How is the government headed by Pastolypin. The role of Stolypin in the fight against the revolutionary movement

Stolypin considered the fight against the revolution as the most important task of the government and his own civic duty. After his appointment as Prime Minister on July 8, 1906, he retained the post of Minister of the Interior, which strengthened his influence in the government, but at the same time increased his personal responsibility for making political decisions. Speaking in the 1st State Duma on June 8, 1906, he stated that the most important duty of the government is “to protect tranquility and legality, freedom not only of work, but also freedom of life, and all measures taken in this direction signify not reaction, but order.” necessary for the development of the broadest reforms."

According to the “Regulations of the Council of Ministers of August 19, 1906 on military courts» emergency military judicial bodies were created to speed up proceedings in cases of military and civilians accused of robbery, murder, robbery, attacks on military, police and officials and other serious crimes, in cases where there is no need for obviousness of the crime in additional investigation. Bill about courts-martial was developed at the direction of Emperor Nicholas II by the chief military prosecutor V.P. Pavlov, with the participation of I.G. Shcheglovitov. The immediate reason for the adoption of the bill in the manner of inter-mural legislation in accordance with Art. 87. The basic laws were inspired by the assassination attempt on the Chairman of the Council of Ministers P.A. Stolypin on August 12, 1906, in which his daughter and son were injured, 27 people were killed and 32 were wounded. Military courts were introduced in areas declared under martial law or a state of emergency protection. During 1906-07 they were introduced in 82 of the 87 provinces transferred to martial law or a state of emergency protection. Stolypin himself considered the introduction of courts-martial as an exceptional measure, not permissible as a permanent factor in the fight against the revolution. Speaking in the Duma on March 13, 1907 on the issue of Muzhduma legislation implemented in accordance with Art. 87. Basic laws (including the decree on the introduction of courts-martial), he called courts-martial a cruel measure of “necessary defense”, and stated that the state is obliged, when in danger, to pass exceptional laws “to protect itself from disintegration.” The government did not submit the law on courts-martial to the 2nd State Duma, and it automatically lost force on April 20, 1907. The consideration of cases of the most serious crimes was transferred to military district courts, in which procedural norms of production were observed. From 1907 to 1909, military district courts handed down 4,232 death sentences, of which 1,824 were carried out. After 1909, the number of those executed under military district sentences decreased in 1910 to 129, in 1911 to 58 people. In addition to emergency measures to suppress the revolution, the repressive apparatus of civil justice was also used. In 1906-1912, 35 thousand people were tried in civil courts in cases of state crimes, of which 10 thousand were acquitted. The verdicts included charges of belonging to illegal societies, revolutionary propaganda and possession of illegal literature, participation in political demonstrations, and insulting His Imperial Majesty. Special categories included “crimes against the order of government” (in 1911, 8,117 people were convicted of them), crimes and misdemeanors of the press (in 1911, 233 people were convicted of them). Of the political prisoners in 1905-1912. 7.5 thousand were sentenced to hard labor. In 1906-1908, administrative exile was widely used as a punishment. In 1908, 10,060 people were sent into administrative exile. , and in 1909 – 1991 people.

For Stolypin, the question of condemning revolutionary terror, which was raised in the 2nd State Duma by right-wing factions in response to the Cadets introducing a bill on the abolition of courts-martial, became of fundamental importance. Speaking in the Duma, Stolypin, addressing the deputies, said: “We want to believe that from you, gentlemen, we will hear a word of appeasement, that you will stop the bloody madness. We believe that you will say the word that will force us all to stand not for the destruction of the historical building of Russia, but for its re-creation, reconstruction and decoration.” In the hands of the Duma, he emphasized, “the calming of Russia, which, of course, will be able to distinguish the blood on the hands of executioners from the blood on the hands of conscientious doctors using the most extreme measures, there can be measures with only one hope, with one hope, with one faith - it is difficult to heal sick." However, the left majority of the 2nd Duma refused to condemn political murders; the Cadets managed to remove discussion of this issue from the agenda and carry out a simple formula for moving on to the next case.

The formation of political parties in the country and the spread of extremist movements raised the problem of involving civil servants in active political activities. Stolypin considered the participation of civil servants in political organizations and unions unacceptable. On August 4, 1906, the Council of Ministers considered the issue “On limiting the right of officials and employees in state institutions for free employment to participate in political parties and unions and on preventing such persons from engaging in anti-government agitation.” At the meeting, a decision was made, approved by Emperor Nicholas II on August 24, 1906, that “the participation of employees in political unions and societies is permissible only insofar as this is compatible with the requirements of official duty and official discipline, and that the participation of these persons in anti-government agitation is not can be tolerated under any circumstances."

Taking into account the experience of combating anti-government protests on the eve and during the first Russian revolution, Stolypin proposed a number of bills to increase the efficiency of the repressive apparatus and security forces. Under his leadership, a special interdepartmental commission chaired by Comrade Minister of Internal Affairs A.A. Makarov developed a new “Project of the State of Exception” instead of the outdated provisions of 1881-82. A state of exception was introduced “in areas included in the area of ​​military operations or of particular importance for military interests, or affected by internal unrest,” that is, in cases of emergency circumstances that threatened state security. The project provided for in areas declared to be in a state of exception, the suspension of laws on the inviolability of the person, home, freedom of movement, assembly, unions and speech, which entailed the exclusive rights of the “commander in chief” to suspend the publication of periodicals and introduce preliminary censorship; prohibition of the activities of unions, societies and parties; temporary closure of educational, commercial and industrial institutions; issuing preventive decrees on strikes and walkouts, prohibiting demonstrations, meetings, processions, public festivities and fairs, imposing curfews, etc. Persons who committed particularly serious crimes, including terrorist acts against persons or property of citizens, were handed over to the military or military - to the maritime court, applying to them the procedure for conducting cases established for wartime, while administrative expulsion could be applied to persons “recognized as dangerous to public order” by order of the “chief in chief” and without a court order. Thus, the project contained measures of both a preventive and repressive nature. Taking into account the exclusive rights and broad prerogatives of the “commander-in-chief,” the draft stipulated the procedure for appealing his orders, but only in the event of declaring an area in a state of exception due to internal unrest. Complaints about unlawful actions of the “commander in chief” were submitted within a two-week period to the Minister of Internal Affairs, the Minister of War or the governor in the Caucasus, who decided on the further transfer of the complaint to the Council of Ministers.

At the end of 1906, a commission was formed under the Ministry of Internal Affairs to reform the police, chaired by Makarov, which prepared a draft police reform, handed over on April 15. 1911 to the Council of Ministers. The reform included a draft on the Establishment of the Police, which provided for regulations on the organization of the police, its types, the position of its ranks among other government bodies, and on police expenditures; and the draft Police Charter, which replaced the rules of the outdated Charter on the prevention and suppression of crimes. The Police Charter defined the rights and responsibilities of police officials: “The police monitor, within the limits of the duties assigned to them and on the grounds specified in this Charter, the use of laws and mandatory regulations and take measures to prevent, detect, eliminate and prosecute all kinds of actions, prohibited by criminal laws or directed against state or public order and tranquility, as well as personal and property security.” The need for police action strictly within the framework of current legislation, the law on personal integrity and the rules of legal proceedings was especially emphasized. The charter determined the procedure for the official activities of the police in various areas, including the protection of religious order and decency, public order and personal safety of citizens; public morality, trade and crafts, property interests, etc.

The “Draft of the State of Exception” and the “Police Charter” were never adopted, despite their discussion in the State Duma of the 2nd-4th convocations.

The aggravation of the criminal situation in the country during the revolution of 1905-07. demonstrated the need to adopt a law unifying, regulating and regulating the activities of detective departments. Due to the decentralization of the investigative bodies and their subordination to the local administration, their effectiveness was low. 29 Dec 1907 Stolypin presented to the Chairman of the State Duma a bill on the organization of the detective unit. According to the law approved on July 6, 1908, detective departments were created at police departments in cities and counties to carry out searches in cases of a common criminal nature, their staffing schedule and material remuneration for employees were established. Officials of the detective departments were entrusted with all the rights and responsibilities of the police in accordance with the judicial statutes of 1864, and therefore, in addition to operational investigative actions, they conducted inquiries into individual crimes and carried out orders from prosecutors and judicial investigators.

Simultaneously with the reorganization of law enforcement agencies, a reform of the judiciary was carried out. In this regard, the reform of the Supreme Criminal Court, which tried cases of particularly important state crimes and malfeasance of senior officials of the Russian Empire, was of great importance. On April 22, 1906, the Supreme Criminal Court was transformed into a permanent institution for the consideration of cases of crimes in the service of senior officials of the civil department, and cases of state crimes were removed from its department. This reform necessitated the publication of a new law on the procedure for the responsibility of senior command personnel, which was embodied in the Regulations on the Supreme Military Criminal Court (Highly approved on May 1, 1906). Thus, the responsibility of persons holding senior government positions was increased, including officials connected by family and personal ties with the imperial family.

Projects were prepared to change the procedure for proceedings in cases of recovery of remuneration for harm and losses caused by orders of officials, which concerned officials of all classes, as well as representatives of peasant and public administration. Unfortunately, the discussion of bills in the State Duma and the State Council dragged on until 1917. The projects, combined into a law on criminal and civil liability of employees, were adopted on April 11, 1917, but no longer had practical application.

Thus, most of the projects proposed by Stolypin and his cabinet to reform the security forces did not become laws. The main role in suppressing the revolution and combating terrorist activities was played by repressive measures carried out by the forces of the outdated state apparatus. Over the course of several years, it was possible to suppress the main centers of the revolution, eliminate actively operating terrorist and expropriation groups, and virtually paralyze the illegal activities of left-wing socialist parties in the country. The achieved internal political stability allowed the Stolypin government to move on to implementing a positive reform program.

Source: Stolypin P.A. We need Great Russia. Complete collection of speeches in the State Duma and State Council. 1906-1911., M., 1991; P.A. Stolypin: Reform program. Documents and materials. T.2. M., 2003.

Lit.: History of political repression and resistance to unfreedom in the USSR, M., 2000; Pozhigailo P.A., Shelokhaev V.V., Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin: Intelligence and will, M., 2005.

O.A. Iskhakova.

The name of a prominent Russian statesman of the early twentieth century, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Russia (1906-1911) Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin (1862-1911) is widely known and popular among politicians, scientists, and representatives of the creative intelligentsia. This, in particular, is evidenced by the high rating that Stolypin received in the famous television project “Name of Russia”. He was among those who made it to the top list of the 12 most popular figures in Russia, and according to the results of electronic voting, he took second place after Alexander Nevsky.
Meanwhile, to this day, discussions about the significance of those reforms that were carried out or prepared by Stolypin during the period of his premiership do not subside. Representatives of various political movements in modern Russia give Stolypin’s policies assessments that range from enthusiastic to extremely negative. If we turn to the past, we will see that Stolypin’s contemporaries gave him and his policies very different characteristics: from complete approval to complete rejection. Thus, disputes about the identity of the outstanding statesman of the era of Nicholas II began during Stolypin’s lifetime and have not stopped to this day.
In fact, the reforms of P. A. Stolypin of 1906-1911. were the last attempt at monarchical reformation in Tsarist Russia. The Stolypin government set itself the main goal of saving and strengthening the monarchy in the political situation that arose in the country during the first Russian revolution of 1905-1907.
Formulation of the problem. The main question addressed in this article is whether the reforms proposed by Stolypin could solve the problem of saving the monarchy, or whether they objectively weakened it, regardless of the plans of the reformer.
We will seek the answer to this difficult question by turning to the right-wing, monarchist camp, whose representatives, by their very definition, were supposed to be the support of the monarchy. We will try to show how monarchist circles assessed Stolypin's reforms from the point of view of the possibility of achieving the stated goal - to strengthen the monarchy and traditional foundations, and how the right acted: did they help or hinder the reforms?
Who are the rightists? In historical and political science literature, the right is traditionally understood as “conservative parties that defended and are defending traditional - political, social, economic, religious, everyday - ways of life that stand for preserving the foundations of the existing or existing system.”
In Russia at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. the right advocated the preservation of autocracy, and in this regard, the term “right” for that time was actually synonymous with “monarchical organizations.” The right also advocated for the primacy of the Russian nationality and the Orthodox religion in the territory of traditional residence of Russians, Little Russians and Belarusians.
The oldest political organization of the right was the Russian Assembly, created in St. Petersburg at the end of 1900 by the monarchical elite of Russian society under the traditional slogan: “Orthodoxy. Autocracy. Nationality.” The official program of the Russian Assembly was approved in 1906 and included the following provisions:
- autocratic and indivisible Russia;
- the dominant position of Orthodoxy in Russia;
- the legislative and advisory nature of the State Duma.
Subsequently, right-wing circles were represented by various political organizations, press organs of the relevant orientation, political salons, and individual prominent figures who publicly promoted their views.
It should be noted that the right-wing conservative movement was not homogeneous. It intertwines many rather heterogeneous currents - from the moderate right to the extreme right. The moderate right were ready to recognize the need to combine the Autocracy with some kind of limited parliament with the leading role of the autocracy. This emphasis on the leading role of the monarch sharply distinguished right-wing monarchists from right-wing liberals represented by the Octobrists and right-wing Cadets, who recognized the need to preserve the monarchy in Russia, but with the leading role of parliament (following the British model).
Representatives of moderate monarchists include such well-known public figures as V. P. Meshchersky, publisher of the newspaper "Citizen", General E. V. Bogdanovich, organizer of the largest monarchist salon, etc. They mainly supported the principles and ideas of the June Third monarchy. With a certain degree of convention, the All-Russian National Union (VNS) party, created in 1908, and the “Moderate Right Party,” which arose in 1909 and soon merged with the VNS, can also be considered among the moderate right. There were also moderate monarchists in the governing bodies of the estate-political organization “United Nobility” (1906-1917), where leaders of extreme right movements were also represented.
The far right is represented mainly by the Union of the Russian People (RNR) and other related Black Hundred organizations, which arose in 1905 during the first Russian revolution. Let us note that the term “Black Hundred” itself has a long history in Muscovite Rus', meaning the taxable (taxed) townspeople population of the so-called “black settlements”. The Black Hundreds were also not an ideologically homogeneous movement. It is no coincidence that after the revolution the Black Hundreds quickly split. The views of the All-Russian Union of Russian People, led by Dubrovinsky, turned out to be more radical in content. More moderate were the adherents of the “renovationist” wing of the RNC, headed by N. E. Markov, and the Union of the Archangel Michael, headed by V. M. Purishkevich. The Dubrovintsy camp, in turn, also had its own extreme right radicals, like N. N. Zhedenov, editor-publisher of the Groza newspaper.
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To date, a large number of works have been published, one way or another devoted to the reforms of P. A. Stolypin and the attitude towards them on the part of right-wing monarchist circles.
Among the works of the Soviet period, noteworthy is the monograph “Autocracy, bourgeoisie and nobility in 1907-1911,” written by the famous Leningrad historian V. S. Dyakin. He was one of the first in Soviet historiography to draw attention to the fact that P. A. Stolypin’s reforms met resistance from those political forces who believed that the existing order in Russia did not require any reforms. Dyakin called these conservative forces “legitimists” and contrasted them with supporters of reforms, whose line he defined as “Bonapartism.” According to Dyakin, it was “the clash between the Bonapartist and legitimist groups that lay at the heart of the struggle at the top in 1907-1911.”
However, this approach was not typical for Soviet historiography. Much more typical was the point of view of the famous Moscow historian A. Ya. Avrekh, who also noted the Bonapartist nature of Stolypin’s policies, but at the same time assessed Stolypin primarily as an ardent reactionary, and not as a reformer. Avrekh, in particular, wrote that “Stolypin is precisely and, above all, a right-wing extreme reactionary, a conductor of a policy that has gone down in history under the name of the Stolypin reaction.”
In the works of the post-Soviet period, both scientific and journalistic, the prevailing tendency is to change negative assessments of Stolypin’s activities to positive ones. Thus, P. N. Zyryanov in the book “Peter Stolypin. Political Portrait” (1992) gave a generally positive description of the prime minister’s personality and noted the progressive nature of his reforms. The author cites a lot of interesting and little-known facts characterizing Stolypin’s activities. True, the work contains some inaccuracies.
In 1992, another monograph by Zyryanov was published, dedicated to the peasant community of European Russia in 1907-1914. In this work, the author comes to the conclusion that Stolypin’s reforms failed to ram through the thickness of the peasantry in order to impose on the country a path of development that was beneficial to a small number of landowners, but doomed the bulk of the people to many years of poverty. This conclusion carries a negative assessment of the reforms in terms of their social orientation and degree of success.
In his book “August the Fourteenth,” which is part of the epic novel “The Red Wheel,” the famous writer A. I. Solzhenitsyn gives an enthusiastic description of P. A. Stolypin and his reforms, portraying the prime minister as a moderate reformer and humanist. Solzhenitsyn devoted many pages in his novel to the problem of Stolypin's murder. “Russia,” he writes, “buried its best - for a hundred years, or for two hundred - the head of government - with ridicule, contempt, turning away by the left, half-left and right. From emigrant terrorists to the pious Tsar.”
G. Sidorovnin's work "P. A. Stolypin. Life for the Fatherland" is openly apologetic in nature. The author characterizes Stolypin as “a wonderful person, a Russian patriot.” G. Sidorovnin believes that the current situation in Russia prompts us to look for a kind of “third”, “national path with its inherent individual characteristics”, and in this regard, he considers it necessary to carefully study the “experience of transformations in Russia carried out by Prime Minister P. A. Stolypin” .
It is also worth mentioning the two-volume book by the famous liberal economist, politician and businessman B. G. Fedorov, dedicated to Stolypin, whose life and work became the subject of study and close interest of the author of the book in the last years of his life.
Vyatka researcher A.P. Borodin dedicated his monograph to the reform activities of P.A. Stolypin. The main strength of this study is that the author used a wide range of archival sources, many of which have not previously been used by historians.
In 2004, in the series “Life of Remarkable People”, the book “Stolypin” by the famous writer and public figure S. Yu. Rybas was published, which, according to the author’s definition, is a “documentary-historical novel” about “a bright personality, a man of tragic fate, elevated to the top of the executive power of the Russian Empire." The author will set himself the task of “correlating the problems of the beginning of the last century (terrorism, degradation of the ruling elite, party discord, etc.) with modern ones, exposing the spirit of the times.” He emphasizes that “even after a hundred years, it is important for Russians to know not only about the civil and moral feat of this amazing man, but also about his visionary view of the historical path of Russia, of the establishment of a strong sovereign and constitutional principle in the country.” According to the author, “Stolypin’s reforms are the last attempt of the society of that time to remove the decaying St. Petersburg elite from power and carry out liberal reforms without destroying the statehood.”
Seeing the essence of Stolypin’s reforms in the “liberation of the productive forces of society,” Rybas argues that “Stolypin wanted to create in Russia a type of economically free person, for which the main emphasis was placed on the “second liberation” of the peasants (from the power of the community),” on the creation of a “middle class capable of stabilizing the country and accelerating its development."
Considering the question of the attitude towards Stolypin on the part of monarchical circles, the author notes that Stolypin was also opposed by right-wing circles, “whose reforms eliminated their support in landownership,” as well as “the tsarist circle, which sought to reduce reforms to a minimum, since they limited his power."
In recent years, a number of other works have been published that are of undoubted interest. Their authors analyze both Stolypin’s personality and his reforms. All of these authors evaluate P. A. Stolypin as a convinced monarchist, who, however, considered it necessary to carry out a number of liberal reforms in the country in order to smooth out the most acute social contradictions. Stolypin is portrayed as a talented statesman who proposed a program of reforms that was unique for his time and sought to implement them through the most “soft means.” These historians dismiss accusations against the prime minister of excessive cruelty towards the revolutionaries. Speaking about the fate of Stolypin's reforms, researchers note that Stolypin encountered resistance, first of all, from part of the bureaucratic elite, who considered it acceptable to preserve the existing system in its unshakable form.
A number of general works devoted to the political life of Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century also examine in one way or another an issue related to both the activities of the right camp in general and the attitude of the right to the reforms of P. A. Stolypin. Some aspects of the relationship between the right and the Stolypin cabinet are discussed in the monograph by S. A. Stepanov, published in 1992, and then revised and republished in 2005, dedicated to the history of the Black Hundred. The work of D. D. Bogoyavlensky also explored the problem of the relationship between right-wing parties and the government. As the historian I.V. Omelyanchuk rightly noted, D.D. Bogoyavlensky “considers the reasons for the split in the Black Hundred movement to be the agrarian policy of P.A. Stolypin, which pitted defenders and opponents of communal land ownership, government subsidies to monarchical organizations, which caused conflicts in the right-wing environment both on the issue of their distribution, and the fundamental admissibility of the use of government money by political parties, as well as targeted actions of the authorities aimed at maintaining the existence of various movements and groupings within the right camp.”
St. Petersburg researcher S.V. Lebedev also touched upon the issue related to the relationship between the right and Stolypin’s cabinet. The already mentioned A.P. Borodin devoted an entire chapter devoted to the problem of the relationship between the right and Stolypin in his monograph. At the same time, he did not avoid bias in his work, often unfoundedly accusing the right of slandering the prime minister. This researcher has a certain one-sided position, when almost all the right-wingers are considered by him only as convinced critics of Stolypin’s policies.
A significant contribution to the problem under consideration was made by the Moscow historian A.V. Repnikov. The fifth chapter of his monograph “Conservative Concepts for the Restructuring of Russia” is devoted to the views of conservatives on the socio-economic problems of Russia. It analyzes discussions on the issue of preserving or reforming the peasant community, shows the ambiguous, sometimes diametrically opposed attitude of the right to the agrarian policy of P. A. Stolypin, and provides critical judgments of the right about the capitalist structure as a whole.
These are some of the most interesting, in our opinion, works that in one way or another relate to the reforms of P. A. Stolypin, as well as the attitude of the right towards him. As we see, the assessment of the activities of Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin, given by different historians, is ambiguous. The change in its orientation towards the apologetics of reforms was largely due to the change in the socio-economic system in our country in the early 1990s.
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Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin was born on April 2 (14), 1862 in Dresden (Germany), where his mother went to visit her relatives. The family of the future reformer belonged to an old Russian family, known since the 16th century, and was associated with many names that constituted the glory and pride of Russia. P. A. Stolypin's great-grandfather, a senator, was a friend of M. M. Speransky, a major statesman of the early 19th century. The maternal grandfather, Prince Gorchakov, was the commander-in-chief of the Russian army during the Crimean War. Father - Arkady Dmitrievich - participant in the Crimean War, friend of L. N. Tolstoy. The future prime minister himself was the second cousin of M. Yu. Lermontov. Stolypin's wife - Olga Borisovna Neigardt - great-granddaughter of A.V. Suvorov.
In 1881, Stolypin graduated from the Vilna Gymnasium and in the same year entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University, after which in 1885 he took the position of assistant chief of staff at the Ministry of State Property. Soon he was appointed Kovno district leader, and subsequently the provincial leader of the nobility. In 1889, Stolypin moved to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and in 1901 became the youngest governor in Russia - in Grodno, and from 1903 in Saratov. P. A. Stolypin was a decisive person and more than once showed extraordinary personal courage. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, during the revolution, as a governor, he could enter a rioting crowd without security and calm it down.
In April 1906, Stolypin was appointed Minister of Internal Affairs, and on July 8, 1906, he was appointed by the Tsar to the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers, retaining his ministerial chair in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. According to the then manager of the office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, D.N. Lyubimov, who, in turn, refers to a letter from Nicholas II to his mother, Dowager Empress Maria Fedorovna, Stolypin’s appointment was facilitated by his predecessor as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, I.L. Goremykin. “Old Goremykin gave me good advice, pointing only to him. For that, I thank him,” the Tsar wrote to his mother.
Having become the head of government, Stolypin took decisive measures to suppress revolutionary uprisings, and also began to implement a series of reforms that, as he imagined, would prevent a new revolutionary explosion in Russia and prevent the death of the monarchy. All known sources allow us to say that Stolypin was a convinced monarchist and was very loyal to Nicholas II, serving him faithfully.
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Of course, the most important of Stolypin's reform programs was agrarian reform. The agrarian question, in conditions when the majority of the peasantry experienced difficulties associated with the lack of cultivable land, was the most acute and difficult for the state authorities at the beginning of the twentieth century, as was clearly shown by the agrarian protests of the peasants of 1905-1906, which terrified the authorities of the Russian Empire.
All left parties proposed solving the agrarian question by allocating land to the peasants that was owned by the imperial family, the church and noble landowners. At the same time, we were talking about the confiscation of these lands and the gratuitous provision of them to needy peasants.
However, Stolypin was categorically against such a solution to the agrarian question. The main essence of his agrarian reform was to replace communal peasant land use with individual land ownership in order to create among the peasants a significant layer of strong owners - private land owners. These owners were, firstly, to become defenders of private property in principle, and secondly, to raise agricultural productivity and increase the purchasing power of peasants, and thereby provide a reliable domestic market for the development of domestic industry.
This is how the prime minister himself described the main goal of his agrarian reform: "<…>We are building our economic revival on the presence of purchasing power among a strong, sufficient class at the bottom, because our bills on improving and streamlining local zemstvo life are based on the presence of this element, because, finally, the equalization of the rights of the peasantry with the rest of the classes of Russia should not be a word , but should become a fact."
The first step on the path of agrarian reform was the Tsar's decree of November 9, 1906, which granted peasants the right to leave the community and secure the communal land due to them as personal property. For the successful implementation of the reform, it was necessary to divide communal holdings into independent farms - cuts and farms. For this purpose, on November 15, 1908, “Temporary rules on the issuance of allotment land to certain places” were issued. In 1910, the decree of November 9, 1906, which finally became a law, was supplemented by a provision providing for the mandatory liquidation of the community where land redistribution had not taken place since 1863.
Stolypin's agrarian policy also envisaged the massive resettlement of peasants beyond the Urals and the provision of land to them in the vastness of Siberia.
Representatives of right-wing circles were far from unambiguous about the Stolypin agrarian reform that had begun. There were both its convinced supporters and opponents, including among the nobility.
Noble organizations. A contradictory attitude towards reforms on the part of the nobility appeared already in the spring of 1906, that is, at a time when the project for future reform was still being discussed. Thus, at the first congress of authorized noble societies in May 1906, many landowners supported Stolypin, saying that the community was the main cause of the agricultural crisis. “The community is that swamp in which everything that could come out into the open will get stuck,” K. M. Grimm declared at the congress, “thanks to it, the concept of property rights is alien to our peasantry. The destruction of the community would be a beneficial step for the peasantry.” This point of view won at the congress. However, the final resolution of the congress, which expressed support for Stolypin’s agrarian reforms, was not supported by all the nobles who participated in this meeting. About thirty deputies presented a dissenting opinion, in which they condemned the practice of “schematically templated, monotonously dogmatic solutions to the agrarian question in the central institutions without sufficient attention to all the various everyday, tribal, geographical and other features of individual regions of Russia.”
Stolypin's reforms were also criticized by a number of high-ranking dignitaries of the empire. Thus, a prominent statesman, member of the State Council Pyotr Nikolaevich Durnovo (1843-1915) also established himself as a staunch opponent of the agrarian reform of P. A. Stolypin and, in general, any reforms in this area. Back at the end of 1905, at a meeting on the draft regulations on the elections of deputies of the State Duma (the so-called “Tsarskoye Selo meetings”), he was skeptical about all the then proposals for agrarian reform, believing that the authors of these proposals themselves did not know well the mood of the village: “Experts, whom we listened to, joined well-known social movements. They themselves know little about the village and the mood of the peasant masses: D. N. Shipov was the chairman of the Moscow provincial zemstvo government and is a well-known public figure, but he is little familiar with the peasant environment; A. I. Guchkov and Baron Korf are homeowners and do not know the village, and Count Bobrinsky, although he is the district leader of the nobility and lives among the peasants, is constantly changing his views.”
Senator Alexander Aleksandrovich Rimsky-Korsakov (1849-1922), one of the prominent rightists, later (from 1914) the organizer of the right-wing monarchist circle, also sharply criticized the agrarian policy of P. A. Stolypin for blindly copying the Western experience of farming on Russian soil. It is generally accepted that he was removed from the post of governor in 1909 due to P. A. Stolypin’s personal hostility towards him. However, the displacement only contributed to the growth of the senator’s popularity among monarchists.
Members of the Black Hundred organizations also had an ambiguous attitude towards the Stolypin agrarian reform. It became one of the factors that determined the split of the Union of the Russian People into more traditional (Dubrovin) and “renovationist” (Markov) wings. This split occurred in 1911-1912, i.e. at a time when the controversial results of Stolypin's reforms were already fully evident.
It should be noted that according to available data, the tsarist government during the first Russian revolution provided financial support to Black Hundred organizations. However, after the revolution, Stolypin was involved in financing only that part of the RNC, which took shape in the form of the so-called “renovationist” RNC, headed by N. E. Markov, who shared the main provisions of the agrarian reform. There is also information that Stolypin provided financial assistance to the All-Russian National Union and other Russian nationalist organizations.
P. A. Stolypin, during the years of his premiership, having refused to support a significant part of the Black Hundred movement, began to fully support the nationalists. Thus, according to the testimony of Stolypin’s successor as prime minister, Count V.N. Kokovtsov, who published his memoirs in exile, shortly after the assassination attempt on Stolypin, “on the third or fourth,” a deputation of nationalists from the Southwestern Territory, represented by members of the State Duma P N. Balashov, D. N. Chikhachev, A. A. Pototsky and Professor V. E. Chernov. Balashov gave a speech to Kokovtsov, in which, as Kokovtsov himself conveys its contents, “he began with the fact that the nationalist party was agitated by the assassination attempt on Stolypin, not only as an outstanding and noble statesman, irreplaceable at the present moment, but also as a person , merged with his whole being with the national party, imbued with its ideals and providing it with his powerful patronage, because in it he sees the only healthy political party in Russia that does not fight the Government in the name of seizing power. The excitement of the party, according to Balashov, - increases even more from the fact that I have been appointed or will be appointed as Stolypin’s successor, because the party does not trust me and is very afraid that my policy will be completely different, alien to clear national ideals, and imbued with too much sympathy for the West, therefore, for elements of international capital and - foreign."
In turn, Professor V.E. Chernov expressed the idea that, in his opinion, “in Russia you need not fight with the authorities, but work with them, but you can only work with the authorities that you respect, and help only those that which will shake up the parties and lead the country along the right path." Kokovtsov himself was dissatisfied with the statements of the nationalists, not sharing one of the most important program provisions of this political movement: “Provide whatever protection you want to the Russian element, together we will elevate it in all respects and give it first places, but persecute today the Jew, tomorrow the Armenian, then the Pole , Finnish, and to see in all of them enemies of Russia who need to be tamed in every possible way, I do not sympathize with this and in this we are not on the same path.”
Summing up the results of Stolypin’s transformations, publicists of the All-Russian National Union, who fully expressed their support for him, wrote after the death of the prime minister that he “openly and clearly accepted the national program and carried it out in practice”, that “the general background of all public works of P. A. is nationalism” . But here is the description of Stolypin that the famous nationalist deputy V.V. Shulgin gave in his book “The Years”: “I would say that Stolypin was exactly what a prime minister should be: impressive, impeccably dressed, but without any panache. His voice was not Rodzianka's bell-like bass, but he spoke loudly enough, without tension.The peculiarity of his manner of speaking was the following.<…>Stolypin did not talk to the audience at all. His speech somehow floated above the audience. It seemed that, penetrating through the walls, it sounded somewhere in a large expanse. He spoke for Russia. This was very suitable for a man who, if he did not “sit on the royal throne,” then under certain circumstances would be worthy of taking it. In a word, in his manner and appearance one could see an all-Russian dictator. However, he is the type of dictator who is not prone to rude attacks.”
Active support for Stolypin’s agrarian reforms was provided by Nikolai Evgenievich Markov (1866-1945), the leader of the right-wing faction in the III and IV State Dumas, who since 1912 was the leader of the “renovationist” Union of the Russian People. Markov believed that “the land should mainly belong to those who extract the most nutritious products from it.” And since the yield of privately owned lands is greater than the yield of communal lands, it is necessary to promote the separation of peasants from the community. “I,” Markov emphasized, “for my part, welcome the emergence of a new class of peasants - small owners or peasant landowners.”
Standing up for the “economic fist,” Markov spoke out against the community: “Communal land ownership is nothing more than serf land ownership, where the free will of each individual peasant is enslaved by the will of those whom<…>called an anarchist mob<…>, drunk all the time. An individual Russian peasant is a wonderful, kind, good, sympathetic person, but when they gather in a crowd, when they form a community, when various clerks make this community drunk with vodka, then this community really is a beast, and this beast must be fought."
Markov’s point of view was shared by many right-wing Duma deputies who supported Stolypin’s policies both during his life and after his tragic death. Thus, the St. Petersburg researcher of the right-wing conservative movement A. A. Ivanov identified the names of several Black Hundred deputies of the Fourth State Duma who approved of the agrarian policy of P. A. Stolypin. One of them is Kozma (Kosma) Egorovich Gorodilov (1859 - not earlier than April 1917), member of the Fourth State Duma from the Vyatka province, since 1913 - member of the Russian Assembly. He was the leader of the peasant community of the right-wing faction and believed that it was the community that was the breeding ground for revolutionary ideas in the countryside.
Another active supporter of P. A. Stolypin’s policies is Vasily Nikolaevich Snezhkov (1864 - not earlier than 1917), a member of the Fourth State Duma from the Tambov province. An active participant in the Black Hundred movement, chairman of the Kozlov Union of Russian People, member of the Russian Assembly since 1913. He also fully supported the political program of P. A. Stolypin.
It should be noted that the sympathy of some of the Black Hundreds for Stolypin’s agrarian reform was dictated, first of all, by their ideas about the need to have a strong peasant-kulak in the country, independent of the community, managing his own farm.
Referring to the problem of the attitude of right-wingers loyal to the prime minister towards agrarian reform, historian A.V. Repnikov rightly notes that opponents of preserving the community “tried to oppose it with the idea of ​​​​developing a proprietary, “business” spirit, which, in their opinion, is inherent in the best representatives of the peasantry.”
At the same time, another part of the Black Hundreds sharply criticized Stolypin’s agrarian reform. Among the most famous critics was Dr. Alexander Ivanovich Dubrovin (1855-1921), the first chairman of the Union of the Russian People, who after the split became the leader of the All-Russian Dubrovin Union of the Russian People. He believed that “the farm reform is a huge factory of the proletariat,” and noted that “if before the reform there were hundreds of thousands of the proletariat, now there are millions of them, and in the near future there will be tens of millions.”
Convinced critics of Stolypin's agrarian policy include a prominent ideologist of the Russian right, a talented organizer and publicist, an active member of the oldest right-wing organization - the "Russian Assembly" Klavdiy Nikandrovich Paskhalov (1843-1924).
The significance of Paskhalov in the life of the monarchists is eloquently indicated by the statement of A. Ya. Avrekh, according to which “Paskhalov for the Black Hundreds was approximately the same as Prince P. A. Kropotkin was for the anarchists: a patriarch and a theorist at the same time.”
Paskhalov was a staunch opponent of the Stolypin agrarian reform, believing that the destruction of the community would have irreparable consequences for the Russian countryside. “The community was spoiled not by its organic shortcomings, but by changes in the attitude of the ruling power towards it, which alone is to blame for its current sad situation. But this same power, that is, its connivance, made all other state institutions unusable, but to no one the wild thought does not come to mind to demand their destruction, but demand the restoration of control, order and legality in them. And then, if down with the community, then for the same reason why not down with the universities, in which all kinds of dirty tricks and crimes were carried out, down with all the ministries with their embezzlement and lawlessness, down with the State Duma and - what then is not down? , asked Paskhalov.
The publicist also expressed concern about how the government intended to equalize the rights of peasants: “We give a surprisingly strange interpretation to the concept of equalization of rights when it comes to peasants. Peasants are equalized in rights - and the privilege of security from collection and alienation is taken away from them land and a certain part of movable property, the equation makes further progress - and the land of the communities is forcibly alienated into the personal property of the householder, and his family is deprived of all ownership rights to the land, the equation takes a new step, and the peasant is deprived of the privilege of his own, elected, class court. , the whole equation of the peasants still consists in the gradual cutting off of all the advantages that they had over other classes."
On the pages of K. N. Paskhalov’s works, sometimes very harsh characteristics of P. A. Stolypin are given (as well as, naturally, his predecessor, liberal and “constitutionalist” S. Yu. Witte). Paskhalov believed that Stolypin did not create anything, but managed to destroy a lot: the peasant community, the largest right-wing monarchist party - the Union of the Russian People, which during the years of his premiership was split into two political forces at war with each other.
Paskhalov saw in Stolypin a kind of successor of Witte’s liberal cause, and in the article “The Most Honest Destroyers,” written in 1906, he assessed the activities of the Stolypin government as follows: “In view of all the actions of the present cabinet, we have every right to say that, although Count Witte was eliminated from participating in state destruction personally, but his entire destructive program is punctually carried out by his successors. And if, under Mr. Stolypin, courts-martial were introduced against robbers, then in such an unsystematic, inconsistent manner, in such a homeopathic dose that did not kill in the least of allopathic proportions nationwide robbery, which did not reach such grandiose proportions as it does now, even during the reign of Count Witte. Thus, if this evil genius of Russia was destroying it consciously, with a definite, selfish purpose, then in the name of what are these “most honest” people destroying the Russian state? " People?"
There is evidence that various local Black Hundred functionaries had a negative attitude towards the policies of P. A. Stolypin. Thus, the well-known researcher of the Black Hundred movement in the Volga region, E. M. Mikhailova, writes that “a certain role in attracting peasants into the ranks of the movement was played by the distancing of some right-wing organizations of the Volga region from the methods of implementing the Stolypin agrarian reform. Often, right-wing departments even stood up to defend the interests of peasants in conflicts with landowners and local authorities, it came to the point of initiating a boycott of land management commissions."
Thus, not all monarchists supported the agrarian reforms of P. A. Stolypin, pointing out the danger of destroying the traditional way of life in the country.
Peasantry. Let us note that the peasantry itself did not clearly perceive the new trends in the countryside. The progress of the reform showed that it did not arouse either understanding or sympathy among the majority of peasants. For 1907-1915 34% of householders submitted applications to leave the community, while about 2.5 million (28%) householders formally left the community. There were very few cases of complete dissolution of the community (about 130 thousand in total). Most of the peasants who left the community were represented by the poor and wealthy owners. The first, having received land as their property, most often sold it, and themselves went to the cities or moved to new places, thus replenishing, in the words of A.I. Dubrovin, the “factory of the proletariat.” The second, and there were about 10% of the total number of peasant farms, organized their own farms. In fact, 22% of householders received land ownership, and more than half of these lands were sold. The buyers of such land were often wealthy communal peasants, as well as the communities themselves, who returned the land to secular use.
Prince S.E. Trubetskoy in his memoirs cites a characteristic conversation with old peasants in the village of Vasilievskoye (Kaluga province), neighboring his estate, which took place in 1912. The prince asked them if anyone from their community had stood out, as had already been observed in neighboring villages. “No,” the old men answered, “no one stood out.” “And whoever stands out will make a mistake,” the economical old man Polykarp Parshin calmly remarked. "Why would he be wrong?" - asked Trubetskoy. “But because we’re going to shoot him,” said another old man, Stolyarov, judiciously. “That’s what we decided, so don’t stand out!” And indeed, until 1917, no one from the community stood out in Vasilyevskoye. In the depths of their souls, many peasants realized that with the destruction of the community, something important and important in their lives was being destroyed, namely, their traditional way of life. It should be recognized that the Stolypin agrarian reform did not actually improve the situation of the peasants and, at the same time, developed in them a more cautious and distrustful attitude towards the tsarist government, which had encroached on their age-old foundations.
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One of the first actions of the Stolypin government was the dissolution of the Second State Duma on June 3, 1907, the majority of deputies of which were against Stolypin’s agrarian policy. Simultaneously with the Emperor's manifesto on the dissolution of the Duma, a new electoral law was introduced in the country, which curtailed the voting rights of the lower social strata of the population. Thus, thanks to the Regulations on the elections to the State Duma of June 3, 1907, the ratio between the curiae of electors changed dramatically in favor of the landowners and the big bourgeoisie (1% of the country's population received 2/3 of the deputy seats). Elections to the new Duma were not universal, unequal and not direct. In fact, the new electoral law was a consequence of the impossibility of carrying out monarchical reform in the left-wing Duma.
Most of the right-wing figures and organizations supported this action of Stolypin. As the diary of A.V. Bogdanovich, the wife of General E.V. Bogdanovich, testifies, her husband supported the actions of the government. According to the wife of E.V. Bogdanovich, he generally sympathized with the policies of P.A. Stolypin and called the prime minister “a knight and an orator.”
There is evidence that it was E.V. Bogdanovich who at one time persistently demanded from P.A. Stolypin the dissolution of the first two Dumas. So, in particular, even during the work of the first Duma, on March 22, 1906, Bogdanovich tried to convince P. A. Stolypin of the need to dissolve it: “It is necessary to act, it is necessary to show power. The inevitability of the dissolution of the Duma is obvious to everyone, and Under these conditions, waiting can only be interpreted and understood as indecision and weakness.<…>What is needed now is not words, but actions." At the same time, the general believed that the establishment of a military dictatorship in the country could not replace the Duma. Its dissolution had to coincide with the "immediate calling of new elections." However, hopes for a moderate composition of the Second Duma were not justified, and the general began to demand its immediate dispersal, criticizing Stolypin for his slowness.
Thus, E.V. Bogdanovich wrote to Nicholas II on May 10, 1907: “The wonderful man P.A. Stolypin is a completely unfit prime minister, he does not see the future and does not understand the present when he says that “the Duma will rot at its roots.”
The general's wife wrote that the prime minister "in character resembles Svyatopolk-Mirsky" (P.D. Svyatopolk-Mirsky - Minister of Internal Affairs of the Tsarist Government in 1904-1905 - D.S.), plays a "dual game" that Stolypin's policies " will lead to terrible disasters."
Bogdanovich fully approved the manifesto on June 3, 1907. In one of his letters to the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, the general praised the manifesto of June 3, 1907 and its edition, “impeccable in all respects,” which “make an excellent impression.”
Subsequently, already during the work of the Third Duma, Bogdanovich demanded its dissolution, while the prime minister himself did not consider it necessary to take such extreme measures.
A similar position, actually expressed in the demand for the establishment of unlimited autocracy, as it was before the manifesto of October 17, 1905, was substantiated on the pages of his “Diary of a Conservative” by the publisher of the newspaper “Citizen”, Prince V.P. Meshchersky. According to Stolypin’s successor as Prime Minister, V.N. Kokovtsov, Meshchersky believed that Stolypin “overshadowed the person of the sovereign” and pushed to too great a height “the constitutional principle of a united cabinet, completely incompatible with the autocracy of the Russian Tsar.”
Many monarchists opposed the preservation of the Duma as a legislative institution. This position was rooted in disputes that went back to 1905. Thus, the already mentioned P. N. Durnovo on December 5, 1905, when discussing with the Tsar a draft regulation on the election of deputies of the State Duma (the so-called “Tsarskoye Selo meetings”), stated: “ Troubles cannot be cured by any elections.<…>Under a general electoral law, non-state elements will get into the Duma.<…>We open our doors to people who are alien to any traditions and cannot discuss government affairs. There is no public opinion in Russia now. I find that this is not how government affairs should be structured."
As a modern researcher of the Black Hundred movement A.D. Stepanov rightly notes, “Durnovo believed that only the existing state apparatus could protect the Empire from collapse, that Russian society had not yet reached the degree of maturity that would allow it to create its own governing institutions, that without state administration society will not be able to exist. At the same time, he opposed the hasty and unjustified reform of government bodies."
Another prominent ideologist of monarchism, Lev Aleksandrovich Tikhomirov (1852-1923), actively collaborated with P. A. Stolypin in the period from 1907. During the work of the third State Duma, Tikhomirov, like Prince V.P. Meshchersky, proposed that the government urgently revise the Basic Laws in favor of strengthening the autocracy and wrote a corresponding letter to the Prime Minister. P. A. Stolypin imposed a resolution stating that this was impossible, because it would lead to a new revolution. After this, V.P. Meshchersky’s newspaper “Citizen” spoke out with “distress” in connection with this decision of the prime minister.
And here is another critical judgment about Stolypin from another government official, State Comptroller, member of the State Council P. H. Schwanebach. L.A. Tikhomirov writes in his diary that one day (December 16, 1907) he went to see Schwanebach, and they started talking about the prime minister’s policies. “Peter Khristianovich criticized Stolypin for a very long time. - He resolutely denies the possibility of Stolypin playing any major role as a national leader. It saddens me to hear all this, especially when the criticism is confirmed by the story of his previous activities. Schwanebach recognizes him as a noble and talented person, but denies he has a great mind and character, calls him a man of compromise and, moreover, accuses him of extreme pride and vanity, leading to popularity." True, Tikhomirov himself, admitting the validity of Schwanebach’s criticism of Stolypin, nevertheless writes: “No, in my opinion, if Stolypin is not the person you need to have, then such a person does not yet exist at all, he has not arrived yet.”
K. N. Paskhalov, for his part, expressed the idea that replacing the Autocracy with “people's representation” could ultimately lead not only to a weakening of the Imperial power, but also to the gradual destruction of the monarchy in general. "And can there be any compromise between Autocracy and Representation? These two governmental ideas are directly opposed and one completely excludes the other. Autocracy is the concentration of the people's will in one person, all of whose interests are inextricably and organically linked with the interests of the people and state subordinate to him ; in it, as if in focus, all the joys and sorrows experienced by the country, successes and failures, needs and prosperity are reflected. Such a unity of interests of the Tsar and the people makes the highest and most necessary quality of any government inherent in the Autocracy: impartiality and justice. Elected representatives of the people should join the Autocracy with a decisive vote is impossible without destroying the principle of Autocracy, but adding permanent people's representatives with only an advisory voice to it by a special legislative act will probably not satisfy anyone, and is also unnecessary because the Autocrat is free to invite everyone, whom, how and when as he pleases, to government work,” the publicist wrote in his article “On measures to end the unrest and improve the political system.” After Stolypin’s death, Paskhalov expressed the hope in his correspondence that “as long as the word “Autocracy” exists in the Fundamental Laws, albeit plucked, it can be revived in all its historical fullness and mighty power.”
Thus, as we see, many on the right believed that the changes to the electoral law, which were carried out in 1907, were not enough, and demanded the restoration of unlimited autocracy, with which Stolypin himself categorically disagreed. Thus, in his first speech to the deputies of the Third Duma, delivered on November 16, 1907, the prime minister, in particular, said: “With the presence of the State Duma, the government’s tasks in strengthening order can only be made easier, since in addition to funds for transforming the administration and police, the government is counting on to receive valuable support from representative (highlighted in the text of the speech - D.S.) institutions by exposing the illegal actions of the authorities, both regarding abuse of power and inaction thereof.”
Meanwhile, even those on the right who generally agreed with the need for representative institutions to exist in Russia, nevertheless demanded further tightening of the electoral law. As S.V. Lebedev writes in this regard, “even those Black Hundreds who supported Stolypin tried to further change the electoral law on June 3, 1907, in order to further reduce the representation of foreigners and give greater benefits to the nobility.
Let us note here that the fears of some on the right, in particular K. N. Paskhalov, that the presence of representative institutions will eventually lead to the destruction of the very principle of autocracy, turned out to be in many ways fair, if not prophetic. After the death of Stolypin, during the work of the Fourth State Duma, it turned out that a significant part of this body of power, having united in the so-called “Progressive Bloc”, in the conditions of the First World War, moved into harsh opposition to the tsarist government and contributed to the destruction of the monarchy.
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In addition to agrarian reform and changes in the electoral law, P. A. Stolypin carried out other important reforms as prime minister. The head of government, who considered the labor issue to be important, spoke many times in the Third Duma, justifying the need to discuss and adopt new laws affecting the working class.
Some representatives of the right tried to support Stolypin in resolving the labor issue. Thus, after the dissolution of the Second State Duma (June 3, 1907), at the request of the Prime Minister L. A. Tikhomirov joined the Council of the Main Directorate for Press Affairs as a specialist in working issues. On behalf of Stolypin, Tikhomirov wrote several notes on the history of the labor movement and relations between the state and workers. The result of studying this issue was the book “The Work Question. Practical Methods for Solving It” (M., 1909).
Tikhomirov in his works argued that the working class must move away from the “proletarian idea” with its “cosmopolitanism” and, with the state guaranteeing a minimum of social rights, independently earn respect and honor in society: “By abandoning the proletarian idea, recognizing in themselves” citizens," workers can indeed acquire a strong and honorable, and at the same time useful position in society and the state for everyone. By creating their own economic organization, workers can develop and apply to the social structure all the high qualities that labor develops in a person (hereinafter highlighted by the author - D.S.) But it is not the position of the proletarian, but labor that develops these properties,” the publicist argued.
The problem, however, was that the right-wing Third Duma was in no hurry to guarantee workers even a minimum of social rights.
In June 1908, 10 bills were submitted to the Duma that provided for social insurance of workers; creation of savings banks; regulation of rules for hiring workers and working hours; measures to encourage the construction of cheap residential buildings, etc.
However, the projects lay dormant for many years. Only in 1912, when a new upsurge in the social movement began, did the Duma pass a law on state insurance against accidents and illness (applied to only 15% of workers). A decision was also made to create health insurance funds for workers. Thus, Stolypin’s program on the labor issue was not implemented, and the workers, contrary to Tikhomirov’s hopes, did not abandon their “proletarian idea.”
In addition to attempts to resolve the labor issue, reforms in the education system occupied an important place in the policy of Stolypin's reforms. In 1909, the Duma received a project to introduce universal primary education in Russia within a 10-year period. According to him, all children, regardless of gender and class, could “on reaching school age undergo a full cycle of education in a properly organized school.” In connection with the proposed reform of higher education, a new University Charter was developed, which granted broad autonomy to higher education. Stolypin closely linked the development of scientific knowledge with the education system. During the years of reform, scientific research, expeditions, restoration work, publication of scientific literature, and the development of theater and cinema were actively financed. Also during this period, the “Regulations on the Protection of Antiquities” was prepared; a decision was made to create the Pushkin House in St. Petersburg; Projects for organizing museums in the provinces were supported. But a final legislative decision on school projects has never been made. Stolypin’s plans to introduce the principle of lifelong education with continuity at various levels were also not realized.
The majority of the right supported the government's initiatives in the field of education. Even such a critic of P. A. Stolypin’s activities as K. N. Paskhalov wrote with approval that “our highest state institutions are zealously working to introduce universal and even compulsory education, sparing no expense to achieve the intended goal.” However, the same Paskhalov warned the authorities against excessive flirting with liberal circles, which, in particular, organized the Congress of People on Public Education in the Moscow City Administration in 1912. More than a thousand teachers of city schools took part in this event. The publicist was indignant at the resolutions of the congress, according to which “it was recognized that homework should not be assigned; also, answers should not be given marks and punishments should not be resorted to.” “Until now, everything that is now denied by modern educators has formed the basis of school work throughout the world,” emphasizes K. N. Paskhalov. And the congress resolution on the abolition of the restrictive catalog of student libraries and on the joint education of male and female children, according to Paskhalov, will contribute to the spread of vices and outright debauchery among teenagers. In his opinion, resolutions of this kind actually cancel out all the government’s efforts to improve the public education system and interfere with their implementation.
The national policy was carried out under the slogan “Russia for Russians” and was aimed at preserving a single indivisible Russia. The electoral law of June 3, 1907 reduced the representation in the State Duma of Poland and the Caucasus, and foreigners from Central Asia, Kazakhstan and Siberia were generally deprived of voting rights. Meanwhile, a number of bills and circulars prepared by the government lifted various national restrictions, including those regarding the Jewish population.
The question of the position of the Grand Duchy of Finland was especially acute for Stolypin. The Prime Minister insisted on the primacy of all-Russian laws in Finland and decided to pass a bill on the relationship between the Russian Empire and Finland without the consent of the Finnish Sejm. To develop laws and measures relating to Finland, a Special Meeting on the Affairs of the Grand Duchy of Finland, chaired by P. A. Stolypin, was formed under the Council of Ministers. It also included prominent right-wingers - participants in the salon of E. V. Bogdanovich - member of the State Council V. F. Deitrich, Minister of Justice I. G. Shcheglovitov and the Finnish Governor General General F. A. Zein.
The head of government proceeded, first of all, from the fact that Finland was an integral part of the empire, and the empire, in his opinion, should be governed by “a united government that is responsible to the Sovereign for everything that happens in the state.” At the same time, it was especially noted that “Russia cannot wish to violate the legitimate autonomous rights of Finland regarding its internal legislation and its separate administrative and judicial structure.” However, “in general legislative issues and in some general management issues there should be a common decision together with Finland, with the predominance, of course, of Russia’s sovereign rights.” The Chairman of the Council of Ministers believed that the general imperial interests were not secured in any way, and the “picture of state impotence” in relation to Finland seemed complete to him. The government of P. A. Stolypin, who wanted to “establish a coherent legal order throughout Russia,” was developing a bill, the main goal of which, according to its creators, was to protect “the historical sovereign rights of Russia.”
The Stolypin reform plan in relation to Finland was expressed in “a turn towards the decisive protection of Russian imperial interests while maintaining full respect for Finnish autonomy and Finnish privileges.” It should be especially noted that the organizer of the largest right-wing monarchist salon, E. V. Bogdanovich, fully supported the policy of P. A. Stolypin on the Finnish issue. Visitors to his circle, as already noted, participated in the development of a bill concerning Finland.
This document, submitted to the Duma on March 14, 1910, caused protests from the Duma opposition, but was adopted by the majority. Also approved by the State Council, the document became law on June 17, 1910. Now the Finnish Diet retained only an advisory voice in all significant issues of both general imperial and internal legislation (state budget, military service, the press, meetings and unions, public education, police, etc.). These issues were no longer subject to direct resolution by the Sejm and had to be resolved by the legislative institutions of Russia. Until the new laws were issued, however, the old ones remained in force, and in fact there were no significant changes in Finland.
The Finnish bill has generated heated debate in right-wing circles. Some on the right opposed Stolypin's Finnish reform. For example, V.P. Meshchersky spoke out in 1910 for granting broad autonomy to Finland. This led to fierce criticism of his activities from the far right.
Right-wing publicist M. O. Menshikov published an article in Novoye Vremya entitled “Meshcherskaya pen-trade,” which criticized the prince’s position on the Finnish question. The views of the publisher of “Citizen” were proclaimed as “a completely Jewish principle,” “the principle of “self-determination” of Russians and foreigners.” He, according to Menshikov, “is suitable for the final liquidation of the Russian Empire.”
In turn, another right-wing publicist, S.K. Glinka-Yanchevsky, criticized V.P. Meshchersky’s position on the Finnish issue in his “Zemshchina”. In an article dated June 5, 1910, the journalist argued that the prince, with his views, “abolished the autocracy” and “slandered the right wing of the Duma when the question of establishing less humiliating, but still humiliating, relations between Russia and Finland was raised.”
So, the opinion of V.P. Meshchersky significantly diverged from the position of other rightists. The organizer of another famous salon, A.V. Bogdanovich, spoke about the Finnish bill in her diary in June 1910 as follows: “We must<…>pass this bill now without making amendments." Thus, the position of A. V. Bogdanovich was in line with government policy on the Finnish issue and was shared by the majority of the right.
Under Stolypin, the Russification policy intensified in the territory of the Kingdom of Poland. A number of Polish cultural and educational societies and Polish-language schools were closed, and municipal institutions with a predominance of Russian employees were created in cities.
In 1909, a bill was submitted to the Duma to separate the Kholm province from the Kingdom of Poland. Its peasant population consisted mainly of Ukrainians, and its landowners consisted of Poles and Russians.
The idea of ​​​​forming a separate Kholm province was not new. Over the past few decades, it was discussed in the government eight times and rejected the same number of times. Only for the ninth time, during the premiership of P. A. Stolypin, was it approved. All Warsaw governors-general at one time were against it for purely business reasons. In their opinion, the administrative disruption that will be required when the Kholm region is separated into a separate province creates a lot of inconvenience of an administrative and military-strategic nature. For the same reasons, such well-known right-wing statesmen as K. P. Pobedonostsev, D. S. Sipyagin, S. I. Timashev opposed the allocation of the Kholm region. In 1906, Minister of Internal Affairs P. N. Durnovo spoke out against this reform. On November 25, 1911, after the death of P. A. Stolypin, a discussion began in the Duma of the bill “On separating from the provinces of the Kingdom of Poland the eastern parts of the Lublin and Siedlce provinces with the formation of a special Kholm province from them.”
The main idea of ​​the speaker on the bill, nationalist D. N. Chikhachev, was that the size of the Russian population in the region should be determined not on a religious basis, as the Poles insisted, but on an ethnographic basis. A Catholic is not yet a Pole, his ethnic origin is important, the speaker noted. “Undoubtedly,” Chikhachev argued, “the Russian nationality cannot in any way be lost by the mere fact of the transition from Orthodoxy to Catholicism.” Referring to Academician A.I. Sobolevsky and the 1897 census, Chikhachev concluded that the Russian people in the Kholm region predominate, amounting to 450 thousand people.
The position of the extreme right differed from the position of the nationalists in that they criticized the bill from the point of view of its possible, so to speak, side effect. The very idea of ​​separation is harmful, G. A. Shechkov argued, because it comes from the recognition of Poland as a special national-historical organism, and this is grist for the Poles’ mill. By highlighting “we are creating a fiction of Polish nationality, a fiction that we must fight. We are creating it ourselves at our own expense.” From what was said, Shechkov concluded: “Take a ruler and line as required: you have every right to do this; you act at home, and you have no one to apologize to and justify yourself with the argument that we have the right to draw the border this way.” “It’s because here such and such a percentage of the population is Russian, and such and such a percentage is Polish; this doesn’t fit here at all, it’s all completely unnecessary.”
N. E. Markov described the bill as a worthless piece of paper. From his point of view, he causes harm, and “first of all, harm from the fact that the false teaching is strengthened, as if there is some kind of real Kingdom of Poland.<…>Instead of reining in the arrogant gentry, Jesuits and priests in their place, this bill is limited to writing up paper, renaming one locality to another, and forming a paper province.<…>This is not a bill, sir, this is a cover for a bill."
After long debates, the bill on the Kholm region was adopted on April 26, 1912 by the right-wing Octobrist majority in the Duma. On May 4 it was transferred to the State Council, and on June 23 it was approved by the Tsar. The bill became law. However, its full implementation was prevented by the outbreak of the First World War two years later and the subsequent German occupation of Polish lands.
The law adopted in 1911 on the creation of zemstvos in the western provinces - Vitebsk, Minsk, Mogilev, Kyiv, Volyn, Podolsk - also caused a heated debate in right-wing circles. The Russian (Little Russian and Belarusian) population of these provinces, which had been under Polish rule for several centuries, was discriminated against by Polish landowners, who owned most of the land, making up only a few percent of the population. If zemstvos in these provinces were created in accordance with all-Russian legislation, then most of the places in them would go to the curia of landowners, i.e. to the Poles. To prevent this from happening, Stolypin proposed reducing the electoral qualification in Western zemstvos by half compared to the all-Russian one and creating curiae based on nationality.
This bill was supported by the Tsar and the State Duma, but the State Council rejected it. One of the most implacable opponents of the bill in the State Council, Count S. Yu. Witte, stated that national curiae “cannot be tolerated as long as a clear and firm consciousness of the unity of Russian statehood remains in Russia.” The draft also contains “legislative recognition for the whole world that in ancient Russian provinces<…>There may be political curias of non-Russian people who may have their own interests that are not identical with the interests of Russian statehood."
Prince A.D. Obolensky went even further. Every national community, he argued, strives for a political community: “A freely developing nationality ultimately degenerates into statehood.” A Pole in the zemstvo, if there are curiae, will be “authorized by Polish nationality,” which “is not found anywhere in any public or state institution in Russia.” The projected “national isolation” will mean “some state danger,” and “if we allow this beginning in the Western Territory, then why not allow it in other parts of Russia?” P. N. Durnovo, Prince P. N. Trubetskoy and N. A. Zinoviev also spoke out against the national curiae. “I repeat again,” said the latter, “I recognize the distribution of nationalities among curiae in the western provinces as impossible.”
Prince V.P. Meshchersky, in the pages of his “Citizen,” also sharply criticized Stolypin’s nationalist policies. And when the prime minister proposed a project for introducing zemstvos in nine western provinces, V.P. Meshchersky even announced a “huge conspiracy against Russia.”
In response to the refusal of the State Council to support the bill, P. A. Stolypin submitted his resignation. This step displeased the emperor. However, he not only did not accept the resignation (not without the influence of the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, who completely patronized Stolypin), but was also forced to agree to the prime minister’s conditions: to send P. N. Durnovo and V. F. Trepov, who opposed Stolypin’s policies, on long leave . In April 1911, through the use of an exceptional procedure, the law was nevertheless adopted by the government.
Let us emphasize once again that Nicholas II in this case took the side of the prime minister under the influence of Empress Maria Feodorovna, who considered Stolypin a man of extraordinary intelligence and insight. Stolypin’s daughter M. Bok eloquently testifies to how Maria Feodorovna treated the prime minister, who in her memoirs spoke about how the Dowager Empress received Stolypin immediately after the failure of his bill on Western zemstvos in the State Council: “The Empress met the pope exceptionally warmly and affectionately and immediately began by convincingly asking him to remain in his post. She told my father about the conversation that she had just had with the sovereign. “I conveyed to my son,” she said, “my deep conviction that You alone have the strength and opportunity to save Russia and lead it to the right path."
General E.V. Bogdanovich provided support to Stolypin during the crisis that arose after the State Council rejected Stolypin’s bill on Western zemstvos. At the beginning of 1911, when rumors spread in St. Petersburg about the possible resignation of P. A. Stolypin, Bogdanovich wrote a letter to the Emperor, in which he advised “not to let Stolypin go, but to keep him as prime minister.”
Critic of Stolypin's agrarian reform K. N. Paskhalov also expressed support for the prime minister's actions on the issue of Western zemstvo.
Thus, P. A. Stolypin’s national policy also met with very different attitudes in right-wing circles. And only support from the emperor, largely due to pressure from Empress Maria Feodorovna, contributed to the implementation of the projects of the head of government.
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Stolypin's government tried to implement other changes in various areas of government policy. However, all of them drew criticism not only from the left, but also from the right. At the same time, criticism from the right gradually grew, which was a consequence of their concern about the overall results of Stolypin’s reforms. The growth of a critical attitude was manifested in the Duma when a prominent representative of the right faction, the leader of the Russian People's Union named after Michael the Archangel V. M. Purishkevich (1870-1920), using as a pretext the bill on Western zemstvo, sharply criticized the policies of P. A. Stolypin as a whole . At the same time, Purishkevich attacked the prime minister’s personality: “I understand Stolypin’s desire to get into Bismarck; but in order to get into Bismarck, you need to be distinguished by an insightful mind and state sense; and in this act there is neither a discerning mind nor state sense<…>, for, I say, if Stolypin throughout his reign spoke about calm and did not achieve calm, if he spoke about strengthening Russia and did not achieve strengthening, then with this step he achieved and achieved one thing - he achieved complete unification, with a few exceptions, of everything well-meaning Russian society in one thing: in opposition to itself."
It was against the background of growing criticism from the right and increasing dissatisfaction with the prime minister on the part of the tsar that the mysterious murder of Stolypin took place on September 1, 1911, during the stay of the Royal Family in Kyiv, in the building of the local opera. As is known, Stolypin was mortally wounded by the terrorist Dmitry Bogrov, who since 1906 had been an agent of the Kyiv Security Department, “covering” the activities of anarchist and Socialist Revolutionary groups.
There is no consensus among researchers about the motives for Bogrov’s crime. Some believe that Stolypin's murder was the work of the secret police; others - that the killer acted on instructions from the Socialist Revolutionary Party (which subsequently declared its non-involvement in this event); third, that Bogrov had personal reasons.
One way or another, the country lost an energetic statesman who understood the need for reform. After Stolypin's death, his reforms began to be gradually curtailed. The successors to the post of chairman of the Council of Ministers, in particular V.N. Kokovtsov, did not have the charisma, temperament, or organizational talent of their predecessor.
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Of course, P. A. Stolypin’s reforms were conceived by him as a way to strengthen the then existing state system, that is, the monarchy. However, not all of his transformations objectively contributed to this process.
The agrarian reform with its destruction of the community, as many rightists pointed out, actually led to the fact that the peasantry, the bulk of the Russian population, which traditionally had loyal feelings, for the most part did not accept government initiatives, gradually becoming increasingly opposed to the authorities.
The electoral law reform of 1907, although it ensured a right-wing majority in the Third and Fourth Dumas, nevertheless could not eliminate the danger of the formation of an effective Duma opposition directed against the Autocracy. This opposition was formed against the backdrop of the difficulties of the First World War and played a very important, if not key role, in ensuring the victory of the February Revolution, which ended the Autocratic power in Russia.
Stolypin's Russification policy on the national outskirts aroused fierce resistance from national minorities and objectively contributed to the growth of separatist sentiments, which immediately manifested themselves in full after the fall of the monarchy.
Other reforms in general, both due to the small amount of time allotted by history for them and due to powerful resistance, on the one hand, by the liberals, and on the other hand, by the right, were not implemented and remained only on paper.
To sum up, we can draw the following conclusions.
1. Despite the fact that the goal of the reforms was to strengthen the foundations of the existing political and socio-economic system in Russia, the right-wing monarchist forces did not clearly support Stolypin’s policies. The prime minister's reforms, and especially the agrarian one, were largely supported by the moderate right and nationalists, who recognized the need for certain economic and political reforms in the country and the possibility of limiting autocracy by representative institutions. The extreme right (Black Hundreds) for the most part perceived Stolypin’s reforms, especially the agrarian reforms, as a dangerous attempt to destroy the traditional foundations in the country. The role of the right in slowing down Stolypin's reforms seems significant. At the same time, it should not be overestimated.
2. On the main agrarian issue, Stolypin passed the laws he wanted. However, he was unable to “pacify” the village and create a sufficiently influential layer of defenders of private property there. The chosen reform tactics, which involved, in particular, the forced destruction of the community, were not based on sufficient resource (financial, organizational, etc.) support. During Stolypin's premiership, the country was preparing for a world war, and the state was forced to solve other problems that urgently faced it. In the specific conditions of Russia, agrarian reform could not give a different result: in the short term, it exacerbated social tension in the countryside, rather than reducing it. And this only increased dissatisfaction with the reforms in monarchical circles.
Probably, Stolypin himself understood the role of the time factor. It is no coincidence that he uttered what has become a catchphrase: “Give the state 20 years of peace, internal and external, and you will not recognize today’s Russia.” In fact, as it turned out, Stolypin himself was allotted only five years for reforms, while Russia had only 11 years in peacetime after the end of the Japanese War before the start of the World War.
3. The goal of reforms declared by Stolypin - strengthening the Autocracy - was not achieved in the short period of peacetime that history allowed. The possibility of solving this problem under more favorable conditions seems highly doubtful. All the reforms announced by Stolypin (agrarian, political, school, zemstvo, etc.) objectively had the potential that should have led to the dominance of bourgeois relations in Russian society. And within the framework of such a society, there was simply no place left for Autocracy: the monarchy could only lay claim to the role of a traditional institution, within which Monarchs “reign, but do not rule.”
Dmitry Igorevich Stogov, Candidate of Historical Sciences