The Reformer Read online

  Vasily Maklakov in St. Petersburg. © State Historical Museum, Moscow.

  © 2017 by Stephen F. Williams

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  First American edition published in 2017 by Encounter Books, an activity of Encounter for Culture and Education, Inc., a nonprofit, tax-exempt corporation.

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  FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Williams, Stephen F., author.

  Title: The reformer: how one liberal fought to preempt the Russian Revolution / by Stephen F. Williams.

  Other titles: How one liberal fought to preempt the Russian Revolution

  Description: New York: Encounter Books, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017006458 (print) | LCCN 2017035181 (ebook) | ISBN 9781594039546 (Ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Maklakov, V. A. (Vasilii Alekseevich), 1870–1957. | Politicians—Russia—Biography. | Reformers—Russia—Biography. | Liberalism—Russia—History—20th century. | Russia—Politics and government—1894–1917.

  Classification: LCC DK254.M23 (ebook) | LCC DK254.M23 W55 2017 (print) | DDC 947.08/3092 [B]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017006458

  PRODUCED BY WILSTED & TAYLOR PUBLISHING SERVICES

  Design and composition: Nancy Koerner

  Page 479 is an extension of this copyright page.

  Dick Williams

  and

  Jack Powelson

  Who kept asking useful questions*

  * They also proposed quite a few answers

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  IntroductionWhy Maklakov?

  I. Origins of a Public Figure

  CHAPTER 1Scapegrace and Scholar

  CHAPTER 2Trial Lawyer

  CHAPTER 3Friends and Lovers

  II. A Radical Tide

  CHAPTER 4Into Politics—and Early Signs of Deviance from Party Dogma

  CHAPTER 5A Constitution for Russia?

  CHAPTER 6The First Duma

  Take-Off and Crash Landing

  CHAPTER 7The Second Duma

  Challenging Stolypin, Engaging Stolypin

  III. Reform in the Third and Fourth Dumas

  CHAPTER 8The Third and Fourth Dumas and Maklakov’s Fight against Government Arbitrariness

  CHAPTER 9Religious Liberty

  CHAPTER 10National Minorities

  CHAPTER 11Judicial Reform, Citizen Remedies

  CHAPTER 12Peasant Rights

  CHAPTER 13Reforms and Reform

  An Appraisal

  IV. The Slide toward Revolution

  CHAPTER 14National Liberals

  CHAPTER 15War—and the Mad Chauffeur

  CHAPTER 16The Killing of Rasputin

  CHAPTER 17February 1917

  CHAPTER 18In the Maelstrom

  The Liberals in Office

  V. Postlude

  CHAPTER 19Exile

  CHAPTER 20Coda

  The Rule of Law as the Thin End of the Wedge

  Chronology

  Abbreviations

  Notes

  Selected Bibliography

  Index

  Acknowledgments

  I want to thank some of the many people whose kindness, scholarly prowess, and general helpfulness made this book possible, recognizing that I’ll likely forget to name some key contributors. First, I’m deeply indebted to Lars Lih, Daniel Orlovsky, and Melissa Stockdale, who provided in-depth criticism and suggestions in their peer reviews and who engaged with me long thereafter. Many other scholars of Russian history also extended a welcome to this visitor from the world of law, ready to answer questions, point me to resources, chat about related (or unrelated) issues of Russian history, and offer useful suggestions. Among the many providing expert help (including partial readings) were Abe Ascher, Ira Lindsay, Jonathan Daly, Robert Weinberg, Albina and the late Igor Birman, Alex Potapov, Ilya Beylin, and Olga Zverovich, and Peter Roudik and Ken Nyirady of the Library of Congress. I am in debt to Abe for far more than his reactions to particular segments—his astute observations, encouragement, friendship, and laughter date back to nearly twenty years ago, when I first thought of doing real work in Russian history.

  I’m also indebted to Peter Reuter, Peter Szanton, and Matt Christiansen for readings of the whole book, and Peter Conti-Brown and David Tatel for partial readings, all from the perspective of intelligent, well-informed citizens. David Dorsen, Mike O’Malley, Amanda Mecke, Max Singer, Emmanuel Villeroy, and Jonathan Zittrain have provided all kinds of clues and ideas, as well as valued hand-holding and consultation.

  Many thanks to Zhanna Buzova for hours spent untying the linguistic knots in Maklakovian sentences that first eluded me. I am grateful to the good people at Wilsted and Taylor Publishing Services for close copy editing and massaging the book to readiness for publication, and to Katherine Wong at Encounter Books for attentive support over the past year. Finally, thanks to all members of my family, especially to my wife, Faith, for readings, comments, and a well-calibrated mix of nudges and cheerleading.

  “The only way to avert a revolution is to make one.”

  ANTOINE PIERRE BERRYER

  Introduction

  Why Maklakov?

  IN OCTOBER 1905 Tsar Nicholas II issued the October Manifesto, opening the door for the first time in Russia’s history to real-world political advocacy—advocacy that could affect the election of legislators, who in turn could pass laws controlling government action. This book is an account of the efforts of Vasily Maklakov, a lawyer, legislator, and public intellectual who used this opportunity to advance the rule of law in Russia. Though his efforts were clearly not enough to prevent the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917,* they illuminate the kind of challenge that reformers face today in authoritarian regimes around the globe.

  In the October Manifesto the tsar promised to allow freedom of conscience, speech, and assembly and to establish an elected legislature. He also took a pledge to the rule of law. Under the manifesto, a law could take effect only with the consent of the legislature, rather than merely by decree of the autocrat, as before. And compliance with law would be an essential condition for valid executive action. If fully implemented, the manifesto would have created a government of laws.

  As a trial lawyer, Maklakov regularly observed the practical qualities and defects of the rule of law in early twentieth-century Russia. He was renowned for being able to sway juries and judges with calm conversational logic. As a legislator he used his analytic and forensic skills to press for reform of Russia and reduce the risk of revolution, advocating, for example, a practical integration of peasants into Russian society and an end to religious and ethnic discrimination. He wrote for newspapers and intellectual journals on vital issues of the day. He appeared to move with ease between technical legal issues and the more philosophical questions of how law might enable the creation of a free society. His arguments delineate a Russia that might have been—a Russia struggling with corners of backwardness, to be sure, but liberal, open, welcoming previously unheard voices, and developing institutions that could channel conflict into lawful paths.

  As participant and observer, actor and critic, Maklakov is an inviting lens through which to view the last years of tsarism. Born
in May 1869, he received a degree in history before getting one in law. He was on the political stage from shortly before the October Manifesto until the Bolsheviks took power in 1917. Named ambassador to France by the Russian Provisional Government, he set off for Paris on October 12, but was unable to present his credentials before the provisional government fell. Although active thereafter as the effective dean of the Russian émigré community in France, he was also able to write the story of the revolution and its background in several books of lucid and engaging prose. Like any historian-participant, he occasionally spun events to fit his views at the time of writing, but through his contemporaneous speeches and writings we can detect cases where he adjusted history—usually only slightly—to reflect a new outlook. And his charm and capacity for friendship with people radically different from himself—Leo Tolstoy and the maverick Social Democrat Alexandra Kollontai come quickly to mind—created a trail of relationships far beyond the ken of most lawyer-politicians, however distinguished.

  In the Russia of 1905–17, Vasily Maklakov may have represented the very center of the political center. As Leon Trotsky wrote of him in 1913, he “rose above all parties.”1 Trotsky’s words were, in fact, an ironic sneer at Maklakov, but regardless of the intended irony, the words capture a truth. The moderate opposition—those who were neither self-proclaimed revolutionaries nor fans of unlimited autocratic power—was divided into two main parties. On one side were the Constitutional Democrats, or Kadets (the informal name derived from KD, the initials of their name in Russian). On the more conservative side were the Octobrists, who took their name from the October Manifesto and sought to advance the political system that it sanctioned. One might call the Kadets the center left and the Octobrists the center right. Though a Kadet leader, Maklakov combined elements of both the Kadets and the Octobrists. His insistence of thinking issues through for himself led to criticism from more partisan contemporaries. Paul Miliukov, the leader of the Kadet party and often an adversary of Maklakov, criticized him after the Bolshevik revolution (when both were emigrants) for having believed unduly in compromise2 and described him with some disdain as having a lawyer’s professional habit of “seeing a share of truth on the opposite side, and a share of error on his own.”3

  Maklakov deviated from Kadet and Octobrist orthodoxy on several key issues. The Kadets were firmly committed to a drastic agrarian policy: the state should take the land of non-peasant landowners, giving some compensation but not market value, and should transfer it to the peasants. But the peasant recipients themselves would not get full title—only a temporary right to use the land, subject evidently to endless further bureaucratic redistribution (a point the Kadets soft-pedaled in their quest for peasant votes).4 Someone who favored serious protection for private property, though recognizing limits on that protection, could not be fully at home among the Kadets. But the Octobrists generally opposed equal treatment for Jews, Poles, and Finns and staunchly resisted anything like autonomy for Poles and Finns. This isn’t to say that the Kadets were utterly indifferent to property rights or that the Octobrists were anti-Semites and extreme nationalists to a man. But anyone who favored the rule of law and private property rights and an end to state discrimination against Jews and Russia’s “national minorities” was bound to be a bit uncomfortable in either party. Maklakov cast his lot with the Kadets, but the relationship was always a somewhat awkward marriage of convenience.

  Maklakov brought to that marriage above all his skills as a brilliant and persuasive advocate, referred to in virtually every appraisal of him by his contemporaries. He had mobilized these skills for the first time in a controversy at Moscow University. A student chorus and orchestra had traditionally given a concert for the benefit of impoverished fellow students, but the famine of 1891 led to a proposal that the concert proceeds should go instead to famine relief. The issue was to be decided at a public meeting of the students, and those planning to speak for or against the change lined up on opposite sides of the auditorium. After Maklakov spoke in favor of famine relief, the line on the opposing side melted away, and the issue was resolved by default to his position.5

  Maklakov used his advocacy on behalf of the Kadet party, both on the stump and in Russia’s parliament, the Duma. At least he did so for goals with which he was in genuine agreement, such as judicial independence, limits on government arbitrariness, dispensing with restrictions on Jews and religious minorities, and constitutional treatment of national minorities. On issues where he could not embrace Kadet views, such as their confiscatory solution to Russia’s agrarian problems, he generally remained silent.

  Maklakov, in turn, enjoyed a position of influence in the party, being a member of its central committee from its founding until long after 1917. And he had the satisfaction of playing a pivotal role in mobilizing support for the party’s electoral and (occasional) legislative wins. Assuming that the Kadets comprised, from his perspective, the least bad of the parties in existence, they gave him a political home without his having to try his luck at founding a new party—a course he contemplated but rejected.

  Maklakov liked to quote Antoine Pierre Berryer’s remark, “The only way to avert a revolution is to make one.” Probably most Russian liberals agreed with the general idea, with everyone understanding that the idea was to obviate a revolution by means of drastic reform. But what kind of reform? Maklakov gave no explicit answer. But his work as a member of the Second, Third, and Fourth Dumas (from 1907 to the February Revolution in 1917) provides one indirectly. He seems to have believed that Russia could curtail government arbitrariness and supplant it with something resembling a Western emphasis on the rule of law. This vision permeated his public activities and writings. Even when advocating reforms that could be advanced on many grounds, he always highlighted the rule-of-law benefits.

  As the rule of law was Maklakov’s foremost reform goal, his greatest concern in strategy echoed Miliukov’s phrase “the need to see possible merits in opponents’ views.” Especially in his historical accounts, he time and again expressed the belief that Russia’s tragedy lay in a kind of twin blindness—a failure on each side to welcome, to use, and to benefit from the moderates on the other side. The regime and the opposition were each internally divided. Despite its autocratic character, the regime contained liberal elements interested in reaching out to the liberal opposition; the opposition, despite containing a powerful, and in many instances ruthless, revolutionary movement, also contained moderates who favored a gradualist path toward constitutional monarchy or at least some variety of liberal democracy. But the regime was reluctant to extend a hand to the liberals (confusing them with the regime’s true enemies, the revolutionaries), and the liberals typically failed to grasp the hand occasionally extended (confusing the regime with the far right and discounting the far left’s threat to liberalism).6

  Maklakov’s relationship to his brother Nikolai, also deeply involved in pre-revolutionary Russian politics, adds a special pi quancy to his story. Representing almost opposite poles in the political spectrum, the two weave in and out of each other’s lives. A biographer sketching a person’s ancestry, upbringing, and schooling tends to rely on at least an implicit suggestion that these may partly account for the shape of his career and character. This biography will be no exception. But as to any causal link, the suggestion is muted.

  Maklakov’s parents had seven children who survived infancy. At a relatively early stage Vasily appears to have been at odds with his younger brother Nikolai, to the point that in October 1895, when Vasily was only 26 years old and Nikolai only 24, Vasily expressed a wish that there be no further correspondence between them.7 Later, Nikolai seems not to have been so hostile—in a conversation about Kadets with a government colleague in 1913, Nikolai said in passing that he had a brother who was a Kadet and “he has a lot of good qualities.”8 Whatever the exact cause of the rupture, politics seems likely to have played a role. While Vasily was inveighing against the lawlessness of the ministry of interna
l affairs, Nikolai was an integral part of that ministry—indeed, he was the minister for two and a half years, from December 1912 to June 1915.9 While Vasily was defending Menahem Mendel Beilis against trumped-up charges of murdering a 13-year-old boy in order to extract blood for mysterious Jewish rituals, Nikolai was helping to concoct the charges and orchestrate the prosecution. Nicholas II, whom we don’t think of as a punster, was sufficiently struck to make a pun out of the brothers’ initials, NAM (Nikolai Alekseevich Maklakov) and VAM (Vasily Alekseevich Maklakov). These are Russian pronouns, and Nicholas would commonly say (in a liberal translation), “We have two Maklakovs, one NAM (ours), one VAM (theirs).”10 Actually, if he’d listened to VAM, he might have spared himself and, far more important, Russia endless grief.

  It is a troubling clue to early twentieth-century Russian politics that Lenin declared, in a passage quoted in the entry on Vasily Maklakov in the first edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, “The difference between any Maklakov and the Octobrists is completely illusory.”11 Given the differences, Lenin’s lumping the brothers together, and both of them with the Octobrists, seems a triumph of venom over reality.

  The rule of law has many definitions—as many, it’s been said, as there have been people writing about the subject, reflecting an inescapable amorphousness in the concept. But certainly for Maklakov, as probably for most advocates of the rule of law, the central feature was the subordination of the executive to law, sharply limiting its possible arbitrariness. These limits require, for openers, judicial independence, clear laws rather than ones whose vagueness invites arbitrary and biased application, and remedies that give relief to the victims of government arbitrariness and disincentives to officials tempted to embark on lawless behavior.

  These limits on government all relate directly to formal rules and structure. But these alone cannot assure the rule of law. Parchment tenure provisions can buttress courts’ independence but cannot, alone, enable them to constrain a willful executive. As Alexander Hamilton argued, courts have “no influence over either the sword or the purse,”12 and in a state where the executive’s power is little tempered by an independent legislature, free press, or civil society, courts are unlikely to pose a serious constraint on executive authority.13 Although independent courts may be the instrument for protecting the rule of law, their effectiveness is quite dependent on the “correlation of forces,” both material and intellectual. Unless key segments of society respect the concept of law, and the laws at least broadly reflect those segments’ interests, rulings applying the law are unlikely to command adherence. Getting to such laws of course requires compromise.