraid to go out and preferred to lead a solitary life in Tsarskoye Selo, where the lonely Vyrubova would also settle.

With the outbreak of the First World War, Vyrubova, together with the imperial family, began to work as a nurse in the infirmary arranged in Tsarskoye Selo. The wounded in this hospital are operated by Vera Gedroits, the most famous female doctor in Russia. Being in voluntary isolation, Alexandra Fedorovna receives almost all the news from the capital from her faithful friend, who often gives her not the best advice. Officers - hospital patients are accustomed to the constant visits of the empress, and therefore allegedly no longer show proper attitude towards her - Vyrubova advises to visit the infirmary less often in order to teach disrespectful subjects a lesson.

At the age of 18, Vyrubova contracted typhus, but escaped.

On January 2, 1915, Vyrubova went by train from Tsarskoe Selo to Petrograd, however, before reaching the capital only 6 miles, the train got into an accident. The adviser to the Empress is found under the rubble with little or no chance of survival. In her memoirs, Vyrubova carefully describes all the details of the terrible catastrophe that happened to her: for 4 hours she lay alone without help. The arriving doctor says: "She is dying, you should not touch her." Then Vera Gedroits arrives and confirms the fatal diagnosis. However, after the identity and status of the victim becomes public knowledge, she is urgently taken to Tsarskoye Selo, where the Empress and her daughters are already waiting on the platform. Despite all the assurances of the doctors that nothing would help the unfortunate woman, Rasputin, who urgently arrived at the request of the Empress, prophetically announces that Vyrubova "will live, but will remain a cripple."

After the abdication, the imperial family lives under arrest in Tsarskoe Selo, Vyrubova remains with them. However, on March 21, they are visited by the Minister of Justice of the Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky, who arrests the empress's friend on suspicion of an anti-government conspiracy, despite all persuasions and complaints. The soldiers of the guard are quite surprised that the famous Vyrubova is not at all a depraved secular diva, but a disabled person on crutches, looking much older than her 32 years.

The investigation denied rumors about her connection with Rasputin

After spending several days in a pre-trial detention cell, Vyrubova finds herself in the most terrible prison for political criminals - in the Trubetskoy bastion of the Peter and Paul Fortress, where, in addition to the empress's friend, other enemies of the new government, whose names were associated with all the worst crimes of the former regime, are also imprisoned: the leader of the right-wing party " Union of the Russian People” Alexander Dubrovin, former Minister of War Vladimir Sukhomlinov, Prime Ministers Boris Shtyurmer and Ivan Goremykin, Interior Minister Alexander Protopopov. Tsarist officials are kept in appalling conditions. When Vyrubova is brought into the cell, the soldiers take the straw bag and pillow from the bed, tear off the gold chain on which the cross hangs, take away the icons and jewelry: “The cross and several icons fell on my knees. I cried out in pain; then one of the soldiers hit me with his fist, and, spitting in my face, they left, slamming the iron door behind them. From Vyrubova's memoirs, it becomes clear how inhuman the attitude towards the prisoners was: from dampness and constant cold, she gets pleurisy, her temperature rises, she finds herself practically exhausted. There is a huge puddle on the floor in the middle of her cell, sometimes she falls into it from her bunk in delirium and wakes up soaked through. The prison doctor, according to Vyrubova's memoirs, mocks the prisoners: “I was literally starving. Twice a day they brought half a bowl of some kind of bourda, like soup, into which the soldiers often spat, they put glass. It often stank of rotten fish, so I plugged my nose, swallowing some to keep from starving; poured out the rest." However, a few months later, a thorough investigative check was finally carried out, and on July 24 Vyrubova was released due to the lack of corpus delicti.

For a month Vyrubova lives quietly in Petrograd, until on August 25 she is declared an extremely dangerous counter-revolutionary and sent to the Finnish fortress of Sveaborg. The convoy leaves for its destination on the Polar Star yacht, which used to be the property of the royal family - Vyrubova often visited it: “It was impossible to recognize the wonderful dining room of Their Majesties in the spat, filthy and smoky cabin. At the same tables sat about a hundred "rulers" - dirty, brutalized sailors. By the way, their hatred for each other was mutual - the majority associated the figure of Vyrubova with the most sinister crimes of the tsarist government. Leon Trotsky unexpectedly comes to her aid, who orders the immediate release of the "prisoner of Kerensky" (not without the protection of Vyrubova's mother, Nadezhda Taneeva). On October 3, Vyrubova was brought to a reception at Smolny, where Lev Kamenev and his wife Olga, Trotsky's sister, met her. Here they even feed her dinner, after which they let her go.

Fearing re-arrest, Vyrubova hid with her friends for another year, finding refuge in "the cellars and closets of the poor, who she once rescued from poverty." At the end of 1920, a devoted friend of the former empress managed to illegally enter Finland, where she would live for another 40 years, taking tonsure under the name Maria Taneeva in the Smolensk Skete of the Valaam Monastery.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Anna Taneeva-Vyrubova, like Grigory Rasputin, found herself at the very center of the Masonic smear campaign to discredit the Russian monarchy, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna and Tsar Nicholas II. And after the revolution of 1917, the haters of the Tsarist power finally formed the slanderous myth about the “rotten monarchy”, “the debauchery of Rasputin” and his “selfish and loving girlfriend” Vyrubova, who allegedly also had a passion for power.

Writer Igor Evsin about the fate of the righteous nun Anna (Anna Alexandrovna Taneeva-Vyrubova).

However, today it is documented that several official medical examinations of Taneeva-Vyrubova were carried out by special commissions, which stated the same thing: Anna Aleksandrovna is a virgin. And already during her lifetime it became clear that the statement about her intimate relations with Rasputin was slander.

As for greed and imaginary millions accumulated by Vyrubova, the following must be said. Having fled from the Soviet authorities to Finland, she was refused the issuance of Finnish citizenship due to lack of sufficient means of subsistence. And having received citizenship, she lived in Finland very modestly, almost begging.

She did not have any accumulated millions allegedly received for her petitions for certain people before Tsar Nicholas II. This means that she did not have any influence driven by self-interest on Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna.

This is how Anna Alexandrovna was described by Comrade Ober-Procurator of the Holy Synod, Prince N.D. Zhevakhov: “Having entered the bosom of Orthodoxy, the Empress was imbued not only with the letter, but also with its spirit, and, being a believing Protestant, accustomed to respecting religion, she fulfilled her requirements differently from the people around her who loved only “to talk about God ”, but did not recognize any obligations imposed by religion. The only exception was Anna Alexandrovna Vyrubova, whose unfortunate personal life early introduced her to those inhuman sufferings that forced her to seek help only from God.

Note that Zhevakhov here speaks of the suffering that Taneeva-Vyrubova endured after a terrible railway accident. This catastrophe practically killed her, and only the prayers of the elder Grigory Rasputin resurrected Anna Alexandrovna to life. Elder Gregory then performed a miracle that shocked all the eyewitnesses. However, Vyrubova forever remained an invalid and was forced to endure severe pain.

“The life of A. A. Vyrubova,” Prince Zhevakhov writes further, “was truly the life of a martyr, and you need to know at least one page of this life in order to understand the psychology of her deep faith in God and why only in communion with God A. A Vyrubova found the meaning and content of her deeply unhappy life. And when I hear the condemnation of A. A. Vyrubova from those who, not knowing her, repeat the vile slander created not even by her personal enemies, but by the enemies of Russia and Christianity, the best representative of which was A. A. Vyrubova, then I am surprised not so much to human malice, but to human thoughtlessness...

The Empress got acquainted with the spiritual image of A. A. Vyrubova when she found out with what courage she endured her sufferings, hiding them even from her parents. When I saw her lonely struggle with human malice and vice, then between Her and A. A. Vyrubova there arose that spiritual connection, which became the greater, the more A. A. Vyrubova stood out against the general background of a self-satisfied, prim, unbelieving know.

Infinitely kind, childishly trusting, pure, knowing neither cunning nor cunning, striking with her extreme sincerity, meekness and humility, suspecting intent nowhere and of nothing, considering herself obliged to meet every request, A. A. Vyrubova, like the Empress , divided her time between the Church and the exploits of love for her neighbor, far from the thought that she could become a victim of deceit and malice of bad people.

In fact, Prince Zhevakhov told us about the life of a righteous woman, a servant of God.

At one time, Investigator Nikolai Rudnev headed one of the departments of the Extraordinary Commission established by the Provisional Government of Kerensky. The department was called "Investigation of the activities of dark forces" and investigated, among others, the cases of Grigory Rasputin and Anna Vyrubova. Rudnev conducted the investigation honestly and without prejudice and came to the conclusion that the materials against Rasputin were slander. And about Anna Vyrubova, he wrote the following:

“Having heard a lot about the exceptional influence of Vyrubova at the Court and about her relations with Rasputin, information about which was placed in our press and circulated in society, I went to Vyrubova for interrogation in the Peter and Paul Fortress, frankly, hostile to her. This unfriendly feeling did not leave me in the office of the Peter and Paul Fortress, right up to the appearance of Vyrubova under the escort of two soldiers. When Mrs. Vyrubova entered, I was immediately struck by the special expression in her eyes: this expression was full of unearthly meekness. This first favorable impression was fully confirmed in my subsequent conversations with her.

My assumptions about the moral qualities of Mrs. Vyrubova, taken out of lengthy conversations with her in the Peter and Paul Fortress, in the detention center, and, finally, in the Winter Palace, where she appeared on my calls, were fully confirmed by her manifestation of purely Christian forgiveness in relation to those from whom she had to endure a lot in the walls of the Peter and Paul Fortress. And here it should be noted that I learned about these abuses of Mrs. Vyrubova by the fortress guards not from her, but from Mrs. Taneeva.

Only after that did Mrs. Vyrubova confirm everything her mother had said, declaring with surprising calmness and gentleness: "They are not to blame, they don't know what they're doing." In truth, these sad episodes of mockery of the personality of Vyrubova prison guards, expressed in the form of SPITTING IN THE FACE, REMOVING HER CLOTHES AND UNDERWEAR, ACCOMPANIED BY BEATING THE FACE AND OTHER PARTS OF THE BODY OF THE SICK WOMAN WHO BARBLY MOVED ON CRUTCHES, AND THE THREATS TO LIFE THE CONCUBE OF THE SOVEREIGN AND GRIGORY" prompted the commission of inquiry to transfer Mrs. Vyrubova to the detention facility at the former Provincial Gendarmerie Directorate."

Here we see the real Christian feat of the martyr Anna. A feat that repeats the feat of Christ Himself.

However, until now, Anna Taneeva-Vyrubova is judged according to her alleged book of memoirs "Her Majesty's maid of honor Anna Vyrubova." However, while it does contain most of the original text, the editorial has cut it in half! Moreover, it includes fictional paragraphs that Anna Aleksandrovna never wrote. Thus, in a Jesuit subtly, the work of discrediting the righteous martyr continues. The publishers did their best to distort the moral image of Vyrubova, to give the reader the impression of her as a person of a narrow-minded mind.

The forged diary "Anna Vyrubova's Diary" placed in the book is especially aimed at this. In fact, this is a continuation of the diabolical work to discredit both Anna Alexandrovna herself, and Grigory Rasputin and the holy Royal Family.

This vile fake was written by the famous Soviet writer A.N. Tolstoy and historian P. E. Shchegolev, a former member of the Extraordinary Investigative Commission of the Provisional Government. Alas, alas and alas - the texts of the book "Her Majesty's maid of honor Anna Vyrubova" and the fake diary placed in it are still reprinted in various reputable publications and passed off as originals.

However, archival documentary evidence about Vyrubova-Taneeva creates a true image of the righteous. Based on them, the modern historian Oleg Platonov writes: “One of the closest admirers of Rasputin, a friend of the Empress Anna Vyrubova, was a model of the most strict life.

She devoted her life to serving the royal family and Rasputin. She did not have a personal life. A healthy, beautiful woman completely obeyed the most stringent monastic requirements. In fact, she turned her life into a monastic ministry, while the slanderers in the leftist press published the most vile details about her supposedly depraved intimate life.

In the hospital with the wounded on the fronts of the Great (First World) War. On the left is the first female surgeon in Russia, Princess Vera Gedroits (in a hat) and her nurses (in white headscarves) - Grand Duchess Tatyana, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and Anna VYRUBOVA. Sitting - Grand Duchess Olga.

Anna VYRUBOVA , nee Taneeva (1884 - 1964) was the daughter of the secretary of state and chief manager of the Chancellery of the Russian Emperor and the great-great-great-granddaughter of Field Marshal Kutuzov. The maid of honor and closest friend of the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. She was considered one of the ardent admirers of Grigory Rasputin. For which, under the "democrats" of the Provisional Government and the Bolsheviks, she was repeatedly slandered. From the beginning of the Great (World War I) together with the Empress and her daughters, she worked as a nurse in a hospital. In 1915, after a railway accident, she remained crippled for life, moved on crutches or a wheelchair. She organized a military hospital in Tsarskoye Selo for monetary compensation for the injury. After the February Revolution of 1917, she was arrested by "democrats" on suspicion of espionage and treachery and was kept in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Was released due to lack of evidence with the help of Trotsky. A medical examination established that she was a virgin and could not have been Grigory Rasputin's mistress. In his memoirs ("Pages of my life ”, first edition, Paris, 1922) described the approaching catastrophe and the death of the Russian Empire as follows: “It is difficult and disgusting to talk about Petrograd society, which, despite the war, had fun and reveled all day long. Restaurants and theaters flourished…

“In practice, high society princes and other representatives of high society led a frivolous lifestyle, did not pay attention to the people, who were on a low standard of living, did not pay attention to their culture and education. Bolshevism was born through their fault. ... The death of Russia did not occur with the help of outside forces. We must also recognize the fact that the Russians themselves, those from the privileged classes, are to blame for its death.

***
In January 1921, her relatives miraculously managed to transport her, a wheelchair user, over the ice of the bay to Finland. In 1923, in the Smolensk Skete of the Valaam Monastery, she was secretly tonsured a nun with the name Maria. Even in St. Petersburg, she made a vow that if she and her mother managed to escape to Finland, then she would devote her remaining life to God. Hieroschemamonk Ephraim (Khrobostov) becomes her spiritual father.

In the fall of 1939, the Winter War began. Anna Vyrubova leaves Finland (Vyborg) for Sweden and lives not far from Stockholm in a small shelter with full support. The expenses were paid by the Swedish Court. The Swedish Queen Louise was the daughter of the sister of the Russian Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. Anna was familiar and friendly with Queen Louise.
At the request of Anna Vyrubova, Marshal Mannerheim, with whom she was personally acquainted, gave her the following recommendation in 1940: “For over thirty years I have known Mrs. Anna Taneeva, with her respected parents and with many members of their family, and I ask that all those whoever finds himself in communication with Mrs. Taneeva - who suffered a lot, in addition, became disabled after a railway accident - treats her sympathetically and with understanding. Anna Vyrubova was given a modest apartment in Helsinki.

Maid of honor of the last Russian EmpressShe was buried at the Ilyinsky Russian Cemetery in Helsinki. A modest but well-groomed grave testifies that the memory of her and her martyr's life lives in the hearts of people.

Name: Anna Vyrubova (Anna Taneeva)

Age: 80 years old

Activity: maid of honor and friend of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, memoirist

Family status: was divorced

Anna Vyrubova: biography

Anna Alexandrovna Vyrubova was not only the favorite maid of honor of the Empress, but also the closest friend of the august person. She knew many secrets of the court and was initiated into the details of the life of the royal family. This was the cause of envy, gossip and incredible rumors that poisoned her life and trailed even after death.

Childhood and youth

Anna Vyrubova was born into a noble family, where many ancestors became famous for their faithful service to the tsar and the fatherland. The maid of honor of the maid of honor is Taneeva. She was born in St. Petersburg in the summer of 1884. Anna's father, Alexander Sergeevich Taneyev, was a prominent official and for 20 years held the responsible post of Secretary of State and Chief Executive of the Imperial Chancellery.

It is noteworthy that the same post under the tsars, and was occupied by the grandfather and great-grandfather of Taneeva.

Anna Vyrubova's mother, Nadezhda Illarionovna Tolstaya, was the great-great-granddaughter of the field marshal himself. Her father, Illarion Tolstoy, was a participant in the Russian-Turkish war, and her grandfather, General Nikolai Tolstoy, managed the Nikolaev Chesme almshouse.

Anna Vyrubova spent her childhood in a family estate near Moscow, which was called Rozhdestveno. From a young age, the girl was instilled with good manners and a love of reading. In 1902, she passed the exam at the St. Petersburg educational district and received the right to work as a home teacher.

For six months the Taneyev family lived in St. Petersburg, and for six months in Rozhdestveno. Their neighbors were noble: the princes Golitsyn, with whom the Taneevs were related, and Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. His wife, Elizaveta Feodorovna, was the sister of the Tsar's wife, Alexandra Feodorovna.

One day, when the Taneyevs came to Rozhdestveno again, Elizaveta Fyodorovna invited them to tea. There Anna Alexandrovna Vyrubova, then still Taneeva, met Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, who came to visit her older sister.

maid of honor of the empress

In 1903, when Anna was 19 years old, she received the so-called cipher: she was entrusted with the duties of a city maid of honor under the empress, temporarily replacing the ill Sophia Dzhambakur-Orbeliani. From that moment on, Anna Alexandrovna Vyrubova was among those chosen who wrote the history of Russia. The girl was obliged to be on duty at balls and other appearances in the light of the empress.

Soon the royal family went on vacation and took Taneeva with them. Together with Alexandra Fedorovna and the children, Anna picked mushrooms and berries, walked through the forest, and performed small tasks. They became attached to a pleasant and sensible girl. Later, in her memoirs, she writes that she also fell in love with the sovereign's family with all her heart.

The empress liked the smart, modest and well-mannered girl, who stood out sharply against the background of the conceited and self-serving nobility. But her kind attitude towards the new maid of honor immediately aroused the envy of the rest of the courtiers.

Envious and ill-wishers, of whom there were a great many around the queen, expressed open discontent, blaming the empress for her ignorance of etiquette. They said that only bearers of chosen surnames could approach the royal family, and the Taneevs were not included in this circle.

But Alexandra Fedorovna was in no hurry to give in, answering that she now knows that at least one person in her entourage serves her disinterestedly, without demanding remuneration.

In 1907, Anna married naval lieutenant Alexander Vyrubov. The queen favored this marriage. It was she who found her beloved maid of honor, as it seemed to her, a worthy party. But a year later the marriage broke up.

After the divorce, Anna Vyrubova could no longer be an official maid of honor - only unmarried girls had the right to perform these duties. But the queen did not want to part with almost the only friend she trusted. Therefore, Vyrubova remained with her as an unofficial lady-in-waiting.

It often happened that the Empress escorted her to her office through the servants' rooms in order to avoid meetings with full-time ladies-in-waiting. Women whiled away the time for needlework, reading and spiritual conversation. But this secrecy of meetings gave rise to malicious rumors and dirty gossip.

A failed marriage and malicious whispering behind her back pushed the religious Anna Vyrubova to even closer communion with the church. Pierre Gilliard, the tutor of the Tsarevich, wrote about this in his memoirs. He said that the girl was very religious, prone to mysticism and sentimental, but sincerely devoted to the imperial family.

Prince N. D. Zhevakhov, a close friend of the Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod, agrees with him. In his memoirs, he wrote that the lady-in-waiting Anna Vyrubova turned out to be the only truly believing person in the empress's entourage.

The web of gossip began to weave even more actively when an old man appeared in the life of the imperial family. Rumor attributed his acquaintance with the tsarina to the mediation of Vyrubova. But the memoirs of Anna Vyrubova refute this. In them, the woman writes that she met Grigory Efimovich thanks to the Grand Duchess Milica Nikolaevna. And the appearance of the Siberian wanderer in the royal chambers is the merit of the Grand Dukes and their wives, who heard about the miraculous properties of the amazing old man.

When the pendulum of history swung and the tsar abdicated, the former close associates of the Romanovs defiantly turned away from Nicholas II and his family to please the new authorities. Now they openly slandered the family and the elder, whom they bowed to only yesterday. Anna Vyrubova and Grigory Rasputin were linked together by rumor. Accusations of a vicious relationship rained down on them.

In the memoirs of Anna Vyrubova, it was said that the Grand Dukes and the aristocracy slandered the loudest, spreading rumors about the “rotten monarchy”, the imaginary vices of the imperial family, the depraved Rasputin and the cunning maid of honor.

After the February Revolution of 1917, the Provisional Government arrested Anna Vyrubova. Even her disability did not become an obstacle. After a terrible railway accident in which the maid of honor fell in 1915, she survived by a miracle. The woman could move only in a wheelchair or with the help of crutches.

Anna Vyrubova was accused of espionage and treachery and thrown into the Peter and Paul Fortress for several months. Investigator Nikolai Rudnev, who at that time was in charge of one of the departments of the Cheka (an emergency commission created by the Provisional Government of Alexander Kerensky), was instructed to investigate the cases of Rasputin and Vyrubova.

For this purpose, Rudnev arrived at the Peter and Paul Fortress to meet with Anna Alexandrovna. What he saw shocked the battered investigator. The emaciated woman was subjected to torture and incredible humiliation. She barely moved.

Rudnev demanded to replace the attending physician Serebrennikov, who encouraged bullying of the patient. Ivan Manukhin, who replaced him, having examined the former maid of honor of the Empress, was amazed: there was no living place on her body from constant beatings.

The woman was hardly fed and was not allowed to walk. From the cold and dampness, she developed pneumonia. But the main thing is that several medical examinations carried out debunked the main and dirtiest myth about Anna Vyrubova: it turned out that she was a virgin. The intimate ties attributed to her with Rasputin, the tsar and the tsarina turned out to be slander.

Due to the lack of corpus delicti, the sick and barely alive woman was released. But she was too dangerous a witness. Therefore, the threat of a new arrest constantly hung over her. Anna Alexandrovna had to hide in the apartments and basements of the people she had once helped.

In 1920, she managed to illegally move to Finland with her mother. There, the former maid of honor Anna Vyrubova, accused of greed and allegedly received millions from the royal family, led an almost beggarly lifestyle. She had difficulty obtaining citizenship due to her lack of means of subsistence.

In exile, Taneeva-Vyrubova wrote a memoir entitled "Pages of My Life". In them, she told the truth about the royal family, Grigory Rasputin and herself.

Unfortunately, until now this woman is judged by another book - "Her Majesty's maid of honor Anna Vyrubova" or "Vyrubova's Diary". This essay appeared in 1920. Its authenticity has already been called into question. Publicly refuted the authenticity of the "Diary" and Anna Alexandrovna Vyrubova herself.

In all likelihood, this vulgar libel was written to order by the new government by the Soviet writer and professor of history P. E. Shchegolev. In the same period, their joint play with a similar plot called "The Conspiracy of the Empress" was released.

Personal life

The 22-year-old maid of honor, the favorite of the Empress, was deeply unhappy in her personal life. Naval officer Alexander Vyrubov, whose wedding took place in Tsarskoye Selo, turned out to be a mentally ill person. Perhaps this happened because of the tragedy experienced. The battleship "Petropavlovsk", on which he served, was flooded during a breakthrough in the harbor of Port Arthur. Of the 750 crew members, only 83 survived. Vyrubov was among them.

It seemed to the Empress that with such a person her maid of honor would be happy. But the personal life of Anna Vyrubova cracked immediately after the marriage. Probably because of the shock experienced, the husband suffered from sexual impotence. In addition, according to Gilliard, he turned out to be a scoundrel and a drunkard.

Soon, Alexander showed signs of severe mental illness. Once, in a fit of rage, a drunken husband severely beat his wife. Vyrubov was declared mentally deranged and placed in a Swiss hospital. The marriage was annulled after a year.

Death

Anna Vyrubova lived in Finland for another 40 years. She took the tonsure and took the name Maria. Nun Maria spent the last years of her life in the Smolensk Skete of the Valaam Monastery.

Anna Alexandrovna Vyrubova died in the summer of 1964 at the age of 80. She was buried in an Orthodox cemetery in the Lapinlahti district of Helsinki.