Pyotr Arkadievich Stolypin
Pyotr Stolypin ( Russian Пётр Аркадьевич Столыпин , scientific. Transliteration Pëtr Arkad'evič Stolypin , April 2. * . Jul / 14. April 1862 greg. In Dresden , † September 5 jul. / 18th September 1911 greg. In Kiev ) was a Russian statesman who in the post of prime minister from 1906 to 1911 carried out far-reaching reforms in the Russian Empire .
origin
Stolypin came from a noble Russian family. Most of his ancestors held high positions in the civil service. The family owned large estates across Russia. On his father's side he was related to the poet Mikhail Lermontov , his maternal grandfather was the Russian general Mikhail Gorchakov (1793–1861). His father, General Arkadi Dmitrijewitsch Stolypin (1821–1899), worked temporarily as the Russian envoy in Germany; so Stolypin was born in Dresden. Since 1884 he was married to Olga Borisovna Neidhardt, the daughter of a prominent Moscow family. He had five daughters and one son with her.
Career
The contacts of his family enabled him to have a steep career in civil service. He graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at the University of Saint Petersburg in 1885 . At the age of 27, he already led the nobility assembly in the capital of the then province of Lithuania in Kovno . After a one-year interlude as provincial governor of the Belarusian city of Grodno , Stolypin was appointed governor to Saratov in the Volga region in 1903 . There he made a name for himself during the revolution of 1905 with measures against the local revolutionary movement. That is why he was appointed Minister of the Interior by Tsar Nicholas II and then Prime Minister in 1906. Since the Duma did not approve his government program, one of his first acts was its dissolution. In doing so, Stolypin wanted to weaken the radical elements of the parliament, which refused to cooperate with the government and continued to bet on a revolutionary overthrow. As revolts broke out in several places, in which high state officials were murdered, the prime minister imposed martial law over several governorates . To restore order, he relied on a system of standing courts , which passed around 5,500 death sentences during his tenure . This procedure earned him the title of "Iron Prime Minister".
Political reforms
Agrarian reform
Stolypin was a monarchist, but he realized that a reform of the ancien régime was necessary in order to ensure its continued existence. His main political goal was to prevent a violent revolution which he believed would plunge all sections of the population into misery. He realized that the state had to take care of the peasantry, most of the Russian population. Although the peasant liberation in the Tsarist empire was enforced by Alexander II in 1861 , it had brought little tangible benefits to the population. Although the farmers were no longer chained to landowners, they were individually just as unfree in the continuing system of village communities . The community system distributed the land among the peasants, did not allow private ownership of land and restricted the mobility of the peasants as each resident was tied to their community.
As early as 1906, Stolypin enforced the right to private land ownership for small farmers by ukase . The following steps grew into a far-reaching agrarian reform. In order to provide the peasantry with sufficient capital and to raise their level of education, he created a training program and low-interest agricultural loans. He also initiated a system of cooperatives that gave farmers the opportunity to increase their production by buying and using machines together. The aim of his program was the creation of a peasant middle class that could rise above the mass of the egalitarian village communities through its own efforts and state aid . Thus, broad sections of the population were offered the prospect of social advancement for the first time, especially since the rural population also received political representation in the newly founded Agrarian Party , which should make its contribution to overcoming the centuries-long political agony of the former third estate in the Tsarist Empire . In this way, this largest part of the population should be reconciled with the Russian state and capitalism and thus all revolutionary efforts among the rural population should be removed.
Reclaiming land in Siberia
Stolypin didn't just want to strengthen the social position of the farmers. Likewise, the tsarist empire should benefit economically from the rise of the peasantry by expanding the arable land. Hand in hand with his social reform went a land reclamation program. This concentrated mainly on the areas beyond the Urals . From 1908 until the beginning of the World War there was a migration of over 2.8 million people to Siberia and Central Asia. For this purpose, the migrants were transported to their destination using the so-called Stolypin wagons .
Modernization of the state
Stolypin had other plans to transform the autocracy into an efficient system of government. So he drafted plans for the creation of ministries for health and ethnic affairs. In spite of his nationalist and monarchist convictions, he also spoke out in favor of an independent Polish state which, through a gradual process, should obtain more and more sovereignty from the Russian Empire.
Initiatives for the equality of the Jews
In view of the role of activists of Jewish origin in the revolution of 1905 and the wave of pogroms against the Jews during this period, Stolypin took several initiatives against the legal discrimination of the Jewish population of the Tsarist Empire. The aim must be "to calm the non-revolutionary part of Judaism and to free our legislation from sediments which served as a source for countless abusive applications". In October 1906 he proposed to the State Council a package of laws aimed at “complete legal equality” for the Jewish population. As a first step, he also suggested that the Tsar lift the restrictions on the construction and operation of a large synagogue in Moscow. But the latter rejected the advances, citing “an inner voice” as justification.
Stolypin also ordered an investigation to determine the originators of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion . This was intended to remove the ground from the propaganda by right-wing extremists about the alleged disloyalty of the Jewish population. He informed Nicholas II of the result of the investigation that it was clearly falsifications; but according to the testimony of contemporary witnesses, the tsar took note of this information indifferently and did not order any action.
Resignation and Assassination
With his reform course, Stolypin made enemies in all political camps. The left and the liberal Constitutional Democrats saw in him a violent oppressor of the revolutionary movement. For many in the right-wing camp, his ideas for modernization went too far. Shortly after he took office, the left opposition responded with open violence, which was also approved by some Duma members. The leading element here was the Socialist Revolutionary Party , which viewed murder as a politically legitimate means.
On August 12, 1906, Stolypin was bombed. The attack killed 27 people, injured him slightly and seriously injured his daughter Natalja.
Stolypin lost more and more of its assertiveness in the course of his tenure. When the Duma rejected a legislative proposal to expand the rights of the rural administrative organization Zemstvo in 1911 , the Prime Minister resignedly resigned.
Stolypin was seriously wounded by two gunshots in the chest on September 14, 1911 while visiting the Kiev opera by the Social Revolutionary Dimitri Bogrov , who was in contact with the Okhrana . He succumbed to his serious injuries four days later in the Kiev clinic Katschkowskyj and died of general sepsis . His grave is in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra , because years earlier he had stated in his will: "Bury me where I was murdered."
additional
In 2008, Stolypin was voted in a poll by Russian state television Rossija 1 for the most important figure in Russian history, just behind Alexander Nevsky and ahead of Josef Stalin in second place.
See also
Web links
- Literature by and about Pjotr Arkadjewitsch Stolypin in the catalog of the German National Library
- Newspaper article about Pyotr Arkadjewitsch Stolypin in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
- Article Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE) , 3rd edition 1969–1978 (Russian)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Entry on Pjotr Stolypin in Brockhaus-Efron ; accessed on March 7, 2019 (Russian)
- ↑ Gennady Kostyrčenko: Tajnaja politika Stalina. Vlast 'i antisemitizm. Novaya versija. Čast 'I. Moscow 2015, p. 21.
- ↑ Gennady Kostyrčenko: Tajnaja politika Stalina. Vlast 'i antisemitizm. Novaya versija. Čast 'I. Moscow 2015, p. 22.
- ↑ The Demon of the Tsarina: Life and Death of Grigorij Jefimowitsch Rasputin by Josef Hahn ; accessed on March 7, 2019
- ↑ Johannes Voswinkel: Stalin for everyone. In: The time . May 3, 2010, accessed February 17, 2015 .
- ↑ Stalin elected third greatest Russian of all time. In: Spiegel Online . December 28, 2008, accessed February 17, 2015 .
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
| Ivan Goremykin | Prime Minister of the Russian Empire July 21, 1906 - September 18, 1911 |
Vladimir Kokovtsov |
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
| Pyotr Durnovo |
Russian Interior Minister April 26, 1906 - September 18, 1911 |
Alexander Makarov |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Stolypin, Pyotr Arkadyevich |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Столы́пин, Пётр Арка́дьевич (Russian) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Russian politician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 14, 1862 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dresden |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 18, 1911 |
| Place of death | Kiev |