Comparison with Russia

Compared to the countries of Western Europe Russia had not kept pace with them in reforms of the system of government and the control of the people over the executive during the nineteenth century. One after another of these countries had set up barriers for the power of the head of state. Since the French Revolution the defence of any sort of ‘absolute power’ was challenged. This had started already earlier in some countries, but it became a general process only in the nineteenth century and went also hand in hand with the growth of bourgeois capitalism and individualism. A fundamental condition for a capitalist economy was the possibility to foresee consequences of actions: investments to be done and fees and taxes to be paid. The regulation of society can be seen as a long-term construction of a liberal bourgeois desire to decrease the influence of contingency and arbitrariness in social life. The ‘rule of law’ or the ‘ Rechtstaat ’ were ideals (with slightly different connotations) that demanded that judiciary, legislation and executive were kept apart, and asked for an influence of representation over legislation. Gradually these ideals won ground in West European states during the nineteenth century. With a rapidly growing industrial capitalism the demands for rule of law, control and representation gained strength in the liberal bourgeoisie and swept with it also many noble families with close relations to the new moneyed elite. In the latter half of the century the demand for representation was taken up also by industrial workers through trade unions and socialist movements where the fundamental demand however was another: social justice, equality and redistribution of wealth.

All these things came to Russia also. The development went in uneven pace over Europe generally, and the late occurence of inustry in Russia was shared with countries in Northern and Southern Europe (Norway, Sweden, Denmark in the North, Italy and Spain in the South). It should be noted also that Germany was half a century after Britain in building large industrial firms with tens of thousands of workers even if it was ahead of the countries mentioned. Only in the 1890s large-scale industrial firms were established in Russia, and along the west shore of the Neva in St Petersburg several giant workshops sprang up. St Petersburg and Moscow became the very centres of the new industry but by 1905 large industrial sites existed in many cities in European Russia and also in some places in Asian Russia.

The big bourgeoisie of Russia was not different from its counterparts in other parts of Europe. As all other capitalists Russian entrepreneurs wanted to know under which conditions they could make profit from their investments and make their business grow.

However, there was one fundamental difference between Russia and the West European countries. In Russia the tsar had an unlimited power, in principle. For a period local self-government had been accepted to make some small inroads in this unlimited power, but its local power base had been questioned seriously both by state officials (especially the ministers of the interior) and the tsar (both Alexander III and Nikolai II). The nobles who led the zemstva, often of very established and titled families, had good connections (i.e. a political network) and were often enough of liberal convictions. Many landed nobles had also become dependent on agrarian capitalist production, which may have made this standpoint natural to them.

There was also an unsatisfied industrial working class in Russia as in the West, though workers had started to get rights of representation under certain conditions in most West European countries. The masses of the working people in Russia were, however, not industrial workers but agrarian workers, officially registered as peasants. Landless peasants constituted the core of the ‘agrarian question’ of Russia, and how to solve this problem was still an open question by 1905.

If we compare Russia and Western Europe strictly by 1905-07, disregarding the developments of the previous century, we will use the eleven questions mentioned at the outset of this chapter.

1) Franchise was more extended in some of the countries of Western Europe than was the case in Russia for the first two Dumas. None of the countries of Western Europe had universal suffrage for men and women and almost everywhere there were some restrictions or qualifications for voting also for men. It was rare to have unequal votes to the ‘popular’ chamber of the representation, though it was rather often the case to the ‘upper’ chamber. In respect to the lower chamber the Russian franchise system differed from what had become ‘normal’ in Western Europe by 1905-07, but it should be noted that this was a period of rapid development of franchise systems and reforms were continuously made. In regard to the selection of members of the upper chamber, the Russian Gosudarstvennyi soviet was old-fashioned but not anomalous.

2) In all countries of Western Europe the head of state had a limited power. Almost always the legislation was totally in the hands of the parliament or at least dependent on the parliament. Even as responsible for the executive the head of state was normally dependent on a government or ministers. In Russia the tsar became formally dependent on the Duma as regards legislation only.

3) Most countries of Western Europe had ‘governments’, which were formal institutions delimited through legislation. It was less common that political leader who had the confidence of a majority in parliament was recognised as the head of the government with a decisive voice i the selection of ministers. Yet this kind of political responsibility was spreading over Europe. Governments were very often a mixture of political personalities and bureaucrats. They had turned out to be dependent on parliament and therefore were no longer hand-picked by the head of state. In Russia the tsar still chose his ministers himself and there was no real government and no recognition of the collective of ministers in laws.

4) There were prime ministers (or equivalent posts) in all countries. Also Russia got a post as prime minister, though it took until 1906 (Stolypin) to temporarily settle the function.

5) In some countries of Western Europe (esp. Britain) a political responsibility of ministers (and whole ministries or governments) existed already in 1905. In many countries this was a period when the political influence of parliaments grew and political responsibility was a concept that was debated, though not always put into effect. In Russia too the debate was vivid but political responsibility was not realised.

6) Parties were almost always accepted as the organisation of fundamental interest groups or ideological groups in the parliaments of Western Europe, though they were often called fractions or groups. Even though there may have been minor exceptions, parliamentary life had become fundamentally dependent on the organisation of common interests and views with leaders who spoke for a collective. The days of prominent individuals in parliament who spoke for themselves in the name of reason were about to end completely. In the Duma the fraction organisation was very similar to contemporary groups in the parliaments of Western Europe.

7) The designation ‘party’ was primarily reserved for national party organisations in many countries, even though it spread to parliamentary groups in the late nineteenth century. National parties were in most cases young in 1905-07, and in several countries the relation between a national party and a fraction in parliament was loose. In Russia national party organisations were even more in the process of being created but the same informal relations held between national parties and fractions in parliament in Russia as in many other countries.

8) National parties often had unlimited possibility to make propaganda in elections – only in some countries a few parties were regarded as subversive and their activities restricted. In Russia some restrictions (for social democrats and socialist revolutionaries) were valid in 1905-07 but they were fewer in the elections to the second Duma than in the elections to the first Duma.

9) By 1905 in Western Europe most interest organisations and associations were linked, directly or indirectly, to parties insofar as they wanted to make their interests heard in the political debate. Parties most often were sponsored by interest groups. Only when organised interest groups had difficulties in finding an appropriate party for their views they acted beside parties to promote certain specific ideas, e.g. women’s rights and female suffrage, which normally was not on the agenda of parties. In Russia many interest groups and voluntary associations had come into existence in the late nineteenth century. They were very active in elections where they promoted their main demands. Their relations to parties was often unclear, e.g. the priest Gapon’s trade union movement in St Petersburg. This holds also for the Union of Unions and its energetic intervention in the political debate in connection with the Russian debacle against Japan.

10) There had been a long tradition of churches, associations and trade unions in Western Europe that had been an important means to promote ideas of a joint responsibility for society. It is judged that in this way a fundamental democratic culture had been disseminated. In Russia there was no long tradition for associations, and temperance movements and Congregationalist churches did not exist. However, social democrats and socialist revolutionaries organised groups at a local level since a couple of decades. Further, the organisational mania in the first years of the twentieth century gave an opportunity for many Russians to combine ideological forces with others and to start working in local democratic forms in their organisations. The impact of these changes should not be overestimated, though it is important to point out that Russia was not unaffected by the type of movements that were important in the west of Europe.

11) Self-government traditions were on the one hand long in Russia, if the organisation of the obshchina is taken into regard, but short if the relation to the state is made the criterion. In many countries of Western Europe self-government had been part of the governmental system for centuries. In Russia the formal type was new and debated, partly curtailed by Aleksandr III and Nikolai II. However, zemstva existed and often a circle of persons had been formed around each zemstvo protecting its interests and practising solutions to problems and active conflict resolution. The relation to democratic schooling may yet be questioned, for the most active in the zemstvo circle often were members of ‘the third element’, i.e. appointed persons and not elected. Yet the zemstva seem to have increased and shaped a political awareness in the region, at least among the local elite, and may have served as a stimulant for political movements locally.

The survey of these eleven points shows that Russia was not on a par in the vital variables of democratic growth with the leading countries of Western Europe. Even the economically less advanced countries in this sphere had come further than Russia on the way towards a functioning formal democracy. But the differences are rather small and are often overestimated. There are two reasons for this. First, Russia’s rapid development economically and socially in the years around 1900 makes it important which period is compared. When we compare the situation in 1905-07 many things existed in Russia which were not at hand a decade earlier. Second, the almost complete halt of democratic development in Russia in 1907 when Western Europe went ahead with its development, tempts the observer to discount the later development, when a comparison is made. We try to avoid this. Then it must be stated, that even in Western Europe suffrage was not solved by 1905-07, and the Russian system, which was tried in the first Duma elections, though a bit old-fashioned was not apparently antiquated at the time compared to Western Europe. There were also variations in Western Europe in regard to the governmental system that made a parliament, whose consent was needed in questions of legislation only, a normal type of parliament. If it had also some influence in budget matters this was also on a par with several others. The most striking difference was the standing of the head of the state. The tsar had not relinquished his absolute power. But then it ought to be noted that many countries lived with a fiction that the monarch was the decision-maker and that ministers were only his chosen advisors, even when this was no longer the case.

No full-grown democracy (as shown by the points 1-6) existed in any country of Western Europe in the years 1905. Therefore it is no wonder that the reforming of Russia did not bring about a full democratic system. What was introduced was a cautious application of certain democratic elements in a moderate scale.

The possibility to involve citizens in political matters as indicated by points 7-11 show that Russia came to be almost at a par with many countries in the western part of Europe. Social transformation was rapid and even though Russia had nothing corresponding to the vital voluntary associations of the West European continent north of the Alps it did not differ fundamentally from a West European pattern by 1905, although it was lacking the traditions that the West profited from.

Let us then compare Russia with the other two empires of Europe, Germany and Austria-Hungary. The empires of Europe were not of one and the same sort, but they had several things in common. First, they were empires in the sense that they comprised parts of different nature and different relations to the central power. The variations were great in all three between some parts that constituted a core and parts that were rather a periphery of the realm. The emperor had different power in relation to such parts. National liberation movements challenged the central power in Russia and Austria, and these empires were also formally divided into parts. However, the Habsburg Empire was divided into two nearly equal parts, for which the monarch was the main unifying link, while the Russian tsar had the same formal position in relation to the whole empire excepting only Finland. His position as tsar to the old European Russian provinces and emperor to the rest of Russia had little importance for his control of these parts.

Of course there were other, factual differences between the empires. Thus, the German empire was divided by some anti-Prussian feelings in the Länder that were joined to the Reich in 1871, and many Czechs, Italians, Serbs and other peoples reacted against the “Austrian” rule of the Emperor in the Habsburg empire. The parallels in Russia are easy to find, especially in the Caucasus area. Also in Asian Russia control from St Petersburg was not quite the same as in European Russia, but this was caused rather by the enormous size of the empire and difficult communications than by constitutional principle. The rapid improvement of communications through railways, canals and telegraph systems was favourable for all three empires but had greatest importance for Russia.

From a constitutional point of view both Austria-Hungary and Germany were more differentiated than Russia in the first years of the twentieth century. Several parts of these realms had managed to secure their own constitutions, which had to be followed for internal affairs, while this held only for Finland in the Russian empire. The difference follows from the fact that there was then no constitution in Russia except in Finland, while the Austrian empire had got one in steps from 1848 and after a backlash of absolutism regained it in 1867, and Germany had one from the inception of the Reich in 1871.

A comparison according to the eleven points that were used earlier gives the following result:

1) In regard to franchise the German Empire with its general suffrage for men from the beginning of the Empire, was at the frontline in Europe. It should be noted, however, that this extended franchise was combined with equality in weight of votes only for the imperial Reichstag and not for the representations of the Länder, where most decisions on matters affecting the daily lives of the population were taken. The franchise systems of Austria (from 1867) and Russia (from 1905) had some similarities of great interest. The electorate was divided into interest groups, in both cases called by the Latin word ‘curia’. Both systems had separate ‘ Kurien ’ for (big) landowners, for cities, and for the general agrarian population. There were differences in the delimitation of these groups and the Austrian system included two more: one for chambers of commerce and one for ‘general voters’. The latter arose when an effort to create a workers’ Kurie had failed. In Russia a workers kuria was created for the elections to the second Duma. It will seem that the similarities between the two systems were not accidental. Russia and Austria-Hungary were very similar in this respect. Also in regard to the upper chamber there were great similarities between the Herrenhaus in Vienna and the Gosudarstvennyi soviet in St Petersburg. Both consisted of imperial family members plus persons appointed by the government. In Russia there were also some members who were elected under specific rules to represent specific interest groups.

2) As heads of state the three emperors were among the most powerful in Europe. However, even though both the Austrian emperor and the German were surrounded by the fiction that they took all decisions, they did not. In Austria-Hungary the power of the monarch was circumscribed by the clause that all decisions had to be countersigned by a minister and ministers had to have the confidence of the representation, even though they were formally chosen by the emperor. In fact the ministry as a whole was an important counterweight to the emperor. In Germany this counterweight lay by the Chancellor, and his countersignature was needed for decisions in internal matters. There were no ministers for the Reich, and the state secretaries who filled this function had no central political function. Foreign policy and military command ultimately lay by the emperor alone, even though taxes needed for military actions stayed with the parliament. In comparison the Russian emperor had more power than both other emperors had. However, the October manifesto of 1905 made promises of certain restrictions that would make the power of the Russian head of state more similar to the German. While the position of the German emperor was decided in the constitution of the Reich, it must be noted that the manifesto had the form of a decree by the tsar, not a law. It is a question of interpretation to decide how binding this could be for the tsar in the future.

3) The ‘governments’ that existed had a degree of informality in all three empires. There was no institution of ‘government’ that was regulated by law in any of them. In all three countries the term ‘pravitelstvo’ or ‘Regierung’ was used to denote the actual ways and forms of governing, not a certain institutionalised combination of ministers or ministers plus emperor. The Russian Council of Ministers had, however, a certain formal character. In Russia ministers were still normally picked by the emperor but exactly in the years 1905-07 the prime minister started to exert an influence on the selection of ministers. In Austria-Hungary the crucial dependency was the need for support in parliament for the budgetary proposals of ministers, and the president of ministers had become the real selector of other ministers. In Germany there were ministers in the Länder and the secretaries of state of the Reich had not the same position. In all three countries ministers had no political responsibility. They were bureaucrats and led administrations in the first hand, and the juridical responsibility they had in Austria was regulated by law and concerned the legality of their ‘advice’ to the emperor.

4) The prime minister of Germany was the Chancellor who held a responsibility (de jure) for the internal policy. The position was potentially very powerful, as was shown by Bismarck. The Chancellor in the years 1905-07, von Bülow, was an able man but far more dependent on the majority of the Reichstag than Bismarck had been. In Austria-Hungary there existed de facto a post as president of the ministers, and he was the centre of the so-called ‘cabinet’. In Russia the October Manifesto brought about a central function in among the ministers, but Witte found that it was difficult to fill with a real content, as ministers related themselves rather to the tsar than to him.

5) In Germany the Chancellor had a juridical responsibility for the decisions countersigned by him, and the same holds for ministers in Austria-Hungary who countersigned decisions by the emperor. Thus they could refuse to countersign. In Russia no responsibility was institutionalised, although parties asked for responsibility of ministers (if a political or a juridical responsibility is often not clear). Political responsibility did not exist in a formal sense in any of the three countries, but in Germany the Emperor could not really have a Chancellor who could not come to terms with the Reichstag. In Austria-Hungary the relation between the cabinet and its leader, the President of Ministers, was even closer, and the political dependence clearer than in Germany. In this respect the Russian Empire deviated even though the dissolution of the Duma in 1906 and 1907 shows that the prime minister (Stolypin) found himself in an awkward position without the support of the Duma.

6) The party system was well established inside parliament both in Germany and in Austria-Hungary. Parties as fractions in parliament acted collectively for their aims and tactical voting and negotiations between different directions in order to establish a majority for a proposal were well-known procedures. When the Russian Duma began its activities its members soon acted in the same ways and very quickly learnt the lessons for efficiency in a decision-making parliamentary system. Many of them also had experience from similar meetings in other organisations earlier. In all three countries a main effort of some parties was to undermine and counteract certain decisions and proposals of the government, i.e. to act as an opposition. This was thus immediately taken up in the Russian Duma.

7) Party organisations preceded parliament in Russia contrary to what was the rule in most other countries in Europe. But this refers only to the parties of the radical left. The other national parties were created suddenly when the Duma was to be elected or even after its first election. In Germany some parties (especially the Social Democrats, the Centre, the National Liberals and the Free Conservatives) had well-developed organisations and the Social Democrats were outstanding in this respect. These organisations were intended to function on a permanent basis, although other parties than Social Democrats had difficulties in putting this into effect. The same can be said of national parties in Austria-Hungary.

8) National party organisations were very active in elections disseminating propaganda and news. Meetings in order to favour one candidate were common in Germany with its general and equal suffrage for men and with a system of majority elections in each constituency. This type of activity was not equally natural in Austria-Hungary or Russia, with a complicated classified right to vote with unequal weight of votes. Parties were active to mobilise voters all the same.

9) In Germany important organisations existed that were not parties (setting up candidates themselves) but yet active in elections. In Austria it will seem that this was not equally common. In Russia the Union of Unions and several other organisations tried to influence elections. The activity of non-party organisations may be seen both as an asset for democracy, as it stimulated interest in politics among the members of these organisations, and as a danger, as the influence on elections was kept out of real control by the political system. It will seem that voluntary associations, that played a prominent role in England and Scandinavia, were of little importance in the empires but they had been very important in the formation of a political consciousness among wide strata in Germany. [Langewiesche???]

10) As a school for democracy other organisations than parties were of subordinate importance in both Austria-Hungary and Russia.

11) Local self-government was a very important political test-case in Russia, teaching new layers the possibilities of collective action in political matters. There is no evidence that it played the same role in the other two empires. In this respect Russia was more like several countries in Western Europe.

In order to make a fair comparison between the state of a democratic culture in the three empires a word should be added about the judiciary even though we try to keep that question out of the present discussion. In Germany and Austria Montesquieu’s doctrine of the three independent spheres of government was taken into regard. Courts were kept apart from legislation and executive, even though an influence was at hand by way of appointing judges in the system. In Russia the same doctrine was less respected and courts stood closer to the executive, which should be borne in mind when one compares the systems.

Yet it is apparent, that the Russian system that was about to be established in the years 1905-07 was very close to the systems that were at hand in the two other empires. The election system was so similar to the system of Austria-Hungary that an impact seems to have been at hand. Ministers, government and responsibility varied between the three, but in none of them a political responsibility to the parliament existed for governments or chief ministers. All three were governed in a way that gave fundamental influence to bureaucracy. The parties had a more established position in Austria-Hungary and Germany in the years 1905-07, when all parties except social democrats and socialist revolutionaries started from scratch in Russia. In parliament the party fractions used the same methods and tactical dispositions, which is natural as they could not (as in Britain) form a government by themselves. Articulate opposition became a vital type of activity for those who were not silently or openly supporters of the policy of the government. No formal democracy existed in any of the three empires. It may be said that Russia was further away from democracy in some respects, but certainly not in all. With the changes of 1905-07 Russia rapidly caught up with the other two in many formal structures and came very close to them both or one of them in different respects. It is very difficult to say that Russia in these years were more undemocratic than Germany or Austria-Hungary, but more important is that Russia was under a rapid change towards incorporating parts of the political apparatus that belonged to parliamentarianism and democracy.

The schooling into democratic ways of life that associations of different sorts provided in some other countries did not exist either in Russia or in the two other empires. The rapidly growing trade union movement was however a sort of substitute in Russia, as it had been also in the two other empires with a long tradition of such activities. In the Russian countryside only the socialist-revolutionaries and some related organisations brought a possibility for training in politics. Many peasants were out of reach for its activities. On the other hand the organisational mania in Russia and the intensive discussion among intellectuals in journals and newspapers made up for some of these deficiencies, and the Russian situation was partly similar to the situation in 1848 in the other two empires. Partly Russia was however quite on a par with the other two empires as regards political culture and the rapid growth of the characteristics of a democratic culture.

The conclusion of the comparison is that all three empires were behind many West European states in developing formal democracy. They also lacked some the traditions in associational life and local self-government that gave networks and habits in taking a responsibility for common social goals and training in conflict resolution.

On the other hand the three empires were very similar to each other in these respects (but not in ethnical composition leading to nationality struggles or in size, educational level of population and other variables that may be compared). Formal democracy and the system of government was very similar, sometimes to an extent that suggests influence in details from one to the other. The Russian reforms of 1905-06 thus made the Russian Empire one of an imperial group of countries, which partly adapted to popular demands for institutions of a West European type and partly tried out similar forms for the preservation of a monarchical rule.

Thus, even if these politicians went abroad from their own initiative, they did not do so primarily because they were interested in the political system of other European countries. They normally chose to stay in Europe, many of them in Switzerland or France, some in Great Britain (mainly in London) or in Germany. Only occasionally leading Russian radicals took their residence in other countries. Although such political emigration was not determined by interest in the new country of residence several of the emigrants stayed for so long that they must have been well acquainted with the political affairs of their second home country and must have had occasion to make their views of the advantages and disadvantages of the political system abroad.

There is one important reason why most of them were not content with what they saw or were not really interested in taking it into consideration. They had read history at home and they had preconceived views of developments. For example, when P. B. Struve hastened abroad after conspiring liberal ideas with leading zemtsy, he did not chose Britain for his stay, but Germany. In his view Britain had by historical struggle obtained a constitutional system, which he idealised. Germany was by no means a country which he saw as a paradigm. But Germany had practical advantages for the production of the newspaper that he was to edit. His choice was done from other considerations than ideological affinity and learning from the system he lived in.[34] Historical sociology, in a broad sense, was a main branch of knowledge cultivated by political radicals in Russia from all ideological directions: liberals, socialists, narodniki. Struve, whose academic field was mostly economics mixed with history, was active in all discussions of late nineteenth century Russia on the sociology of history. Many others of the left, Plechanov, Akselrod, Vera Zasulich, Lenin and, among liberals, Miliukov can be mentioned as some of the most well-known, were discussing historical development in sociological terms, trying to find leads in the past to future development. Of course, even the ideological traditionalism of the monarchists had its roots in a kind of historical sociology but, as it led to no revolutionary conclusions, these people did not flee abroad.

From early nineteenth century two well-known two schools of thought about Western Europe fought a bitter struggle in Russia. One saw in Western Europe a model for Russia and wanted to “westernise” Russian institutions and Russian thought. The other saw Russia as different from Western Europe, with its specific traditions and institutions. Two concrete institutions were often mentioned in this debate, feudalism as it had flourished in Western Europe without a direct counterpart in Russia, and the obshchina, the Russian peasant village community, idealised to be a model of common ownership and social security.

It is not the intention here to take up the problem of these directions of thought and their different variations. Suffice it to say that the two main lines of thought can be followed up to 1905-07, even though they were developed and modified by different authors with the passing of time and an intensive discussion. One of the leaders of the ‘slavophile’ direction, that stressed the specific traits of Russia and Russian development, was Michail (???) Kliuchevskii (????), whose career has been carefully investigated by James Billington.[35] Many other researchers from the United States and Western Europe have found a great interest in the development of political ideas in the Late Empire. The combinations of nationalism with radical or cautious reformation of society or revolution on the one hand and its close relation to traditionalism and conservatism on the other has called forth a great interest from researchers. Franco Venturi laid a foundation, in the West, with his Roots of Revolution, originally in Italian and published first in 195?????,[36] and many others have followed his track.

The ‘westernisers’ have generally met with less interest in the West, probably because their ideas were seen as less specific or exotic and less provocative. However, the biography of P.B. Struve by Richard Pipes is worth mentioning for its careful tracing of the impulses that made Struve’s thinking a challenge to both Marxists, among whom he thought to belong in his early career, and to radical Liberals who found in him a defector of the main liberal demands in his later writings.[37] Let us also mention??? Stockdale who made something similar to Miliukov and showed his formation which was also a way into politics and his maturity as a Liberal leader and finally his vain efforts to keep a party together where he himself had become a ballast with his efforts to play on all possible strings during the First World War.[38] Common to all these authors is the ambition to explain how these Russian protagonists in the ideological and political debate saw upon the the ideals from East and West and how they sought to combine or confront impulses from the one camp with those from the other. They give typical outsiders’ perspectives at the same time as they are well informed about the Russian sources. Most Russian authors are more of insiders in their views of these conflicting ideas, more detailed and more absorbed by the actual dissent. In the midst come some western researchers who combine an effort to assume the empathic perspective at the same time as they reflect, such as Mary Schaeffer Conroy in her analysis of Stolypin’s policy and career.