The citizens of Russia were after their rulers’ blood.
The opposition now rallied behind the campaign for a national zemstvo assembly. The liberal ‘zemstvo men’ had been calling for this since 1902, but Plehve always stood in their way. Now there were hopeful signs. Plehve’s murder had deeply shocked the Tsar and, although his natural inclination had been to replace him with another hardliner, the bad news from the Front and the strength of the opposition at home had convinced him of the need to appoint a man enjoying the ‘confidence of society’. The new Minister of the Interior, Prince Sviatopolk-Mirsky (or Mirsky for short) was made for the role. Liberal, good-natured and decent, he was a typical product of the enlightened bureaucracy that espoused the ideals of the Rechtsstaat. He spoke of the need to strengthen the rule of law, to end the despotism of the police, and to break down the barriers of mistrust between the government and society. He called himself a ‘zemstvo man’ — in the sense that as a bureaucrat he saw his primary duty as to serve the public rather than the Tsar — and sought to conciliate the zemstvo liberals. They took his appointment, on 25 August, as a cue to revive their campaign for a national assembly.
Such expectations placed Mirsky in an impossible situation. ‘I am afraid’, wrote his wife in her diary on 22 September, ‘that so much is expected from Pepka [Mirsky] and yet so little will be possible; the only thing he can do is to act in accordance with his conscience, so God willing.’ The Minister was trapped between the demands of the liberals and the stubborn determination of the Tsar to stand firm on the principle of autocracy. He was not the last to be caught in this way. If there is a single, repetitive theme in the history of Russia during the last twenty years of the old regime, it is that of the need for reform and the failure of successive governments to achieve it in the face of the Tsar’s opposition. Not that sweeping reforms would have been necessary: most of the liberals would have been satisfied by such moderate changes as the convocation of a consultative assembly, the expansion of local self-government and greater civil rights, which need not have undermined the monarchy. But Nicholas was opposed to the idea of any limitation upon his autocratic prerogatives. Naively perhaps, Mirsky continued through gentle persuasion to try and bring the Tsar round to the idea of reform. But Nicholas was impervious to reason, and the Minister’s frustration grew. On one occasion, when Mirsky explained that the whole of the country was clamouring for a national zemstvo assembly, the Tsar replied: ‘Yes, it is needed, then they will be able to look into the veterinary problem.’ When Mirsky explained that the issue was the right of elected representatives to participate in the work of government, and warned that, if nothing was conceded, there would soon be a revolution, the Tsar remained silent. ‘He lets everything unpleasant run off him’, the exasperated Minister complained later to his wife.24
Mirsky initially thought to give the zemstvo assembly his official approval on the understanding that it would confine itself to local affairs. But when it produced a revised agenda that included discussion of a legislative parliament, he tried to have it postponed, or moved to the provinces, where it would attract less attention. But the ‘zemstvo men’ stood firm and the mild-mannered Mirsky at last gave way, allowing the assembly to meet in private quarters in the capital — ‘for a cup of tea’, as he put it. On 6–9 November 1904, 103 zemstvo representatives assembled in various residences, including the apartment of Vladimir Nabokov, father of the future novelist. Shipov was elected chairman, Prince Lvov and Petrunkevich vice-chairmen. It was, in effect, the first national assembly in Russian history. People compared it with the French Etats Generaux of 1789, and, despite Mirsky’s ban on publicity, more than 5,000 congratulatory telegrams arrived from all over the country. Civic bodies and associations held meetings to support its resolutions, which condemned the existing state of affairs and called, in all but name, for a constitution. Even the Provincial Marshals of the Nobility, normally the most conservative of gentry office-holders, held a congress to support the idea of a national assembly. Professional organizations held public banquets, modelled on the Paris banquet campaign that preceded the Revolution of 1848, where speakers called for political reforms and toasts were proposed to the future constitution. Gorky was at the biggest of these in St Petersburg on 20 November, and the following morning he wrote to his wife in Yalta:
I have just returned from the banquet in the Pavlova Hall. There were more than 600 diners — writers, lawyers, ‘zemstvo men’, in general, the intelligentsia … Outspoken speeches were made and people chanted in unison ‘Down with the autocracy!’, ‘Long live the Constituent Assembly!’, and ‘Give us a constitution!’ … A resolution was passed unanimously calling for a Constituent Assembly elected by universal suffrage. It was all very heated and very democratic … For the first time a woman even stood up to speak. She said that universal suffrage would give the vote to policemen, but no one had yet mentioned women. All this time they have struggled alongside the men — yet now people have forgotten about them. Shame! Her speech was very good.25
Mirsky presented the Tsar with a carefully worded digest of the zemstvo assembly’s resolutions, in the hope of winning him over to a programme of moderate reforms. The most controversial recommendation was the one for elected zemstvo representatives to sit on the State Council. But it also declared, in terms that must have offended the Supreme Autocrat, that the ‘old patrimonial order’ with its ‘notions of personal rule’ had been dead since the 1860s. Russia was no longer ‘the personal property and fiefdom of its ruler’, but ‘an impersonal state with its own body politic’, its own ‘public interest’ and ‘public opinion’, which made it ‘separate from the person of the ruler’. It was no doubt this challenge to his cherished ideals of patrimonialism that convinced the Tsar, under pressure from the Empress and his court advisers, to reject the most progressive parts of Mirsky’s draft decree. ‘I will never agree to the representative form of government’, Nicholas proclaimed, ‘because I consider it harmful to the people whom God has entrusted to me.’ The decree, which was finally passed on 12 December, promised to strengthen the rule of law, to ease restrictions on the press and to expand the rights of the zemstvos. But it said nothing on the all-important subject of a parliamentary body, on which concessions were essential if a revolution was to be averted. Hearing of its contents, Mirsky at once fell into despair. ‘Everything has failed,’ he said despondently to one of his colleagues. ‘Let us build jails.’26
ii ‘There is no Tsar’
Snow had fallen in the night and St Petersburg awoke to an eerie silence on that Sunday morning, 9 January 1905. Soon after dawn the workers and their families congregated in churches to pray for a peaceful end to the day. Later, 150,000 of them would march in columns from various quarters of the city and converge in front of the Winter Palace, where their leader, a priest called Father Gapon, was to present a Humble and Loyal Address to the Tsar begging him to improve the conditions of the workers. Singing hymns and carrying icons and crosses, they formed something more like a religious procession than a workers’ demonstration. Bystanders took off their hats and crossed themselves as they passed. And yet there was no doubt that the marchers’ lives were in danger. During the night 12,000 troops had been posted in the city to prevent them from reaching the palace. Many of the marchers had been up all night preparing themselves for death. One of them, Ivan Vasilev, left a note for his wife as he left her asleep with his young son in the small hours of the morning: