Translated material
Unread Manifesto
The history of Russia could have been completely different
A hundred years ago, the Manifesto of October 17, 1905 was promulgated - a document that there is reason to consider the first Russian constitution. The historian Olga EDELMAN talks with the historian, researcher of socio-political thought in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, Modest KOLEROV, about the perception of this state act by the society of that time, the significance of the Manifesto in the history of our country and its unrealized potential.- The Manifesto of October 17 is spoken of as the first constitution. On the other hand, he did not play the role required by this constitution. Does this mean there was something wrong with it, some kind of defect? In the Manifesto, in society, in the situation?
-- When the Manifesto was released on October 17, the problem was actively discussed in society: should this Manifesto, which really granted the country basic civil liberties, including property, human rights, the foundations of parliamentarism, be considered a constitution? And as a result, as one might assume, public opinion would be reassured by the recognition that the Manifesto of October 17 lays the foundations of the constitutional order, but does not create a mechanism for its functioning. That is, from a fundamental point of view, this is a constitution; from the point of view of the state system, the Manifesto does not create a constitutional monarchy.
But revolutionary events developed in parallel. The manifesto was a product of the revolutionary crisis, and growing radicalization washed away the understanding of what it really gave to the country in the public consciousness. 90% of the political forces operating in Russia at that time, from right to left, were to blame for radicalization, since only political forces that were insignificant in the electoral sense, those that aspired to be liberal centrists, were satisfied with this Manifesto. The same Cadets, socialists on the one hand and monarchists on the other, perceived the Manifesto as something that needed to be overcome. And either return to the “national foundations”, or complete the constitution to the utopia that they promised their voters. The state, the government headed by Stolypin, responsible political forces tried, and in many ways successfully tried, to preserve the meaning of the Manifesto, to implement it in the activities of the State Duma, the State Council, in creating a dialogue between the government and society, etc. But the First Duma, elected according to a certain order at that time, turned out to be so peasant-radical that it was very quickly dissolved. Because, as we well remember from our own experience, during the Supreme Council of the RSFSR during Gorbachev’s time, it was least concerned with solving pressing problems, and most of all was concerned with declarations (although they were also necessary). This declarativeness of the State Duma and, more broadly speaking, the declarativeness of how society perceived and applied the foundations of the constitutional order, gutted from within the opportunities that the foundations of the constitutional order provided for evolutionary development. Actually, this is the basic experience, the main conclusion from the revolution of 1905, which was made by the most responsible representatives of the intelligentsia and which was presented in the classic collection “Vekhi”. At a time when the decades-long struggle of society for freedom was largely crowned with success, when there was a desire of the government to meet society halfway, there was a national crisis, when all this forced the state to create the foundations of a constitutional system, society in its utopian, anti-state, irresponsible emotions was not satisfied with this, and began to destroy even what was barely created. Destroy not in the name of building something intelligible and responsible, but in the name of another utopian feature. And this only drove the country into crisis.
— Did the government also bear its share of responsibility for this crisis?
-- Undoubtedly. Any government is not consolidated; even in a non-free state, the government is a compromise between clans, factions, etc. Therefore, responsible administrators, such as first S.Yu. Witte, then P.A. Stolypin, who, of course, were not excessive liberals, but as technocrats understood the inevitability of reforms, very often found themselves in the minority within the ruling class. The ruling class often does not see the fullness of life, the fullness of responsibility behind departmental interests and political emotions, and in every possible way opposes overripe reforms, which only strong figures could push through and defend before the tsar. Well, the tsar was known as a weak person, a double-minded person, inconsistent and, in fact, inadequate. In general, in this situation, horror seizes at the thought of what should have actually been in the heart of the same Stolypin. What is it like to understand the weakness of the power vertical, to understand that only punitive measures can stop the unrest in the peasantry, which has already begun the “black redistribution”, and calm the outbreak of interethnic conflicts; to keep the economically bankrupt nobility from counter-revolution... A bunch of problems that, by the way, the leader of France, General Charles de Gaulle, also faced in the 1950s. This is the problem of a responsible authoritarian leader who cannot afford to become completely authoritarian for the sake of the development of his country, because he himself must create a feedback mechanism, checks and balances. And at the same time, he is forced to use his authoritarian capital in order to keep his own supporters from narrow-mindedness, from narrow-mindedness, from the desire to “drag and not let go.” Such a leader often finds himself isolated. Society, like a teenager, demands more and more, unable to bear responsibility even for what it has in its hands; the old government ceases to understand anything at all and perceives any movement as a betrayal of ideals, remains isolated, not really managing anything, but continues to insist on a repressive punitive scenario - to suppress everything, to “freeze Russia.” Such leaders are generally tragic figures. Witte, as you know, had a reputation not only as a strong administrator, but also as a dishonest administrator. Stolypin deserved to be defined not only as a person who stands for “great Russia against great upheavals,” but also received from one of the most moderate leaders of the liberal opposition, Rodichev, the brand of a hangman, the inventor of “Stolypin ties,” i.e. gallows Trouble, in short.
I specifically analyzed the Manifesto of October 17 in the context of the programs of political parties of that time and I can say that the Manifesto written by Witte, from the point of view of a solid, comprehensive, systemic view of society, of the rights that must be provided to society, is head and shoulders above his contemporary programs not only of radical socialists, but even of the Cadets, who did not have a problem at all: what should be the economic basis of civil freedom, i.e. own? For them it was always an abstract conversation. It turns out that the “royal satraps,” the royal dignitaries, in their approach to society turned out to be much more prosperous than the sworn (as we now say, democratic) opposition.
— By the way, I am struck by reading documents on the history of the revolutionary movement by the fact that the gendarmerie papers turn out to be written in normal human language, with some human understanding of the opponents, but the revolutionary self-awareness is completely insane.
- Revolutionary self-awareness could be constructive if revolutionaries were not ashamed to really comprehend what is happening to them. If only they would honestly admit to themselves that mutual informing, mutual suppression of freedom of thought, and clannishness flourish in their revolutionary movement. I'm not even talking about unscrupulous deeds, the completely humiliating dictates of the so-called authorities over the party masses, etc. All these horrors that illustrate Koestler’s famous formula “there are only rats in the underground.” If they had the courage to analyze all this, they would not use the language of cheap propaganda. By the way, the Vekhi people who had the courage to analyze revolutionary values were subjected to general ostracism.
— A question that interests me, although it is stupid and not within the competence of historical science. There is a concept that by that time the empire was already doomed, the state and society were sliding into the abyss and nothing could be done about it, because the mechanism had already started.
- All the talk about how something was doomed because a mechanism was set in motion, talk that happens after the fact, is like wit on the stairs. Does it take a lot of intelligence to say that if something happened in history, then this is a purely historical pattern? This is primitive, school, antediluvian, not even Marxism, but economic materialism. Because even Marxism, in the well-known analyzes of Marx and Engels, is head and shoulders above any predetermination, any primitive pattern, it always leaves room for courage, the will of the political class and leaders to keep the country (or party) from disaster, on the brink of disaster. If something happened, it means that one of the factors, maybe not even the most important one, prevailed. I often recall the elementary electoral statistics presented at the only free elections in old and Soviet Russia - in December 1917 to the Constituent Assembly. In these elections the Bolsheviks received 25% of the votes. And after a year and a half or two, we finally won. And the Socialist Revolutionaries got 50% because the peasant masses voted for them. The Bolsheviks were 300 thousand party members, and the Socialist Revolutionaries were a million. So, is this 25% more important than the rest as a factor? Here other factors come into force: the fact that the Bolsheviks held on to urban centers, to which the most populated regions adjoined, they were strong in central Russia, they had railway communications in their hands, etc. There are many factors, and it is primitive to say that the empire was doomed based only on the position of power and elites. Nothing in history is ever predetermined. And this is not cheap variability, but space for political will. In the spring of 1918, when the coup had already taken place and famine had set in in Petrograd, the famous socialist economist Sergei Nikolaevich Prokopovich analyzed the city's food supply. And it turned out that as long as the structures of the Provisional Government operated in the capital by inertia (and they, despite the change of power, operated until the beginning of 1918), the city more or less coped with the food supply. But as soon as the war communism of the Bolsheviks covered up these remnants of the current administration, then famine began. It turns out that the Provisional Government, having in its hands the mechanisms of food supply and having the economic basis of power, was unable to cope with the political problem of protecting the state. And having lost politically, they were unable to realize their economic opportunities.
We can say that the empire could not provide an outlet for the energy of socially mobile people. But during the years of the First World War, if I am not mistaken, the so-called wartime officers, who were recruited not from the nobility, but from the ordinary middle class, peasant sons, workers, students, those who did not even constitute the middle class, but were simply socially up to one hundred thousand people became mobile. These are the same “tsarist officers”, of whom there were only 170 thousand in 1917. These are the people who succeeded, they got a way out, and became officers. But they were not satisfied with this, they formed the backbone of the revolution, and in 1918, when the white and red cadres of the Civil War began to form, these 170 thousand split. By the end of 1918, it was one hundred thousand officers who joined the Red Army; it was they who formed the personnel backbone of the army, which later defeated everyone. And the remaining 70 thousand partly fled, and partly joined the heroic White movement. That is, therefore, the very possibility of social mobility is not yet sufficient to stabilize society. There is a huge inertia of social grievances. The peasant “black redistribution” of the summer of 1917 was, as we know, a step backward, it was predatory and gave the peasantry the opportunity to structure itself from the point of view of economic efficiency only by the beginning of the 1920s, when, after war communism, after surplus appropriation, economically efficient kulaks, middle peasants, etc. That is, only many years after this primitive division and robbery were people able to realize their economic opportunities. Although the military crisis, which was the result of political events, the pre-war history of the Anglo-Russian and Anglo-French alliances, as is known, stimulated a national crisis, which led to the fall of the monarchy, to the revolution, it did not make it predetermined. It was not yet foreseen either in 1910, or in 1913, 1914, 1915. We can say after the fact that in 1915 there were mistakes in military planning, and highly respected industrialists - Putilov, Guchkov and others - stole money and did not fulfill military orders, thereby undermining defense capability, but this does not mean at all that in 1917 there should something was going to happen. Even if all these Lenins, who were in exile in 1917, received the message with great surprise that a revolution had happened. This revolution was not made by the working masses. It is becoming increasingly clear that the February Revolution was planned, stimulated and carried out by a military-oligarchic conspiracy.
-- That is?
- Duma liberal figures, military industrialists, part of the high command, part of trade unionists, a number of intelligent Masonic circles, even part of the Social Democrats.
- Masons in the literal sense?
- Yes. But the Freemasons would not have done anything without the military-industrial conspiracy. These were the Zemsky and City Unions, military-industrial committees, they purposefully moved towards the overthrow of Nicholas II, trying to seize power. The infrastructure that grew materially from supplying the army, in the rear of the army, successfully spread its tentacles around the monarch. But they didn’t even think about how they would maintain this power. The most interesting manifestation of their blindness was that when in the summer of 1917 it turned out that Ukraine was actually leaving their control and was rapidly becoming autonomous, they had not only no mechanism for reacting to this, but even a mechanism for describing what was happening in Ukraine , in the Caucasus, in Finland, and in other national regions. They did not even have a language to describe these processes, there were no concepts for this. And by the end of 1917, their actual zone of geographic control was minimal. The Bolsheviks, in fact, carried out a coup in the rest of the country. Then there was not only a Civil War, but also a war with the newly formed quasi-states - Don, Kuban, etc. The question arises: what did this military-industrial oligarchic group, striving for power, hope for? It turns out that in their blind illusion they thought that in order to carry out a coup, it was enough to simply break off the head, and the rest of the state infrastructure would supposedly march in orderly rows at their command! This is utter stupidity, characteristic of all conspirators. Because once you break the top, everything breaks. The entire state. And if a state stands with a broken top, then it is no longer a state, but... a territory.
-- Returning to the Manifesto of October 17. Can we say that its appearance was one of the steps that prevented such a development of the crisis in 1905?
- Yes. Undoubtedly. Because in 1905 the Bolsheviks, who called for the Moscow uprising on Presnya, did so in an unscrupulous desire to push the revolution further. While society had not yet even had time to digest and master the new opportunities that were created by the Manifesto and the announced procedure for elections to the State Duma, which clearly provided an outlet for social energy, including the peasantry. And the Moscow uprising is typical Chegevar radicalism. Which lost because, firstly, it developed separately from the peasant movement, and secondly, separately from the liberal opposition and society. But in 1917, in its delirium, the liberal oligarchic opposition, which also used the labor movement, carried out the February coup, and everything fell apart. That is, it turns out that the radicals did not achieve it in 1905, but the oligarchs achieved it in February 1917.
—And the radicals came to power because the oligarchs tried to use them?
- Yes. They wouldn't have succeeded on their own.