The shadowin the Cabinet

There is a particular kind of ghost that haunts executive palaces, and its outline has barely changed in a hundred years. In the final, decaying days of the Romanov dynasty, Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra surrendered the fate of an empire to Grigori Rasputin – he held no official portfolio, answered to no parliament and took no oath of office. Yet, because he had the ear of the sovereign, cabinet ministers were appointed and dismissed at his whim, military strategies were altered and the formal machinery of the state was reduced to an expensive theater.