BIRTH OF A NATION:

Hunger Causes Petrograd Riots: Military Chief Orders Troops to Use Arms Against Demonstrators (The New York Times, March 9, 1917)

A number of causes, working together, brought the crisis momentarily to a head, although I do not personally believe there can be serious trouble while the Duma is sitting.

A number of baker shops were destroyed, and at others crowds seized bread from those who succeeded in buying it. A crowd last night broke the windows of a factory because its workers refused to strike.

The methods of the Cossacks, as I saw them this afternoon, are to make a cordon with their horses at opposite ends of the streets. Meanwhile, other troops ride through the crowd. The feeling of the people is not hostile to the Cossacks. For the most part the crowds are good tempered, and there is still hope that serious conflict will be avoided.

The general character of the excitement is vague. Throughout yesterday the streets were full of people, although Petrograd is heavily patrolled by Cossacks and mounted police; most of the crowd, including many women, were out to watch other people make trouble. The general atmosphere of excitement is like a bank holiday with thunder in the air.

As Richard Pipes has written in his magisterial history, The Russian Revolution, reform had already begun in Tsarist Russia, making Revolution unnecessary and, given its inevitable course, tragic. Meanwhile, the great Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has offered Prime Minister Peter Stolypin as an example of a healthy alternative--gradual liberalization under constitutional monarchy--that might have been followed instead, Solzhenitsyn Revisited: a review of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Ascent from Ideology. By Daniel J. Mahoney (Robert P. Kraynak, First Things)

Solzhenitsyn's appreciation of Stolypin has been largely unknown because it appears in the second edition of August 1914: The Red Wheel I (1989), which few have read. What Solzhenitsyn claims in the Stolypin chapters is that a moderate alternative to Tsarist autocracy existed in Russia in the early twentieth century-namely, a peaceful evolution toward a European-style constitutional monarchy under the enlightened statesmanship of Prime Minister Stolypin.

The main features of Stolypin's plan were the preservation of the Romanov dynasty and Orthodox Church, combined with economic and political reforms-reforms that would have given land to peasants and established local self-governing councils. Tragically, Stolypin was assassinated by terrorists who feared the success of his plan (which Solzhenitsyn estimates could have created an independent peasantry in twenty years and prevented Communist revolution). Mahoney's analysis shows Solzhenitsyn to be a Burkean-style admirer of constitutional monarchy that gradually evolves toward ordered liberty while preserving his nation's distinctive traditions.

It's almost unbearable to consider how much better the 20th Century might have been had the Russian Revolution been avoided or had Woodrow Wilson more vigorously pursued pre-emptive war against the Bolsheviks at the end of WWI.

MORE:
Here's a recent treat, Richard Pipes reviewing Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Alone Together: SOLZHENITSYN AND THE JEWS, REVISTED (Richard Pipes, 11.14.02, New Republic)

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 8, 2003 8:25 AM