H28 RUSSIA 



on September i8th. This tragic end to the ablest and strongest head of the Russian 

 Government since Count Witte had left office produced a great sensation throughout the 

 country and agitated all political parties. 



Peter Arcadevich Stolypin was born in 1863, the son of a Russian Admiral of Sevasto- 

 pol fame, who had married a Princess Gorchakov, so that on his mother's side he was 

 related to the noble line of the descendants of Rurik. Having finished his 

 Character education at the University of St. Petersburg, he entered the Government 

 of Stolypla. service in 1884, first in the ministry for Internal Affairs and then in the 

 Department of Agriculture. He was appointed Governor of Grodno in 

 1902, and of Saratov in 1905, where he became known as a firm administrator. 

 He was called from the governorship of Saratov in April 1906 to be Minister of 

 Internal Affairs, and in July succeeded M. Goremykin as Minister President. He 

 quickly proved himself a capable and wise statesman of strong character and convictions, 

 a good orator with a clear and concise style, an indefatigable worker, and able to give 

 unity and prestige to the Ministerial Council over which he presided. He at first co- 

 operated with the Octobrists and the Duma, and knew how to make use of the latter for 

 the realisation of his programme of national legislation. It was said that the Duma 

 determined the character of Stolypin, while Stolypin to a great extent determined the 

 character of the Duma. Certainly the third Duma, convoked under the operation of 

 Stolypin's modified electoral law and influenced by his able speeches, turned out incom- 

 parably more workable and practically useful than either of its two predecessors. His 

 motto was reform and order. To those who objected to the arbitrary and autocratic 

 tendencies of his policy his answer was that until new and better laws were introduced 

 the old and defective ones, which often produced harm as well as good, would be strictly 

 enforced. Amongst the important agrarian reforms which he promoted v. r as the aboli- 

 tion of the tyrannical hold of the antiquated and fast decaying communal system over 

 the Russian peasantry. In a few years time the inhabitants of St. Petersburg will have 

 reason to bless Stolypin's memory on account of his scheme of compulsory sanitation and 

 drainage, which the Municipal Duma of the Russian capital, after long years of culpable 

 neglect, will now be bound to carry out. He resisted everything tending towards com- 

 promise with sedition in any form, and maintained the extraordinary and extra-judicial 

 measures of public security and the operation of courts-martial in the face of much op- 

 position. He was the terror of the Finns and the socialist revolutionaries. The latter 

 regarded him as their deadliest enemy, and no less than seven plots and attempts against 

 his life were organised, from August 1906, when a bomb was exploded in his summer 

 villa with terrible consequences to his family and visitors, down to the attack at Kiev 

 which unhappily proved fatal. 



The death of Stolypin induced the radical opposition to entertain hopes of a change 

 of policy under his successor, but M. Kokovtsov, 1 the new President of the Council of 

 Ministers, very soon dispelled that illusion. In his first speech to the Duma 

 as l jMinsie V m tn ^ s new ca P ac ^Y ne laid much stress upon the fact that there would be 

 President. n political change whatever, and this declaration, combined with the im- 

 pression produced by the fact of the assassin of Stolypin having been a Jew, 

 gave a fresh stimulus to the Nationalist cause and gained for it the full support of the 

 Octobrists. At a great banquet on October iyth in memory of the October Manifesto, 

 the Octobrists and Nationalists, under Goochkov and Balashov respectively, joined their 

 forces to pass a whole series of bills initiated by Stolypin. These included the law of 

 equal rights for Russians in Finland, a money contribution from the Finnish to the 

 Russian Exchequer in lieu of personal military service, the separation of the Holm 

 district from Polish control, and the introduction of municipal administration into Pol- 

 ish towns, which was a sop to the Poles after foisting upon them the zemstvo scheme. 

 1 Vladimir Nikolaievich Kokovtsov was born in 1847. After serving in the prison 

 administration, and then as Secretary to the Imperial Council, he became Assistant Minister 

 of Finance under Witte in 1901. In 1904 he was appointed Minister of Finance, and he 

 retained this office as Prime Minister, M. Makarov being appointed Minister of Internal 

 Affairs. In December 1912 the latter made way for M. Maklakov. 



