The Landed Nobility, the State Council, and P. A. Stolypin (1907–11)

ALEXANDRA SHECKET KORROS

Desperate to restore some semblance of normalcy to society in the wake of the disorders of 1905, the Russian government acceded to demands for a popularly elected legislative assembly (the State Duma). The early stages of the 1905 revolution had been marked by expressions of discontent from all strata of society, including the landed nobility, the commercial and industrial classes, and the ever dissident intelligentsia. However, by the end of the year most of the newly radicalized nobles found their ardor beginning to cool in the wake of the increased peasant disorders and the Moscow armed uprising. Thus, when the tsar’s special conference met to discuss the electoral law for the new Duma, the government turned to the landed nobility as a means of buffering the power of what was expected to be a radical, if not revolutionary, institution.

In order to place this “buffer” within the framework of the limited constitutional order established by the Manifesto of 17 October, the reformers of Russia’s governing institutions converted the bureaucratic Gosudarstvennyi sovet (State Council) into an upper house, a legislative chamber with powers equal to the popularly elected Duma.¹ In contrast to the Duma, which was to represent the entire Russian population without regard for estate (soslovie) origins, the membership of the State Council, beyond the bureaucratic elite of which it had traditionally been composed,² was to be limited to representatives of the “cultured” elements of Russian society.

To this end, the bureaucratic reformers decided to allocate six representatives to each of several important interest groups—commerce and industry, the Academy of Sciences and the universities, and the Orthodox clergy—or a total of eighteen deputies. The remaining seventy-four elected members were to come from the zemstvos (thirty-four representatives), the landowners of the nonzemstvo provinces (twenty-two), and the nobility (eighteen representatives indirectly elected by the local assemblies of nobility). By establishing high service and property qualifications for those elected by the zemstvos and landowners, the government virtually guaranteed that seventy-four of the ninety-eight elected members of the State Council would be noblemen. As a result, the Council became the institution in the new governmental structure that most strongly represented noble interests.³

Loosely organized though they were, the landed noble representatives in the State Council had a considerable impact upon the government’s policies. It is the purpose of this article to examine this group’s impact and, more generally, its political characteristics, focusing on their awareness and defense of their estate interests. Of necessity, the term “landed nobility” is here defined as the Russian landed nobility, for, although there were Polish landed noblemen in the State Council, their distinct national and historical identity caused them to pursue very different concerns in the upper chamber and prompted them to form their own political grouping, the Polish kolo (which usually supported the majority center faction).⁴ The Russian landed noblemen displayed no similar propensity to form a single political group representing their common interests, but they did display common patterns of political behavior reminiscent of those of Russian noble organizations before the 1905 upheaval.

Since the reign of Catherine the Great, the Russian landed gentry had been organized into district and provincial assemblies of nobility, whose elected marshals represented and sought to reconcile the corporate interests of their estate with those of the State power. As a result of the relatively high property qualifications for election, the marshals tended to be large landowners,⁵ who, because of their wealth and unpaid status, remained relatively independent of the central bureaucracy. During the closing years of the nineteenth century, the provincial assemblies, through their marshals, pressed the government to safeguard their declining estate by conferring noble status on non-noble landowners, and they also attempted to exclude from these assemblies landless noblemen, who in large part were local bureaucrats ennobled by the Table of Ranks. In addition, the marshals increasingly emerged as champions of noble economic interests, demanding state aid for the landed nobility whose fortunes had suffered serious decline since the emancipation of the serfs. By 1896 provincial marshals had begun to meet annually to coordinate these activities and to attempt to influence state policies in their favor. But despite political concessions on the local level, including the 1890 Zemstvo Statute and the creation of the land captains (zemskie nachal’niki), government policy continued to support the industrialization of the country and to neglect the concerns of the agricultural sector, including those of the landed nobility. As a consequence, the imperial government was regarded as generally unresponsive to their demands.

The provincial and district zemstvos were the other principal center of noble activities. Created in 1864, the zemstvos were all-estate assemblies, dominated by noble landowners. The provincial and district assemblies were responsible for supervision of schools, hospitals, road construction, etc. in rural areas. Noblemen active in zemstvo affairs were frequently thought of as more “liberal” than their counterparts in the assemblies of nobility; however, the district zemstvo was presided over by the district marshal of nobility, who also frequently served as chairman of the zemstvo board (uprava). Thus, at the district level, these two centers of noble activity overlapped.⁶

It is important to emphasize that only a relatively small number of the noblemen in any given district or province were actively involved in zemstvo affairs. Few could afford the money or the time to travel to the district or provincial capital to participate fully and regularly in zemstvo assemblies. As a result, only a handful of nobles dominated zemstvo affairs, often giving a zemstvo a political character shaped by the concerns of a minority of its members.

Government policies under Nicholas II strengthened hostility among both the zemstvos and the assemblies of the nobility toward the central administration. Liberals discussed constitutional limitations on bureaucratic arbitrariness, while conservatives sought means to retain exclusive estate privileges. Both sides, however, viewed the state bureaucracy as insensitive to noble needs and were even more vocal and unrestrained in their criticism of the government.

However, before 1905 the vast majority of landed noblemen stood aside from political activity, although their ostensible political leaders—the marshals through their annual meetings and the zemstvo men through their congresses—had begun to draw more closely together. In the midst of the national crisis of 1905, many noblemen who had rarely, if ever, participated in zemstvos found themselves involved in political affairs for the first time. Initially led by liberal zemstvo men, the assemblies moved to the left in a wave of support for universal (though not direct) suffrage and constitutionalism. But after the peasant disorders in late summer 1905, the zemstvos began to return to “sanity,” replacing the liberals of 1905 with leaders of much more moderate, if not conservative, persuasion.

The conservative noblemen, alarmed both by the spread of liberal ideas and by the liberals’ initial success in the noble milieu, decided to establish their own organization. Early in 1906, they called a congress of provincial and district marshals, which led to the formation of the United Nobility, a political organization dedicated to the defense of noble interests. Throughout the succeeding years, the United Nobility became the principal spokesman and pressure group for the provincial nobility. It is significant that approximately one-third of the delegates to the First Congress of the United Nobility, and nine of its fifteen-member executive board (the Permanent Council), served as elected members of the State Council, and that all of these men gravitated toward the right wing of the chamber.⁷

The creation of the State Duma introduced a new element into Russian political life—the legal political party. Most of the noblemen who had been active in the moderate wing of the zemstvo congresses joined the Union of 17 October, a party committed to the principles of the October Manifesto. But the Octobrists attempted to represent the interests of both rural and urban property owners, expecting the noblemen to renounce their special estate privileges and fuse with property owners of other estates.⁸ Such an expectation ran counter to the traditional attitudes of the landed nobility. Thus, the party to which more noblemen were initially attracted than any other could not represent their particular interests as an estate.

The State Council provided a forum for the articulation of these interests. All seventy-four seats that could be occupied by nobles were in fact filled by them. In choosing their representatives to the upper house, the nobility, the zemstvos, and the landowners of the west quite naturally gravitated to their traditional leaders—the marshals of the nobility and the chairmen of the zemstvo boards. At least thirty of the representatives elected to the State Council in 1906 were past or present marshals, while another six had chaired their local zemstvo boards.⁹

Although the noble delegates were numerous enough to form the second largest grouping in the chamber (second only to the appointed bureaucrats), the Russian landed nobles in the upper house did not form a single “nobles’ group.” Not surprisingly, the political divisions among the nobles’ representatives in the State Council occurred over the same issues that had previously divided the local zemstvos and noble assemblies: support of constitutional government as outlined in the October Manifesto, rejection of the Manifesto in favor of the old order, or, in a few cases, advocacy of further constitutional concessions.

Yet, whatever their political affiliations or inclinations, Russian noblemen of all political factions in the Council approached government in a similar manner. Noble interests frequently conflicted with bureaucratic views of state interest. But while bureaucrats were accustomed to playing an active, if not always creative, role in implementing state policy, the nobles’ representatives were not; they had always looked to the autocrat to enact changes on their behalf. Thus, their conception of state service was to implement whenever possible the wishes of the central authority, while protesting only those measures which interfered with their own estate interests. This was true, by and large, even of those noblemen in the State Council who had previously participated in the Liberation Movement. These self-professed “progressives” had, for the most part, adhered to the moderate rather than liberal wing of the zemstvo congresses, resisting demands for four-tail suffrage and a constitution. Later, in the upper house, they tended to go along with their more conservative colleagues in considering the noble estate the most loyal servant of the tsar and of the state. Thus, even they were not inclined to oppose government policies as long as these policies did not directly conflict with the concerns of their estate.

Within a few weeks of the convocation of the State Council, three groups emerged—the right, center, and left—of which the first two almost immediately became considerably larger than the third. The center attracted many Russian noblemen, particularly zemstvo representatives, as well as bureaucrats of moderate views (largely from the Ministries of Justice and Finance), some former senators, the representatives of trade and industry, and Polish and Baltic landowners. The right was composed of retired military men, bureaucrats, representatives of the Orthodox clergy and some noble and zemstvo representatives. The left included only the six academic representatives and five zemstvo men who combined to form the “liberal” opposition in the upper chamber. Generally, bureaucrats and landed noblemen were so intermingled in the major political groups of the State Council that individual allegiances appeared to be determined largely by personal opinions and attitudes.

Early in the second session, Stolypin turned to the center group for his base of support in the Council. The center was ostensibly the majority group in the upper chamber and sought to act as a genuine political party, playing an active role in passing legislation.¹⁰ But while he had a group to which he could turn in the State Council, it was not until after the coup d’état of June 1907 and the issuance of the new electoral law that the prime minister was able to begin developing his base in the Duma. The first and second Dumas had been radical assemblies, spurring reactionaries to hope that Stolypin would abolish the Duma entirely. Instead, he altered its composition to permit the domination of large property owners. When the State Council met in the fall of 1907, many of its members had changed their attitude toward the lower chamber. The dominance of the moderate property-owning elements made it possible for moderates of the State Council to cooperate with the Duma, forcing the advocates of a return to the old order to face for the first time the prospect of effective representative government.

However, while Stolypin could look now to the Union of 17 October for a somewhat stable base of Duma support, he found that the center of the State Council was not a “sure thing.” The Octobrists could enforce some degree of group discipline in the Duma, but discipline was nearly impossible in the State Council. Members of the upper chamber were not dependent on their group or party affiliation for election and reelection; rather, group affiliation was entirely voluntary, and by the end of the Council’s second session, the center as much as admitted that it could do little to make its members abide by group decisions.¹¹ Many of the center’s landed noble members refused to heed leadership decisions and, in so doing, formed a right wing, which was to plague the group throughout the period under discussion.

In his first speech to the State Council as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Stolypin outlined the areas of reform he envisioned.¹² Most significant was the introduction of new institutions of local government at the volost’ (district) level. He sought to make the district the basic unit of administration—to establish zemstvos, courts, and other necessary local institutions at this level, thereby permitting local residents maximum participation in their own government. Stolypin also outlined a program rationalizing Russian administration, eliminating many problems that had led to discontent in 1905. He promised to carry out his programs without eliminating or displacing those already in power.

The reforms entailed extensive restructure of local government, particularly at the next level, the uezd (county). The county zemstvo was to be reorganized through the abolition of restrictions on peasant and urban suffrage. The basis for determining the franchise would be the amount of taxes an individual paid rather than the amount of immovable property he possessed. Supervision of the zemstvo would be limited to the legality of its actions rather than the expediency of its decisions. A county council would be created to coordinate government offices in the area, the head of which would be appointed by the Ministry of Interior. In sum, proposals were designed to substitute bureaucratic for noble control in the county, reducing the role of the county marshal of nobility to that of estate representative.¹³

The proposals prompted an immediate reaction from the Council of the United Nobility. A. A. Naryshkin, a member of the Council from Orel’, met with Stolypin on February 27, 1907, to warn the Prime Minister that the passage of his “democratic” proposals would bring the “third element” into zemstvo work at the expense of the nobility. Naryshkin emphasized that the “virtual replacement of the county marshals would undermine the authority of the nobility,” and he asked Stolypin to submit his proposals for discussion to the zemstvos and assemblies of nobility.¹⁴

In defending his program, Stolypin maintained that the “estate principle” had lost its meaning and had to be rooted out of local government. He contended that the “third element” presented no threat to the zemstvo and refused to submit the bill to noble scrutiny before its introduction into the State Duma, fearing that only a “purposeless mass of written materials” would result.¹⁵ But Stolypin later reconsidered and allowed the nobility in their zemstvos and noble assemblies to discuss and review the government projects while they were being considered by the Duma.

The United Nobility formed a special committee to deal with the various aspects of the proposals and the organization retained its interest in Stolypin’s local reforms long after the abrupt dismissal of the Second Duma on June 3, 1907. In particular, the report presented to the Congress of the United Nobility in March of 1908 gave the nobility the opportunity to exact maximum pressure on the government.

The threat of local government reform was the dominant theme of the 1908 Congress, and all its discussions related directly or indirectly to the subject. Even the first topic, the need to increase the number of noble representatives in the State Council, bore on this issue.¹⁶ Many noblemen felt that their estate was insufficiently represented in the upper house, particularly in comparison to the zemstvos. Everyone agreed that a change was necessary, but several points of difference emerged: about at whose expense, if anyone’s, this increase should be made; about the nature of temporary election changes until the increase had been achieved; and finally, about when such a petition should be presented to the tsar. The last point brought the ominous reform proposals into the discussion.

V. L. Kushelev of Pskov suggested that the best time to petition the tsar would be in connection with the projected zemstvo reform. All the zemstvo representatives, he observed, were noblemen, but it was unlikely that all postreform zemstvo representatives would continue to be noblemen. Since the State Council had to be “a conservative institution, restraining those impulses beyond the strength of the state, and it is this which we are constantly required to prove to the emperor and the government,” Kushelev suggested that if the local government reforms were passed, the eighteen noble members would be a “drop in the ocean.” Thus the nobility could not “lay aside” its estate interests or postpone “the expansion of the conservative element in the State Council.”¹⁷

S. M. Prutchenko of Novgorod agreed with Kushelev but advised the Congress to wait until the reform had been adopted by the government before presenting its petitions. The nobility would then have a valid basis for its arguments that democratization of the zemstvo would mean democratization of the State Council. He suggested that the organization rephrase its request for an increase in noble representation in order to enable the legislative institutions “to hold off the approaching attack of radicalism . . . and ... to call to the emperor’s attention the desirability of increasing the number of noble representatives in the State Council, especially in view of the approaching zemstvo reform.”¹⁸

Closely tied to the zemstvo proposals (which had not yet been submitted to the Duma) were the other proposed reforms of local government, to which the Congress devoted the remainder of its sessions. F. D. Samarin, one of the two Moscow noble representatives in the State Council, reported on the special committee’s criticism of the reforms. The committee, he emphasized, had opposed the reforms, not as a threat to estate interests, but as measures objectively unsuited to Russian conditions at this moment. He urged the Congress to deal with them in a similar manner, stressing that the government had not yet surrendered on the reforms in the face of the committee’s opposition, although it had not yet resubmitted the proposals to the Third Duma. Samarin claimed that if the first two projects for local court reform were approved, the others would pour into the legislative chambers.¹⁹ He outlined the manner in which the marshals of nobility would lose their powers and how local court reform was designed to deprive land captains of their judicial powers. Samarin conceded that changes were needed, but he insisted that reform should be gradual lest its telescoping lead to a series of drastic projects exceeding Russia’s financial means.

The Congress condemned the reforms and affirmed the intrinsic worth of the existing elective local institutions dominated by the noble estate. In its resolution against the county reforms, the Congress concluded that “such a measure, resulting mainly from the desire to structure all local institutions on a nonestate principle, cannot be justified either by the characteristics of the county marshals’ . . . activities, or by any considerations of a practical character.”²⁰

Several leaders of the Congress were members of the State Council’s right and had frequently opposed Stolypin’s policies, so their vehement protests were not unexpected. But when P. V. Dicheskul’, a former marshal of nobility and the Bessarabia zemstvo representative in the State Council, voiced his opposition, it was quite another matter. Dicheskul’ belonged to the center group; indeed he was a leader of its right faction and his views were probably representative of many of his colleagues. His comments were scathing.

I believe that the nobility desires to reform all that can be reformed . . . but it does not believe that what is being offered . . . will be any better than, and fully replace, what already exists. ... I am for the retention of land captains . . . and against the administration’s pernicious influence. . . . Thus, we cast our votes not against reform and partial change . . . but against the bureaucratic structure. . . .²¹

Dicheskul’s remarks, reflecting traditional noble opposition to bureaucratic control, indicated that if the more moderate noblemen were opposed to the proposals, it would be a difficult task to muster a majority on their behalf in the State Council.

Toward the conclusion of the Congress, la. A. Ofrosimov of Vitebsk, later a member of the State Council, reminded the noblemen that their most important task was the preservation of the marshals’ powers, and that all other aspects of the reforms were secondary. If justices of the peace replaced land captains, they would still be appointed by provincial or county marshals. “On that,” Ofrosimov concluded, “we must insist.”²²

The press thoroughly reported the proceedings of the Congress, publishing several accounts of the debates and carefully noting the opposition to the Stolypin proposals.²³ The prime minister could not be unaware of the poor reception accorded his reforms.

The proceedings revealed the full extent of the nobles’ opposition to what they regarded as encroachments on their estate interests. The proposed reforms were an overwhelming threat to the nobility’s position in the countryside, particularly if the powers of local elective leaders—the provincial and county marshals—were reduced. All factions of the nobility opposed the reforms—not only Stolypin’s traditional opponents, but his supporters as well.

The prime minister had been subjected to noble pressure against the reforms from the moment they had been announced. He had responded to the pressure by reorganizing the Ministry of Interior’s Council on the Affairs of Local Economy (Sovet po delam mestnago khoziastva) in October of 1907, five months before the Congress of the United Nobility. Various provincial zemstvos sent their representative (usually the provincial marshal) to the council, and almost all of them rejected the reforms, particularly the one altering the district zemstvo.

S. E. Kryzhanovskii, Deputy Minister of Interior and architect of the reforms, wrote that Stolypin dropped the zemstvo reform as a result of the defeat in the Congress of the United Nobility.²⁴ Geoffrey Hosking cites the Congress’s resolutions and observes: “It is certain that the combination of these with those passed in the Council on the Affairs of Local Economy constituted a crushing blow for the local reforms. ... In fact, little more was heard of the provincial and uyezd zemstvo reforms.”²⁵ The reforms previously submitted to the Duma did not come up for legislative action until 1910, and then again in 1913. The State Council did not discuss them until 1913, but by then, the projects were so altered that they conformed to noble demands—land captains and marshals had had their power restored, although in altered form.²⁶ Thus, conscious of his need to maintain the landed nobility’s support, Stolypin was forced to postpone the enactment of his local government reforms and to reevaluate the considerations that had prompted them.

After his setback on local government, Stolypin apparently chose to refrain from encroaching on noble estate interests. However, the center group on which he relied was still unable to provide the prime minister with the base of support he needed to ensure passage of his legislation in the State Council. Although it ostensibly remained the largest single group in the Council, the center’s numbers continued to decline. The combination of declining size, tenuous noble loyalty, and lack of group discipline increased Stolypin’s need to find new allies in the upper chamber.

In March of 1909 the State Council barely passed a bill funding the Naval General Staff and approving a list of naval appointments, which had been included in the bill by the Duma. The bill’s opponents argued that the latter section violated the tsar’s prerogatives, but a small majority, composed of parts of the center, the left, and seven ministers, contended that this section was an exception and that, rather than force the Naval General Staff to go without funding, the bill should be passed.²⁷ Its passage precipitated the first major political crisis of the Stolypin era.

During most of April, rumors spread throughout Petersburg that Stolypin would be forced to resign and be replaced by a prime minister with strong right-wing sympathies. Stolypin was accused of associating with liberal elements and seeking to increase his own power at the expense of the autocrat. After nearly a month’s speculation, the tsar refused to sign the Naval Staff bill but retained Stolypin as prime minister. Having squelched the intrigues against him of the State Council right Stolypin emerged from the crisis determined to disassociate his policies from “liberal” elements. In May 1909, in his first State Council appearance after the resolution of the crisis, the prime minister endorsed a proposal designed to increase Russian representation from the nine western provinces in the upper chamber at the expense of the Polish majority. In supporting this plan, the Pikhno proposal, sponsored by thirty-three members of the right and named after D. I. Pikhno, an archrightist appointed member of the upper house and the editor of the nationalist newspaper Kievlianin, Stolypin set out on a new course—supporting Great Russian nationalism.²⁸ He sought to establish a new majority in the State Council, one that would include not only the center but also the nationalists in the Council, breakaway members of the center and right who had begun to emerge as an important element in nationalist organizations since 1908.²⁹

Several prominent State Council nationalists were landed noblemen active in the right faction of the center group. One of them, Stolypin’s brother-in-law, A. B. Neidgardt, the zemstvo representative from Nizhnii Novgorod and a former provincial marshal of nobility, was a member of the Permanent Council of the United Nobility. Neidgardt emerged as the leader of the center’s right faction, a group numbering between fourteen and nineteen members largely composed of landed noblemen.³⁰ They became the strongest supporters of government policy in the State Council after Stolypin’s move to the right.

Throughout the Council’s fifth session (1909-10), Stolypin seemed to be gaining some measure of legislative success with his new policy. The government modified its 1906 stand on a bill liberalizing the position of the Old Believers, and the prime minister personally sponsored a bill severely curtailing the autonomous powers of the Finnish Sejm.³¹ By advocating these invasions, Stolypin apparently succeeded in neutralizing his opponents on the Council’s extreme right wing. He sponsored bills that encouraged nationalist aims, and enjoyed the tsar’s enthusiastic support, making it impossible for the rightists opposing him to block legislation.

Yet another barometer of Stolypin’s growing support was the attitude of the right-wing press. Novoe vremia, a paper that had been severely critical of the prime minister, especially during the ministerial crisis of 1909, now praised Stolypin’s farsighted policies and condemned the shortsighted members of the State Council who seemed to oppose him. The nationalist journal Okrainy Rossii, the organ of the Russian Borderlands Society (Russkoe okrainnoe obshchestvo), lauded the government and Stolypin personally, where only months before it had entirely ignored him.³²

Attitudes in the State Council, particularly among the landed noblemen, were now characterized by two basic trends: an important nationalist group, led by Neidgardt, Pikhno, Stishinskii, and others, warmly supported Stolypin’s new policy; in contrast, some landed noblemen, members of the center’s so-called basic group (i.e., that group of the center, approximately forty-seven members, who faithfully followed the decisions of the group’s bureau) supported nationalist legislation so long as it did not affect their immediate concerns. After the second session, the center’s leaders tried to support government policy as much as possible, and the “basic group” followed them.

Stolypin’s opponents on the right also had to assume supportive posture, but against their will. These men, a majority of whom had been career bureaucrats or military men, were reluctant to vote against legislation enjoying the tsar’s endorsement. Nevertheless, they continued to oppose Stolypin personally, consistently seeking new ways to undermine his position at Court, in the legislative chambers, and in the public eye.

The prime minister’s adoption of nationalism seemed to serve him well: it provided him with support outside government circles as well as in the legislative chambers. In 1910 the government submitted a bill introducing the zemstvo into the six southwestern provinces. The bill, known as the Western Zemstvo bill, sought to bring these institutions under Russian domination, a goal to which Russian nationalists had long aspired. In order to accomplish this aim, the proposal included a section establishing national curiae so designed as to enable Russian landowners in the region to obtain a sufficient number of votes to outnumber their larger and more powerful Polish counterparts. A Duma amendment further guaranteed Russian dominance by cutting the property qualification for direct participation in the western zemstvos in half. These two modifications had major implications for the structure of the zemstvo. The national curiae, in effect, eliminated election by estate social group as the chief characteristic of zemstvo structure, while the lowered property qualification permitted much greater peasant participation than was currently the case in most zemstvos.

Stolypin correctly assessed that the nationalists would be so anxious to attain domination of the western zemstvos that they would be willing to forsake some measure of noble preponderance for this purpose. But while the nationalists were willing, less committed members of the State Council displayed great reluctance to support these aspects of the bill. Consequently, these two sections of the bill, and especially the national curiae, were the most controversial. But Stolypin underlined the importance of the national curiae by declaring the Western Zemstvos a meaningless bill without their inclusion,³³ an opinion strongly seconded by the nationalists in the Council.

The Western Zemstvo act encountered strong opposition from the outset. Its passage was delayed from spring 1910 until the beginning of the sixth session that fall. When the bill was introduced in the Council in November, the Duma’s amendments, particularly the lowered property qualification, caused such an outcry that it had to be returned to committee. Only in January of 1911 was the bill finally brought before the Council.

As expected, the Polish kolo and the left strongly opposed the bill, and they were joined by the Baltic noblemen and many Russian zemstvo noblemen. The zemstvo noblemen approved of the idea of extending the zemstvo to the southwest, and many of them also believed that Russian domination of the zemstvo was worthwhile. However, they objected to the specific means chosen to effect this goal: the national curiae and lowered franchise.

A. A. Donetskii, a landowner from the Don region, emphasized this point. Identifying himself as an “old zemstvo man,” he asserted that the bill’s other provisions were sufficient to guarantee Russian domination of the zemstvo. “It is self-evident that such a situation, created by the bill, which deviates from basic principles of self-government, and is in direct breach of fairness, cannot but hinder the Poles’ activities and ruin Russo-Polish relations, resulting in extremely harmful consequences for local as well as state interests.”³⁴ Donetskii concluded that the proposed zemstvo structure was basically inequitable, giving dominance to those paying lower taxes. The bill thus violated the basic nature of the zemstvo, setting a precedent that could spread throughout Russia.

Another opponent was V. F. Trepov, an appointed member of the extreme right. Trepov had advocated the dissolution of the First Duma and continued to oppose the Duma’s existence despite the changes wrought by the electoral law of 3 June 1907. He now voiced his opposition to the zemstvo bill, even though his fellow rightists, unsure of the tsar’s position, seemed reluctant to do so. Trepov accused Stolypin of playing a “game” designed to tamper with the Empire’s most fundamental institutions, noting that the courts, navy, schools, and church were among the “cards” that had already been played. “The conservative, monarchical principle of the zemstvo has been placed on the board today—true, only in six western provinces—but it is not necessary to be a prophet to predict that this game will be extended to include the all-Russian zemstvo and in this game the card will be played out.”³⁵

Trepov’s remarks emphasized the close relationship between the bill’s two controversial sections. He opposed the introduction of zemstvos into the western provinces because they would be dominated not by the landowning nobility but by peasants who just happened to be Russian. The government argued that the goal of this legislation was to establish a Russian zemstvo, but the bill in reality would allow the peasants to dominate the zemstvos. Such a precedent, if extended to central Russia, would make the zemstvos a potential base for revolutionary agitation. Trepov’s fellow rightists remained silent throughout the debate since they did not know to what degree the tsar supported the legislation. Only a few felt they had nothing to lose in defying the tsar’s apparent wishes.

Thus, when the bill was voted on its first reading, 103 members supported considering it article by article, while 56 opposed any further discussion.³⁶ On this occasion, Stolypin succeeded in forming a new majority in the State Council, the right and most of the center, bridged by the nationalists, having fallen into line. It appeared that opposition would be minimal when the individual sections of the proposal were examined by the Council at the second reading in early March.

When the national curiae section was brought up at the second reading, Prince P. N. Trubetskoi, a leader of the center and chairman of the special committee considering the bill, emerged as the leading opponent of the section, reiterating Trepov’s earlier objections. He admitted that introduction of the zemstvo was important to the southwest’s development, but urged that the zemstvos be based on principles identical to those that applied in the rest of Russia. Trubetskoi feared the national curiae would politicize the zemstvos, exacerbating rather than reducing national antagonisms.³⁷

Another noble landowner and member of the center, N. P. Balashev, agreed with Trubetskoi. While concurring that the zemstvo had to be a Russian institution, he asserted that there were ways to achieve this goal other than the national curiae. The curiae, Balashev insisted, were both extraneous and dangerous; they were needed only in Poland and Finland.³⁸

As Balashev’s remarks indicate, the Polish and Russian noblemen differed greatly in their reasons for opposition to the Western Zemstvo project. The Russians feared for their estate’s dominance in the zemstvos if the national curiae should become a precedent for zemstvo organization. They suggested that it would be easier to guarantee Russian dominance by stipulating that the zemstvos and their boards be composed of a majority of Russians. The Poles protested that their loyalty to the Russian Empire had been called into question and claimed, even more vociferously, that passage of the national curiae would create further national antagonisms in the southwest.

It appeared from the debate that the core opposition to the national curiae had remained unchanged since the January vote. The left, the Poles, the trade and industry group, and some Russian landed noblemen opposed the form in which the zemstvo was to be introduced, while the right, with a few exceptions, kept silent. However, when the vote was taken, provision for a national curiae was defeated by a vote of 92 to 68—³⁹a stunning setback for Stolypin’s new policy.

The crucial shift in the balance of votes had come from the unexpected defection of the right. P. N. Durnovo and V. F. Trepov, two of the group’s leaders, had conspired to defeat the bill. On the eve of the voting on the curial system, Trepov had asked for an audience with the tsar and returned from the interview to inform his rightist colleagues that the autocrat wanted them to be guided in this matter only by their “conscience,” i.e., to vote as they wished.⁴⁰ Thus freed of their commitment to support unquestioningly a policy favored by the throne, the members of the right supplied the margin of defeat for the national curiae. To be sure, the right would not have been able to muster a majority in the State Council without the support of landed noblemen usually loyal to Stolypin. As we have seen, these men opposed the Western Zemstvo bill because the establishment of the national curiae might have a dangerous effect on their own estate interests and privileges. Thus Stolypin was undone by a combination of bureaucratic and estate interests.

The outraged prime minister refused to accept his defeat. He prorogued the two chambers and enacted the Western Zemstvo under the emergency provisions of Article 87 of the Fundamental Laws.⁴¹ In so doing, Stolypin damaged beyond repair his image as a “constitutionalist,” enraging both legislative chambers and losing much of his moderate support. It was clear after his gamble on the Western Zemstvo that his power was on the wane: that he had lost credibility both with the tsar and with the legislative chambers. Indeed, the Western Zemstvo crisis marked the end of Stolypin’s political career.

It is understandable that the landed nobility had played an important role in Stolypin’s political demise, for although from the outset he had looked to it for support, he had failed to understand its most basic social attitudes. Whatever their ostensible political position, landed noblemen continued to regard themselves as belonging to a special group within the Russian social order, whose rights it was their duty to safeguard.

The political divisions among the landed noblemen, after all, were relatively new—products of the general politicization of Russian society during the 1905 crisis. Few noblemen had really managed to break out of their older estate orientations, and fewer still among the elite who became members of the reformed State Council. Stolypin was repeatedly baffled, and eventually defeated, when these men united against policies that appeared to threaten the predominant position of their estate in national life.

NOTES

1. In his report to the tsar on October 9, 1905, Count S. Iu. Witte wrote: “It is most important to reform the State Council to allow an elected element to participate prominently in it. Only in this way will it be possible to establish normal relations between this institution and the State Duma.” Cited in Sidney Harcave, First Blood (New York: Macmillan, 1964), p.291.

At the secret December Conference called by the tsar to discuss the Duma electoral law, Witte commented: “The Council must be the second chamber and emerge as the necessary counterweight to the Duma, as a moderator. . . .” See “Tsarskosel’skiia soveshchaniia, Protokoly sekretnago soveshchaniia pod predsedatel’stvom byvshago imperatora po voprosu o rashirenii izbera-tel’nago prava,” in Byloe, no. 3, Sept. 1917, p.245.

2. The State Council was created in 1810 by Tsar Alexander I. Until its restructuring in 1906, its members were appointed by the emperor from the ranks of the highest levels of the bureaucracy and military.

3. Although the bureaucrats represented in the State Council were of noble rank and many were indeed hereditary noblemen, in this particular context we are referring primarily to that part of the landed nobility which was involved in the local zemstvos and assemblies of nobility. In order to be elected to the State Council from the zemstvo, an eligible candidate had to possess three times the full property requirement for direct participation in the county zemstvo, or he had to own the full property qualification and to have served for at least two elected terms as either a provincial or county marshal of nobility, a chairman of the provincial or county zemstvo board, a mayor of a town, or a justice of the peace.

The landowner assemblies of Poland and the western provinces elected their representatives from among those who were entitled to participate directly in Duma elections in their district and who had owned three times the full property qualification for three years. They were exempt from the requirement of local officeholding since no local elective institutions existed in these provinces. The marshals of the western provinces were essentially bureaucrats, appointed by the central government. In Poland, electors possessing three times the property qualifications chose six representatives to the State Council from among themselves at a special assembly convoked in Warsaw.

The only qualification for election as a representative of the noble corporations was membership in a local assembly of nobility. See Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov, Series III, Vol. 26, Feb. 20, 1906, #27425: Article 1, section 6 for election of noble representatives; Article VII for election of zemstvo representatives; Article VIII, sections 1 and 2 for election of landowner representatives.

4. Polish noblemen in the State Council came from the Kingdom of Poland and from the nine western provinces, where a significant proportion of the larger landowners were Poles, even though a majority of local landowners were Russian. The kolo was made up of fifteen Poles. Because of the strong Polish influence, the western provinces were not allowed to elect their own marshals of nobility, who were appointed instead by St. Petersburg.

5. In 1905 thirty of the thirty-one marshals of the nobility of the zemstvo provinces owned over 500 desiatiny of land. The sole exception—M. A. Stakhovich of Orel province—came from a large and wealthy family with vast holdings in his home province. See Roberta Manning, “The Russian Provincial Gentry in Revolution and Counterrevolution, 1905-07” (doctoral diss., Columbia University, 1975), p.61.

6. A. P. Korelin, “Rossiskoe dvorianstvo i ego soslovnaia organizatsiia (1861-1804gg),” Istoriia SSSR, no. 5, 1971.

7. Fifty-five of the 133 elected delegates and 10 of the 61 coopted delegates at the First Congress of the United Nobility were State Council representatives. TSGAOR, f. 454, op. 1 d. 5/4, 1906 g., 11. 278-82; Ob’iavlenia soveta ob’edinennykh dvorianskikh (St. Petersburg, 1906); Entsiklopediche-skii slovar (Granat & Co.), vol. 23. I would like to thank Roberta Manning for supplying me with this information.

8. Michael C. Brainerd, “The Octobrists and the Gentry, 1905–1907: Leaders and Followers?” This volume, p.69.

9. See Russia. Council of the Empire. Stenograficheskie otchety (hereafter GSSO), Session II. (St. Petersburg: Gosudarstvennaia tipografiia, 1907), pp.1–14 of the Supplement.

10. Birzhevye vedomosti, #9783, March 3, 1907.

11. Birzhevye vedomosti, #9825, June 2, 1907.

12. GSSO, Session II, meeting 4, pp.27–42.

13. Geoffrey A. Hosking, “Government and Duma in Russia (1907–1914),” (doctoral diss., King’s College, Cambridge, England), pp.214–16.

14. Ibid., p.216.

15. Ibid., pp.215–16.

16. Ibid., p.216.

17. Trudy IV s’yezda upolnomochennykh dvorianskikh obshchestv’, 1908. 32 provinces. March 9-16, 1908. (St. Petersburg, 1909), pp.23–24.

18. Ibid., pp.50–51.

19. Ibid., pp.54–55. In fact, only two government projects for local reform ever reached the State Council: the district zemstvo and the district court bills, the first of which was considered only in 1913.

20. Ibid., pp.234–35.

21. Ibid., p.314.

22. Ibid., p.322.

23. Rossiya, March 11 and 13, 1908.

24. S. E. Kryzhanovskii, Vospominaniia (Berlin, 1938), pp.218–19.

25. Hosking, p.225.

26. Ibid., pp.227–28.

27. For details of the crisis created by the passage of the Naval General Staff bill, see Geoffrey A. Hosking, The Russian Constitutional Experiment: Government and Duma, 1907–1914 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1973), and Edward Chmielewski, “Stolypin and the Ministerial Crisis of 1909,” in California Slavic Studies, Vol. IV, 1965. In Russian, see A. Ia. Avrekh, “III-ia Duma i nachalo krizisa treteiun’skoi sistemy,” in Istoriche-skie zapiski, Vol. 53, 1955. For more details, see Alexandra D. Shecket, “The Russian Imperial State Council and the Policies of P. A. Stolypin, 1906–1911: Bureaucratic and Soslovie Interests versus Reform” (doctoral diss., Columbia University, 1974), Chapter V.

28. During the crisis over the Naval General Staff bill, the right group developed a proposal altering the election laws to the State Council from the nine western provinces. There were rumors that they sought to embarrass the Stolypin government with this proposal, which guaranteed that a majority of the State Council representatives from the western provinces would be Russians. The Stolypin government had never taken a strong stand on nationalist questions, but quite unexpectedly Stolypin spoke favorably on the issue, promising to present a bill enacting a zemstvo dominated by Russian elements in the west. See GSSO, Session IV, meeting 34, May 8, 1909, cols 1933–1944. The press perceived a very important change in Stolypin’s policies, as evidenced in such articles as “Na pravo!” [To the Right!] in Birzhevye vedomosti, #11096, May 9, 1909.

29. Among the nationalists in the State Council Right were A. S. Stishinskii and D. I. Pikhno, whose interests coincided with those of such prominent members of the center as A. B. Neidgardt and V. I. Deitrikh. See Rossiya, Nov. 29, 1907; Birzhevye vedomosti, #10226, November 29, 1907; Rossiya, June 12, 1908. All are articles pertaining to the formation of the Russian National Party.

30. See A. N. Naumov, Iz utselevskikh vospominanii, 1868–1917, Vol. II (New York: Izdanie A. K. Naumovoi i O. A. Kussevitskoi, 1955), p.145: “Despite their relatively small numbers, they played a very important role in the fate of a whole series of State Council proposals, often emerging during the balloting as the deciding factor, depending upon with which of the two basic groups the “Neidgardtsy” voted. This gave them weight in the legislative life of the State Council, particularly when Stolypin was in power.”

31. In 1910 the government introduced a bill to limit the powers of the Finnish Sejm by curtailing its right to approve or reject legislation passed in St. Petersburg. For further details, see A. Ia. Avrekh, Stolypin i tret’ia Duma (Moscow: “Nauka,” 1968), pp.23–58. See also Shecket, op. cit., Chapter VI.

32. See Novoe vremia, Jan. 1, 1911, for the editorial commenting on the “quiet year,” and the nationalist journal Okrainy Rossii throughout 1911.

33. GSSO, Session VI, meeting 25, March 4, 1911, cols. 1240-41.

34. GSSO, Session VI, meeting 18, Jan. 28, 1911, cols. 835-839.

35. Ibid., col. 927.

36. Ibid., col. 979.

37. Ibid., meeting 25, cols. 1199–1203.

38. Ibid., cols. 1209–1212.

39. Ibid., col. 1256.

40. For details of the intrigue, see V. N. Kokovtsov, Iz moego proshlago (Paris: Izdanie zhurnala Illiustrirovaniia Rossiia, 1933), Vol. 1, pp.451–55; V. M. Andreevskii, Biograficheskie sosedeniia o zhizni i deiatel’nosti (Unpublished ms., Columbia University Russian and East European Archive), pp.78 d and e; A. Ia. Avrekh, Stolypin i tretaia Duma, pp.330–34; and Shecket, Chapter VII.

41. When Stolypin learned of the intrigue that had led to the defeat of the Western Zemstvo, he persuaded the tsar to allow him to prorogue the Duma and State Council and enact the bill under Article 87 of the Fundamental Laws. Article 87 stipulated that while the legislature was out of session, the government could enact emergency laws, which would then be approved by the Duma and State Council. Stolypin’s action enraged the Duma and the State Council, and both chambers proposed very strong interpellations against the Prime Minister. Although the State Council interpellation failed (by two votes; a two-thirds majority was necessary), it was clear that Stolypin no longer retained his authority. On Sept. 1, 1911, Stolypin was assassinated in Kiev. Although his killer, one Bogrov, was caught, no adequate explanation of how he had gained access to the Prime Minister, who was attending an Imperial performance at the Kiev Opera House, was ever forthcoming. See Shecket, Chapter VII.