CHAPTER XVI

THE CAREER OF M. STOLYPIN

Peter Arkadievitch Stolypin was the son of an aide-de-camp general of Alexander II. His father had been at one time very popular in St. Petersburg society, and through his numerous family connections had made a brilliant career. He was a pleasant man, a perfect gentleman in manners, but by no means clever or bright. His most salient quality was the perfection with which he could indulge for hours in small talk, and it was this capacity that had made him such a welcome guest at a dinner table or at a party.

His son, the future Prime Minister of Nicholas II., was not very well known among the select circle of Court Society in the capital. He had entered the public service when quite young, and had been at once sent to the interior of the Empire, to work out his advancement step by step. After having done so to the best of his capacity, he was appointed Governor of the province of Samara, and whilst there had attracted the notice of the public and of his superiors by the energetic manner in which he had suppressed local riots. Count Witte was the first man to whom it occurred to appoint him to a more important post. M. Stolypin, who had only waited for a favourable opportunity to approach his Sovereign, was delighted to be called to St. Petersburg, and when he arrived there it was with the firm intention to do everything to win for himself Imperial protection and Imperial favour; to show himself an able courtier and a faithful executor of the wishes and intentions of the master upon whom his future career depended.

He was a man of strong character, but of immense ambitions, very personal in all his actions, and secretive in his designs.

In his provincial life he had had no hopes of ever making anything else than an administrative career, such as Government officials generally do, and the thought that he might be called upon to occupy an important post in the capital had never entered his mind. When he was summoned to St. Petersburg he was at first stunned by this unexpected piece of luck, but very quickly recovered himself, and, being a keen observer of human nature, no sooner had he been presented to Nicholas II. than he had taken an estimate of that monarch’s character, and the right way to influence it, so as to obtain for himself a leading part in his counsels. The two men had much in common, though little real sympathy existed between them. Stolypin was certainly more cultivated than the Tsar; also he had more determination, and more firmness in character, but there was lurking in the corners of his nature the same hardness, the same tyrannical tendencies, the same want of heart. Both were egotistical, with the difference that one thought it was his right to be so, whilst the other only imagined that he could win this right for himself.

Stolypin was brave, but of fatalistic temperament. He firmly believed that he would not die before the day appointed for him to do so by fate, and that conviction made him often appear to be reckless, whilst in reality he was only indifferent as to a fate which he thought was already settled by a power higher than his own. He had been told one day in his youth by a fortune-teller that he would reach a high position, which he would keep until his death, and, sceptical though he was on other points, he had faith in that prediction, which was to come true in so singular a fashion. Authoritative, selfish, merciless whenever he feared his personal interests were threatened, he succeeded during the years he was in power in making himself hated alike by the anarchists he was supposed to fight and the Conservatives he was believed to protect.

The ability with which he managed to get all his opinions and all his plans approved by the Sovereign would have been sure to win him many enemies, even if he had not made himself so offensive everywhere. Disdainful by nature, he had not the least regard for the feelings of anyone, and did not respect either those of his friends or of his foes. His high position, and the unlimited power conferred upon him by the force of circumstances more than by anything else, had imbued him with the conviction that he was indispensable, and that everything would be allowed to him because there was no one to take his place.

Another man before him had enjoyed as much, and even more of the confidence of the Tsar. It was General Trepoff, and death soon removed that rival, who was not even a dangerous one, because he had neither the intelligence nor the cunning that could have made him an opponent worthy of notice by Stolypin.

Since I am mentioning General Trepoff, perhaps a few words concerning that personage will not be out of place. Trepoff was one of the many children of the famous General Trepoff, who had for such a long time held the important post of Prefect of the town of St. Petersburg, under the reign of Alexander II., and whose attempted assassination by Vera Zassoulitch had been the first open act of warfare of the Nihilist party. His son began his career in the first regiment of Horse Guards, and at one time was considered one of the crack officers in the Society of the capital. He was invited everywhere, and at last succeeded in ingratiating himself into the good graces of the Grand Duke Paul, who was in command of the regiment. It was the latter who had him appointed head of the police in Moscow under his brother, the Grand Duke Sergius. Once in Moscow young Trepoff made himself pleasant to the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, and at one time public gossip was very busy with their names. What amount of truth there lay at the bottom of all these rumours it is impossible to say, but the fact is that it was on the recommendation of the Grand Duchess that Colonel Trepoff, as he was at the time, was called to the head of the Okhrana, or personal guard of the Sovereign.

For some time his influence was very powerful, but it did not last long. Trepoff was of an imperious disposition, but perfectly loyal to his master. He might have been an excellent watch-dog, and, indeed, performed the duties of one to perfection; but he was a man with limited education, who held no opinions except those he was ordered to have. His reign was very brief, and he did not deserve all the hatred expended upon him, because his influence would never have been lasting. He did not possess the qualities of an administrator, and, short-sighted as Nicholas II. was, he still had noticed this, and would certainly have sacrificed Trepoff to Stolypin had he been called upon to choose between the two. Fate intervened and saved him the necessity. Trepoff died, worn out with too much work, and perhaps also with the anxiety of his responsible post, for which he felt himself to be unequal; and Stolypin remained the only personage capable of leading the Government of Russia under the weak and tottering rule of the Emperor Nicholas.

He very soon assumed the attitude of a dictator, and in doing so bluffed a good many people into really believing that he possessed the necessary qualities of a leader. This was not the case. Stolypin pretended to have more determination than he really possessed.

After the dissolution of the first Duma, a measure he was the only one to approve, and the only one gifted with sufficient courage to execute, he became the object of the execration of all the Liberal parties in Russia. An era of revolution began in the whole country. Even in St. Petersburg rebellion raged, assassinations were frequent, and no one felt himself to be in safety. The Nihilists, who once more came to the front in the struggle which waged between Stolypin and the whole nation, at last proceeded to extremes, and the first attempt to assassinate the too powerful Minister took place when his summer villa on the Islands of the Apothecaries, near St. Petersburg, was nearly destroyed, his children wounded, and about forty-five persons killed, whilst he alone remained untouched.

It was on that awful day that M. Stolypin showed the fatalism which was one of the dominant traits of his character. Another man would have lost his head, or at least given way to discouragement under the blow that had struck his daughter and his son. Peter Arkadievitch remained perfectly calm, outwardly at least, and he never for a single minute thought of resigning the responsible position which he occupied. On the contrary, he seemed to find a compensation for his private sorrows in the authority which the dastardly attempt against his person and his family had added to those which he already possessed. He could now represent to the Emperor, with more force than ever, how indispensable it was to show no mercy to all those who tried to shatter his Throne and his power, and could obtain the assent of the Sovereign to all the measures which he thought imperative for assuring the latter, and for the welfare of the country.

That country was about the last subject to which Stolypin turned his attention. Russia meant nothing to him, except in the sense that through her he could gain honours and dignities, and advance his own welfare. He had, it is true, Nationalist tendencies, and worked towards the development of Nationalism in the country, which perhaps was another of his many mistakes, and brought about the conflict that shortly before his death arose between him and the Council of State. In this dispute the Council refused to agree to Stolypin’s bill for the introduction of zemstvos, or local councils, in the Polish provinces, where they had not yet been installed. When that conflict took an acute shape, and he had been defeated in the Upper House, Peter Arkadievitch offered his resignation to the Emperor. This was merely a move, for he had some secret influence with certain personages near the Throne, amongst them the Dowager Empress, so it was said, who advised Nicholas II. to ask him to keep office, to which he at last assented, but not without securing conditions which strengthened his authority and made him more powerful than ever.

The country did not approve, and even in St. Petersburg, where individuals were rather chary of expressing their opinions, people began openly to attack him. The fact was, that everybody was getting wearied of this kind of Major-domo of the Palace, which Stolypin had succeeded in becoming, and which reminded one of the old Merovingian kings and of the dictators who had ruled under them. The personality of the Emperor was becoming submerged in comparison with the importance that the influence of his Prime Minister was assuming. Conservatives disliked this effacement of the Sovereign; Liberals thought that if one had to be ruled by an autocrat, it would be better to have a Romanoff than one of his subjects.

Nicholas II. himself became, not perhaps jealous, but certainly impatient, at the independence that Stolypin displayed, now that he felt his position more secure. Once or twice he had found some orders that he had given counteracted by dispositions made by Stolypin without consulting his Emperor. Nicholas was not a man capable of forgiving encroachments made upon his authority, and certainly not one to forget them. Vindictive as he was by nature, the Emperor found the yoke that his Prime Minister had forced him to assume heavy to bear, and though he felt that the time had not come when he could get rid of him, yet one can well suppose that he would have seized with pleasure an opportunity to cover Stolypin with honours and at the same time retire him into private life, had he only asked a second time the permission to do so.

The Minister was too observant not to notice that, though his influence had not begun to get weakened, his person was no longer sympathetic to the Emperor. He was, however, determined to keep his post, and to have more distinctions showered upon him. He then tried to invent some conspiracies against the life of the monarch, in order to prove that he was indispensable, and that his vigilance was the best safeguard that Nicholas II. could find against the many dangers which threatened him. Provocative agents began once more to be sent all over the country, and the police received energetic orders to find conspirators, no matter at what cost. He thought that fear was the best means left at his disposal to make his position unassailable on the part of those who tried to shatter it. St. Petersburg Society did not take to Peter Arkadievitch. It considered him a little in the light of an intruder, a parvenu, who had imposed himself upon it, and forced an entrance into its rooms. Madame Stolypin, too, was little liked, and thought lacking in refinement. She came from a worthy family of German origin, who had served without distinction, but with much zeal, its Sovereign, and which belonged essentially to the middle class. Neither her manners nor her tact made her a fit wife for a Prime Minister, and a certain spirit of intrigue and of gossip, caused her to be disliked, rather than anything else. She never made herself at home, or popular, among the smart circles of the capital, where she was received, but seldom welcomed.

Nevertheless, though the Emperor began to get just a little tired of the state of dependence in which M. Stolypin kept him, nothing of this impatience appeared in public. He was still a favourite, and the man to whom everybody turned whenever one was in want of a favour or of a protection of some kind. When the Imperial Family left for the Crimea in the autumn of the year 1911, with the intention to stop on its way in Kieff and in order to allow the Emperor to be present at some manœuvres in the south of Russia, M. Stolypin accompanied them, and was the principal personage in their numerous suite. That journey was to see the end of his ambitions and of his career, for it was during its course that he was killed.

The murder took place at Kieff during a performance at the theatre. The Prime Minister fell under the bullet of one of his own agents, a Jew called Bagrov, who had been employed by the political police as a spy for a number of years. It was with a ticket signed by Stolypin himself that he had obtained an entrance into the theatre, and he fired at his chief with a revolver which belonged to the Government, and which had been given to him by one of the heads of the Okhrana or private guard of the Emperor. Stolypin fell, or rather dropped in his chair, with just one exclamation, “I am done for!” Nicholas II. was sitting with his daughters in the State box, but he never made the slightest movement to show that he was impressed by the tragical event. The crowd that filled the theatre began to cheer him with unusual enthusiasm, which he accepted with a slight bow in the direction of the audience, but he did not seem to evince particular interest as to the fate of his wounded Minister. He returned to the Palace without visiting the wounded man, or making personal inquiry as to his condition.

At first there was some hope of saving Stolypin, though a renowned physician, who held the post of professor at the University of Kieff, at once told his friends that the situation was desperate, because the liver had been perforated by the bullet. The wounded man himself had no illusions as to his fate, and he bore the terrible sufferings which he had to endure with great courage and fortitude, asking only from his doctors to keep him alive until his wife and family had arrived. A great surgeon was summoned from St. Petersburg, and everything possible was done to ease his last days, but it was felt from the very first that a recovery was impossible, and those who had expressed some hope had only done so in order to spare the feelings of the dying man and of those near to him.

The whole of Russia was aghast at the assassination of Stolypin; even his enemies were dumb with the horror of it. Assurances and expressions of sympathy came from every side; the person who appeared the most unmoved was the Emperor. It was only on the third day after the attack that he visited the dying statesman. He expressed no sympathy to the dying man beyond some conventional inquiries and official words of regret. It may be assumed that at heart he was neither sorry nor perplexed as to the consequences which the event could have, and that, if anything, he felt relieved at the solution of the problem which the dismissal of M. Stolypin would have proved. It was certain that such an eventuality would have arisen very soon, because the Tsar could not have borne much longer with a man in whom he saw a rival in authority rather than a helpmate or a faithful servant.

Stolypin lingered but a few short days after the one upon which he had been struck. The Emperor came to his bedside just before the end, and was received by Madame Stolypin, who used this opportunity to address a few tactless words to the Sovereign, which he resented afterwards. Nicholas II. only remained a few minutes with the dying man, and after some formal expressions of grief he retired.

Stolypin died two days after this visit. His funeral was made the occasion of great manifestations of sorrow on the part of the Conservative, or Old Russian party, who transformed him into a martyr, fallen for the defence of his country and of his Sovereign.

Nicholas did not consider it to be his duty to attend the funeral of his murdered servant. He was to leave Kieff for the Crimea on the very day upon which it took place, and it would have been easy enough to put off this departure for a few hours. But there was no one to suggest it to Nicholas II., who himself never thought of the opportunity which he would have had to make himself popular had he walked behind the coffin of his murdered Minister, and thus showed publicly that he knew how to value the services rendered to him and how to recognise them.

This indifference contributed considerably to lessen the already very small popularity which the Tsar enjoyed. M. Stolypin had not been liked; many people rather rejoiced at his death, and for others it came as a great relief; but even his many enemies felt that it ought to have produced a terrible impression on the Emperor, before whose eyes he had been struck. All wondered at the impassiveness the monarch displayed in those tragical circumstances, and some asked themselves whether he had realised their importance. It seemed strange that, after having worked for years with the murdered man, after having made him a powerful Minister and a personal friend, after having shared with him political anxieties and apprehensions of all kinds, after having confided to him the welfare of the whole vast Russian Empire, after having trusted him above all other people and listened to him rather than to anyone else, the greatest proof of sorrow that his assassination provoked in Nicholas II. took the form of a considerable pension accorded to Madame Stolypin. He gave her money, but did not think it worth while to offer her the one supreme sign of sympathy he could have accorded--that of praying beside the coffin of her husband. The whole of Russia was represented at the funeral service held over the remains of Peter Arkadievitch Stolypin; the Emperor alone was missing.