Resignation of Stürmer

On 24 November 1916 (11 November in the Julian calendar) the Petrograd press announced that the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, that is the Prime Minister of Russia, Boris Stürmer, had left office. He also lost the Foreign Ministry, which he had headed since July. The decision had been taken the day before, 23 November (10 November in the Julian calendar), by Tsar Nicholas II at Stavka in Mogilev. The new Prime Minister was Alexander Trepov, until then Minister of Transport. The British war chronology records the change under 24 November, the day of the official announcement.

“Stupidity or treason?”

Stürmer, appointed in February 1916, had from the start been seen as a man of the court camarilla, a favourite of the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and of Grigori Rasputin. His German surname and the fact that in July he had pushed Sazonov out of the government, Sazonov being regarded as the guarantor of Russia’s loyalty to the Entente, fuelled rumours that he was seeking a separate peace with Germany. In the autumn these rumours were joined by high prices, food shortages in the cities and chaos on the railways. The opposition in the State Duma decided that its main demand at the new session would be the Prime Minister’s departure.

The session opened on 14 November (1 November in the Julian calendar) in the Tauride Palace. The ministers knew what awaited them. After a short speech by the President of the Duma, Mikhail Rodzianko, they rose and, with Stürmer at their head, left the chamber without reading the prepared government declaration. At the Prime Minister’s request the ambassadors of the Allied powers also left the gallery. Once they had gone, speaker after speaker sharply attacked the government, among them Alexander Kerensky and above all the leader of the Kadets, Pavel Milyukov.

Milyukov listed the failings and abuses of the authorities: the case of the former War Minister Vladimir Sukhomlinov, the release from custody of the Prime Minister’s secretary, Ivan Manasevich-Manuilov, accused of bribery, and the activities of German agents. After each set of charges he repeated the question: “What is this: stupidity or treason?”. From the benches came replies, sometimes “stupidity”, sometimes “treason”. He named Manasevich-Manuilov, Rasputin, Metropolitan Pitirim (PL) and Stürmer himself as the “court party”. He quoted the most sensitive sentence in German from the Viennese “Neue Freie Presse”: Stürmer’s appointment was “a victory of the court party gathered around the young Tsarina”. According to Russian historians, he spoke in German partly so that the deputy chairman presiding over the sitting, who did not know the language, would not deprive him of the floor for lèse-majesté. Milyukov himself admitted later in his memoirs that he had not been sure of all his charges.

The censorship banned the printing of the speech, but it circulated in copies throughout the country, often supplemented with accusations the speaker had not made, including that the Empress was a spy. The French ambassador, Maurice Paléologue, noted that the ban only strengthened its effect.

The Tsar gives way

Stürmer wanted to answer with force. According to Paléologue, at a government meeting on the night of 16–17 November he proposed dissolving the Duma and arresting Milyukov, but only the Minister of the Interior, Alexander Protopopov, supported him. The next day the War Minister, Dmitry Shuvayev, and the Naval Minister, Admiral Ivan Grigorovich, unexpectedly came to the Duma and assured the deputies of their readiness to cooperate. Some members of the dynasty also demanded the Prime Minister’s departure.

Nicholas II defended the Prime Minister for a long time, but in letters to his wife he admitted that the situation was untenable. On 21 November (8 November in the Julian calendar) he wrote that Stürmer acted “like a red rag not only to the Duma but to the whole country”, that nobody trusted him and that things were worse than a year earlier with Goremykin. Summoned to Mogilev, the Prime Minister left the capital on the evening of 20 November. The Tsar received him on 22 November, and the next day telegraphed his wife briefly: “I have done it”. In a letter of the same day he added that “the poor old man was calm and touching”. The Empress, who had wanted to keep Stürmer at least as Prime Minister, did not this time manage to impose her will. She did, however, succeed in saving Protopopov, whom the Tsar had also intended to dismiss.

Trepov

Alexander Trepov was 54. He was a son of General Fyodor Trepov, formerly chief of police in Warsaw and later in St Petersburg, and a brother of several senior officials. Since November 1915 he had headed the Ministry of Transport and had pushed through, among other things, the building of the railway to Murmansk, built largely by prisoners of war. He kept this ministry as Prime Minister too. He was regarded as a conservative and monarchist, but also as an energetic organiser, an opponent of Rasputin’s influence and a determined enemy of Germany. The Foreign Ministry was run temporarily by the deputy minister, Anatoly Neratov, and the Tsar appointed a new minister, Nikolai Pokrovsky, only in mid-December.

Paléologue, who learned of the change on the evening of 23 November, received it with relief. He believed that Trepov’s presence at the head of the government guaranteed Russia’s loyalty to the Allies. The habitués of the Petrograd salons reacted similarly. The ambassador also noted, however, the words of one of his interlocutors who, instead of rejoicing, foretold for Russia “defeat, disgrace, ruin and revolution”. On 24 November it was also announced that the ailing Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander, General Mikhail Alekseyev, was going on leave, and that General Vasily Gurko was replacing him.

The change of Prime Minister did not calm the situation. Trepov failed to get rid of Protopopov or to reach an understanding with the Duma, and on the night of 29–30 December (16–17 December in the Julian calendar) aristocratic conspirators murdered Rasputin. At the beginning of January 1917 Trepov himself lost office. After the February Revolution Stürmer was arrested by the Provisional Government and died in prison in September 1917. Milyukov’s speech went down in history as one of the first harbingers of the fall of tsarism.