The Socialists-Revolutionaries decided on a massive terror campaign in January 1906—that is, after the country had been promised a constitution. The scope of the campaign was staggering. Stolypin told the Duma in June 1906 that in the preceding eight months there had occurred 827 assaults with the intent to kill against officials of the Ministry of the Interior (which included the police and the gendarmerie), as a consequence of which 288 persons lost their lives and 383 suffered injuries.26 The director of the Police Department informed the Duma a year later that in the two Baltic provinces of Livonia and Courland there had taken place 1,148 terrorist acts, which resulted in the loss of 324 lives, the majority of the victims being policemen and soldiers.27 It has been estimated that in the course of 1906 and 1907 terrorists killed or maimed in the Russian Empire 4,500 officials.28 If private persons are added, the total number of the victims of left-wing terror in the years 1905–7 rises to over 9,000.29
The government’s hope that the Duma would help it deal with these outrages were not realized. Even the Constitutional-Democrats refused to condemn them on the grounds that the revolutionary terror was a natural reaction to governmental terror. When a Duma deputy ventured to declare that in a constitutional regime there was no place for terror, he was attacked by his colleagues as a “provocateur” and the resolution which he moved received only thirty votes.30
In these difficult circumstances—a rebellious parliament, rural violence, and nationwide terror—the monarchy turned to a “strong man,” the governor of Saratov, Peter Arkadevich Stolypin.
Stolypin, who would serve as Prime Minister from July 1906 until his death in September 1911, was arguably the most outstanding statesman of Imperial Russia. For all their remarkable gifts, his only possible rivals—Speranskii and Witte—lacked his combination of the statesman’s vision and the politician’s skills. Not an original thinker—most of his measures had been anticipated by others—he impressed Russians and foreigners alike with his strength of character and integrity: Sir Arthur Nicolson, the British Ambassador to Russia, thought him simply the “most remarkable figure in Europe.”31 In his actions he was guided by the ideas of the liberal bureaucracy, believing that Russia required firm authority but that under modern conditions such authority could not be exercised without popular support. The dvorianstvo, in his view, was a vanishing class: the monarchy should rely on an independent yeomanry, the creation of which was one of his principal objectives. Parliament was indispensable. He was virtually the only Russian Premier to address representatives of the nation as equals and partners. At the same time he did not believe that parliament could run the country. Like Bismarck, whom he in many ways emulated, he envisioned it as an auxiliary institution.* That he failed in his endeavors demonstrates how irreconcilable were the divisions in Russia and how unlikely it was that the country would escape violent collapse.
Born in 1862 in Germany, Stolypin descended from a dvorianstvo family which had served the tsars since the sixteenth century: Struve described him as a typical “servitor in the medieval sense, instinctively loyal to the Imperial sovereign.”32 His father was an artillery general who had distinguished himself in the Crimean War; his mother was related to Alexander Gorchakov, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs under Alexander II. Stolypin would probably also have followed a military career were it not for a physical disability incurred in childhood. After attending secondary school in Vilno, he enrolled at the Physical-Mathematical Faculty of St. Petersburg University, from which he graduated in 1885 with the Highest Honors and a Candidate’s Degree (the Russian equivalent of an American Ph.D.) for a dissertation on agriculture. A highly cultivated man (he is said to have spoken three foreign languages), he liked to think of himself as an intellectual rather than a bureaucrat, a feeling the St. Petersburg officialdom reciprocated by treating him as an outsider even after he had reached the topmost rung of the bureaucratic ladder.33
After completing his studies, Stolypin joined the Ministry of the Interior. In 1889 he was sent to Kovno, in what used to be Polish-Lithuanian territory, where his wife, the socially prominent O. B. Neidgardt, owned property. Here he spent thirteen years (1889–1902), serving as Marshal of the Nobility (an appointed office in this area), devoting his spare time to the improvement of his wife’s estate and studies of agriculture.
21. P. A. Stolypin: 1909.
The years which he spent in Kovno were to exert a decisive influence on Stolypin’s thinking. In the western provinces of Russia communal landholding was unknown: here peasant households held their land as outright property. Comparing the superior condition of the rural population in this region with that of central Russia, Stolypin came to agree with those who saw in the peasant commune the main impediment to rural progress; and because he considered rural prosperity a precondition of national stability, he concluded that the preservation in Russia of law and order demanded the gradual elimination of the commune. The commune inhibited improvement in the peasant’s economic condition in several ways. The periodic redistribution of land deprived the peasant of incentives to improve the soil since it was not his property; at the same time, it ensured him of the minimum needed to survive. It also encouraged the enterprising and industrious peasant to engage in usury. Stolypin believed that Russia needed a large class of independent, landowning peasants to replace the decaying dvorianstvo and provide a model for the rest of the rural population.34
In May 1902, impressed with his performance as Marshal of the Nobility, the Ministry of the Interior appointed Stolypin governor of Grodno: at forty, he was the youngest holder of that office in the Empire. After serving less than one year, he was transferred to Saratov, one of the Empire’s most troublesome provinces, with a record of agrarian unrest and a strong SR presence. He is said to have owed this appointment to Plehve, who sought to appease public opinion by selecting officials with a liberal reputation.35 His experience in Saratov strengthened Stolypin’s hostility to the commune, but it also made him aware of the strong hold it exerted on the muzhik, who liked its “leveling” effect. As Stolypin saw it, however, the commune allowed only for “leveling down.” To allow the peasants’ energies to “level up,” he came on the idea of having the government distribute Crown and State lands to independent farmers in order for a significant private peasant sector to emerge alongside the communal.36
Saratov was very turbulent in 1905. Stolypin displayed intelligence and courage in coping with rural unrest. Unlike many governors who reacted to peasant violence by closeting themselves in their offices and leaving the task of pacification to gendarmes and soldiers, he visited the areas of disturbance, spoke with the rebellious peasants, and debated radical agitators. He persisted in this policy despite several attempts on his life, in one of which he was wounded. Such initiatives enabled him to quell the agrarian disorders in Saratov with minimal resort to force. In right-wing circles this earned him a reputation for “softness” and “liberalism” which was not helpful in his subsequent career.
St. Petersburg, however, took notice. His proven administrative abilities, his courage, and his known devotion to the dynasty made him an ideal candidate for ministerial office. On April 26, 1906, following Witte’s resignation, he was offered the portfolio of the Interior in Goremykin’s cabinet. After some hesitation, he accepted the post and moved to the capital. Although favored by the Court for his slavish devotion, the sixty-seven-year-old Goremykin proved entirely unable either to handle the Duma or to quell public disorders. The archetypal bureaucrat-steward, dubbed “His Illustrious Indifference” (Ego Vysokoe Bezrazlichie), he was let go on the day of the First Duma’s dissolution (July 8, 1906). Stolypin now assumed the chairmanship of the Council of Ministers while retaining the portfolio of the Interior.
In approaching his new responsibilities, Stolypin acted on the premise that the October Manifesto had marked a watershed in Russian history: as he told Struve, “there was no possibility of restoring absolutism.”37 This outlook placed him at odds with the Court and i
ts conservative supporters. Stolypin found himself from the outset pursuing a policy that did not enjoy the sympathy of either the Crown or many of his subordinates in the Ministry of the Interior. The latter preferred the traditional repressive measures. Stolypin, albeit with a heavy heart, agreed to repression, to quell disorders, but he thought it futile unless accompanied by reform. He had an ambitious program in mind which centered on administrative decentralization as a device for raising the cultural level of the population.38
In March 1907, he outlined a sweeping program of reforms which called for the expansion of civil liberties (freedom of religion, personal inviolability, civic equality), improvements in agriculture, state insurance for industrial workers, extension of the powers of organs of local self-government, reform of the police, and the introduction of a graduated income tax.39
Determined to carry out his duties with the cooperation of society, he established contact with the leaders of all political parties save those committed to revolution. He also sought to build up in parliament a coalition of supporters, on the example of George Ill’s “King’s Friends” and Bismarck’s Reichsfreunde. He was prepared to go to great lengths to achieve this end, agreeing to legislative compromises and resorting to bribery. His Duma addresses were outstanding examples of parliamentary oratory, by virtue of not only the force of arguments but also their tone: he spoke as a Russian patriot to fellow patriots rather than as a royal steward communicating the master’s wishes. In actions as well as public pronouncements, he took it for granted that the interests of Russia had precedence over all private and partisan interests.
This endeavor met with little response in a country in which the sense of nationhood and statehood was as yet poorly developed. To the opposition Stolypin was a lackey of the despised monarchy; to the monarchy he was an ambitious, self-seeking politician. The bureaucratic establishment never accepted him, because he had not risen through the ranks of the St. Petersburg ministries.
The most urgent task confronting Stolypin was the restoration of public order. This he accomplished by harsh measures which earned him odium among the intelligentsia.
The immediate justification for launching a campaign of counterterror was a nearly successful attempt on his life.
After moving to St. Petersburg, Stolypin maintained the gubernatorial custom of keeping on Sundays open house for petitioners. He insisted on this practice despite warnings from the police. In the afternoon of August 12, 1906, three Maximalists, two disguised as gendarmes, sought admission to his villa on Aptekarskii Island. When a suspicious guard tried to detain them, they threw briefcases, loaded with explosives, into the building.40 A frightful carnage ensued: twenty-seven petitioners and guards, as well as the terrorists themselves, were torn to pieces by the explosion and thirty-two people suffered wounds. Stolypin miraculously escaped harm but both his children were injured. Reacting with characteristic coolness, he directed the removal of the victims.
The assault on Stolypin was only the most sensational manifestation of terrorism which continued to hold the country in its bloody grip. The commander of the Black Sea Fleet and the governors of Warsaw and Saratov fell victim to it. Hardly a day passed without a police official losing his life. To make matters worse, monarchists, emulating revolutionary tactics, resorted to counterterror, and on July 18 murdered the Jewish deputy, Michael Gertsenshtein, who had presented to the Duma the Kadet land program with a demand for compulsory expropriations.* No government in the world could have remained passive in the face of such violence. Since a new Duma had not yet been elected, Stolypin had recourse to Article 87. He subsequently made frequent use of this clause: during the half year that elapsed between the dissolution of the First Duma and the convocation of the Second, Russia was in effect administered by decree. Because he believed in the rule of law, he regretted having to do so, but he saw no alternative: such procedures were “a deplorable necessity,” justified on the grounds that at times the interests of the state took precedence.41
Since 1905, a good part of Russia had been placed under martial law: in August 1906, eighty-two of the Empire’s eighty-seven provinces were under “Reinforced Safeguard.”42 These measures proved insufficient, and under strong pressure from the Court, Stolypin resorted to summary justice. On August 19—one week after the failed attempt on his life—he introduced, under Article 87, field courts for civilians.43 The law provided that in areas placed under either martial law or Extraordinary Safeguard, the governors and commandants of the military districts could turn over to military courts persons whose guilt was so obvious as to require no further investigation. The personnel of these courts were to be appointed by local commanders and to consist of five officers. Hearings were to take place behind closed doors: defendants were allowed no lawyer but could call on witnesses. The field courts had to convene within twenty-four hours of the crime and reach a verdict in forty-eight hours. There was no appeal from their sentences, which were to be carried out within twenty-four hours.
This law remained in force for eight months, expiring in April 1907. It is estimated that Stolypin’s field courts meted out up to 1,000 death sentences.44 Subsequently, terrorists and other persons accused of violent political crimes were tried by ordinary courts. A contemporary source estimates that in 1908 and 1909 the courts convicted for political crimes and armed assault 16,440 persons, 3,682 of them to death and 4,517 to hard labor.45
Stolypin’s repressive measures evoked cries of outrage from public circles which displayed considerable tolerance for revolutionary terror. The Kadets, who ignored SR murders, spared no words of condemnation for the quasi-juridical procedures employed by Stolypin to prevent them: one of their spokesmen, Fedor Rodichev, referred to the gallows used by the field courts as “Stolypin’s neckties” and the name stuck. In July 1908, Tolstoy wrote Ne mogu molchat’!—I Cannot Keep Silent!—in which he argued that government violence was a hundredfold worse than criminal and terrorist violence because it was perpetrated in cold blood. His recipe for ending revolutionary terrorism was abolishing private property in land. The issue was so divisive that Guchkov’s defense of Stolypin’s field courts as a “cruel necessity”46 split the Octobrist Party and led to the resignation of Shipov, one of its most respected figures.
But public order was eventually restored, enabling Stolypin to launch his program of economic and political reforms.
Without awaiting the convocation of the second Duma, Stolypin enacted, again with resort to Article 87, a series of agrarian reforms which he viewed as the key to Russia’s long-term stability.
An initial step in this direction was a law of October 5, 1906, which accorded the Russian peasant, for the first time in history, civil equality with the other estates.47 It removed all restrictions on peasant movement, depriving the communes of the power to refuse members permission to leave. The land commandants could no longer punish peasants. Thus disappeared the last vestiges of serfdom.
Stolypin addressed himself concurrently to the issue of land shortage, increasing the reserve of agricultural land available for purchase by peasants and facilitating access to mortgage money. The Peasant Land Bank, founded in the 1880s, had already in 1905 received broad powers to provide easy credit to help peasants acquire land. Stolypin now made much more land available for this purpose by persuading the Court to offer for peasant purchase Crown and State lands. This was formalized in laws of August 12 and 27, 1906.48 The Crown (udeVnye) lands used for this purpose amounted to 1.8 million desiatiny (2 million hectares) of arable land, and the State lands to 3.6 million (4 million hectares). Approximately the same acreage of woodland was put on the market, for a total of 11 million desiatiny (12 million hectares).49 These properties, augmented with land which the landlords sold after the 1905–6 rural disturbances, considerably increased peasant holdings.
To provide access to these lands it was necessary to organize and finance a large-scale resettlement program to move peasants out of the overcrowded provinces of central Russia. This
the government initiated as early as March 1906, before Stolypin had assumed office, in a reversal of previous policy discouraging peasant movement. Under Stolypin, the state-sponsored resettlement program assumed massive proportions, with the peak years being 1908 and 1909. Between 1906 and 1916, 3 million peasants moved to Siberia and the steppes of Central Asia, settling on lands which the government had made available (547,000 of them later returned).50
Russian liberals and socialists considered it axiomatic that the country’s “agrarian question” could be solved only by expropriations of properties belonging to the State, the Crown, the Church, and private landlords. Like Ermolov, Stolypin felt this belief rested on an illusion: there simply was not enough non-peasant land in the Empire to satisfy those who needed it as well as those who were added each year to the rural population from natural growth. In a masterfully reasoned speech to the Duma on May 10, 1907, he argued that the Social-Democratic program of nationalizing land was without merit:
Let us assume for the sake of argument that the government accepts [the nationalization of land] as a desirable thing, that it sidesteps the issue of driving to ruin a whole … numerous educated class of landowners, that it reconciles itself to the destruction of the sparse centers of culture in the countryside. What would result? Would this at least solve the material aspect of the agrarian question? Would it or would it not make it possible to satisfy the peasants in the localities where they reside?
These questions can be answered with figures, and the figures, gentlemen, tell the following: If one were to transfer to the peasantry all the privately owned land, without exception, even that located in the neighborhood of cities, then in the province of Vologda the communal land as now constituted, together with that added to it, would provide 147
desiatiny
The Russian Revolution Page 28