A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

France: Second Empire and Third Republic 725

that could summarily convict and sentence civilians accused of violent polit­
ical crimes. This law resulted in nearly 1,000 hangings before it expired six
months later. Liberals dubbed the ropes of the gallows “Stolypin’s neckties.”
After Nicholas changed the rules of election to increase the power of
noble votes at the expense of peasants, workers, and non-Russians, a third
Duma was elected in 1907 that was more to the tsar’s liking. It was domi­
nated by the “Octobrists,” who believed that the tsar’s promises in the
October Manifesto of 1905 represented sufficient reform and wanted to
stop at that. The repression and Russification campaign went on.
Stolypin nonetheless undertook rural reforms beginning in 1906, hoping
that they might defuse the political intensity of the agrarian question and
reduce unrest without the confiscation of land owned by the gentry. His
goal was to create a class of prosperous peasants (kulaks) while increasing
agricultural production by allowing peasants to leave their villages and set
up independent farms. He hoped that the enclosure of common lands and
a consolidation of holdings would expand the number of peasant plots.
Indeed, a considerable amount of land passed from communal to private
ownership. The number of prosperous peasants increased. Yet prices for
farm products fell, and even peasants with fairly large plots of land still had
to struggle to survive. By 1914 more than 5 million Russians had crossed
the Ural Mountains, most of them peasants attracted by the possibility of
land—Siberia thus became something of the equivalent of the American
West.
In 1911, Stolypin was assassinated. Although the government of course
claimed the assassin was a Jew, the minister may have been killed with the
approval of the tsar at the instigation of noble advisers who considered him
too liberal and rejected any agrarian reforms.
A surge of industrial strikes and peasant violence over the next three
years demonstrated continued popular dissatisfaction. With political par­
ties now legal, although facing police constraints, and the press in princi­
ple free, Liberals, Socialist Revolutionaries, and Menshevik and Bolshevik
Social Democrats mobilized support against the regime. Indeed, the grow­
ing popularity of Bolsheviks among organized urban workers—revealed in
their victories in trade union elections—reflected deepening impatience
with the path of moderate reform.

France: Second Empire and Third Republic

In the meantime, Europe’s traditionally most revolutionary country

remained France. Following the Revolution of 1848, Louis Napoleon Bona­

parte completed his destruction of the Second Republic with his coup d’etat

on December 2, 1851. The following year he proclaimed himself emperor as

Napoleon III, with the overwhelming support of the upper classes and many

peasants.