Into this turbulent scenario stepped the flamboyant Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin, then Minister of Interior, and from this point on, one of the key players of the period. A wealthy landlord with big political ambitions, Stolypin owned two estates, one in Penza province with 2,850 acres, and another in Kovno, with a further 2,500 acres. In addition, his wife, the daughter of a high official of the imperial household, owned another 14,000 acres in Kazan. He therefore had plenty of reasons for interesting himself in the land question. Although he is generally described as a progressive reformer, Stolypin had earned the Tsar’s confidence by his application of the most brutal measures of repression during the period of ‘pacification’ following the 1905 Revolution.
His draconian measures in suppressing one of the most turbulent of the Volga provinces in 1905-6 made him notorious. His own words are suggestive: of one action against the peasants he reported to the Ministry of the Interior, “the whole village, almost, went to prison on my instructions… I billeted Cossacks in the houses of the worst offenders, left there a squadron of Orenburgers, and imposed a special regime on the village”. (L. Kochan, Russia in Revolution, p. 123.)
Stolypin’s reputation with the people is shown by the fact that a hangman’s noose was referred to as a ‘Stolypin necktie’, and as late as the 1930s, railway trucks used to carry political prisoners to Siberia were still referred to as ‘Stolypin carriages’. However, he was undoubtedly one of the few really competent men among the Tsar’s advisers in the period before 1914, until he was removed by an assassin’s bullet. Kerensky characterises this consummate and skilful reactionary as follows:
Just before the first Duma was due to meet, a new Minister of the Interior was appointed in St. Petersburg. This was the governor of Saratov, Peter A. Stolypin, who was hardly known to anyone at the time of the appointment. In less than three months, just after the dissolution of the Duma on 8 July, 1906, he was appointed chairman of the Council of Ministers… Of provincial upper-class origin, he was not a member of the St. Petersburg court set and had never been employed in any of the higher government establishments of the capital. The whole of his career had been spent in the provinces, where he had no lack of connections among prominent public and Zemstvo figures… He did not share the view of his predecessor Goremykin that the Duma was merely an idle ‘talking-shop’. On the contrary, unlike the hidebound and soulless bureaucrat, Goremykin, he was strongly attracted by the role of a constitutional minister. The idea of making speeches in parliament, openly debating vital issues with the opposition, and governing the country on the basis of his government majority appealed to him greatly.
The fighting spirit lacked by the St. Petersburg officials was more than compensated for by Stolypin. The Tsar liked Stolypin for his youth, self-confidence, devotion to the throne, and readiness to carry out the Tsar’s plan for illegal changes in the electoral law. The heads of the Council of United Gentry saw in him one of their own kind who would save the system of upper-class land proprietorship from destruction. The Octobrists and various other moderate constitutionalists, frightened by the excesses of the revolution, clutched at him as a drowning man clutches at a straw. They welcomed his programme, which was intended to unify the government with the moderately liberal and conservative public, thus strengthening the constitutional monarchy and eliminating for good the revolutionary movement. They thought of him as a Russian Thiers (the man who consolidated the bourgeois Third Republic in France after the defeat of the Commune in 1871). (A. Kerensky, The Kerensky Memoirs: Russia and History’s Turning Point, pp. 94-95.)
Shortly before the dissolution of the Duma, Nicholas had appointed this “strong man” as chairman of the Council of Ministers in place of the “hidebound and soulless” Goremykin. At first, Stolypin, in a show of uncharacteristic modesty, refused to accept the honour, whereupon the Tsar instructed him to kneel before his favourite icon. “Let us make the sign of the cross over ourselves and let us ask the lord to help us both in this difficult, perhaps historic, moment.” After this brief consultation with the Almighty, Nicholas then got down to serious business: “On what day would it be best to dissolve the Duma and what instructions do you propose to give to ensure order, chiefly in St. Petersburg and Moscow?” With the help of the Almighty, the date of the coup was fixed for Sunday 9 (21) July.
The Tsar need not have worried. The first Duma disappeared from history, not with a bang but a whimper. The liberals had not the slightest intention of stirring up the masses. Faced with the fait accompli of dissolution, some 200 deputies travelled to Vyborg, which, being under Finnish control, was relatively safe. There they issued the Vyborg Manifesto which called on the people to engage in acts of civil disobedience, such as non-payment of taxes and refusal to accept military service, as a sign of protest at the dissolution. This document was drawn up by a joint parliamentary commission made up mainly of the Cadets and Trudoviks. True to form, the Cadets were unenthusiastic even about these demands and later backed out of it. This farcical experience exposed the counter-revolutionary character of the Cadets and the hopelessness of such methods. Horrified at this quite predictable turn of events, the Menshevik Central Committee called on the workers to strike and demonstrate in support of the Duma. But this call went unheeded.
Lenin opposed the call for demonstrations in support of the Duma. Lenin was never afraid to tell the truth to the workers. His position was always dictated by an unerring revolutionary instinct and realism. What should the working class fight for? Not for bourgeois parliamentarism, but against the main enemy – tsarist reaction. The working class must not accept any responsibility for bourgeois pseudo-democracy or spread illusions in the counter-revolutionary liberals, but come out openly for an armed uprising against the autocracy, not for the defence of the Cadet Duma, but for the Constituent Assembly, which will give land to the peasants, an eight-hour day to the workers, and full democratic rights for all. Here we have in a nutshell the difference between revolutionary Marxism and reformism.
While the Mensheviks participated in yet another pantomime with the Cadets, Lenin pressed home his call for a revolutionary united front with the Trudoviks. Under pressure from the mood of the working class and peasants, the Trudoviks actually agreed to a joint appeal with the Social Democrats for an armed uprising. Here, in outline, was the possibility of a ‘left bloc’ with the Trudoviks, a united front of the organisations of the working class and peasant masses for the purpose of struggle against the autocracy and the liberals. While Lenin ruled out any deals with the bourgeois liberals, he accepted the possibility of temporary agreements with the Trudoviks, as the parliamentary representatives of the peasantry, and even occasionally voting together with the Trudoviks against the Cadets to win over the former. Such partial and temporary parliamentary agreements with the representatives of the revolutionary petty bourgeoisie – without for a moment renouncing the right to criticise the Trudoviks for their inconsistency and vacillations – had nothing whatsoever in common with the political bloc with the liberals advocated by the Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks’ position was to use the Duma as a platform to expose the tsarist regime and the liberals, and at the same time for organising outside parliament in preparation for revolution.