Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR. Tsarist ministers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs - princes, presidents of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, gifted sculptors Minister of the Interior since 1904
On April 8 (20), 1846, in the city of Meshchovsk, Kaluga province, into a noble family of Russified Orthodox Germans, Vyacheslav Konstantinovich Pleve, State Secretary of His Imperial Majesty, Senator, Actual Privy Councilor, State Secretary (1894-1902) Minister of Internal Affairs (1902- 1904).
Vyacheslav Konstantinovich's father, State Councilor Konstantin Grigorievich von Plehve, until 1851 worked as a history and geography teacher at the Meshchovsky district school, his mother, Elizaveta Mikhailovna Shamaeva, came from Kaluga noblemen.
Since 1851, Vyacheslav Pleve with his family lived in Warsaw, studied at the Warsaw gymnasium, then graduated from the Kaluga Nikolaev gymnasium with a gold medal, and in 1867, after graduating from the law faculty of Moscow University, received a candidate of law degree.
Plehve's official career began in the department of the Ministry of Justice, where he served for almost a decade and a half, going from a comrade (deputy) prosecutor of provincial courts to prosecutor of the Petersburg Court of Justice. Acting as the capital's prosecutor, Plehve became personally known to Alexander II. By imperial command, he reported to the emperor all the details on the progress of the investigative proceedings in cases of state crimes. It was Alexander II who drew the attention of the Minister of Internal Affairs M. T. Loris-Melikov on Plehvo, who had an exceptional memory and capacity for work. Participation in the investigation of the attempt on the life of Alexander II, committed by Stepan Khalturin in 1880, allowed Plehve to meet the heir-Tsarevich, who noted the professionalism and phenomenal memory of the young prosecutor.
In the spring of 1880, with the assignment of the rank of state councilor, Vyacheslav Konstantinovich was approved in the position held by the prosecutor of the Petersburg judicial chamber. From March to April 7 (19), 1881, Plehve acted as prosecutor in the Special Presence of the Governing Senate "for judging cases of state crimes and in the proceedings of the atrocity on March 1" (the murder of Emperor Alexander I I). In April 1881, Plehve was appointed director of the State Police Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and from May 1881 - a member of the Commission for drawing up a regulation on state protection. From the first days of his leadership of the State Police Department, Plehve was actively involved in the fight against the terrorist organization "Narodnaya Volya". He considered it necessary to oppose the revolutionary movement with "a similar spiritual force - the force of the religious and moral re-education of our intelligentsia." He proposed to achieve this by introducing "strict social discipline in all areas of people's life that are accessible to the control of the state." Together with Lieutenant Colonel G.P. Sudeikin, he developed a system of secret agent work within revolutionary organizations. In May 1881, Plehve took part in the work of the Commission for the preparation of the Statute on State Protection. In 1884 he became a senator, and a year later - Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs. Vyacheslav Konstantinovich directed the work of the commissions for revising the Charter on the factory and factory industry, for drawing up the Regulation on the management of the steppe regions, for considering the issue of foreigners, etc., supported the introduction of the institute of zemstvo chiefs, led the development of the law on resettlement (1889). In 1892 Plehve was a clerk member of the Special Committee for Aid the Famine.
In 1894, Vyacheslav Konstantinovich became Secretary of State and Chief Executive Officer of the Codification Unit under the State Council, participated in the Special Meeting on the Affairs of the Nobility.
In August 1899, Plehve was appointed Secretary of State for the Grand Duchy of Finland. In this position, Vyacheslav Konstantinovich was an energetic supporter of Russification and the unification of the Grand Duchy with the empire. With his active participation, a new charter on military service in Finland was drawn up, a manifesto was issued on the introduction of the Russian language into the office work of the Senate and administrative institutions of the region, the influence of the governor-general on the decision of the affairs of the Senate was increased.
In April 1902, after the assassination of DS Sipyagin, Plehve was appointed Minister of the Interior and Chief of the Gendarme Corps. In this post, he consistently pursued a tough policy towards opposition and revolutionary movements. With the arrival of Plehve, the role of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in determining the general political course began to increase to the detriment of the influence of the Minister of Finance S. Yu. Witte. Plehve sharply criticized the peasant reform that was being prepared by Witte, having developed her own plan, in which the emphasis was on farm land tenure. The project provided for non-economic measures to protect landowners 'land tenure, including a legislative ban on the Peasant Bank's operations to buy landowners' land in almost the entire territory of European Russia. Plehve was a supporter of the strengthening of state power in the provinces, the initiator of the dispersal of some of the most opposition-minded zemstvos. In the central department, he merged all the departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in charge of zemstvo and city affairs into the Main Directorate for Local Economy Affairs. Under him, projects of reforms were developed: provincial, peasant legislation, local self-government, etc. In the Jewish question, Plehve advocated a softening of the regime of restrictions, at the same time strongly opposed their complete abolition. He also supported the intensification of Russian expansionist policies in the Far East and Manchuria, believing that the military conflict would defuse internal political tensions in the country.
On July 15 (28), 1904, in St. Petersburg, on Izmailovsky Avenue, Plehve was killed by a bomb thrown into his carriage by the Socialist-Revolutionary Yegor Sozonov.
Pleve Vyacheslav Konstantinovich- Russian statesman, born April 20 in 1846 in Meshchovsk, Kaluga province. Vyacheslav was the only son of the teacher Elizaveta Mikhailovna Shamaeva and Konstantin Grigorievich Pleve. His father, a nobleman, taught at the school.
From 1851 he lived with his parents in Warsaw, where he studied at the gymnasium. In 1863 he took part in the maintenance of order on the streets during the Polish uprising of 1863-1864. In 1863, Plehve was sent by his parents to Kaluga, where he graduated from the gymnasium course with a gold medal. In 1867, he graduated from the course at St. Petersburg University with a candidate of law degree and entered the service of the judicial department, remaining in it until 1881. He held the positions of assistant prosecutor at the Vladimir and Tula district courts, prosecutor in Vologda, assistant prosecutor of the judicial chamber in Warsaw. In 1879, Plehve was appointed prosecutor of the Petersburg Court of Justice. Alexander II noticed a capable young man and pointed him out to the Minister of Internal Affairs M. T. Loris-Melikov.
Count M.T. Loris-Melikov. 1888 Art. I.K. Aivazovsky.
In 1881, Plehve was appointed acting prosecutor in the Special Presence of the Senate to handle cases of state crimes and the atrocity of March 1 (murder of Alexander II). In the same year, 1881, Plehve was appointed director of the police department. Plehve considered it necessary to oppose the revolutionary movement "A similar spiritual force - the force of the religious and moral re-education of our intelligentsia", was a supporter of the introduction "Strict social discipline in all areas of popular life that are accessible to the control of the state"... He carried out energetic and successful actions to defeat the Narodnaya Volya organization, he developed a system of provocative actions that did not know such a scale in Russia, for the first time introduced the idea of double agents, etc. state protection. In 1884 Plehve became a senator. And in 1885 he took up the post of Comrade (Deputy) Minister of Internal Affairs. In 1894 he was appointed Secretary of State and Chief Executive Officer of the Codification Section under the Council of State.
On August 17, 1899, he was appointed to correct the post of Minister - State Secretary of the Grand Duchy of Finland, with the retirement of State Secretary; served as chairman of the Commission to discuss issues of changing the establishment of the Finnish Senate. Pursued a policy of Russification of Finland. With his active participation, a new Charter on military service in Finland was drawn up, a manifesto was issued on the introduction of the Russian language into the office work of the Senate and administrative institutions of the region, the influence of the governor-general on the decisions of the local Senate was strengthened.
Emperor Alexander II
In 1902, after the assassination of the Minister of Internal Affairs D. Ye. Sipyagin by the Socialist-Revolutionary S. Balmashev, Vyacheslav Pleve was appointed to this position. Plehve intensified his agent work against the participants in the revolutionary movement, significantly strengthened the role of the heads of security departments, endowing them with administrative rights. Plehve emphasized the disintegration of revolutionary movements from within, for which he widely supported the practice of introducing police agents and provocateurs into Social Democratic and Socialist-Revolutionary organizations. Plehve intensified repressions, supported Jewish pogroms, and sent punitive detachments against peasant uprisings. Vyacheslav Plehve was a supporter of the war with Japan, believing that the quick victory achieved would cause a patriotic upsurge in the state, as a result of which it would be easier to deal with the revolutionary movement.
Under him, peasant uprisings in the Podolsk and Kharkov provinces were suppressed. On May 30, 1902, according to Plehve's report, the "Imperial order to stop the collection of statistical information by the zemstvos of twelve provinces in 1902 and to apply this measure in individual rural areas of the remaining zemstvo provinces at the discretion of the governors" was issued. He took measures to restrict the activities of local committees on the needs of the agricultural industry; in November of the same 1902, by his order, the Voronezh district committee was closed, "... for the harsh judgments of its members"; some of them were subjected to administrative repression. In 1903, the zemstvo institutions of the Moscow, Vyatka, Kursk and Tver provinces were subjected to an administrative audit. By the highest order on January 8, 1904, the Minister of Internal Affairs and the Tver governor were granted extraordinary powers in relation to the Tver provincial and Novotorzhsky district zemstvos. Constraining the activities of zemstvos, especially provincial ones, Plehve was an ardent advocate of strengthening the governor's power.
Minister of Internal Affairs D. E. Sipyagin
He was a member of the first monarchist organization in Russia - the Russian Assembly, which he himself almost closed on a denunciation.
In May 1903, the law established the institution of the district police guard, replacing the rural police.
Plehve understood the inadequacy of repressive measures alone in the fight against the growing general discontent, but the manifesto published with his close participation on February 26, 1903 did not and could not have any practical consequences, except for the abolition of mutual responsibility (among the peasantry).
From the memoirs of contemporaries: "He read a lot, observed and thought and, to my great pleasure, turned out to be very well-read in the works of ... Saltykov-Shchedrin" - Academician Yanzhul, Ivan Ivanovich.
According to the memoirs of S.Yu. Witte, a former political rival of Plehve, Plehve spoke about the Russo-Japanese war: “ We need a small victorious war to keep Russia from revolution". This phrase attributed to Plehve was first published in the book The Exodus of the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Government of Nosar, published under the pseudonym A. Morskaya (pseudonym of V.I. Contemporaries considered this book inspired or even written by Witte himself. Then the same phrase appeared in Witte's posthumously published memoirs.
For his service he was awarded a number of the highest Russian orders, up to and including the Order of St. Alexander Nevsky.
Repin I.E. Portrait of S. Yu. Witte, Minister of Finance. 1903
On July 28, 1904, in St. Petersburg, near the Varshavsky railway station, he was killed by a student, Socialist-Revolutionary Yegor Sazonov, who threw a bomb into his carriage.
All attempts on the life of the Minister of Internal Affairs V.K. Plehve, who took this post after Sipyagin, was five.
1. The assassination attempt on March 18 was attended by: Maximilian Schweitzer - loaded the bomb and handed it over to the throwers; they stood as throwers: Alexey Pokatilov with two bombs - on the Fontanka embankment, Borishansky also with two bombs - closer to the Neva and Yegor Sazonov, disguised as a cabman - with a bomb under the apron of the flight - at the entrance of the department. The signalmen were Ivan Kalyaev and another cabman Matseevsky. Boris Savinkov led the assassination attempt.
2. The assassination attempt on March 25: the bombs were prepared by Pokatilov. He and Borishansky, disguised as peddlers, went out with shells towards Plehve along the embankments of the Neva and Fontanka, to the building of the Police Department. Sazonov took only an indirect part in the assassination attempt, there were no other terrorists in St. Petersburg.
3. The attempt on April 1 did not take place, because the night before in the hotel Pokatilov, preparing a bomb, died from an explosion.
4. Schweitzer, who lived in a hotel with an English passport, prepared bombs for the 8 July assassination attempt. The metalworkers were: Sazonov, dressed in a jacket of a railway employee, Borishansky and Leiba Sikorsky in raincoats of a marine pattern. Cab drivers: Yegor Dulebov and Matseevsky.
5. On July 15, the same ones participated in the same order. 7,000 rubles were allocated for the murder of Plehve. Big money at that time.
The area near the Warsaw station. Remains of the minister's carriage. Photo of Karl Bulla, July 28, 1904.
The timing was not the best. An industrial crisis has emerged. Peasant and landlord estates became poorer. Revolutionary propaganda penetrated the student and work environment. Jewish pogroms began in Russia. The foreign press claimed that they were inspired by the Ministry of the Interior. At this time, Plehve wrote to one of the leaders of Zionism, Dr. Herzl:
« As long as Zionism sought to create an independent state in Palestine and organize the eviction of a certain number of Jews from Russia, the Russian government could only treat it favorably; but from the moment Zionism changed its task and directed its activity towards the national unification of all Jewry in Russia, it is natural that the government opposed this new trend of Zionism. The assumption of this would have the consequence of the formation in the state of whole groups of persons completely alien to the general patriotic feeling, and yet it is obvious that it is on this feeling that the strength of any state is based.».
Theodor Herzl (Hebrew Benjamin Zeev)
So, on July 15, 1904, Plehve was killed by the explosion of a bomb thrown by Sazonov. The precautions didn't help. The guards seized Sazonov and Sikorsky. During the first interrogation, Sazonov did not say anything about himself, only said that he pleaded guilty to the murder of Plehve and to belonging to the "Combat Organization" of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. He refused to sign the interrogation protocol, saying that his arm was hurting, "and if it were healthy, I would not have signed the protocol, not wanting to find my handwriting."
Telegrams with signs of an unknown person were sent everywhere; fillers who knew various suspicious people by sight were summoned to St. Petersburg. Time did not work for the police, the terrorist's accomplices could hide abroad. And he himself, wounded, fell into a semi-conscious state, began to delirium. The police department referred to the security department:
“The killer of Art. - secret. Plehve began delirious phenomena, during which he utters fragmentary phrases that may have a factual basis in the past, moreover, he often mentions the names of Peter, Valentin and Nikolai Ilyich, talks about some tavern where they were waiting for someone, and mentions his treatment for a nervous disease in St. Petersburg ... In his delirium, he talks about meetings and meetings outside the city, and also mentions that he was "given a transmission" and that he was somewhere "in the teachings." A gendarme officer was on duty around the clock at Sazonov's bedside and recorded the nonsense. The police hoped to find at least some clue in words.
Egor Sazonov
From telegrams from the director of the Police Department to the head of the Moscow security department:
“The murderer is a conscientious artisan or a rural teacher, apparently from the south, above average height, solid build, blond, reddish, faint traces of smallpox on both cheeks, a crooked nose, a dark blond mustache, Russian face, dressed in a railway uniform, he declares that he belongs to the "Combat Organization" which prepared several unsuccessful assassination attempts; An hour after the event, a Jew was detained on the Neva, who threw a package into the water, and is suspected of complicity. Telegraph if any of the members of the Fighting Organization monitored have gone away, and make an undercover search. "
“According to some information, it can be concluded that the killer was treated in Moscow, perhaps for a nervous illness. Carry out a thorough search according to the signs you have in all medical institutions in Moscow. "
And finally, help. The identity of the terrorist has been established:
“Sazonov Yegor Sergeevich, the son of a merchant, a former student of Moscow University, was born in 1876 in the village of Petrovskoe, Vyatka province, was brought up in the Ufa gymnasium, after which he entered the university, from there he was fired from his second year in 1901 for participating in student riots, on the basis of the highest order, which followed in 1903, for a state crime, he is subject to expulsion to Siberia, under the public supervision of the police for 5 years. Following to the Yakutsk region, the designated place of his placement, Sazonov disappeared into an unknown place. "
,
ministry manager
(1754-1831)
(1783-1865)
(1785-1864)
ministry manager
(1795-1891)
(1792-1856)
(1792-1870)
(1787-1862)
(1815-1890)
(1818-1893)
(1830-1883)
(1825-1888)
(1832-1908)
(1823-1889)
(1834-1903)
(1839-1917)
until February 26 -
ministry manager
(1853-1902)
(1846-1904)
(1857-1914)
(1851-1919)
(1845-1915)
(1862-1911)
(1857-1919)
(1871-1918)
(1868-1943)
(1872-1918)
(1848-1917)
(1857-1922)
(1866-1918)
Ministers of Internal Affairs of the Provisional Government
| Name | Appointment to the post | Resignation from office |
|---|---|---|
| Lvov, Georgy Evgenievich (1861-1925) |
March 15th | July 20 |
| Tsereteli, Irakli Georgievich (1881-1959) |
July 23 | 6 august |
| Avksentiev, Nikolay Dmitrievich (1878-1943) |
August 7 | September 15th |
| Nikitin, Alexey Maksimovich (1876-1939) |
September 15th | 7 november |
White movement
| Name | Appointment to the post | Resignation from office |
|---|---|---|
| Hattenberger, Alexander Nikolaevich (1861-1939) |
7 november | April 29 |
| Pepeliaev, Victor Nikolaevich (1885-1920) |
1st of May | November 22 |
| Cherven-Vodali, Alexander Alexandrovich (1872-1920) |
November 22 | 4 January |
People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the RSFSR
| Name | Appointment to the post | Resignation from office |
|---|---|---|
| Rykov, Alexey Ivanovich (1881-1938) |
8 november | 17 november |
| Petrovsky, Grigory Ivanovich (1878-1958) |
17 november | March 30 |
| Dzerzhinsky, Felix Edmundovich (1877-1926) |
March 30 | 6 july |
| Beloborodov, Alexander Georgievich (1891-1938) |
August 30 | December 3 |
| Tolmachev, Vladimir Nikolaevich (1887-1937) |
January 2 | December 15th |
NKVD (MVD) of the USSR
| Name | Appointment to the post | Resignation from office |
|---|---|---|
| Yagoda, Henrikh Grigorievich (1891-1938) |
10 july | September 25 |
| Ezhov, Nikolay Ivanovich (1895-1940) |
September 26 | 24 november |
| Beria, Lavrenty Pavlovich (1899-1953) |
November 25 | December 30th |
| Kruglov, Sergey Nikiforovich (1907-1977) |
10 january | 5th of March |
| Beria, Lavrenty Pavlovich (1899-1953) |
March 15th | June 26 |
| Kruglov, Sergey Nikiforovich (1907-1977) |
June 26 | January 31 |
| Dudorov, Nikolay Pavlovich (1906-1977) |
March 23rd | 13th of January |
Ministry of Internal Affairs of the RSFSR-RF
Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation
| |
|
|
|---|---|---|
(b. 1944) |
||
(b. 1946) |
||
(b. 1946) |
March 23rd | March 30 |
| Stepashin, Sergei Vadimovich (b. 1952) |
And about. March 30 28 april |
28 april 12 May |
| Vasiliev, Vladimir Abdualievich, and. O. (b. 1949) |
||
(b. 1953) |
May 21st | 28 march |
| Gryzlov, Boris Vyacheslavovich (b. 1950) |
28 march | December 24 |
| Nurgaliev, Rashid Gumarovich (b. 1956) |
And about. December 24 9th of March |
9th of March May 21st |
| Kolokoltsev, Vladimir Alexandrovich (b. 1961) |
from May 21 | Until now |
Write a review on the article "List of Russian Interior Ministers"
Notes (edit)
Links
- on the official website of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation
| ||||||||||||||
Russian Federation (since 1992)Excerpt characterizing the List of Ministers of the Interior of Russia
He touched the horse and, calling the head of the column, Miloradovich, to him, gave him the order to attack.The army stirred again, and two battalions of the Novgorod regiment and a battalion of the Absheron regiment moved forward past the sovereign.
While this Apsheron battalion, ruddy Miloradovich, without an overcoat, in uniform and orders, and with a hat with a huge sultan put on sideways and from the field, was passing by, the march jumped forward and, saluting valiantly, reined in the horse in front of the sovereign.
“With God, General,” the emperor told him.
- Ma foi, sire, nous ferons ce que qui sera dans notre possibilite, sire, [Really, your majesty, we will do what we can do, your majesty,] - he answered cheerfully, nevertheless causing a mocking smile from the gentlemen retinue of the sovereign with their bad French accent.
Miloradovich turned his horse abruptly and stood somewhat behind the sovereign. The people of Absheron, excited by the presence of the sovereign, with a valiant, brisk step, beating a leg, walked past the emperors and their retinue.
- Guys! - shouted in a loud, self-confident and cheerful voice Miloradovich, apparently so excited by the sounds of shooting, the expectation of a battle and the sight of the good fellows of the Absheron people, even their Suvorov comrades, who boldly passed the emperors, that he forgot about the presence of the sovereign. - Guys, this is not your first village to take! He shouted.
- We are glad to try! The soldiers shouted.
The sovereign's horse jumped away from an unexpected cry. This horse, which bore the sovereign at the shows in Russia, here, on the Austerlitz field, carried its rider, withstanding his scattered blows with his left foot, alerted the ears from the sounds of shots, just as it did on the Field of Mars, not understanding the meaning of neither these heard shots, neither the neighborhood of the black stallion of the Emperor Franz, nor all that he said, thought, felt that day the one who rode it.
The Emperor with a smile turned to one of his entourage, pointing at the good fellows of the Apsherons, and said something to him.
Kutuzov, accompanied by his adjutants, followed the carabinieri step by step.
Having driven about half a mile in the tail of the column, he stopped at a lonely abandoned house (probably a former inn) near a fork in two roads. Both roads went downhill, and troops walked on both.
The fog began to disperse, and indefinitely, two miles away, enemy troops could be seen on opposite heights. At the bottom left, the shooting grew louder. Kutuzov stopped talking with the Austrian general. Prince Andrew, standing somewhat behind, peered at them and, wishing to ask the adjutant for a telescope, turned to him.
“Look, look,” said this adjutant, looking not at the distant army, but down the mountain in front of him. - These are the French!
The two generals and adjutants began to grab the pipe, pulling it away from one another. All faces suddenly changed, and horror was expressed on all. The French were supposed to be two miles away from us, but they appeared suddenly, unexpectedly in front of us.
- Is this the enemy? ... No! ... Yes, look, he ... probably ... What is it? - voices were heard.
Prince Andrey with his simple eye saw a thick column of Frenchmen rising to meet the Absheronians below to the right, no more than five hundred paces from the place where Kutuzov stood.
“Here it is, the decisive moment has come! It came to me, ”thought Prince Andrew, and hitting the horse, drove up to Kutuzov. "We must stop the Absherons," he shouted, "your Excellency!" But at the same moment everything was covered with smoke, close shooting was heard, and a naively frightened voice two steps away from Prince Andrey shouted: "Well, brothers, sabbath!" And as if this voice was a command. At that voice, everything started to run.
Mixed, ever-increasing crowds fled back to the place where five minutes ago the troops had passed by the emperors. Not only was it difficult to stop this crowd, but it was impossible not to move back along with the crowd ourselves.
Bolkonsky only tried to keep up with her and looked around, bewildered and unable to understand what was being done in front of him. Nesvitsky with an embittered look, red and not looking like himself, shouted to Kutuzov that if he did not leave now, he would probably be taken prisoner. Kutuzov stood in the same place and, without answering, took out his handkerchief. Blood flowed from his cheek. Prince Andrew pushed his way up to him.
- Are you injured? He asked, barely keeping his jaw trembling.
- The wounds are not here, but where! - said Kutuzov, pressing his handkerchief to his wounded cheek and pointing at the fleeing. - Stop them! - he shouted and at the same time, probably making sure that it was impossible to stop them, hit the horse and rode to the right.
The again surging crowd of fleeing grabbed him with them and dragged him back.
The troops fled in such a dense crowd that, once caught in the middle of the crowd, it was difficult to get out of it. Who shouted: “Let's go! why hesitated? " Who immediately, turning around, shot into the air; who beat the horse that Kutuzov himself rode. With the greatest effort, getting out of the stream of the crowd to the left, Kutuzov, with his retinue, reduced by more than half, rode off to the sound of nearby gunshots. Having got out of the crowd of fleeing, Prince Andrey, trying to keep up with Kutuzov, saw on the slope of the mountain, in the smoke, a Russian battery still firing and the French running up to it. Higher up stood the Russian infantry, moving neither forward to help the battery, nor backward in the same direction as the fleeing. The general detached himself from this infantry on horseback and rode up to Kutuzov. Only four people remained from Kutuzov's retinue. They were all pale and exchanged glances in silence.
- Stop these scoundrels! - breathlessly, Kutuzov said to the regimental commander, pointing at the fleeing; but at the same instant, as if in punishment for these words, like a swarm of birds, bullets flew with a whistle through Kutuzov's regiment and retinue.
The French attacked the battery and, seeing Kutuzov, fired at him. With this salvo, the regimental commander grabbed his leg; several soldiers fell, and the ensign, who was standing with the banner, released it from his hands; the banner swayed and fell, lingering on the guns of the neighboring soldiers.
Soldiers without a command began to shoot.
- Oooh! Kutuzov mumbled with an expression of despair and looked around. “Bolkonsky,” he whispered in a voice trembling from the consciousness of his senile powerlessness. - Bolkonsky, - he whispered, pointing to the upset battalion and the enemy, - what is it?
But before he finished these words, Prince Andrey, feeling the tears of shame and anger rising to his throat, was already jumping off his horse and running towards the banner.
- Guys, go ahead! He shouted, childishly piercing.
"Here it is!" thought Prince Andrew, seizing the flagstaff and hearing with delight the whistle of bullets, obviously directed against him. Several soldiers fell.
- Hooray! - Prince Andrey shouted, barely holding the heavy banner in his hands, and ran forward with the undoubted confidence that the whole battalion would run after him.
Indeed, he ran only a few steps. One soldier, another, and the whole battalion started shouting "Hurray!" ran ahead and overtook him. A non-commissioned officer of the battalion, running up, took the banner that was wavering from the weight in the hands of Prince Andrey, but was immediately killed. Prince Andrey again grabbed the banner and, dragging it by the pole, fled with the battalion. Ahead of him he saw our gunners, some of whom were fighting, others were throwing their cannons and running towards him; he also saw French infantry soldiers grabbing the artillery horses and turning the cannons. Prince Andrey with the battalion was already 20 paces from the guns. He heard the incessant whistle of bullets above him, and the soldiers incessantly to his right and left groaned and fell. But he did not look at them; he looked only at what was happening in front of him - on the battery. He clearly saw already one figure of a red-haired artilleryman with a shako knocked to one side, pulling a bannik from one side, while a French soldier was pulling a bannik to him on the other side. Prince Andrew already saw the clearly bewildered and at the same time embittered expression on the faces of these two people, apparently not understanding what they were doing.
"What are they doing? - thought Prince Andrey, looking at them: - why does not the red-haired artilleryman run when he has no weapon? Why doesn't the Frenchman prick him? Before he has time to run, the Frenchman remembers the gun and stabs it. "
Indeed, another Frenchman, with a gun to the advantage, ran up to the fighting, and the fate of the red-haired artilleryman, who still did not understand what awaited him, and triumphantly pulled out the bannik, had to be decided. But Prince Andrew did not see how it ended. As if from full swing with a strong stick, one of the nearest soldiers, as it seemed to him, hit him in the head. It hurt a little, and most importantly, it was unpleasant, because this pain entertained him and prevented him from seeing what he was looking at.
"What is it? I'm falling? my legs are giving way, ”he thought and fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle between the French and the gunners had ended, and wishing to know whether the red-haired gunner had been killed or not, the guns had been taken or saved. But he saw nothing. Above him there was nothing but the sky - a high sky, not clear, but still immeasurably high, with gray clouds quietly creeping over it. “How quietly, calmly and solemnly, not at all the way I ran,” thought Prince Andrey, “not the way we ran, shouted and fought; not at all like the Frenchman and the artilleryman with embittered and frightened faces dragged from each other a bannik - not at all the way the clouds crawl across this high endless sky. How then have I not seen this high sky before? And how happy I am that I finally got to know him. Yes! everything is empty, everything is deception, except for this endless sky. Nothing, nothing but him. But even that is not even there, there is nothing but silence, reassurance. And thank God!…"
On the right flank at Bagration at 9 o'clock the case had not yet begun. Not wanting to agree to Dolgorukov's demand to start business and wanting to deflect responsibility from himself, Prince Bagration suggested that Dolgorukov send the commander-in-chief to ask about this. Bagration knew that, at a distance of almost 10 versts, separating one flank from the other, if they did not kill the one who was sent (which was very likely), and if he even found the commander-in-chief, which was very difficult, the sent one would not have time to return earlier evenings.
Bagration looked around his retinue with his large, expressionless, sleepy eyes, and Rostov's childish face, involuntarily dying with excitement and hope, was the first to catch his eye. He sent it.
- And if I meet his majesty before the commander-in-chief, your excellency? - said Rostov, holding his hand at the visor.
- You can tell him to Majesty, - hastily interrupting Bagration, said Dolgorukov.
Having changed from the chain, Rostov managed to nap for several hours before the morning and felt cheerful, courageous, resolute, with that elasticity of movements, confidence in his happiness and in that state of mind in which everything seems easy, cheerful and possible.
* After the assassination of Plehve, various intrigues emerged as to whom to appoint as Minister of the Interior: this is how some recommended Sturmer, the former director of Plehve's chancellery, and even Sturmer introduced himself to the Tsar. What conversation he had with the Emperor is unknown to me. Others pointed to General Valya, who was the assistant minister of internal affairs at one time under Plehv; finally, the Tsar stopped at Mirsky, mainly due to a special recommendation to his Tsar from Milashevich (Gendov), who, according to her first husband, was Sheremetyev (head of the convoy under Alexander III -m), and by birth Countess Stroganova, daughter of Princess Leuchtenberg, daughter of Emperor Nicholas I Mariya Nikolaevna.
The Tsar, while still being the heir, often visited the Sheremetyevs and was on very good terms with her, and she had a great influence on the appointment of Mirsky. Mirsky himself, as I already had the occasion to say, represented and now represents a person outstanding in his moral purity. This is a man completely crystal clear, impeccably honest, a man of high principles, a man of rare soul and a very cultured general of the general staff.
Of course, Mirsky's appointment was a kind of flag. When Mirsky was appointed, I was in the Caucasus; in Sochi. For some reason Mirsky thought that I should be appointed instead of Plehve, and therefore, when he became a minister, he gave me a telegram, as if justifying himself. I answered him from the bottom of my heart, expressing deep joy and satisfaction at his appointment. Unfortunately Mirsky was appointed very late, when Russia had already been so revolutionized by internal events, and earlier by failures in the war, that it was beyond his power to change the state of affairs, especially since the Tsar, having appointed him, nevertheless continued to listen to the advice of extreme reactionaries, which prevented Mirsky from taking a new course of domestic policy. At the same time, I must say that Mirsky, with all his high moral qualities, from the point of view of state experience, was a beginner, and his character is rather soft. From this point of view, of course, he did not correspond to the difficult state of affairs in which any Minister of the Interior would find himself. * Svyatopolk-Mirsky was governor under Goremykin, assistant minister of internal affairs and chief of gendarmes under Sipyagin. Already under Sipyagin, he was going to leave, although he was his great friend. He reproached Sipyagin for various measures that needlessly irritate public opinion.
I also often told Sipyagin that these measures, without calming the turmoil, only irritate prudent people. Suffice it to say that a member of the State Council, a former head of appanages, a general who was wounded during the Eastern war, was exiled to his estate because, during the riots on Kazan Square, revolutionaries and youth, entered into an argument with a police officer, whose actions seemed to him incorrect - Prince Vyazemsky, the largest landowner, now one of the most right-wing members of the State Council. Once, when I told Sipyagin in the presence of his wife that these measures would not lead to good, he, justifying them and finding them necessary, said to me:
If you knew what the Emperor requires of me. The Emperor believes that I am very weak.
When, after the murder of Sipyagin, Plehve was appointed to his place, Mirsky frankly explained to him and said that, knowing his ideas, he could not remain his assistant. Plehve asked him to stay for a while, so that his departure did not have the appearance of a demonstration, and very soon after that, Mirsky was appointed governor-general in Vilna.
Wherever Mirsky served, he was loved and respected everywhere. He is undoubtedly the noblest, most honest and well-meaning person with little governmental experience, rather weak physically, intelligent and educated by nature. Having assumed control of the ministry, he announced the principle that the administration of Russia should be based on trust in society. This was told to them by one deputation and became the slogan of that time. Then the same was said to them and developed to some foreign correspondent who published his interview.
After reading this in Sochi, I immediately thought: not to please Mirsky. Back in Sochi, they wrote to me that the Tsar was dissatisfied with Mirsky's interview with a foreign correspondent. In October I returned to Petersburg. I knew well and was very friendly with Mirsky. As soon as I arrived in Petersburg, I went to see him. Then the so-called congress of public figures was to convene, made up of zemstvos, city leaders and some politicians, who later became horse breeders, the so-called cadets (Milyukov, Gessen, Nabokov, etc.). Plehve forbade these congresses, since they were pursuing the idea of establishing the constitution. It is remarkable that many of the leaders of this congress have now rushed completely to the right, but then all educated and, so-called, intelligent people, with the smallest exceptions, demanded a coup, i.e. declared war on the bureaucracy, and when they were asked what they mean by bureaucracies, they answered: unlimited supreme power, but that they cannot write and speak like that in view of censorship and repression.
Under Plehve, these congresses met in secret, in private apartments, but then their decisions were made known to everyone. Now they turned to Mirsky with a request to allow them this congress openly. Mirsky allowed the congress to meet in St. Petersburg and then set some restrictive conditions.
At my first meeting with Mirsky, I asked him how the Tsar felt about his actions. He answered me that when His Majesty offered him to take the post of Minister of Internal Affairs, he reported to Him that neither physical strength nor ability would allow him to accept this post, but the Sovereign insisted that he fulfill His desire, promising him several months in the year of rest. To this Mirsky reported to His Majesty that, in addition, he has his own political views and convictions and that he cannot act otherwise, as his conscience tells him. 291 His views are such that the government and society currently constitute two militant camps, that such a state of affairs had arisen for a long time, but the unfortunate war brought this situation to an extreme and that such a state of affairs is impossible, since the state under such conditions cannot exist for a long time. Thus, he believes that it is necessary to reconcile the government with society, and this is possible only by satisfying the urgent and just desires of public circles, as well as by satisfying the just desires of foreigners.
The Emperor told him that He himself was of the same opinion and that therefore he would not encounter obstacles to carrying out these thoughts. Then Mirsky believed that it would be so. Regarding the congress, I told him that, in my opinion, he would have a misunderstanding about this congress and that the congress in one form or another would decide the desire for a constitution, and this, of course, would be rejected, and that, consequently, instead of starting a reconciliation of the government with public opinion an even greater exacerbation will occur.
And so it happened. When he asked if I would support him regarding his policy, I answered him that my feelings and attitudes towards him are such that I, like Mirsky, will always support him, and as for his policy, with the current attitude towards me Sovereign, my opinions will not matter in His eyes ... But if the Sovereign summons me to meetings, then I will speak out as I did all the time with complete frankness, not paying attention to whether the Sovereign likes my judgments and the members of the meeting, or don't like it.
When I returned to St. Petersburg, an official from the Ministry of Internal Affairs came to me to tell me that everyone in the police department was looking for some kind of brochure I had written about the war. After meeting Mirsky a few days later, I asked him what kind of brochure the police department was looking for. He answered me that he knew nothing, and was surprised by this question. The next day he came to me and told me the following.
The palace commandant, Adjutant General Hesse, in addition to him, Mirsky, handed over to the director of the police department Lopukhin the Highest command that a brochure, which I wrote for the circumstances preceding the war, be found, and that the department found that such a brochure had been printed in the printing house of the Ministry of Finance. The department cannot find this brochure except for a few proof sheets. Then Mirsky added that he expressed his displeasure with Lopukhin, that this was being done apart from him, and showed me the sheets he had found.
I immediately learned that this was a pamphlet of a completely academic nature, drawn up by the office of the Ministry of Finance when I was Minister of Finance, in which all the circumstances of the policy in the Far East before 1901 were documented and briefly stated. (It was customary in the ministry to compose prints for all outstanding ministerial events and projects.)
This brochure has the most innocent content in the ordinary normal state of affairs (it is attached to my story about the outbreak of the Russian-Japanese war). When the madness that led to the war began, fearing that the facts stated in the note would not get into the press and burden the position of those responsible for the madness that led to the war, I ordered all copies of this brochure to be burned, leaving only a few copies.
Laughing at Mirsky's message, I took a copy of the said brochure out of the closet and told him to hand it over to the Tsar on my behalf, reporting to Him that I am very sorry that the Tsar did not apply for this brochure directly to me. Afterwards I asked Mirsky if he had given the brochure to the Tsar and if he had said what I asked to say. Mirsky answered in the affirmative. Then I asked:
And what did the Emperor say?
Mirsky replied that He only asked if this brochure was probably not distributed?
To which Mirsky replied that the best proof of this is the fact that the police department tried to get it for several months, sparing no expense, but could not.
At this time, the war took an ever worse and worse turn, and therefore Admiral Abaza and the palace camarilla had the idea of dumping the war on my neck. At that time, articles in this sense began to appear in one or another newspaper, especially in Moskovskiye Vedomosti.
Prince Meshchersky, upon my arrival from Sochi, turned to me with a request to ask Mirsky to receive him, and 293 declared that, according to his experience, he could bring him enormous benefit. I refused this assignment, saying that knowing Mirsky, I am sure that he would not want to be inspired by them. By the way, I conveyed this to Mirsky, pointing out that Meshchersky is in constant correspondence with His Majesty. Mirsky answered me that he knew this and had a conversation with the Emperor on this subject. He told me that somehow the Tsar told him something about Meshchersky and that then Mirsky told the Tsar that he did not know such persons, that the fact of the Tsar's constant relations with Meshchersky is known to many, and that all decent people regret and are indignant at this, for decent people cannot have any intercourse with such subjects. Indeed, since then, the Tsar's relationship with Meshchersky began to weaken and completely ceased, although Meshchersky continues to write his political considerations to the Tsar in the form of a diary (Now these relations have become intimate again thanks to the aide-de-camp, Captain Nilov, who in his youth was Meshchersky's favorite (1912) .).
Meanwhile, during these internal upheavals, our military affairs in the Far East were getting worse and worse every day. Of course, there were disagreements between Kuropatkin and Alekseev. Kuropatkin, referring to the system of meaningful retreat until the moment of gathering all the necessary forces, had this program only in his head, preaching all the patience and patience, but he could not carry out this program in the proper system, because the commander-in-chief Alekseev, who in essence did not take any part in battles, and he could not take any part out of complete ignorance in this matter, he preached the reverse system, namely, that we not only do not need to retreat, but we need to go to Port Arthur and save and take Port Arthur and knock out the Japanese. Sitting in his luxurious office, it was easy for him to say that he needed to go to Port Arthur and take it, but the question was how to take it.
Thus, military operations were influenced by two plans, one of Alekseev's plan, the plan of the attack on Port Arthur, and the other is Kuropatkin's plan, a plan for a meaningful retreat to Harbin. In the end, of course, none of these plans was meaningfully carried out. Both sides turned 294 to St. Petersburg, and many of the actions in the theater of war took place on command from St. Petersburg. Of course, this method of waging war was completely unheard of in its absurdity, and therefore it could not produce any other results than those that we systematically endured the most shameful retreats. In the end, this discord reached such proportions that the governor and commander-in-chief of the active army, Alekseev, was summoned to Petersburg and instead of him the commander-in-chief was appointed on October 14 by the commander-in-chief of the troops, Adjutant General Kuropatkin.
Prince Mirsky submitted a report to the Sovereign with the attachment of a draft decree on various liberties, including on the attraction of elected officials to the State Council and on the granting of complete freedom of religion to the Old Believers. This was the first step towards transformations conceived by Mirsky. Both this report and the draft decree were drawn up by an employee of the ministry, Kryzhanovsky under the leadership of Prince A. Obolensky (the future chief prosecutor), who, as usual, intervened everywhere, expressed his ideas everywhere, often intelligent, but mostly inspired by a restless soul, in essence neurasthenia. After the events of October 17, he completely opened up to me.
He is by nature intelligent and well-meaning Dobchinsky, but he still suffered from neurasthenia in the exact sense of the medical term. I did not know anything about the said report, no one then said anything about it and it was not discussed anywhere. Prince Obolensky gave it to me much later than Mirsky's departure and now it is in my archive.
In November 1904, the Tsar convened a meeting on the question of what measures should be taken regarding the said report of Mirsky. All the ministers were invited to the meeting: Kokovtsev, Lobko, Ermolov, Muravyov, Lamsdorf, Sakharov, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, Mirsky, Pobedonostsev, Avelan, then Budberg (chief manager of the petition commissions), Taneyev (chief manager of the office), general-admiral Richter, Count Vorontsov-Dashkov, Count Solsky, E. V. Frisch and myself. I was told that the Tsar did not want to invite me, but Mirsky persuaded Him. This was conveyed to me by Prince Obolensky.
The very question raised at the meeting was for me a sign that the Tsar had gone far in his political outlook, for earlier, when I had to speak during a report - this is the public opinion, the Tsar sometimes said with heart:
And I care about public opinion.
The Tsar quite rightly believed that public opinion was the opinion of the "intellectuals", and as for His opinion about the intelligentsia, Prince Mirsky told me that when the Tsar traveled through the western provinces, and long before his appointment as minister, Mirsky was Governor-General He was accompanied through the provinces entrusted to him, then once at the table someone pronounced the word "intellectuals", to which the Emperor remarked: how disgusting I am with this word, adding, probably sarcastically, that the Academy of Sciences should be ordered to delete this word from the Russian dictionary.
The sovereign was told that all the people, all the non-intelligentsia, were for him. In principle, this is true: the people have always been for the tsars, who were for the people, but it is difficult to expect that the entire people for the tsar, when the Emperor rules through the "palace noble camarilla", which, in turn, believes that it is the salt of the Russian land that everything should be done for her and in any case through her.
If the Sovereign, after the Peace of Portsmouth, Himself, on his own initiative, made a broad peasant reform in the spirit of Alexander II, Himself, on his own initiative, gave certain liberties, long overdue, such as freed the Old Believers from any embarrassment, boldly adopted the principle of religious tolerance, eliminated clearly unjust embarrassment foreigners, etc., then October 17 would not have been required.
The general law is that the people are demanding economic and social reforms. When the government systematically refuses this, then it comes to the conviction that its desires cannot be satisfied by this regime, then among the people, economic and social demands are postponed and political demands mature, as a means of obtaining economic and social transformations. If then the government wisely does not regulate this current, and even more so if it begins to create madness (Japanese war), then a revolution breaks out. If the revolution is extinguished (which was done by me and my co-workers - the convening of the Duma), but then they continue to play right and left, then anarchy is established.
The greatest anarchy is now manifested in the actions of the so-called union of the Russian people, which is the second government, and the Tsar today signs the acts of the government (ministries 296 Stolypin), and tomorrow he willful, encourages and thinks to rely on these unconscious people, led by political scoundrels or madmen.
How convinced the Tsar is that the whole people will always be for Him can be characterized by the following conversation, which Mirsky had not long before his departure from the post of Minister of Internal Affairs with Empress Alexandra Fedorovna, who directs the will and inclinations of the Tsar and who is most to blame for the fact that that the reign of Nicholas II is so unhappy for Him and for Russia. God grant that it does not end even worse, especially for Him.
Knowing the Tsar from my youth, I love Him as a man in the most ardent and sincere way, and if I sometimes accumulate a feeling of anger against Him, then this feeling is prompted by annoyance that the Tsar is destroying himself, His house and inflicting wounds on Russia, then how all this could be eliminated, all this could not be.
Talking about the political situation, Mirsky told the Empress that everyone in Russia is against the existing order. To this the Empress remarked sharply:
Yes, the intelligentsia is against the Tsar and His government, but all the people have always been and will be for the Tsar.
To this Mirsky replied:
Yes, this is true, but events are always created by the intelligentsia everywhere, while the people today can kill the intelligentsia for the Tsar, and tomorrow they will destroy the royal palaces - this is the element.
The opinion expressed by the Empress was laid in the foundation of the law on August 6, 1905 on the Duma. The entire electoral law was based on the need to give the main voice to the peasantry; it is necessary for the Duma to be, if not a peasant, then primarily a peasant. It contains the historical basis of conservatism.
This idea, as I was told, in the meetings chaired by His Majesty in St. Petersburg before August 6, when I was in America, was strenuously pursued by two pillars of conservatism: Pobedonostsev and State Comptroller Lobko. The Bulygin election law formed the basis for the election law on December 12, 1906. He could not but lie in its foundation, as is evident from the text of the manifesto on October 17, 1905, since the manifesto ordered, without stopping the elections already begun on August 6, to make only a possible expansion in it. 297 What did the peasantry give to the first and second thought? The most extreme left-wing elements and the mass of revolutionaries. So much for the conservatism of the peasantry! The conservatism of the peasantry at the present stage of its development and with real turmoil is a phrase, for the elements do not obey the law. *
Back to the meeting. His Majesty was pleased to say that, in view of the revolutionary trend that is gaining momentum in Russia every day, he summoned his advisers in order to discuss what measures should be taken in the sense of satisfying the desires of a moderate and prudent society; moreover, at first the question was posed: is it necessary to meet this society halfway or it is necessary to continue the previous reactionary policy of Plehve, which led to the successive assassinations of two ministers of the interior, Sipyagin and Plehve.
I had to speak first; I expressed my resolute opinion that it is absolutely impossible to pursue the previous policy of reactions, that this will lead us to ruin. I was supported by Count Solsky, Frisch, Aleksey Sergeevich Ermolov, Nikolai Valerianovich Muravyov and Vladimir Nikolaevich Kokovtsev, and the latter supported me from the point of view that with the former direction of our domestic policy, we are gradually losing trust in financial circles abroad, and so on. the state of affairs during the war, which until now is extremely unfavorable for us, can lead finances to complete ruin.
Prince Mirsky almost did not express his opinion, because, obviously, he expressed his opinion to the Emperor earlier, in private.
Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev was critical of our statements, not expressing unconditionally against; all the same, he reduced his remarks, his speech to his inherent direction, that is, that it is best to do nothing. * But the greatest conversation raised the question of attracting electives to participate in legislation. The majority spoke for, against, K.P. Pobedonostsev spoke.
In general, as always, he spoke intelligently and his criticisms were quite strong, but the conclusions were vague. I did not say anything, but when the Tsar asked me to speak out on the issue of elections, I said that, in my opinion, the existing order of government does not correspond to its needs and is in contradiction with the self-consciousness of almost all intellectual classes, and that therefore, I share the opinion of those who speak for the necessity of this measure, but I find that the argument they put forward that this will not shake the existing political system is not true.
I, of course, do not think that they present this argument, knowing its correctness in order to achieve what they strive for, but it is my deep conviction that any correct organized and constant participation of the elected in legislation will inevitably lead to what is called a constitution. As was the case for the most part, the conferences chaired by the Sovereign, when there was no definite written material, never led to definitely formulated conclusions, and so it was this time. *
In the end, His Majesty agreed with the opinion of the majority, and the Tsar was pleased to instruct me, as chairman of the committee of ministers, and the manager of the office of the committee of ministers, Baron Nolde, who was also present at the meeting, but was silent in his position during the meeting. The meeting discussed the subjects that the decree should touch upon. They pointed out the need to restore the rule of law in the Russian Empire, which had been significantly shaken in recent years - and, by the way, at the present time and completely overthrown into the abyss; - the need for laws on heterodox and other non-Orthodox religions, and in particular, they spoke about the need to destroy the harsh laws regarding Old Believers, they generally spoke about the need for religious tolerance and greater freedom of religion; spoke about the need to involve public figures in public affairs, especially local, that is, in other words, to expand zemstvo powers and zemstvo activities, as well as city powers and urban activities, etc. At the same time, the question was raised: how to revise all the proper legislation and make the necessary changes in it and in the life of the Russian state?
It was decided that all these issues should be considered in the committee of ministers, that the committee of ministers should give direction to all these changes and, as the discussion of issues, if necessary, ask for the Highest instructions.
This meeting inspired the spirit of those present; everyone, apparently, was agitated by the thought of a new direction of state building and state life, which His Majesty was pleased to give to Great Russia.
At the end of the meeting, the aged Count Solsky turned to His Majesty on behalf of those present with heartfelt words about the gratitude that all those present cherish and which the whole of Russia undoubtedly shares for the initiative of the Sovereign Emperor.
This whole scene was so touching that some of the members, namely Prince Khilkov - the Minister of Railways and Alexei Sergeevich Ermolov burst into tears.
After the meeting I am with the deceased bar. Nolde began to work out the well-known historical decree on December 12, 1904, which I am not citing here, for anyone who is interested in it can find it in the collection of legalizations.
The draft decree in the wording established by me and Baron Nolde was signed by all members of the meeting. As far as I remember, only one Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev made some difficulties and I am not sure exactly whether he signed it or not, I think he signed it.
The draft of this decree under the title: "On the plans for the improvement of state order" - was presented to His Majesty.
Several days passed and on December 11 in the morning I received a note from His Majesty, in which he asked me to come to him in the evening. I arrived at Tsarskoe Selo in the afternoon.
His Majesty received me, as usual, in his study.
Entering the office, I saw that His Majesty was with the Moscow Governor-General, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. His Majesty asked me to sit down. The three of us sat down. Then His Majesty addressed me with the following words
I approve of this decree, but I have doubts about only one point.
(This was precisely the point that spoke of the need to involve public figures in the legislative institution of that time, namely the Council of State.) 300 His Majesty told me to express my opinion on this point completely frankly to him and give him advice: to leave this item or not to leave.
I replied to the Sovereign Emperor that this decree, including the point about which His Majesty is pleased to speak, was drawn up under my direct leadership, and therefore, in essence, I share this point and believe that now it is timely to take the measure that this clause proclaims. As for the command of His Majesty to give him advice, I honestly must say the following: attracting representatives of society, especially in an elective form, in legislative institutions is the first step towards what all the cultural countries of the world are spontaneously striving for, i.e. to a representative form of government, to a constitution; undoubtedly, this will be the first very moderate and limited step along this path - but over time it can lead to the next steps, and therefore my advice is this: if His Majesty sincerely, irrevocably came to the conclusion that it is impossible to go against the world historical trend, then this point in the decree must remain; but if His Majesty, after weighing the significance of this point and bearing in mind - as I report to him - that this point is the first step towards a representative form of government - for his part finds that such a form of government is unacceptable, that he himself will never allow it - then, of course, from this point of view it would be more careful not to put this item.
* During this conversation, the conversation came about the Zemsky Councils. I expressed my conviction that the Zemsky Councils are such a venerable antiquity, which in the current situation is not applicable; the composition of Russia, its relationship to other countries and the degree of its self-awareness and education, and in general the ideas of the 20th and 16th centuries are completely different. *
When I expressed my opinion, His Majesty looked at the Grand Duke, who, apparently, was pleased with my answer and approved of it.
After that, the Emperor said to me:
Yes, I will never, in any case, agree to a representative form of government, because I consider it harmful for the people entrusted to me by God, and therefore I will follow your advice and delete this point.
Then he got up and thanked me very much. 301 I bowed to the Tsar and the Grand Duke, and with a decree in which this point was deleted (and later approved by the Tsar), I returned to St. Petersburg.
Just on that day there was a meeting on the agricultural industry. Since I was absent, the oldest member, Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky, chaired in my place. I returned when the meeting was not yet over, and took over the presidency (This meeting took place in the Soviet room of the Minister of Finance.).
At the meeting was, among other things, and Prince. Mirsky. I wrote the book. To Mirsky, on a piece of paper, there are approximately the following lines:
This message, apparently, very upset the book. Mirsky. After the meeting, I explained to him in detail everything that had happened. This decree was published in the collection of legalizations on December 12, 1904.
On the evening of the 11th I saw the last time the Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich.
The year 1905 has come. The turmoil in Russia in the minds of the entire society, without exception, in all its strata, grew more and more as our shameful failures in the Far East.
The central place of manifestation of the turmoil, or to put it more modernly, the revolutionary mood, the revolutionary movement was all the time Moscow.
Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, essentially a very noble and honest man, but due, on the one hand, his narrow-mindedness and state inexperience, and on the other hand, his stubborn character, who carried out reactionary police measures in Moscow, which extremely embittered all strata of society, stood up in Moscow into a completely impossible position.
By the way, unfortunately, he surrounded himself with extremely limited faces, with police instincts, such was and. D. Chief of Police during the Khodynka regiment. Vlasovsky, such was the Chief Police Officer General Trepov, who, in essence, was the Moscow Governor-General.
Since the direction of the policy was led. Book. Sergei Alexandrovich, and in essence, the policy of General Trepov, could not receive any support in the Minister of Internal Affairs, Prince Svyatopolk-Mirsky, then the Grand Duke prudently wished to leave the post of Governor-General and on January 1, 1905, he was relieved of this post. but he was appointed commander of the Moscow military district, and his assistant Bulygin remained in his place.
In 1905, the revolutionary turmoil in Russia began to play out with rapid strides.
The departure of the Grand Duke from the post of governor-general for the Minister of Justice Nikolai Valerianovich Muravyov, who was a highly intelligent, dexterous and remarkably talented person, was a sign that an era of all kinds of accidents and disasters was coming, and therefore, like rats before a storm leave the ship, so he decided to settle somewhere in a quieter bay, realizing that this whole career, in fact, was made by the Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, that while Sergei Alexandrovich is still in power, and there, God knows what will happen, maybe he already had a presentiment that the Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, on the one hand, due to his straightforwardness and narrow-mindedness, and on the other hand, honor and nobility, would not get along, that the anarchists would sharpen their teeth at him. In view of these circumstances and after all these events, - Muravyov begged the Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich to intercede with the Emperor to be made ambassador, and he very much petitioned to be appointed ambassador to Paris; but in Paris they could not open vacancies in any way. When the post opened in Vienna, the Roman ambassador Urusov was appointed there, and Muravyov was appointed to Rome. (1 * Muravyov is a man with a great talent for speech, educated, intelligent, but as far as morality is concerned - very weak If he had not been Muravyov, but was born into the family of some bourgeois Ivanov, then, of course, he would have ended very badly long ago.
When I left the post of chairman of the council of ministers and came to the Tsar to take my leave, He, by the way, told me that he wanted to offer the post of chairman of the council to Muravyov and added:
But he has such a bad reputation as a man that I have abandoned this thought.
Nevertheless, this will not prevent the Tsar from appointing him to another prominent post on occasion. *).
If only the decree of December 12, even with the paragraph crossed out, received a quick, complete, and mainly sincere 303 implementation, then I have no doubt that it would significantly contribute to calming down the revolutionary mood spread in all strata of society.
Unfortunately, as will be seen from my subsequent stories, the implementation of the decree encountered hidden difficulties, and then an extremely insincere attitude towards it - a few weeks after this decree was issued.
As a result, the decree on December 12 could not serve to calm society, but on the contrary, sometimes served to even more excitement. society, because if not all, then a part of society quickly and easily figured out that what was given, they already want to nullify.
Lived: 1946-1904
Pleve Vyacheslav Konstantinovich is one of the conservative statesmen during the reign of Alexander III and Nicholas II. He held such important posts in the state as Director of the Police Department in 1881-1884, acting privy councilor in 1899, Secretary of State from 1904- 1902 and the Minister of the Interior from 1902-1904. The listing of these posts indicates that it was he who was primarily responsible for order in the country, for the observance of legality in it.
An intelligent, educated person who graduated from Moscow State University, a lawyer by education, V.K. Pleve knew the legal system of the country perfectly. Being a conservative in his views and convictions, V.K. advocated the preservation of autocracy, strengthening control over the manifestation of all kinds of dissent.
What are the main activities of Pleve V.K. and their results?
One of the directions in domestic politics was the preservation of unlimited autocracy. To this end, he carried out reforms that contribute to strengthening the power of the monarch, and therefore those in power in the country. Particularly noteworthy are his proposals to preserve the inviolability of landlord ownership. He was a staunch enemy of any reforms limiting the power of the landowners. He advocated a ban on the withdrawal of peasants from the community, and even more so was against the ability of peasants to buy and sell land. Plehve believed that the mutual guarantee that exists in the community is "the most reliable means of collecting any arrears."
On the other hand, he offered to support the nobility, not to let it go broke, to be diluted among other estates. It is the nobility, in his opinion, that is the basis of autocratic power in Russia.
The result of this activity the inhibition of reform in the country, especially in the field of the peasant question, the retention of the leading position by the nobility.
Another area of activity of Pleve V.K. there was a fierce struggle against revolutionary uprisings and any other acts of people's disobedience to the authorities. His motto in this regard was the words: “Calm first, then reforms". As the Minister of the Interior and the chief of the gendarmes, he used police terror, persecution of any manifestation of free thought. These included executions of peaceful demonstrations and punitive expeditions to places of peasant unrest (for example, in the Poltava and Kharkov provinces). Plehve supported the Jewish pogroms that swept across the country. It was he who successfully fought the activities of the terrorist organization "Land and Freedom", arresting its leaders, and he believed that the fight against a handful of criminals was not enough, it was necessary to carry out extensive educational work among the intelligentsia.
For the sake of a successful fight against the revolutionary movement in Russia, V.K. persuaded Nicholas II to enter the war with Japan in 1903. It is he who owns the famous words: "We need a small victorious war to hold the revolution back." We can say that he was one of those in Russia who is guilty of the death of many thousands of Russian soldiers, sailors and officers who died in this terrible war, for which Russia was completely unprepared.
It should be noted that Plehve also waged a struggle with a liberal-minded zemstvo - local self-government bodies. He was called "heavy artillery" in the fight against the zemstvo, which, in his opinion, should have dealt only with economic and social issues, and not political, as it was at that time. He believed that the desire of the zemstvos to deal with legal issues was untimely and only exacerbated the situation in the country.
The result of this activity- many victims of police terror throughout the country, restriction of free thought, enormous hatred of V.K. Pleve himself. among broad strata of the population, especially the revolutionary-minded youth, and the entire zemstvo environment. Therefore, his death at the hands of the Socialist-Revolutionary Yevgeny Sozonov in St. Petersburg, in July 1904, is not accidental.
In this way, Plehve V.K. is a vivid example of a statesman of the period of autocracy, defending the principles of unlimited monarchy, the privileges of the nobility, not taking into account the changing political situation in the country. Such people hindered the development of Russia, led it back, and held back reform. Therefore, the activities of Plehve V.K. caused such a negative attitude from many layers of society and his life ended so tragically.
This material can be used when preparing