Читаем Russia полностью

In terms of the territorial extent of the Empire, the peace with Japan cost Russia relatively little: the Lüshun Peninsula, half of Sakhalin, and recognition that Japanese interests should predominate in Korea. However, Russia retained the East China Railway and its dominant position in northern Manchuria. Vitte had deftly extricated the Empire from what had promised to be a much greater disaster. Furthermore, as sometimes happens in the complex affairs of great empires, inertia decreed that there would be some successes even in the wake of cataclysmic defeat. The Orenburg—Tashkent line started after the turn of the century was finished in 1906; the Tiflis—Julfa railway opened for traffic the following year. ³⁵ And in 1907 Britain was persuaded to concede the division of Persia into Russian and British spheres of influence.

To the west, the threat of Germany and Austria was countered by Russia’s alliance with France and Britain, while at home attempts were made not only to accommodate the regime to democracy, but to solve the peasant problem. This task fell to an experienced provincial governor, Petr Stolypin, and the solution which he applied was radical. His strategy was to turn the more substantial peasants into private farmers, break up the peasant commune, and force those who could not survive to sell their plots and move either on to the labour market (which was short of manpower) or to underpopulated Siberia. Between 1906 and 1914 2 million people did so. ³⁶ The destruction of a traditional way of life invariably involves cruelty, but there seemed to be no workable alternative. Stolypin claimed that, given twenty years of peace, his reforms would transform Russia, creating a solid, prosperous farmer class which would benefit the economy and stabilize politics. But while attending a performance in Kiev’s handsome cream, red and gilded opera house in 1911 he was killed by an assassin’s bullet. His reforms might have succeeded but they were to be overtaken by the First World War only three years later.

Nor was the experiment with parliamentary democracy successful, though the fault did not lie entirely with the regime. Stolypin’s offer to the majority liberal opposition of seats in a coalition government was rejected. As one liberal was himself to recall, the politicians saw in ‘compromises and gradualism “a lowering of the flag”. They wanted everything, and wanted it immediately … A “constitutional democracy” was certainly attainable, but it could not be realized at once … The intolerance of the doctrinaires … was sharpest in questions involving “theoretical … principles”. A concession in this area was regarded as treason.’ ³⁷ The result was an unrealistic attitude to the monarchy. The democrats wanted to form the government, even though they had no experience in office, and in effect they forced the government to change the electoral process in the hope of getting a Duma with which it could work. But it proved impossible to reach an accommodation even with a slightly more tractable Duma. The problem was partly constitutional, partly the intransigence of the democratic leaders, but partly, too, the Tsar’s.

Experienced statesmen had noticed a problem in Nicholas II some time before. In July 1901 A. Polovtsev, Chief Secretary of the State Council and a senator — a loyal official in a central position — noted in his diary that

Things are done piecemeal… on momentary impulse, through the intrigues of one person or another, or through the importunities of various fortune seekers … The young Tsar is becoming increasingly contemptuous of the organs of his own authority and is beginning to believe in the beneficial effect of his own autocratic power. [Yet] he exercises it sporadically, without prior deliberation and without reference to the general course of affairs. ³⁸