Mikhail Geller - Utopia in Power

reduce Russia's dependence on foreign capital. Although The History of the USSR, a textbook for students of history at Soviet uni­versities and teachers colleges, states that in 1914 the "specific weight" of foreign capital in the Russian economy was 47 percent,⁴ another Soviet source, the historian L. M. Spirin, estimates that foreign investments amounted to only about "one-third of total investments."⁵ The English writer Norman Stone notes that on the eve of World War I foreign investment in Russia had declined by 50 percent in the period 1904^1905, and amounted to 12.5 percent in 1913.⁶

Edmond ТЬёгу emphasized that Russian agriculture had made as much progress as industry. From 1908 to 1912 wheat production rose by 37.5 percent over the preceding five years; rye by 2.4 percent; barley by 62.2 percent; oats by 20.9 percent; and corn by 44.8 percent. ТЬёгу commented: "This increase in agricultural production served not only to meet the new needs of the population. ... It also allowed Russia to expand its foreign markets significantly and, thanks to its earnings from grain exports, to end its unfavorable balance of trade." In good harvest years, such as 1909 and 1910, Russian wheat exports amounted to 40 percent of world wheat ex­ports. Even in bad years, such as 1908 and 1912, they still accounted for 11.5 percent.⁷

The population of the Russian empire, which in 1900 was 135 million, reached 171 million in 1912. ТЬёгу, basing himself on the demographic statistics of the beginning of the century, predicted a population of 343.9 million by 1948.® The figure cited by Soviet historians for the Russian empire in 1917, based on 1914 borders, is 179,041,100.⁹

The nation's economic progress was accompanied by fundamental social change. In the last fifty years of the empire, the urban population grew from 7 million to 20 million. The hierarchical structure of the state began to crumble. Social barriers fell. The importance of the nobility, the autoc­racy's traditional base of support, declined. "The class that provided lead­ership has ceased to fulfill its function; it is obsolete," wrote Vasily Shulgin, a prominent conservative politician (a monarchist) and subsequently one of the most talented chroniclers of the revolution.¹⁰

Major improvements were initiated in public education. In 1908 a law introducing compulsory primary education was adopted (although its im­plementation was interrupted by the revolution and delayed until 1930). The increased government spending for education serves as an index of the efforts being made: between 1902 and 1912 such spending rose by 216.2 percent.¹¹ By 1915, 51 percent of all children between eight and eleven years of age were in school, and 68 percent of all military conscripts knew how to read and write.¹² Certainly Russia still lagged behind the advanced Western countries, but the increased number of schools and greater funding testify to the government's commitment and the considerable success achieved in this area. The first two decades of the twentieth century also saw a remarkable flowering of Russian culture, which is often referred to as Russia's Silver Age.

The governmental system evolved at a much slower pace than the eco­nomic, social, and cultural structures. The 1905 revolution, which grew out of the disastrous war with Japan, compelled Tsar Nicholas II to accept a series of reforms and introduce a constitution. Russia became a consti­tutional monarchy with an elected assembly, the Duma. Freedom of the press, assembly, and association were guaranteed. These rights, and the powers of the Duma, were more limited than in the Western democracies, but they existed nevertheless. In the Duma, highly diverse political trends were represented—from the Bolsheviks on the left to supporters of absolute monarchy on the right. However, the Duma was based on indirect repre­sentation (a system of elections passing through several stages) and a limited franchise (allowing only those with certain qualifications to vote).

In 1906 Prime Minister Stolypin introduced a law allowing every head of a peasant family to become the owner of his share of the village's communal land. Trotsky explained clearly and concisely the potential im­portance of this reform, which was not fully implemented. "If the agrarian problem ... had been solved by the bourgeoisie, if it could have been solved by them, the Russian proletariat could not possibly have come to power in 1917."¹³

During the brief period between the 1905 revolution and World War I, Russia underwent a political evolution unprecedented in its history. Never­theless, discontent spread to all strata of the population. Despite major improvements in their condition, the peasants continued to feel intense land hunger and firmly believed that the only solution to their problems was to divide up the large landed estates. Workers' conditions were slowly improving. They had obtained, albeit with certain restrictions, the right to strike over economic issues and, after 1912, both health and accident insurance. Still they demanded a shorter workday and a better standard of living. The young bourgeoisie, seeking a place in the country's political system, demanded an extension of political rights. The intelligentsia dreamed of a revolution that would bring "freedom," and from its ranks came the nuclei of the numerous political parties. Also opposed to the central gov­ernment were all the heterogeneous peoples included in the Russian empire, the bitterest discontent being found among the Poles, the Finns, and the Jews.

Russia on the eve of World War I served as confirmation of a rule deduced by Alexis de Tocqueville from an analysis of the causes of the French revolution: for a bad government, the most dangerous time is when it begins to reform itself.

The case of Mendel Beilis, a Jew accused of the ritual murder of a Christian child, summed up the situation in a nutshell. Despite the openly expressed desire of the tsarist government and the judges for a conviction, the jury of half-literate Ukrainian peasants acquitted Beilis. The verdict in his favor was a remarkable expression of the weakness of progovernment forces.

Thus, Russia became involved in the world war at a time of rapid economic development, in an era of demolition and new construction, under conditions of universal discontent and rising expectations, with a weak government incapable of winning popular support. On several occasions the dangers posed by an entrance into the European conflict were pointed out. In February 1914, for example, Petr Durnovo, minister of the interior under the Witte government of 1905-06 and subsequently a member of the tsar's Council of State, sent Nicholas II a memorandum that included these prophetic words:

A war involving all of Europe would be a mortal danger for Russia and Germany, regardless of which was the victor. ... In the event of defeat, a possibility which cannot be excluded when faced with an enemy such as Germany, social revolution in its most extreme form would be inevitable in our country.

The memorandum was found among the tsar's papers after the revolution, unmarked by any royal notations. It is possible that the tsar did not bother to read it.¹⁴ Even Grigory Rasputin, that evil genius in the bosom of the royal family, whose influence on the destiny of the nation grew steadily after 1906, warned against the dangers of a war.

To this day historians disagree over who was responsible for and what were the actual causes of World War I. It is often forgotten that in the summer of 1914 one sentiment

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