№ 4 - 2001
Novikova L.I.
P.A.Stolypin as Statesman

The author views P.A.Stolypin as a new-type politician who had to work at one and the same time both with the autocratic power and with the Duma endowed with legislative powers. Unlike Speransky and Vitte, L.I.Novikova stresses, it was not from the “roof” that P.A.Stolypin began to construct the new building of Russia’s statehood - not by declaring liberal freedoms, but from below, by taking care of the most numerous and destitute estate of Russia, the peasantry. He subordinated the work of al the ministries to a single general plan, overcoming the resistance of very influential persons, among them the tzar’s closest relatives. Politically, the author maintains, P.A.Stolypin’s main desert is that he accustomed Russian public to a parliamentary, Duma-based style of state management.