Background

Pyotr Stolypin was born on April 14, 1862 in Dresden, Kingdom of Saxony, German Confederation. Stolypin's family belonged to an ancient Russian aristocracy, known from the XVI century. His father Arkady Dmitrievich Stolypin was an Imperial Russian general of artillery, governor of Eastern Rumelia and commandant of the Kremlin Palace guard. His mother Natalia Mikhailovna Stolypina (née Gorchakova) was the daughter of Prince Mikhail Dmitrievich Gorchakov, the Commanding general of the Russian infantry during the Crimean War and later the governor general of Warsaw. Stolypin was related to generals, senators and the famous Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov.

Pyotr spent his childhood at the family estate Serednikovo near Moscow. In 1869, the family lived in Kalnaberžė manor (now Kėdainiai district of Lithuania), built by his father.

Education

In 1876, the Stolypin family moved to Vilnius. Pyotr studied at the gymnasium there. In September 1879, the 9th army under command of Stolypin’s father returned from Bulgaria to Oryol. Pyotr and his brother Alexander were transferred to the Oryol Boys College. Pyotr was enlisted in the seventh class. According to his teacher B. Fedorova, he “was standing out among other students for his rationalism and character.” He graduated from the gymnasium in 1881 and entered St. Petersburg Imperial University, Faculty of Physics and Mathematics. One of his teachers was a well-known Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev. One of the exams was supervised by Mendeleev who was impressed by the young student’s knowledge and even staged a scholarly dispute of sorts with him. Stolypin would, however, dedicate his life not to science but imperial Russia.

Stolypin wrote his thesis on tobacco growing in the south of Russia and graduated in 1885.

Career

After his graduation in 1885, Pyotr Stolypin entered the Russian Imperial Ministry of the Interior, the traditional path for members of his family, abandoning his dream of becoming a chemist.

Up to the age of forty, Stolypin spent his life in rather remote, yet historical places around Russia. In 1899, the 37-year-old ambitious politician was appointed Marshal of the Kovno (today’s Kaunas, Lithuania) Governorate in Lithuania. Three years later he became Russia’s youngest governor, first in Grodno and in 1904 in Saratov. Stolypin made his name across Russia in the stormy months of the first Russian revolution when he ruthlessly suppressed peasant revolts in his governorate. The governor of Saratov often summoned regular troops that took harsh measures to reinstate law and order, including execution by firing squad (often without trial) and mass floggings of rebellious peasants. While assessing this “farsighted outstanding reformer,” this aspect of Stolypin’s versatile activities can by no means be disregarded. Already in 1905, the revolutionaries condemned him to death.

Stolypin took office at what was a difficult time for Russia in general and for this agriculturally-driven province specifically. Civil unrest spread through peasant communities and Stolypin had very distinctive views on how to resolve the issue. He dealt with the revolts using an unlikely combination of firmness and understanding, which attracted the attention of Nicholas II, the Tsar Nicholas II and was appointed Minister of the Interior in May 1906. In July he was also named President of the Council of Ministers (Prime Minister). The politician pleased the Tsar and the moderate conservatives in his entourage with his energetic disposition and excellent oratory skills. In the light of growing civil unrest and Bolshevik attacks, Stolypin instituted a series of fast-paced trials of terrorists. The verdicts were reached quickly and were often harsh. It was during this time that the term “Stolypin's tie” came in to use – meaning the hangman’s noose and the expression “Stolypin's wagon” was used to describe the trains which took prisoners to hard labour camps. During the years of Stolypin's prime ministership (1906-1911) nearly 3,000 people were executed after summary verdicts in public trials.

Chief Minister, Sergi Witte, advised Tsar Nicholas II to introduce political reforms following the 1905 Revolution. The Tsar reluctantly agreed and published details of the proposed reforms that became known as the October Manifesto. This granted freedom of conscience, speech, meeting and association. He also promised that in future people would not be imprisoned without trial. Finally it announced that no law would become operative without the approval of the State Duma. It has been pointed out that "Witte sold the new policy with all the forcefulness at his command". He also appealed to the owners of the newspapers in Russia to "help me to calm opinions". The first meeting of the Duma took place in May 1906. A British journalist, Maurice Baring, described the members taking their seats on the first day: "Peasants in their long black coats, some of them wearing military medals... You see dignified old men in frock coats, aggressively democratic-looking men with long hair... members of the proletariat... dressed in the costume of two centuries ago... There is a Polish member who is dressed in light-blue tights, a short Eton jacket and Hessian boots... There are some socialists who wear no collars and there is, of course, every kind of headdress you can conceive." Several changes in the composition of the Duma had been changed since the publication of the October Manifesto. Nicholas II had also created a State Council, an upper chamber, of which he would nominate half its members. He also retained for himself the right to declare war, to control the Orthodox Church and to dissolve the Duma. The Tsar also had the power to appoint and dismiss ministers. At their first meeting, members of the Duma put forward a series of demands including the release of political prisoners, trade union rights and land reform. The Tsar rejected these proposals and dissolved the Duma in July, 1906.

In April, 1906, Tsar Nicholas II forced Sergi Witte to resign and asked the more conservative Stolypin to take the post. At first he refused but the Tsar insisted: "Let us make the sign of the Cross over ourselves and let us ask the Lord to help us both in this difficult, perhaps historic moment." Stolypin told Bernard Pares that he was against the idea of a democratically elected Duma: "an assembly representing the majority of the population would never work". Stolypin attempted to provide a balance between the introduction of much needed land reforms and the suppression of the radicals. In October, 1906, Stolypin introduced legislation that enabled peasants to have more opportunity to acquire land. They also got more freedom in the selection of their representatives to the Zemstvo (local government councils). "By avoiding confrontation with peasant representatives in the Duma, he was able to secure the privileges attached to nobles in local government and reject the idea of confiscation." However, he also introduced new measures to repress disorder and terrorism. On 25 August 1906, three assassins wearing military uniforms, bombed a public reception Stolypin was holding at his home on Aptekarsky Island. Stolypin was only slightly injured, but 28 others were killed. Stolypin's 15-year-old daughter had both legs broken and his 3-year-old son also had injuries. The Tsar suggested that the Stolypin family moved into the Winter Palace for protection.

Elections for the Second Duma took place in 1907. Pyotr Stolypin, used his powers to exclude large numbers from voting. This reduced the influence of the left but when the Second Duma convened in February, 1907, it still included a large number of reformers. After three months of heated debate, Nicholas II closed down the Duma on the 16th June, 1907. He blamed Lenin and his fellow-Bolsheviks for this action because of the revolutionary speeches that they had been making in exile. Members of the moderate Constitutional Democrat Party (Kadets) were especially angry about this decision. The leaders, including Prince Georgi Lvov and Pavel Milyukov, travelled to Vyborg, a Finnish resort town, in protest of the government. Milyukov drafted the Vyborg Manifesto. In the manifesto, Milyukov called for passive resistance, non-payment of taxes and draft avoidance. Stolypin took revenge on the rebels and "more than 100 leading Kadets were brought to trial and suspended from their part in the Vyborg Manifesto."

The Russian government considered Germany to be the main threat to its territory. This was reinforced by Germany's decision to form the Triple Alliance. Under the terms of this military alliance, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy agreed to support each other if attacked by either France or Russia. Although Germany was ruled by the Tsar's cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm II, he accepted the views of his ministers and in 1907 agreed that Russia should joined Britain and France to form the Triple Entente.

Pyotr Stolypin instituted a new court system that made it easier for the arrest and conviction of political revolutionaries. In the first six months of their existence the courts passed 1,042 death sentences. It has been claimed that over 3,000 suspects were convicted and executed by these special courts between 1906 and 1909. As a result of this action the hangman's noose in Russia became known as "Stolypin's necktie."

Pyotr Stolypin now made changes to the electoral law. This excluded national minorities and dramatically reduced the number of people who could vote in Poland, Siberia, the Caucasus and in Central Asia. The new electoral law also gave better representation to the nobility and gave greater power to the large landowners to the detriment of the peasants. Changes were also made to the voting in towns and now those owning their own homes elected over half the urban deputies.

In 1907 Stolypin introduced a new electoral law, by-passing the 1906 constitution, which assured a right-wing majority in the Duma. The Third Duma met on 14th November 1907. The former coalition of Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, Bolsheviks, Octobrists and Constitutional Democrat Party, were now outnumbered by the reactionaries and the nationalists. Unlike the previous Dumas, this one ran its full-term of five years.

In 1911 when the Duma opposed parts of his agrarian reform, he threatened to resign, aiming to make the Tsar pressurise the parliamentarians into accepting the proposal. His plan worked, but it made him seriously unpopular with the Tsar and the whole cabinet. When he arrived in Kiev on an official visit with the Tsar in 1911, a carriage in the royal procession wasn't provided for him – a clear indication of the fact that he would probably be dismissed. Before this could happen, however, Stolypin was mortally wounded by a Socialist-Revolutionary terrorist Dmitri Bogrov at a theatre in Kiev on September 1, 1911.

Pyotr Stolypin died from his injuries on 18th September, 1911. He was the sixth Minister of the Interior in a row to be assassinated.

Achievements

• 

  Throughout the history of modern Russia, Pyotr Stolypin has remained a controversial figure. He is famous chiefly for his agricultural reforms and the draconian methods he used to deal with his opponents. However, during his time in office both as Minister of the Interior and Prime Minister, he was the author of many progressive policies in finance, military and education. In difficult times of social and political change, he walked a thin line between what he believed to be for the good of the country and the social welfare of its people. Some consider him to be the demon of Imperial Russia, others – the driving force of history.
  
  Stolypin's key reform, the one for which he is remembered in high school history books, is the agrarian one. He aimed at a “wager on the strong”, i.e. the creation of an independent peasantry which would become a bulwark for the reformed autocracy. He made it possible for ex-serfs to buy themselves out of the peasant commune and for small strips to be consolidated into capitalist farms, aided by loans from the Peasant Land Bank. About two million households (about one-eighth of the total) took advantage of these arrangements before 1916, many moving into the less populated Siberia and Central Asia.
  
  Pyotr Stolypin's reforms produced astounding results within a few years. Between 1906 and 1915, thanks to the efforts of Stolypin's farmers, the productivity of crops nationwide grew by 14 percent, in Siberia by 25 percent. In 1912, Russia's grain exports exceeded by 30 percent those of Argentina, the United States and Canada combined.
  
  Nevertheless, Stolypin instituted other important changes into the running of pre-revolutionary Imperial Russia. He extended religious freedoms to Jews and other political groups. Old Believers, a breakaway group of the Russian Orthodox Church since 1666, gained political freedoms for the first time. He instituted changes to the welfare state, insuring workers in case of illness, accidents, death of family members and other events. He decentralised the government, giving more autonomy to local politicians and made education more widely accessible.

Religion

Pyotr Stolypin was baptized on May24, 1862 in the Russian Orthodox Church. He supported the Orthodox Church. Stolypin constantly visited St. Alexander Nevsky Church, close to the governor's house. "Every morning, - he admitted to the friends subsequently, - I create a prayer and I look for the forthcoming day as at the last in life..." While holding the position of Prime Minister, he attempted to improve the acrimonious relations between Russian Orthodox and Jewish citizens at the level of nationalities policy.

Politics

Pyotr Stolypin delineated himself as a constitutionalist and not a parlamentarist. He was a monarchist and hoped to strengthen the throne. He determined his efforts as a statesman as follows: appeasement first, reforms next. And so, the task of pacifying a country rising up in revolutionary flames remained his highest priority. Reforms came later. Stolypin set himself a rule not to interfere in foreign policy and tried to obey this rule.

Dismissing the first Duma (the elected legislative body created after the 1905 Revolution) on July 22, 1906, because it demanded a determining voice in the formulation of an agrarian reform program, Stolypin, by executive decree, introduced his own reforms. These gave the peasantry greater freedom in the selection of their representatives to the zemstvo (local government) councils, removed restrictions that had excluded the peasantry from participating in normal judicial procedures, and, most importantly, provided them with an opportunity to leave their communes, acquire private ownership of consolidated plots of land, and transform themselves, according to Stolypin’s wish, into a prosperous, stable, and loyally conservative class of farmers (October and November 1906).

Stolypin, however, also instituted a network of courts-martial, which were authorized to try accused rebels and terrorists; within the few months of their existence they used “Stolypin’s necktie” (the noose) to execute several thousand defendants; the prime minister gained the enmity of the left wing and much of the centre. He also provoked the opposition of the moderate left when he swiftly dismissed the second Duma (which met from March to June 1907) because it refused to endorse his agrarian reform proposals and when, on the day of its dissolution (June 16, 1907), he issued—in complete disregard for the recently adopted constitution—a new electoral law reflecting his personal conservatism and Russian nationalism and restricting the franchise of the peasant and worker electorate as well as that of the national minorities.

Although he had earlier also alienated the extreme right by partially accepting the constitutionalframework, Stolypin did obtain the cooperation of the party of the moderate right (the Octobrists), which dominated the third Duma (convened November 1907). With the Octobrists’ aid he passed legislation confirming and elaborating his 1906 agrarian reforms (June 1910 and June 1911). He was also able to reimpose harsh Russification policies on Finland. When he convinced the Emperor to temporarily suspend both the Duma and the upper legislative house (the State Council) in order to bypass them and enact legislation on the extension of the zemstvo system into the Polish regions of the empire (March 1911), he also alienated the moderate right, which condemned him for once again abusing the constitutional system of government.

Views

Stolypin believed that the peasants were natural conservatives at heart. He planned to introduce reforms that would harness this conservatism and bring them on to the side of the government. In short, he wanted to foist onto them a bourgeois mentality by moving them away from their communal responsibilities and substituting this for individual responsibilities. Stolypin wanted to introduce a freehold system of land tenure. Stolypin believed that the peasants would thank the government for this improvement in their lifestyle and scupper any chance there might have been of the workers in the cities joining ranks with the peasants in the countryside.

Quotations: Stolypin’s two main objectives as prime minister were to win the peasantry over and, at the same time, suppress the radicals. He knew the task would be a difficult one: “In no country is the public more anti-governmental than in Russia,” he once told a colleague.

On 30 October 1905, he announced his ‘October Manifesto’:‘The disturbances and unrest in St Petersburg, Moscow and in many other parts of our Empire have filled our heart with great and profound sorrow… Fundamental civil freedoms will be granted to the population, including real personal inviolability, freedom of conscience, speech, assembly and association.”

“You, gentlemen, are in need of great upheavals; we are in need of Great Russia.”

On August 19, 1906, the law on field courts martial was adopted bypassing the State Duma. Each case would be handled within 48 hours and those found guilty would be executed within the next 24 hours. These courts were established with Stolypin’s active participation, in order to suppress the revolutionary movement. In the first eight months after enactment they passed 1,102 death verdicts. “When your home is on fire, gentlemen, you break into other homes, breaking down the doors and smashing the windows. When you are attacked by a murderer, you kill him. Gentlemen, this is self-defense,” he said addressing the Duma in March 1907.

Stolypin responded six months later, in January 1908 to the letter of Count Leo Tolstoy urging him to “abolish the oldest and greatest injustice of all, which is common to all peoples: the individual ownership of land.” What Tolstoy considered evil he considered good for Russia, he wrote, adding that the absence of peasant ownership of land was the reason for Russia’s problems. He argued that nature has bestowed man with certain instincts, like the sense of hunger, sexual desire, and so on, he continued. Ownership is among the strongest ones. You can’t care about someone else’s property the way you care about your own, just as you won’t strive to improve a plot in your temporary possession the way you would do a plot being your property. Depriving the peasants of this innate sense of ownership will have many bad consequences, above all it will lead to poverty. For all I know, Stolypin concluded, poverty is worse than slavery.

Personality

As a politician, Stolypin adopted a disdainful and autocratic style, as befitted a person who by birthright and character regarded himself as vested with special powers. He is often cited as one of the last major statesmen in Imperial Russia with a clearly defined political programme and a determination to undertake major reforms. Therefore, he is currently a historical figure who creates a wide field for debate. On one side, Stolypin's supporters consider him to have been Russia's last potential saviour from Bolshevism. They say that his patriotism caused him to have a harsh, but realistic stance on contemporary realities. Some see him as a tyrant, driven by arrogance and indifference, who didn't see the reality behind his own idealised vision of Russia.

He gained a reputation as the only governor who was able to keep a firm hold on his province. Stolypin was the first governor to use effective police methods against those who might be suspected of causing trouble. It is said that he had a police record on every adult male in his province. Stolypin also ensured that his police force was totally loyal. The only criteria for promotion was effectiveness. While you were in Stolypin’s police force, you were safe. This bound you to the police. Any hint that a police officer was involved in corruption was met with dismissal. This took away from you the protection that the police offered – and Stolypin’s police force had many enemies.

One of Stolypin’s great strengths as a politician was his ability to wait and observe rather than make an immediate decision. This served him well at the meeting of the First Duma. The reform programme of the Duma had been rejected by the government as inadmissible. This provoked great anger in the Duma and many took to the floor to criticise the government. Ministers responded by simply not listening to their calls – all except Stolypin. He listened to what was said – not because he agreed with all of it, but because it identified to him who Russia’s enemies were. It also showed him who were the more moderate – people whom he could probably work with in implementing the reforms he had in mind for Russia.

After the Social Democratic MP Fyodor Rodichev, in the heat of debate, called the ropes used to hang those convicted by field courts martial “Stolypin neckties,” the enraged prime minister walked out and then challenged him to a duel. Rodichev had to apologize as Stolypin’s marksmanship was common knowledge. Nevertheless the expression wasn’t forgotten and before long started being extensively used by the revolutionary press.

He was an extremely brave person, a faithful husband. Stolypin never smoked, rarely drank alcoholic drinks, didn't play cards. In clothes and food, he was very modest.

Quotes from others about the person

• Stolypin’s daughter, Maria Bok, wrote “I have an amateur photo with my father riding his horse right into the crowd that moments earlier was in a frenzy and now everyone was on his knees. All the ten thousand dropped to their knees at the first words my father said.” She recalls another similar case. Governor Stolypin addressed an assembly of agitated peasants. A young fellow headed in his direction, obviously with hostile intent. Stolypin looked at him calmly, then tossed his overcoat at him, the way an aristocrat does to a servant, saying, “Here, hold it for me.” The man was taken aback, obediently caught the overcoat and held it for the duration of Stolypin’s speech. This incident must have strengthened his conviction that he (probably only he!) knew how to pacify the people, how a nobleman should treat the unruly mob. It was perhaps then that he formulated his political credo: appeasement first and reforms next.
  
  Count Leo Tolstoy was the celebrated mouthpiece of the Russian peasantry’s communal moods (these moods were somewhat less manifest in Ukraine but had sufficient public support). On July 28, 1907, Tolstoy sent a letter to Stolypin, passionately urging him to “abolish the oldest and greatest injustice of all, which is common to all peoples: the individual ownership of land.” He went on to say that, just as there can be no right of man to own others (slavery), there is no right of one man, poor or rich, tsar or peasant, to own land. Land is the property of all and all people have the same right to use it; that Stolypin, unfortunately, was following the road leading to bad deeds, ill repute, and above all, sin.”
  
  The tsar described Stolypin’s assassination as:“During the second interval we had just left the box, as it was so hot, when we heard two sounds as if something had been dropped. I thought an opera glass might have fallen on somebody’s head and ran back into the box to look. To the right I saw a group of officers and other people. They seemed to be dragging someone along. Women were shrieking and, directly in front of me in the stalls, Stolypin was standing. He slowly turned his face towards me and with his left hand made the sign of the Cross in the air. Only then did I notice he was very pale and that his right hand and uniform were bloodstained. He slowly sank into his chair and began to unbutton his tunic. People were trying to lynch the assassin. I am sorry to say the police rescued him from the crowd and took him to as isolated room for his first examination.”
  
  Stolypin's repressive methods created a great deal of conflict. Lionel Kochan, the author of Russia in Revolution (1970), pointed out: "Between November 1905 and June 1906, from the ministry of the interior alone, 288 persons were killed and 383 wounded. Altogether, up to the end of October 1906, 3,611 government officials of all ranks, from governor-generals to village gendarmes, had been killed or wounded."
  
  General Alexei Polivanov, diary entry on the death of Stolypin September 19, 1911: “What a distressing feeling! Not to speak of the loss for Russia, I feel a personal bereavement. I was under the charm of this man. I delighted in him, I was proud to think that he was satisfied with my work. When I said goodbye to him on 6th September after the Cabinet meeting, as usual I tried to catch his eye. He stood by his chair, tall and upright, and his fine face looked healthy and tanned. It was on the 9th September that for the last time I heard his manly voice on the telephone.”

Interests

• poetry, agriculture

Connections

In 1884, Pyotr Stolypin married Olga Borisovna Neidhart – whose family was of a similar standing to Stolypin’s. Olga had been engaged to Stolypin’s brother, Mikhail, but became engaged to Stolypin following Mikhail’s death in a duel. Their marriage was a happy one, devoid of scandal; the couple had five daughters and one son.

Father:

Arkady Dmitrievich Stolypin

He was an Imperial Russian general of artillery, governor of Eastern Rumelia and commandant of the Kremlin Palace guard.

Mother:

Natalia Mikhailovna Gorchakova

She was a court maid of honour, the daughter of General M. Gorchakov, governor of the Kingdom of Poland, an intelligent and educated woman, but she had a bad temper. During the Russian-Turkish war, Natalia Mikhailovna was a sister of mercy and received a bronze medal "The Sign of Mercy".

Wife:

Olga Borisovna Neidhart

Son:

Arkady Petrovich Stolypin

He was a French writer and publicist.

Daughter:

Maria Stolypina

Daughter:

Natalia Stolypina

Daughter:

Elena Stolypina

Daughter:

Olga Stolypina

Daughter:

Alexandra Stolypina

critic:

Leo Tolstoy

The Stolypin family and the Tolstoy family were friends, but later Count Leo Tolstoy strongly critisized Stolypin and his reforms.

second cousin:

Mikhail Lermontov

Emperor, Tsar:

Nicholas II of Russia

In April 1906, Nicholas appointed Stolypin minister of the interior and later Prime Minister.

teacher:

Dmitrii Mendeleev

Stolypin studied agriculture at St. Petersburg University where one of his teachers was Dmitri Mendeleev.

References

• Reminiscences of My Father, Peter A. Stolypin
• Peter Arkad'evich Stolypin: Practical Politics in Late Tsarist Russia
• Pyotr Stolypin. Last Russian nobleman / Petr Stolypin. Posledniy russkiy dvoryanin
• Pyotr Stolypin. "Stalnoy premer"
• P. A. Stolypin: The Search for Stability in Late Imperial Russia
• Stolypin: Russia's Last Great Reformer
• Government and Peasant in Russia, 1861-1906: The Prehistory of the Stolypin Reforms (Studies of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University)
• A Reluctant Parliament: Stolypin, Nationalism, and the Politics of the Russian Imperial State Council, 1906-1911
• Land Reform in Russia, 1906-1917: Peasant Responses to Stolypin's Project of Rural Transformation