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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