Duma circles, cut off from reality by a screen of communiqués announcing our brilliant victories in Galicia, took a long time to realize that the war was off to a bad start. Guchkov was the first to return from the army in the field, in the autumn of 1914, with exaggerated reports that everything was collapsing, that the war was “nearly lost already”—and the Kadets, eternal oppositionists, did not believe this hotheaded duelist who never stopped boasting of his military expertise. It was only in January 1915, through the Budget Commission of the Duma, that they began to learn a few things about the shortage of shells and the defects of the supply system generally. But even in closed sessions, blithe, self-intoxicated Sukhomlinov caroled, unabashed, that all was well with the army. By January 1915 the Kadets had decided in closed session to resume their conflict with the government. But in an open session of the Duma—a laughably short, three-day session, meant to show that the government had no need of that body—Milyukov kept up the line previously adopted: although the government was taking advantage of the truce with the opposition to strengthen its own hand in domestic policy, the Kadets would not join battle in public, so as not to undermine the morale of the army or feed the enemy’s Schadenfreude.
This was no longer the Milyukov who used to invite students to commit terrorist acts—for one thing, he had since then been threatened with assassination himself, and nobody likes that—and who had sought to reconcile constitution with revolution: he had become slightly more statesmanlike, and very much more cautious. Besides, he was not eager to make a frontal assault on the regime while the students were so quiet and the socialists so timid. Why should the Kadets have to take the lead?
The February session was short, but the Duma had ceased to insist on long ones: the truce with the government went on and on, and the deputies no longer knew how to conduct themselves. In May, however, Rodzyanko, the president of the Duma, returned from the front and painted such a picture of the retreat in all its immensity—almost as far as the Western Bug—that silence was no longer possible: the government was plainly destroying Russia—and perhaps there was a conspiracy to do so? Deliberately to bring the country under the German jackboot, so as to crush progressive society? Two cities fell in quick succession: Peremyshl (the Tsar himself had attended the recent and rash celebrations of its capture) and the illustrious city of Lvov, also the recent scene of great celebrations. As though to mock its opponents, the government was headed by none other than the muttonchop-whiskered court sycophant Goremykin, now a feeble old man of seventy-five, but showing no intention of dying, an unsinkable dreadnought of a State Secretary. He had been Minister of the Interior before Stolypin, before Pleve, before Sipyagin—all in turn assassinated, while he, alternating in office with these doomed ministers, had never got in the way of a revolutionary bomb, although it was he who had dissolved the First Duma. Now here he was, in use again, like an old fur coat taken out of mothballs. The whole world was astounded to see this decrepit old man presiding over the government at such a dangerous time.
Contemporaries never know the inside story of government reshuffles. It was rumored that the post of Prime Minister had been offered more than once to Krivoshein, the Minister of Agriculture. There seemed to be very good grounds for such an appointment, and he had been in the cabinet for seven years, longer than any of them. But, for reasons unknown, he was not the one chosen.
It was actually Krivoshein’s own decision not to accept the premiership, which was offered to him several times. He had long been intimately concerned with the problem of cabinet unanimity: he was the author of a perceptive memorandum to the Emperor in the summer of 1905, before the revolution was in full swing. It said that ministers in the Russian government did not act in agreement with each other: each of them was directly subordinate to the Tsar and for a short time after an audience with him would feel that he was expressing His Majesty’s will and would take even less account of his colleagues. This recalled the state of Louis XVI’s government when the States-General were convened. The Duma now being convened should find itself faced with a strong and unified authority, and opposition from within the government should not be allowed. The specter of revolutionary France made some impression on the Emperor—he had a feel for history—and he thought of including something relevant in the Fundamental Laws of 1906, but faltered yet again and was dissuaded. No such clause was included, and the government drifted on without rigorous procedural rules. (Anyway, if the government was firmly united, would not the Autocrat be sidelined?)
Krivoshein was an outstanding figure among the servants of the Russian state. He did not belong to the highest level of society, and had no connections in high places, but owed his rise solely to his own talents and efforts. He had served so long that he could pass for a bureaucrat born and bred. He was indistinguishable from all the others in striving for advancement and suffered cruelly from setbacks. What made him different was his political sense and his eagerness to do great deeds. At the same time, he knew the limits beyond which he should not aspire: he lacked Stolypin’s drive to make history, to become a great leader of men. And so, circumspect and subtle, he took care not to occupy the first place (which in any case attracts envy and hatred) but chose one close enough to it to assure him the advantages of real power. Characteristically, he sought to influence developments without taking full responsibility for them. He knew how fickle the Tsar was, and where there was no certainty of success he showed an extraordinary flair for anticipating changes of mood and fluctuations of authority, so that he could divine the right time to act. He was reputed to be a staunch conservative, he had good personal relations with bureaucrats, court circles, and anyone likely to become influential. He was even close to the royal couple—well liked by the Empress (because of their shared interest in peasant handicrafts) and the Tsar’s trusted adviser (it was he who penned the solemn Imperial Manifesto declaring war on Germany). He who had once fought at the side of Stolypin, the bugbear of educated Russian society, became over the years more and more acceptable and congenial to society. He had direct links with the stiff-necked Moscow merchants through his wife, who belonged to the Morozov family, which also meant that he was financially secure for life. He had been ready for Stolypin, having headed the Resettlement Agency from 1896, and for his agrarian reform. (He had been actively concerned with those problems before Stolypin, but not strong-minded enough to commit himself to one side or the other in the great debate.) After Stolypin’s death he had put many years of honest work into such causes as reform of the peasant commune, the improvement of agricultural methods and of land use, and resettlement, and had brought them within sight of victory. He made wide and confident use of volunteer helpers among the educated public, and relied greatly on the “third element” in the zemstvos, so earning the goodwill of educated society, especially by his laconic toast in Kiev in 1913:
In such a huge state as Russia it is impossible to control all things from the center. It is essential to enlist the aid of local social forces and to place the necessary resources at their disposal. My belief is that our fatherland will only achieve prosperity if the division between “us” and “them,” meaning government and society, ceases to exist, and people begin saying simply “we,” meaning the government and society together.
He was seeking a way out of what was the basic conflict in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Russia, a way to break through the inherent misunderstanding between government and society. He tried to become the intermediary between them. (Rech, however, saw his challenge as capitulation on the part of the government. And Prime Minister Kokovtsov reproved him for what he too saw as capitulation.) Furthermore, in his seven years as a minister Krivoshein had succeeded in remaining on excellent terms with the Duma, thanks to good personal relations with influential deputies, and had obtained credits for agriculture without once speaking in the Duma itself, which would have meant formulating his views and policies clearly and so displeasing either society or the monarch. Krivos
hein had achieved the impossible, winning the confidence of both the Emperor and the State Duma.
The news of Stolypin’s assassination had reached Krivoshein at his summer home in the Crimea. He was by then such a prominent member of the cabinet that he could expect to be offered the premiership. However reluctant he might be to accept it, refusal at that moment would be embarrassing—it would look as though he was afraid of the terrorists. And the Emperor was already on his way to the Crimea! Krivoshein hurriedly left to attend the funeral, and so miss him.
Nevertheless, the Emperor offered to crown his career with the premiership two years later, at Livadia. Krivoshein then refused explicitly, alleging that he had heart trouble and got overexcited when he had to make public speeches. He lacked the courage to cross the fateful borderline and take supreme power. But he had begun to feel uncomfortable in the cabinet under the austere Kokovtsov, especially because Kokovtsov, as Minister of Finance, was primarily interested not in the development of the country’s productive forces but in amassing a reserve of idle gold, and so refused to give generous credits for the development of agriculture and for land reform. (“Such thrift is more ruinous than the most reckless prodigality,” said Krivoshein.) He had to get Kokovtsov removed if development was to replace financial sclerosis. For those who resort to political intrigue the most dubious cards may have their uses. The right-winger Prince Meshchersky had fallen out of favor with the Tsar, but Krivoshein foresaw from the start that they would make up, because they had similar views on the nature of the imperial power. He subsidized the prince’s journal—and sure enough, Meshchersky, back in favor, helped Krivoshein to change the government, replacing Kokovtsov as Finance Minister with the trusty Bark, and as Prime Minister with … with whom? Meshchersky urged Krivoshein to take the post himself. But he refused yet again, and suggested the aged Goremykin, with whom he had been on the best of terms ever since those distant days at the turn of the century when Minister Goremykin had done so much to advance an obscure civil servant named Krivoshein. Goremykin could now temporarily occupy the highest post without hindering Krivoshein in the exercise of real power within the cabinet, and should it be necessary, the old man would cheerfully surrender the office of Prime Minister. (Krivoshein explained to his intimates that after Stolypin no one would be given real power—the Emperor was so jealous and suspicious that whoever was Prime Minister would find himself with more responsibility than power. Kokovtsov, almost echoing Stolypin, said that “in Russia the Prime Minister has nobody to rely on. He is tolerated only until he begins to loom too large in the mind of the public, and to play the part of a real ruler.”) This long and little-known story explains why the government of our mighty and by then flourishing Russia was headed by the timeserving old dodderer Goremykin at the beginning of the fateful year 1914.
Krivoshein was the real Prime Minister in that government, and he further strengthened his position at the end of 1914 by bringing in a supporter of his, the liberal zemstvo activist Count Ignatiev, as Minister of Education. (The Tsar, who had an extraordinary memory for people and occasions, readily consented. He remembered that twenty-one years earlier Count Ignatiev, then an NCO in the Preobrazhensky Guards Regiment, had been an excellent song leader after exhausting maneuvers. Shortly afterward, Prince Shakhovskoy was appointed Minister of Trade and Industry, thanks to the Tsar’s grateful memory of the way in which in the September of Stolypin’s assassination he had organized that river trip along the barely navigable Desna from Kiev to Chernigov, and then in May 1913, in celebration of the dynasty’s tercentenary, that marvelous cruise along the Volga. He had also done an excellent job of improving the main roads in the Crimea, along which the Tsar was now driven at great speed.) Goremykin readily yielded the limelight to Krivoshein and gave him a free hand. On all important matters they were at one until the summer of 1915. Krivoshein’s influence extended to foreign policy as well as to all other matters. (He and Sazonov had a good understanding.) He held the title of “His Majesty’s Secretary of State,” which gave him the right to issue verbal instructions in the name of the Emperor. There remained, however, within the cabinet a group of ministers who refused to submit to him and sometimes mounted intransigent rightist opposition: Sukhomlinov, Nikolai Maklakov, Shcheglovitov, and Sabler. Internal conflict reached a point at which, for the sake of unanimity within the government, it became necessary to get rid of those ministers. At cabinet meetings Krivoshein and Sazonov pretended that they could not see or hear Maklakov. The retreat of 1915 speeded up developments.
In the first six months of the war Sukhomlinov’s radiant optimism, and the peculiar system which gave the government no say in the administration of the armed forces, meant that ministers shared the general ignorance of shortcomings in the military supply system. It was not until February 1915, in the course of a private conversation at GHQ, that Shcheglovitov and Bark were told about the disastrous shortfall in the supply of shells. The spring retreat, coming on top of this, exacerbated public hostility. The cabinet majority began conspiring to remove the ministers detested by society, threatening to resign unless they got their way. The idea originated with Sazonov, and the whole Krivoshein circle, including Grigorovich, the Navy Minister, but excluding Goremykin, met secretly at his apartment. Mutiny had broken out within the government, but it seemed to be in a good cause; a war can be successfully waged only if government and society are at peace with one another.
Goremykin himself was not seen as an obstacle, and to ask for his removal as well would have been asking too much. Krivoshein saw clearly who the best candidates for office were and promptly presented a full list of replacements.
The Emperor was dismayed to find one group of ministers plotting behind the backs of another (“That sort of thing isn’t done in the regiments”), but gave in: defeats in the field can make a stubborn man more reasonable. Stunned by the retreat from Peremyshl and Lvov, he did not want to quarrel either with his ministers or with society, and Krivoshein stood higher in his estimation than ever. So, dearly as the Emperor loved Nikolai Maklakov, he agreed to remove him from the Ministry of the Interior.
The removal of the War Minister called for greater exertions. Krivoshein journeyed to GHQ before the other ministers were summoned and worked hard to persuade Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich that Sukhomlinov should be replaced by Polivanov. (Polivanov’s candidature had been persistently urged by Guchkov, with whom Krivoshein was on friendly terms and had family connections.) A triumphally publicized photograph shows the Council of Ministers in session at GHQ in Baranowicze that June, all wearing white tunics—only Sabler and Shcheglovitov were absent, which made it easier to persuade the Emperor that they too should be dismissed. Goremykin did as Krivoshein wished, and was himself eager to create the united cabinet so urgently needed. The new Minister for Justice, however, Khvostov (the uncle), was Goremykin’s not Krivoshein’s candidate. The new Procurator of the Holy Synod was Samarin, chosen by Krivoshein because of his influence in Moscow. The announcement of these two changes was held up by the Emperor until the beginning of July.
The situation meanwhile was getting out of hand. The Kadets set out their grievances against the government at a conference in June. Military setbacks and poor organization on the home front were at the bottom of the list. Much more aggravating were government distrust of voluntary aid organizations, irritating monitoring of contacts between intellectuals and ordinary soldiers (was it true that pamphlets from the revolutionary years were taken away from the wounded?), the harsh treatment of the Uniates in Galicia, and the government’s refusal to make concessions to the Jews and the Poles. And why had the Bolshevik deputies been tried and condemned, and why had the terrorist Burtsev, who had patriotically returned from abroad, not been honored for it but banished? The Kadets were more and more inclined to criticize the government in public. In their eyes its composition was the real trouble, and two dismissals only left them hungry for further changes, for the reconstitution of the government so that it wo
uld enjoy the confidence of society—let it be made up of bureaucrats so long as they were congenial ones. (This was the latest Kadet ploy. That phrase—"a government enjoying public confidence”—was camouflage for the “ministry answerable to parliament,” which was impossible for the time being. It was easier to agitate for and obtain a government enjoying public confidence, which would then gradually turn into a “responsible” government.) The Kadets now intended to insist on the convocation of the Duma and a lengthy session.
Hotheads proposed convening the Duma summarily—that is to say, without seeking authorization. Milyukov sought to cool them down:
At present the eyes of all Russia are on the battle front. If the Duma assembles in a spontaneous, revolutionary fashion, all Russsia will instantly turn to look in amazement at a spectacle which can rejoice only our enemies. And the “spontaneous” Duma itself will be dissolved without difficulty. The result will be a pale and wretched copy of the Vyborg appeal … Should we perhaps summon the masses to come out in support of us? The government is unaware of what is happening in the “depths of Russia,” but observers like ourselves, intellectuals, see clearly that we are walking on the brink of a volcano. The present equilibrium is so precarious that a single jolt would suffice to create general instability and disarray. There would be another mob orgy … of the sort that nipped the splendid promise of the 1905 revolution in the bud. A strong regime, whether good or bad, is needed more now than ever before … All we can do is open the government’s eyes and reform the cabinet without exerting undue pressure.
Some said that the country’s salvation lay in an amnesty for revolutionaries and a Kadet government, but the party’s leaders—V. Maklakov, Shingarev, Rodichev—urged restraint, saying that the time for this had not come and that they must contribute to victory in the field, even if it meant forgetting their program in its pure form.
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