Peter Stolypin: Progressive Statesman

PETER STOLYPIN: PROGRESSIVE STATESMAN LEONID I. STRAKHOVSKY FORTY years ago the bullet of an assassin ended the life and work of one of Russia's greatest statesmen. Peter Arkadievich Stolypin, Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, was mortally wounded in the evening of September 14, 1911,' by two bullets fired by a Jewish revolutionary, Mordka Bogrov, who also served as a secret agent of the Russian police. Stolypin died four days later. The assassination took place while he was attending a performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Tsar Saltan in Kiev in the presence of the Emperor and members of the Imperial family. Before he slumped into his chair he turned toward the Imperial box and made the sign of the cross in its direction, thus imparting his blessing upon the Sovereign to whom he was devoted, but who by then did not understand any more, nor trust, the one man who could have saved the Russian monarchy from the catastrophe which was to come. The forces of revolution and of reaction rejoiced alike at Stolypin's death, because his progressive constitutionalism and enlightened statesmanship were hated and feared by both extremes. Lenin called him "super-hangman" and "organizer of pogroms" in his article "Stolypin and the Revolution" written one month after Stolypin's death.2 The reactionary newspaper the Russian Banner echoed the words it had printed several years before: "Some time a day will come, and this will be soon, when we shall not permit the drugging of Russian citizens with promises of an overseas constitution."8 Such venomous attacks from both the extreme left and the extreme right, whose leaders were aware that the success of Stolypin's policies would have completely transformed Russia into a free capitalistic country and thus doomed both revolution and reaction, pursued him all his life, but they merely strengthened his conviction that he was following the right path. Stolypin was born in Dresden, Saxony, but spent his childhood on the family estate near Moscow. His father, a hero of the defence of Sevastopol in the Crimean War and later commander of an army corps in the Russian Turkish War of 1877-8, ended his career as lAll dates arc according to the Western calendar. 2V. I. Lenin, Sochineniyo (4th ed., Moscow-Leningrad. 1948), XVII, 217, 219. 3Russkoye Znamya, no. 65, March 20. 1907. 239 UNIVERSITY OF TOR.ONTO QUARTERLY, vol. XX, 00. 3, April, 1951 240 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY governor of the Kremlin. Stolypin's mother was a princess Gorchakov, belonging to one of the most illustrious families of Russia.' He was always intently interested in agriculture and in the lot of the Russian peasant, and chose to study agriculture in the Department of Natural Sciences when he entered the University of St. Petersburg. While still at the university he married Olga Neidhart, daughter of the Grand Marshal of the Court. After graduating from the university in 1885, Stolypin served two years in the Ministry of Agriculture. Then in 1887 he was appointed County Marshal of Nobility in the province of Kovno, where he possessed an estate. During ten years in this office he worked ceaselessly to improve the conditions of the peasants in his county. When he was appointed Provincial Marshal of Nobility he had a larger field before him. He organized the Kovno Association for Agriculture in order to co-ordinate the efforts of the three leading national groups in the province: Russians, Poles, and Lithuanians. When he was appointed Governor of the neighbouring province of Grodno in 1902,' one of his first acts was to present his own programme for agrarian reform at the opening session of the Committee for the Relief of Peasants. The main objectives of this programme were to encourage and develop individual peasant ownership of land, to abolish the communal redistribution of land, and to create and extend credit facilities for the peasants.' This was in essence the agrarian reform which he carried out four years later when he was at the head of the Russian government . In this committee he had already to combat the reactionaries who wanted to prevent the education of the peasants. Stolypin spoke out boldly: "One...