The day turned out to be a memorable occasion, as Mr. Stolypin, minister
of the interior, in answer to an interpellation, made his first address
in the chamber. He had availed himself of the legal limit of thirty days
before replying to the interpellation on the acts of lawlessness
committed by provincial governors, police officials, etc. Stolypin began
by admitting that in some cases there had been illegal acts, but
frequently the Government had to act vigorously in order to preserve
order. During the various disorders 228 police had been killed and 388
wounded; that he had no knowledge of the printing of proclamations in
the ministry inciting the people to murder the Jews; that he felt the
Douma should not call him to account for the acts charged against his
predecessors. He could, however, guarantee that while he was in office
such acts would not recur, and, as his future policy, he would do his
utmost to maintain law and order. It was not his business to make laws,
but to administer them, and this was quite impossible without resort to
a state of seige. (Cries of “Enough, Enough!” from the left, to which
the minister replied: “I will not be perturbed by your noise; I have a
clear conscience.”) As the minister left there were yells of “Murderer!
Assassin!” and the excitement was such that the president suspended the
meeting for an hour.
At the renewal of the session, Prince Urussoff declared that massacres
were always organized by secret forces. Urussoff went on to say that
this “régime” was so strong that there was no guaranty whatever that
such things would not occur again. He claimed that no minister, not ever
one chosen from the Douma, could bring the country out of its present
condition as long as the same dark mysterious powers were allowed to
handle the reins of the Government and to carry out their experiments in
vivisection. In the Douma they were trying [Page 1262] to raise the Tsar above and beyond the reach of
political passions; they were all ready to sink their differences for
the national welfare, but they felt the same dark forces estranging them
from the sovereign, and rendering impossible that union of Crown and
parliament without which there could be no peaceful evolution. They were
confronted by a great and terrible danger which would not disappear
until men imbued with traditions of the police officer were excluded
from the conduct of affairs of state.
Previous to this the St. Petersburg Bourse had shown great weakness, but
after the workings of the secret powers, as they have been called, had
been exposed in the Douma, confidence seemed to be somewhat
restored.
It is thoroughly realized now that the present cabinet can not work in
conjunction with the Douma and strong conservative influences are being
brought to bear at Peterhof in order to induce the Tsar to select a
cabinet the greater part of which shall be taken from the Douma.
[Inclosure.]
question of liability of government—a
fundamental question abroad, as money loaned goes to police
department.
Speech by Prince Urussoff, governor of Tver to 1905,
where he was very popular. Resigned on the appointment of Trepoff as
assistant minister of interior. Was himself assistant minister for a
time under Durnovo, 1905. Elected to the Douma as a member of the
Moderates (Octobrists).
I ask to speak, representatives of the people, in order to offer for
your consideration some of my reflections on the interpellation of
the imperial Douma to the minister and the answer to this
interpellation which we have just heard. I suppose that we shall
look at the news of a special bureau concealed in the recesses of
the police department and printing appeals to the people with its
summons to civil war not so much as a fact of the past as a
disturbing suggestion of the possibility that government officials
may, in the future, take a further part in the preparation of those
bloody dramas by which they have earned a sorrowful distinction in
recent times and which, as recent events have shown, continue to
occur, arousing the indignation of all to whom human life is dear
and who value the dignity of the Russian Empire. At this point let
me explain I do not for a minute doubt the sincerity of the
declaration of the minister of the interior. It is not against the
ministry that what I want to say to you is directed. On the
contrary, the whole meaning, the whole interest, the whole
importance of the question which we are considering is precisely in
this, that massacres and civil murder by circumstances which still
have force and are still to be found inside the sphere of government
activity continue, and will continue, to be independent of any
relations to them of this or that minister of the interior, or this
or that ministry. The declaration of the minister in this respect
seems to me not sufficiently convincing and I will at once try to
explain why I think so. With this in view I shall have to touch the
question of massacre and on the way explain the role played in this
business by the press which has already excited our interest.
Any investigation of the so-called “pogroms” (massacres) will bring
the investigator face to face with the following certain symptoms;
they are identical in all cases: Firstly, a massacre is always
preceded by reports of its preparation, accompanied by the
circulation of appeals exciting the population and of one constant
kind in form and substance. They are accompanied by a certain kind
of stormy petrels in the person of little known representatives of
the dregs of the population. Then, too, the cause of the massacre as
officially announced is afterwards always without exception found to
be false. Furthermore, in these massacres there is always to be
found a certain similarity of plan which gives these actions the
character of chance. The murderers act on the assumption of some
kind of right, as though conscious that they will not [Page 1263] be punished, and only continue to
act as long as this confidence remains unshaken—after which the
massacre stops extraordinarily quickly and easily. Again, in the
conduct of the police there is never any unity or plan, and whilst
some police districts suffer complete devastation in the presence of
considerable police forces, others remain almost untouched in
consequence of the protection afforded them by the police who have
fulfilled their duty with confidence and energy. At last the
massacre is stopped, arrests are made, and the authorities when
visiting the prisoners can not avoid the impression that they have
before them not so much criminals as ignorant persons whom some one
has deluded, and so one feels that there is some kind of
organization always the same and broadly planned. Those are wrong
who, when they have attributed it to the Government, think that the
question is settled and the matter quite clear. But they are not
altogether wrong, and the events of last winter which have served as
reason for our interpellation, will help us to partly see through
the mist which envelopes the affairs, so dark even without it.
In January, 1906, one of the persons occupying a secondary position
in the ministry of the interior, but known as an opponent of the
policy of massacre—I do not refer to myself—began to receive a large
quantity of specimen appeals, simply designed, which had been widely
circulated in the chief centers of south and west Russia, and also
anxious complaints against the preparation of massacres in Vilna,
Bialostok, Kiev, Nikolasv, Alexandrovsk, and other towns. The Gomel
massacre of January confirmed the correctness of the apprehensions
which had been expressed, and induced the person whom I have
mentioned to use every means to avert any further massacres, which
he also succeeded in doing, thanks to the action taken by the
president of the Council of Ministers, who was gradually acquainted
with the course of affairs by means of a secret investigation.
At this time some light was thrown, though still of an imperfect
kind, on the following picture of the activity of the constructors
of the massacres: A group of persons composing a kind of fighting
organization of one of our “patriotic “clubs, together with some
persons who were in close touch with the editors of a newspaper not
in St. Petersburg (Moscow Gazette) undertook to combat revolution.
Being patriots in that sense which was recently given to the word
here by a member from the government of Tver and “real Russian
people,” they saw occasion for disturbance in the alien races. The
people of the frontier, the pale of Jewish settlement, the Russian
population, and also in particular Russian soldiers, were invited to
settle accounts with the traitors in the thousand of appeals. These
appeals, of the most exciting character, were conveyed by members of
the society to the spot and were handed over to reliable local
members or associates, who in their turn circulated these appeals
with judgment and caution.
There were curious results from the point of view of the preservation
of the unity of authority. An assistant police master (I give merely
an example) circulates appeals without the knowledge of his chief,
the police master. Or again, a police captain, let us say, of the
first ward, was considered worthy of a confidence which was denied
to the police captain of a second ward. Some one serving in the
gendarme administration or in the detective department proved to be
provided with special sums of money, to whom began to resort certain
of the lower people. Reports went through the town of some kind of
special preparations; frightened inhabitants went to see the
governor, the governor reassured them, feeling all the time that
things were far from tranquil. Telegrams which came in from the
minister spoke of measures to be taken to secure tranquillity, and
such measures were often taken. But in the depositions made to this
end very few people had any confidence. In some cases the police
quite honestly supposed that the measures were taken simply for
show, for decency, but that they were already in possession of the
real intention of the government. They read between the lines and
thought that they heard beyond the order of the governor some voice
from farther off, in which they had greater belief. In a word, there
developed a hardly credible confusion, complete disorganization, and
complete demoralization of the authority.
Meanwhile in St. Petersburg, as early as the autumn of 1905 (and it
would seem before the October ministry came into office), in No. 16
Fontanka street, in some remote room of the department of police,
there was at work a printing press, purchased at the expense of the
department by government money. This press was put under the control
of an officer of gendarmes in civil dress, Komisarov, who with a few
assistants assiduously prepared the appeals to which I have already
alluded. The secret of the existence of this “underground” press was
so carefully kept, and the conduct of its organizers was so
conspirative, [Page 1264] that not
only in the ministry, but even the department of police itself there
were very few persons who knew about it. Meanwhile the work of the
society, whose organ the press was, was clearly meeting with
success. For when questioned by a person who happened to come upon
the track of this organization Komisarov answered, “A massacre—we
can make for you any kind you please; if you like, for 10 men, and
if you like, for 10,000.” Gentlemen, this is a historic phrase.
[Great excitement among the deputies in the house.] For the
information of the Kiev deputies, I will add that in Kiev there was
arranged a massacre of 10,000 for February 16, but it was
successfully averted. [Great excitement.] The president of the
Council of Ministers had, we are told, a most serious attack of
nervous asthma when the facts which I have just narrated were
communicated to him. He summoned Komisarov, who reported to him on
what he had done and on the full powers which he had received, and
in a few hours the department no longer contained either the press
or the appeals of the staff. There was simply an empty room. And
that is why no one, among others not even the minister of the
interior, will be able to satisfy the legitimate desire of the Douma
to know the names of those persons who controlled this organization,
guaranteed its impunity, had a magic influence on the minds of
police and other government officials, and even made it possible to
secure promotions and rewards for those among them who showed the
greatest activity. The examples of such rewards I am not able to
remember, as also some other details of all this affair. At present
I have to speak without notes and without preparation and
reluctantly omit many things. Besides I have already exhausted your
attention. [Numerous cries, Go on, we beg you.]
It is time to pass to the inferences of all that I have said. The
first inference is this: That the explanation of the minister of the
interior does not give us any serious guaranty with regard to the
stopping of the work of organizations which prepare wholesale
massacres and induce government officials to take part in their
work. Yes; and that it quite intelligible; the chief organizers and
instigators are outside the sphere of the activity of the ministry,
and they can be altogether indifferent as to whether the minister of
the interior may observe a benevolent neutrality toward them, or
whether he may make some public declaration condemning their work.
More than that, I affirm that no ministry, not even one taken from
the body of the Imperial Douma, will be able to establish order in
the country while persons who stand apart behind an impenetrable
barrier can lay rough hands on separate parts of the government
machine—sharpening their political ignorance by experiments on
living organisms engaged in a kind of political vivisection. [Loud
applause.]
A second inference is still more painful. It concerns the Imperial
Douma itself. Representatives of the people, we have brought here
from every corner of Russia, not only indignation and complaints,
but also ardent desire for work, self-devotion, and real, pure
patriotism. Here among us are many persons who live by incomes from
estates, but have you heard a single expression from them directed
against the plan of compulsory expropriation of land in the
interests of the working tiller of the soil? There are many of us
here who belong to the privileged classes, yet has anything been
said on our side against the abolition of privileges, against the
idea of civil equality, or against reform in a broad national and
democratic spirit? And has not this so-called revolutionary Douma
from the very beginning of its work and to the time at which I speak
endeavored to solicitously raise the prestige of the Czar’s crown,
to put it above common political scandals, above our mistakes, and
keep it from all responsibility for those mistakes? One might as
well say, what other kind of Douma should we want at a time when the
hour has come for pressing and inevitable reforms than such a one as
has been capable of making private interests and class contentions
yield to the triumph of the single welfare of the nation and of the
Empire? [Vigorous and prolonged applause.] And yet, all the time we
all feel that those dark forces are arming against us; that they
hedge off from us the sovereign power and undermine its confidence
in us. They do not allow our work to proceed in that harmony with
the sovereign power which, by the law that has established our new
order of government, is the essential condition of success and the
pledge of a peaceful development and of the life of our State. It is
here that we discover a great danger, and it will not vanish while
the affairs of the administration and the destiny of the country are
under the influence of men who are by education sergeants and
policemen, and by conviction Organizers of massacre.” [Loud and
prolonged applause from all sides; shouts of “Resign.”]
