The Reformer
Page 40
Rule-of-law reform here contrasts sharply with substantive reform such as the sudden shift in property rights advocated by the Kadets over the twelve key years of 1905–1917—confiscation of gentry land, with the owners to be only partially compensated. That proposal was charged with risk of violence. Landowners facing loss of their status and prosperity, and the existing regime (which was closely tied to those landowners), were unlikely ever to have gone gentle into the night of impoverishment. And with the Provisional Government’s weakness, “moderate” politicians’ support for confiscation naturally encouraged peasant self-help. The Kadets’ zeal for a universal franchise and a government responsible to the Duma carried the same implications. A Duma so elected would have promptly adopted a compulsory land transfer, quite possibly more extreme than the Kadet proposal, and thus have triggered a violent clash. The sort of rule-of-law reforms pressed by Maklakov carried little danger of such earthquakes; indeed, they militated against them. Their embrace by the regime would have harmed only officials (and, marginally, some private persons accustomed to rely on lawless official assistance).
This point leads to the issue of mixed strategies among reformers. Those who focus entirely on the rule of law, and thus on pacific methods of protest, are unlikely to make the threat of a hard landing seem plausible. They might therefore benefit from the activity of violent resisters.19 But the extra pressure on the regime comes at a cost. First, though such methods might give the regime an incentive to accept rule-of-law reforms, they might also, by fostering anxiety, make the regime unwilling to palliate its suppression techniques by upholding the rule of law.20 Second, rule-of-law reformers may get tarred with a broad brush applied to “oppositionists” in general, both in exposure to suppression and in an extra harshness in the regime’s assessment of rule-of-law proposals. In late tsarist Russia both of these side effects were present. In the face of extremist agitation the regime clung to the extraordinary security laws and viewed even moderates such as Vasily Maklakov with alarm—thus, as we saw in the Introduction, Nicholas II’s writing off Maklakov as “theirs” in contrast to his reactionary brother, whom the tsar embraced as “ours.” It’s far from clear how rule-of-law reformers can achieve the right balance—provide enough support for revolutionaries ready to embrace violence to concentrate the authorities’ minds, but not so much as to drive them into a cul-de-sac where they think the rule of law is too risky.
It is perhaps no surprise that any final tally on the utility of a rule-of-law strategy is inconclusive. If successful, it seems to carry benefits for virtually all concerned. But there is little assurance of success. The incumbent regime is almost always likely to be able to thwart such reform. The French and Russian stories suggest that authoritarian leaders may be more effective at resisting rule-of-law reform than in preventing their own ultimate overthrow, even though overthrow, when it comes, will follow a path as disastrous for them as for others.
Chronology
Except for dates after January 1, 1918, all dates are “old style,” that is, by the Julian rather than the Gregorian calendar. In the twentieth century, these are thirteen days behind Western dates.
1869
May 10
Birth of Vasily Maklakov
1894
October 20
Accession of Nicholas II
1895
January
Nicholas’s “senseless dreams” speech
May 4
Death of Alexei Nikolaevich Maklakov, Vasily’s father
1896
Spring
Vasily Maklakov completes legal studies and starts practice
1904
January
Start of Russo-Japanese War
1905
January 9
Bloody Sunday
February 18
Nicholas II issues three proclamations, promising consultative assembly, inviting people to propose reforms, and asserting inviolability of the autocracy
May 14–15
Russian fleet sunk in battle with Japanese in Straits of Tsushima
August 6
Nicholas makes formal proposal of consultative parliament
October 12–18
First Congress of Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets)
October 17
Nicholas II issues October Manifesto
December 11
Electoral law issued
1906
February 20
Law governing new Duma and State Council issued
March 4
Rules on public meetings issued
April 23
Fundamental Laws issued
April 27
Opening day of First Duma
July 8
Tsar signs decree dissolving First Duma; Stolypin becomes prime minister
July 9
Kadet and Trudovik deputies issue Vyborg Manifesto attacking dissolution of First Duma
August 19
Government issues decree creating field courts martial
October 5
Government issues decree advancing equal rights for peasants
November 9
Government issues decree enabling peasants to convert their rights in land into approximation of full ownership
1907
February 20
Opening day of Second Duma
June 3
Dissolution of Second Duma and issuance of decree modifying electoral law to limit franchise (the June 3 coup d’état)
November 7
Opening day of Third Duma
1911
September 1
Stolypin assassinated (dies September 5); replaced by Kokovtsov
1912
June 9
Closing day of Third Duma
November 15
Opening day of Fourth Duma
December 16
Nikolai Maklakov becomes Minister of Internal Affairs
1913
October 28
Menachem Beilis acquitted
1915
Summer
Nikolai Maklakov and three other reactionary ministers are dismissed under liberal pressure
Mid-August
Formation of the Progressive Bloc
1916
June
Maklakov secures Duma passage of bill expanding October 5, 1906, decree of peasant rights
September 27
Maklakov’s “Mad Chauffeur” allegory published in Russkie Vedomosti
November 3
Maklakov’s “we or they” speech in Duma
December 16
Assassination of Rasputin
1917
February 23
Riots that launch February Revolution start
February 27
Formation of Duma Committee (which forms Provisional Government), and of Executive Committee of Petrograd Soviet
March 2, 11:40 p.m.
Tsar signs decree of abdication in favor of Grand Duke Mikhail
March 3
Grand Duke Mikhail declines the throne and issues decree purporting to vest authority in Provisional Government
October 12
Maklakov leaves Russia to assume post as ambassador to France
October 25
Bolsheviks overthrow Provisional Government
1957
June 15
Maklakov dies in Switzerland
Abbreviations
Works and archives frequently cited in the Notes and Bibliography have been identified by the following short forms and abbreviations.
Bakhmetev-Maklakov Correspondence
Sovershenno Lichno i doveritelno!: B. A. Bakhmetev—V. A. Maklakov, Perepiska, 1919–1951 [Strictly personal and confidential!: B. A. Bakhmetev and V. A. Maklakov, correspondence, 1919–1951], ed. Oleg Budnitskii, 3 vols. (Moscow and Stanford, CA: ROSSPEN and Hoover Institution Press, 2001–2002).
GARF
Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii [State
Archive of the Russian Federation]
GDSO
Gosudarstvennoi Dumy, Stenograficheskii Otchet [State Duma, stenographic minutes]
GIM
Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Muzei [State Historical Museum]
Hoover
Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Vasilii Maklakov Papers, 1881–1956. Collection no. 57005. Two-number citations indicate the box followed by the folder.
Maklakov, La Chute
V. A. Maklakov, preface to La Chute du Régime Tsariste: Interrogatoires des Ministres, Conseillers, Généraux, Hauts Fonctionnaires de la Cour Impériale Russe par la Commission Extraordinaire du Gouvernement Provisoire de 1917 [The fall of the Tsarist regime: Interrogations of the ministers, counsellors, generals, high officials of the Imperial Russian Court by the Extraordinary Commission of the Provisional Government of 1917], French translation by J. and L. Polonsky (Paris: Payot, 1927), 7–87.
Padenie tsarskogo rezhima
Padenie tsarskovo rezhima, stenograficheskie otchety doprosov i pokazaniia, dannikh v 1917 g. v Chrezvychainoi Sledstvennoi Komissii Vremennogo Pravitelstva [Fall of the Tsarist regime: Stenographic records of interrogations and evidence taken in 1917 by the Extraordinary Investigative Commission of the Provisional Government] (Leningrad-Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo, 1925).
Protokoly
Protokoly Tsentralnogo komiteta i zagranichnykh grupp Konstitutsionno-demokraticheskoi partii, 1905–seredina 1930-kh gg. [Protocols of the Central Committee and Foreign Groups of the Constitutional Democratic Party, 1905–mid-1930s], compiled, with introduction and notes by Dmitrii Borisovich Pavlov (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1998).
Sezdy i konferentsii
Sezdy i konferentsii konstitutsionno-demokraticheskoi partii: 1905–1920 gg. [Congresses and conferences of the Constitutional Democratic Party], 3 vols., ed. O.V. Volobuev (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1997–2000).
Tyrkova-Williams Diary and Letters
Nasledie Ariadny Vladimirovny Tyrkovoi: Dnevniki, Pisma [The legacy of Ariadne Vladimirovna Tyrkova: Diary, letters], collected, with an introduction and commentary by N. I. Kanishchevas (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2012).
Notes
INTRODUCTION: WHY MAKLAKOV?
1.A. Lunacharskii, K. Radek, and L. Trotskii, Siluety: Politicheskie portrety [Silhouettes: Political portraits] (Moscow: Izdatelstvo politicheskoi literatury, 1991), 240. Trotsky’s comment originally appeared in an article entitled “Guchkov and Guchkovshchina” [Guchkov and the Guchkov Era], in the newspaper Kievskaia mysl, no. 276 (October 6, 1913).
2.See, for example, P. N. Miliukov, “Sud nad Kadetskim ‘Liberalizmom,’” Sovremennye Zapiski 41 (1930): 347, 365, 368.
3.Quoted in Michael Karpovich, “Two Types of Russian Liberalism: Maklakov and Miliukov,” in Continuity and Change in Russian and Soviet Thought, ed. Ernest J. Simmons, Joint Committee on Slavic Studies of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council (New York: Russell and Russell, 1955, 1967), 129, 138 (citing Miliukov’s remarks at Kadet party congress of October 12–18, 1905).
4.V. V. Shelokhaev, “Agrarnia programma kadetov v pervoi Russkoi revoliutsii” [Agricultural program of the Kadets in the first Russian revolution], Istoricheskie Zapiski 86 (1970), 172, 183, 192, 204–7. Peasant issues are discussed in various places, but especially in chapter 12.
5.V. A. Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii (New York: Chekhov Publishing House [Izdatelstvo imeni Chekhova], 1954), 146–48; see also I. P. Aleksinskii, “Pervye gody moego studentchestva (1889–1891),” in Moskovskii universitet, 1755–1930 (Paris: Izdatelstvo “Sovremmenie Zapiski,” 1930), 355, 363–65. S. V. Zavadskii, “Iz Zhizni Moskovskogo Universiteta v XIX stoletii,” in Moskovskii universitet, 1755–1930 (Paris: Izdatelstvo “Sovremmenie Zapiski,” 1930), 351–52, acknowledges Maklakov’s eloquence but reports the student vote as coming out the other way.
6.Compare a recent argument that abolitionist zeal, particularly in opposing Lincoln’s consideration of proposals to buy out the South’s slaveholders, had the effect of drastically prolonging the Civil War, with its terrible loss of life and long-run setback for healthy political evolution in the South. Thomas Fleming, A Disease in the Public Mind (New York: Da Capo, 2013).
7.N. I. Dedkov, Konservativnyi liberalizm Vasiliia Maklakova (Moscow: AIRO-XX, 2005), 64–65.
8.I. I. Tolstoi, Dnevnik, 1906–1916 [Diary, 1906–16] (St. Petersburg: Evropeiskii Dom, 1997), 469–70.
9.He was named acting minister on December 16, 1912; confirmed as minister on February 21, 1913; and relieved of the office on June 5, 1915.
10.Boris Efimov, Desiat desiatiletii: O tom, chto videl, perezhil, zapomnil [Ten decades: What I saw, survived, remembered] (Moscow: Vagrius, 2000), 204.
11.Bolshaia Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia (Moscow: 1926–47), 37:752.
12.Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 78.
13.Matthew Stephenson, “‘When the Devil Turns . . .’: The Political Foundations of Independent Judicial Review,” Journal of Legal Studies 32 (2003), 59.
14.See chapter 12, discussing the June 1916 legislation and the disconnect between peasant life and the country’s general laws.
15.See chapter 9.
16.Dominic Lieven, Nicholas II: Twilight of the Empire (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), see page 106 for the Pobedonostsev quotation.
17.Ibid.
18.Stephen F. Williams, Liberal Reform in an Illiberal Regime: The Creation of Private Property in Russia, 1906–1915 (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2006), 97.
19.For the absence of peasant rights, see Victor Leontovitsch, The History of Liberalism in Russia, trans. Parmen Leontovitsch, with a foreword by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012). For peasant sayings about the law, see Boris Nikolayevich Mironov, with Ben Eklof, A Social History of Imperial Russia, 1700–1917 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999–2000), 304–5.
20.Richard Wortman, “Property Rights, Populism, and the Russian Political Culture,” in Civil Rights in Imperial Russia, ed. Olga Crisp and Linda Edmondson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 13–32.
21.Bakhmetev-Maklakov Correspondence, 1:460 (Maklakov to Bakhmetev, August 30, 1921); ibid., 3:475 (Maklakov to Bakhmetev, April 1, 1930); Lieven, Nicholas II, 176–77.
22.Fred W. Carstensen and Gregory Guroff, “Economic Innovation in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union: Observations,” in Entrepreneurship in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, ed. Gregory Guroff and Fred V. Carstensen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 353.
23.Thomas C. Owen, Russian Corporate Capitalism from Peter the Great to Perestroika (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 187, and generally, 50–84, 115–38 [LR 246]; Thomas C. Owen, Capitalism and Politics in Russia: A Social History of the Moscow Merchants, 1855–1905 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Thomas C. Owen, “The Russian Industrial Society and Tsarist Economic Policy, 1867–1905,” Journal of Economic History 45, no. 3 (September 1985), 599–600.
24.See Jacob Walkin, “Government Controls over the Press,” Russian Review 13 (1954), 203–9.
25.V. A. Maklakov, Vlast i obshchestvennost na zakate staroi Rossii (Vospominaniia sovremenika) [State and society in the twilight of old Russia (Recollections of a contemporary)] (Paris: Izdanie zhurnala “Illustrirovanaia Rossiia,” 1936), 149–50, 161–62, 242–43.
26.Chapter 3 discusses Maklakov’s relations with Tolstoy and includes Maklakov’s analysis of the relation between Tolstoy’s views and his actual conduct as a reforming public figure.
27.Kathleen Parthé, “Who Speaks the Truth? Writers vs. Lawyers,” Universals and Contrasts, NY-St. Petersburg Institute of Linguistics, Cognition, and Culture, no. 1 (Spring 2012), 1.
28.Wayne Dowler, Russia in 1913 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2012), 47, 58.
29.Douglas C. North, John Joseph Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast, Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History (New York: Cambridge Universi
ty Press, 2009); Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011); Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (New York: Crown Business, 2012); Joel Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 1700–1850 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012); Deirdre McCloskey, The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); Deirdre McCloskey, Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); Deirdre McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016).