The thing about writing history, Paul Veyne tells us, is that it looks easy, but it is not. This truism is all the more applicable to influential historical writing. Pavel Miliukov (1859-1943) produced more than one such historical work. Indeed, his Outlines of Russian Culture may have been the most widely read history of the pre-revolutionary era. To have then transitioned from scholarship to politics, where he helped organize and lead a major political party in Russia’s inchoate Duma system, sets him apart as an individual of truly distinctive capabilities. However, as anyone who has listened to the kind of chatter that takes place in History department faculty lounges can attest, even the best historians can be quite hopeless as analysts of contemporary politics. It should come as no great surprise, then, that Miliukov should ultimately have proved a brilliant failure as a politician in late imperial and war-time Russia. Yet, for reasons that probably have to do with respect for his scholarly abilities and regret that a more moderate path for Russia was not taken, Miliukov’s reputation as both an historian and a politician is higher in the West than it ought to be. The work under review here, a political and intellectual biography of Miliukov up to the Revolution of 1905, is a useful corrective to the overly generous reception in the West of Miliukov as historian and politician. It is also an example of the high caliber of historical research that can be produced in Russia outside the capitals, despite the challenging circumstances. At the same time, it offers examples of some pitfalls to avoid and precautions to take in enhancing the worthwhile endeavor of making this rich scholarship available in future volumes.
The last ten years have witnessed a minor explosion of Miliukov studies. This seems to be the result of a convergence between the normal workings of research cycles and the extraordinary “outlier” event of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The general turn to social history in the 1960s and away from political biography, intellectual history and studies of liberalism contributed to a certain neglect of Miliukov. By the 1990s, the bloom was off the social history rose, and the search for directional landmarks in the barren post-Soviet landscape of identity led naturally enough to Miliukov, that most prominent pre-revolutionary liberal. The neglect of Miliukov as subject began to be reversed in the second half of the 1990s with the appearance of substantial studies by Melissa Stockdale and Thomas Bohn.^[1] It continued with the publication of the proceedings of a 1999 scholarly conference dedicated to Miliukov^[2] and may be considered to have reached a certain state of maturity with the volume under consideration here.
At the same time that this work constitutes a crowning of recent Miliukov research, it also represents the first volume in what promises to be a very productive new series on Contemporary Russian History. The series, edited by Semion Lyandres and Dietmar Wulff, aims to provide an outlet for Russian scholars outside the capitals. If subsequent volumes approach the caliber of this collaborative study, then provincial scholars are most deserving of publication opportunities. These two scholars, laboring in the parlous provincial research environment, have produced a first-rate work of scholarship. While this study does not completely transform our view of Miliukov, it extends and deepens our understanding to such a degree that a fuller and truer picture emerges, one that significantly qualifies the overall positive scholarly assessment that Miliukov enjoys. It is quite simply the most exhaustive examination of Miliukov that exists. The authors have brought into the scholarly ambit previously unutilized archival material, and the final section constitutes the most incisive analysis of Miliukov’s historical views in any language that I am aware of. While not without its flaws, it is fair to say that this work will be the touchstone against which future studies of Miliukov’s life and career up to the outbreak of the Revolution of 1905 will be judged. Although until his death Miliukov continued to write, and although he revised more or less continuously his most important scholarly work, Outlines of Russian Culture, his scholarly career gave way to that of an active politician by 1905. As a result, Makushin and Tribunskii’s work will be the point de dйpart of all subsequent analyses of Miliukov’s scholarly corpus and views.
There can be no doubt that Miliukov was one of the most talented and productive scholars of the late imperial period. By 1905, the total run of all editions of all volumes of his Outlines of Russian Culture amounted to nearly 60,000 (Table 8, P. 417). He was from the outset a mature and independent-minded intellect, ultimately a man of extremely broad and nuanced erudition and culture throughout his very long life (1859–1943). Like so many educated youth of the third quarter of the nineteenth century in Russia, Miliukov was very strongly influenced by the dominant “scientistic” spirit of the age. In his case, it was Comtean Positivism that shaped his world view. According to Miliukov, who read the third volume of Comte’s Course of Positive Philosophy in the summer of 1878, Comte was “read, reread, outlined, and exercised the most decisive influence on the scientific views of students” (P. 25). As a result, Miliukov became convinced that all developed societies follow the same evolutionary path and that Russian history was therefore not so much different from Western history as it was behind it in evolutionary progress.
Makushin and Tribunskii maintain that “In essence, the main lines of both Miliukov’s philosophical and historical views were established by the time he finished the university” (P. 28). In their conclusion, they establish that “already at this preparatory stage were revealed two characteristic circumstances that subsequently accompanied practically uninterruptedly P. N. Miliukov’s scholarly activity – political opposition to the authorities... and disagreement with V. O. Kliuchevskii” (P. 375). Here are the main lines of Miliukov’s scholarly career in basic outline. He studied history convinced of the working in it of universal processes. As a result, he chose to study the most advanced stage of human social evolution, European history, as a university student. Having familiarized himself with that, he saw nothing challenging about further study of those processes in the European environment, and, cognizant of the issue of access to archival sources, instead chose to study Russian history for his master’s degree. Here, he felt himself to be applying, as it were, Comtean understandings of universal “scientific” processes to Russian historical circumstances. This study would then show the specific course by which Russia was following the general path of human societal evolution and would thus set up his political career. In other words, the engaged scholarship that characterized Miliukov’s career, certain ticklish questions about his scholarly preparation and course work, and his subsequent abandonment of scholarship for politics were already present ab ovo by the time Miliukov finished his undergraduate course work at Moscow University.
We can see here both Miliukov’s strengths and his weaknesses. He had assimilated and applied Comte’s complex social theory, had rejected Ger’e’s old-fashioned history of ideas for more contemporary intellectual approaches, and had laid the foundation for his scholarly and political world views by the time he applied for graduate study in Russian history. It is telling, though, that Pavel Vinogradov, the noted historian of medieval England, was the main supporter of his application, not the senior Russian historian at Moscow University, Vasilii Kliuchevskii. In fact, Kliuchevskii looked askance at Miliukov’s application, noting that Miliukov “practically had not studied Russian history, devoting all his time to the study of universal (vseobshchaia) history” (P. 35). As time passed, Miliukov would remain close to Vinogradov, while his relationship with Kliuchevskii would always be troubled. Despite his strained relations with Kliuchevskii, Miliukov could have had a brilliant career. Indeed, insofar as the inspiration did not come directly from Kliuchevskii’s published or lithographed works, Miliukov helped leaven the analysis of younger historians of the St. Petersburg school, such as Platonov, with sociological yeast from the Moscow school, during the time he spent in the capital archives for his magister dissertation. Because Kliuchevskii was a more or less inimitable master,^[3] Miliukov could have served as mentor to a whole generation of Russian scholars.
Could have, that is, had it not been precluded by his poor judgement of others’ character and by his arrogance, “the boundless self-love” noted by the conservative professor N. P. Bogolepov, “[that] darkens Miliukov’s thoughts” (P. 151). Again and again throughout Miliukov’s life misunderstandings arose, critical moments of singular opportunity were let to pass, and professional and political tragedies ensued. One thinks in the first instance of his famous rejoinder to Minister of the Interior Viacheslav Plehve in 1904, when he expressed no interest in the post of Minister of Education that Plehve dangled in front of him, but that, if offered Plehve’s own post as Minister of Interior, “then that I would consider” (P. 274). Of course, Plehve was playing his own game and the imperial government had the capability of evoking disdain from broad swathes of the educated public, but this is an indicative rejoinder by Miliukov. The same dynamic was at work in his relations with Kliuchevskii. In a well-known statement, Miliukov gave Kliuchevskii credit for having demonstrated that Russian history could be the subject of serious disciplinary study (what they called “scientific analysis”) and the basis for establishing “laws” (P. 28). This was a backhanded compliment, and Miliukov showed his true opinion by not working closely with Kliuchevskii and by openly criticizing Kliuchevskii for “neglect of archives.” Given all these factors, plus Kliuchevskii’s initial concerns about Miliukov’s background in Russian history and certain reservations he had about Miliukov’s magister dissertation (Gosudarstvennoe khoziaistvo Rossii v pervoi chetverti XVIII veka i reforma Petra Velikogo), it is stunning that Miliukov would have insisted that the work count for both of his dissertations and would have refused to write a second doctorate, thereby closing off his main hope for employment, that of university professor. In this regard, the close connection between Miliukov’s historical research and his political ideas did not serve him well. It is true, as Miliukov himself noted, that the “societal interest” that “inspired and enlivened our interest in science, ...never separated us from life. Interest of this type did not narrow or distort our scientific efforts and scientific understanding, but, to the contrary, informed it with greater breadth and vitality” (P. 123). In this instance, however, the close linkage between his scientific and his societal interests seems to have contributed to Miliukov’s overestimation of the quality of his research, its applicability to contemporary Russian politics, and his own ability to marry the two. The magister dissertation and Miliukov’s reaction to its reception can serve as a template for other crucial moments in his life; a life littered with might have been that foundered on the shoals of his ego and the failures in judgment that his ego gave rise to.
While underscoring his very real achievements and abilities, this study also conveys a greater sense of the shortcomings and limitations, if not outright flaws, that also characterized Miliukov and his scholarly and political careers. For that reason, I find the overall image of Miliukov imparted by this study to be more accurate and compelling than that presented in the best previous study of the man, Melissa Stockdale’s Paul Miliukov and the Quest for a Liberal Russia. There is more emphasis here, for example, on the shortcomings of Miliukov’s Gosudarstvennoe khoziaistvo. In addition to establishing antecedents to Miliukov’s interpretation, especially in the work of Solov’ev, the authors note the contradiction between his assertion that historical evolution is regular and predictable and his finding that Peter’s reforms were inspired by external events, an instance of Primat der Aussenpolitik that belies the Comtean emphasis on internal societal maturation (Pp. 326-327). They conclude that, “In general, Miliukov was more original in [his] concrete investigation of Peter’s epoch than in [his] overall assessment...” (P. 331). Again, this is not to deny the power of his analysis and utilization of previously unworked archival sources in the Ministry of Justice, something which even critics such as Kliuchevskii and Pavlov-Silvanskii recognized at the time. The issues were whether his obstinance in refusing to write a second dissertation was warranted by the unqualified brilliance and sui generis accomplishments of his magister dissertation (the authors remark on p. 338 that the work established for Miliukov “a solid scholarly reputation”– my italics, Th. S.) and whether, even if his work merited credit for two degrees, his encumbering the professorial path with such an obdurate reaction was a judicious decision. In the event, his subsequent actions got him dismissed from his privat dotsent teaching post at Moscow University and banished to Riazan’. Later still, the enmity he had attracted from the tsarist government cost him a teaching post at an institute in Sofia. That he continued to make a living from his writing and public speaking is a testimony to his intellectual ability. That he was forced to do so because other career options were precluded by his questionable judgments is a sign of the character flaws that marred his political career, too.
On the issue of terror, as well, I find this study more realistic in its assessment of Miliukov. One of the signal achievements of Stockdale’s work was to establish Miliukov’s bona fides as a “new liberal.” She demonstrates that he arrived independently at the “new liberal” position characteristic of English liberals of the same era by emphasizing social and economic factors, and not merely civil and political rights. In a balanced assessment, she asserts that, “The resemblance of his liberalism to that of Western European ‘new liberalism’ does not of course constitute an argument for its viability in the Russia of his day. But it does challenge characterizations of his views as an illiberal reworking or variant of a more ‘genuine’ liberal creed.”^[4] The emphasis in natural law philosophy on absolute rights based in the individual, she shows, was ceding ground to a more sociologically oriented emphasis on rights as relative to the society and therefore not immutable. This is all well and good where it concerns living wage, access to education and opportunity, at least minimally acceptable living conditions and so on – qualifiers of the liberal program of equality of political and civil rights. It comes up fatally short, however, as a justification, even temporarily, for terror. Stockdale takes note of Miliukov’s radicalism in a handful of places in her extensive study, citing his 1905 call to “use all forces, all means to eliminate the plundering gang” in power and acknowledging that “if being a liberal requires a belief in the primacy of the individual and absolute values, then Miliukov never was a liberal.”^[5]
Compare this, however, with Makushin and Tribunskii’s treatment. They demonstrate a continued acceptance, even embracing, of political terror, from his time as a student up to 1905. According to Viktor Chernov, for example, in their circle of young people, Miliukov “did not directly speak against individual methods of struggle, [and] ...gave it to be understood that shaking the government by means of blows struck using the old, tested means of the narodnovol’tsy would be met from his side by the most sympathetic reaction” (P. 129). In the early 1900s he made similar statements in front of audiences, going so far in 1905 as to assert that “the punishment of I. P. Kaliaev for the murder of Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich was ‘a sacrifice, borne for the good of the people’” (Ibid.). It is most telling that Lenin should have abjured terror and Miliukov did not. Hence, we have the bizarre circumstance in which the leader of the Russian liberals, according to the recollections of N. A. Alekseev, “strongly upbraided the Iskraites for the polemic against terror after the murder of Sipiagin by Balmashev.” In a statement stunning for its calculation and callousness, Miliukov foresaw that “one or two more successful terrorist acts and we will receive a constitution” (P. 271).^[6] Stockdale notes that Miliukov’s ambition got in the way of the formation of a liberal ministry,^[7] but it seems more accurate to say that both moral and personal shortcomings contributed to the way Miliukov in 1907 “stubbornly” refused to renounce terror even in return for legalization of the Kadets by Stolypin (P. 129). The decision not to cooperate with Stolypin was a political watershed equivalent to the washing away of Loris-Melikov’s consultative assembly in the wake of the assassination of Alexander II. Openly accepting murder as a political weapon is a far cry from the extension of liberalism to include concerns with social and economic justice. This is not “new” liberalism; it is old Populism. Here, it is not enough to argue that the Kadets as a whole would not have accepted a renunciation of terror. On both personal moral grounds and on the basis of political calculation, it was incumbent on Miliukov as the leader of the party to renounce terror. This refusal to publicly turn away from terror constituted Miliukov’s single greatest political mistake and is the red X marking the spot of a certain moral hollowness in him that cannot be covered over by the label “new liberal.”
Though it is not part of their argument, Makushin and Tribunskii provide data that can be used to question Miliukov’s refusal to abjure terror in terms of his own overall political strategy. During his Boston lectures in late 1904, Miliukov stated that “for all of the growing rupture between the government and the revolutionaries, the only possibility for a peaceful resolution of the conflict involved the Russian liberals, standing between the two forces and relying on public opinion” (P. 289). It would have been more accurate to say that the only possibility for a liberal resolution of the conflict was for the liberals to stand between the two forces and to rely on public opinion, with public here taken to mean the educated public. Any effort to win popular approval for liberalism in competition with peasant socialism was doomed to failure. As Terry Emmons has shown, Kadet success in the first two Dumas was a function of their solid support among certain parts of the educated public (the enduring foundation of the Kadet party) and peasant calculations that the Kadets represented their best hope of getting land reform. In other words, peasants were wed to the Kadets only as part of a short-term political calculation, something on which long-term political viability could not be founded. Given this, it is particularly striking to note Miliukov’s support for the so-called four-tailed suffrage (direct, free, equal and secret). Both policy and culture separated the liberals from the majority of the population of the Russian empire, and their well intentioned efforts at public outreach were the thinnest of reeds on which to base hopes of cultural transformation of the narod. It is undoubtedly true that, as Makushin and Tribunskii assert, “the liberal intelligentsia... viewed their educational acts not only as a gift in service of the people, but also as an important instrument in the political struggle” (Pp. 135-136). But these educational acts, especially public lectures, reached at best the most educated elements of the popular masses. Indicative of how the rarified scholarship of someone like Miliukov fared in the public marketplace of ideas was his lecture series in the US. According to Makushin and Tribunskii, “the most popularity Miliukov enjoyed on the eve of the Russian Revolution was in America, where he gave lectures in Chicago and Boston during 1903 and 1904/1905” (P. 266). But in his American lectures he clearly misgauged his audience. His lectures on “Russian Civilization” in Chicago in June and July 1903 were first attended by almost 500 people, but by the sixth lecture the crowd had dwindled to 30 (P. 279).
These numbers are indicative. Miliukov and his liberal confreres never had a chance in the contest over the “hearts and minds” of the Russian people. Frankly, this is as it should have been. It has been said that in order to be liked, you must like. Miliukov, for one, does not seem to have liked the Russian people. He held them up to a supposedly universal scale of Comtean evolution and found them to be backward. In Miliukov’s view, this may have been largely attributable to autocracy, but it was a “fact” nonetheless. Consider this passage from the volume on Religion in his Outlines of Russian Culture. In the section devoted to the Schism, he wrote, “The formalism of the old Russian religion was the cardinal trait characterizing both the Schism and the national church of the sixteenth century. The total absence of an indispensable preparatory knowledge prevented the Russians from discerning the substance of faith.”^[8] This is the sort of monochromatically negative assessment of the Russian people that one would expect from Marquis de Custine, not from the self-styled leader of Russian democracy. It is hardly surprising that by March 1917 Miliukov should be working desperately to preserve the monarchy. His party and his people had shallow roots at best in the population as a whole and were effortlessly washed away by the rising waters of the deluge that would flood Russia. What is surprising is that Miliukov, as leader of a constituency as politically and socially vulnerable as Russian liberals, would have staked out a position so independent of established power sources. His best known, most dramatic and most characteristic political acts – the Vyborg Manifesto, the refusal to abjure terror in return for recognition of the Kadets by Stolypin, and the insistence in 1917 on full implementation of the secret treaty clauses, including acquisition of Constantinople and the Straits – make sense only for a politician with a broad-based and secure political foundation. In light of the narrow and fragile political base that Miliukov actually possessed, they were as dazzlingly arrogant and ill-considered as they were unsuccessful. Just as in the case of his insistence on two doctorates for his magister thesis, they are rooted in an arrogance and ambition that blinded him to political realities.
The final section of the book delves substantively into Miliukov’s historical views and finds them deserving of critical, qualifying remarks, too. For example, as regards his magister dissertation, they found his principles for judging which piles of uncataloged archival documents to work through to be “subjective,” a subjectivity caused by the brevity of his excursus into the literature on the main questions relating to the subject (P. 309). They also criticize the demographic calculations that were important to his conclusions and explain that they were brought under negative scrutiny shortly after publication of the book (Pp. 316-325). As noted above, while finding his overall thesis not all that original, they highlighted the contradiction between his Comtean insistence on regularity and the assertion that the Russian people were not ready for Peter’s reforms, a contradiction inadequately resolved by use of the explanatory deus ex machina of foreign pressure (Pp. 326-328). Similarly, he accords Peter an important role, but makes it somewhat “accidental” and limited (Pp. 329-330). Their general assessment of his work is guarded.
The treatment of Miliukov’s historical views as expressed in Outlines of Russian Culture is also qualified. The authors state that “the presence of regularity in history” constitutes “the cornerstone of Miliukov’s theory of the historical process.” Because of this preconceived historical understanding, though, they find that Miliukov “was not free of subjectivism” (P. 339). More substantively, they judge Miliukov to have been far less than a path-breaking historical thinker. In a very interesting insight, they assert that:

“it is possible to argue with the widespread proposition that V. O. Kliu-chevskii, although his course was published only at the beginning of the twentieth century, crowned nineteenth-century Russian historiography, its Positivist period, but Miliukov, although his Outlines began to be published already at the end of the nineteenth century, belonged already to a new period, to the twentieth century (P. 341).”

They note that Miliukov himself identified a difference with Kliuchevskii in that the latter “said that one had to be able to question the material so that it would supply answers and that these answers had to be determined beforehand, so as to have the possibility to verify them by research” (P. 341). This, they point out, was very close to the ideas of Max Weber, whose views Miliukov rejected. “Thus,” they conclude, “it is rather that Miliukov belongs wholly to the nineteenth century, and Kliuchevskii, despite his age, could grasp the new theoretical currents” (P. 341). In keeping with this sense of Miliukov’s theoretical rigidity and a certain narrow-mindedness, they note similarities between Miliukov’s views and those of the Marxists, especially regarding monism and the role of personality in history (Pp. 343, 349). In closer keeping with his Comtean views, Miliukov held that the consciousness of the historical process was a function of its regularity, and that applied sociology measures this consciousness. The authors opine that faith in consciousness “held no small amount of danger for him as a future politician” (P. 351). They identify two layers to Outlines. The exterior layer is made up of the liberal pronouncements, and the other layer, arising from “the factual material” derives from unalloyed borrowings from the so-called “state school” of Russian history. Despite this illiberal foundation component, Miliukov was able to convince himself on the basis of his Comtean evolutionary ideas and the rapid socio-economic changes of late imperial Russia that his liberal political program was suited to the circumstances (Pp. 364-365). In essence, overestimating the power of Comtean evolutionary processes and underestimating the ease with which an unconscious mass can be transformed into conscious individuals – failed calculations that I attribute to his arrogance – set Miliukov up for his political mistakes. Later, Miliukov would exculpate the Russian intelligentsia for this failure by asserting that they had not had enough time to educate the people. Perhaps a better reason for that failure to inculcate a new cultural tradition in the people was the underappreciation by Miliukov and the liberals of Russian nationalism. The authors quote Presniakov to the effect that Miliukov “did without this concept and scarcely even recognized its legitimacy (zakonnost’). At least, he ignored it” (P. 354). On one occasion, Miliukov told his students, “I ask you not to be surprised, if you do not encounter a national point of view in [our] national history in my subsequent exposition” (P. 355). We have already seen his opinion of Russian religious faith. The authors find that “in general, criticism of autocracy was the main motive of Outlines, but criticism of “nationalism” was [also] allotted substantial attention...” (P. 361). Of course, patriotism and nationalism are not identical, as the authors point out, and Miliukov associated nationalism with autocracy. That is, he understood the term nationalism to imply the narrow patriotism that attached to the imperial government and its policies. Nonetheless, in keeping with many liberals, in rejecting nationalism in this way, he rejected outright something with which in some forms at least the population as a whole had a deep identification. Perhaps if one conceives of oneself as a democratic (rule by the people) leader, it behooves one to connect more closely to the world and values of the people one aspires to lead.
Makushin and Tribunskii have achieved a great deal here. They have established a new benchmark of archival thoroughness for Miliukov studies. On the basis of that research, they have elaborated a new, more critical, and in my assessment more realistic understanding of Miliukov as historian. Since Miliukov himself conceived of his historical and political work as so intimately conjoined, in the process Makushin and Tribunskii have also provided the basis for calling into question the liberal project in late imperial Russia, at least insofar as Miliukov embodied and shaped it. Much of their criticism of Miliukov as historian is grounded in a far greater respect for and appreciation of native Russian historical traditions (the Moscow school of Solov’ev and Kliuchevskii, and the St. Petersburg school, especially in the persons of Platonov and Presniakov) that also places them in the context of global historiographical currents of the day. They rightly criticize Miliukov for not being more open to those global currents and their anti-Positivist character. The greater the pity, then, that the work is not itself based on global scholarship and that its presentation is not more palpably un-Positivist. These are the two main criticisms that I would levy against this otherwise excellent work. The first is understandable, but regrettable. Western works on Russian history are often beyond the resources of scholars at research institutes in the capitals, much less for scholars at mid-level teaching institutions in the provinces. Perhaps as part of this laudable series, the editorial board could work with the AAASS and begin to create an international lending library, with works supplied from the private collections of scholars in the West and some mail costs covered by funding agencies. If Western scholars were willing to part with the works completely, they could be passed around the scholarly community in Russia the way samizdat publications traveled through the intelligentsia. In terms of the second issue, more attention could be paid to editing out some of the detail that is less than essential to the authors’ metanarrative. Even failing that, the text needs much more by way of summing up and generalization of the main points covered in the different sections. As it is, the density of detail and the absence of points of consolidation make it difficult to draw forth the authors’ valuable and insightful interpretations. Some additional attention to these areas of presentation and organization would go a long way toward insuring that the very valid points that the authors raise would be more clearly and effectively transmitted. Those few reservations aside, both the authors of this particular work and the editors of the series are to be commended for this substantial contribution to the study of Miliukov and of historical writing in late imperial Russia. One can only expectantly await the publication of further volumes in the series.