A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924

At the end of August 1911 Stolypin arrived in Kiev for celebrations to mark the unveiling of a monument to Alexander II. He had long been prepared for a violent death and before he left St Petersburg had entrusted one of his senior aides with a box of secret papers which he ordered to be destroyed should he fail to return. He ignored police warnings of a plot to kill him and travelled to Kiev without bodyguards. He refused even to wear his bullet-proof vest. On I September the Kiev Opera put on a performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's The Legend of Tsar Sultan. Nicholas and his four daughters occupied the royal box near the orchestra, while Stolypin sat in the front row of the stalls. During the second interval, while he stood talking with Count Fredericks in front of the orchestra pit, a young man in evening dress approached and, drawing a revolver from under his programme, fired twice at Stolypin. One bullet struck him in the right arm, the other in his chest, where a medal deflected it into his liver. Slowly, as if unaware of what had happened, Stolypin took off his gloves, carefully placed them on the barrier and unbuttoned his jacket, whereupon he saw his waistcoat covered in blood and sank into a chair. In a voice audible to all those around him, he said, 'I am happy to die for the Tsar,' and, on seeing him in the royal box above, lifted his hands and motioned him to withdraw to safety. Nicholas remained standing there and Stolypin, in a last theatrical gesture, blessed him with a sign of the cross. For four days the Prime Minister's condition remained stable. The Tsar continued with the programme of celebrations in Kiev and visited him in hospital. But on 5 September, Stolypin began to slip away. He died that evening. The Tsar came the next morning and said prayers by his bedside. Over and over he repeated the words, 'Forgive me.'²¹

* * * The man who shot Stolypin was D. G. Bogrov, a student-revolutionary turned police informer through financial need. Nobody ever managed to discover which side Bogrov was working for — the Right or the Left — and in a sense that is the real point. For Stolypin had many enemies on either side. Long before Bogrov's bullet killed him, he was politically dead.

Stolypin's political demise must be explained by his failure as a politician. Had he been better versed in 'the art of the possible', perhaps he could have gained more time for himself and his reforms. Stolypin had said that he needed twenty years to transform Russia. But partly through his own fault he had only five. He adhered so rigidly to his own aims and principles that he lost sight of the need to negotiate and compromise with his opponents. He antagonized the old political elites by riding roughshod over their traditional privileges and lost the support of the liberals by suppressing the Duma whenever it stood in his way. This political inflexibility stemmed from his narrow bureaucratic outlook.

He acted as if everything had to be subordinated to the interests of the state, as these were defined by his reforms, and believed that this placed him above the need to involve himself in the dirty business of party manoeuvring. He thought he could get his reforms by administrative that, and never moved outside the bureacracy to mobilize a broader base of support. Although he acknowledged that the key to his programme was the creation of a conservative peasant landowning class, he never considered the idea of sponsoring the foundation of a smallholders' party. There was a Stolypin but no Stolypinites. And so when Stolypin died his reforms died with him.

According to some historians, the tsarist regime's last real hope was wiped out by the assassin's bullets. Stolypin's reforms, they argue, were its one real chance to reform itself on Western lines. If only they had been given more time, instead of being disrupted by the First World War, then perhaps the Revolution of 1917 would not have taken place. This optimistic view rests on two assumptions: that Stolypin's reforms were succeeding in their aims; and that they were capable of stabilizing Russia's social system after the crisis of 1905. Both assumptions are patently false.