1892-1893 – The Brusilov Crisis
The momentous elections of 1892 produced a particularly complicated picture. There had been a clear shift from the Right and Centre towards the Left. Both the Constitutionalists and National Alliance saw their vote share drop, with the results of the Right plunging so far as to allow the liberals to win a slightly higher vote share. Despite losing votes, the Constitutionalists were able to modestly increase their tally of seats while the National Alliance 48. This allowed them to remain the largest parliamentary block but left them clearly humbled. The votes lost by the major parties flowed towards the Left, who also gained further support from the minority parties. The Democrats were left largely disappointed by their result, failing to achieve the major split in liberalism they had sought and seeing five of the eight deputies who had defected from the Constitutionalists in 1887 lose their seats. They had nonetheless won nearly 400,000 votes and ensured their continued survival as a parliamentary force. The most successful party of the election were the Trudoviks, who further cemented themselves as a national power with a surge in support and flurry of gains that trebled their Duma block. Away from the national parties, there was drama in Tatar and Mongol communities as the Grand Turanian Congress ran a full slate of candidates against the unionist deputies of the Hindu-Muslim Block – winning almost a quarter of Muslim and Hindu votes and securing a sizeable phalanx of separatist deputies.
Despite winning just 180 seats, and the Tsar’s preference for continued cooperation between centre-left and centre-right, Petr Orlov presented himself as the leader of a radical alliance of Duma parties; forming a Constitutionalist minority government with support from the Trudoviks, Democrats, elements of the Christian Block and including Belegunutist ministers from the Hindu-Muslim Block. In order to hold this coalition of support together, he promised a spectacular programme of reform involving universal manhood suffrage, social reform, the institution of an income tax and an end to the Brusilov Line.
The government quickly went to work on its grand programme of reform. Remarkably for a country that had possessed an electoral franchise limited to the very wealthiest tiers of society just over half a decade previously, the easiest part of the reformist programme to pass through the Duma was universal manhood suffrage. Not only was there little dissent from the government and its allies, elements of the opposition – particularly in the Agudah Yisrael – were happy to back the drive to give all adult males the vote. With this support, the 1892 Reform Act nearly doubled the size of the electorate to around 22,000,000 – giving all men over the age of 21 the right to vote.
The task of introducing the progressive income tax, a tax with a wider scope and great redistributive features than any previously instituted in Polish history, alongside a series of social reforms was much more difficult. Indeed, a budget proposing higher taxes and higher social spending appeared decidedly unliberal and grated with a large part of Orlov’s own party. Despite an emerging rebellion on the Constitutionalist benches benches within dozens of deputies either voting against or abstaining, the Prime Minister was able to pass what was dubbed the ‘People’s Budget’ in 1892 with the backing of his Duma allies out with his own party. The budget brought in the much discussed income tax – addressing the new fiscal needs of the modern state, introduced a modest pension for those over the age of 70 without family to support them and a small measure of poor relief for the unemployment and impoverished. Within mere months, Petr Orlov, a moderate by inclination, had, with striking energy, reshaped Polish society. However, it was the final flagship policy of the new government, the abolition of the Brusilov Line, that would be the most controversial and most challenging to bring into practise.
The Right had been concerned by many aspects of the second Orlov ministry, but none elicited the same degree of horror, anger and political energy as the prospect of the end of the Brusilov Line. Conservatives feared that abolishing the Line would fundamentally change the nature of the Polish state – forever breaking Jewish control over the empire that served as the greatest protector of the Jewish people across the world. Jews would be relegated to a permanent minority within their own Duma, and a terrifying alliance of the godless and Muslims were liable to rule in perpetuity. In this world, what future would there be for Jewish and Slavic civilisation, what guarantee would there be of their right and security? The prospect was terrifying, and likely irreversible. Moderates like the recently deposed Prime Minister Vasiliy Vlasov, could hold little sway in this context. The deputies of the National Alliance quickly lined up behind former premier Yildilz Kazimzade, who forthrightly promised to fight to the end to preserve the Line and Jewish civilisation.
The ensuing Brusilov Crisis marked the moment when the performance of politics in Poland caught up with the new age of mass participation. It extended beyond the bourgeois world of parliamentary intrigue, the broadsheet press and regular, orderly, elections to encompass the streets. In the East, Tatars and Mongols both west and east of the Brusilov Line organised mass demonstrations in support of the government – a part of a strategy to put Kiev’s feet to the fire and ensure that it maintained its promise to enfranchise all of the empire’s peoples. To the West, Jewish groups, many with religious links and connections to Agudah Yisrael, had their own marches and counter demonstrations – leading to clashes in ethnically mixed areas like Muscovy and the Donbass. Elsewhere, newspapers with mass readerships spread increasingly shrill and highly partisan rhetoric that further inflamed passions.
Few 19th century politicians were comfortable in this new world, Petr Orlov for one was horrified and seemed completely disorientated by it. There was one clear exception, Yildilz Kazimzade. The great man of the Right engaged with the popular press and mass organisations with ease – making use of mass politics to bring maximum pressure onto the Duma. Most famously, following a huge pro-Brusilov demonstration in Kiev that had drawn over a hundred thousand into the capital from the provinces, Kazimzade rose to speak to the crowds and promised “Brusilov today, Brusilov tomorrow, Brusilov forever!”
Internationally, 1892 saw the birth of a new first-rate global power – the United States of America. The powerful new state was born out of the Americas’ most developed nation – New Andalucia, which over the previous decades had expanded its borders through wars with indigenous tribes and the purchase of lightly populated Skottish territory in Appalachia. The new Union was created in the aftermath of a series of revolts in Danish colonial territories in the North East and Florida that had been driven by Muslim migrants that had pushed into these territories from New Andalucia in search of new lands to settle. After the Danish withdrawal from these territories in the 1880s, new mixed Muslim-Christian statelets were formed, under heavy New Andalucian influence. Seeking to incorporate these valuable and strategic new lands, New Andalucia had adopted a new secular constitution that promised substantial local autonomy and even distanced the new nation from its Iberian heritage. Thus, the United States was formed.
The success of the New Andalucians, or rather the Americans, had a major impact on the Islamic world more widely. Since opening up to mass immigration from the oppressed Muslim populations of the Old World, millions of Arabs, Tatars and others had settled within its borders – diluting its historically Iberian population and strengthening the connections between the Eurasian and North American Muslim communities. The impressive achievements of the United States, now a world power whose people enjoyed some of the highest standards of living in the world, illustrated how successfully a Muslim society could govern itself, while its secular constitution inspired reformers under Christian rule in the Near East and Jewish control in the Polish empire. Most pointedly for Poland, it added tremendous energy to Tatar activists and their drive to abolish the Brusilov Line.
In the Duma, the legislation to abolish the Line was proving difficult to pass. Many Constitutionalist and Christian Block deputies, and even a small number of Trudoviks, shared the fears of the Right or were at the very least worried for the consequences to the social order. Indeed, it should not be forgotten that the abolition of Brusilov would significantly reduce the influence on the Christian community within the Duma. The great majority of Christians living in the western parts of the empire and already enjoying voting rights, and those that did not were predominantly Ugrians – looked down upon as less civilised by Balts and Krakowians. For them, end of the Line would not be a liberation for minorities, but merely a root to Muslim rather than Jewish power.
Despite this discontent among his own ranks, Orlov brought forward the legislation to the Duma in February 1893. Dissent had been expected, but the Prime Minister had hoped that his personal authority and the hefty majority held by the progressive parties would see the Bill pass through. The atmosphere in the lead up to the vote was incredibly tense. The day prior the Kohen Gadol, the head of Orthodox Judaism, had taken the unusual step of making an official announcement with relation to the vote – urging deputies to “carefully consider” their decision, offering as close was as practically possible to official church sanction for the pro-Brusilov faction. Instead, the government faced one of the largest parliamentary rebellions in Polish history. More than a third of Constitutionalist deputies voted against the Bill, as did around half of the Christian Block and a tenth of the Trudoviks. The Bill was defeated by 273 votes to 228.
In the aftermath of this defeat the government was left in disarray. The Hindu-Muslim deputies were enraged and threatened to abandon the government while in the province Turanian led demonstrations turned to riots in Tatar communities. The Constitutionalist Party itself was sent hurtling into internecine strife, while the Christian Block began to distance itself from the government entirely. Orlov was in a perilous position but chose to forge forwards. As the fallout from the first vote settled, the government announced that it would bring its Brusilov legislation forward for a second time. This time the Constitutionalist deputies would be whipped heavily, with dissenters threatened with expulsion from the party.
Kazimzade and the members of the National Alliance had spent over a year assiduously working behind the scenes to cultivate the liberal division that had led to the defeat of the Bill’s first reading, and these connection proved vital in the lead up to the second vote. With just a week to go until the second reading, 42 Constitutionalist deputies announced their defection from the party to form the National Liberal Party. They would sit among the opposition deputies of the National Alliance as its third constituent party, the Right having offered to bring them under their electoral wing and in doing so presenting a route to continue their political careers beyond the next election.
The second vote came in early April 1893, and this time the result was far closer. Similar numbers of Christian Block and Trudovik deputies joined the, now enlarged, National Alliance in the pro-Brusilov camp, but Orlov’s threats and cajoling had significantly brought a number of the remaining Constitutionalist rebels back into line. While a small number abstained, no further liberals voted against the Bill. It therefore received the narrowest of endorsements in the Duma – passing by 247 votes to 245.
This was the point at which the Tsar intervened. Outside of government formations, Tsar Nikolai had largely remained neutral in political affairs over the course of his 44-year reign – allowing the parties of the Duma to govern the empire as they saw fit. However, the drama of the Brusilov Crisis had stirred him from this inaction. He expressed his concerns to the Prime Minister that such a divisive policy was due to be enacted without even achieving majority support in the Duma and urged him to either seek a broader mandate or revise the legislation itself. Unwilling to question his sovereign, and possessing some misgivings about forging on based on a minority parliamentary vote, Orlov looked to dissolve the Duma and push for a new election that would be fought squarely on the Brusilov issue. The Brusilov Crisis was hurtling towards a conclusion