Piotr Arkadiévitch Stolypine (), born on April 14th (April 2nd according to the Calendar Julien) 1862, dead on September 14th (September 1st according to the Julien calendar) 1911, was the Prime Minister of Nicolas II of 1906 to 1911. It remained in the history to have tried to fight against the revolutionary groups and to set up a land reform.

Its family belonged to the high Russian aristocracy and had goods in the province of Grodno (today in Bielorussia), and by its father it was attached to the poet Mikhail Lermontov. At the time of his birth, in Baden-Baden, his/her father represented Russia near the large-duke of Bade. He accepted a good education and entered to the service of the State, which was a family tradition. He Maria with Olga Borisovna Nejgart, old been engaged of his Michail older brother, who had died after a duel and, on his bed of death, had recommended to him to deal with it. They were to have five girls and a son.

Political course

In 1905 it was named governor in the province of Saratov and the energetic way of which it managed to maintain the order in 1905, the year of the Revolution, drew to him the attention of the tsar. It was initially named Minister of Interior Department by the Prime Minister Ivan Goremykine and, a few months later, Nicolas II chooses it to replace Goremykine.

Russia in 1906 was in prey with revolutionary disorders and dissatisfaction was large in the population. The left organizations conducted campaigns against the autocracy and profited from a broad support; everywhere in Russia, the police officers and the bureaucrats were assassinated. In August 1906 there was a great explosion in its datcha, located in a suburb of Saint-Pétersbourg, it made twenty-seven dead and of many casualties, among whom the son of Stolypine and one of his/her daughters. To answer these attacks Stolypine constituted a system of military tribunals which considered way expeditious very rebellious which was seen showing. If the defendant were condemned to death, as that often arrived, the sentence was carried out the very same day. Thousands of Russian revolutionists were killed thus under the system of Stolypine and the gibet accepted even the nickname of tie of Stolypine.

Following the Revolution of 1905, Nicolas II had conceded the creation of a Parliament, the Duma, but it counted among its members a great number of radical revolutionists, who did not express any good will to collaborate with the government and asked for a land reform. Stolypine made dissolve this first Duma on July 22nd (July 9th) 1906. To help to choke the dispute he wanted however to make disappear some from the causes of dissatisfaction in the farming community. Thus it presented important land reforms; it also tried to improve the life of the workmen of the cities and it endeavoured to increase the capacity of the local government agencies.

The opinions on the work of Stolypine are very divided. In the atmosphere of disorder which reigned after the Revolution of 1905 it had to subdue the violent revolt and anarchy. Its land reform contained many promises however. The word of Stolypine that it was a “bet on the force” was often denatured and in an unjust way. Stolypine and its collaborators (the first of which it would be necessary to mention its Minister for agriculture Alexandre Krivoshein and the Danish agronomist Andrei Andreievitch Køfød) tried to give most possible to peasants a chance to leave poverty, by promoting the regrouping, by offering a banking system to the peasants, by encouraging the emigration of the over-populated Western areas towards the virgin lands of the Kazakhstan and of the Siberia of the South.

As the second Duma did not show itself not laid out better than the first, Stolypine made it dissolve and, in June 1907, it changed the mode of election. Its goal was to create a class of moderate rich peasants (Kulaks), which would be of the supporters of law and order in the company. (See the article the Reform of Stolypine, in English).

To spring 1911 Stolypine presented a bill whose failure involved its resignation. He proposed to extend the system of the zemstvos to the provinces of the south-west of Russia. He was immediately criticized and obtained only one narrow majority, and its keen enemies ended up carrying it. In its irritation, he resigned like Prime Minister for the third Duma.

Lénine feared that Stolypine could succeed in helping Russia to avoid a violent revolution. Many German politicians feared that a successful economic transformation of Russia sapped in a generation German hegemony in Europe. Certain historians think that the German leaders into 1914 wanted to cause a war against Russia tsarist, to overcome it before it became too powerful. However the Tsar did not give to Stolypine a support without reserve. In fact, one believes that its position at the Court was already seriously shaken whereas it was victim of a mortal attack in 1911.

The reforms of Stolypine did not survive the swirl of the First World War, the Revolution of October and the Civil war in Russia.

Stolypine had changed the composition of the Duma to try to return it better laid out to accept the legislation suggested by the government. After the dissolution of the Second Duma in June of 1907, it modified the voting system to support the nobility and the rich person, by reducing the importance of the lower classes. Such a reform influenced the elections at the third Duma of which the members, much more preserving, were been willing to cooperate with the government.

September 14th (September 1st) 1911, Stolypine essuya a fired gunshot by a radical left, Dmitri Bogrov, whereas it attended a representation with the opera of Kiev in the presence of the Tsar and of its family. He died four days later.

Stolypine and the Anti-semitism

One will find on a Russian site of the interesting information on this question. Little is known that, as of the first year of its high positions, in October 1906, Stolypine wanted to put forward to the Tsar measures of a careful liberalism for raising certain restrictions which weighed on the Jews; he worked there for two months with his ministers before putting forward the measures at the beginning of December. December 10th Nicolas II answered him that it disallowed his proposals while saying: “Up to now my conscience me forever misled. This is why, once again, I intend to follow what she orders to me. ” While insisting respectfully Stolypine ends up tearing off an assent of the end of lips; the business was returned to the Duma, but none of the three Dumas found time to examine it, and the Tsar took care well not to oblige them there.

Sources

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