marked the end of the old patrimonial order and, along with it, of the personalized notions of rulership. Russia ceased to be the personal property and fiefdom of its ruler.… [The concepts] of “public interest” and “public opinion” suggested the emergence of the impersonal state … with its own body politic, separate from the person of the ruler.42
Legality (zakonnosf) was depicted as entirely compatible with autocracy because the Tsar would remain the exclusive source of laws, which he could repeal at will. The proposed representative body—envisaged as limited to consultative function—was depicted as a return to the days of “true autocracy” when tsars used to heed the voice of their people.
Mirskii’s draft was discussed on December 7 by high officials under Nicholas’s chairmanship. The most controversial clause called for the introduction into the State Council, at the time an exclusively appointed body, of deputies elected by the zemstva. It was an exceedingly modest measure, but it did inject the elective principle into a political system in which legislation and administration were the exclusive preserve of the monarch and officials designated by him. In advocating its adoption, Mirskii argued that it would “ensure domestic tranquility better than the most determined police measures.”43 According to Witte, the meeting was very emotional. The majority of the ministers sided with Mirskii. The chief adversary was Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the procurator of the Holy Synod and the regime’s most influential conservative, who saw in the introduction of elected representatives into state institutions a fatal breach in Russia’s traditional political system. Having heard out both sides, Nicholas agreed to all of Mirskii’s proposals. Those present left the meeting with the sense of having been witnesses to a momentous event in Russia’s history.44
At the Tsar’s request, Witte prepared an appropriate document for his signature. But Nicholas had second thoughts: he needed reassurance. Before signing it into law, he consulted Grand Duke Sergei and Witte. Both advised against adding elected representatives to the State Council—Sergei out of conviction, Witte more likely out of opportunism. Nicholas did not require much convincing: relieved, he struck out this provision. “I shall never, under any circumstances,” he told Witte, “agree to a representative form of government because I consider it harmful to the people whom God has entrusted to my care.”45
When he learned of the Tsar’s change of heart on the key provision in his draft, Mirskii fell into despondency. Convinced that all was lost he offered to resign, but Nicholas persuaded him to stay on.
On December 12, 1904, the government made public a law “Concerning the Improvement of the Political Order,” which, its title notwithstanding, announced all kinds of reforms except in the realm of politics.46 One set of measures addressed the condition of the peasantry, “so dear to OUR heart.” Others dealt with the population’s legal and civil rights. Government officials would be held accountable for misdemeanors. The sphere of activity of zemstva would be broadened and zemstvo institutions introduced into lower administrative units. There were pledges of state insurance for workers, equal justice for all, religious tolerance, and the easing of censorship. The emergency regulations of 1881 providing for the suspension of civil rights in areas placed under Safeguard would be modified.
All this was welcome. But the absence of any political concessions was widely seen as a rejection of the demands of the November 1904 Zemstvo Congress.47 For this reason the Law of December 12 was given little chance to resolve the national crisis, which was first and foremost political in nature.
Commissions were named to draft laws implementing the December 12 edict, but they had no issue because neither Nicholas nor the Court desired changes, preferring to procrastinate. They may have been hoping for some miracle, perhaps a decisive victory over the Japanese now that the Minister of War, Kuropatkin, had taken personal command of the Russian armies in the Far East. On October 2, Russia’s Baltic Fleet sailed to relieve Port Arthur.
But no miracle occurred. Instead, on December 20, 1904/January 2, 1905, Port Arthur surrendered. The Japanese captured 25,000 prisoners and what was left of Russia’s Pacific Fleet.
Throughout 1904, Russia’s masses were quiet: the revolutionary pressures on the government came exclusively from the social elite—university students and the rest of the intelligentsia, as well as the zemstvo gentry. The dominant trend was liberal, “bourgeois.” In these events the socialists played a secondary role, as terrorists and agitators. The population at large—peasants and workers alike—watched the conflict from the sidelines. As Struve wrote on January 2, 1905: “In Russia, there is as yet no revolutionary people.”48 The passivity of the masses encouraged the government to wage a rearguard action against its opponents, confident that as long as the demands for political change were confined to “society” it could beat them off. All this changed dramatically on January 9 with the massacre of worker demonstrators in St. Petersburg. This so-called Bloody Sunday spread the revolutionary fever to all strata of the population and made the Revolution truly a mass phenomenon: if the 1904 Zemstvo Congress was Russia’s Estates-General, then Bloody Sunday was her Bastille Day.
This said, it would be incorrect to date the beginning of the 1905 Revolution from January 9 because by then the government had been under siege for more than a year. Indeed, Bloody Sunday would not have occurred were it not for the atmosphere of political crisis generated by the Zemstvo Congress and the banquet campaign.
It will be recalled that in 1903 Plehve had dismissed Zubatov but continued the experiment of police-sponsored trade unions. One of the post-Zubatov unions which he authorized was led by a priest, Father George Gapon.49 The son of a Ukrainian peasant, Gapon was a charismatic figure who genuinely identified with the workers and their grievances. He was inspired by Leo Tolstoy and agreed to cooperate with the authorities only after considerable hesitation. With the blessing of the governor-general of the capital, I. A. Fullon, he founded the Assembly of Russian Factory and Plant Workers to work for the moral and cultural uplifting of the working class. (He stressed religion rather than economic issues and admitted only Christians.) Plehve approved Gapon’s union in February 1904. It enjoyed great popularity and opened branches in different quarters of city: toward the end of 1904, it was said to have 11,000 members and 8,000 associates,50 which overshadowed the St. Petersburg Social-Democratic organization, numerically insignificant to begin with and composed almost entirely of students. The police watched Gapon’s activities with mixed feelings, for as his organization prospered he displayed worrisome signs of independence, to the point of attempting, without authorization, to open branches in Moscow and Kiev. It is difficult to tell what was on Gapon’s mind, but there is no reason to regard him as a “police agent” in the ordinary meaning of the term—that is, a man who betrayed associates for money—because he indubitably sympathized with his workers and identified with their aspirations. Unlike the ordinary agent provocateur, he also did not conceal his connections with the authorities: Governor Fullon openly participated in some of his functions.51 Indeed, by late 1904 it was difficult to tell whether the police were using Gapon or Gapon the police, for by that time he had become the most outstanding labor leader in Russia.
At first, Gapon’s only concern was for the spiritual welfare of his flock. But in late 1904, impressed by the Zemstvo Congress and the banquet campaign, and possibly afraid of isolation, he concluded that the Assembly had to enter politics, side by side with the other estates.52 He tried to make contact with the Social-Democrats and Socialists-Revolutionaries, but they spurned him. In November 1904 he communicated with the St. Petersburg branch of the Union of Liberation, which was only too happy to involve him in its campaign. As Gapon recalled in his memoirs: