Dismissed in 1903 and given the purely honorific post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Witte was now recalled and sent to the United States. His instructions were vague. He was under no circumstances to agree to an indemnity or to surrender one foot of “ancient Russian soil.”78 Otherwise he was on his own. Witte, who had a fine sense of the “correlation of forces,” realized that Russia was not without strong cards, for the war had severely strained Japan’s economy and made her no less eager to come to terms. While in the United States, he exploited American anti-Japanese feelings, and made himself popular with the public by such democratic gestures as shaking hands with railway engineers and posing for ladies with Kodak cameras, which he admitted came hard to him, unaccustomed as he was to acting.
In Russia, the news of Tsushima raised the political tension still higher. On May 23, the St. Petersburg Municipal Council voted for political reforms; the Municipal Council of Moscow followed suit the next day. These were significant developments because up to that time the institutions of urban self-government had been more restrained than the zemstva and stayed clear of the Liberation Movement. On May 24–25, the zemtsy held in Moscow a gathering of their own people along with representatives of the nobility and Municipal Councils.79 Its resolution called for the convocation of a national representative body elected on a secret, equal, universal, and direct ballot: among the signatories were the chairmen of twenty Municipal Councils.80 The meeting chose a deputation to see the Tsar, which he received on June 6. Speaking for the group, Prince Sergei Trubetskoi, the rector of Moscow University, urged Nicholas to allow public representatives to enter into a direct dialogue with him. He spoke of the military defeats raising among the people the specter of “treason” in high places. Without specifying whether the proposed body should be advisory or legislative, Trubetskoi asked that it be elected, not by estates, but on a democratic franchise. “You are Tsar of all Russia,” he reminded him. In his response, Nicholas assured the deputation he was determined to convene representatives of the nation.81 The encounter set a historic precedent in that it was the first time a Russian ruler had met with representatives of the liberal opposition to hear pleas for constitutional change.
9. Sergei Witte at Portsmouth, N.H.: Summer 1905.
How widespread the demand for such change had become after Tsushima can be gathered from the fact that a Conference of the Marshals of the Nobility (June 12–15) concluded that Russia stood at the threshold of anarchy because she had only a “shadow” government. To restore state authority, the Tsar had to stop relying exclusively on the officialdom and avail himself of the assistance of “elected representatives of the entire land.”82
The entire opposition movement at this point was driven by liberals and liberal-conservatives who saw in constitution and parliament a way of strengthening the state and averting revolution.83 The revolutionaries continued to play a marginal role and followed the liberals. This would remain the case until October.
On June 23, a newspaper carried the first reports on the discussions underway in government concerning the Duma, as the new representative body was to be called. In July more information on this subject leaked from a secret meeting at Peterhof. (The leaks originated with the professor of Russian history at Moscow University, Vasilii Kliuchevskii, who participated in the drafting commission as a consultant.84) The provisions of what came to be popularly known as the Bulygin Constitution were officially released on August 6.85 Because of the leaks, the public, even if disappointed, was not surprised. It was the usual story of too little, too late. A proposal that would have been welcomed six months earlier now satisfied no one: while the opposition was demanding a legislative parliament and even a Constituent Assembly, the government was offering a powerless consultative body. The new State Duma was to be limited to deliberating legislative proposals submitted for its consideration by the government and then forwarding them to the State Council for final editing. The government was not even obligated to consult the Duma: the document explicitly reaffirmed the “inviolability of autocratic power.” As a concession to liberal demands, the franchise was based, not on estate, but on property qualifications, which were set high. Many of the non-Russian regions were deprived of the vote; industrial workers, too, were disenfranchised. In St. Petersburg and Moscow, only 5 to 10 percent of the residents qualified; in the provincial cities, 1 percent or even fewer.86 The franchise was deliberately skewed in favor of Great Russian peasants. According to Witte, during the deliberations of the Bulygin Commission it was assumed
that the only [group] on which one could rely in the present turbulent and revolutionary condition of Russia was the peasantry, that the peasants were the conservative bulwark of the state, for which reason the electoral law ought to rely primarily on the peasantry, i.e., that the Duma be primarily peasant and express peasant views.87
The assumption had never been put to a test and turned out to be entirely wrong: but it fitted with the Court’s deeply held conviction that the pressures for political change emanated exclusively from the cities and the non-Russian ethnic groups.
Even though the so-called Bulygin Duma offered little, it represented a major concession, inadequately appreciated by contemporaries: “The autocrat and his government, who had always claimed to be the best and only judges of the people’s true interests, now at least were willing to consult with the people on a permanent and comprehensive basis.…”88 In so doing, the Tsar accepted the principle of representation, which a mere eight months earlier he had declared he would “never” do. Witte, who also knew the proposal fell far short of what was needed, nevertheless felt certain that the Duma would in no time develop from an advisory into a full-blooded legislative institution: only “bureaucratic eunuchs” could have deluded themselves that Russia would be content with a “consultative parliament.”89
The liberals now faced the choice of accepting the Bulygin Duma as given, petitioning the Tsar to change it, or appealing to the nation to pressure the government. A joint Zemstvo and Municipal Councils Congress held in early July, by which time the substance of the government’s proposal was already known, discussed these options. The more conservative participants feared that a direct appeal to the population would inflame the peasants, who were beginning to stir, but there was near-unanimity that it was pointless to petition the Tsar. The majority decided to call on the population to help achieve “peaceful progress”—a veiled way of exhorting it to civil disobedience.90
Notwithstanding these developments, in August and September 1905, the country seemed to be settling down: the announcement of August 6, promising a Duma, and the prospect of peace with Japan had a calming effect. Nicholas, convinced that the worst was over, resumed the routine of Court life. He ignored warnings of informed officials, including Trepov, that the calm was deceptive.
Witte returned to Russia in triumph, having managed to obtain far better terms than anyone had dared to hope. In the Treaty of Portsmouth, concluded on September 5 (NS), Russia surrendered the southern half of Sakhalin and consented to Japan’s acquiring the Liaotung Peninsula with Port Arthur, as well as establishing hegemony over Korea, neither of which were Russian property. There was to be no indemnity. The price was small, considering Russia’s responsibility for the war and her military humiliation.*