by James Millar
ROGER R. REESE
MILYUKOV, PAUL NIKOLAYEVICH
(1859-1943), Russian historian and publicist; Russian liberal leader.
Milyukov was born in Moscow. He studied at the First Gymnasium of Moscow and the department of history and philology at Moscow University (1877-1882). His tutors were Vassily Kliuchevsky and Paul Vinogradov. After graduating from the university, Milyukov remained in the department of Russian history in order to prepare to become a professor. From 1886 to 1895, he held the position of assistant professor in the department of Russian history at Moscow University. In 1892 he defended his master’s thesis based on the book State Economy and the Reform of Peter the Great (St. Petersburg, 1892). In the area of historical methodology Milyukov shared the views of posi-tivists. The most important of Milyukov’s historical works was Essays on the History of Russian Culture (St. Petersburg, 1896-1903). Milyukov suggested that Russia is following the same path as Western Europe, but its development is characterized by slowness. In contrast to the West, Russia’s social and economic development was generally initiated by the government, going from the top down. Milyukov is the author of o ne of the first courses of Russian historiography: Main Currents in Russian Historical Thought (Moscow, 1897). In 1895, he was fired from the Moscow University for his public lectures on the social movement in Russia and sent to Ri-azan, and then for two years (1897-1899) abroad.
In 1900 he was arrested for attending the meeting honoring the late revolutionary Petr Lavrov in St. Petersburg. He was sentenced to six months of incarceration, but was released early at the petition of Kliuchevsky before emperor Nicholas II. In 1902, Milyukov published a program article “From Russian Constitutionalists in the Osvobozhdenie” (“Liberation”), magazine of Russian liberals, issued abroad. Between 1902 and 1905, Milyukov spent a large amount of time abroad, traveling, and lecturing in the United States at the invitation of Charles Crane. Milyukov’s lectures were published as Russia and Its Crisis (Chicago, 1905).
In 1905 Milyukov returned to Russia and took part in the liberation movement as one of the organizers and chairman of the Union of Unions. On August, 1905, he was arrested, but after a month-long incarceration was released without having been charged. In October of 1905 Milyukov became one of the organizers of the Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) Party. His reaction towards the October Manifesto was skeptical and he believed it necessary to continue to battle the government. Due to formal issues, he could not run for a place in the First and Second Dumas, but he was basically the head of the Kadet Faction. From 1906, Milyukov was the editor of the Rech (Speech) newspaper, the central organ of the Cadet Party. From 1907, he was the chairman of the Party’s central committee. From 1907 to 1912, he was a member of the third Duma, elected in St. Petersburg. He favored the tac941
MILYUTIN, DMITRY ALEXEYEVICH
tics of “the preservation of the Duma,” fearing its dissolution by the tsar. He became a renowned expert in the matters of foreign policy. In the Duma, he gave seventy-three speeches, which total approximately seven hundred large pages. In 1912 Milyukov was reelected to the Duma, once again from St. Petersburg.
After the beginning of World War I, Milyukov assumed a patriotic position and put forth the motto of a “holy union” with the government for the period of the war. He believed it necessary for Russia to acquire, as a result of the war, Bosporus and the Dardanelles. In August of 1915, Milyukov, was one of the organizers and leaders of the oppositionist interparty Progressive Bloc, created with the aim of pressuring the government in the interests of a more effective war strategy. On November 1, 1916, Milyukov made a speech in the Duma that contained direct accusations of the royal family members of treason and harshly criticized the government. Every part of Milyukov’s speech ended with “What Is This: Stupidity or Treason?” The speech was denied publication, but became popular through many private copies and later received the name of “The Attacking Sign.”
After the February revolution Milyukov served as the foreign minister in the Provisional Government. Milyukov’s note of April, 1917, declaring support for fulfilling obligations to the allies provoked antigovernmental demonstrations and caused him to retire. Milyukov attacked the Bolsheviks, demanding Lenin’s arrest, and criticized the Provisional Government for its inability to restore order. After the October Revolution, Milyukov left for the Don, and wrote, at the request of general Mikhail Alexeyev, the Declaration of the Volunteer Army. In the summer of 1918, while in Kiev, he tried to contact German command, hoping to receive aid in the struggle against Bolshevism. Milyukov’s “German orientation,” unsupported by a majority of the Cadet Party, led to the downfall of his authority and caused him to retire as chairman of the party. In November of 1918, Milyukov went abroad, living in London, where he participated in the Russian Liberation Committee. From 1920, he lived in Paris. After the defeat of White armies, he proposed a set of “new tactics,” the point of which was to defeat Bolshevism from within. Milyukov’s “new tactics” received no support among most emigr? Cadets and in 1921 he formed the Paris Democratic Group of the Party, which caused a split within the Cadets. In 1924 the group was modified into a Republican-Democrat Union. From 1921 to 1940 Milyukov edited the most popular emigr? newspaper The Latest News (Poslednie Novosti). He became one of the first historians of the revolution and the civil war, publishing History of the Second Russian Revolution (Sofia, 1921-1923), and Russia at the Turning-point (in two volumes, Paris, 1927).
In 1940, escaping the Nazi invasion, Milyukov fled to the south of France, where he worked on his memoirs, published posthumously. He welcomed the victories of the Soviet army and accepted the accomplishments of the Stalinist regime in fortifying Russian Statehood in his article “The Truth of Bolshevism” (1942). Milyukov died in Aix-les-Bains on March 31, 1943. See also: CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY; FEBRUARY REVOLUTION HISTORIOGRAPHY; LIBERALISM; OCTOBER REVOLUTION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Emmons, Terence. (1999). “On the Problem of Russia’s ‘Separate Path’ in Late Imperial Historiography.” In Historiography of Imperial Russia, ed Tomas Sanders. Armonk, NY: M. E.Sharpe. Miliukov, Pavel Nikolaevich. (1942). Outlines of Russian Culture. 3 vols., ed. Michael Karpovich; tr. Valentine Ughet and Eleanor Davis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Miliukov, Pavel Nikolaevich. (1967). Political memoirs, 1905-1917, ed. Arthur P. Mendel, tr. Carl Goldberg. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Miliukov, Pavel Nikolaevich. (1978-1987). The Russian Revolution. 3 vols., ed. Richard Stites; tr. Tatyana and Richard Stites. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press. Miliukov, Pavel Nikolaevich; Seignobos, Charles; and Eisenmann, L. (1968). History of Russia. New York: Funk amp; Wagnalls. Riha, Thomas. (1969). A Russian European: Paul Miliukov in Russian Politics. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Stockdale, Melissa K. (1996). Paul Miliukov and the Quest for a Liberal Russia, 1880-1918. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
OLEG BUDNITSKII
MILYUTIN, DMITRY ALEXEYEVICH
(1816-1912), count (1878), political and military figure, military historian, and Imperial Russian war minister (1861-1881).
MILYUTIN, NIKOLAI ALEXEYEVICH
General Adjutant Milyutin was born in Moscow, the scion of a Tver noble family. He completed the gymnasium at Moscow University (1832) and the Nicholas Military Academy (1836). After a brief period with the Guards’ General Staff, he served from 1839 to 1840 with the Separate Caucasian Corps. While convalescing from wounds during 1840 and 1841, he traveled widely in Europe, where he decided to devote himself to the cause of reform in Russia. As a professor at the Nicholas Academy from 1845 to 1853, he founded the discipline of military statistics and provided the impulse for compilation of a military-statistical description of the Russian Empire. In 1852 and 1853 he published a prize-winning five-volume history of Generalissimo A. V. Suvorov’s Italian campaign of 1799. As a member of the Imperial Russian Geographic Society he associated with a number of future reformers, including Konstantin Kavelin, P. P. Semenov-Tyan-Sh
ansky, Nikolai Bunge, and his brother, Nikolai Milyutin. An opponent of serfdom, the future war minister freed his own peasants and subsequently (in 1856) wrote a tract advocating the liberation of Russian serfs.
As a major general within the War Ministry during the Crimean War, Milyutin concluded that the army required fundamental reform. While serving from 1856 to 1860 as chief of staff for Prince Alexander Baryatinsky’s Caucasian Corps, Milyutin directly influenced the successful outcome of the campaign against the rebellious mountaineer Shamil. After becoming War Minister in November 1861, Milyutin almost immediately submitted to Tsar Alexander II a report that outlined a program for comprehensive military reform. The objectives were to modernize the army, to restructure military administration at the center, and to create a territorial system of military districts for peacetime maintenance of the army. Although efficiency remained an important goal, Milyutin’s reform legislation also revealed a humanitarian side: abolition of corporal punishment, creation of a modern military justice system, and a complete restructuring of the military-educational system to emphasize spiritual values and the welfare of the rank-and-file. These and related changes consumed the war minister’s energies until capstone legislation of 1874 enacted a universal military service obligation. Often in the face of powerful opposition, Milyutin had orchestrated a grand achievement, although the acknowledged price included increased bureaucratic formalism and rigidity within the War Ministry. Within a larger imperial context, Milyutin consistently advanced Russian geopolitical interests and objectives. He favored suppression of the Polish uprising of 1863-1864, supported the conquest of Central Asia, and advocated an activist policy in the Balkans. On the eve of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, he endorsed a military resolution of differences with Turkey, holding that the Eastern Question was primarily Russia’s to decide. During the war itself, he accompanied the field army into the Balkans, where he counseled persistence at Plevna, asserting that successful resolution of the battle-turned-siege would serve as prelude to further victories. After the war, Milyutin became the de facto arbiter of Russian foreign policy.
Within Russia, after the Berlin Congress of 1878, Milyutin pressed for continuation of Alexander II’s Great Reforms, supporting the liberal program of the Interior Ministry’s Mikhail Loris-Melikov. However, after the accession of Alexander III and publication in May 1881 of an imperial manifesto reasserting autocratic authority, Mi-lyutin retired to his Crimean estate. He continued to maintain an insightful diary and commenced his memoirs. The latter grew to embrace almost the entire history of nineteenth-century Russia, with important perspectives on the Russian Empire and contiguous lands and on its relations with Europe, Asia, and America. See also: MILITARY, IMPERIAL ERA; GREAT REFORMS; MILITARY; SUVOROV, ALEXANDER VASILIEVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brooks, Edwin Willis. (1970). “D. A. Miliutin: Life and Activity to 1856.” Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, Stanford, CA. Menning, Bruce W. (1992, 2000). Bayonets before Bullets: The Imperial Russian Army, 1861-1914. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Miller, Forrestt A. (1968). Dmitrii Miliutin and the Reform Era in Russia. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
LARISSA ZAKHAROVA
MILYUTIN, NIKOLAI ALEXEYEVICH
(1818-1870), government official and reformer.
Nikolai Milyutin was born into a well-connected noble family of modest means. One of his brothers, Dmitry, would serve as Minister of War
MINGRELIANS
from 1861 to 1881. Nikolai entered government service at the age of seventeen and served in the Ministry of Internal Affairs from 1835 until 1861. A succession of ministers, recognizing his industry and talent, had him draft major reports to be issued in their names. He was largely responsible for compiling the Urban Statute of 1846, which, as applied to St. Petersburg and then to other large cities, somewhat expanded the number of persons who could vote in city elections.
Until 1858, Milyutin was a relatively obscure functionary. In the next six years he was the principal author of legislation that fundamentally changed the Russian empire: the Statutes of February 19, 1861, abolishing serfdom; the legislation establishing elective agencies of local self-administration (zemstva), enacted in 1864; and legislation intended to end the sway of the Polish nobility after their participation in the insurrection of 1863. He exercised this influence although the highest position he held was Acting Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs from 1859 to 1861-“acting” because Alexander II supposed that he was a radical. He was dismissed as deputy minister as soon as the peasant reform of 1861 was safely enacted.
In the distinctive political culture of autocratic Russia, Milyutin demonstrated consummate skill and cunning as a politician. None of the core concepts of the legislation of 1861 was his handiwork. He was, however, able to persuade influential persons with access to the emperor, such as the Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna, to adopt and promote these concepts. He was able, in a series of memoranda written for the Minister of Internal Affairs Sergei Lanskoy, to persuade the emperor to turn away from his confidants who opposed the emerging reform and to exclude the elected representatives of the nobility from the legislative process. And, as chairman of the Economic Section of the Editorial Commission, a body with ostensibly ancillary functions, he was able to mobilize a fractious group of functionaries and “experts” and lead them in compiling the legislation enacted in 1861.
Almost simultaneously he served as chairman of the Commission on Provincial and District Institutions. In that capacity he drafted the legislation establishing the zemstvo, an institution which enabled elected representatives to play a role in local affairs, such as education and public health. The reform was also significant because the regime abandoned the principle of soslovnost, or status based on membership in one of the hereditary estates of the realm, which had been the lodestone of government policy for centuries. To be sure, the landed nobility, yesterday’s serfholders, were guaranteed a predominant role, since there were property qualifications for the bodies that elected zemstvo delegates.
Concerning the “western region” (Eastern Poland), Milyutin rewrote the legislation of February 19 so that ex-serfs received their allotments of land gratis and landless peasants were awarded land, often land expropriated from the Catholic Church. He wished to bind the peasants, largely Orthodox Christians, to the regime and detach them from the Roman Catholic nobles, who had risen in arms against it.
Milyutin was well aware of the shortcomings of the reform legislation he produced. He counted on the autocracy to continue its reform course and eliminate these shortcomings. His expectations were not realized. It is the paradox and perhaps the tragedy of Milyutin that, despite his reputation as a “liberal,” he saw the autocracy as the essential instrument to produce a prosperous, modern, and law-governed Russia. See also: EMANCIPATION ACT; MILYUTIN, DMITRY ALEX-EYEVICH; PEASANTRY; SERFDOM; ZEMSTVO
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Field, Daniel. (1976). The End of Serfdom: Nobility and Bureaucracy in Russia, 1856-1861. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lincoln, W. Bruce. (1982). In the Vanguard of Reform: Russia’s Enlightened Bureaucrats, 1825-1861. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Zakharova, Larissa. (1994). “Autocracy and the Reforms of 1861-1874 in Russia.” In Russia’s Great Reforms, 1855-1881, eds. B. Eklof, J. Bushnell, and L. G. Za-kharova. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
DANIEL FIELD
MINGRELIANS
Mingrelians call themselves Margali (plural Mar-galepi) and are Georgian Orthodox. Mingrelian (like Georgian, Svan, and Laz) is a South Caucasian (Kartvelian) language; only Mingrelian and Laz, jointly known as Zan, are mutually intelligible.
MININ, KUZMA
The ancient Zan continuum along the Black Sea’s eastern coast from Abkhazia to Rize was broken by Georgian speakers fleeing the Arab emirate (655-1122) in Georgia’s modern capital Tiflis, so that Georgian-speaking provinces (Guria and Ajaria) now divide Mingrelia (western Georgian lowlands bounded by Abkhazia, Svanetia, Lechkhumi, Imer
e-tia, Guria, and the Black Sea) from Lazistan (northeastern Turkey). The Dadianis ruled post-Mongol Mingrelia (capital Zugdidi), which came under Russian protection in 1803, although internal affairs remained in local hands until 1857. Traditional home economy resembled that of neighboring Abkhazia.
A late-nineteenth-century attempt to introduce a Mingrelian prayer book and language primer using Cyrillic characters failed; it was interpreted as a move to undermine the Georgian national movement’s goal of consolidating all Kartvelian speakers. In the 1926 Soviet census, 242,990 declared Min-grelian nationality, a further 40,000 claiming Min-grelian as their mother tongue. This possibility (and thus these data) subsequently disappeared; since around 1930, all Kartvelian speakers have officially been categorized as “Georgians.” Today Mingrelians may number over one million, though fewer speak Mingrelian. Some publishing in Mingrelian (with Georgian characters), especially of regional newspapers and journals, was promoted by the leading local politician, Ishak Zhvania (subsequently denounced as a separatist), from the late 1920s to 1938, after which only Georgian, the language in which most Mingrelians are educated, was allowed (occasional scholarly works apart). While some Mingrelian publishing has restarted since Georgian independence, Mingrelian has never been formally taught. Stalin’s police chief, Lavrenti Beria, and Georgia’s first post-Soviet president, Zviad Gamsakhur-dia, were Mingrelians. The civil war that followed Gamsakhurdia’s overthrow (1992) mostly affected Mingrelia, where Zviadist sympathizers were concentrated; even after Gamsakhurdia’s death (1993), local discontent with the central authorities fostered at least two attempted coups, reinforcing longstanding Georgian fears of separatism in the area. See also: ABKHAZIANS; CAUCASUS; GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS; SVANS