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2 11 Nationalizing the Empire 7 In June 1907, Prime Minister P. A. Stolypin dissolved the second Duma on the pretextthatitsSocialDemocraticdeputieshadparticipatedinillegalagitation.Shortly thereafter, he announced alterations to electoral laws, which would be implemented in time for the fall 1907 election of a third imperial Duma. The new laws reduced the electoral power of urban residents and peasants and enhanced that of the largest property owners, who in most locales strongly supported rightist parties.1 The so-called Stolypin coup is usually seen as a conservative measure intended to reduce the power of liberationist parties, roll back the social and political reforms of 1905, and produce a Duma that could work productively with the tsar.2 In the southwest , however, the new electoral system produced a rather different outcome. The region’s “truly Russian” partisans argued that it was not mass politics that posed the greatest threat to the imperial system in the western borderlands but rather the continued enfranchisement of the minority groups whom they considered adversaries of the tsar and children of Rus′. Ultimately they convinced Stolypin and the MVD to organize selected electoral contests in the region on a national basis, expanding the electoral power of Orthodox East Slavs and restricting that of Poles and Jews. Rather than restoring the old order in the southwest, then, the Stolypin coup initiated a new experiment in national governance, promoting the putative collective interests of the borderlands’ Orthodox East Slavs. The nationalization of electoral curiae greatly benefited the southwest’s “true Russians.” With the influence of their political rivals limited, they rapidly enhanced their profile in the right bank, where they now claimed the support of many Orthodox believers, from landowners to urban professionals to peasants and workers. As their local influence grew, they also worked to adapt the concerns and beliefs that had first emerged from the Little Russian lobby and from Kiev urban politics for an empirewide audience. Southwestern activists—who now frequently referred to themselves 1. For details on the new law, see Samuel N. Harper, The New Electoral Law for the Russian Duma (Chicago, 1908). 2. Leopold H. Haimson, ed., The Politics of Rural Russia (Bloomington, IN, 1979), 94–218; Geoffrey A. Hosking, The Russian Constitutional Experiment (New York, 1973), 14–55. 212 c h a p t e r s e v e n simply as “Russian nationalists”—became a force to contend with in the imperial Duma; meanwhile, they forged relationships with high-ranking officials and joined forces with more traditional right-wing politicians in St. Petersburg to create a formal Russian Nationalist Party, whose influence reached across the empire. This chapter charts the rapid ascent of the southwest’s Russian nationalists between 1907 and 1911, showing how they engaged educated society across the empire in a discussion about the characteristics, needs, and prospects of the Russian nation. It also considers the unintended costs of their accomplishments, examining how they unwittingly undermined the stability of the empire. Preparing for Elections After the dismissal of the Duma, the southwest’s “truly Russian” forces sprang into action to prepare for the upcoming elections. As before, activists convened a Committee of Russian Electors that aimed to unify Orthodox East Slavs from different walks of life against their purported adversaries. Now, however, southwestern intellectuals coupled their efforts to mobilize the masses with more aggressive attempts to convince the authorities to introduce ethnonational status as a consideration in electoral law. Volynia’s “truly Russian” electoral committee, which united N. P. Dobrynin, D. I. Pikhno, V. V. Shul′gin, Antonii Khrapovitskii, and local landowners and SRN members, wrote to Stolypin to express its concern that the new electoral laws would strengthen the “alien element” in the region by enhancing the voting power of the wealthiest Polish magnates, who had consistently supported liberationist or Polish nationalist parties. The group added that while the more restrictive franchise in cities and rural communities would reduce the electoral power of liberals and radicals, it would also prevent large segments of the Orthodox population—workers, peasants, artisans—from voting. Imploring Stolypin to prioritize the promotion of “Russian interests” in the southwest, the Volynian committee proposed that the franchise be divided into separate curiae of “Russians and rightists” and “Poles, Jews, and Leftists”; only broadening the voting rights of the first group and restricting those of the latter, they argued, could adequately protect the children of Rus′ from the threats supposedly posed by “aliens” and revolutionaries.3 “Truly Russian” electoral committees in Podolia and Kiev provinces (the...

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