Pyotr Stolypin

Russia’s contemporary ruling political class extols the administrative experience of Pyotr A. Stolypin (1862-1911) as a paragon of salutary, inescapable reforms, statesman’s wisdom and true patriotism. Obviously, this idealized and mythologized image of the “great reformer of the Russian state” has little to do with real historical Stolypin. However, this isn’t important for today’s Russian historians, journalists, and politicians who are upholding this cult. The important thing is to demonstrate, using this celebrated Russian reformer, the possibility of combining the great-power, imperialist ideas and quasidemocratic “liberalism” within a single political course. This course has been pursued by the Kremlin rulers for a number of years, so Stolypin is precisely the figure to substantiate this allegedly inevitable political choice.

Pyotr Stolypin was born on April 5, 1862, to an aristocratic family whose members had served the empire and the tsar for centuries (among them quite a few career army officers, ranking administrators, and dedicated landowners). This privileged status, their rigid code of ethics (Pyotr’s elder brother was killed in a duel and the young fellow challenged the man, who shot him in the right hand that would remain almost totally paralyzed), and certain caste prejudices left their trace on Stolypin’s worldview and political career.

In 1884, Stolypin graduated from the faculty of natural sciences at St. Petersburg University. One of the exams was supervised by Dmitri Mendeleev who was impressed by the young student’s knowledge and even staged a scholarly dispute of sorts with him. Stolypin would, however, dedicate his life not to science but imperial Russia.

In 1899, the 37-year-old ambitious politician was appointed marshal of the Kovno (Kaunas) Governorate in Lithuania. Three years later he became Russia’s youngest governor, first in Grodno and in 1904 in Saratov. Stolypin made his name across Russia in the stormy months of the first Russian revolution when he ruthlessly suppressed peasant revolts in his governorate. The governor of Saratov often summoned regular troops that took harsh measures to reinstate law and order, including execution by firing squad (often without trial) and mass floggings of rebellious peasants. While assessing this “farsighted outstanding reformer,” this aspect of Stolypin’s versatile activities can by no means be disregarded. Already in 1905, the revolutionaries condemned him to death.

As a politician, Stolypin adopted a disdainful and autocratic style, as befitted a person who by birthright and character regarded himself as vested with special powers. His daughter, Maria Bok, later wrote “I have an amateur photo with my father riding his horse right into the crowd that moments earlier was in a frenzy and now everyone was on his knees. All the ten thousand dropped to their knees at the first words my father said.” She recalls another similar case. Governor Stolypin addressed an assembly of agitated peasants. A young fellow headed in his direction, obviously with hostile intent. Stolypin looked at him calmly, then tossed his overcoat at him, the way an aristocrat does to a servant, saying, “Here, hold it for me.” The man was taken aback, obediently caught the overcoat and held it for the duration of Stolypin’s speech.

This incident must have strengthened his conviction that he (probably only he!) knew how to pacify the people, how a nobleman should treat the unruly mob. It was perhaps then that he formulated his political credo: appeasement first and reforms next. Fatally for Stolypin, the realities were such that there would be no concord during those “20 years of peace” he dreamed about; there was no time left in a country devastated and stunned by the revolution. At the same time, he was well aware of the need of reforms aimed, first and foremost, at upgrading and strengthening the monarchic system headed by Nicholas II, the “ruler of the Russian land.”

Nicholas II couldn’t fail to notice such a decisive, ruthless, and confident administrator. On April 26, 1906, he summoned Stolypin to St. Petersburg and appointed him as minister of the interior, the most important post in the imperial government. From the outset the new — and the youngest — minister impressed his colleagues with his aggressively clear political views. Addressing the State Duma, he described the leftist opposition, “These attacks are meant to cause a paralysis of will and thought in government, in the regime; all of them boil down to two words addressing those in power: ‘Hands up!’” In response to these words, he continued to say that this government can only respond, calmly, confident in being on the right side: “You won’t intimidate us!”

On July 8, 1906, Pyotr Stolypin headed the Council of Ministers, retaining his interior minister’s post. As mentioned previously, he determined his efforts as a statesman as follows: appeasement first, reforms next. A group of socialist revolutionary terrorists made an attempt on his life on August 12, 1906, blowing up his dacha on Aptekarsky Island, killing 22 persons, wounding his son and daughter, although leaving him unscathed. After this tragedy Nicholas II invited the prime minister and his family to live at the Winter Palace with its maximum security arrangements.

And so the task of pacifying a country rising up in revolutionary flames remained his highest priority. Reforms would come later. On August 19, 1906, the law on field courts martial was adopted bypassing the State Duma. Each case would be handled within 48 hours and those found guilty would be executed within the next 24 hours. These courts were established with Stolypin’s active participation, in order to suppress the revolutionary movement. In the first eight months after enactment they passed 1,102 death verdicts. Volodymyr Korolenko wrote at the time that executions had become daily practice.

Stolypin had no intention of justifying his actions. “When your home is on fire, gentlemen, you break into other homes, breaking down the doors and smashing the windows. When you are attacked by a murderer, you kill him. Gentlemen, this is self-defense,” he said addressing the Duma in March 1907. He was trying to make the go-vernment resort to stronger measures, to make one and all abide by the will and arbitrary rule of a single person; he wanted a dictatorship that would now and then prevent a threat to the state and save the regime: “Gentlemen, there are fatal moments in the life of a state, when the needs of the state take precedence over the law (prophetic words, considering that the concept would dominate the rest of the 20th century — Author), when it is necessary to choose between the integrity of the theory and the integrity of the Fatherland.” After the Social Democratic MP Fyodor Rodichev, in the heat of debate, called the ropes used to hang those convicted by field courts martial “Stolypin neckties,” the enraged prime minister walked out and then challenged him to a duel. Rodichev had to apologize as Stolypin’s marksmanship was common knowledge. Nevertheless the expression wasn’t forgotten and before long started being extensively used by the revolutionary press.

The country was pacified (at least the prime minister thought so, for history shows that it was an illusion) and now it was time for reforms, the main point on Stolypin’s lifelong agenda, in which he believed implicitly. Stolypin was perfectly aware of the sense and essence of the main, agrarian reform: forming a class of small-time owners as a new, “strong support of law and order” in “one and indivisible Russia.” After that, the prime minister was convinced, Russia would fear no revolutions. The big question was whether Stolypin’s appeasement (stabilization) was strong enough to allow him time to carry out his plans. Stolypin was in a hurry. On November 9, 1906, an ukase was published (also adopted without the Duma) authorizing peasants to leave their communities (the latter formed the basis of Russia’s agrarian economy and its principle was that the land belongs to the Lord, therefore to no one, and that work is the only way to have the right to use it, so the peasants hated big landowners) with their own plots and had the right to sell them. The prime minister believed that by doing so the peasant communities would soon be destroyed, that the principles of a new peasant order had been established, which would allow the peasants to work as free men and become prosperous. He hoped that it would rid them of the yoke of the obsolete communal system and make revolution in the empire impossible in principle.

Count Leo Tolstoy was the celebrated mouthpiece of the Russian peasantry’s communal moods (these moods were somewhat less manifest in Ukraine but had sufficient public support). On July 28, 1907, Tolstoy sent a letter to Stolypin, passionately urging him to “abolish the oldest and greatest injustice of all, which is common to all peoples: the individual ownership of land.” He went on to say that, just as there can be no right of man to own others (slavery), there is no right of one man, poor or rich, tsar or peasant, to own land. Land is the property of all and all people have the same right to use it; that Stolypin, unfortunately, was following the road leading to bad deeds, ill repute, and above all, sin. Stolypin responded six months later, in January 1908. What Tolstoy considered evil he considered good for Russia, he wrote, adding that the absence of peasant ownership of land was the reason for Russia’s problems. He argued that nature has bestowed man with certain instincts, like the sense of hunger, sexual desire, and so on, he continued. Ownership is among the strongest ones. You can’t care about someone else’s property the way you care about your own, just as you won’t strive to improve a plot in your temporary possession the way you would do a plot being your property. Depriving the peasants of this innate sense of ownership will have many bad consequences, above all it will lead to poverty. For all I know, Stolypin concluded, poverty is worse than slavery.

It was a principled debate. History shows that subsequent events (1908-11; 1918-21, and 1928) were in many respects caused by most peasants sharing Tolstoy’s views rather than Stolypin’s (people also remembered the future prime minister’s “appeasement” and floggings in Saratov). That was why Stolypin’s mysterious death at the hand of the agent provocateur Bodrov, at the Kyiv Opera on September 1, 1911, can hardly be described as a decisive factor in regard to the reforms. The lesson of the Stolypin drama is this: any reforms must be understood, accepted, and supported by the people. Otherwise the very notion will be met with understandable animosity and contempt.