The Duma Monarchy

[Nentsia]

The Duma Monarchy in Russia
1905 - 1917
Part III. Fragile Stability



Tsar Nicholas and his prime minister Stolypin (most right figure in white) during a visit in Kiev, 1911.

From 1908 to about 1914 Russia experienced both strong economic growth and a sense of political stability. Culturally the country blossomed as the West discovered Russian literature from Anton Chekhov, Russian ballet from Diaghilev, painting by Kandinsky and Malevich and music by Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. Even philosophically, Western audiences were intrigued by the ideas of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and the Russian ‘soul’. When historians talk about the Duma Monarchy’s potential to save the Romanov dynasty and avert revolution or civil war, they often have these years in mind. The Duma started to function, took a constructive role, and there was an effective government, headed by the visionary strongman Pyotr Stolypin. Had the World War not derailed the project in 1914, the rocket-like economic growth during those years would’ve surely solved many of the social conflicts, like in other European countries in the 19th century, and thus a stable, prosperous, politically moderate Russia would emerge by the 1920’s and 1930’s.

Other historians point out that the Duma Monarchy’s own success from 1908 onwards carried the seeds of its own destruction. The single-most destabilizing factor in Russia since the 1890’s had been the flood of proletarian workers to the overcrowded cities, and with every step towards further economic modernization, their numbers and grievances swelled. Throughout the long history of Russia, social disturbances had occurred, large and small, but because they occurred among the peasantry – it was distant and isolated from the political centers such as Moscow or Petersburg. But with the internal migration to the cities, Moscow and Petersburg were now industrial centers, with hundreds of thousands of frustrated workers, living under worse conditions than the peasant villages they had abandoned, and living only a few districts away from the political heart of the Empire. One single workers’ uprising could do what dozens of enormous peasant rebellions never could. Workers constituted only a few percent of the total population, but they were highly concentrated around the political and economic center of the empire.

In fact, most of the first generation workers coming to a city like Petersburg experienced a total cultural shock. St. Petersburg was not unlike most other European capitals such as Paris or Vienna, with its palaces, enormous shopping malls, modern fashion, electric communication networks and cars. But the workers arriving there came from an ancient world that had not significantly changed since the 18th century. The elite lifestyle that the cosmopolitan Petersburg jet-set confronted the working classes with on a daily basis, while the workers lived in cramped barracks without any salary or toilets even, was a recipe for hatred and violence. By 1910, the workers in major cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg made up between 40 and 50% of the population.

The revolutionary movement had not been idle since its defeat after 1905-1907. A new and radicalized branch was emerging, known in intellectual circles as the Marxists. But within this Marxist camp, a radicalized core was formed, calling themselves the ‘Bolsheviks’, headed by Vladimir Lenin. Until then the revolutionary movement was dominated by the Socialist Revolutionary Party and the Narodnik movement. Marxism was a relatively new phenomenon, providing it with a new way of understanding Russian society – a key ingredient combined with the experiences of the past failures. Especially Lenin himself, whose brother was executed in 1887 for terrorist activities, vowed to learn from the mistakes of the past. For the time being however, the revolutionary movement was weak. Its leaders were exiled, the movement itself was discredited, and the Duma Monarchy appeared too strong after 1907.

A House United

An interesting feature of the 1907-1914 period was the newfound unity that helped to cement the Empire and the new Duma, if only for a few years. As the foundations of the monarchy became more fragile, Tsar Nicholas II invoked more and more rituals and symbols to express the mythical unity between Tsar and People, and the divine mission of Russia and its Orthodox Church to bring order, culture and civilization to the many peoples of the Empire.

Pyotr Stolypin, the prime minister, discovered nationalism unifying force in the Duma, where the Rightist faction (dominated by the All-Russian Nationalist Union) and the centrist Octobrists formed the majority, together with the Independents (often reactionary aristocrats who refused to subscribe to political parties), and the right-wing leaning members of the Liberal Kadet Party. Although these political factions all wildly differed on many issues, they could agree on a number of national themes. First of all, they supported Stolypin’s cry for a ‘Great Russia’, after the military humiliation by Japan, the growing tensions in the Balkans, and the increasingly threatening attitude of the German Empire. On this issue, the Court, the government, and the Duma from the far-right to the Liberals could shake hands.

But this also gave rise to new tensions. The great-power chauvinism of the Duma and the Tsar far exceeded the ambitions of the government under Stolypin, which lacked the financial resources to rebuild Russia’s naval might. Stolypin tried to convince the Duma instead that industrialization and economic modernization should have the priority over rearmament, in order to build a Great Russia. The Tsar himself, obsessed with military grandeur, and who genuinely believed he was destined to expand Russia’s borders throughout Asia, was reluctant to go along with Stolypin. On a personal level, Nicholas loathed Stolypin, who – like everyone – had a tendency to lecture the Tsar who was seldomly taken seriously.

It also wasn’t quite clear who was Russia’s main enemy. Tsar Nicholas, the Court, and the radical Union of the Russian People resented Russia’s political alliance to decadent France since 1893, and they saw the conservative German Emperor as a much more natural ally. Former Interior minister Pyotr Durnovo, and then member of the Imperial Council as he belonged to the ancient aristocratic Durnovo family, warned Tsar Nicholas on the eve of World War I that a war between the German Empire and the Russian Empire would produce no victors and destroy the Monarchy in both countries.

This aristocratic position was starkly at odds with the rest of the Duma and Russian society, where nationalism produced strong anti-German sentiment. The Russian masses resented the political influence of Baltic German aristocrats, Russian industrialists detested their German rivals, and tensions in the Balkans revived Pan-Slav sentiments, which traditionally viewed Germany, Austria and their Pan-German aspirations as a threat to the Slavs of Central Europe. Despite these internal differences, public indignation over German aggression, and the denunciation of Jews and Socialists as enemies of Russia helped to forge a superficial sense of unity within Russia.

Stolypin’s Downfall

It would however cost the head of prime minister Stolypin. As the number of international crises in the Balkans, Persia and Turkey rose exponentially after 1908, Stolypin constantly had to say ‘no’ to war enthusiasts at the Court, the military and in the Duma. He also ran into trouble with the Tsar himself, who used his reactionary connections in the Duma to frustrate Stolypin’s reforms. While military generals pressured the government to expand its military budgets, the Russian finance ministry became increasingly dependent on French loans to make ends meet.

Influential reactionary aristocrats never wasted an opportunity to warn the Tsar that Stolypin was a traitor, a closet liberal, and a stain on Russia’s autocracy. Among them was former prime minister Witte, the founder of the Duma Monarchy. Stolypin eventually sealed his fate when he took on the mysterious Grigory Rasputin. Rasputin was a fraud from Western Siberia, posing as a ‘Starets’, Orthodox spiritual healers that were fashionable among the Petersburg elite. Rasputin used the mysterious attraction he had on aristocratic women to make his entry into elite circles, and was eventually introduced to the depressed and despairing German wife of the Tsar. He promised them that he could do what no doctor could: to cure their son Aleksei and save the Romanov dynasty.

By 1911, rumors about the dangerous presence at the court of Rasputin, and about sexual affairs between the Empress and this Siberian vagabond, forced Stolypin to banish Rasputin from St. Petersburg. Rasputin went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but he maintained contact with the Empress. She came to hate Stolypin, for taking away the one person who could alleviate the pain of her only son.

Tsar Nicholas began to block Stolypin’s legislation, with arguments like ‘an inner voice’ keeping him from signing. When even the Imperial Council turned against Stolypin, full of the Tsar’s confidants, he gave up and resigned. Fearing that this would create precedence, the Tsar simply rejected Stolypin’s resignation and the two butted heads.

Later that year, Stolypin accompanied the Tsar to a trip to Kiev. Rasputin was surprisingly in Kiev as well. As Stolypin’s carriage drove past him and the crowds, Rasputin began to scream ‘Death is chasing him!’

That day, the imperial entourage attended the opera Tsar Saltan by Rimsky-Korsakov at the Kiev Opera House. During the break, a man entered the building with a revolver, walked towards Stolypin and shot him twice. The Tsar and his daughters had seen everything. Stolypin died several days later. The assassin was a member of the Revolutionary movement, but also a police informer. The official story claimed that he had defected back to the revolutionary cause and supplied false information to the police that enabled him to assassinate Stolypin. But why didn’t he shoot the Tsar then?

Before long, Rasputin returned to the Court. The Empress did not realize how her German ancestry, her self-imposed isolation, combined with her association with public enemy Rasputin placed a time-bomb under the Russian monarchy. From here, things would only get worse.


(Stolypin's funeral procession)