In January 1911 the revised bill went before the upper chamber. Given its nationalistic tenor, passage seemed a foregone conclusion. Stolypin felt so confident that he did not even bother to attend the discussions in the State Council, since a commission of that body had approved the bill.98
Unbeknownst to him, however, a backstage intrigue was set in motion. Several members of the State Council, led by Vladimir Trepov, organized, with the help of Durnovo, opposition to Stolypin. The bill’s opponents charged that by offering the Poles a separate electoral chamber Stolypin institutionalized ethnic particularism, thus violating the traditional “Imperial” character of Russian legislation. Witte, one of the bill’s most vociferous opponents, argued that “under the flag of patriotism they are striving to create in the western land a local oligarchy in place of tsarist authority.”99 But the true purpose of the camarilla was to bring down Stolypin.
Trepov and Durnovo asked for private audiences with the Tsar. After they had laid before him their objections, Nicholas agreed to release the right-wing deputies in the State Council from having to follow the government’s recommendation: they could vote as their conscience dictated.100 In giving them this freedom, Nicholas neither sought the advice of his Prime Minister nor informed him of it. Stolypin, therefore, had no cause for apprehension when he appeared in the State Council on March 4 to witness the final vote on his bill. Many of the deputies who would have voted for it if the Tsar had instructed them to do so now felt free to cast negative ballots. As a consequence, the bill’s key clause, with the controversial proposal for two electoral chambers, one for Russians, the other for Poles and the other ethnic groups, went down in defeat, 92–68. Stunned, Stolypin stalked out of the Council chamber.
He could be under no illusion: the incident was a vote of no confidence in him, ostensibly cast by the upper chamber but in fact engineered by the Imperial Court. Furious, he decided to force the Tsar to reveal his hand. The next day, he submitted his resignation. Nicholas rejected it and urged Stolypin to reconsider. Why not resubmit the bill to the Duma and the State Council, he suggested, implying that on the next round he would ask that it be supported. Stolypin refused. When the Tsar asked what he would like him to do, he requested that both houses be prorogued long enough to allow the bill to be enacted under Article 87.* He further asked that Trepov and Durnovo be exiled from St. Petersburg.
Nicholas pondered Stolypin’s request for four days, and then granted it. On March 12, both chambers were prorogued until March 15. Having learned of this decision, the State Council quickly took a vote on the entire bill, which resulted in its being rejected by the overwhelming majority of 134–23.101 On March 14 the western zemstvo bill was promulgated under Article 87. Durnovo and Trepov had to to leave the capital until the end of the year.†
Stolypin’s precipitate action had disastrous consequences, alienating from him all political parties.102 When he appeared before the Duma to justify his actions, he had virtually no supporters. The press condemned him; so did high society. Guchkov resigned in protest as head of the Octobrist Party: the cooperation between Stolypin and the Octobrists, which had proved so constructive in the first two years of the Third Duma, now came to an end. Last, but not least, Stolypin incurred the enmity of the Tsar, who never forgave anyone for humiliating him: and that Stolypin had done so was clear to public opinion, which realized full well that in proroguing the Duma and exiling Durnovo and Trepov the Tsar had acted under duress.103 In official circles it was said at this time that Nicholas had made up his mind to be rid of Stolypin, and that his days as Prime Minister were numbered.104 Isolated and spurned, he became, in the words of Kokovtsov, “a completely changed man”105—brooding and irritable where he had been supremely self-confident and magnanimous.
The Empress Dowager Marie, the mother of Nicholas II, who had always urged him to come to terms with society and favored liberal officials, shared with Kokovtsov her sense of despair at these developments:
My poor son, how little luck he has with people. Someone turns up whom no one here knew, but who proves to be intelligent and energetic, and manages to restore order after the horrors which we had gone through nearly six years ago. And now this man is being pushed into the abyss. And by whom? By those who claim to love the Tsar and Russia, and in reality are destroying him and the Fatherland.… How dreadful!106
Stolypin was in virtual disgrace when he departed in late August 1911 for Kiev for celebrations attending the unveiling of a monument to Alexander II. He had long had premonitions of violent death: in his last will, drawn up in 1906, he had requested to be buried near the site of his murder.107 Before leaving, he told Kryzhanovskii that he feared he might not return, and entrusted to him a strongbox with secret papers, which he asked to be destroyed if anything happened to him.* He took no precautions to protect himself, however, leaving behind his bodyguards as well as his bulletproof vest.
In Kiev, he was ignored by the Imperial couple and high dignitaries: the humiliation was unmistakable.
In the evening of September 1, the Kiev Municipal Theater scheduled a performance of Rimskii-Korsakov’s The Story of Tsar Saltan. Nicholas, accompanied by his daughters, occupied the governor’s loge on the orchestra level. Stolypin sat nearby, in the front row. During the second intermission, around 10 p.m., as he stood chatting in front of the orchestra pit with Counts Potocki and Fredericks, a young man in coattails drew near. He pulled a Browning from under the program with which he had concealed it and fired twice at the Prime Minister. Both bullets struck, one in the hand, the other in the chest: the first ricocheted and wounded a musician; the other hit Stolypin’s chest but was deflected by a medal and lodged in the liver. According to an eyewitness, Stolypin at first seemed not to realize what had happened:
He lowered his head and stared at his white tunic, which on the right side, under the chest, was beginning to stain with blood. With slow and sure motions he put his service hat and gloves on the barrier, unbuttoned the tunic, and seeing the waistcoat thick with blood, made a motion as if to say, “It’s all over.” He then sank into a chair and clearly, distinctly, in a voice audible to all who were nearby, said, “I am happy to die for the Tsar.” On seeing the Tsar enter the loge and stand in front, he lifted his hands motioning him to withdraw. But the Tsar did not move, remaining in place, whereupon Peter Arkadevich, in full view of all, blessed him with a broad sign of the cross.108
Stolypin was rushed to a hospital. He seemed to be making a good recovery when an infection set in; he died in the evening of September 5.* The next day, the central Kiev railroad terminal teemed with panic-stricken Jews. Thanks to the firm action by the authorities, however, no anti-Jewish violence occurred.
The assassin, who had been caught and pummeled while attempting to flee the scene of the crime, turned out to be a twenty-four-year-old lawyer, Dmitrii Grigorevich Bogrov, the son of a wealthy Jewish Kievan family.109 At home and on his frequent trips abroad he had flitted in and out of SR and anarchist circles. Although well provided for by doting parents, he often ran out of money because of his passion for gambling and it is fairly certain that it was financial need that drove him to become a police agent. According to his testimony, from the middle of 1907 until late 1910 he had served as an informer for the Kiev Okhrana, supplying information that enabled it to apprehend SR and anarchist terrorists.
The revolutionaries grew suspicious of Bogrov. At first they accused him of embezzling party funds, but eventually concluded that he had to be a police agent. On August 16, 1911, Bogrov was visited by a revolutionary who told him that his role as a police informer had been established beyond doubt and that he faced “execution”: he could save himself only by committing a terrorist act, preferably against Colonel N. N. Kuliabko, the chief of the Kiev Okhrana. This had to be done by September 5. Bogrov visited Kuliabko, but he received from him such a warm welcome that he could not go through with his mission. He next considered assassinating the Tsar, due in Kiev in a few days, but gave up this plan for fear of precipitating anti-Jewish pogroms. He finally settled on Stolypin as the “man mainly responsible for the reaction which had established itself in Russia.”†