Mirskii’s appointment to the most important administrative post in Russia was very favorably received. As an experienced official with a broad base of popular support, he seemed the ideal man to resolve the political crisis. His main shortcomings were softness of character and lack of decisiveness which caused him to send signals that encouraged the opposition in the belief the government was prepared to make greater concessions than was the case.
Mirskii immediately went to work to win public support. He abolished corporal punishment, relaxed censorship, and restored to their posts a number of prominent zemtsy whom Plehve had exiled. He further expressed the intention of lifting the disabilities of the Old Believers and easing the lot of the Jews. He made a strong impression with an address to the officials of the Ministry of the Interior, published in the press, in which he said that experience had taught him that government had to have a “genuinely well-meaning and genuinely trustful attitude toward civic and estate institutions and the population at large.”30
A new era seemed to be dawning. The zemtsy read in Mirskii’s remarks an invitation to hold a national congress. They had held one such gathering in 1902, but surreptitiously because it was illegal. The idea of a public zemstvo congress emerged in late August 1904, immediately after Mirskii’s appointment, and quickly gained the endorsement of both the liberal (constitutionalist) and conservative (Slavophile) wings of the movement. Initially, the planners intended to confine the agenda to zemstvo affairs. But having learned of Mirskii’s remarks, they concluded that the government would welcome their views on national issues and expanded the agenda accordingly. The zemtsy felt it was essential to institutionalize the latest changes in government policy: Mirskii, after all, could prove merely a tool of the “dark forces”—the Court camarilla, above all—to be discarded as soon as he had served his purpose by pacifying the country. In the words of Dmitrii Shipov, the most prominent among the conservative zemtsy, many of his associates felt
that so far, trust in society had been expressed only by the individual placed at the head of the Ministry of the Interior … it was necessary for that one official’s sense of trust to be assimilated by the entire government and clothed in legal form, protected by safeguards, which would preclude shifts in the government’s attitude to society being dependent on such happenstance as the change of personnel at the head of government offices. It was further said that it had become an urgent need to make proper arrangements for legislative activity and to grant a national representative body participation in it.
31
These sentiments spelled constitution and a legislative parliament. Some conservative zemtsy thought this went too far, but persuaded that the government wanted to hear the whole range of opinions, they agreed to place constitutional proposals on the agenda of the forthcoming congress, scheduled for early November.
When he first learned that the zemtsy planned a national congress Mirskii not only approved but asked and received the Tsar’s blessing for it. In so doing he was under the misapprehension that the gathering would confine itself, as, indeed, had originally been planned, to zemstvo matters; in this belief, he inadvertently misled the Tsar. When he learned of the revised agenda, he requested Shipov to have the congress postponed for several months. Shipov thought this impossible to arrange, whereupon the minister requested that it move to Moscow. This, too, was rejected, so Mirskii agreed to have the congress proceed as planned but in the guise of a “private consultation” (chastnoe soveshchanie). His approval conveyed the misleading impression that the government was prepared to contemplate a constitutional and parliamentary regime.
Expecting the Zemstvo Congress to come up with a constitutional project, Mirskii asked Sergei Kryzhanovskii, an official in his ministry, to draft a counterproposal. His intention was to formulate a program that would include the maximum of oppositional demands conceivably acceptable to the Tsar.32
In this atmosphere of great expectations, the oppositional groups felt the time had come to combine forces. On September 17, representatives of the constitutionalist Union of Liberation met secretly in Paris with Socialists-Revolutionaries as well as Polish and Finnish nationalists, to forge a united front against the autocracy.*
The Paris Conference was a prelude to the great Zemstvo Congress held in St. Petersburg on November 6–9, 1904, an event that in terms of historical importance may be compared with the French Estates-General of 1789. The analogy was not lost on some contemporaries.33
The congress met in private residences, one of them the apartment of Vladimir Nabokov (the father of the future novelist) on Bolshaia Morskaia, within sight of the Winter Palace.34 On arrival in the capital, the delegates were directed to their destination by the police.
A number of resolutions were put up for a vote, of which the most important as well as the most controversial called for an elected legislature with a voice in the shaping of the budget and control over the bureaucracy. The conservatives objected to this motion on the grounds that political democracy was alien to Russia’s historic traditions: they wanted a strictly consultative body modeled on the Muscovite Land Assemblies that would convey to the throne the wishes of its subjects but not interfere with legislation. They suffered defeat: the resolution in favor of a legislative parliament carried by a vote of 60–38. There was near-unanimity, however, that the new body should have a voice in the preparation of the state budget and oversee the bureaucracy.35 It was the first time in the history of modern Russia that a legally assembled body—even if assembled under the guise of a “private consultation”—passed resolutions calling for a constitution and a parliament—even if the resolutions did not use these taboo words.
In the weeks that followed, the platform adopted by the Zemstvo Congress provided the text for the many public and private bodies that met to take a stand on national questions, among them the Municipal Council of Moscow, various business associations, and the students of nearly all the institutions of higher learning.36 To spread the message as widely as possible, the Union of Liberation organized a campaign of nationwide banquets—modeled on 1848 France—at which the guests toasted freedom and the constitution.37 The first took place in St. Petersburg on November 20, the fortieth anniversary of the judiciary reform; 676 writers and representatives of the intelligentsia affixed their signatures to a petition calling for a democratic constitution and a Constituent Assembly. Similar banquets were held in other cities during November and December 1904. The socialist intelligentsia, which at first had poured scorn on these “bourgeois” affairs, eventually joined in and radicalized the resolutions. Of the forty-seven banquets on which there exists information, thirty-six are known to have followed the Zemstvo Congress, while eleven went further and demanded a Constituent Assembly.38 The provincial authorities, confused by conflicting signals from the capital, did not interfere, even though Mirskii instructed them in secret circulars to prevent the banquets from taking place and to disperse them if they defied government prohibitions.39
After the Zemstvo Congress had adjourned, Shipov briefed Mirskii on its resolutions; the minister listened sympathetically. Later that month, Prince Sergei Trubetskoi, the rector of Moscow University, submitted at Mirskii’s request a reform proposal, which Mirskii gave to Kryzhanovskii and Lopukhin, the director of the Police Department, to edit for submission to the Tsar.40
The Trubetskoi-Kryzhanovskii-Lopukhin reform proposal which Mirskii presented to Nicholas early in December 1904 was a cleverly worded appeal to the Tsar’s conservative instincts.41 The authors made the proposed constitutional and parliamentary concessions appear to be a restoration of old practices rather than the revolutionary innovation that they really were. The reforms of Alexander II, they wrote, had ended the “patrimonial” (votchinnyi) regime in Russia by introducing the notion of public interest. They
marked the end of the old patrimonial order and, along with it, of the personalized notions of rulership. Russia ceased to be the personal property and fiefdom of its ruler.… [
The concepts] of “public interest” and “public opinion” suggested the emergence of the impersonal state … with its own body politic, separate from the person of the ruler.
42
Legality (zakonnosf) was depicted as entirely compatible with autocracy because the Tsar would remain the exclusive source of laws, which he could repeal at will. The proposed representative body—envisaged as limited to consultative function—was depicted as a return to the days of “true autocracy” when tsars used to heed the voice of their people.
Mirskii’s draft was discussed on December 7 by high officials under Nicholas’s chairmanship. The most controversial clause called for the introduction into the State Council, at the time an exclusively appointed body, of deputies elected by the zemstva. It was an exceedingly modest measure, but it did inject the elective principle into a political system in which legislation and administration were the exclusive preserve of the monarch and officials designated by him. In advocating its adoption, Mirskii argued that it would “ensure domestic tranquility better than the most determined police measures.”43 According to Witte, the meeting was very emotional. The majority of the ministers sided with Mirskii. The chief adversary was Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the procurator of the Holy Synod and the regime’s most influential conservative, who saw in the introduction of elected representatives into state institutions a fatal breach in Russia’s traditional political system. Having heard out both sides, Nicholas agreed to all of Mirskii’s proposals. Those present left the meeting with the sense of having been witnesses to a momentous event in Russia’s history.44
At the Tsar’s request, Witte prepared an appropriate document for his signature. But Nicholas had second thoughts: he needed reassurance. Before signing it into law, he consulted Grand Duke Sergei and Witte. Both advised against adding elected representatives to the State Council—Sergei out of conviction, Witte more likely out of opportunism. Nicholas did not require much convincing: relieved, he struck out this provision. “I shall never, under any circumstances,” he told Witte, “agree to a representative form of government because I consider it harmful to the people whom God has entrusted to my care.”45
When he learned of the Tsar’s change of heart on the key provision in his draft, Mirskii fell into despondency. Convinced that all was lost he offered to resign, but Nicholas persuaded him to stay on.
On December 12, 1904, the government made public a law “Concerning the Improvement of the Political Order,” which, its title notwithstanding, announced all kinds of reforms except in the realm of politics.46 One set of measures addressed the condition of the peasantry, “so dear to OUR heart.” Others dealt with the population’s legal and civil rights. Government officials would be held accountable for misdemeanors. The sphere of activity of zemstva would be broadened and zemstvo institutions introduced into lower administrative units. There were pledges of state insurance for workers, equal justice for all, religious tolerance, and the easing of censorship. The emergency regulations of 1881 providing for the suspension of civil rights in areas placed under Safeguard would be modified.
All this was welcome. But the absence of any political concessions was widely seen as a rejection of the demands of the November 1904 Zemstvo Congress.47 For this reason the Law of December 12 was given little chance to resolve the national crisis, which was first and foremost political in nature.
Commissions were named to draft laws implementing the December 12 edict, but they had no issue because neither Nicholas nor the Court desired changes, preferring to procrastinate. They may have been hoping for some miracle, perhaps a decisive victory over the Japanese now that the Minister of War, Kuropatkin, had taken personal command of the Russian armies in the Far East. On October 2, Russia’s Baltic Fleet sailed to relieve Port Arthur.
But no miracle occurred. Instead, on December 20, 1904/January 2, 1905, Port Arthur surrendered. The Japanese captured 25,000 prisoners and what was left of Russia’s Pacific Fleet.
Throughout 1904, Russia’s masses were quiet: the revolutionary pressures on the government came exclusively from the social elite—university students and the rest of the intelligentsia, as well as the zemstvo gentry. The dominant trend was liberal, “bourgeois.” In these events the socialists played a secondary role, as terrorists and agitators. The population at large—peasants and workers alike—watched the conflict from the sidelines. As Struve wrote on January 2, 1905: “In Russia, there is as yet no revolutionary people.”48 The passivity of the masses encouraged the government to wage a rearguard action against its opponents, confident that as long as the demands for political change were confined to “society” it could beat them off. All this changed dramatically on January 9 with the massacre of worker demonstrators in St. Petersburg. This so-called Bloody Sunday spread the revolutionary fever to all strata of the population and made the Revolution truly a mass phenomenon: if the 1904 Zemstvo Congress was Russia’s Estates-General, then Bloody Sunday was her Bastille Day.
This said, it would be incorrect to date the beginning of the 1905 Revolution from January 9 because by then the government had been under siege for more than a year. Indeed, Bloody Sunday would not have occurred were it not for the atmosphere of political crisis generated by the Zemstvo Congress and the banquet campaign.
It will be recalled that in 1903 Plehve had dismissed Zubatov but continued the experiment of police-sponsored trade unions. One of the post-Zubatov unions which he authorized was led by a priest, Father George Gapon.49 The son of a Ukrainian peasant, Gapon was a charismatic figure who genuinely identified with the workers and their grievances. He was inspired by Leo Tolstoy and agreed to cooperate with the authorities only after considerable hesitation. With the blessing of the governor-general of the capital, I. A. Fullon, he founded the Assembly of Russian Factory and Plant Workers to work for the moral and cultural uplifting of the working class. (He stressed religion rather than economic issues and admitted only Christians.) Plehve approved Gapon’s union in February 1904. It enjoyed great popularity and opened branches in different quarters of city: toward the end of 1904, it was said to have 11,000 members and 8,000 associates,50 which overshadowed the St. Petersburg Social-Democratic organization, numerically insignificant to begin with and composed almost entirely of students. The police watched Gapon’s activities with mixed feelings, for as his organization prospered he displayed worrisome signs of independence, to the point of attempting, without authorization, to open branches in Moscow and Kiev. It is difficult to tell what was on Gapon’s mind, but there is no reason to regard him as a “police agent” in the ordinary meaning of the term—that is, a man who betrayed associates for money—because he indubitably sympathized with his workers and identified with their aspirations. Unlike the ordinary agent provocateur, he also did not conceal his connections with the authorities: Governor Fullon openly participated in some of his functions.51 Indeed, by late 1904 it was difficult to tell whether the police were using Gapon or Gapon the police, for by that time he had become the most outstanding labor leader in Russia.
At first, Gapon’s only concern was for the spiritual welfare of his flock. But in late 1904, impressed by the Zemstvo Congress and the banquet campaign, and possibly afraid of isolation, he concluded that the Assembly had to enter politics, side by side with the other estates.52 He tried to make contact with the Social-Democrats and Socialists-Revolutionaries, but they spurned him. In November 1904 he communicated with the St. Petersburg branch of the Union of Liberation, which was only too happy to involve him in its campaign. As Gapon recalled in his memoirs:
Meanwhile, the great conference of the Zemstvos took place in November, and was followed by the petition of Russian barristers for a grant of law and liberty. I could not but feel that the day when freedom would be wrested from the hands of our old oppressors would be near, and at the same time I was terribly afraid that, for lack of support on the side of the masses, the effort might fail. I had a meeting with several intellectual Liberals, and asked their opinio
n as to what the workmen could do to help the liberation movement. They advised me that we also should draft a petition and present it to the Government. But I did not think that such a petition would be of much value unless it were accompanied by a large industrial strike.
*
6. Governor Fullon visits Father Gapon and his Assembly of Russian Workers.
Gapon’s testimony leaves no doubt that the worker petition that led to Bloody Sunday was conceived by his advisers from the Liberation Movement as part of the campaign of banquets and professional gatherings. At the end of November, Gapon agreed to introduce into his Assembly the resolutions of the Zemstvo Congress and to distribute to its members publications of the Union of Liberation.53
The opportunity for a major strike presented itself on December 20, 1904, with the dismissal of four workers belonging to his Assembly by Putilov, the largest industrial enterprise in the capital. Because the Putilov management had recently founded a rival union, the workers viewed the dismissals as an assault on their Assembly and went on strike. Other factories struck in sympathy. On January 7, an estimated 82,000 workers were out; the following day, their number grew to 120,000. By then, St. Petersburg was without electricity and newspapers; all public places were closed.54
Imitating the banquet campaign, Gapon on January 6 scheduled for Sunday, January 9, a worker procession to the Winter Palace to present the Tsar with a petition. As was the case with all the documents drafted by or with the assistance of the Union of Liberation, the petition generalized and politicized specific and unpolitical grievances, claiming that there could be no improvement in the condition of the workers unless the political system was radically changed. Written in a stilted language meant to imitate worker speech, it called for a Constituent Assembly and made other demands taken from the program of the Union of Liberation.55 Gapon sent copies of the petition to high officials. Preparations for the demonstration went ahead despite the opposition of the socialists.
The Russian Revolution Page 5