The Puppet Show of Memory

by Maurice Baring

In May I went to St. Petersburg for the opening of the Duma, and I stayed there till the Duma was dissolved in July.

The brief life of the first Duma was an extraordinarily interesting spectacle to watch. The Duma met in the beautiful Taurid palace that Catherine the Second built for Potemkin. In the lobby, which was a large Louis XV. ballroom, members and visitors used to flock in crowds, smoke cigarettes, and throw away the ashes and the ends on to the parquet floor. There were peasant members in their long black coats, some of them wearing crosses and medals; Popes, Tartars, Poles, men in every kind of dress except uniform.

There was an air of intimacy, ease, and familiarity about the whole proceedings. The speeches were eloquent, but no signs of political experience or statesmanlike action were to be discerned.

I got to know a great many of the members: Aladin, who was looked upon as a violent firebrand, and the star of the Left; Milioukov, the leader of the Kadets, who was well known as a journalist and a professor; Kovolievsky, also a well-known writer and professor, a large, genial, comfortable man with an embracing manner and a great warmth of welcome, and a rich, flowing vocabulary.

The peasants liked him and he was the only politician whom they trusted. They sent him a deputation to inform him that whenever he stood up to vote they intended to stand up in a body, and whenever he remained seated they would remain seated too. I also knew many peasant members.

The proceedings of the Duma resulted in a deadlock between it and the Government from the very first moment it met. It soon became obvious that the Government must either dissolve the Duma or form a Ministry taken from the Duma, that is to say, from the opposition. The question was, if they did not wish to do that, would the country stand a dissolution or would there be a revolution? The crucial question of the hour was, should the Government appoint a Kadet Ministry, consisting of Liberals belonging to the Constitutional Democratic party who formed the great majority of the Duma, or should they dissolve the Duma? There was no third course possible. I thought at the time that events would move more quickly than they did. I thought if the Duma were dissolved, not only disorder but immediate, open, and universal revolution would follow.

The army was shaky. Non-commissioned officers of the Guards regiments were in touch with the Labour members of the Duma, and their conversations, at which I sometimes assisted, were not reassuring. My impression from these conversations and from all the talks I had with the peasants and Labour members was that revolution, if and when it did come, would be a terrible thing, and I thought it might quite likely come at once. Mutinies had occurred in more than sixty regiments; a regiment of Guards, the Emperor’s own regiment, had revolted in St. Petersburg. I thought the dissolution would be the signal for an immediate outbreak of some kind. I knew nothing decisive could happen till the army turned. I thought the army might turn, or turn sufficiently to give the Liberal leaders the upper hand. I was mistaken.

At the end of July 1906 the Government was vacillating; they were on the verge of capitulation, and within an ace of forming a Kadet Ministry. I think they were only prevented from doing so by the appearance on the scene of P. A. Stolypin. As soon as Stolypin made his first speech in the Duma, two things were clear: he was not afraid of opposition; he was determined not to give in. He was going to fight the Duma; and if necessary he would not shrink from dissolving it, and risking the consequences. At the end of July, Stolypin strongly urged dissolution. He argued that if the Kadets came into power they would not remain in office a week, but would be at the mercy of the Extremists, and at once replaced by the Extreme Left, and swept away by an inrush of unripe and inexperienced Social Democrats who hated the Liberals more bitterly than they hated the Government. There would then, he thought, be no possibility of building a dam or barrier against the tide of revolution, and the country would be plunged in anarchy. Judging from what occurred in 1917, Stolypin’s forecast was correct. For this is precisely what happened then. The Liberals were at once turned out of office, and replaced first by Kerensky and then by Lenin. The pendulum swung as far to the left as it could go, and this is just what Stolypin anticipated and feared in 1906.

But many people in responsible positions (including General Trepov) were advocating the formation of a Kadet Ministry; and had the Kadets had any leaders of character, experience, and strength of purpose, the counsel would perhaps have been a sound one.

At the time I thought the only means of avoiding a civil war would be to create and support a strong Liberal Ministry. The objection to this was, there was no such thing available. What happened was that Stolypin’s advice was listened to. The Duma was dissolved and no revolution followed. The army did not turn; the moderate Liberals capitulated without a fight. They took the dissolution lying down; all they did was to go to Finland and sign a protest, which had no effect on the situation. It merely gave the Government a pretext for disenfranchising certain of their leading members.