Stolypin as utopia

Recently, a significant event happened - modern Russian “reformation” found a new object to follow, and its ideal began to match the Russian coat of arms double -headed. On the one hand, Emperor Alexander II strictly looks at us-“Liberator”, and on the other, even more stringe-Prime Minister Peter Stolypin, sorry, “The hanger” ...

The tandem dismantled the ideals by the rank: the emperor - the emperorovo, the premiere - the premiere. In this, it would seem, natural sovereignty of symbols there is some kind of mysticism, which is very difficult to figure out.

It is also noteworthy that in the field of ideology, Putin copies Medvedev, although, it would seem, it should have been the other way around.

At first, Putin stated that ten years only talks about modernization, reforms and changes. Then, at the White House, they started their own Incor, calling it an agency of strategic development. Finally, the head of the government looked at himself and the suitable sign figure of the reformer. Just a few months after Medvedev spoke in St. Petersburg with a program speech about the emperor-reformer, Putin honored an unbending prime minister and invited the government to slant a monument.

All this makes the excitement around a powerful, but far from unambiguous figure of Stolypin with an intriguing phenomenon. There is no time for archival disputes about the matters of the long time.

The “showdown” between Stolypin and Alexander is the real political struggle today, where the field of history once again has become the theater of military operations.

Stolypin in history was not lucky twice. At first he was undeservedly lowered into the historical underworld, and then also undeservedly ascended to historical heaven. As a result, the real politician who walked on the ground has practically evaporated, turning into a set of myths.

It would be strange not to pay tribute to Stolypin as one of the most powerful administrators in the history of Russia. Less convincing Stolypin looks like a politician.

Of course, under the leadership of Stolypin, one of the most grandiose plans for the transformation of Russian society was developed. Moreover, he himself took up the implementation of this plan with an extremely rare energy and perseverance for Russia. Finally, he led an open public polemic with the opponents of his plan, leaving the descendants with a huge material for study.

However, unfortunately, the study of the Stolypinsky heritage, including the grandiose plan itself, has more theoretically academic than practically political significance. The fact is that

This plan was a great utopia, not yet about Russia that we have lost, but already about Russia, which will never be.

The condition for the realization of his great plan Stolypin made the preservation of stability at all costs. That is, society was supposed to freeze, stop developing within the framework of the trend that was outlined many decades before the birth of the reformer, and dutifully give itself the opportunity to transform itself.

"Give me twenty years!" - How many people in history could pronounce this. How many revolutions the planet would have been missing if politicians had these twenty years. How many great social, economic and political creations of mankind would be born if the smart and strong -willed ruler would be given these twenty years at the request. However, this does not relieve responsibility with those who, unlike Stolypin, had these ten, twenty and even thirty years, and did nothing ....

No twenty years, as it became clear later, and even twenty months, Stolypin did not have and could not. It was impossible to “freeze” society with any reagents, it changed by itself, and very quickly, obeying its own internal impulses. Thus,

The entire Stolypin plan - both smart and impressive, worked only on condition of the presence of a constant that did not exist - to preserve political stability.

And this is the main difference between Stolypin’s plan and Alexander reforms.

The emperor built his policy, focusing on the dynamics of changes in real society (he, in the end, did not fit into it - but this is another question). Stolypin intended to register the society itself inside his plans. This can be dreamed of, but this is impossible to fulfill.

One of the reasons for the difference in the approaches to the reform of society was that, oddly enough, Stolypin was much closer to old Russian society, which resisted the changes than Emperor Alexander. Alexander began changes in society with restrictions on state arbitrariness. Stolypin wanted to rely on state arbitrariness as a tool for changing society.

Those twenty years of the stability that Stolypin dreamed about and which his admirers have so idolized today should have remained for twenty years of unprecedented, epic corruption, moral decay, not stopping for a second of hidden civil war, plundering state money, bureaucracy and widespread sloppiness. For this is the price of stability. Anyone who does not agree with this, let him recall the history of Rasputinism, turn over the sad pages of the Russian-Japanese war. Who knows in what form Russia would be in these twenty years and what would actually give the implementation of a grandiose plan in such a moral atmosphere.

Paradoxically, Stolypin did not feel a special threat from this side - and precisely because he himself was completely organic in this culture of arbitrariness.

He did not feel her viciousness, but, on the contrary, was not averse to taking advantage of the benefits that follow from it.

Among the many assessments that were given the activities of Stolypin as the Prime Minister, the one that his predecessor Sergei Witte, the man to whom the Stolypin government owed even those few years of stability that the story released, also deserves special attention. Because Witte before the resignation itself not only stabilized the forever shaken Russian finances, but also overpecked the Russian loan, providing the Stolypin government for several years (in this sense, he became for Stolypin the same as Kudrin with his reserve funds - for Putin during the crisis).

Of course, Witte is subjective, but this does not mean that from his assessments it is possible to dismiss: “If a collection of his speeches (Stolypin is the author ) is ever published in the first, second and third Duma, then every reader will think - what a liberal statesman, and at the same time no one executed so much in the most ugly way, like he is Stolypin, and accompanying everything with the most liberal speeches and tins. Truly, an honest phrase ...

When Goremykin left, and he became the chairman of the Council of Ministers, I was sincerely glad to do this in the foreign newspaper (I was abroad at that time) expressed that this was an excellent purpose, but then every month I was more and more disappointed in it.

That he was a little book-educated person, without any state experience and a person of medium mental qualities and medium talent, I knew this and did not expect anything else, but I did not expect him to be so insincere, false, unprincipled and, as a result, he was his personal convenience and his personal well-being, and especially the well-being of his family and his many relatives, set his goal of his goal. premiere. "

We can say that Stolypin was a man of the past. And we can say that he is very modern (just Russia made another zigzag, being in his rear). Today, Stolypin would be spoke simply as a “conceptual” person.

He was part of the society that was going to transform. Therefore, he wanted great transformations without great changes (shocks). And this was utopia.

The plan was good, no words. And the personality of Stolypin is colorful. He rises like a giant, like a real man over the bouncer of the faceless leaders of his time. But his rule became lost by time for Russia, because, making a million secondary things, he did not give answers to the main moral questions that were worried about millions of Russian people. And his people, in the end, stopped hearing.

The choice of Stolypin as a political ideal is a risky undertaking. The contrast of Stolypin Alexander is an even more dubious action. In fact, people are offered to choose between loose reality and hard utopia. Often, people under such conditions vote for strict reality.

However, both Stolypin and Alexander - both did not finish well. Like Russian reforms, by the way.