Vyacheslav
Plehve was born in Meshchovsk, Russia on 20th April, 1846.
After studying jourisprudence at the University of Moscow, Plehve joined
the Ministry of Justice in 1867.
An able and intelligent bureaucrat, Plehve served as Director of
Police (1881-84), Vice-Minister of the Interior (1884-99) and Secretary
of State for Finnish Affairs (1899-1902). During this period he
subjected minorities to forced Russification and was responsible for the
persecution of Jews
and
Armenians.
In 1902 Plehve was appointed Minister of the Interior. His
attempts at suppressing those advocating reform was completely
unsuccessful. He also secretly organized Jewish
Pogroms.
Sergi
Witte claimed that Plehve
remarked that Russia needed "a little, victorious war to stem the
revolution". There are doubts about the truth of this statement but
Plehve's actions definitely precipitated the Russo-Japanese
War.
However, the war failed in its main objective to win support for Nicholas II
and the autocracy.
Plehve was much hated by all those seeking reform
and in 1904 Evno
Azef, head of the
Terrorist Brigade of the Socialist
Revolutionary Party, ordered his assassination. Vyacheslav Plehve
was killed by a bomb thrown by Egor Sazonov on 28th July,
1904.
(1) Vyacheslav Plehve,
speech to a Jewish delegation in Odessa in
1903.
In Western
Russia some 90 per cent of the revolutionaries are Jews, and in Russia
generally - some 40 per cent. I shall not conceal from you that the
revolutionary movement in Russia worries us but you should know that if
you do not deter your youth from the revolutionary movement, we shall
make your position untenable to such an extent that you will have to
leave Russia, to the very last man!
(2) Leon
Trotsky, History of The Russian Revolution (1933)
After
Sipyagin we saw the same position occupied by Plehve, then by Prince
Svyatopolk-Mirsky, then Bulygin, then Witte. All of them, one after the
other, arrived with the firm intention of putting an end to sedition,
restoring the lost prestige of authority, maintaining the foundations of
the state - and every one of them, each in his own way, opened the
floodgates of revolution and was himself swept away by its current.
Sedition grew
as though according to a majestic plan, constantly expanding its
territory, reinforcing its positions and demolishing obstacle after
obstacle; while against the backdrop of this tremendous effort, with its
inner rhythm and its unconscious genius, appeared a series of little
mannequins of state power, issuing new laws, contracting new debts,
firing at workers, ruining peasants - and, as a result, sinking the
governmental authority which they sought to protect more and more deeply
into a bog of frantic impotence.
Plehve was as
powerless against sedition as his successor, but he was a terrible
scourge against the kingdom of liberal newspapermen and rural
conspirators. He loathed the revolution with the fierce loathing of a
police detective grown old in his profession, threatened by a bomb from
around every street corner; he pursued sedition with bloodshot eyes -
but in vain.
Plehve was terrifying and loathsome as far as the
liberals were concerned, but against sedition he was no better and no
worse than any of the others. Of necessity, the movement of the masses
ignored the limits of what was allowed and what was forbidden: that
being so, what did it matter if those limits were a little narrower or a
little wider?
Sipyagin fell
to a revolutionary's bullet. Plehve was torn to pieces by a bomb.
Svyatopolk-Mirsky was transformed into a political corpse on January 9.
Bulygin was thrown out, like an old boot, by the October strikes. Count
Witte, utterly exhausted by workers' and soldiers' risings, fell without
glory, having stumbled on the threshold of the State Duma which he
himself had created.
(3) David Strub
was a member of the Social Democratic
Party when Vyacheslav Plehve was in power.
In the midst of
Russian military defeat Plehve, the reactionary Minister of the
Interior, was assassinated by a member of the Terrorist Brigade of the
Socialist Revolutionary Party; street demonstrations broke out,
opposition from every side grew bolder. For the first time the Tsar
retreated, summoning Prince Sviatopolk-Mirsky, a more liberal man, to
Plehve's post.
(4) In 1903 Praskovia
Ivanovskaia joined the Socialist
Revolutionaries and took part in the assassination of Vyacheslav
Plehve.
The
conclusion of this affair gave me some satisfaction - finally the man
who had taken so many victims had been brought to his inevitable end, so
universally desired.
(5) Edward Judge,
Plehve: Repression and Reform in Imperial Russia
(1983)
Azef sat in a
very dangerous position, especially after Gershuni's arrest, and he had
to think first of his own safety. A continual series of arrests, and a
long train of assassination attempts gone awry, could only help convince
his SR colleagues that they had a traitor in their midst. If he were
found out, his game would be over, and so, most probably, would be his
life. On the other hand, if he could successfully plan and accomplish
the murder of Plehve, his position among the SRs would be secured. Azef
had little love for Plehve: as a Jew, he could not help but resent the
Kishinev pogrom and the minister's reputed role.
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