The Russian Revolution полностью

The gentry, having lost “taste for the land,” continued to abandon the countryside. Between 1905 and 1914, gentry landholding in European Russia declined by 12.6 percent, from 47.9 to 41.8 million desiatiny. Most of the land which the landlords sold was acquired by peasants either communally or privately. As a result, on the eve of the Revolution Russia was more than ever a country of small, self-sufficient cultivators.

During this time, agricultural yields improved:

CEREAL YIELDS IN 47 PROVINCES OF EUROPEAN RUSSIA⁶⁵ (kilograms per desiatina)     Rye Wheat 1891–1895 701 662 1896–1900 760 596 1901–1905 794 727 1906–1910 733 672 1911–1915 868 726

Russian yields were still the lowest in Europe, bringing in one-third or less of the crops harvested in the Low Countries, Britain, and Germany—the result of unfavorable natural conditions, the virtual absence of chemical fertilizers, and the communal system. Improved yields made possible increased exports of foodstuffs: in 1911, Russia sold abroad a record 13.5 million tons of cereals.⁶⁶

Stolypin’s vision of “Great Russia” required, in addition to the restoration of public order and changes in agricultural practices, political and social reforms. As with agrarian measures, his political reforms grew out of projects formulated by the Ministry of the Interior before his arrival on the scene: a good part had been anticipated in Witte’s proposals to Nicholas II.⁶⁷ Stolypin adopted and expanded these ideas, whose purpose was to modernize and Westernize Russia. Very little of this program was realized: Stolypin declared that he required twenty years to change Russia and he was given a mere five. Even so, its provisions are of interest because they indicate what the liberal bureaucracy, which was far better informed than either the Court or the intelligentsia, saw as the country’s most pressing needs. As formulated in public addresses, notably his Duma speech of March 6, 1907, and the program which he dictated privately in May 1911.* Stolypin intended the following:

Civil rights: Protection of citizens from arbitrary arrest; abolition of administrative exile; bringing to trial officials guilty of criminal abuse of authority.

Police: Abolition of the Corps of Gendarmes as a separate entity and its merger with the regular police; gendarmes to be deprived of the authority to conduct political investigations; an end to the practice of employing agents provocateurs to infiltrate revolutionary movements.

Administration: Creation of a Ministry of Self-government; replacing the peasant volost’ with an all-estate, self-governing unit whose officials would combine administrative and police functions; major reform of zemstva which would endow them with powers comparable to those enjoyed by state governments in the United States; elections to zemstva to be based on a democratic franchise; the bureaucracy’s authority over zemstva to be confined to ensuring the legality of their actions; the introduction of zemstva into the western provinces of the empire.

Ethnic minorities: Creating a Ministry of Nationalities; full equality for all citizens regardless of nationality and religion; administrative decentralization in the areas populated largely by non-Russians to allow the latter a greater voice in running their affairs; elimination of the Pale of Settlement and other discriminatory laws against the Jews.

Social legislation: Formation of ministries of Social Security, of Health, and of Labor; compulsory elementary schooling; state insurance for the aged and disabled; a national health program; full legalization of trade unions.

To carry out this program Stolypin required the powers of a Peter the Great, or, barring that, at least the unstinting support of the Crown. He enjoyed neither, and hence only a small part of his reform agenda saw the light of day.