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Bureaucratic Authoritarianism in late Imperial Russia: The Personality, Career and Opinions of P. N. Durnovo*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
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1 P. N. Durnovo was born in 1845 and died in 1915. His personality, career and views can usefully be compared to those of A. N. Kulomzin, a representative of the more liberal wing of the ruling elite. See Lieven, D. C. B., ‘Bureaucratic liberalism in late imperial Russia: the personality, career and opinions of A. N. Kulomzin‘, Slavonic and East European Review, LXII, vol. 60, no. 3 (1982).Google Scholar Three men bearing the name Durnovo played important political roles in Nicholas II's reign, all three being appointed members of the state council. I. N. Durnovo (1834–1903) served as minister of the interior (1889–95) and chairman of the committee of ministers (1895–1903). General P. P. Durnovo (born 1835) was governor-general of Moscow during the 1905 revolution. P. P. and P. N. Durnovo were very distant cousins; I. N. Durnovo, it seems, was not related to either of them. A number of historians have caused much confusion by imagining that two or even all three Durnovos were the sameman. In Feinstein, C. H. (ed.), Socialism, capitalism and economic growth (Cambridge, 1967), p. 313,Google Scholar Schlesinger seeks in an extraordinary fashion to derive P. N. Durnovo's views on geopolitics and foreign policy from I. N. Durnovo's opinions on economic problems in the 1890s. Even Ulam, A., Russia's failed revolutions (Harvard, 1980), pp. 185, 228, confuses two of the Durnovos. Given the relatively small numbers of Russian surnames it is crucial that where any confusion is possible full Christian names and patronymics should be cited.Google Scholar
2 The memoirs of other high officials virtually all recognize Durnovo's great ability, though they by no means necessarily applaud his political views. See e.g. Gurko, V. I., Features and figures of the past (Stanford, 1939), pp. 178–83, 413–14.Google ScholarWitte, S. Yu., Vospominaniya, 3 vols. (Moscow, 1960), III, 112;Google ScholarIzvol'sky, A. P., The memoirs of Alexander Iswolsky (London, n.d.), pp. 32—3;Google ScholarSazonov, S. D., Fateful years (London, 1928), p. 289;Google ScholarKryzhanovsky, S. E., Vospominaniya (Berlin, n.d.), p. 210;Google ScholarNaumov, A. N., Iz utselevshikh vospominaniy (2 vols., New York, 1955), 11,31,148–50. The comments of M. M. Kovalevsky, a liberal elected member of the state council, about Durnovo are also critical of his views but flattering about his brain. See Columbia University, Bakhmetev Archive (henceforth CUBA), Kovalevsky papers, Vospominaniya, pp. 55, 63.Google Scholar
3 On Durnovo's family see Ikonnikov, N., La noblesse de Russie, (26 vols., Paris, 1958–66, 2nd edn), vol. c, 570–93. One of his ancestors was killed at the siege of Ochakov in the 1730s, another at the siege of Azov under Peter I. One branch of the family, the descendants of General N. D. Durnovo (1733–1816) was both rich and prominent. It was represented in Nicholas II's state council by General P. P. Durnovo.Google Scholar
4 M. G. Akimov and A. G. Bulygin, the brothers-in-law respectively of Durnovo himself and of his wife. I have discussed the social, racial and educational background and the career patterns of the bureaucracy in ‘The Russian civil service under Nicholas II: some variations on the bureaucratic theme‘, Jahrbucher für Geschichte Osteuropas, xxx, 3 (1982), 366–403.Google Scholar
5 For Mosolov's comments see his memoirs (in manuscript) in the Otdel rukopisey biblioteki imeni Lenina (RO), fond 514, karton 1, ed. khr. 4, 13–14, 20. All details of Durnovo's service, education, property etc. are drawn from his civil service record in Tsentral’nyy gosudarstvenny istoricheskiy arkhiv (TsGIA), fond 1162, opis 6, ed. khr. 190.
6 On Durnovo's love of the navy and his own comments on his naval career see Stenograficheskiy otchot Gosudarstvennogo Soveta (SOGS), session 3, cols. 1712—15.
7 Witte, Vospominaniya, III, 74.
8 Gurko, Features, 182.
9 There are useful summaries of the inadequacies of the police in Santoni, W., ‘P. N. Durnovo as minister of internal affairs in the Witte cabinet’ (Kansas University Ph.D. thesis, 1968), pp. 397ff.,Google Scholar and Weissman, N. B., Reform in tsarist Russia: the state bureaucracy and local government, 1900–1914 (Rutgers, 1981), especially pp. 205–20.Google Scholar
10 The famous episode in which Durnovo sent in his police to search the office of a foreign diplomat whom he considered to be a rival for the affections of a woman. Aldanov, M., ‘P. N. Durnovo. Prophet of war and revolution‘, Russian Review, II (1942), 39–40. Gurko, Features, p. 179.Google Scholar
11 Witte, Vospominaniya, III, 75.
12 Grazhdanin, no. 34, 29 April 1904, p. 23.
13 CUBA, Lyubimov papers, Memoirs, 351. RO, fond 126, K 14, pp. 107, III for the comments by General A. A. Kireyev about the distrust of Durnovo in court circles.
14 Santoni's thesis is largely devoted to study of the means used by Durnovo to suppress the disturbances of 1905–6. See also Gurko, Features, pp. 413–14, 438–41, 449. The memoirs of another close aide of Durnovo in 1905, D. N. Lyubimov, are also of great value. CUBA, Lyubimov, Memoirs, pp. 344–64.
15 CUBA, Lyubimov, Memoirs, p. 352.
16 Published in the Council's stenographic record (SOGS). These speeches, hitherto untapped by historians, provide the fullest and most valuable source of information about Durnovo's political outlook.
17 SOGS, session 9, col. 2300.
18 E.g. see his comment that the ministry of internal affairs should protect the innocent Russian population from the temptations to fall away from Orthodoxy which might ensue if Old Believers were allowed to hold religious processions, use Orthodox-style vestments etc. SOGS, session 5, col. 2810. Such protection was needed because the ‘cultural weakness’ of the peasantry would result in their easily being led astray unless guided by the state.
19 SOGS, session 7, col. 1259.
20 Gurko, Features, 458.
21 See the excellent chapter by B. Plavsic, ‘Seventeenth-century chanceries and their staffs’, in Pintner, W. and Rowney, D. K., Russian officialdom. The bureaucratisation of Russian society from the seventeenth to the twentieth century (London, 1980), pp. 19–45.Google Scholar
22 M. M. Kovalevsky confessed that to his surprise and dismay the appointed, official elements in the Council were in general more able, more experienced and more intelligent than the elected members (of whom he was one). The imbalance was, he wrote, most noticeable of all in the Right group. CUBA, Kovalevsky, Vospominaniya, pp. 55–56.
23 This lay at the centre of his political outlook as he stressed, e.g. in his last speech to the Council. SOGS, session 11, col. 35.
24 CUBA, Lyubimov, Memoirs, p. 358.
25 ‘Governing a state is a harsh business - justice itself yields to the demands of higher state interests.’ Humanitarian sentiment ‘ought not to write laws and still less to govern a state’. SOGS, session 6, col. 595.
26 SOGS, session 6, col. 595.
27 Byloye, xix (1922), 164.Google Scholar
28 SOGS, session 3, col. 1952. RO, fond 544, opis 1, ed. khr. 34 and 59 for the correspondence between Durnovo and L. A. Shanyavskaya.
29 Aldanov, ‘Durnovo’, pp. 39–40. SOGS, session 4, cols. 277–8.
30 On Durnovo's dismissal as minister he received a large, though by no means unprecedented, gift of 200,000 rubles from Nicholas II and his daughter was appointed a maid of honour. Witte, Vospominaniyia, III, 347. As a member of the state council his salary was larger than that of most of his peers though smaller than that of a handful. The same was true of his pension, 10,000 rubles a year going to his wife, 2,000 to his daughter and 4,000 being contributed by the crown towards the expenses of his funeral. TsGIA, fond 1162, opis 6, ed. khr. 190, pp. 113, 119. Comparisons made with salaries of other members of the state council whose personnel records are all held in the same section of fond 1162.
31 Riha, T. (ed.), Readings in Russian civilisation (Chicago, 1964) prints an English translation of Durnovo's memorandum to Nicholas II of February 1914. The phrase cited is on page 470.Google Scholar
32 Quoted by Besancon, A., The intellectual origins of Leninism (Oxford, 1981), p. 156.Google Scholar
33 Hosking, G., The Russian constitutional experiment (Cambridge, 1973), p. 181.Google Scholar
34 ‘In the conception of our people the tsar has to be terrible’, SOGS, session 6, col. 595.
35 Naumov, lz utselevshikh, 11, 150.
36 Riha, Readings, Memorandum, pp. 468–70. Naumov, lz utselevshikh, II, 150.
37 Hosking, Constitutional experiment, pp. 210–13. Dyakin, V. S., Russkaya burzhuaziya i tsarizm v gody pervoy mirovoy voyny (Leningrad, 1967), p. 353.Google ScholarAvrekh, A. Ya., Stolypin i tret’ya Duma (Moscow, 1968), pp. 210–20.Google Scholar
38 SOGS, session 8, col. 1294; session 9, col. 2302.
39 SOGS, session 2, cols. 413–14.
40 SOGS, session 5, cols. 3283–90.
41 SOGS, session 2, cols. 406–8, 414.
42 Durnovo's comments on the duma Chancellery are probably to be explained by this concern. SOGS, session 3, cols. 2047–9. He was afraid that if the best young officials were drawn into the Chancellery and subsequently went on to senior positions in other parts of the service they would carry with them the bacillus of new and divided loyalties.
43 SOGS, session 4, cols. 1345–50.
44 Santoni, Durnovo, pp. 431–6.
45 In April 1911, for instance, Durnovo argued strongly against an amnesty, stressing that the revolutionary threat was by no means destroyed and the need for repression still real. His memorandum on this issue is quoted by N. A. Rubakin, RO, fond 358, Karton 143, ed. khr. 5, p. 100.
46 SOGS, session 2, cols. 404–5, 414–15; session 11, cols. 35–6. Santoni, Durnovo, p. 525.
47 In his memoirs Kulomzin wrote of Loris-Melikov, the head of the government in 1879–81, that ‘by his constant demands that it (i.e. the police) should always act legally in all its undertakings one can with truth say that he caused its collapse; this is a strange statement but it's true; our police never knew anything about laws and when threatened with responsibility for infringing the law it becomes lost and prefers to sit and do nothing’, RO, fond 178, Karton 9803, ed. khr. 5, p. 23.
48 SOGS, session 8, cols. 1291–4.
49 Zayonchkovsky, P. A., Krizis samoderzhaviya na rubezhe 1870–1880 godov (Moscow, 1964), pp. 6, 286, 298, 477–9.Google ScholarWalkin, J., The rise of democracy in pre-revolutionary Russia (London, 1963), pp.47–62.Google Scholar
50 E.g. SOGS, session 6, cols. 384–90. In November 1901 Durnovo complained strongly to Prince V. M. Golitsyn about the central administration's affection for legislation inapplicable in practice given Russian conditions but splendid in theory and on paper. RO, fond 75, Dnevnik, book 23, entry for 16 November 1901.
51 SOGS, session 9, cols. 2300–1.
52 SOGS, session 4, cols. 801–10.
53 SOGS, session 7, col. 264; session 9, col. 2301.
54 SOGS, session 5, col. 3309.
55 SOGS, session 7, cols. 1255–66. See also footnote 9.
56 SOGS, session 3, col. 1711.
57 SOGS, session 3, col. 667; session 7, cols. 2955–6.
58 SOGS, session 5, cols. 3926–7. He certainly showed no enthusiasm for the Cholm issue in December 1905: see ‘Tsarskosel'skiye soveshchaniya, Byloye’, III (1917), 264.Google Scholar
59 This is the main theme of his memorandum. I have discussed Durnovo's views on geopolitics and Russian foreign policy in ‘Pro-Germans and Russian foreign policy 1890–1914’, International History Review, II, i (1980), 34–54.Google Scholar
60 SOGS, session 5, col. 2797.
61 See S. F. Cohen, ‘ The friends and foes of change: reformism and conservatism in the Soviet Union’, pp. 11–31. In Cohen, S. F., Rabinowitch, A. and Sharlet, R. (eds), The Soviet Union since Stalin (Indiana, 1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
62 ‘ Ancient and medieval peoples were strong in spirit, they were not confused by theories or by the various considerations of the Social Democrats, Trudoviki and such people but marched firmly down the road of the creation of a realm and the consolidation of their power’, SOGS, session 6, col. 596.
63 The best examples are his attacks on the workers’ sickness insurance and the volost’ zemstvo bills, SOGS, session 7, cols. 3483–98; session 8, cols. 2297–2302.
64 SOGS, session 9, col. 1589.
65 SOGS, session 5, cols. 2800–3.
66 The importance which Durnovo attached to the intelligentsia's support varied. In 1906 he stated that ‘educated Russia governs the state, one must try to have as many loyal people as possible among the educated’, Byloye, iv (1917), 208. In his memorandum of February 1914, however, he argued that the opposition parties and their supporters were ‘intellectual throughout’ and represented ‘no real force’. Riha, Readings, Memorandum, p. 469.
67 Naumov, lz utselevshikh, 11, 214.
68 Prince B. A. Vasil’chikov, Vospominaniya, Private MSS, chapter 7, p. 82. He states that his source on this conversation is ‘fully reliable’ and was very close to Durnovo. I am very grateful to Prince George Wassiltchikoff for his permission to study his uncle's memoirs.
69 Kryzhanovsky, Vospominaniya, p. 75.