The Reformer
Page 11
Soon afterward, Witte launched a set of negotiations aimed at forming a cabinet relatively acceptable to the nation. First he asked Dmitri Shipov, the leader of liberal Slavism, to call on him, and asked him to join the cabinet as state controller. Shipov declined the job offer, but proffered some advice. As Witte had clearly invited Shipov in order to learn a zemstvo viewpoint, Shipov advised him to turn to the zemstvo leadership, in the form of the Bureau of Zemstvo Congresses, and ask it to send him a delegation. Shipov expected that at the Bureau’s scheduled meeting on October 22 he would have a say in naming the delegates. But the process moved too swiftly. Witte sent the invitation to the Bureau by telegram, which (in Maklakov’s words) “whipped up” the Bureau’s self-confidence. Seeing the request as a sign of the government’s weakness and a capitulation, the Bureau began to act with great self-confidence.25
Before Shipov could meet with the Bureau, it formed a small committee that included, either as a member or at least an attendee, someone who wasn’t involved in zemstvo matters at all, Miliukov himself.26 Miliukov managed to arrange the selection of F. F. Kokoshkin as leader of the delegation, a choice that Miliukov himself recognized as signaling to Witte that the zemstvo bureau was not ready to compromise.27 The committee charged the delegation to tell Witte that the only solution to the present situation was to call a constituent assembly, to be chosen by a “four-tailed” franchise; and that a constitution “granted” by the tsar would be completely unsatisfactory. (This insistence on immediate democracy at the outset, including a democratic method of generating a constitution, seems based on Miliukov’s belief that a developed and organized democratic society “can be created only by an active political life,”28 that is, that the onset of democracy would itself be enough to generate the skills needed to make democracy functional, to enable it to survive amid countervailing forces such as reaction, populist demagoguery, and interest-group machinations.) Obviously Witte could not accept such terms.29 Witte soon thereafter invited Miliukov himself in for consultation, and, curiously, Miliukov’s direct advice to Witte was quite different from the standard Kadet notion that the only way forward was through a constituent assembly. Writing of it later, he explained that with Witte he conceived of himself as acting in a non-party capacity:
I came [Miliukov reported] not as representative of anyone but in my capacity as a private person, whose advice was sought by the highest representative of the authorities of the moment, when it was being decided what direction Russian history should take. And on the question then put to me by Witte, what should be done, I decided to answer according to my conscience and personal conviction, not binding myself to the generally approved political formulae of my intellectual fellow travelers. I wanted to take the discussion down from academic heights to the sphere of real life.30
Miliukov’s explanation of his answer does not really bridge the gap between his public position and his advice to Witte. If important decisions “for Russian history” were at stake (as they were), it would be startling to think that Witte would want anything other than Miliukov’s real views, or that he would prefer notions from the “academic heights” rather than ones from the real world. It seems a sad commentary on the politics of the Kadet party that there was such a gulf between its leader’s “conscience and personal conviction” and the “generally approved political formulae” that he and his “intellectual fellow travelers” had enthusiastically adopted.
The substance of Miliukov’s advice was no less otherworldly. He told Witte that, although he still thought that a constituent assembly was the ideal way to get to a constitution, it was unsuitable in the circumstances and that the tsar should just grant one. Yes, he acknowledged, society would complain (in part because Miliukov himself had been constantly insisting that only a constituent assembly would do), but in the end it would work.
Specifically, he proposed that Witte arrange translation of either the Belgian or the Bulgarian constitution (presumably chosen as reasonably liberal written constitutions, and, in the Bulgarian case, one that had survived since 1879 in a country with scant liberal tradition), get the tsar to sign it the next day (whichever constitution it happened to be), and publish it the following day. Miliukov’s constitutionalism seemed to be wrapped in a passion for labels, for form regardless of substance: when Witte refused to use the word “constitution” and explained that the tsar was against it, Miliukov, by his own account, broke off the discussion, telling Witte, “It is useless for us to continue our conversation.”31
Maklakov says, with some justice, that Witte must have taken the constitutional proposals as a joke. At stake was a new order for a huge country of different ethnicities, different “estates” (a historical legacy that Maklakov was determined to eradicate),32 and different levels of education. Its political relations were encrusted with complications that had accumulated over centuries. And Miliukov was saying that for this transition, it was enough to adopt the constitution of one of two very small countries, with apparent indifference as to which it should be.33 All told, he took a “flick-a-switch” view of how to transition to liberal democracy.
Maklakov’s critique of the Belgian/Bulgarian solution operates on two practical levels. The first is the matter of political power. The tsar had not been defeated. To be sure, his issuance of the October Manifesto had not delivered the hoped-for calm. Indeed, a major insurrection had arisen in Moscow right after its promulgation. But as suppression of the uprising in December was to show, the regime could protect itself. It was naïve and even arrogant to think that under those circumstances the tsar would accept the role of a figurehead in a purely parliamentary regime.
The other element of absurdity in the Belgian/Bulgarian option lay simply in the broader issues of social and political evolution. If a new regime in Russia was to live as a rule-of-law state, it could not instantly transform all the actors’ accustomed roles by fiat. Change to an alternative system of arbitrary rule would be simple enough. But in Maklakov’s view transformation to the rule of law was a different story: people’s old practices, expectations, and habits of mind inevitably shape their behavior to some degree, and Russia’s historic ones would not match the kind of full-blown democracy that Miliukov contemplated.
After the failure of negotiations between the Kadets and Witte, revolutionaries launched a general political strike in Moscow with the hope—which proved well-founded—that it would develop into an armed uprising.34 (Some school students were accused of having started the uprising. Maklakov defended them, and a fellow lawyer and observer wrote later that “never did Maklakov’s talent sparkle so brightly” as in the defense, laying bare the weak spots of the prosecution and leading to acquittal.35) In Maklakov’s view, any constitutional regime would have felt obliged to suppress it. Witte’s choices were whether to do so in alliance with liberal society or with the right. Even in an autocracy, a prime minister needs allies. Finding himself unequivocally rejected on the liberal side, Witte predictably turned to the right, unleashing Minister of the Interior Durnovo to repress the revolution.
Maklakov makes no bones about the savagery of this repression. He describes the use of artillery against neighborhoods, selective shootings of individuals on lists provided by the Okhrana (secret police), and the slaughter of students for no offense other than being a student at large on the streets of Moscow. He recounts one poignant case, in which a father kept his student son at home all day, but then ventured out into the streets with him at night, with the son wearing a coat that covered his student clothing. Police wrenched the son from the company of his father and hustled him off; the father saw him again only in a morgue.36
It is of course speculation that repression by a government at least loosely allied with the liberals would have been less savage. But Witte in his diary entries repeatedly laments his isolation at this period.37 It seems plausible that, if he could have pointed to some liberal support, he might have adopted, or persuaded the tsar to adopt, less ruthless methods of repress
ion.
Instead the Kadets stood aloof, if anything signaling sympathy with the revolutionaries by organizing medical aid, never uttering a public word of criticism of the revolutionaries, and never expressing any recognition that government—any government—has some duty to prevent popular violence. In the central committee of the Kadet party Maklakov and N. N. Lvov favored Kadet condemnation of the uprising but didn’t prevail.38
The Kadet response to the October Manifesto and its aftermath was in Maklakov’s view a failure on many fronts. The most immediate effect of their refusal to work with Witte was the de facto rightist control over suppression of the Moscow uprising. More broadly, it strengthened the right and undermined moderates in the bureaucracy. It also meant, in Maklakov’s view, the abandonment of a key opportunity for the sort of activity required for constitutionalism. A leitmotiv of his writings is the idea that a workable rule-of-law state requires that citizens follow certain behavior patterns, developed and nurtured by experience. Foremost of these is the habit of compromise, of recognition of the rights and interests of others. He quotes Bismarck as saying that the essence of constitutionalism is compromise. Bismarck’s view has been seconded by a quite different political figure, Bill Clinton: “If you read the Constitution, it ought to be subtitled: ‘Let’s make a deal.’”39 Russian autocracy, of course, provided few chances for that experience—the zemstvo being the most notable exception. The October Manifesto offered such an opportunity, and, at least as a party, the Kadets turned their backs on it.
The next major step in the regime’s halting embrace of constitutionalism was its April 23, 1906, repromulgation of Russia’s Fundamental Laws, revised to reflect the commitments made in the October Manifesto. In the next chapter I’ll tackle the question of whether those laws moved Russia seriously toward the ideal of the rule of law. Before that, we should consider Maklakov’s involvement in an effort in Paris, just before the promulgation of the revised Fundamental Laws, to thwart the government’s effort to float a massive loan (2.25 billion francs) with the aid of the French and, to a lesser extent, the British, governments. Apart from its intrinsic interest, the episode is probably the strongest ground for an argument that Maklakov was just Monday-morning quarterbacking in his later writings accusing the Kadet leadership of radicalism and folly in 1905–1907.
Indeed, at first blush, his behavior sounds rather extreme: working abroad to defeat a key foreign policy initiative of one’s country. Perhaps, in fact, it was extreme. Under our Logan Act, adopted in 1799, it would be a crime for an American to carry on correspondence or conversations with a foreign government with the intent to “defeat measures of the United States.”40 Because Russia (so far as I know) had no equivalent of the Logan Act, the key issue was political and not legal: activities of this sort might tar the liberation movement as at least non-patriotic, perhaps worse. I will lay out the facts, primarily as presented by Maklakov himself in his 1936 memoir-history, Vlast i obshchestvennost (State and society). That account squares well with the published scholarly accounts; where they diverge substantively, the scholars offer no evidence supporting their contradiction of Maklakov.41
Maklakov had participated actively in the election for the First Duma, both campaigning for party candidates himself and, as head of the Kadet speakers’ bureau, guiding others. By April 1906 he felt entitled to some time off and, following his long-established predilection for vacations in France, headed to Paris. On the train he had the company of Paul Dolgorukov, who went on directly to the Riviera from Warsaw (and who, as we’ll see, turns up later in Paris and engages in anti-loan lobbying). One of the scholars of the subject speaks of Maklakov’s having got “the idea to go to Paris and join the protest against the loan,” but it seems safe to reject the insinuation that he went to Paris to participate in the protest, given the absence of any supporting evidence and Maklakov’s longtime practice of taking French vacations.42
Once in Paris, Maklakov met one or more of the friends whom he regularly saw there,43 learned that his old friend S. E. Kalmanovich was in town, and was brought by friends to an event in honor of Kalmanovich’s daughter’s wedding. People at the party were somewhat astonished to learn that liberals in Russia had not fully shared the Paris emigrant community’s concern that the imminent loan would strengthen the autocracy vis-à-vis the liberals. Maklakov’s friends brought him to meet Pierre Quillard, a French poet, an ardent Dreyfusard, a champion of oppressed nationalities, and a leading member of the Société des amis du peuple russe et des peuples annexés. Frenchmen of a liberal or socialist bent, with the Société in the lead, had already conducted a vigorous—but quite unsuccessful—public campaign against the possible loan. Quillard proposed that Maklakov prepare a memorandum against the loan for submission to French government officials. Good connections between members of the French government and Société figures such as Quillard and Anatole France ensured delivery of such a memo.44
Maklakov agreed, and a copy of the resulting memo, evidently later obtained from French foreign office files, was published in 1961.45 In a chapter of his 1936 memoirs-history, State and Society, addressing the loan, Maklakov acknowledges that he submitted such a memo but never quotes from it, presumably because he had neither a copy nor access to the foreign office files. His account of the memo is (naturally) shorter than the memo itself, but quite accurately reports its basic thesis, which was entirely political, not legal. It made no legal claim—such as the left had been circulating in France—that the loan would be unlawful without Duma approval. In State and Society he said that he then believed that until promulgation of the Fundamental Laws the tsar’s powers continued;46 the memo is in full accord. The memo argues instead that the loan would represent an intervention on the side of autocracy, relaxing its need to accommodate the burgeoning liberal democracy. Although one of the scholars writing about the anti-loan campaign says that “no reference to this memorandum has been found in Maklakov’s major works,” in fact State and Society refers to the memo and gives its gist.47
But in two respects Maklakov’s account of the memo might be said to shade the truth. First, without actually saying so, the memo rather subtly gives the impression that Maklakov speaks for the Kadet party. In a few places he uses the first person plural (nous or notre), saying, for example, that he’s going to discuss the reasons “why our party, in harmony with the great majority of the nation, consider the foreign loan proposed by our government as disastrous [funeste] for the interests of Russia and dangerous for those of France.”48 His later account doesn’t acknowledge that he had seemed to act as a representative of the party.
Second, though Maklakov’s memoirs-history made clear the basic claim that the loan would help the survival of an absolutist regime, it gave little clue of the memo’s scathing portrait of the autocracy:
The dilemma is clearly posed: the absolutist party must either yield to the national will, and abandon its dream of restoring autocracy, or it must immediately make a supreme effort to provoke a conflict and suppress the Duma. . . .
If it is the former, the current practices of the government will continue, that is, the dilapidation of the Treasury, the weakening of industry and of commerce for want of the necessary liberties, the massacre of Jews and of ethnic minorities, of liberals and intellectuals, the destruction of what remains of the universities and schools, the suppression of the few liberties conceded to the press, the total ruin of agriculture, the final exhaustion of the country’s last vibrant forces, the daily increasing disorganization of the army and the fleet, and finally permanent recourse to more and more onerous loans ending in the inevitable bankruptcy.49
Besides savaging the autocracy and drawing on French sympathies for representative government, liberty, and ethnic fairness, the memo targets concrete French interests: France’s desire for military advantage; firming up its entente with Russia; and its hopes of ever being repaid.
The memo also claims that a decree had “annihilated” the authority of the Duma
by creating a higher legislative body, the State Council, in which half the seats were to be held by appointees of the government,50 and whose agreement would be necessary for most legislative action.
Although the memo might seem to track the most intransigent voices among the Kadets, it does acknowledge that the ministry had contained at least two liberals, M. M. Kutler and Vasily Timiriazev. But it nullifies whatever sympathy that might have won for the regime with the observation that they had been removed, which the memo ascribes to the influence of “a court camarilla” of grand dukes and others.51
The memo never had the slightest chance of affecting the loan. Although it was formally executed on April 22 (n.s.), the loan contract had been signed April 16,52 and the memo bears a legend at the top saying that it had been conveyed to the French foreign ministry on April 18. When Maklakov and two other Russians (Kalmanovich and Count Anatolii Nesselrode) met with Georges Clemenceau (then minister of the interior, but soon to start his first period as prime minister, from late 1906 to mid-1909), the minister made clear that the loan had been a done deal for some time.