Reforming Russia: Stolypin's Legacy

The leading Russian Political Scientist Fyodor Burlatsky said in a recent interview that Pyotr Stolypin (photo left) “was probably the greatest Russian reformer of the century... The success of his reforms would have prevented the October Revolution and all subsequent, tragic trials. It is scary to say, but a simple act — the assassination of Stolypin — crossed out Russia’s history.”

While some may interpret this as hyperbole, it is without a doubt that Pyotr Stolypin played a significant role in Russian history, and would have played a larger role, had an assassin’s bullet not caught him in 1911. In light of current debates over land reform in Russia (and the 135th anniversary of his birth this month), Russian Life asked noted historian Konstantin Shatsillo to offer a look back at Stolypin and his legacy. Archival photos from Great Encyclopedia of Russia.

H ailed by some as a visionary and the greatest reformer of his age, disparaged by others as a ruthless reactionary, Pyotr Stolypin has returned to the center of Russian political life. As Russia grapples once again with economic (and especially agricultural) reform, politicians and observers from all ‘faiths’ are looking for historical guidance. And, if one looks at Russian history of this century, prior to the arrival of the Bolsheviks, Stolypin looms large.

At first glance, this may not seem so amazing. For what stands out most about those men that the last tsar, Nicholas II, chose to govern Russia is their incredible mediocrity. At a time when, more than ever, Russia needed visionaries, willing and able to make bold decisions, its leaders tended to be untalented nonentities. For example, there is Russia’s first wartime premier, Ivan Goremykin. Upon being made premier at age 75, Goremykin quite eloquently shared his misgivings with the speaker of the Fourth State Duma, Mikhail Rodzyanko: “My dear friend, I wish I knew why I’m being taken out of mothballs for the third time.”

An apt description for his totally unprepossessing political career. At the end of the 19th century, Goremykin was momentarily given the post of minister of the interior (the major governmental position in Russia). He was soon dismissed, only to be appointed prime minister and soon afterwards dismissed again. But his pathetic story does not end there.

In 1913, due to the narrow choice of government hopefuls, which allowed lackluster people to make up the ruling elite, Goremykin was once again named Russia’s prime minister.

By the end of December 1916, it had become clear that Russia was on the brink of radical political upheavals. Bowing to Tsarina Alexandra’s demands, Nicholas II appointed Prince Nikolai Golitsyn to the post of prime minister. The latter, who was destined to be the last pre-revolutionary head of government, was distinguished only by his intimate friendship with the Tsarina, as well as his work with her in the Russian Red Cross. He was asked by the State Duma’s speaker: “Don’t you think, my dear Prince, it is a little too much for you to accept this highly demanding post in such a troublesome time without even having the right expertise?”

To this the 70-year-old Golitsyn frankly replied, “I completely agree with you. If only you could hear what I said about myself to the Emperor. Such reviling and humiliating words, if heard from another person, are usually followed by throwing down the gauntlet.” Golitsyn did all he could to avoid being made prime minister, but Nicholas II, guided by his wife’s instructions, prevailed.

The Man, The Myth

Among these largely indistinguishable men, only two stand out as being knowledgeable, innovative and strong-willed: Count Sergei Witte (1849-1915) and Pyotr Stolypin. Witte, pre-revolutionary Russia’s most prominent political figure, was invariably portrayed by contemporaries and historians as a combination of farsighted statesman and crafty, unscrupulous, career-oriented bureaucrat.

Russian historians have characterized Stolypin along two distinct points of view. Some of them describe Stolypin as “first of all, a far-right reactionary and the architect of a policy which came to be known as ‘the Stolypin reaction.’” Others tend to praise him for successfully putting down the 1905-1907 revolution and carrying out the first part of his slogan: “First — order, then — reform,” suggesting that Stolypin was well on his way to implementing far-reaching reforms.

Unfortunately, however, despite assertions from some that Stolypin’s government was ‘Bonapartist’ and sought to preserve the rights of landlords, his reform program was not to the liking of these land-holding gentry, who had failed to keep pace with new economic and social developments. And yet, to incur their ire was no small political matter. For it was precisely this backward looking segment of the Russian nobility that had the most clout with the tsar. Add to this the tsar’s personal distrust of independent-minded persons in the government and the conclusion is clear: Stolypin’s political career was ending even before Dmitry Bogrov, a secret police officer and agent provocateur, shot and killed him in September, 1911.

Yet today, the story of Stolypin’s life continues to attract attention. Some analysts, anxious to keep up with the current political situation in Russia, are not only describing Stolypin as a sober-minded policy maker who sincerely tried to introduce moderate reforms against the resistance of far-right reactionaries, but are also writing eulogies in his honor, calling him a “great reformer.” In their panegyrics to him, they ascribe to Stolypin many innovations introduced by his predecessors. For instance, they forget that it was Finance Minister Alexander Vyshnegradsky, and not Stolypin, who increased the export of bread, while it was Vyshnegradsky’s successor, Sergei Witte, who introduced a gold standard, leading to the industrial upswing of the 1890s.

But historical fabrication does not stop there. Some writers have even claimed that Wall Street moguls, determined to preserve their prominent global position in industry and agriculture, took preventive measures, including acts of terror and sabotage, seeking to “eliminate Pyotr Stolypin, the advocate of a strong Russia.” In these writers’ opinion, American capitalists hoping to dominate world trade were enraged by Russia’s imminent international competitiveness, instigated by Stolypin’s reforms. Echoing Lenin’s words about the emergence of “advanced financial capitalism” in Russia, the observers claim that Russia was in a position to put pressure on the United States. The Americans, this argument continues, thus sought “to neutralize Stolypin and hamper Russian reforms.” Legitimate historians refuse to even discuss such ludicrous speculations.

First Steps

So who was Pyotr Stolypin? What did he manage to achieve? What part did he play in Russia’s history? And what proved his undoing?

Stolypin was born in 1862 into a noble family whose roots reached back to the 16th century. He was a relation of Mikhail Lermontov, and growing up, he frequently spent time at the estate of Lev Tolstoi, a close friend of the family.

But our interest in Pyotr Stolypin really begins in 1881, when the young Stolypin, being independent-minded, chose to enter the Department of Physics and Math at St. Petersburg University, instead of continuing his education in the privileged law department of the same University, which usually secured a quick and successful career for its graduates. Notably, the gifted Stolypin studied not only physics and mathematics but also chemistry, geology, botany, agriculture and zoology. A talented student, at one of his exams he engaged in a scientific dispute with Dmitry Mendeleyev, the Russian chemist of worldwide renown. The professor, carried away with the discussion, went on to ask Stolypin questions beyond the university’s curriculum. Stolypin answer-ed all of them correctly and Mendeleyev, without concealing his satisfaction, gave the student the highest mark in his class.

After completing his university course, Stolypin, quite unexpectedly, put his scientific aspirations aside, undertaking employment at the Ministry of State Property. At the same time, he married Olga Neidgardt, his dead brother’s fiancee, and the granddaughter of Alexander Suvorov, Russia’s famous general. Stolypin’s brother had been killed in a duel that Pyotr avenged by fighting his brother’s killer, damaging his right hand for the rest of his life. Disregarding the unusual circumstances of his marriage, Stolypin turned out to be a model family man, raising five daughters and a son.

After four years in the Ministry of State Property, Stolypin decided to continue his professional career at the Ministry of Interior. He was probably motivated by the desire to oversee an uyezd [the lowest administrative division, a subdvision of a guberniya — Ed.], or to be marshal of the nobility in Kovno (now Kaunas, Lithuania), while concentrating on agriculture. The uyezd was located at his family’s estate, Kolnoberzhe, which his father, an inveterate gambler and womanizer, had won at cards. The Stolypins possessed estates in many different parts of Russia (in the Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Penza and Saratov provinces) but Kolnoberzhe, where Pyotr and his brothers spent their childhood, had always been the Stolypins’ favorite.

As the local marshal, Pyotr was not overloaded with work and could devote his time and energy to agriculture. His persistent, sober approach to solving problems, based upon knowledge he had received at the university, helped turn Kolnoberzhe into a highly effective agricultural enterprise. The example of neighboring Germany, where peasants showed higher productivity when allowed to work their own plots of land, made Stolypin a vocal adversary of the communal system used in the Central Russian provinces. In 1899, following his successful term of service as marshal, Stolypin was promoted to the post of Kovno provincial marshal of the nobility.

The Debate over Land

In 1902, Nicholas II named Vyacheslav Pleve as interior minister (the former minister, Dmitry Sipyagin, had been assassinated by socialist-revolutionaries somewhat earlier). Pleve, villainized in Alexander Bely’s literary masterpiece, Petersburg, was known as a cruel man and a rabid, anti-Semitic reactionary. Even his counterparts in the Cabinet called him “a clever, educated and unscrupulous gendarme.” Pursuing his conservative policy, Pleve  sought to draw representatives from the noble landowning class into both provincial and central government and replace the notoriously faceless and inefficient career bureaucrats. He believed that noblemen, unlike the emerging political class of teachers and doctors, would not challenge his policies on such vital issues as agriculture.

For decades, agriculture had been the center of Russia’s domestic policy, due to the fact that malnutrition, hunger and a sub-standard existence had become a tragic part of peasant life. In dealing with these agricultural problems, state officials nurtured two conflicting approaches.

Plehve, for his part, insisted on the preservation of the communal land ownership system, staking reform on purely technical measures, such as introducing more advanced agricultural methods and technologies as well as making credit more easily available to farmers. This dovetailed nicely with the tsarist government’s traditional policy of supporting the ineffective landlord system. But this system was fast becoming outdated, and landlord’s estates were becoming a target for frustrated peasants’s ire.

Finance Minister Sergei Witte had more radical notions. In particular, he favored doing away with the communal system and revamping the Peasant Bank in order to help concentrate land into the hands of “bourgeois” peasants. Witte also wanted to settle landless peasants in Siberia and the Russian Far East. He was a persistent advocate of private ownership of land and planned to make each peasant a rightful and interested master of his own plot. According to Witte, the peasant “should cease to be a half-person and turn into a full-fledged person.” He believed that only private enterprise was capable of solving Russia’s agricultural problems, pointing out the stupidity of supporting landlords from state coffers; a side-effect of the antiquated communal system.

Reds

In 1902, in the midst of the heated agricultural debate, Stolypin was unexpectedly summoned to St. Petersburg and appointed the governor of the Grodno province. The province was very similar to other Western Russian provinces, where, with the abolition of serfdom, local landlords, mainly Poles, were allotted much less land, while peasant land holdings were increased significantly. In the capacity of governor, Stolypin chose not to follow in the footsteps of Pleve, his direct superior. Instead, he sought to remain loyal to his own ideas, which fully coincided with Witte’s policy of radical renovation. Such policies were supported by the majority of state figures.

But to Witte and his followers’ disappointment, Nicholas II opted to back the opinion of the minority, which was against any and all significant changes in agriculture. Only the grim experience of the first Russian revolution of 1906-1907, compounded by massive and volatile peasant unrest directed against landlords, forced the conservatives to reconsider their shaky position.

Still, Stolypin’s career prospered. In 1903, he was appointed governor of a larger and economically more important province, Saratov. Ironically, Saratov was considered to be a major source of food for Russia. Yet the local peasants suffered greatly from a terrible lack of land and food. Their dire predicament drove them to use every opportunity to express their violent dissatisfaction, which got the province nicknamed, ‘red.’ In his 1904 report to the tsar, Stolypin wrote that, in spite of the bumper crop (that year, more than 4.1 million lbs. of grain were produced, as compared to the yearly average of 3 million lbs.), the peasants’ pathetic standard of living and their resulting acts of protest should be viewed as warning signals. He added that “last winter, peasants of entire villages found themselves in a desperate situation and the only way out for them was to go begging; ... the year... has provided sad evidence of the dislocation in peasant life.” At the end of his report, Stolypin noted significantly, that “in my opinion, the main culprit is the preservation of the communal system.”

“You cannot intimidate us.”

While the report was on its way to the capital, the 1905 revolution broke out in Russia, and Saratov’s muzhiks were quick to join in. In February, they felled trees at the estate of Prince Volkonsky and then went on a rampage on Nikolai Lvov’s land. Lvov remembered: “I witnessed the most terrifying things during a Pugachev-like rebellion. In contrast to high-placed scoundrels giving blood-thirsty orders from their well-protected offices, Stolypin was anything but a coward. He has every right to say to the left-wing radicals in the State Duma, ‘You cannot intimidate us.’”

Immediately upon being informed about the unrest at Lvov’s estate, Stolypin, with a platoon of Cossacks, went directly to a spontaneously convened peasant meeting. At first he tried to calm down the peasants and persuade them to stop rioting. The situation, however, continued to deteriorate and both sides began threatening violence even more forcefully.

“Then,” Lvov wrote, “Stolypin approached the most agitated peasants and simply said ‘kill me.’ It worked miraculously. The peasants knelt down and started begging for pardon. Alas, no sooner had he got into his carriage to depart, than the peasants began their campaign all over again. Finally, the governor quit the scene leaving behind Cossacks and soldiers to “re-establish law and order.”

It may well be that Stolypin had this incident in mind when he wrote in a letter to his wife: “Now I know what it is like to have a historic lump in your throat tying your tongue and preventing you from uttering a word. I realized what kind of will-power you have to possess in order to control your expression and voice.”

The outbreak of the 1905 revolution was further complicated by the fact that the Russo-Japanese war was still in progress and there were not enough troops left to put a lid on the riots. After a socialist-revolutionary murdered Russia’s War Minister Vladimir Sakharov, the head of the anti-riot campaign, in Stolypin’s Saratov province, the young governor decided to take a vigorous tack in curbing the revolutionary movement. He employed “vigilantes” belonging to the Bishop Hermogen’s far-right camp, though he kept them in line, and tolerated no violation of certain permissible (from his point of view) limits. For example, Stolypin prevented a crowd of “Black Hundred” members from attacking striking health care workers in one uyezd. From time to time, he also prohibited the dissemination of the “Black Hundred” broadsheet Bratsky Listok (Brotherly Paper), if the material was more vile than usual.

“A Perfect Statesman”

The efficient activity of the youngest governor in Russia’s history did not go unnoticed. On April 26, 1906, the tsar offered him the post of interior minister. It was not accidental: the opening session of the First State Duma was to be held the next day, in the Winter Palace’s Throne Hall. The post was to go to a new man, who would not be a die-hard reactionary and yet could prevent the revolutionary movement from gaining momentum. Stolypin lived up to everyone’s expectations, excelling in the post. Many years later, Constitutional Democrat Central Committee Member Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams wrote about him: “During the session, everybody was listening attentively to what the new minister was saying. He was a tall and handsome man, a real nobleman judging by his upright, proud bearing and manners. He spoke clearly and expressively. The members of the State Duma pricked up their ears. It was the first time the floor had been taken by a minister who was equal to State Duma tribunes. He was a natural public speaker. His words aroused you. They contained strength. They reflected a clear understanding of rights and duties. He was a perfect statesman rather than a government bureaucrat. He was a force to be reckoned with.”

Habitually, Stolypin relied primarily on political maneuvering, using force only as a last resort. Thus, he did not hesitate to conduct negotiations with liberal politicians, even offering them government posts, albeit of secondary importance. But the First Duma, anxious to be regarded as an organ of revolutionary struggle, was reluctant to compromise, especially on the important agricultural question. It demanded the complete expropriation of landlords at the earliest opportunity. The autocracy, needless to say, was intent on preserving the status quo, and did not even want to settle for a compromise put forward by the Constitutional Democrats — to buy out a part of the land belonging to landlords and then sell it to the peasants at a fair (not a market) price.

Even such a radical politician as Vladimir Lenin believed that such a program if implemented would have accomplished the aim of the autocratic system — “... it would give strength to the peasant bourgeoisie, turning it into a stronghold of ‘order.’” But the fact was that neither the government nor the Duma’s peasant majority were ready to make any concessions.

The only way to overcome this impasse was to dissolve the First Duma and declare new parliamentary elections. But, since there were no new election regulations in place, the Second Duma was destined to be almost a carbon copy of its predecessor. Mindful of a possible intensification of the revolutionary movement, the tsar decided to replace the old prime minister, Ivan Goremykin, with the young and promising Pyotr Stolypin, who simultaneously continued to head the Ministry of Interior.

Stolypin’s Neckties

On July 9, 1906, the manifesto on the dissolution of the First State Duma was published. Some deputies of the outgoing Duma refused to comply and gathered in Vyborg. Soon afterward, an insurrection in Sveaborg took place and Stolypin had to use the entire Baltic fleet to put it down. Then Kronstadt, the main Baltic Navy base (off St. Petersburg), followed suit, along with the cruiser Pamyat Azova (Memory of Azov), anchored near Tallinn.

Stolypin was pitiless in putting down these riots and prosecuted all deputies who had put their signatures under the Vyborg appeal. Stolypin’s decisiveness and firmness delighted far-right radicals and the tsar. “I cannot describe how I like and respect him. Good old Goremykin gave me a valuable piece of advice pointing out Stolypin and I’m very grateful to him for that,” wrote Nicholas II to his mother.

Naturally, left-wing radicals thought otherwise. On August 12, 1906, socialist revolutionary-maximalists exploded two bombs at the premier’s dacha, where a number of people had gathered. As a result, 27 persons were killed, including three terrorists. Thirty-two other persons were seriously wounded, including Stolypin’s three-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter, whose legs were crushed. Miraculously, Stolyin’s study, where he was at the time, was not damaged, and the premier was unhurt. From then on he, upon the tsar’s insistence, took up residence in the Winter Palace, while his family was kept under constant watch by personal bodyguards. Meanwhile, undaunted by the assassination attempt, he acted more forcefully than before.The bloodshed had failed to make him repudiate the policy he had pursued.

A week after the assassination-attempt, on August 19, a decree was issued introducing a system of courts-martial, which stipulated that court procedures relating to terrorists and their activities should not take more than 48 hours, and that any sentence passed must be executed within 24 hours. Thus, law (or “rapid-fire justice” as it came to be known) came into the hands of military officers. It can be argued that such draconian measures were necessary to combat the daily state of siege Russia found itself mired in. For, although the mass opposition movements of 1905 no longer threatened the regime, terrorism, as practiced by the socialists and socialist revolutionary-maximalists, continued on a grand scale. In 1906, some 1,400 people died as a result of terrorist actions, in 1907 that number increased to 3,000.

At that time, only one military officer, Ivan Karras, commander of the Kazan military district, did not sign a single death sentence. He said that he was ready to sacrifice his own life for “the faith, the tsar and the fatherland,” but did not want to sully his name with the blood of others in his old age. But many other generals served their tsar with truly blind, summary justice. For example, the well-known “Black Hundred” member and commander of Odessa’s military district, General A. Kaulbars, sentenced to death two young men who were not even present at the scene of the crime in question. When the actual offenders were found, Kaulbars ordered them to hang also.

Due to the brutal effectiveness of Stolypin’s courts, which could try and sentence a revolutionary even before his or her victims were buried, and to his so-called “neckties” (nooses), a relative degree of calm settled over the country: those terrorists not eliminated scurried quickly abroad.

While Stolypin’s motives are understandable — he famously roared at Russia’s unrepentant revolutionaries: “You want great upheavals, but we want a great Russia!” —  it is incorrect to idealize Stolypin as a shining knight in armor.

For example, he used a provocation masterminded by his own police agents Brodsky and Shornikova, on June 16, 1907, to dissolve the Second State Duma, which had taken the liberty of having its own opinion on the still-raging agricultural question. With Stolypin’s support, the tsar defended this arbitrary decision by mentioning “his historic power, his right to abrogate what he had granted and his intention to answer for the destinies of the Russian state only before the altar of God who had given him his authority.”

This time, electoral changes were put in place that drastically reduced the number of peasant and worker representatives, simultaneously increasing that of the gentry all out of proportion to its actual size. The result was a Third Duma ready to cooperate with the government. Indeed, in contrast with the first two Dumas which only lasted a few months each, the Third Duma served its full legal term of five years.

Order, not Revolution

With the new Duma’s help, Stolypin declared the end of the first revolutionary period in Russia, giving way to a new era in Russia’s history, which was supposed to bring a number of reforms to a peaceful country. Yet it was not to be. Stolypin had miscalculated. In the past, the conservatives and the tsar gave the green-light to reforms only when threatened by a leftist revolt. Now, in a situation where there was nothing to fear, they quickly lost interest in reforms. Stolypin more than once addressed the Duma with his plan for Russia’s transformation, but always put “pacification” before reforms. Though he was instrumental in establishing “peace” in the country, the introduction of reforms proved to be a far more complicated issue.

Stolypin once said in a newspaper interview that, to put his reform programs into life, he needed 20 years of peace. He only got six before World War I broke out. And, in fact, his most notable and significant reform was begun in the “pre-peace time,” in compliance with a decree of November 9, 1906, and was designed long before Stolypin came to power.

The reform provided for abolishing the communal land-ownership system and introducing individual farms modeled on German practices, but it had never been implemented in full. In 1917, 110,000 farming communes remained in place after 12 years of reforms (in 1905 there were 135,000 communes). Individual farmers had only 11% of all land holdings.

In 1910, Stolypin visited Siberia and the Volga territory and came away with the clear understanding that reaching the main goal of his reforms remained in the distant future. “It would be self-deceptive to claim that the transformation of life in Russia’s countryside is in the pipeline. In many localities, land reforms are yet to be started in earnest. Still, the first step has been taken. Even in Prussia, where land reforms have been carried out since 1821, there are lot of problems left to be solved,” wrote Stolypin.

The peasants were also reluctant to change their habitual way of life and leave their communes with holdings that were not big enough to provide them with more or less adequate means of subsistence. Broadly speaking, not only did Russia’s leaders drag their heels in introducing agricultural reforms, but the government also lacked the necessary financial and social assets to carry them through to completion.

Other reforms fared even worse. Among other things, Stolypin wished to change the system of local self-government based on estate principles: the peasants were responsible for village and volost administration, while the noblemen led uyezd administration. Yet the Russian nobility was strongly against the elimination of estate principles, claiming that Stolypin’s innovations “ran counter to the preservation and further development of the monarchy.”

Stolypin also wanted to carry out unpopular reforms in the social security system, namely the introduction of old-age pensions, paid sick leaves, etc. He considered the possibility of transforming labor relations and allowing workers to strike. He favored the introduction of universal primary school education and the reorganization of the central government administration.

Victim of His Own Success

Yet, after putting down the first Russian revolution of 1905-1907, Stolypin found himself no longer needed, neither by the right, nor by the tsar. The latter struck an open alliance with the far-right, giving their leaders permission to vote at the State Council “according to their conscience,” meaning against Stolypin’s draft law on the introduction of the zemstvo [elective district council system —Ed.] system in Western provinces. Upon learning about the tsar’s betrayal, Stolypin sent in his resignation. But the tsar was persuaded by some grand dukes and especially by his mother, Maria Fyodorovna, to not only not sign the resignation, but also to approve of all proposals put forward by Stolypin as a condition of his staying in office. But in reality, the tsar had decided henceforth to ignore many of Stolypin’s proposals, and to replace him altogether in the near future.

In late 1911, minor acts of harassment and a huge work load took their toll on Stolypin’s health, and he decided to go to Kolnoberzhe for a working vacation. At the family home, he continued to plan central executive branch reforms. Specifically, he intended to set up seven additional government ministries (of labor, local self-administration, nationalities, social security, natural resources and health care). The costs involved were planned to be covered by new taxes.

Life for the Tsar

Meanwhile, the Russian newspapers continued to write about the imminent resignation and fall from favor of the once omnipotent prime minister. Stolypin learned only from the press that he was not among the celebrities formally invited to Kiev to attend a ceremony unveiling a monument to Alexander II, commemorating the 60th anniversary of that tsar’s abolition of serfdom in Russia.

Dreadfully offended, he left Kolnebrezhe for Kiev, but at the railway station in Kiev no one was there to meet him and no vehicle was sent for him. The hurt and perplexed chairman of the Council of Ministers had to find himself a cab.

When the infamous Grigory Rasputin met Stolypin in Kiev, he began to howl hysterically, foretelling the prime minister’s demise: “his days are numbered; death is after him, he is not going to last long.” Besides being a known foe of Stolypin, what did the influential Rasputin know? What did he see?

Chillingly, the “sage’s” predictions came true with suspicious accuracy. On September 1, 1911, the Kiev Opera Theater presented Nikolai Glinka’s opera, Life for the Tsar. It was a gala occasion and practically all of the royal court was present, guarded by numerous plainclothes policemen. During one of the intervals, Stolypin was approached by Dmitry Bogrov, the son of a wealthy Kiev lawyer and a member of the socialist-revolutionary party. Bogrov was also an agent-provocateur of the tsarist security department. Bogrov shot Stolypin three times in the chest. Stolypin, covered with blood, turned to the horrified Tsar, sitting in his royal box, and made the sign of the cross in the air. Four days later, he died.

To those who know the plot of Glinka’s Life for the Tsar, which honors the peasant Ivan Susanin’s heroism, even at the cost of his own death, the story of Pyotr Stolypin’s murder has an ironic ring. Stolypin gave his passionate life in service to his tsar and beleaguered country, determined to build a vibrant country out of the disintegrating empire. Yet, for all of his great ambitions, left and right alike conspired against him, and ultimately themselves, as they damned their country to 70 degrading years of communism. His enemies preferred to focus on his unorthodox methods, ignoring his noble intentions.

Perhaps it is simply wishful thinking to think that Stolypin could have really saved Russia from all its suffering. Are we increasing his heroism with historical hindsight? Or, could it be that this great, brave bear of a man, who made business partners out of reactionaries and revolutionaries alike was the last, best hope of Russia?

The world will never know.

Konstantin Shatsillo is a member of the Institute of History, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow.