The Reformer

by Stephen F. Williams

  What of the need for State Council approval for a bill to become law? There is no doubt that the State Council caused the death of the Duma-approved reductions in burdens on the Old Believers. But apart from that, its role was in practice modest. The bill ending the Pale of Settlement died (or at least went into a coma) in a Duma committee, so the views of the State Council were of no consequence. The government’s legislation against the Finnish and Polish national minorities passed the Duma itself; again, the State Council caused no additional trouble.

  On judicial reform, the State Council preserved the township court—thus reversing the Duma, whose bill would have discarded it—and watered down some of the Duma’s provisions giving independence to the restored rural justices of the peace (for example, the ones relating to property qualifications and choice of the head of an assembly of justices of the peace). But in saving the township courts, the State Council cut out some of their most troublesome features—the role of the land captains in selecting the peasant judges and in appeals. The result was a restoration of something like the rural justice system before 1889, with two courts (township and justices of the peace) with partially overlapping jurisdictions and thus with a measure of competition between them. The competition provided a chance for comparison and thus perhaps a better basis for future legislative choices. So the State Council intervention here was by no means a total defeat for reform.

  The reforms proposed for suits challenging official lawlessness died without help from the State Council: Maklakov’s amendment on criminal suits was defeated in the Duma, and his effort to direct a committee to come up with proposals to improve civil remedies never secured a Duma vote. Again, the State Council was inconsequential.

  Finally, the bill to replace the decree equalizing peasant rights passed the Duma but was never presented to the State Council. This seems like a death wound from the latter. But, as Maklakov repeatedly stressed, the most important aspect of the bill was to put the broader issues of peasant rights and their role in local self-government on the agenda. The fact that reformers achieved neither goal—enactment of the bill into law and a serious tackling of local self-government—may be due more to the war than to State Council recalcitrance.

  In short, then, the State Council clearly had some capacity to thwart reform, but in practice seems to have played but a modest role from 1907 to 1917.

  That judgment, however, depends on the comparatively conservative character of the Third and Fourth Dumas. Had the pre–June 3 franchise survived, clashes between the two legislative bodies would have obviously been more frequent and severe. If we accept the idea that the Duma in its 1907–1917 form was learning to be an effective legislature, we must qualify the idea—an effective legislature, yes, but one with little appetite for liberal reform.

  But time and circumstances might have nudged it into becoming a transformative legislature. Consider the nineteenth-century British Parliament, which effected not only substantive reform (for example, repeal of the Corn Laws) but changes in the franchise that constantly increased the proportion of Britons having a say in government. Russian civil society was burgeoning during the Third and Fourth Dumas.13 Had it been allowed to pursue a peaceful course, it seems likely to have become ever more willing and able to press for changes that corresponded to the needs of an open society.

  Instead, of course, Russia’s entry into World War I radically altered matters. War is hardly a favorable incubator of liberal democracy. Its exigencies tend to make societies more tolerant of government arbitrariness, even to the point of welcoming it, and the case for the rule of law correspondingly weakens. Brandishing violence becomes the state’s primary activity. And although that violence is subject to certain regularities (for example, rules of thumb that help predict the outcome of a battle), these regularities are radically different from the norm-infused principles of law that Maklakov had sought to promote in the decade before the Great War. Although the conduct of war encourages a kind of pulling together against the external foe, it also involves government cultivation of venom, hatred, and paranoia toward that foe and internal ones, real or imagined.14 Such passions seem likely to still or even anaesthetize the spirit of compromise that Maklakov stressed, time and again, was the essence of constitutionalism.

  IV. The Slide toward Revolution

  CHAPTER 14

  National Liberals

  MAKLAKOV NEVER TRIED ANY of the drastic remedies available for the divergence between his views and the Kadets’—switching to another party, founding a new one, or trying to engineer a takeover of the Kadets. But in a kind of halfway move, he became identified with a group of moderate Kadets, left Octobrists, and some Progressives, known collectively as “national liberals.” A major strand in their thinking relates to foreign policy (an issue so far neglected here); the national liberals favored a relatively confrontational approach, above all toward Austria, Russia’s rival for influence in the Balkans. Related activities of the national liberals include the founding of a national liberal newspaper, Russkaia Molva (loosely, Russia Speaks), which published a daily paper for about eight months in 1912–13; the efforts of many political figures, including Maklakov, to form a centrist legislative bloc; and relatively open disputes between Maklakov (and like-minded Kadets) and his party. Finally, we consider why Maklakov never went into open rebellion against the Kadet leadership.

  In chapter 10 we saw how two of Maklakov’s persistent concerns, the rule of law and respect for the distinct cultures in the Russian empire, led him to be quite supportive of Russia’s national minorities, especially the Finns and the Poles. One might expect that someone who thought Russia should not push her domestic minorities around would, in a parallel spirit, favor a policy of avoiding confrontation with Russia’s neighbors. Maklakov evidently did not see it that way.

  His views surfaced clearly when Austria annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908. The Congress of Berlin in 1878 had approved Austrian occupation of the area but left its ultimate fate unresolved and presumably subject to future agreement of the great powers. In October 1908, Austria unilaterally annexed the region. Annexation didn’t add to Austrian control, which was already total. But the formal shift, changing Austria’s claim from indefinite to permanent tenure, set off an international crisis. In late October, Maklakov delivered a speech entitled “Serbia and the Slav Culture.” The forum was the Society for Slav Culture, of which he was one of the founders. The moving spirits behind the Society, especially Dmitri Shipov (who had dropped out of the Octobrist party because of its acquiescence in the field courts martial and had formed the Party of Peaceful Renewal), had intended the society to reach across all parties and be based on interest and competency in matters Slav. The group that originally agreed to participate met that standard (it included Miliukov, for example). But in fact the group selected to run the society consisted almost entirely of Octobrists—Maklakov was the only representative of any party to their left.1

  Maklakov’s speech on the Bosnian crisis was rather vehement.2 He called the annexation “an international crime against Bosnia and against Serbia.” He called the German settlements in Russia, presumably including those made at the invitation of Catherine the Great, “colonization,” and he imputed a “sinister character” to them. He specifically attacked the idea that Slav interests (Polish, Czech, or Balkan) could be fulfilled within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Not explaining why the dual empire of Austria-Hungary might not mutate into a triple empire by changing the status of its Slav regions, he declared that the position of the Austrian Slavs could be resolved only by a “victory outside of Austria.”

  Further, he attacked the left-wing idea that a nationalistic policy abroad would be a distraction from internal reform. He suggested, to the contrary, that a rebirth of national feeling would be good for reform: “Isn’t a people’s national feeling the same as an individual’s personal feeling of worthiness?” In a slight variation on the types of nationalism that he invoked in discussing national minori
ties, he decried a “bad” kind of nationalism, which compensated for national abasement (of an unspecified kind) with actions against Finns, Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians, and saw in those actions a satisfaction of national feeling. At this point in the talk, according to the newspaper account, there was a prolonged outburst of applause (presumably based on audience dislike of the bad kind of nationalism). At that, a policeman broke up the meeting. Maklakov got out a few last words, “Our nationalism is not like that.”

  The newspaper account of the speech went on to say, “The lecturer would have said, if he could have gone on: That from the point of view of the progressive parties we should rejoice that in the lawful feeling of national rebirth there is a worthy content, that seeks the defense of the weak, defense of Slav nationalities against their oppressors, that acts in the name of the idea of freedom and equality.”

  Thus the message seemed to be that Slavs should cast their lot with the Russians (and the converse), and should abjure any possible future with the Austrians. Why? Later Maklakov speeches contained standard allusions to “our Slav brothers,” but here he invokes a variant of Russian nationalism that “acts in the name of the idea of freedom and equality.” At the time it was hardly obvious that those ideas would flourish better under Russian than Austrian influence. Austria’s record included its 1867 self-transformation into the Austro-Hungarian Empire, based on a rough equality between those two national components. And whatever the potential of the October Manifesto and the Fundamental Laws of 1906, Russia’s record left it, as Maklakov well knew, woefully short of freedom or equality. Given the weakness of these implied arguments, Slav brotherhood seemed to have a lot of work to do to justify sacrifices on either side. And what was this brotherhood, anyway? A similarity in language, and whatever experience people of long-past generations must have shared that gave rise to the linguistic similarity. Of course, another argument might be raw great-power rivalry—unmentioned by Maklakov.

  The contrast with the Maklakov of domestic policy could hardly be starker. Gone are the nuances, the ability to see the other side, the search for win-win solutions. His arguments show a certain rhetorical ingenuity, as in the effort to elide nationalism and individual self-respect, but such ingenuity, untethered to an analysis of the real values at stake, seems more a deception than an example of Maklakov’s characteristic rhetoric—an evocation of feelings, links, and intuitions that the listeners had long sensed but never heard so well expressed.

  Dominic Lieven imputes Machiavellian domestic purposes to the national liberals such as Maklakov and Struve, for whom he uses a blunter term, “liberal imperialists.” The less plausible the claim to idealistic purposes, the stronger the case is for Lieven’s view. Nationalism had always been the regime’s “great prop,” he observes, and the positions taken by liberal imperialists meant competition on the same ground: “In seizing this ideal for themselves the liberals would take from the government’s hands ‘this flag, its only psychological resource.’”3

  The real value of seizing a political weapon may naturally prove very different from its apparent value. On this purely empirical question—whether pursuit of a forward policy in the Balkans would actually advance reform—the conservative Pyotr Durnovo surely had the better argument. In a February 1914 memo to the tsar, he predicted that a general European war would tear Russia’s government and society apart, probably bring on collapse of the imperial regime, and, given the lack of real authority in Russia’s legislative institutions and political parties, plunge Russia into anarchy. Except for not specifying that the anarchy would end in Bolshevism, he came remarkably close to perfect foresight. With this vision of the effects of war, he advocated reconciliation with Germany, the opposite of the course implied by the national liberals’ enthusiasm for Russia’s Slav brothers in the Balkans.4

  Maklakov seems not to have spoken much on these foreign policy issues. An important and telling exception is a speech in the Duma on December 7, 1912, about two and a half months after the start of the Balkan Wars of 1912–13 (September 25, 1912–July 5, 1913). In the first of these wars, Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria succeeded in collectively conquering most of the Ottoman Empire’s remaining Balkan territory. In the second, the erstwhile allies battled one another over the spoils. At the time of Maklakov’s speech, the first war had ended in sweeping allied victories over the Ottomans, and negotiations over the necessary boundary adjustments were proceeding at a conference in London that included ambassadors of the six great powers that had been present at the Congress of Berlin.

  Maklakov’s speech was almost entirely on domestic matters; it was a vintage display of his ability to lampoon government follies and simultaneously paint an appealing picture, even for the government itself, of pursuing constitutionalism. Making what looks like a last-minute adjustment to his speech, he started by saying that he didn’t want to go into detail on foreign policy, but, “at this critical moment when a page is being turned in world history closely linked to our national honor and our interests, we can’t say that Russia speaks a language worthy of her.” He went on to fault the government “for failing to say clearly that although Russia does not want war, does not want anything for herself, she knows what her merit lies in, her historic duty, and if she doesn’t seek complications, at the same time she doesn’t fear them.” Russia, he said, had spoken in a “meek” language, not that of a great state. He closed this detour into foreign policy by expressing the hope that Russia would “not fall to the temptation to lower Russia in the eyes of Europe and give a cruel disappointment to our younger Slav brothers.”5

  What had the Russian government said that Maklakov found so “meek” and unsuitable for a great power? He doesn’t specify, but, given the date, the trigger seems to have been Prime Minister Kokovtsov’s speech in the Duma on December 5. Kokovtsov’s speech was primarily on domestic matters, but had a brief discussion of the situation in the Balkans. He made the customary bow to Slav brotherhood, expressing “the warmest sympathy in all Russian hearts” for our friends and fellow Orthodox and for their “attainment of their vital interests.” But the emphasis seemed to be much more on the government’s hope of “remov[ing] for the future any expectation of new complications, which are always dangerous for European peace,” suggesting that he found European peace a lot more important than the Serbs’ territorial ambitions.6 Notice that Maklakov echoed the word “complications” but gave it almost the opposite spin: in his view, Russia should say that while she “doesn’t seek complications, at the same time she doesn’t fear them.”

  In fact, unbeknownst to Maklakov or the public, Russia had acquiesced in Austria’s insistence on establishing Albania with borders drawn so as to prevent Serbia from having direct access to the Adriatic (though the agreement also provided for Serbian access to the sea through an international railroad). In fact the population of Albania was not Slavic at all, so to the extent that concern for Russia’s “Slav brothers” meant helping Slavs to join each other in a Slavic nation, that impulse provided no basis for objecting to the Austrian proposal. Indeed, from that perspective, the Austrian position might have been faulted for allowing Serbia to keep Kosovo, which was also ethnically non-Slav. But when Russian acquiescence in the establishment of Albania became public, the press was outraged, as it was toward Russia’s generally unwarlike stance throughout the Balkan wars of 1912–13. Of the major papers, only Rech (Speech), which was controlled by Miliukov, advocated a calmer view.7 Maklakov’s nationalism seems to have been in tune with Russian sentiment—or, more precisely, the vocal element of that sentiment.

  In intra-Kadet battles over foreign policy, Maklakov sounded similar themes. The battles differed from the usual ones in that on the Balkan issues it was Miliukov rather than Maklakov who was relatively isolated. Some of the party members’ criticism of Miliukov suggests a curious political immaturity. At an October 12, 1912, meeting of the St. Petersburg central committee members, for instance, one of Miliukov’s critics described an artic
le by him as having more the “tone of a diplomat, a responsible minister of foreign affairs, than of a leader of the opposition.”8 In a normal moral universe, one might have thought that the highest praise. At a meeting of the Moscow branch of the central committee ten days later, Maklakov called for “preparedness,” in itself not necessarily a warlike stance, but, when coupled with the general mood of zest and sympathy for Russia’s fellow Slavs, and stripped of the sort of cautions that Kokovtsov stressed, it had an aggressive flavor.9 Despite the criticism, Miliukov continued to oppose Russia’s tying itself to Serb interests right up to the Austrian declaration of war on Serbia, whereupon he more or less reversed himself, becoming an ardent advocate of Russian pursuit of ambitious war aims, such as control of the Dardanelles.10

  Maklakov’s stance in 1912 (and in the whole period running up to Sarajevo) is a world apart from his views of the Russo-Japanese war in August 1904. At that time, in a speech at Beseda, he seemed to see the war mainly as an opportunity for scoring points against the regime, tying the regime to the war—which no longer presented any hope for a quick, decisive victory. More important, he disparaged the idea that a great power’s loss of real estate, and thus of prestige, was of much importance: “Great powers have suffered losses and remained great. France lost Canada (and Alsace-Lorraine), England lost the United States. And for us it would not be dangerous to lose Manchuria.”11 He then returned to domestic political implications: “And even if we remain in the minority in our approach to peace, that in itself is not a problem; the agitation can still play a useful role.”12 One can argue that the Balkans were more important to Russia than the Far East, but even assuming that, the shift in tone over these eight years is striking. Whereas in 1904 Maklakov treated Russia’s national prestige and great power status rather casually, in 1912 he saw them as critical.