Moscow and St. Petersburg. In 1881, pogroms - the sad word entered the English language from the Russian - that is, violent popular outbreaks against the Jews, occurred in southwestern Russian towns and settlements, destroying Jewish property and sometimes taking Jewish lives. They were to recur sporadically until the end of imperial Russia. Local authorities often did little to prevent pogroms and on occasion, it is rather clear, even encouraged them. As Pobedonostsev allegedly remarked, the Jewish problem in Russia was to be solved by the conversion to Orthodoxy of one-third of the Russian Jews, the emigration of one-third, and the death of the remaining third. It should be added that the Russian government defined Jews according to their religion; Jews converted to Christianity escaped the disabilities imposed on the others.
Yet even under Alexander III state policies could not be limited to curbing the 'great reforms' and generally promoting reaction. Certain more constructive measures were enacted in the domains of finance and national economy where the government had to face a difficult and changing situation, and where it profited from the services of several able ministers. While the development of the Russian economy and of society after the 'great reforms' will be discussed in a later chapter, it should be noted here that Nicholas Bunge, who headed the Ministry of Finance from 1881 to 1887, established a Peasant Land Bank, abolished the head tax, introduced the inheritance tax, and also began labor legislation in Russia. His pioneer factory laws included the limitation of the working day to eight hours for children between twelve and fifteen, the prohibition of night work for children and for women in the textile industry, and regulations aimed at assuring the workers proper and regular pay from their employers, without excessive fines or other illegitimate deductions. Factory inspectors were established to supervise the carrying out of the new legislation. It is significant that Bunge had to leave the Ministry of Finance because of the strong opposition to his measures and accusations of socialism. His successors, Ivan Vyshnegradsky, 1887-92, and Serge Witte, 1892 -1903,
strove especially to develop state railways in Russia and to promote heavy industry through high tariffs, state contracts and subsidies, and other means.
Nicholas II, Alexander Ill's eldest son, who was born in 1868, became the autocratic ruler of Russia after his father's death in 1894. The last tsar possessed certain attractive qualities, such as simplicity, modesty, and devotion to his family. But these positive personal traits mattered little in a situation that demanded strength, determination, adaptability, and vision. It may well be argued that another Peter the Great could have saved the Romanovs and imperial Russia. There can be no doubt that Nicholas II did not. In fact, he proved to be both narrow-minded and weak, unable to remove reactionary blinders even when circumstances forced him into entirely new situations with great potentialities, and at the same time unable to manage even reaction effectively. The unfortunate emperor struck many observers as peculiarly automatic in his attitudes and actions, without the power of spontaneous decision, and - as his strangely colorless and undifferentiating diary so clearly indicates - also quite deficient in perspective. Various, often unworthy, ministers made crucial decisions that the sovereign failed to understand fully or to evaluate. Later in the reign the empress, the reactionary, hysterical, and willful German princess Alexandra, became the power behind the throne, and with her even such an incredible person as Rasputin could rise to the position of greatest influence in the state. A good man, but a miserable ruler lost in the moment of crisis - no wonder Nicholas II has often been compared to Louis XVI. As Trotsky and other determinists have insisted, the archaic, rotten Russian system, which was about to collapse, could not logically produce a leader much different from that ineffective relic of the past. Or, as an old saying has it, the gods blind those whom they want to destroy.
Reaction continued unimpeded. The new emperor, who had been a pupil of Pobedonostsev, relied on the Ober-Procurator of the Holy Synod and on other reactionaries such as his ministers of interior Dmitrii Sipiagin and Viacheslav Plehve. The government continued to apply and extend the 'Temporary Regulations,' to supervise the press with utmost severity, and as best it could to control and often restrict education. The zemstvo and municipal governments experienced further curtailments of their jurisdictions. For example, in 1900 the limits of zemstvo taxation were strictly fixed and the stockpiling of food for emergency was taken away from
zemstvo jurisdiction and transferred to that of the bureaucracy. Moreover, the authorities often refused to confirm elections of zemstvo board members or appointments of zemstvo employees, trying to assure that only people of unimpeachable loyalty to the regime would hold public positions of any kind.
Religious persecution grew. Russian sectarians suffered the most, in particular those groups that refused to recognize the state and perform such state obligations as military service. Many of them were exiled from central European Russia to the Caucasus and other distant areas. It was as a result of the policies of the Russian government that the Dukhobory and certain other sects - helped, incidentally, by Leo Tolstoy - began to emigrate in large numbers to Canada and the United States. The state also confiscated the estates and charity funds of the Armenian Church and harassed other denominations in numerous ways. The position of the Jews too underwent further deterioration. Additional restrictions on them included a prohibition from acquiring real estate anywhere in the empire except in the cities and settlements of the Jewish Pale, while new pogroms erupted in southwest Russia, including the horrible one in Kishinev in 1903.
But the case of Finland represented in many respects the most telling instance of the folly of Russification. As an autonomous grand duchy from the time it was won from Sweden in 1809, Finland received more rights from the Russian emperor, who became the Grand Duke of Finland, than it had had under Swedish rule, and remained a perfectly loyal, as well as a relatively prosperous and happy, part of the state until the very end of the nineteenth century and the introduction of a policy of Russification. Finnish soldiers helped suppress the Poles, and in general the Finns participated actively and fruitfully in almost every aspect of the life of the empire. Yet the new nationalism demanded that they too be Russified. While some preliminary measures in that direction had been enacted as early as in the reign of Alexander III, real Russification began with the appointment of General Nicholas Bobrikov as governor-general of Finland and of Plehve as state secretary for Finnish affairs in 1898. Russian authorities argued that Finland could remain different from Russia only so far as local matters were concerned, while it had to accept the general system in what pertained to the entire state. With that end in view, a manifesto concerning laws common to Finland and Russia and a new statute dealing with the military service of the Finns were published in 1899. Almost overnight Finland became bitterly hostile to Russia, and a strong though passive resistance developed: new laws were ignored, draftees failed to show up, and so on. In 1901 freedom of meetings was abrogated in Finland. In 1902 Governor-General Bobrikov received the right to dismiss Finnish officials and judges and to replace them with
Russians. In 1903 he was vested with extraordinary powers to protect state security and public order, which represented a definitive extension of the 'Temporary Regulations' of 1881 to Finland. In 1904 Bobrikov was assassinated. The following year the opposition in Finland became part of the revolution that spread throughout the empire.
However, under Nicholas II, as in the reign of Alexander III, the Ministry of Finance pursued a more intelligent and far-sighted policy than did the rest of the government; and this affected many aspects of the Russian economy and life. The minister, Serge Witte, was an economic planner and manager of the type common in recent times in the governments of western Europe and the United States, but exceedingly rare in the high officialdom of imperial Russia. Witte devoted his remarkable energy and ability especially to the stabilization of finance, the promotion of heavy industry, and the building of railroads. In 1897, after accumulating a sufficient gold reserve, he established a gold standard in Russia, a measure which did much to add stability and prestige to Russian economic development, and in particular to attract foreign capital. Witte encouraged heavy industry by virtually every means at his command, including government orders, liberal credits, unceasing efforts to obtain investments from abroad, tariff regulations, and improved transportation. As to railroads, the minister, who had risen to prominence as a railroad official, always retained a great interest in them: the Russian railroad network doubled in mileage between 1895 and 1905, and the additions included the enormous Trans-Siberian line, built between 1891 and 1903 -except for a section around Lake Baikal completed later - the importance of which for Siberia can be compared to the importance of the Canadian Pacific Railroad for Canada. Witte's activities, as we shall see presently, affected foreign policy as well as domestic affairs.
