Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

These economic developments had profound political effects under the weak-willed Czar Nicholas II (1894-1917). For about a decade Nicholas tried to combine ruthless civil repression, economic advance, and an imperialist foreign policy in the Balkans and the Far East, with pious worldwide publicity for peace and universal disarmament, domestic distractions like anti-Semitic massacres (pogroms), forged terroristic documents, and faked terroristic attempts on the lives of high officials, including himself. This unlikely mélange collapsed completely in 1905-1908. When Count Witte attempted to begin some kind of constitutional development by getting in touch with the functioning units of local government (the zemstvos, which had been effective in the famine of 1891), he was ousted from his position by an intrigue led by the murderous Minister of Interior Vyacheslav Plehve (1903). The civil head of the Orthodox Church, Konstantin Pobedonostsev (1827-1907) persecuted all dissenting religions, while allowing the Orthodox Church to become enveloped in ignorance and corruption. Most Roman Catholic monasteries in Poland were confiscated, while priests of that religion were forbidden to leave their villages. In Finland construction of Lutheran churches was forbidden, and schools of this religion were taken over by the Moscow government. The Jews were persecuted, restricted to certain provinces (the Pale), excluded from most economic activities, subjected to heavy taxes (even on their religious activities), and allowed to form only ten percent of the pupils in schools (even in villages which were almost completely Jewish and where the schools were supported entirely by Jewish taxes). Hundreds of Jews were massacred and thousands of their buildings wrecked in systematic three-day pogroms tolerated and sometimes encouraged by the police. Marriages (and children) of Roman Catholic Uniates were made illegitimate. The Moslems in Asia and elsewhere were also persecuted.

Every effort was made to Russify non-Russian national groups, especially on the western frontiers. The Finns, Baltic Germans, and Poles were not allowed to use their own languages in public life, and had to use Russian even in private schools and even on the primary level. Administrative autonomy in these areas, even that solemnly promised to Finland long before, was destroyed, and they were dominated by Russian police, Russian education, and the Russian Army. The peoples of these areas were subjected to military conscription more rigorously than the Russians themselves, and were Russified while in the ranks.

Against the Russians themselves, unbelievable extremes of espionage, counterespionage, censorship, provocation, imprisonment without trial, and outright brutality were employed. The revolutionaries responded with similar measures crowned by assassination. No one could trust anyone else, because revolutionaries were in the police, and members of the police were in the highest ranks of the revolutionaries. Georgi Gapon, a priest secretly in the pay of the government, was encouraged to form labor unions and lead workers’ agitations in order to increase the employers’ dependence on the autocracy, but when, in 1905, Gapon led a mass march of workers to the Winter Palace to present a petition to the czar, they were attacked by the troops and hundreds were shot. Gapon was murdered the following year by the revolutionaries as a traitor. In order to discredit the revolutionaries, the central Police Department in St. Petersburg “printed at the government expense violent appeals to riot” which were circulated all over the country by an organization of reactionaries. In one year (1906) the government exiled 35,000 persons without trial and executed over 600 persons under a new decree which fixed the death penalty for ordinary crimes like robbery or insults to officials. In the three years 1906-1908, 5,140 officials were killed or wounded, and 2,328 arrested persons were executed. In 1909 it was revealed that a police agent, Azeff, had been a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionaries for years and had participated in plots to murder high officials, including Plehve and the Grand Duke Sergius, without warning these. The former chief of police who revealed this fact was sent to prison for doing so.

Under conditions such as these no sensible government was possible, and all appeals for moderation were crushed between the extremists from both sides. The defeats of Russian forces in the war with Japan in 1904-1905 brought events to a head. All dissatisfied groups began to agitate, culminating in a successful general strike in October 1905. The emperor began to offer political reforms, although what was extended one day was frequently taken back shortly after. A consultative assembly, the Duma, was established, elected on a broad suffrage but by very complicated procedures designed to reduce the democratic element. In the face of agrarian atrocities, endless strikes, and mutinies in both the army and navy, the censorship was temporarily lifted, and the first Duma met (May 1906). It had a number of able men and was dominated by two hastily organized political parties, the Cadets (somewhat left of Center) and the Octobrists (somewhat right of Center). Plans for wholesale reform were in the wind, and, when the czar’s chief minister rejected such plans, lie was overwhelmingly censured by the Duma. After weeks of agitation the czar tried to form an Octobrist ministry, but this group refused to govern without Cadet cooperation, and the latter refused to join a coalition government. The czar named Pëtr Stolypin chief minister, dissolved the first Duma, and called for election of a new one. Stolypin was a severe man, willing to move slowly in the direction of economic and political reform but determined to crush without mercy any suspicion of violence or illegal actions. The full power of the government was used to get a second Duma more to its taste, outlawing most of the Cadets, previously the largest party, and preventing certain classes and groups from campaigning or voting. The result was a new Duma of much less ability, much less discipline, and with many unknown faces. The Cadets were reduced from 150 to 123, the Octobrists from about 42 to 32, while there were 46 extreme Right, 54 Marxist Social Democrats, 35 Social Revolutionaries, at least 100 assorted Laborites, and scattered others. This group devoted much of its time to debating whether terrorist violence should be condemned. When Stolypin demanded that the Social Democrats (Marxists) should be kicked out, the Duma referred the matter to a committee; the assembly was immediately dissolved, and new elections were fixed for a third Duma (June, 1908). Under powerful government intimidation, which included sending 31 Social Democrats to Siberia, the third Duma was elected. It was mostly an upper-class and upper-middle-class body, with the largest groups being 154 Octobrists and 54 Cadets. This body was sufficiently docile to remain for five years (1907-1912). During this period both the Duma and the government followed a policy of drift, except for Stolypin. Until 1910 this energetic administrator continued his efforts to combine oppression and reform, especially agrarian reform. Rural credit banks were established; various measures were taken to place larger amounts of land in the hands of peasants; restrictions on the migration of peasants, especially to Siberia, were removed; participation in local government was opened to lower social classes previously excluded; education, especially technical education, was made more accessible; and certain provisions for social insurance were enacted into law. After the Bosnian crisis of 1908 (to be discussed later), foreign affairs became increasingly absorbing, and by 1910 Stolypin had lost his enthusiasm for reform, replacing it by senseless efforts at Russification of the numerous minority groups. He was assassinated in the presence of the czar in 1911.