The Reformer

by Stephen F. Williams

  CHAPTER 1: SCAPEGRACE AND SCHOLAR

  1.V. A. Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii (New York: Chekhov Publishing House [Izdatelstvo imeni Chekhova], 1954), 25.

  2.Ibid., 12.

  3.N. G. Dumova, Kadetskaia partiia v period pervoi mirovoi voiny i Fevralskoi revolutsii [The Kadet party in the period of the First World War and the February Revolution] (Moscow: Nauka, 1988), 130. See also William G. Rosenberg, Liberals in the Russian Revolution: The Constitutional Democratic Party, 1917–1921 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974), 23, saying that Maklakov came from one of “Russia’s oldest families” and speaking of the “drawing rooms” of Maklakov and other Kadet leaders as “frequently the scenes of large social gatherings, in which guests opposing the party’s political orientation often outnumbered Kadets.”

  4.So Maklakov said in his memoirs (see Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 329; see also 22, 280, for Zvenigorod connection). A Russian scholar reports that the Maklakov archives confirms that the Maklakov property was not income generating. N. I. Dedkov, Konservativnyi liberalizm Vasiliia Maklakova (Moscow: AIRO-XX, 2005), 22–23. On the subject of family wealth, Maklakov noted that Aunt Raisa’s eighteen children (his first cousins once removed) all had to work for a living. Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 11–12. Of course, that would not be inconsistent with his mother’s inheriting enough to live on without working, she being an only child.

  5.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 21–24.

  6.Ibid., 14–17.

  7.Ibid., 27–28.

  8.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), 32–38.

  9.Ibid., 39–41.

  10.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 28–31, 301.

  11.Ibid., 17–21.

  12.Ibid., 32–41.

  13.Marina Aleksandrovna Ivanova, “Rol V. A. Maklakova v Obshchestvenno-politicheskoi zhizni Rossii” [The role of V. A. Maklakov in the social-political life of Russia] (PhD thesis, Rossiiskii Universitet Druzhby Narodov, 1997), 141, citing GIM, fond 442, ll. 112–112ob.

  14.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 32–54; Maklakov, Vlast i obshchestvennost, 12–13.

  15.Kornei Chukovsky, Diary, 1901–1969, ed. Victor Erlich, trans. Michael Henry Heim (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005), 251–52.

  16.Otdel Rukopisei, Rossiiskaia Gosudarstvennaia Biblioteka [Manuscript Department, Russian State Library], fond 131, papka 32, delo 62. November 18, 1892.

  17.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 122–28.

  18.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 121–22; Dedkov, Konservativnyi liberalizm, 26.

  19.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 54–56, 128–30, 136, 188–89; Dedkov, Konservativnyi liberalizm, 32.

  20.V. A. Maklakov, “Vinogradov,” Slavonic and East European Review 13, no. 39 (1939), 633–40; Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 194, describing Vinogradov as a “European in the best sense of the word.”

  21.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 192, 211–13.

  22.Ibid., 62–64; Dedkov, Konservativnyi liberalizm, 34.

  23.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 63–67; Dedkov, Konservativnyi liberalizm, 34–35.

  24.GDSO, Third Duma, 5th Sess., pt. 2, February 29, 1912, col. 3400.

  25.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 62; Maklakov, Vlast i obshchestvennost, 75.

  26.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 110–12; Dedkov, Konservativnyi liberalizm, 37.

  27.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 113.

  28.Ibid., 110–15.

  29.Ibid., 116–21.

  30.“Prime minister” slightly oversimplifies. From 1903 to October 1905 he was chairman of the “committee” of ministers, and from then till his dismissal in April 1906, chairman of the “council” of ministers. The difference between committee and council is that, associated with that change in name, was a jump upward in the authority of the chairman to coordinate the cabinet.

  31.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 133–36; see also Jonathan Daly, “Political Crime in Late Imperial Russia,” Journal of Modern History 74, no. 1 (March 2002), 62–100, 94n138.

  32.Ivanova, “Rol V. A. Maklakova,” 58, citing GIM, fond 442, ll. 112–112ob. Bogoslovskii identifies V. A. Dolgorukov as the crucial contact—mistakenly, so far as it appears.

  33.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 138.

  34.Ibid., 72.

  35.Dedkov, Konservativnyi liberalizm, 36.

  36.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 60, 88–90.

  37.Ibid., 142–49.

  38.Ibid., 148–49.

  39.Ibid., 150–51.

  40.Ibid., 78–80, 84–86.

  41.Ibid., 90.

  42.Ibid., 92, 97–99.

  43.Ibid., 100–101; Bakhmetev-Maklakov Correspondence, 1:508 (citing Ariadne Tyrkova-Williams, “Russkii parlamentarii,” Novyi Zhurnal, no. 52 [1958], 238).

  44.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 103–4.

  45.Ibid., 108–10.

  46.Ibid., 106, 136–38.

  47.Ibid., 18–19, 163–64.

  48.Ibid., 164–65; see also V. A. Maklakov, “Lev Tolstoi: Uchenie i Zhizn” [Leo Tolstoy: Teaching and life], in V. A. Maklakov, O Lve Tolstom: Dve Rechi [On Leo Tolstoy: Two speeches] (Paris: Annales contemporaines, 1929), 54–55.

  49.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 165. In his account of his student years, Maklakov seems to have placed the Singer event ahead of the relief efforts because it was a natural follow-up to his own obvious excitement at merely seeing Tolstoy.

  50.Georgii Adamovich, Vasilii Alekseevich Maklakov: Politik, Iurist, Chelovek [Vasily Alekseevich Maklakov: Politician, jurist, human being] (Paris, 1959), 81; Dedkov, Konservativnyi liberalizm, 128.

  51.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 165–68.

  52.V. A. Maklakov, “Lev Tolstoi kak obshchestvennyi deiatel” [Leo Tolstoy as a public figure], in V. A. Maklakov, Rechi: Sudebniia, Dymskiia i Publichniia Lektsii, 1904–1926 [V. A. Maklakov, Speeches: Judicial, Duma and public lectures, 1904–1926] (Paris: Izdanie Iubileinogo Komiteta, 1869–1949), 142.

  53.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 181.

  54.Ibid., 197–201.

  55.Dedkov, Konservativnyi liberalizm, 51.

  56.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 203.

  57.Ibid., 185–88.

  58.Ibid., 213, 216–17.

  59.Ibid., 218–19.

  60.Ibid., 225–30. Apropos of exam preparation as a sporting achievement, Maklakov once said, in an homage to Vinogradov, “I felt an irresistible weakness for examinations as a kind of sport.” Maklakov, “Vinogradov,” 636.

  CHAPTER 2: TRIAL LAWYER

  1.William E. Pomeranz, The Emergence and Development of the Russian Advokatura: 1864–1905 (PhD dissertation, University of London, 1990), 78–80, 84. The rules were somewhat relaxed in the period from 1896 to 1910 but were then restored in their full restrictive vigor. In chapter 17 we’ll see Maklakov ending these restrictions in one of the first reforms of the February Revolution.

  2.Ibid., 184.

  3.V. A. Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii (New York: Chekhov Publishing House [Izdatelstvo imeni Chekhova], 1954), 231–34; V. A. Maklakov, “F. I. Rodichev i A. R. Lednitskii,” Novyi Zhurnal, no. 16 (1947), 240, 244–45; Vaclav Lednitskii, “Vokrug V. A. Maklakova (lichnye vospominaniia)” [Around V. A. Maklakov (personal reminiscences)], Novyi Zhurnal, no. 56 (March 1959), 222–50.

  4.Maklakov, “F. I. Rodichev i A. R. Lednitskii,” 245.

  5.Girish N. Bhat, “The Moralization of Guilt in Late Imperial Russian Trial by Jury: The Early Reform Era,” Law and History Review 15, no. 1 (Spring 1997), 77–113; Samuel Kucherov, Courts, Lawyers, and Trials under the Last Three Tsars (New York: F. A. Praeger, 1953), 64–68.

  6.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 282–86.

  7.Ibid., 235–38.

  8.See Lev N. Tolstoi, Polnoe Sobranie sochinenii [Complete works], ed. G. Chertkov, 90 vols. (Moscow: Gos. izd-vo khudozh. lit-ry, 1928–58), 70:453–54; 73:287; 79–80:113, 163–64; 81:217–18, for letters from Tolstoy to Maklakov.

/>   9.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 238–47.

  10.Ibid., 248–50.

  11.Ibid., 250–56.

  12.L. I. Goldman, Politicheskie protsessy v Rossii, 1901–1917 (Moscow: 1932), 42, 45, 57, 76, 141–43, 146.

  13.“Sudebnaia khronika,” in Russkie Vedomosti (c. July 23, 1906), located in GIM, fond 31, delo 87, l. 235. For praise of Maklakov’s eloquence in this summation by a fellow defense lawyer, see A. A. Goldenbeizer, “Vospominaniia o V. A. Maklakove,” Novoe Russkoe Slovo (July 28, 1957), 2.

  14.Kucherov, Courts, Lawyers, and Trials, 235–38; Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 275–77.

  15.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 276. The new code had been nominally adopted in 1903, but its provisions on political and religious crimes, the only ones finally approved, were put into effect in June 1904. Jonathan W. Daly, “Political Crime in Late Imperial Russia,” Journal of Modern History 74, no. 1 (March 2002), 62, 71.

  16.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 264–67, 275–76.

  17.Jonathan W. Daly, “On the Significance of Emergency Legislation in Late Imperial Russia,” Slavic Review 54 (Autumn 1995), 602, 624.

  18.Georgii Adamovich, Vasilii Alekseevich Maklakov: Politik, Iurist, Chelovek [Vasily Alekseevich Maklakov: Politician, jurist, human being] (Paris, 1959), 241n*.

  19.M. L. Mandelshtam, 1905 god v politicheskikh protsessakh: Zapiski zashchitnika [The year 1905 in political trials: Notes of a defense counsel] (Moscow: Izdatelstvo polikatorzhan, 1931), 101.

  20.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), 170–73.

  21.Ibid., 174.

  22.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 294; Marina Aleksandrovna Ivanova, “Rol V. A. Maklakova v Obshchestvenno-politicheskoi zhizni Rossii” [The role of V. A. Maklakov in the social-political life of Russia] (PhD thesis, Rossiiskii Universitet Druzhby Narodov, 1997), 95–97, citing GIM, fond 31, dela 92, 108, 110–12, 117, 122, 125–29, and 131–32.

  23.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 292–93.

  24.A. Lunacharskii, K. Radek, and L. Trotskii, Siluety: Politicheskie portrety [Silhouettes: Political portraits] (Moscow: Izdatelstvo politicheskoi literatury, 1991), 237. Trotsky’s comment originally appeared in an article on Miliukov in the newspaper Luch, nos. 6–7 (September 22–23, 1912). See http://magister.msk.ru/library/trotsky/trotm193.htm.

  25.N. I. Dedkov, Konservativnyi liberalizm Vasiliia Maklakova (Moscow: AIRO-XX, 2005), 113–14.

  26.David Arwyn Davies, V. A. Maklakov and the Problem of Russia’s Westernization (PhD thesis, University of Washington, 1967), 37 and n29. Davies learnt of the practice from M. Kantor, a close personal friend of Maklakov in his later years.

  27.The Beilis trial illustrated a somewhat different procedure, in which a “civil plaintiff” appears in a criminal trial on behalf of a party claiming injury, there evidently the family of the murder victim. See chapter 9 for details in connection with Beilis.

  28.V. A. Maklakov, “F. N. Plevako,” in V. A. Maklakov, Rechi: Sudebniia, Dymskiia i Publichniia Lektsii, 1904–1926 [V. A. Maklakov, Speeches: Judicial, Duma and public lectures, 1904–1926] (Paris: Izdanie Iubileinogo Komiteta, 1869–1949), 71, 72, 112.

  29.Ibid., 75–85.

  30.Iosif V. Gessen, V Dvukh vekakh: Zhiznennyi otchet [In two centuries: A life’s account], Arkhiv Russkoi Revoliutsii 22 (1937), 170–71. Gessen was also a Kadet party leader, Duma member, and advocate.

  31.Adamovich, Vasilii Alekseevich Maklakov, 68–69.

  32.Lednitskii, “Vokrug V. A. Maklakova,” 222, 235.

  33.Ibid., 226.

  34.Maklakov, “F. N. Plevako,” 97–99, 101.

  35.Ibid., 104, 104; Adamovich, Vasilii Alekseevich Maklakov, 60.

  36.Maklakov, “F. N. Plevako,” 100–101.

  37.Ibid., 105–6.

  38.Ibid., 112.

  39.Maklakov, Vlast i obshchestvennost, 165–66; Pomeranz, Emergence and Development, 221.

  40.Maklakov, Vlast i obshchestvennost, 167–68; Maklakov, Iz Vospominaniia, 348, and, speaking of citizens who went to electoral meetings in the same terms as he had used for jurors, 356–57.

  41.Gessen, V Dvukh vekakh, 183. See Shmuel Galai, The Liberation Movement in Russia, 1900–1905 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 247, regarding Maklakov’s leadership role.

  42.Galai, Liberation Movement, 245–48. Though Galai identifies Maklakov as a leader of the union of lawyers on page 247, it is not clear if he exercised any of that leadership after the 1905 change described in the text.

  43.This was technically the All-Russian Peasants Union. It had few peasant members and was really an extension of the union of agronomists and statisticians. See Galai, Liberation Movement, 253.

  44.Maklakov, Vlast i obshchestvennost, 361–62, 365–68.

  45.Bakhmetev-Maklakov Correspondence, 3:97–98 (Maklakov to Bakhmetev, November 23, 1923); Dmitrii Vladimirovich Aronov, Pervyi spiker (Moscow: Iurist, 2006), 92–95; N. A. Kaklukov, “V Moskovskoi Iuridicheskom Obshchestve” [In the Moscow Juridical Society], in Sergei Andreevich Muromtsev (Moscow: Izd. M. i S. Sabashnikovykh, 1911), 134–40.

  CHAPTER 3: FRIENDS AND LOVERS

  1.GIM, fond 31, delo 69, l. 1 (letter of June 18, 1903, from Chekhov to Maklakov).

  2.V. A. Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii (New York: Chekhov Publishing House, 1954), 174–75.

  3.See Marina Aleksandrovna Ivanova, “Rol V. A. Maklakova v Obshchestvenno-politicheskoi zhizni Rossii” [The role of V. A. Maklakov in the social-political life of Russia] (PhD thesis, Rossiiskii Universitet Druzhby Narodov, 1997), 102, 217n46 (citing GIM, fond 31, delo 150) (letter to Maklakov acknowledging his role as a prototype).

  4.GIM, fond 31, delo 110.

  5.See I. Kashuk, “Poslednii god Shaliapina” [Chaliapin’s last year], Illiustrirovanniia Rossiia, 684, no. 26 ([June 18], 1938), 3–5.

  6.V. A. Maklakov, “Lev Tolstoi: Uchenie i Zhizn” [Leo Tolstoy: Teaching and life], in V. A. Maklakov, O Lve Tolstom: Dve Rechi [On Leo Tolstoy: Two speeches] (Paris: Annales contemporaines, 1929), 7–57.

  7.See Tyrkova-Williams Diary and Letters, 1011–16 (Maklakov to Ariadne Tyrkova-Williams, October 12, 1955, and November 3, 1955).

  8.Maklakov, “Lev Tolstoi: Uchenie i Zhizn,” 10, 13.

  9.Ibid., 20–24.

  10.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 169–70.

  11.Maklakov, “Lev Tolstoi: Uchenie i Zhizn,” 29–30.

  12.Ibid., 31.

  13.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 170.

  14.V. A. Maklakov, “Lev Tolstoi kak obshchestvennyi deiatel” [Leo Tolstoy as a public figure], in V. A. Maklakov, Rechi: Sudebniia, Dumskiia i Publichniia Lektsii, 1904–1926 [V. A. Maklakov, Speeches: Judicial, Duma and public lectures, 1904–1926] (Paris: Izdanie Iubileinogo Komiteta, 1869–1949), 146–48.

  15.Ibid., 153.

  16.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 173; “Lev Tolstoi: Uchenie i Zhizn,” 49–50.

  17.“Lev Tolstoi: Uchenie i Zhizn,” 47–48. Maklakov also observed: “The degree of a person’s religiosity is defined not so much by his views as by the seriousness for him of those questions and interests that religion answers.” V. A. Maklakov, “Tolstoi—kak Mirovoe Yavlenie” [“Tolstoy as a world presence”], in V. A. Maklakov, O Lve Tolstom: Dve Rechi [On Leo Tolstoy: Two speeches] (Paris: Annales contemporaines, 1929), 71.

  18.V. A. Maklakov, “Tolstoi i sud” [Tolstoy and the courts], in V. A. Maklakov, Rechi: Sudebniia, Dumskiia i Publichniia Lektsii, 1904–1926 [V. A. Maklakov, Speeches: Judicial, Duma and public lectures, 1904–1926] (Paris: Izdanie Iubileinogo Komiteta, 1869–1949), 168.

  19.Ibid, 171.

  20.Ibid., 173–74.

  21.Ibid., 181.

  22.Ibid., 189–90; Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 178–81.

  23.Maklakov, “Tolstoi i sud,” 192.

  24.See chapter 2.

  25.This is confirmed in many references to social events with
“the Maklakovs” in The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy, trans. Cathy Porter (New York: Harper Perennial, 2009), a group that clearly included his sister Mariia and brother Alexei.

  26.Maklakov, Iz Vospominanii, 168.

  27.Maklakov, “Lev Tolstoi: Uchenie i Zhizn,” 52.

  28.Ibid., 53.

  29.Ibid., 56–57.

  30.GDSO, Second Duma, March 12, 1907, Meeting 8, cols. 391–92.

  31.See Ivanova, “Rol V. A. Maklakova,” 187, 230n103 (citing GIM, fond 31, delo 1).

  32.GIM, fond 31, opis: describing dela 5 (124), 6 (114), 11 (199), 12 (194), 54 (225), 78 (319), 79 (439), 80 (500), 81 (337), 82 (207), 83 (201). The correspondence amounts to eleven folders, each having no less than 124 pages and no more than 500.

  33.GIM, fond 31, dela 11 and 12.

  34.The Kollontai-Maklakov letters have been transcribed and posted on the Internet; see http://ru-lib.3dn.ru/publ/kollontaj_aleksandra_mikhajlovna_pisma_k_v_a_maklakovu/1-1-0-460.

  35.Hoover, 1–3. The passage is part of a brief snippet on Maklakov in Rosa Vinaver’s draft memoir of Paul Miliukov.

  36.GIM, fond 31, delo 11, l. 1.

  37.Ibid., l. 3.

  38.Ibid., l. 6.

  39.Ibid., ll. 14, 9.

  40.Ibid., l. 15.

  41.Kollontai-Maklakov Letters, Letter no. 14 (as numbered on website). The speeches on the peasant question seem necessarily to be those of June 1916, discussed in chapter 12, as those were the only ones where Maklakov focused on peasant issues. Kollontai’s hesitancy about the “later ones” may be because they reflect his reluctance to try to extend the reform to achieve Jewish equality; as we’ll see, he believed that such an extension would jeopardize passage of the peasant reform.

  42.Barbara Evans Clements, Bolshevik Feminist: The Life of Alexandra Kollontai (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1979), 253.

  43.Ibid., 183–99.

  44.Ignazio Silone, Emergency Exit (London: Victor Gollanz, 1969), 68.

  45.Kollontai-Maklakov Letters, letter nos. 9 and 13.

  46.Ibid., letter no. 14.

  47.Ibid., letter nos. 7 and 14.