It was difficult for the liberals, despite their fear of the masses, to resist this opportunity for political gain. By speaking for ‘the nation’ against the dynasty they might place themselves once again at the head of the opposition movement. This seemed increasingly important now that the protests against the war and its economic hardships were taking a more radical form, with mass strikes and demonstrations, many of them led by the socialists. ‘I am afraid’, one Kadet leader told his colleagues in the autumn of 1916, ‘that the policy of the government will lead to a situation in which the Duma will be powerless to do anything for the pacification of the masses.’ The reports of the secret police made it clear that ‘the broad mass of the people’ were becoming increasingly hostile to the Duma and were accusing it ‘of deliberately refusing to come to the aid of the masses; the most bitter accusations in this respect are levelled not only at the Octobrists, but at the Kadets too’. If the Duma was to avoid becoming obsolete and ineffective, it would have to move closer to the mood of the streets and add its own voice to the revolutionary movement. That was the view of the left Kadets, of Kerensky’s Trudoviks, and of a growing number of public figures, including Prince Lvov, who told a meeting of the Progressive Bloc that Russia’s only hope of salvation lay in a revolution. ‘Abandon all further attempts at constructive collaboration with the present government,’ he wrote in December; ‘they are all doomed to failure and are only an impediment to our aim. Do not indulge in illusion; turn away from ghosts. There is no longer a government we can recognize.’56
Such arguments were strengthened by the continued intransigence of the regime. The appointment in September of A.D. Protopopov as acting Minister of the Interior had raised the hopes of the moderate liberals, men like Miliukov, who still sought to win reforms from the government through conciliation. Protopopov was an Octobrist landowner and textile manufacturer, a member of the Progressive Bloc, and Deputy Chairman of the Duma. His appointment was widely seen as government capitulation to the liberal opposition — one soon to be followed by the appointment of a Duma ministry. But in fact it was no more than a clever political manæuvre by the court. The Duma was due to convene on 1 November and Protopopov, as a ‘Duma man’, was seen as the best man to control it. ‘Please take Protopopov as Minister of the Interior,’ the Tsarina had urged her husband. ‘As he is one of the Duma it will make a great effect and shut their mouths.’ Protopopov was a fanatical mystic (he once told Kerensky that he ruled with the help of Jesus Christ) and, unknown to the liberals, a protégé of Rasputin (who, as he once told Brusilov, was ‘saving Russia from a revolution’). He was ambitious and ridiculously vain — he was clearly overwhelmed by the honour bestowed on him by the Tsar — and was thus unlikely to endanger his own position by making common cause with the opposition. When the real nature of his role became clear — he soon donned the uniform of the Imperial Gendarmerie, an archetypal symbol of tsarist oppression — an old Duma colleague begged him to resign. Protopopov replied: ‘How can you ask me to resign? All my life it was my dream to be a Vice-Governor, and here I am a Minister.’57
Disillusionment with the new minister set in very quickly. Hope gave way to hatred in Duma circles. Protopopov’s obsequiousness to the imperial couple was nauseating. Instead of providing a bridge between the liberal opposition and the government he turned himself into a lackey of the court and was roundly condemned as a traitor to the parliamentary cause. On Rasputin’s request, he ordered Sukhomlinov’s release from prison — most of the country would have had him hanged for treason — and banned public organizations from meeting without the police in attendance.
