On assuming office, Protopopov drew up a liberal reform program, centered on the abolition of the Pale of Settlement and the other Jewish disabilities58—a long overdue move, but hardly at the heart of Russia’s concerns, the more so that the mass expulsions of Jews from the front zone had the effect of lifting the Pale.* This proposal, meant to meet one of the demands of the Progressive Bloc, was inspired by Rasputin, who favored equality for Jews. Protopopov also toyed with the idea of a responsible ministry—responsible, however, for illegal as well as “inexpedient” (netselesoobraznye) actions, not to the Duma but to the Senate, a wholly appointed judiciary body.59 He neither thought out nor pursued any of these plans. A few weeks after taking over the ministry, he met with the opposition in the hope of agreeing on a joint course of action, but this endeavor, too, had no result.
Disillusionment with the new Minister of the Interior set in very quickly: hope gave way to hatred. His obsequiousness to Nicholas and Alexandra revolted Duma politicians. So did his tactless actions, such as releasing General Sukhomlinov from prison and placing him under house arrest (done at the request of Rasputin) and appearing in the Duma in a gendarme’s uniform.60 On the eve of the convocation of the Duma, he was widely perceived as a renegade. Instead of serving as a bridge between administration and parliament, he caused a virtual break between the two, because no respectable political figure would so much as talk to him.
Time was running out. Information reaching political leaders in Moscow and Petrograd (and corroborated confidentially, as we now know, by the police) indicated that the economic hardships of the urban population could any day explode in mass unrest. If such unrest was to be prevented, the Duma had to seize power and do so soon. There was not a moment to lose: if riots broke out before it took charge, the Duma, too, could be swept aside. This imperative—the perceived need to act before the outburst of popular fury—lay behind the irresponsible and, indeed, dishonorable conduct of the opposition leaders in late 1916. They felt they were racing against the clock: the question was no longer whether a revolution would occur, but when and in what form—from above, as a coup d’état directed by themselves, or from below, as a spontaneous and uncontrollable mass revolt.61
In September and October the main opposition parties, meeting at first separately and then jointly, as the Progressive Bloc, held secret conferences to devise a strategy for the forthcoming Duma session. Their mood was unyielding: the government had to surrender power. This time there would be no temporizing and no compromises.
The driving force behind this revolutionary challenge was the Constitutional-Democratic Party. At the meeting of its Central Committee on September 30-October 1, complaints were heard that the party had lost contact with the country because it no longer behaved like an opposition. The Left Kadets wanted to launch a “merciless war” against the government, even at the risk of provoking the Duma’s dissolution.62 The Kadet Party formally adopted the strategy of confrontation at a conference on October 22–24. Thanks to the information supplied by police agents,63 we are well informed of the proceedings of this meeting, perhaps the most consequential in the party’s history. Miliukov came under attack for being too cautious and too eager to maintain the legitimacy of the party in the eyes of the authorities. The country was lurching to the left and unless the Kadets followed suit they would lose influence. Some of the provincial delegates, who were more radical than the party’s Duma deputies, thought it a mistake even to waste time on parliamentary debates: they preferred that the party appeal directly to the “masses”—that is, engage in revolutionary agitation as the Union of Liberation and the Union of Unions had done in 1904–5. Prince P. D. Dolgorukov thought that the moderate Miliukov retained his position as the party’s leader only because there was still hope that the government would dismiss Stürmer: should it refuse to do so and send the Duma packing, Miliukov would be finished. It was the last chance to confront the government in parliament.64 Colonel A. P. Martynov, the outstanding chief of the Moscow Okhrana, passed to his superiors the information gathered by agents at the Kadet conference, along with personal comments. In his opinion, the thrust of the Kadets’ strategy lay in the resolution which spoke of the necessity of “maintaining contact with the broad masses of the population and organizing the country’s democratic elements for the purpose of neutralizing the common danger.” He added that the Kadets were terrified of a revolution breaking out either now or after the war, when the country would face problems beyond the government’s ability to solve.65
To force the government to capitulate, the Kadets adopted the riskiest course imaginable: it was so out of character for a party which prided itself on respect for law and due process that it can only be explained by a mood of panic. The party resolved publicly to charge the Prime Minister with high treason. There was not a shred of evidence to support this accusation, and the Kadets well knew this to be the case. Stürmer was a reactionary bureaucrat, ill qualified to head the Russian government, but he had committed nothing remotely resembling treason. Rumors of treason, however, were so rife in the rear and at the front that they decided to exploit them for their own ends, playing on the Prime Minister’s German surname.*
The Kadets coordinated their plan with the other parties in the Progressive Bloc. On October 25, the bloc agreed on a common platform: to demand the dismissal of Stürmer, to call for the repeal of laws issued under Article 87, and “to emphasize rumors that the right was striving for a separate peace.”66
The opposition leaders thus set out on a collision course from which there was no retreat: they would confront the Crown with a revolutionary challenge.
Stürmer, whom the police kept informed of these developments, was understandably outraged. He informed Nicholas that when the Duma reconvened the opposition would launch an all-out attack charging the ministers with high treason.67 Such behavior in time of war was nothing short of criminal, inconceivable in any other belligerent country. He recommended, as a first step, withholding the deputies’ pay and threatening those of military age with conscription. He further requested the authority, if the situation required it, to dissolve both chambers of parliament and order new elections. Nicholas equivocated. He wanted to avoid, if at all possible, a confrontation. Stürmer could dissolve the Duma, he said, only in an “extreme case.”68 He was letting power slip from his hands. He was tired from lack of sleep and thoroughly discouraged. He could not even bear the sight of the daily press: the only newspaper he read was Russkii invalid, a patriotic daily put out by the Ministry of War.69
Although he had failed to obtain a carte blanche, Stürmer felt he had the authority privately to inform the Duma leaders that if they dared to accuse the government of treason, the Duma would be at once prorogued and possibly dissolved.70
These warnings threw confusion into the ranks of the Progressive Bloc, dividing its radical wing, represented by the Left Kadets and Progressives, from the more conciliatory wing of mainstream Kadets, Octobrists, and individual conservatives. The Kadets, bound by resolutions of the party conference, warned their conservatives that if they did not support them, the Kadets would introduce a still more sharply worded resolution.71 V. V. Shulgin and other nationalists expressed unhappiness over the Kadet proposal, arguing that public accusations of treason could have disastrous consequences. Eager to retain conservative support, the Kadets agreed to a bloc resolution from which the word “treason” was removed.72 The Progressive Party, unhappy over this compromise, withdrew from the bloc. The Left Kadets also threatened to defect, but Miliukov managed to dissuade them with the promise to deliver a “sharp” address in the Duma.73
The Duma opened at 2:30 p.m. on November 1 in an atmosphere laden with unprecedented tension.
Rodzianko, the chairman, began the proceedings with a brief patriotic address. As soon as he had finished, all the ministers, led by Stürmer and Protopopov, rose to their feet and left the chamber, followed by the foreign ambassadors.* The socialist deputies responded with hoots an
d catcalls.
S. I. Shidlovskii, the leader of the Octobrists and spokesman for the Progressive Bloc, delivered the first major address. He criticized the government for having prorogued the Duma in order to rule by Article 87, neglecting the food supply, and using military censorship to safeguard its “nonexistent prestige.” He warned that Russia faced serious dangers. The country had to have a government of public confidence: the Progressive Bloc would strive for this objective “employing all the means permitted by law.”74
Kerensky made a hysterical speech that in vituperation exceeded anything previously heard in the halls of the Duma.75 He accused Europe’s “ruling classes” of having pushed “democracy” into an intolerable war. He charged the Russian Government with conducting a “White Terror” and filling its prisons with working people. Behind all these acts stood “Grisha Rasputin.” Excited by the sound of his own words, he demanded rhetorically:
Gentlemen! Will everything that we are living through not move us to declare with one voice: the main and worst enemy of our country is not at the front, but here, in our midst. There is no salvation for our country until, with a unanimous and concerted effort, we force the removal of those who ruin, humiliate, and insult it.
Comparing the ministers to “hired killers” and pointing at their empty seats, he demanded to know where they had gone, “these men suspected of treason, these fratricides and cowards.”
Although reprimanded by the chair, Kerensky continued his diatribe, warning that Russia stood on the brink of her “greatest trials, unprecedented in Russian history,” which threatened anarchy and destruction. Russia’s real enemies were those who placed their private interests above those of the country:
You must annihilate the authority of those who do not acknowledge their duty: they [pointing again at the empty ministerial seats] must go. They are the betrayers of the country’s interests.
At this point, the chairman asked Kerensky to step down.
Although cheered by the left, Kerensky did not enjoy much respect from the majority of the Duma since his rhetorical excesses were familiar. It was a different matter when Miliukov mounted the rostrum, for he was widely known as a responsible and levelheaded statesman. His speech, only slightly less vituperative than Kerensky’s, carried, therefore, much greater weight. It must be borne in mind that his address was the result of a compromise struck between the left and right factions of the Progressive Bloc: in deference to the former, which included a sizable segment of his own party, Miliukov accused the government of treason; to placate the latter, he muted the charge, posing it in the form of a question.
Miliukov began by recalling the changes which had taken place in Russia in 1915 in consequence of military defeats and the hopes which these changes had aroused. But now, with the war in its twenty-seventh month, the mood of the country was different: “We have lost faith that the government can lead us to victory.” All the Allied states had formed governments of national unity, involving in the management of the war effort the most qualified citizens, without regard to party. And in Russia? Here all the ministers capable of gaining parliamentary support had been forced from office. Why? To answer his question, Miliukov resorted to insinuation of treason based on information which he claimed to have secured on a recent trip to Western Europe:
The French Yellow Book has published a German document outlining the principles of how to disorganize an enemy country, to instigate in it unrest and disorders. Gentlemen, if our government wanted deliberately to carry out this mission, or if the Germans wanted to use for this purpose their own means, such as influence and bribery, they could not have done it better than the Russian Government. [The Kadet deputy F. I. Rodichev from his seat: “Alas, it is so!”]
76
The government’s behavior caused rumors of treason in high places to sweep the country. Then Miliukov produced his bombshell/Citing from the Berliner Tagwacht of October 16, he reported that the private secretary of Stürmer, Ivan Manasevich-Manuilov, a journalist with a shady past, had been employed before the war by the German Embassy to bribe the conservative daily Novoe vremia. Why was this individual first arrested and then released? Because, Miliukov explained, as Manasevich-Manuilov himself had admitted to the prosecutor, he had passed on some of that German money to Prime Minister Stürmer. Miliukov went on to read from German and Austrian newspapers expressions of satisfaction over the dismissal of Sazonov as Foreign Minister and his replacement by Stürmer. The impression which these citations conveyed was that Stürmer had secret communications with the enemy and worked for the conclusion of a separate peace.
At this point, the right disrupted Miliukov with shouts of slander. When order was restored, Miliukov made some murky but ominous hints of pro-German ladies active abroad and in Petrogad. What did all these bits and pieces of information add up to? That something was seriously amiss:
We need a judiciary inquiry of the kind given to Sukhomlinov. When we accused Sukhomlinov, after all, we did not have in our possession the facts that the inquiry would uncover. We had what we have now: the instinctive voice of the entire country and its subjective certainty.
On his visit to Paris and London, Miliukov went on, he had been told that the Central Powers had access to Russia’s most sensitive state secrets. This was not the case when Sazonov ran foreign policy. Miliukov next mentioned a meeting between Protopopov and a German businessman in Stockholm the preceding spring (which was no secret and on which Protopopov had reported to the Tsar), once again planting in the minds of his audience the ideas of treason and separate peace. Referring to Stunner’s quitting the Duma earlier that day, Miliukov exclaimed: “He heard the shouts with which you welcomed his departure. Let us trust that he will never set foot here again!”
Reverting to the subject of his opening remarks, Miliukov said that once there had been a possibility of cooperation between the Duma and government but this was no longer the case. Citing Shuvaev’s “I may be a fool, but I am no traitor,” Miliukov concluded his speech with a rhetorical flourish, repeated several times. “Is it stupidity or is it treason” that Russia was unprepared to conduct operations in the Balkans after Romania had entered the war on her side? That she had delayed granting Poland autonomy until the Germans had beaten her to it? That the government treated as sedition the Duma’s efforts to organize the home front? That the Police Department instigated factory strikes and engaged in other “provocations” to provide an excuse for peace negotiations? To each of these questions, the audience lustily responded: “Stupidity!” “Treason!” “Both!” But, Miliukov answered himself, it really did not matter, since the effect was the same. His parting words demanded the dismissal of the cabinet.
The “subjective certainty” which Miliukov claimed to possess of high officials’ acts of collusion with the enemy had no basis in fact: to put it bluntly, it was a tissue of lies. Miliukov knew, even as he spoke, that neither Stürmer nor any other minister had committed treason, and that whatever his shortcomings, the Prime Minister was a loyal Russian. Later on, in his memoirs, he admitted as much.77 Nevertheless, he felt morally justified slandering an innocent man and sowing the most damaging suspicions about the government because he thought it essential for the Kadets to take charge of the country before it fell apart.78
In reality, he contributed as much as anything the government did or failed to do to inflaming revolutionary passions. The effect of his speech, which attracted immense attention since he spoke for Russia’s most important political party, was enhanced by his reputation as a prominent scholar: it seemed inconceivable that a man of his stature would make such grave accusations unless he had incontrovertible proof. Some Russians even believed that Miliukov received from Allied sources additional incriminating evidence which he withheld for security reasons. The government forbade the press to publish Miliukov’s speech or to comment on it. The prohibition only served to heighten interest. Reproduced by typewriter, mimeographed, and printed on broadsheets, Miliukov’s address i
s said to have spread in the rear and at the front in millions of copies.79 It had an immense impact: “The people and the troops, simplifying the speech, concluded: Duma deputy Miliukov had proven that the Empress and Stürmer were selling out Russia to Kaiser Wilhelm.”80 The passions unleashed by Miliukov’s speech played a major role in promoting the February Revolution,81 in which anger over alleged government treason was initially the single most important motive.
The Duma sessions which followed brought the authorities little comfort. Shulgin, the leader of the Progressive Nationalists, said that the country which for two years had bravely fought the enemy “had come to be mortally afraid of its own government … the men who had fearlessly looked Hindenburg in the eye lost courage confronting Stürmer.”82 And the left applauded this monarchist and anti-Semite. The only speaker to defend the authorities was N. E. Markov (known as Markov II), a notorious reactionary and pathological Judeophobe, who later, in emigration, would back the Nazis: in this period he happened to receive regular subsidies from Protopopov.
The November 1–5, 1916, sessions of the Duma marked the onset of a revolutionary psychosis: an intensely felt, irrational desire to pull down the entire edifice of monarchic Russia. This psychosis, long prevalent among radical intellectuals, now seized the liberal center and even spilled into conservative ranks. General V. N. Voeikov, who observed this phenomenon from headquarters at Mogilev, speaks of a “widespread conviction that something had to be broken and annihilated—a conviction that tormented people and gave them no peace.”83 Another contemporary wrote in December 1916 of a “siege of authority that has turned into sport.”84
How pervasive this attitude had become may be demonstrated on the behavior of the Tsar’s immediate family, the grand dukes, who now lined up with the Progressive Bloc. In late October, before the Duma had met, Nicholas spent some days in Kiev with his mother and several relatives, who warned him against the influence of his wife and Rasputin.85 On November 1, he received at headquarters Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, who, besides being a well-known amateur historian, took pride in his reputation as the most radical of the Romanovs, the Russian Philippe-Egalité. He brought a letter addressed to the Tsar in which he implored him to be rid of Rasputin. But he went further, alluding to the evil influence of the Empress, an issue obviously of the greatest delicacy:
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