The Reformer. Stephen F. Williams
theses passed the committee unanimously. Sheremetyev wanted to publish a book of the reports, but the provincial governor would allow it only if Maklakov’s paper were excluded. Sheremetyev refused to submit unless Maklakov agreed to the omission. The matter was ultimately settled by publishing only Maklakov’s “theses” (which he had articulated carefully as argument headings) and the comments of others, excluding Maklakov’s development of his theses. V. M. Gessen, later a fellow Duma deputy, asked him for the report, and in a book on the work of the Special Conference he dedicated more attention to Maklakov’s theses “than they deserved,” as Maklakov wrote in his memoirs. But the report and the rather enigmatic comments on it stirred up the educated public’s curiosity and attention.3
The paper’s moderation—in contrast to the usually extreme expressions of members of the Liberation Movement—found support. In his memoirs Maklakov noted sardonically that “even” his brother Nikolai (then a tsarist official in Tambov) wrote to him expressing satisfaction with the memo. “In those days it didn’t take much to become a hero of society.”4
As a direct result, he was invited to join Beseda (meaning “Symposium”), a tiny “semi-conspiratorial” organization whose members were important players in the Liberation Movement and, later, in the nonrevolutionary political parties competing for power in the legislative elections made possible by the October Manifesto. Its membership was limited to people engaged in “practical work,” meaning that they held elective office in Russia’s embryonic system of local self-government—a duma in the city or a zemstvo in the countryside. The criterion was a natural one, as Beseda had been formed in response to a 1903 memorandum by Count Witte that had attacked the compatibility of zemstvo self-government with autocracy and, at least implicitly, indicated that, of the two, it was zemstvo self-government that ought to go. Beseda was created precisely to oppose that idea. Maklakov held no elective office, but Beseda made a special place for him as “secretary.”5
Viewpoints in Beseda represented a broad range of reformist but nonrevolutionary opinion. Liberal constitutionalists favored a representative legislative body. The Slavophiles, who believed Russia could be better reformed by restoring healthy Russian practices than by adopting Western ones, split into at least two camps. Liberal Slavophiles favored reforms altering the structure of government but falling considerably short of an elected legislature; conservative ones favored policy reforms, but with no changes in the structure of the autocracy. Liberal Slavophilism was represented by Dmitri N. Shipov, whose vehement reaction to the Witte memorandum had been the spark for Beseda’s founding. Though constitutionalists of a moderate or liberal flavor soon came to dominate Beseda numerically, they never sought to make it purely constitutionalist, if only because doing so would have cost the organization the liberal Slavophiles’ potential influence over the government. Maklakov identified its unifying principle as a commitment to some degree of self-government, which was the essence of the zemstvo. At the time he joined, he was already a friend of a majority of the members.6 Perhaps surprisingly for such an elite group, it seemed not to take itself too seriously. By tradition, Maklakov reports, the first day of its meetings was devoted to what was jokingly called “collection of gossip”—information not generally available about what was going on in the corridors of power.7
By the time of the October Manifesto, its members had dispersed politically, mainly to the Kadet and Octobrist parties, and Beseda ceased to meet. Maklakov later wrote a brief elegy.
“Beseda” left me the best of memories. . . . To the end it personified the youth of Russian liberal society. It was pervaded by lively and powerful illusions about the healthy and peaceful renewal of Russia, illusions that later weakened. It had not yet lost faith in the authorities and was full of faith in Russian society. . . . The historical interest of Beseda lies in its representing one of the stages of development of Russian society, when it had not yet forgotten the traditions of the ’60s [the Great Reforms], but recalled the cooperation of the authorities and society and prepared for more of just that cooperation.8
The Russian Revolution of 1905 began on Bloody Sunday, January 9, in the wake of Russia’s disastrous performance in its war with Japan. Father Gapon, a charismatic activist priest, led a throng of workers toward the Winter Palace to deliver a petition to the tsar. Government troops opened fire on the marchers, killing 130 and seriously wounding 299, according to official figures.9 One can hardly imagine behavior more sure to arouse nearly universal hostility toward the regime. It triggered strikes, violence, arson, and killing in the cities and countryside; it nearly precipitated the regime’s collapse.
There is, oddly enough, a little-known counter-story to Bloody Sunday that tangentially involves Maklakov’s friend Alexandra Kollontai. In 1961 a woman who said she had been a 19-year-old weaver in 1905 told one I. A. Isakov that she found herself in the first row of marchers, facing soldiers led by an energetic, trim, and well-dressed officer trying to prevent the crowd from continuing toward the Winter Palace. All was peaceful and quiet. Suddenly, a cleanly dressed person rushed out of the crowd up to the officer, who seemed to expect some sort of word or request from him. The man pulled out a revolver and shot the officer. The officer fell, and then the soldiers began to fire at the crowd. The weaver escaped. Later, in the 1930s, she told the story to Kollontai, with whom she was well acquainted. Kollontai cautioned, “Masha, don’t tell anyone of this story. It could do you great harm.”10 Of course the story’s value depends on the veracity of the weaver and Isakov, which can’t be verified. But Kollontai clearly recognized the physical risk to anyone offering evidence impugning a key element of Russia’s revolutionary iconography.
In any event, Russian society, including Maklakov and other Beseda members, responded to the accepted account with vehemence. The Assembly of the Moscow Nobility met just a few days after the shootings to discuss possible “addresses” to the tsar, ultimately endorsing the most conservative of the drafts, one presented by F. D. Samarin (formerly of Beseda), supporting the troops’ action. Though not directly opposing reform, Samarin urged that it be postponed until war and internal rebellion passed (there had been little internal rebellion at that stage). Maklakov says that he “never took part in nobility meetings,” explaining (perhaps in jest), “I would have had to obtain a uniform,” but in nearly the same breath he reports that, at the request of Prince S. N. Trubetskoi (a professor of philosophy and liberal constitutionalist, also of Beseda), he did take the floor to contest Samarin. He argued that Samarin’s view—first peace and quiet, then reform—was just what had gotten Russia into its current position. Without reform there would be no peace. Writing about the episode later, Maklakov said that after rereading Samarin’s speech he didn’t see it as quite the “unconditional reaction” he had seen originally.
Samarin’s address prevailed, getting 219 votes, while a more reformist address received 147 votes. The moderates decided to issue a separate statement explaining their opposition to Samarin’s position and tasked an all-Beseda committee of Trubetskoi, N. A. Khomiakov (a liberal Slavophile), and Maklakov to draft the statement. A line supplied by Trubetskoi attacking the bureaucracy and accusing it of both paralyzing Russian society and dividing it from the monarch drew great applause, even from the rightists. As a way forward, the minority statement called on the tsar to summon freely elected representatives, whose presence could reconcile the tsar and the people. By contrast, the action of the assembly’s majority stood out against a background of overwhelming public sympathy for the victims and condemnation of the regime. In retrospect, Maklakov thought that, although the liberals didn’t prevail, their efforts at least qualified the image of the Moscow nobility as supporters of aggressive reaction.11
The Beseda records (under Maklakov’s custodianship as secretary) suggest that Maklakov’s attitude at the time was more hostile to the monarchy than one might suppose from a study of his later writings. As a historian he pointed with horror to another politician’s seeming indifference to the burning of manor houses.12 Yet his January 1905 remarks at Beseda seemed to express a good deal of schadenfreude at the woes of the autocracy and gentry. He argued that the agrarian disorders “make autocracy a much more dangerous profession.” Though seeing the disorders as possibly making ordinary people more reactionary, he had an answer. The task before Beseda, he said, was to convince the public that the