The Russian Revolution полностью

Its guiding philosophy was a state based on law—law equally binding on the administration and society. Alexander Guchkov, the party’s leader, was descended from a prominent Moscow merchant family founded by a serf and had received his education in Western Europe. According to Alexander Kerensky, who described him as “something of a dour loner with an air of mystery,” he had opposed the Liberation Movement.⁸⁵ He had a low opinion of the Russian masses and did not feel comfortable with politicians. A devoted patriot, in temperament and outlook he resembled Stolypin, whom he helped to split the right-wing in the Third Duma, separating from it the more moderate elements; these, organized as the Nationalist faction, together with the Octobrists, formed an absolute majority and helped Stolypin push through many of his legislative bills.⁸⁶ Much of the rank and file of the Octobrist Party had its roots in the zemstvo movement and maintained close links with it.

To gain support for his legislative programs, Stolypin annually assigned 650,000 rubles from secret funds for subsidizing newspapers and bribing influential right-wing deputies.⁸⁷

The Third Duma was an active body: it voted on 2,571 bills introduced by the government, initiated 205 of its own, and questioned or “interpellated” ministers 157 times.⁸⁸ Its commissions dealt with agrarian problems, social legislation, and many other issues. The year 1908 and even more so 1909 were periods of bountiful harvests, declining violence, and renewed industrial development. Stolypin stood at the pinnacle of his career.

Yet at this very time the first clouds appeared on the horizon. As noted, the constitution had been granted under extreme duress as the only alternative to collapse. The Court and its right-wing supporters viewed it, not as a fundamental and permanent change in Russia’s system of government, but as an emergency measure to tide it over a period of civil unrest. The refusal to admit that Russia even had a constitution and the insistence that the Tsar’s not swearing an oath to the new Fundamental Laws absolved him from having to observe their provisions were not lame excuses, but deeply held convictions. Thus, as the situation in the country improved, and the emergency attenuated, the Court had second thoughts: with public order and rural prosperity restored, did one really need a parliamentary regime and a Prime Minister who played parliamentary politics? Stolypin, who had said of himself that he was “first and foremost a loyal subject of the sovereign and the executor of his designs and commands,” now appeared “a most dangerous revolutionary.”⁸⁹ The main objection to him was that instead of acting in parliament exclusively as an agent of the Crown he forged there his own political constituency. Stolypin believed that he was putting together a party of “King’s Friends,” not for his own, but for the King’s benefit. The monarchists, however, saw only that his political practices led to a diminution of Imperial authority, or at least such authority as Nicholas and his entourage believed him to be entitled to:

Stolypin would have been the last to admit that his policy tended to weaken the Emperor’s independent power—indeed, he considered the source of his own authority to lie in the fact that it had been entrusted to him by the autocratic monarch. Yet, inevitably, that was the effect of his policy, since he realised that in modern conditions that state could only be strengthened against revolution by increasing in it, through parliament, the influence of the landowning, professional and educated classes. And this could only happen at the expense of the Emperor’s own independent power. It was this undeniable fact which gave the reactionaries’ arguments such force in the mind of the Emperor.⁹⁰

This was the crux of Stolypin’s difficulties with the Court, the cause of his waning support and ultimate disgrace. After his death, the Tsarina would admonish his successor, Vladimir Kokovtsov, with reference to Stolypin, “not to seek support in political parties.”⁹¹ In general, the more successful Stolypin’s policies were, the less were his services required and the greater grew the Court’s antagonism to him. Such was the paradox of Russian politics.

His reforms and reform projects also alienated powerful interests. The agrarian reforms, designed to give Russia a class of peasant landlords, threatened that segment of the rural gentry which saw itself as irreplaceable Kulturträger. His efforts to decentralize the administration and make bureaucrats legally accountable aroused the hostility of the officialdom, while his plans to curb the police gained him no friends in those quarters. His unsuccessful efforts on behalf of Jews infuriated the extreme right.