Miliukov was the leader of the party. Pavel Milyukov: biography, political activity, books

politician, leader of the Cadet Party, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Provisional Government, publicist and pro-Western historian.

From an ancient noble family. The son of professor-architect Nikolai Pavlovich Milyukov. He was educated at home, graduated from the 1st Moscow Gymnasium (1877). In the summer of 1877 he was in Transcaucasia as the treasurer of the military economy, and then - the authorized representative of the Moscow sanitary detachment. In September 1877 entered the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University, among his teachers were P.G. Vinogradov, V.O. Klyuchevsky and N.S. Tikhonravov.

Scientific activity

Since 1886, Privatdozent at Moscow University, simultaneously taught at the gymnasium and at the Higher Women's Courses; in 1892 he was awarded a master's degree in Russian history for his dissertation on the topic “The State Economy of Russia in the First Quarter of the 18th Century. and the reforms of Peter the Great ”(he was also awarded the S.M. Solovyov Prize). From 1892 to 1895 he taught the course "History of Russian culture" at the university. In 1895, Milyukov was dismissed from the university with a ban on teaching "for a harmful influence on young people" and because of "extreme political unreliability" and was exiled to Ryazan, where in 1895-1897. participated in archaeological excavations. In 1897, Milyukov was invited to Bulgaria, where he was offered a course of lectures on history at the Sofia Higher School. In 1898 he was suspended from teaching at the request of the Russian authorities. Milyukov traveled to Macedonia, took part in an archaeological expedition. He described his impressions in Letters from the Road, which were published in Russkiye Vedomosti.

Gradually, Milyukov formed his own view of history. He denied the laws of the historical process, contrasted the historical development of Russia and the West, and, based on the theory of the eternal cultural backwardness of Russia, drew a conclusion about the progressive role of foreign borrowings, etc. Milyukov wanted to prove that the popular masses in Russia have always been marked by inertia. In addition, Milyukov argued that the decisive role in the history of the country was played by state power, which had a supra-class character.

Political activity

In 1899 Milyukov returned to Russia, to St. Petersburg. A year later, in February 1900, he chaired the evening, which was dedicated to the memory of P.A. Lavrov. For the "memorial word" he uttered, Milyukov was arrested and sentenced to 6 months in prison with a ban on living in the capital after the end of the prison term. V.O. stood up for Milyukov. Klyuchevsky, who turned to the emperor with a request to reduce the term of imprisonment; in the end, the imprisonment was cut almost in half.

In 1902, Milyukov prepared a draft policy statement for the Osvobozhdeniye magazine, and a year later, in 1903, he undertook a long trip abroad, which lasted until 1905. During this trip, Milyukov lectured in the USA about Russia and the Slavs. In the winter of 1903-1904. he lived in England and met in London with N.V. Tchaikovsky, P.A. Kropotkin, E.K. Breshko-Breshkovskaya, R. Macdonald. In addition, he had a meeting with V.I. Lenin, visited Canada, where he prepared the publication of the book "Russia and Its Crisis".

In April 1905 Milyukov returned to Russia. On May 24, at the opening congress of the Union of Unions, he was elected its chairman. Miliukov succeeded in persuading the congress to accept his proposed appeal to society and the people, in which the idea of ​​convening a Constituent Assembly was put forward. Milyukov set himself the task of creating, not a revolutionary, but a constitutional party, in his words, the task of this party should be the struggle against "parliamentary means."

At the founding congress of the Constitutional Democratic Party, which took place in October 1905, Milyukov was instructed to deliver an introductory address to the congress and a report on tactics. He prepared his appeal, but the final decisions on the tactics, ideology and organization of the "People's Freedom" Party (PNS) were taken only at its 2nd congress, held in January 1906. Member since 1905, since 1907 chairman Party Central Committee. Since February 1906, co-editor (together with I.V. Gessen) of the main Cadet newspaper Rech; Miliukov himself published extensively in the newspaper and was the author of almost all of its editorials.

Deputy of the State Duma

Milyukov was not elected to the 1st State Duma; opposition from the authorities affected, although the formal pretext for removal from participation in the elections was the non-compliance with the requirements of the housing qualification. After the dissolution of the Duma, he was one of the drafters of the Vyborg Appeal, which called on the population to civil disobedience. Due to the participation of Milyukov in the drafting of the Vyborg Appeal, he was forbidden to participate in the elections to the 2nd State Duma.

In the fall of 1907, Milyukov was elected to the 3rd State Duma. As chairman of the Cadets faction, it was Milyukov who took upon himself all the speeches in the Duma on questions that concerned a constitutional and political nature. However, the main specialty to which Milyukov turned his attention was questions of foreign policy.

At the Extraordinary Session of the Duma, on the occasion of the outbreak of the First World War, on July 26, 1914, Milyukov read out a statement written by him, which was approved by the Central Committee of the party: “We are fighting for the liberation of the Motherland from foreign invasion, for the liberation of Europe and the Slavs from German hegemony ... In this struggle we are united; we don't set conditions, we don't demand anything." Because of this statement and Milyukov's desire to fight the war to a victorious end, he was called the "leader of the Duma opposition."

In the summer of 1915, Milyukov became one of the main initiators of the creation of the Progressive Bloc. As he himself wrote in his memoirs: “They called me the 'author of the bloc', the 'leader of the bloc', and they expected me to direct the policy of the bloc. … It was the high point of my career.” The bloc's program was as follows: the creation of a government of persons who enjoy the confidence of the country; a radical change in management methods and the creation of a common administration for political crimes; equalization of peasants with other classes; reform of city and land institutions, etc. At the same time, Milyukov took an active part in organizing and directing a large-scale slanderous campaign in the press aimed at discrediting the government and the Royal Family.

On November 1, 1916, Milyukov delivered his famous speech in the Duma, which was banned for publication, but was distributed on lists throughout the country. In his speech, Milyukov categorically and without any evidence accused Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and Russian Prime Minister B.V. Sturmer in the preparation of a separate peace with Germany. In his memoirs, Milyukov wrote: “I spoke about rumors, about “treason” ... about the actions of the government that aroused public indignation, and in each case I left the listeners to decide whether it was “stupidity” or “treason” ... But I masked the most powerful part of the speech with a quote “ Neue Freie Press. The name of the empress was mentioned there in connection with the names of the camarilla surrounding her ... ". One of the results of Milyukov's slanderous speech was another government crisis and the resignation of B.V. Stürmer.

On February 27, 1917, at a private meeting of the Duma, Milyukov proposed to wait a little while until the nature of the movement was clear, and in the meantime to create a temporary committee of members of the Duma to restore order in the country. This proposal was accepted, and Milyukov was elected a member of the Provisional Committee of the State Duma. At meetings of the Progressive Bloc and the Provisional Committee, Miliukov actively participated in the discussion of all questions of the revolution, including the composition of the government.

On March 2, Milyukov delivered a speech in the Catherine Hall of the Tauride Palace and announced the composition of the Provisional Government headed by Prince G.E. Lvov. About the emperor and the Romanov dynasty, Milyukov spoke quite clearly: “The old despot, who brought Russia to complete ruin, will voluntarily renounce the throne - or be deposed. Power will pass to the regent, Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich. Alexei will be the heir. However, on March 3, it became known that Nicholas II had abdicated in favor of his brother. Therefore, at a meeting of the Provisional Committee and members of the Provisional Government with the participation of Mikhail Alexandrovich, Milyukov opposed the abdication of the Grand Duke. He argued his position by the fact that strong power is necessary to strengthen the new order, but it also needs to be supported by a symbol of power, to which the masses are already accustomed. However, such statements did not find support among the majority of the leaders of the Progressive Bloc.

Foreign Secretary

In the first composition of the Provisional Government, Milyukov served as Minister of Foreign Affairs. One of his first steps in his new post was to order the embassies to assist in the return of revolutionary emigrants to Russia. Also, Milyukov continued to adhere to his position of the war to a victorious end, and therefore he was determined to work and advocate for the fulfillment by Russia of its obligations to the allies in the Entente. However, this caused even more indignation on the part of the left parties, as well as the Petrograd Soviet. The left increased pressure on the government and demanded that it immediately turn to the allies with a proposal to abandon "annexations and indemnities." When he expressed his disagreement with such a decision, a new campaign began against Milyukov as Minister of Foreign Affairs and someone who could directly contact the Allies.

Due to the heavy defeats suffered at the front, as well as economic difficulties and anti-war revolutionary agitation, a sharply negative attitude towards the continuation of the war spread in Russia. The Statement of the Provisional Government of March 27 (April 9), 1917 spoke of full compliance with the obligations assumed in relation to the allies. However, at the same time, the Statement contained provisions that allowed them to hope for an early end to hostilities (for example, the rejection of annexations and indemnities, etc.). Due to some concern on the part of the Allies, which was caused by the ambiguity of the Statement of the Provisional Government, on April 18 Milyukov attached his accompanying note (the so-called "Milyukov Note"), which was an additional document to the Statement and which set out the point of view of the country's leadership on Russia's participation in the war. In a note, Milyukov stated that the position of the Provisional Government did not give any reason to think about the weakening of the role of Russia in the common allied struggle and proclaimed the popular desire to bring the world war to a victorious end. The note gave rise to the April Crisis, which was the first armed demonstration against the Provisional Government on 20 and 21 April. The participants in this demonstration demanded the resignation of Milyukov from the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs. In a similar situation, Milyukov was forced to resign on May 2 (15), 1917.

Emigration

After his resignation, he continued his political activities as the leader of the Cadet Party, supported the Kornilov movement (after the defeat of the speech, he was forced to leave Petrograd for the Crimea). Milyukov reacted sharply negatively to the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, was a consistent supporter of the armed struggle against them. On November 14, Milyukov was elected to the Constituent Assembly, but did not participate in its activities, since he left for the Don.

Having moved from the Don to Kyiv, Milyukov came into contact with the command of the German troops (May 1918), as he considered Germany as a potential ally in the fight against the Bolsheviks. The Central Committee of the Kadet Party condemned such a policy, and Milyukov resigned from his duties as chairman of the Central Committee. At the end of October, he recognized his policy towards the German army as erroneous. From the end of 1918, Milyukov was abroad (in Romania, Paris, London).

Two years later, in 1920, Milyukov settled in Paris. There he became editor-in-chief of the influential foreign Russian newspaper Posledniye Novosti, a position he held from March 1921 to 1941. During his emigration, Pavel Nikolaevich wrote a number of works on the history of the revolution and the civil war.

In 1922, during a speech in Berlin, Milyukov was assassinated by monarchists, but the bullet hit V.D. Nabokov, who covered it with himself.

On the eve of World War II, Milyukov was a determined opponent of Germany, and shortly before his death, he sincerely rejoiced at the victory of the Soviet troops at Stalingrad. In 1954, after the lease of the grave had expired, the ashes were transferred to Paris, to the Batignolles cemetery, where he was buried next to A.S. Milyukova.

Family

1st marriage, Milyukov was married to the daughter of the rector of the Moscow Theological Academy, Anna Sergeevna Smirnova (1861 - 1935); 2nd marriage - to Nina Vasilievna Grigorievna (1881 - 1960). Children: Nikolai (1889-1957), Sergei (1894-1915), Natalya (1898-1921).

January 27, 1859 (Moscow, Russian Empire) - March 31, 1943 (Aix-les-Bains, French state)



P.N. Milyukov

Milyukov Pavel Nikolayevich is better known in modern Russia as a politician of the liberal opposition, a talented publicist, leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party (Party of People's Freedom, Party of Cadets), Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Provisional Government, an active participant in the Civil War. But it is absolutely impossible to dispute the fact that this man left a significant mark on history, not only as its protagonist. Historian, researcher, lecturer at Moscow University, he made a significant contribution to the development of Russian historical science in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, becoming one of the brightest representatives of Russian historiography of that time. It is to P.N. Milyukov that Russian society actually owes a scientific justification for the legitimacy and necessity of state reforms in Russia, carried out “from above”, but in agreement with “public opinion”. The entire liberal-democratic and bourgeois intelligentsia fell for this "bait", and enthusiastically accepted the gains of February 1917. But the Bolsheviks, like Peter I, carried out a radical reform of the state system of Russia, without any regard for "public opinion" in the person of the same bourgeois intelligentsia. Ultimately, they artificially led the country off its historical path, leaving neither “society”, nor its “opinion”, nor P.N. Milyukov himself.

Family and early years

Pavel Nikolayevich Milyukov was born on January 15 (27), 1859 in Moscow. It was believed that his grandfather - Pavel Alekseevich Milyukov - came from the Tver nobles. In the era of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, one of his ancestors was granted a charter, however, there was no documentary evidence of his noble origin. Having gone to Siberia in search of gold, the grandfather failed and was completely ruined. The father of the future politician - Nikolai Pavlovich Milyukov - is a graduate of the Academy of Arts, an architect by profession. He taught a lot, served as an inspector of two art schools in Moscow, worked as an appraiser in a bank, and for some time served as a city architect. The atmosphere in the family was far from well-being due to the difficult relationship of the parents. Mother was proud of belonging to the noble family of the Sultanovs, invariably emphasizing that her marriage to N.P. Milyukov (this was her second marriage) was a misalliance. Quarrels constantly broke out in the family, no one seriously took care of the children. P.N. Milyukov later recalled: “Father, busy with his own affairs, did not pay any attention to the children at all and did not take care of our upbringing. We were led by our mother…”

Pavel was the eldest of two children born in the marriage. From an early age he had a steady interest in poetry and music. He began to write poetry early: at first they were imitations of Nikitin, Pushkin, later - his original works. P. N. Milyukov carried his love for music through his whole life: he had an absolute ear for music, he played the violin perfectly.

The future historian received his education at the 1st Moscow Gymnasium, located on Sivtsev Vrazhek. At the end of the gymnasium, in the summer of 1877, together with P.D. Dolgorukov P.N. Milyukov participated as a volunteer in the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878 as the treasurer of the military economy, and then as an authorized Moscow sanitary detachment in Transcaucasia.

In 1877 he became a student of the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University. At first, the young man was attracted by such a new direction of science as linguistics and comparative linguistics. “History,” recalled P. N. Milyukov, “was not immediately interested in me,” because. the first teachers in general and Russian history, V. I. Guerrier and Popov, did not stimulate interest in the subject and did not leave good impressions. Everything changed when V. O. Klyuchevsky and P. G. Vinogradov appeared at the university, real, according to P. N. Milyukov, luminaries of learning and talent. P. G. Vinogradov impressed students with serious work on historical sources. “Only from Vinogradov did we understand what real scientific work means and to some extent we learned it,” wrote P. N. Milyukov. "AT. O. Klyuchevsky, according to P. N. Milyukov, “suppressed students with his talent and scientific insight: his insight was amazing, but its source was not available to everyone.”

In 1879, after the death of his father, the Milyukov family was on the verge of ruin. To ensure a decent existence for his mother (younger brother Alexei did not live with his family at that time), the student was forced to give private lessons.

In addition, the period of study of P. N. Milyukov at the university was marked by a particularly strong surge in the student movement. April 1, 1881 Milyukov was arrested for attending a student meeting. The result was exclusion from the university, however, with the right to enter in a year.

A break in study was used by P. N. Milyukov to study Greco-Roman culture in Italy. After graduating from the university, P. N. Milyukov was left at the department of V. O. Klyuchevsky. In parallel, he taught at the 4th Women's Gymnasium (from 1883 to 1894), gave lessons at a private women's school and at the Agricultural College. Having successfully passed the master's exams and read two trial lectures, P. N. Milyukov became a Privatdozent at Moscow University in 1886, which significantly changed his social position and circle of acquaintances. He became a member of many Moscow historical societies: the Moscow Archaeological Society, the Society for Natural Science, Geography and Archeology. At the university, the historian taught special courses on historiography, historical geography and the history of the colonization of Russia.

Master's thesis by P.N.Milyukov

For six years (from 1886 to 1892) P. N. Milyukov prepared his master's thesis "The state economy of Russia in the first quarter of the 18th century and the reform of Peter the Great."

By the time of defense, the dissertation was published in the form of a monograph, and the young scientist already had a big name in the scientific world. Milyukov actively published his articles in the well-known historical and literary journals Russkaya Mysl, Russkaya Starina, Istoricheskiy Vestnik, Istoricheskoe Obozrenie, Russkiy Arkhiv, etc., participated in the English magazine Ateneum, where he published annual reviews of Russian literature. In 1885 he was elected a corresponding member, and in 1890 a full member of the Imperial Moscow Archaeological Society.

Opponents on defense were V.O. Klyuchevsky and V.E. Yakushkin, who replaced I.I. Yanzhul.

The dissertation brought PN Milyukov truly all-Russian fame. The originality of this work was that the researcher, recognizing after S.M. Solovyov and, to a certain extent, V.O. Klyuchevsky, the "organism" of the transformations of the beginning of the 18th century with the previous development of Russia, noted their artificiality, and considered the very need for the transformations of Peter I doubtful. They were “timely” only in the sense of external conditionality: a favorable foreign policy situation prompted Russia to go to war, which resulted in reforms. According to Milyukov, the internal conditionality of the Petrine reforms was completely absent:

Milyukov was the first in the history of Russian historiography to express the idea that the reforms of Peter I were a spontaneous and completely unprepared process. They gave a much smaller result than they could, because they went against the opinion and wishes of society. Moreover, according to Milyukov, Peter I not only did not recognize himself as a reformer, but in fact he was not one. Milyukov considered the personal role of the tsar the least important factor in carrying out the transformations:

The conclusion about the limited influence of Peter I on the development and the course of the reform itself was one of the fundamental theses of Milyukov's dissertation. Despite the criticisms already available in the scientific literature about the role of the tsar-reformer (in particular, in the works of N.K. Mikhailovsky and A.S. Lappo-Danilevsky), it was Milyukov who formulated this conclusion in the most categorical form and with his name entered the subsequent literature.

The high scientific merits of the work, the scale and completeness of the studied material, reasoned and strictly proven conclusions, and the novelty of the study caused a lot of positive reactions to the dissertation among the scientific community and professors of Moscow University. A proposal was even made to assign P.N. Milyukov immediately doctoral degree. Most likely, the scientist was counting on this, presenting an extremely controversial, but original work as a dissertation research. However, his teacher V.O. Klyuchevsky, who won over the Academic Council.

In his memoirs, Milyukov noted that in response to all the insistence of other professors that the work was outstanding, Klyuchevsky inexorably repeated: "Let him write another one, science will only benefit from this."

Most researchers explain Klyuchevsky's position as a personal insult to the ambitious Milyukov. He rejected the theme of the master's thesis, previously proposed by his teacher, and, taking the reforms of Peter I as an object of study, defiantly withdrew from his scientific guidance. Klyuchevsky was never able to come to terms with the quick success of an unauthorized student, which forever ruined their relationship.

The work about Peter I brought Milyukov great fame and prestige. Almost all scientific and socio-political journals have placed responses to his book on their pages. For his research, P.N. Milyukov was awarded the S.M. Solovyov.

However, the resentment and "sense of insult", which, according to him, remained with him from the defense, hurt the pride of the young scientist. Milyukov made a promise to himself, which he subsequently kept: never to write or defend a doctoral dissertation. In this regard, he refused the offer of S.F. Platonov to nominate his other work for the doctoral degree - "Controversial Issues of the Financial History of the Moscow State" and defend it at St. Petersburg University. This work was a review, which Milyukov, at the request of the same S.F. Platonov, wrote on the book by A.S. Lappo-Danilevsky “Organization of direct taxation in the Muscovite state from the time of unrest to the era of transformations” (St. Petersburg, 1890).

In the late 1880s, changes took place in the personal life of P.N. Milyukov: he married Anna Sergeevna Smirnova, daughter of the rector of the Trinity-Sergius Academy S.K. Smirnov, whom he met in the house of V.O. Klyuchevsky. Like her husband, who was fond of playing the violin all his life, Anna Sergeevna loved music: according to the reviews of others, she was a talented pianist. Having left her family against the will of her parents, Anna lived in a private boarding school (piano lessons were the main source of her livelihood) and attended the women's courses in the world history of Professor V.I. Guerrier, where V.O. Klyuchevsky. Anna became a faithful companion of Milyukov, was an activist in the movement for the emancipation of women, and took an active part in the life of the Cadet Party. Together they remained exactly half a century - until her death in 1935 in Paris. Three children were born in the Milyukov family: in 1889 - son Nikolai, in 1895 - son Sergei, the youngest child was the only daughter Natalya.

"Political unreliability" and the exile of P.N. Milyukov

Recognition in the scientific world, awards and wide fame that fell upon Miliukov after the publication of his works, undoubtedly, were a reward for his hard work, but they only served to amuse the historian's ambition. His further career within the walls of Moscow University seemed to be very problematic. According to the university charter of 1884, only professors could be full-time employees of the university with an appropriate salary, and it was impossible to get this title without a doctoral degree. It remained possible to seek inclusion in the staff as an associate professor, but this option ran into resistance from V.O. Klyuchevsky, who at that time held the position of vice-rector of the university. The university career, Milyukov noted with regret, "was closed to me before the government closed it."

In this regard, one cannot but agree with the opinion of some subsequent researchers who believed that Russia owes the phenomenon of the politician Milyukov, who almost brought the country to the brink of a national and political catastrophe, oddly enough, to the great historian V.O. Klyuchevsky. In particular, N.G. Dumova in her book "Liberal in Russia: the tragedy of incompatibility" considers 1892-1893 as a turning point in the biography of P.N. Milyukov. The conflict with Klyuchevsky led to the fact that the historian is actually being forced out of the university: he is not included in the staff of teachers; the vice-rector, by his power, does not allow to read the main course of lectures at the faculty; successful defense of a doctoral dissertation under such conditions also becomes impossible.

The precarious social and financial situation makes P.N. Milyukov to look for new areas where he could realize his potential more fully. Although during this period Milyukov continued to be actively engaged in historical research, took part in the activities of scientific societies, published in journals, social and then political activities were more and more mixed with these activities.

For the development of self-education of teachers in the provinces, the Moscow Archaeological Society organized a lecture bureau. The professors included in it had to travel around the country and give general education lectures. As such a lecturer, P.N. Milyukov spoke in Nizhny Novgorod, where he gave a series of lectures on the Russian liberation movement of the 18th-19th centuries. In them, he traced the development of the Russian liberation movement, starting from its inception in the era of Catherine II and ending with the current state of affairs. The liberal orientation of the lectures, in which he, in his own words, "could not fail to reflect ... in one way or another this general high spirits" associated with society's expectations from the accession of Nicholas II, aroused great interest of the assembled public.

Using the examples of the era of Catherine II, Milyukov tried to convey to the audience the need to develop a dialogue between society and government, to educate citizenship and create public institutions in Russia.

The lectures given caused dissatisfaction with the authorities, who saw them as sedition and a harmful effect on young people. The Ministry of the Interior opened an investigation against Miliukov. By order of the police department on February 18, 1895, he was suspended from any teaching activity due to "extreme political unreliability." The Ministry of Public Education issued an order to dismiss the historian from Moscow University with a ban on teaching anywhere. Until the end of the investigation, P.N. Miliukov was expelled from Moscow. He chose Ryazan as the place of exile - the provincial city closest to Moscow, in which there was no university (such was the condition of the authorities).

In Ryazan, Milyukov participated in archaeological excavations, wrote articles and feuilletons in Russkiye Vedomosti, actively collaborated in the encyclopedic dictionary of F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron, worked on the creation of his main fundamental work "Essays on the History of Russian Culture".

The first edition of the Essays was published in 1896-1903 in three editions and four books. Until 1917, 7 editions of the Essays were published in Russia. While already in exile, Milyukov published a new, revised edition of the book. It took into account the published literature on various fields of knowledge and the changes that the author considered it necessary to make to his concept of the historical development of Russia. The new edition was published in Paris in 1930-1937, and was a jubilee edition dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the first edition.

At the beginning of 1897, Milyukov received an invitation from the Sofia Higher School in Bulgaria with a proposal, after the death of MP Dragomanov, to head the department of world history. The authorities allowed the trip. The scientist stayed in Bulgaria for two years, taught courses on general history, on antiquities of archeology and on the history of philosophical and historical systems, studied Bulgarian and Turkish languages ​​(in total, Milyukov knew 18 foreign languages). The deliberate ignorance of the solemn reception at the Russian embassy in Sofia on the occasion of the name day of Nicholas II caused irritation in St. Petersburg. The Bulgarian government was required to fire Miliukov. The "unemployed" scientist moved to Turkey, where he took part in the expedition of the Constantinople Archaeological Institute, in excavations in Macedonia.

In November 1898, at the end of the two-year period of supervision, Milyukov was allowed to live in St. Petersburg.

In 1901, for participation in a meeting at the Mining Institute dedicated to the memory of P. Lavrov, P. N. Milyukov was again arrested and sent to the Kresty prison. After a six-month stay in it, he settled at the Udelnaya station near St. Petersburg.

During this period, Milyukov became close to the liberal zemstvo milieu. He became one of the founders of the journal "Liberation" and the political organization of Russian liberals "Union of Liberation". In 1902-1904, he repeatedly traveled to England, then to the USA, where he lectured at the Chicago and Harvard Universities, at the Boston Lowell Institute. The course read was framed in the book "Russia and Its Crisis" (1905).

Actually, this is the biography of P.N. Milyukov as a historian and scientist can be completed. The revolutionary events of 1905-1907 finally made the Privatdozent "excommunicated" from teaching an opposition politician and publicist who seriously believed that society could be "prepared" for constitutional reforms.

P.N. Milyukov - politician

Since the summer of 1905, the former historian has become one of the founders and the undisputed leader of the party of constitutional democrats. He is also the publisher and editor of the Cadet press, the permanent leader of the Cadet faction in all 4 Dumas.

Miliukov, as is known, could not be elected either to the First State Duma or to the Second. There was opposition from the authorities, although the formal pretext for exclusion from participation in the elections was the non-compliance with the requirements of the housing qualification. Nevertheless, Pavel Nikolayevich acted as the de facto leader of the Duma faction of Cadets. It was said that Milyukov, who visited the Tauride Palace every day, was "conducting the Duma from the buffet"!

Milyukov's cherished dream of parliamentary activity came true in the autumn of 1907 - he was elected to the Third Duma. The leader of the Cadets Party, having led its parliamentary faction, became an even more influential and prominent figure. They joked that Milyukov was an ideal parliamentarian, he was created as if by order especially for the British Parliament and the British Encyclopedia. In the Third Duma, the Cadet faction was in the minority, but its leader P.N. Milyukov became the most active orator and chief expert on foreign policy issues. He also dealt with these issues in the Fourth Duma, and also spoke on various problems on behalf of the faction.

At the Congress of the Constitutional Democratic Party of P.N. Milyukov proposed the tactic of "isolating the government", which won the support of the majority of the delegates. This meant legitimizing the open confrontation between the Cadets and the authorities, which was reflected in the harsh speeches of the party representatives in the Duma and in the periodical press.

The First World War at first made adjustments to the tactics of the Cadets. P.N. Milyukov became a supporter of the idea of ​​ending the internal political struggle before victory, for the sake of which the opposition forces should support the government. He considered the war as an opportunity to strengthen the foreign policy influence of the state, associated with the strengthening of positions in the Balkans and the inclusion of the Bosporus and Dardanelles in the Russian Empire, for which he received the eloquent nickname "Milyukov-Dardanelles".

But the "sacred unity" with the government did not last long: the economic crisis in the country, the defeat of the army and domestic political instability led to the fact that a strong opposition to the government began to form in the Duma, which in August 1915 united in the Progressive Bloc. P.N. Milyukov was the organizer and one of the leaders of the bloc, who believed that Russia could win the war only if the existing government was replaced by a ministry that enjoyed the confidence of the country.

At the end of 1915, P.N. Milyukov experienced a deep personal tragedy: during the retreat from Brest, his second son Sergei, who had gone to war as a volunteer, was killed.

1916 - the peak of the Progressive Bloc. This year, B.V. turned out to be the head of the Russian government. Stürmer, who concentrated in his hands three key positions of the Cabinet of Ministers, a protege of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and G.E. Rasputin. It is natural that the resignation of B.V. Stürmer became one of the main tasks of the unit. An important step towards its implementation was the famous Duma speech by P.N. Milyukov dated November 1, 1916, which received in historiography the conditional name "Stupidity or treason?" on the basis of the refrain repeated in it. Having built his speech on information unknown in Russia, collected by him during a trip abroad in the summer - autumn of 1916, P.N. Milyukov used them as evidence of B.V.'s incapacity and malicious intent. Stürmer, mentioning in this connection even the name of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. The speech denouncing the queen became very popular in the country, which is why among the emigrants, already in the 1920s, it was often perceived as a “storm signal” for revolution.

Milyukov’s political obsession is also evidenced by the little-known words he uttered at breakfast with the British ambassador George Buchanan shortly before the February Revolution. Buchanan asked why the parliamentary opposition, in the midst of a difficult war, is so aggressive towards its government? Russia, from the point of view of a diplomat, has acquired a legislative Duma, freedom of political parties and the press in ten years. Shouldn't the opposition moderate its criticism and wait for the implementation of its wishes for another "some ten years"? Milyukov exclaimed with pathos: "Sir, the Russian liberals cannot wait ten years!" Buchanan chuckled in response: "My country has waited hundreds of years..."

After the February Revolution, P.N. Milyukov took part in the formation of the Provisional Government, which he joined as Minister of Foreign Affairs. After the abdication of Nicholas II, he tried to achieve the preservation of the monarchy in Russia until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly.

At the ministerial post, the decline of the political career of P.N. Milyukov: the war was unpopular among the people, and on April 18, 1917, he sent a note to the allies in which he outlined his foreign policy doctrine: war to a victorious end. This was the main drawback of P.N. Milyukov, a politician who cost him his career: being convinced of the correctness of his views and firmly convinced of the need to implement the program guidelines of his party, he imperturbably walked towards his goals, not paying attention to external influences, to the real situation in the country, to the mindset of the population. The manifestation of discontent and demonstrations in the capital after the note by P.N. Milyukov called for the resignation of the minister on May 2, 1917.

In the summer - autumn of 1917, P.N. Milyukov participated in the political life of Russia as chairman of the Central Committee of the Constitutional Democratic Party, a member of the permanent bureau of the State Conference and the Pre-Parliament. In August 1917, he supported the proposals of General L.G. Kornilov, at the same time actively appealed to the Russian public about the need to fight Bolshevism.

Bolshevik coup P.N. Miliukov did not accept and began to use all his influence to fight the Soviet regime. He advocated armed struggle, for which he sought to create a united front. In November 1917, Milyukov participated in a meeting of representatives of the Entente on the fight against Bolshevism. Having gone to Novocherkassk, he joined the volunteer military organization of General M.V. Alekseev. In January 1918 he was a member of the Don Civil Council. When Alekseev asked Milyukov in February 1918 to familiarize himself with the draft of the so-called "Political Program of General Kornilov", Milyukov expressed his disagreement that the draft was created without consultation with political parties. He also rejected Kornilov's attempt to single-handedly create a government. Milyukov believed that the publication of the program would deprive the volunteer movement of the support of the general population. In the end, the leaders of the Volunteer Army, still not indifferent to the remarks of liberal politicians, did not accept any program. Together with the junker boys and yesterday's students, they went to perish in the Kuban steppes. A P.N. Milyukov, as befits a "giant of thought and the father of Russian democracy", moved from the inhospitable Don to Kyiv, where, on behalf of the conference of the Kadet Party, he began negotiations with the German command about the need to finance the anti-Bolshevik movement. A staunch supporter of the Entente at that moment saw in the German occupiers the only real force capable of resisting the Bolsheviks. The Cadet Central Committee condemned his policy, and Milyukov resigned from his duties as chairman of the Central Committee. At the end of October, he recognized his policy towards the German army as erroneous. He welcomed the military intervention of the Entente states.

At the same time, P.N. Milyukov resumed his activity as a historian: in 1918, the History of the Second Russian Revolution, published in 1921-23 in Sofia, was being prepared for publication in Kyiv.

Emigrant

In November 1918, P.N. Milyukov traveled to Western Europe in order to obtain support from the allies for the anti-Bolshevik forces. For some time he lived in England, where he edited the weekly "The New Russia", published in English by the Russian emigrant Liberation Committee. He spoke in print and journalism on behalf of the White movement. In 1920 he published in London the book Bolshevism: An International Danger. However, the defeat of the White armies at the front and the indifferent policy of the allies, which failed to provide the White movement with sufficient material support, changed his views on how to rid Russia of Bolshevism. After the evacuation of the troops of General P.N. Wrangel from the Crimea in November 1920, Milyukov declared that "Russia cannot be liberated against the will of the people."

In the same years, he received from Soviet Russia the tragic news of the death of his daughter Natalya from dysentery.

In 1920, P.N. Milyukov moved to Paris, where he headed the Union of Russian Writers and Journalists in Paris and the council of professors at the Franco-Russian Institute.

Summing up the results of the anti-Bolshevik struggle in 1917-1920, he developed a "new tactic", with the theses of which he spoke in May 1920 at a meeting of the Paris Committee of Cadets. The "new tactics" in relation to Soviet Russia, aimed at internally overcoming Bolshevism, rejected both the continuation of the armed struggle within Russia and foreign intervention. Instead, it was envisaged the recognition of the republican and federal order in Russia, the destruction of landownership, the development of local self-government. P.N. Milyukov considered it necessary, together with the socialists, to develop a broad plan in land and national questions, in the sphere of state building. It was expected that this platform would gain the support of the democratic forces within Russia and inspire them to fight against the Bolshevik regime.

A change in outlook put P.N. Milyukov in opposition to most of the Russian emigration and made enemies of many of the Cadets who were his like-minded people in Russia. In June 1921, he left the party and, together with M.M. Vinaver, forming the Paris Democratic Group of the People's Freedom Party (in 1924 it was transformed into the "Republican-Democratic Association").

The monarchists, who rightly accused P.N. Milyukov in unleashing the revolution in Russia and in all its consequences, several attempts were made to assassinate him. In Paris, a city with a relatively liberal emigrant colony, the former politician had to live in a "semi-secret" apartment and hide out for fear of attacks. March 28, 1922 in the building of the Berlin Philharmonic in P.N. Milyukov was shot, but V.D. Nabokov, a well-known cadet, the father of the writer V. Nabokov, covered the former leader of the party with himself, as a result of which he himself was killed.

In exile P.N. Milyukov wrote and published a lot: his journalistic works “Russia at a Turning Point”, “Emigration at a Crossroads” were published, “Memoirs” were started, and remained unfinished. Milyukov wrote articles about Russia for the Encyclopædia Britannica, collaborated in other publications, lectured on the history of Russia in many countries, including the United States of America, where he traveled at the invitation of the American association Lowell Institute.

From April 27, 1921 to June 11, 1940, P.N. Milyukov edited the Latest News newspaper published in Paris. It devoted much space to news from Soviet Russia. Since 1921, P.N. Miliukov consoled himself by finding in Russia “signs of rebirth and democratization,” which, in his opinion, went against the policy of the Soviet government. In the 1930s, he began to positively evaluate Stalin's foreign policy for its imperial character, approved of the war with Finland, arguing: "I feel sorry for the Finns, but I am for the Vyborg province."

For 20 years, Latest News, headed by Milyukov, played a leading role in the life of the emigration, uniting around itself the best literary and journalistic forces of the Russian diaspora. It is enough to mention the names of those whose works regularly appeared on the pages of the newspaper: I. A. Bunin, M. I. Tsvetaeva, V. V. Nabokov (Sirin), M. A. Aldanov, Sasha Cherny, V. F. Khodasevich, K D. Balmont, A. M. Remizov, N. A. Teffi, B. K. Zaitsev, H. N. Berberova, Don Aminado, A. N. Benois and many, many others. The liberal Latest News waged a fierce debate with the ultra-right émigré newspaper Vozrozhdenie, headed by P. B. Struve, a former comrade-in-arms of Milyukov in the Union of Liberation and the Cadet Party.

Former like-minded people, who had previously entered into fierce disputes among themselves, became irreconcilable enemies in exile. Disputes between the two newspapers were on all political issues, and above all, on the most painful - who is to blame for what happened to Russia? Their endless squabbles on this subject have become commonplace in émigré life. In the neutral magazine Illustrated Russia, a satirical picture was published: two dogs squabble, pulling out a gnawed bone from each other. The emigrant, looking at them, remembers: - Oh, I forgot to buy "News" and "Renaissance"!

In the conditions of World War II, P.N. Milyukov was unconditionally on the side of the USSR, considering Germany as an aggressor. He sincerely rejoiced at the Stalingrad victory, evaluating it as a turning point in favor of the USSR.

P.N. Milyukov died in Aix-les-Bains on March 31, 1943 at the age of 84 and was buried in a temporary section of the local cemetery. Soon after the end of the war, the only surviving child of P.N. Milyukova, the eldest son Nikolai, moved his father's coffin to Paris, to the family crypt at the Batillon cemetery, where A.S. Milyukov.

P. N. Milyukov’s personality assessments

It must be said that the attitude of contemporaries towards Milyukov throughout his life remained complex and contradictory, and assessments of his personality were often polar opposites. In the memoir literature, it is almost impossible to find impartial, not colored by a personal attitude, judgments about this extraordinary person. He always had many enemies and at the same time many friends. Sometimes friends became enemies, but it happened - though rarely - and vice versa.

The ability to maneuver flexibly between political extremes, the desire to search for mutually acceptable solutions (those features for which opponents on the right and left usually stigmatized "cowardly liberalism") coexisted in Miliukov with extraordinary personal courage, which he repeatedly showed at decisive moments in his life. As Prince V. A. Obolensky, who knew Pavel Nikolayevich closely (and was quite critical of him), testified that he had absolutely no “fear reflex”.

The most contradictory traits were combined in his character. Great political ambition and complete indifference to insulting opponents (he said to his friends: “I am spit on every day, but I do not pay any attention”). Restraint, coldness, even some stiffness and true, unostentatious democracy in dealing with people of any rank, any position. Iron tenacity in defending their views and sharp, dizzying, completely unpredictable turns in the political position. Commitment to democratic ideals, universal values ​​and unwavering devotion to the idea of ​​strengthening and expanding the Russian Empire. A smart, insightful politician - and at the same time, according to the nickname that has become stronger behind him, "the god of tactlessness."

Milyukov never attached importance to everyday comfort, he dressed cleanly, but extremely simply: his shabby suit and celluloid collar were the talk of the town.

In Paris, he lived in an old "abandoned house, where almost all his rooms were filled with shelves of books," which constituted a huge library of more than ten thousand volumes, not counting numerous sets of newspapers in different languages.

There were legends about Milyukov's efficiency. During the day, Pavel Nikolayevich managed to do a huge number of things, all his life he wrote serious analytical articles every day, worked on books (the bibliographic list of his scientific works compiled in 1930 amounted to 38 typewritten pages). At the same time, he devoted a lot of time to editorial, Duma and party activities. And in the evenings, he kept up with all sorts of entertainment: he was a regular at balls, charity evenings, theater premieres, and vernissages. Until old age, he remained a great ladies' man and enjoyed success, as one of the people close to him, D. I. Meisner, recalled.

In 1935, after the death of his wife A.S. Milyukova, P.N. Milyukov, at the age of 76, married Nina (Antonina) Vasilievna Lavrova, whom he met back in 1908 and maintained the closest relationship for many years. Nina Vasilievna was much younger than her husband. In obedience to her tastes, Milyukov agreed to move to a new apartment on Montparnasse Boulevard, where for the first time in his life he designed his surroundings in a different, “bourgeois” way. However, he himself, as before, remained outside all external conventions. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, the elderly historian felt like a stranger in this apartment, he almost never had lunch in the dining room, preferring to have a snack in his office, right at his desk. When, during the German occupation, the Milyukovs' Parisian apartment was robbed, Pavel Nikolayevich was most worried about the loss of his library and some manuscripts - the most precious thing left in his life.

Historical heritage of P.N.Milyukov

The views of P. N. Milyukov on the history of Russia were formulated in a number of works of a purely historical nature: “The State Economy of Russia in the First Quarter of the 18th Century and the Reform of Peter the Great”; "The Main Currents of Russian Historical Thought" - the largest domestic historiographic study of the late 19th century; "Essays on the History of Russian Culture", "Law School in Russian Historiography (Soloviev, Kavelin, Chicherin, Sergeevich)". His historical views are also reflected in journalism: "The Year of Struggle: Journalistic Chronicle"; "Second Duma"; "History of the Second Russian Revolution"; "Russia at a turning point"; "Bolshevik turning point of the Russian revolution"; "Republic or Monarchy", etc.

Despite his wide fame and popularity, Milyukov was not actually studied as a historian before the revolution. Important critical assessments of his views were given only by N. P. Pavlov-Silvansky and B. I. Syromyatnikov. The rest of the scientific community was disgusted by the passion of its recent member for politics, and therefore P.N. Milyukov was no longer taken seriously as a historian.

In Soviet times, the scientific concept of PN Milyukov was also considered through the prism of his political views. This tradition remained almost unchanged in Soviet literature from the 1920s to the mid-1980s. According to the point of view of A. L. Shapiro and A. M. Sakharov, Milyukov stood on the principles of positivism and belonged to the school of neo-statists. They call him the most tendentious historian of the early 20th century, who skillfully subordinated the historical material to the argumentation of the political positions of the Russian bourgeoisie.

Only in the early 1980s did authors begin to free themselves from ideological standards in relation to the historian. For the first time there is an interest in the historiographical work of P. N. Milyukov. During this period, I. D. Kovalchenko and A. E. Shiklo expressed their point of view on the methodological views of P. N. Milyukov and defined them as typically neo-Kantian. It was recognized that, having learned something from historical materialism, P. N. Milyukov remained on idealist positions and tried to use his theoretical equipment to refute the Marxist historical concept.

The most detailed study of the historical concept of P.N.

In connection with the 140th anniversary of the birth of Milyukov in Moscow in May 1999, an international scientific conference was held dedicated to the memory of the historian, which resulted in the fundamental work “P. N. Milyukov: historian, politician, diplomat. (M., 2000). It summarizes the study of the philosophical, historical and socio-cultural foundations of Milyukov's worldview, shows his contribution to Russian historical science, to the development of the doctrine and ideology, program and tactics of a new type of liberalism.

From that time on, the study of Milyukov's historical work began to acquire objectivity and comprehensiveness. And yet, it can be stated with bitterness that among Russian historians, the main work of P.N. reading Russian public).

"Essays on the history of Russian culture" and the historical concept of P.N. Milyukov

Today we have every reason to assert that Milyukov's historical concept developed on the basis of, in interaction with, and in contradiction with various theoretical, methodological and scientific-historical theories of both domestic and foreign science. The sources of influence on Milyukov's historical constructions were diverse, and in his theoretical and methodological views the complex historiographic situation of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was refracted, when three main methodological systems collided - positivism, neo-Kantianism and Marxism.

Milyukov's conception of the history of Russia took shape gradually. The initial stage of its formation falls on the mid-1880s - early 90s of the XIX century, when the historian writes his master's thesis "The state economy of Russia in the era of transformations of Peter I". In the first works of Milyukov, purely positivist positions are visible; the influence of the state (legal) historiographic school of S.M. Solovyov and the views of V.O. Klyuchevsky is great.

Further development of Milyukov's concept is outlined in Essays on the History of Russian Culture and a number of his historical and journalistic works.

In the first issue of "Essays" Milyukov outlined "general concepts" about history, its tasks and methods of scientific knowledge, defined the author's theoretical approaches to the analysis of historical material, contains essays on the population, economic, state and social system. The second and third issues examine the culture of Russia - the role of the church, faith, school, and various ideological currents.

P. N. Milyukov pointed out the existence of various directions in understanding the subject of history. History filled with stories - stories about heroes and leaders of events (pragmatic, political) was replaced by history, the main task of which is to study the life of the masses, i.e. internal history (domestic or cultural). Thus, P. N. Milyukov believed, “history will cease to be an object of simple curiosity, a motley collection of “days of past anecdotes” - and will become “an object capable of arousing scientific interest and bringing practical benefits.”

Miliukov considered the opposition between “cultural” history and material, social, spiritual history, etc., to be unfounded. “Cultural history” is understood by him in the broadest sense of the word and includes: “both economic, and social, and state, and mental, and religious, and aesthetic” history. "... Attempts to reduce all the listed aspects of historical evolution to any one we consider completely hopeless," the historian concludes.

The historical concept of P. N. Milyukov was originally built on a positivist multifactorial approach to the analysis of historical material.

Demographic factor

Among the factors influencing the process of historical development, Milyukov attached particular importance to the "population factor", i.e. historical demographics. Milyukov constantly compared the processes of population in Russia with similar processes in the countries of Western Europe. He believed that there are two types of countries: countries with low prosperity, and weak development of individuality, with the presence of unspent sources of livelihoods. In these countries, population growth will be most significant. The second type is characterized by a high degree of well-being of the population, the individual has great scope for development, and labor productivity can be increased by artificial means, and, accordingly, population growth is inhibited. Milyukov refers Russia to the first type of countries. Russia was characterized by a low level of well-being, isolation of the lower social system, poor development of individuality, and, accordingly, a large number of marriages and births.

Demographic processes, both in Russia and in Europe, Milyukov "considered the totality and conditionality of the ethnographic composition of the population and colonization", considered it necessary to take into account the time of settlement, noted the delay of these processes in Russia compared to Western European ones.

Geographic and economic factors

The second section of "Essays on the History of Russian Culture" deals with economic life. According to Milyukov, the economic development of Russia was lagging behind that of Western Europe. The initial thesis of his reasoning: the transition from subsistence to barter economy in the countries of Western Europe was completed much earlier than in Russia. The belatedness of the historical process is explained by Milyukov exclusively for climatic and geographical reasons, since the Russian plain was freed from the continuous ice cover much later than the Western European territory. Over time, this belatedness was never overcome, and it was deepened by the interaction of a number of local conditions.

According to P. N. Milyukov, the population usually begins by plundering natural resources. When they are not enough, the population begins to migrate and settle in other territories. This process, according to the historian, took place throughout the history of Russia and was far from over in the 19th century. The researcher names the north and southeast as the main directions of colonization. The continuous movement of the Russian people prevented the growth of population density, which determined the primitive nature of our economic economy:

“... In general, our entire economic past, there is a time of domination of subsistence farming. In the agricultural class, only the emancipation of the peasants caused the final transition to barter economy, and in the peasant class, subsistence farming would flourish to our time if the need to raise money to pay taxes did not force the peasant to bring his products and personal labor to the market, ”wrote P .N.Milyukov.

Milyukov associated the beginning of the industrial development of Russia exclusively with the activities of Peter I and the factor of state necessity. The second stage of industrial development - with the name of Catherine II; a new type of completely capitalist factory - with the reform of 1861, and the traditional patronage of the state of industry, according to the historian, reached its climax by the end of the 19th century.

In Russia, unlike in the West, manufactory and factory did not have time to develop organically from home production. They were artificially created by the government. New forms of production were brought over from the West ready-made. At the same time, Milyukov notes that since the second half of the 19th century, there has been a rapid break between Russia and its economic past.

The general conclusion that follows from the analysis of the economic development of Russia and Western countries is that “having lagged behind its past, Russia is still far from sticking to the European present.”

The role of the state

P.N. Milyukov explains the predominant role of the state in Russian history by purely external reasons, namely: the elementary nature of economic development, due to demographic and climatic factors; the presence of external threats and geographical conditions that contributed to continuous expansion. Therefore, the main distinguishing feature of the Russian state is its military-national character.

Milyukov further identifies five fiscal-administrative revolutions in the life of the state, carried out as a result of the growth of military needs in the period between the end of the fifteenth century and the death of Peter the Great (1490, 1550, 1680 and 1700-20). Summing up his arguments in the conclusion to the first volume of the Essays, Milyukov wrote: “If we want to formulate the general impression that is obtained by comparing all the aspects of the Russian historical process that we have touched upon with the same aspects of the historical development of the West, then it seems that it will be possible to reduce this impression in two main ways. What is striking in our historical evolution is, firstly, its extreme elementarity, and secondly, its perfect originality.

According to PN Milyukov, Russia's development is proceeding in accordance with the same universal patterns as in the West, but with a huge delay. The historian believed that at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, Russia was already going through the stage of state hypertrophy and was developing in the same direction as Europe.

However, already early critics, in particular N.P. Pavlov-Silvansky and B.I. Syromyatnikov, drew attention to the unsuccessful and completely inexplicable leap from the former backward "originality" to the future successful uniformity with the West in the concept of Milyukov. Later, Milyukov made changes to the thesis about originality. In 1930, in a lecture on "The Sociological Foundations of the Russian Historical Process" given in Berlin, Milyukov reduced his concept of originality to the idea of ​​backwardness or slowness. And later, in his efforts to distance himself from the Eurasianists, Milyukov destroyed the Russia-Europe dichotomy altogether by recognizing the existence of multiple "Europas" and constructing a west-east cultural bias that included Russia as the easternmost flank of Europe, and therefore as the most distinctive European country.

Thus, P. N. Milyukov in his “Essays on the History of Russian Culture” tries to return to the state theory, but accumulates the latest achievements of Russian and European thought, laying a more solid foundation for it.

The historian constantly emphasizes such a feature of Russia as the absence of a “dense impenetrable layer” between the authorities and the population, i.e. feudal elite. This led to the fact that the public organization in Russia was placed in direct dependence on state power. In Russia, unlike the West, there was no independent landowning nobility, in its origin it was servicemen and dependent on the military-national state.

The military-national state was personified by P. N. Milyukov with the Moscow kingdom of the XV-XVI centuries. The main spring is "the need for self-defense, imperceptibly and involuntarily turning into a policy of unification and territorial expansion." The development of the Russian state is connected with the development of military needs. “The army and finances ... have been absorbing the attention of the central government for a long time since the end of the 15th century,” writes P. N. Milyukov. All other reforms have always been driven by these two needs alone.

However, P. N. Milyukov does not accept the empiricism of positivism and the absolutization of the economic factor in the sociological schemes of Marxism. He presents his position as something between idealism and materialism. The philosophical studies of P. N. Milyukov belong to the period when the research program of neo-Kantianism was just beginning to take shape in Russian historiography. The main battles between positivists and neo-Kantians were yet to come, therefore, in the work of P. N. Milyukov, we do not find either a statement of the problem of the specific logic of historical research, or ways to resolve it. It is possible to talk about the evolution of the historian in the direction of neo-Kantianism, perhaps, only keeping in mind the general cultural atmosphere, saturated with interest in the individual, creativity, historicism, culture in general, and in particular, “cultural history”, which the author reflects on.

"Cultural History" by P.N. Milyukov

In 1896, two outstanding historians - K. Lamprecht in Germany and P.N. Milyukov in Russia, independently announced a new direction in historical science. And to designate this direction, both historians have chosen a new term - "cultural history". It was a reaction to the crisis of historicism in the 19th century. To explain the historical process, both used socio-economic factors, subsequently, both were suspected of historical materialism.

“While Milyukov relied on sociology and used social psychology as an additional auxiliary tool to establish the parallelism of material and spiritual processes, Lamprecht took a step even further. He got lost in folk psychologism, which is based on artistic and historical categories. In the end, Lamprecht concentrated his scientific interests on the national consciousness, or mental life of the people. In contrast, Milyukov sought to establish a cultural tradition or democratize society,” this is how the modern German scientist T. Bohn outlined the unique historical and cultural situation at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, where he sees the origins of the modern understanding of anthropological searches.

Milyukov considers the "place of development" and the economy as a building in which spiritual culture lives and develops. Its existence, according to P. N. Milyukov, is a reception process, which is broadcast by the school, church, literature, theater. For Russia, external cultural influence played a decisive role in this process. The main feature of Russian culture, according to the historian, is the absence of a cultural tradition, which he understands as "the unity of public education in a certain certain direction." Initially, the influence of Byzantium dominated with the greatest force manifested in the attitude of Russian society to religion, then, starting from the era of Peter's reforms, Russia is experiencing a decisive influence of German and French cultures.

In this matter, P. N. Milyukov continues the tradition of his teacher V. O. Klyuchevsky, who believes that the 17th century marks the beginning of a new Russian history, however, the process of Europeanization affects only the upper layers of Russian society, mainly the nobility, which predetermined it further break with the people.

When a Russian person "woke up in front of an unexpectedly large total of alien habits learned from trifles, it was already too late to go back," states P. N. Milyukov. “The old way of life was already virtually destroyed.”

The only force that could act in defense of antiquity was a split. According to P. N. Milyukov, he was a big step forward for the religious self-awareness of the masses, since for the first time he awakened their feelings and thoughts. However, the split did not become a banner of nationalist protest, because. “in order to accept ... under the protection of the nationalist religion all national antiquity in general, it was necessary that all of it be subjected to persecution ...”. In the 17th century, this did not happen, and by the time of the transformations of Peter I, the schismatic movement had already lost its strength.

The reform of Peter I is the first step in the formation of a new cultural tradition, the transformation of Catherine is the second. PN Milyukov considered the era of Catherine II a whole era in the history of Russian national identity. It was at this time that the “prehistoric, tertiary period” of Russian social life ends, the old forms finally die out or emigrate to the lower strata of society, the new culture finally wins.

A characteristic feature of Russian culture, according to P. N. Milyukov, is the spiritual gap between the intelligentsia and the people, which was revealed, first of all, in the field of faith. As a result of the weakness and passivity of the Russian church, the attitude of an intelligent person to the church was already initially indifferent, while the people were characterized by religiosity (albeit formal), which increased immensely during the time of the schism. The final boundary between the intelligentsia and the people lay as a result of the emergence of a new cultural tradition in our country: the intelligentsia turned out to be the bearer of critical elements, while the masses of the people were nationalistic.

In his later work, The Intelligentsia and Historical Tradition, P. N. Milyukov argues that, in principle, the intelligentsia's break with the traditional beliefs of the masses is quite natural. It is not at all a characteristic feature of the relationship between the Russian strata of society, but "there is a constant law for any intelligentsia, if only the intelligentsia is really the advanced part of the nation, performing its functions of criticism and intellectual initiative." Only in Russia did this process, due to the peculiarities of its historical development, acquire such a pronounced character.

Milyukov attributes the very emergence of the intelligentsia in Russia to the 50s-60s of the 18th century, but its quantity and influence at that time are so insignificant that the historian begins the continuous history of Russian intellectual public opinion from the 70s-80s of the 18th century. It was during the era of Catherine II that an environment appeared in Russia that could serve as an object of cultural influence.

The fate of the Russian faith and the absence of tradition, according to P. N. Milyukov, determined the fate of Russian creativity: "... the independent development of national creativity, as well as national faith, was stopped at the very bud."

The historian identifies four periods in the development of literature and art. The first period - until the 16th century - is characterized by a mechanical reproduction of Byzantine samples. The second period - XVI-XVII centuries - the period of unconscious folk art with the active use of local national characteristics. Under the pressure of zealots of true Greek antiquity, any national creativity is subjected to persecution. Therefore, during the third period, art began to serve the upper class and copy the works of Western models. Everything popular at this time becomes the property of the lower strata of society. With the onset of the fourth period, art became a true need of Russian society, it revealed attempts at independence, the purpose of which was to serve society, and the means - realism.

In the closest dependence on the history of the Russian Church is the history of the Russian school. As a result of the inability of the church to establish a school, knowledge began to penetrate into society outside of it. Therefore, having started the creation of the school, the state did not meet competitors, which in the future predetermined the very strong dependence of the Russian school on the mood of the Russian authorities and society.

Thus, P. N. Milyukov considers the history of Russian spiritual culture as a unity of social, authoritative facts and internal mental processes. Unfortunately, in the Soviet tradition, this synthetic approach to the history of culture was lost and replaced by class analysis.

To this day, there is an opinion in the scientific community that the “Westernizer” Milyukov belittled the development and significance of Russian culture. Even in the latest publications (for example, in the works of S. Ikonnikova), we come across such conclusions. However, the concept of Milyukov's borrowings is more complex and interesting. The researcher largely anticipates the modern vision of the interaction of cultures, their mutual dialogue.

Milyukov believes that simple borrowing is being replaced by creative comprehension. The change in the composition of the participants in the dialogue contributes, according to P.N. Milyukov, the destruction of certain historical prejudices. So, for example, when assessing the legal school in Russian historiography, he focuses not on borrowing, but on combining the ideas of the historical school and the German philosophy of Hegel and Schelling. The dialogue of cultures is taking place, according to P.N. Milyukov, certain stages: the reception of a foreign culture (translations); "incubation period", accompanied by compilations and imitations of someone else's; completely independent development of Russian spiritual creativity and, finally, the transition to the stage of "communication with the world as an equal" and influencing foreign cultures.

Characteristics of the dialogue given by P.N. Milyukov in the latest, Parisian edition of the Essays, in many respects have something in common with the dialogue model of Yu.M. Lotman - the perception of a one-way flow of texts, mastering a foreign language and recreating similar texts - and, finally, a radical transformation of a foreign tradition, i.e. the stage when the party that receives some cultural texts becomes the transmitting one.

Thus, considering the process of borrowing, Milyukov resorts to a figurative comparison of it with a photograph, or rather, with a developer, without which an image that already exists in potentiality is not perceived by a person: “The picture was, in fact, before its “manifestation” in solution. But every photographer knows that not only is a developer necessary to detect a picture, but that, to a certain extent, the distribution of light and shadows in a picture can be influenced by changing the composition of the solution. Foreign influence usually plays the role of such a "developer" of the created historical picture - a given national type.

The Theme of Revolution in Milyukov's Historical Publicistic Works

The first Russian revolution was reflected in the publicistic works "Year of Struggle" and "Second Duma". The articles in the first collection cover the period from November 1904 to the end of May 1906; the second - from February to June 3, 1907. Considering the history of the first Russian revolution, Milyukov assesses it as a natural phenomenon. It was called upon to transform tsarism into a constitutional bourgeois state in the form of a constitutional monarchy in a reformist way. The reasons for the revolution of 1905-1907 were reduced by Milyukov to a statement of political prerequisites with a clear dominance of the psychological factor. He saw the essence of the revolutionary upheavals at the beginning of the 20th century in the conflict between the authorities and society over the constitution, and he considered all phases of the first Russian revolution to be phases of the struggle for the constitution.

Milyukov, as a participant in the events, was characterized by a political and legal approach to the first Russian revolution. Therefore, these works cannot even be called historical and journalistic. The participant in the events expressed his opinion - and that's it.

Milyukov devotes a great work to the Second Russian Revolution, The History of the Second Russian Revolution. The work “Russia at the Turning Point. The Bolshevik Period of the Revolution” (Paris, 1927, Vol. 1-2).

The opportunistic conclusions and the weakness of the source base of the above studies are partly due to the fact that the politician P.N. Milyukov in 1917-1920 did not have a real opportunity to create, in fact, a historical work.

He began writing The History of the Second Russian Revolution at the end of November 1917 in Rostov-on-Don, and continued in Kyiv, where it was planned to publish 4 issues. In December 1918, the printing house of the Letopis publishing house, where the first part of the book was typed, was destroyed by the Petliurists. The entire set of the book was destroyed. Milyukov, now busy saving the fatherland from the Bolsheviks, was able to start working on History again only in the autumn of 1920, when he received from the publisher, who had moved to Sofia, a copy of the manuscript he had saved. The business went into full swing from December 1920: the author got access to an extensive collection of Russian periodicals stored in Paris. It was they, combined with personal observations, memories and conclusions of the ex-historian Milyukov, that formed the basis of his History of the Second Russian Revolution. The full text of the book was prepared for printing and published in Sofia in three parts (1921-1923).

In the "History" he wrote, there is no moral indignation and accusatory tone that was present in the contemporary works of authors of the moderate socialist trend. Milyukov the politician did not try to defend socialism against "Bolshevik" perversions. For him, the main issue of the revolution was the question of power, not justice. In his History, Milyukov argued that the success of the Bolsheviks was due to the inability of their socialist opponents to view the struggle from these positions.

Other socialist leaders (Chernov, Kerensky) usually began the periodization of the history of the October Revolution with the Bolshevik coup, thus ignoring their own failures and defeats throughout 1917. Milyukov, on the other hand, considered the Bolshevik regime the logical result of the activities of Russian politicians after the collapse of the autocracy. If in the view of the socialists the Bolshevik government was a separate, qualitatively new phenomenon, completely isolated from the so-called "conquests of the February Revolution", then Milyukov viewed the revolution as a single political process that began in February and reached its culmination in October.

The essence of this process, according to Milyukov, was the inexorable decay of state power. Before the readers of Milyukov's "History" the revolution appeared as a tragedy in three acts. The first - from February to July days; the second - the collapse of the right-wing military alternative to the revolutionary state (the Kornilov rebellion); the third - "The Agony of Power" - the history of the last government of Kerensky up to such an easy victory over him by the Leninist party.

In each of the volumes Milyukov focused on government policy. All three volumes of the "History" are filled with quotations from speeches and statements of leading politicians of post-February Russia. The purpose of this quotation panorama is to show the pretentious incompetence of all rapidly changing rulers.

Analyzing the causes of the revolution, the author again draws attention to the complex system of interaction of geographical, economic, political, social, intellectual, cultural, psychological factors, diluting all this with examples drawn from periodicals.

Milyukov, as was to be expected, placed all the blame for the defeat of the revolution on Kerensky and the socialist leaders. He accused his fellow politicians of "inaction under the guise of phrases", the absence of political responsibility and the resulting action based on common sense. Against this background, the behavior of the Bolsheviks in 1917 was a model of a rational desire for power. The moderate socialists were defeated not because they were unable to achieve the solution of their tasks, but because they themselves did not know what they wanted. Such a game, in Miliukov's opinion, could not win.

"History of the Second Russian Revolution" caused sharp criticism from both emigre and Soviet historiography. The author was accused of rigid determinism, schematic thinking, subjectivity of assessments, positivist “factual”.

But here's what's interesting. Although the theme of betrayal and “German money”, thanks to which the Bolsheviks were able to achieve their goals, is loud in the “History”, in general both in this book and in the two-volume “Russia at the Turn” (history of the civil war) published in 1926, Lenin and his followers are depicted as strong, strong-willed and intelligent people. It is known that Milyukov in exile was one of the most stubborn and implacable opponents of the Bolsheviks. At the same time, he retained his attitude towards them as serious carriers of the state idea, followed by the people, until the end of his life, thereby restoring almost the entire White émigré community against himself - from violent monarchists to yesterday's fellow liberals and socialists of all stripes.

Partly for this reason, and partly because of not too high professionalism and a purely positivist approach to research methodology, Miliukov's latest work was not successful. It is not for nothing that they say that you cannot step into the same river twice. The historian who himself strives to make history, as a rule, dies for science forever.

So it happened with P.N. Milyukov. His name as a politician for a long time was inclined in every way by the Russian monarchist emigration; at home, the leader of the Cadet Party was also cursed and almost completely forgotten. At history lessons in the Soviet school, he was remembered only as the unlucky "Milyukov of the Dardanelles", calling for war to a victorious end, when the "tops" could not, and the lower classes "did not want to." Moreover, I. Ilf and E. Petrov in their satirical novel “The Twelve Chairs” (accidentally or not?) gave the treasure hunter Kise Vorobyaninov not only an outward resemblance to the former leader of the cadet party, but also made a clear nod towards Milyukov, naming his colleague Ostap Bender "a giant of thought and the father of Russian democracy."

Nevertheless, there has always been interest in the original concept of "cultural history" by P.N. Milyukov in the scientific community. This concept was invariably reflected even in Soviet university textbooks; Milyukov's historical works were translated and repeatedly republished in the West. And today, interest in the historian, and even politics, does not weaken Milyukov, forcing researchers from different countries to turn again and again to the study of his scientific heritage.

Elena Shirokova

Literature used in the preparation of the article:

1. Aleksandrov S.A. The leader of the Russian cadets P.N. Milyukov in exile. M., 1996.
2. Arkhipov I. P. N. Milyukov: intellectual and dogmatist of Russian liberalism // Zvezda, 2006. - No. 12
3. Vandalkovskaya M.G. P.N. Milyukov // P.N. Milyukov. Memories. M., 1990. T.1. pp.3-37.
4. Vishnyak M.V. Two ways February and October. - Paris. Publishing house "Modern notes", 1931.
5. Dumova N.G. Liberal in Russia: the tragedy of incompatibility. M., 1993.
6. Petrusenko N.V. Milyukov Pavel Nikolaevich // New Historical Bulletin, 2002. - No. 2 (7)

In these October days, in the house No. 10, well known to me, on the Admiralteyskaya Embankment, the ministers-congress-democrats gathered every day, at six o'clock. (Konovalov Minister of Trade and Industry, Kishkin Minister of State Charity, Kartashev Minister of Religions of the Provisional Government, adjoining Tretyakov), together with the members of the Central Committee delegated to these meetings - Milyukov leader of the cadet party, Shingarev Member of the IV State Duma, doctor, Minister of Finance (since May 1917), Vinaver, Adzhemov and me. The purpose of these conferences was, firstly, to keep the ministers in constant contact with the Central Committee, and, on the other hand, to have constant and correct information about everything that was happening in the government. In these meetings of ours, Konovalov always had an extremely depressed look and it seemed that he had lost all hope. “Ah, dear V.D., it’s bad, very bad!” - I remember this phrase of his very well, he repeatedly said it to me (he treated me with special trust and goodwill). In particular, he was oppressed by Kerensky, the prime minister.

By that time he had finally become disillusioned with Kerensky and had lost all confidence in him. He was mainly driven to despair by the inconstancy of Kerensky, the complete impossibility of relying on his words, his accessibility to any kind of influence and pressure from outside, sometimes the most accidental. “It happens all the time, almost every day,” he said. - You will agree on everything, you will insist on this or that measure, you will finally achieve agreement. “So, so, Alexander Fedorovich, now it’s firmly, it’s finally decided, there won’t be a change?” You receive a categorical assurance. You leave his office - and in a few hours you find out about a completely different decision that has already been implemented, or, at best, that an urgent measure that should have been taken right now, right today, is again postponed, new doubts have arisen or resurrected. old ones - it would seem that they have already been eliminated. And so from day to day. A real fairy tale about a white bull. He and all of us were especially worried about the military situation in St. Petersburg and the role of Colonel Polkovnikov Commander-in-Chief of the Petrograd Military District whom he did not feel an iota of confidence in. Apparently, Kerensky was in a period of low spirits these days, it was absolutely impossible to move him to any energetic measures, but time passed, the Bolsheviks worked to their fullest, less and less embarrassed. The situation became more and more formidable every day. Rumors about the forthcoming performance of the Bolsheviks in the coming days went around the city, exciting and alarming everyone. In these days, a - completely academic - arrest order was issued

Graduated from the 1st Moscow Gymnasium. In the summer, during the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878, he was in the Transcaucasus as a treasurer of the military economy, and then an authorized Moscow sanitary detachment.

He graduated from the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University (; was expelled for participating in a student gathering in, reinstated the following year). At the university he was a student of V. O. Klyuchevsky and P. G. Vinogradov. In his student years after the death of his father, he gave private lessons to provide for his family. He was left at the university to prepare for a professorship.

Pavel Milyukov (from a letter to Joseph Vasilyevich Revenko):“You know that we took a firm decision to use the war to carry out a coup shortly after the outbreak of this war. Note also that we could not wait any longer, for we knew that at the end of April or the beginning of May our army was to go on the offensive, the results of which would immediately completely stop all hints of discontent and would cause an explosion of patriotism and jubilation in the country.

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Pavel Nikolaevich Milyukov(1859-1943) - theorist of liberal democracy and leader of the Party of Constitutional Democrats, famous historian, political scientist, politician. Born in Moscow. His father, a commoner who received an architectural education, combined work in his specialty with pedagogical activity. Mother - a noblewoman from the Sultanov family, was a domineering woman and played a major role in the family.

Navel Miliukov matured early for a conscious independent life. This was facilitated by a steady interest in literature, music, painting, and history. In his gymnasium years, he wrote poetry, played the violin brilliantly, read ancient authors with rapture. He organized a circle for political discussions in the gymnasium. In 1877, his father died, and Pavel, as the eldest man in the family, began to help his mother and younger brother, earning money by private lessons.

At the age of 18, Milyukov entered the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University. His most prominent teachers were V. O. Klyuchevsky and P. G. Vinogradov. Here, too, the leadership qualities of the future politician were manifested: for participation in the movement of constitutionalist students, Milyukov was expelled from the university with the right to continue his studies in a year. At the end of the course, he was left at the department of Russian history. In 1892, having defended his dissertation "The State Economy of Russia in the First Quarter of the 18th Century and the Reform of Peter the Great", he received a master's degree.

The ideas formulated in this work formed the basis of his scientific views. This is the determination by economic relations of the state structure of the country. But unlike Western countries, Russia's economic development occurs mainly under the influence of the state, that is, not from the bottom up, but from the top down. The development of civilization in Russia, according to Milyukov, went along the European path, but was delayed by environmental conditions. Peter's reforms were not subjective "acts of the tsar"; they organically fit into the historical process, were prepared by the internal evolution of Russian society.

In addition to teaching Russian history, P. N. Milyukov is engaged in educational activities. On behalf of the Moscow commission for self-education, he lectured in Nizhny Novgorod on social movements in Russia. For condemning the autocracy, he was dismissed from the university and exiled for three years to Ryazan. It was there that he did the main work on writing Essays on the History of Russian Culture.

In 1897, Milyukov accepted an invitation from Bulgaria and became head of the Department of World History at the Sofia Higher School. He combined his professional activities with the study of Slavic culture and the political situation in the Balkans (published in Russkiye Vedomosti in 1897-1899, Letters from the Road).

Upon his return to Russia, to St. Petersburg (1899), he presides over a meeting dedicated to the memory of P. N. Lavrov. This time he is sentenced to six months in prison, followed by a ban on living in St. Petersburg. After serving his sentence (1890), Milyukov settled outside the city at the Udelnaya station.

In the next period of his activity, he prepares a draft policy statement for the liberal journal "Liberation" (1902), publishes the monograph "From the History of the Russian Intelligentsia" (1903), undertakes a trip abroad (1903-1905), during which he lectures "On Russia and the Slavs "at Chicago and Harvard Universities, publishes in English and French the book "Russia and Its Crisis" (Chicago, 1905), visits (except the USA) Canada, Austria-Hungary, England, France, where he meets with famous political scientists, politicians, public figures (A. Lowell, R. MacDonald), including Russian emigrants (P. A. Kropotkin, A. V. Tchaikovsky, E. K. Breshko-Breshkovskaya, V. I. Lenin, etc.).

Upon his return to Russia (1905), Milyukov was elected chairman of the congress of the Union of Unions - an authoritative public and professional organization that adopted an appeal demanding the convocation of a Constituent Assembly. In August 1905, Milyukov was again arrested for publishing The Political Significance of the Law of August 6 and spent a month in Kresty. After that, he settled in Moscow, where he joined a circle of lawyers (M. M. Kovalevsky, S. A. Muromtsev, F. F. Kokoshkin, P. I. Novgorodtsev), who discussed the text of the future Russian constitution.

In the conditions of expanding political freedoms, he is connected to the process of party building. He aims to create not a revolutionary, but a constitutional party. At the founding congress of the Constitutional Democratic Party (KDP) (October 1905), Milyukov made an introductory address and a report on tactics. At the II Congress of the KDP-PNS (People's Freedom Party), he read a report (January 1906), which became the basis for decisions on issues of ideology, tactics and organization.

Milyukov was the recognized leader of the KDP-PNS, co-editor (with N. V. Gessen) of the party newspaper Rech and the author of almost all of its editorials (published in the book Year of Struggle, St. Petersburg, 1907). At the III Congress (September 1906), the KDP-PNS dissociated itself from the revolutionary actions of the left forces - Social Democrats, Socialist-Revolutionaries and Anarchists ("not an assault, but a regular siege"). Octobrist leader A. I. Guchkov, who did not recognize the need to put pressure on the tsar in order to establish constitutionalism and parliamentarism as soon as possible. He calls the KDP-PNS a "non-class" parliamentary party, a "third possibility" party (neither left nor right).

Unable to be elected to the First and Second State Dumas, Milyukov actually led the most numerous faction of the Cadets. After the dissolution of the First State Duma by the Tsar, it was he who drafted the Vyborg Appeal of Deputies, which called on the population to civil disobedience.

In 1910, P. N. Milyukov took part in the collection The Intelligentsia in Russia, which was the response of the liberal-democratic intelligentsia to the religious-conservative authors of the collection Milestones (1909). In the article "The Intelligentsia and Historical Tradition", Milyukov, while recognizing the historical separation of the intelligentsia from the people, the "departure" of the intelligentsia, nevertheless showed its enormous importance in society, which only intensifies with the beginning of a new political life (after the Manifesto

October 17, 1905). Moreover, new political realities (elections, party struggle, the work of the State Duma, controversy in the press, etc.) will serve, in his opinion, to joint activities and mutual understanding of the intelligentsia and the lower ranks. Other accusations of the Russian intelligentsia of being non-religious, stateless, and non-national only manifest, as Milyukov believed, the philosophical and ideological (neo-Slavophilism, Orthodox Russian nationalism) and political (right-wing spectrum of forces) position of the authors of Vekhi. P. N. Milyukov not only affirmed the historicity and organic nature of the European and Russian intelligentsia, not only opened up the prospect of overcoming its “apostasy”, but also indicated the path for the democratic development of the whole society - the path of joint social and political activity, the rejection of estate privileges, the inclusion of the lower classes culture, politics, education.

In the III and IV Dumas, P. N. Milyukov was already a full-fledged deputy, the leader of a faction, specializing in questions of constitutionalism and foreign policy. In relation to the war, the Cadets took the position of liberating the motherland, Europe and the Slavs from German hegemony, freeing the world from the unbearable burden of ever-increasing armaments.

In 1915, Miliukov became the initiator and de facto leader of the Progressive Bloc, which included left- and center-right parties and which put forward a program to create a government of confidence, change the government of the country, amnesty for political and religious crimes, abolish restrictions on Jews and persecution of Ukrainians, and grant autonomy Poland, the restoration of trade unions, the equalization of peasants in rights with other classes, the reform of city and zemstvo institutions. On November 1, 1916, the leader of the Kadets made a famous speech in the Duma on the policy of the tsarist government, in which the refrain sounded: “What is this, stupidity or treason?” The public outcry of the speech was so great that the chairman of the Council of Ministers, B. V. Stürmer, was immediately dismissed. At the end of 1916, the leading figures of the Progressive Bloc (G.E. Lvov, A.I. Guchkov, P.N. Milyukov) discussed the idea of ​​a palace coup with the aim of transferring power to the heir Alexei under the regency of Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, complaisant nature and liberal convictions which could become a guarantee of the Russian constitutional order.

During the February Revolution of 1917, Milyukov played a decisive role in determining the composition of the Provisional Government and especially in choosing its chairman, the chairman of the Zemstvo organization, Prince G. E. Lvov. Milyukov himself was approved as Minister of Foreign Affairs. He determined his line in this post in an active struggle on three fronts: 1) against Zimmerwaldism (internationalism), for maintaining a common foreign policy with the allies, 2) against Kerensky's aspirations to strengthen his own power, and 3) for maintaining the full power of the government, created by the revolution. As Minister of Foreign Affairs, Milyukov also spoke out for the liberation of the Slavic peoples inhabiting Austria-Hungary, and the creation of the Czech-Slovak and Serbo-Croatian states, the merging of the Ukrainian lands of Austria-Hungary with Russia, for the possession of Constantinople and the Black Sea straits. For the last requirement, he was nicknamed "Dardanelle". Based on these goals of the government, which coincided with Russian national interests, Milyukov drew up a note of the Provisional Government (dated March 27, 1917).

The left-wing parties, supported by A.F. Kerensky, compromised Miliukov's statement in every possible way and advocated an immediate peace "without annexations and indemnities." Clashes broke out in Petrograd between supporters of the left-wing parties, who put forward the slogan "Down with Milyukov, down with the capitalist ministers!" and supporters of the centrist forces under the slogan “Trust in Milyukov! Long live the Provisional Government! Down with Lenin! There were casualties. The way out of the political crisis, according to many, was the creation of a coalition government with the participation of left and center parties. In the new government, Milyukov was offered the post of Minister of Public Education, but he resolutely refused. It was the nickname of his political career.

In the future, he continued to be chairman of the Central Committee of the KDP-PDS, but the ban on the Cadets party by the Bolsheviks who came to power (October 1917) put an end to his legal activities in Petrograd. Milyukov left for Novocherkassk. But, having familiarized himself with the draft "Political Program of General Kornilov", he expressed disagreement with the fact that the documents and the government in the South of Russia were created without consultations with political parties. Having moved to Kyiv, he came into contact with the German command, for which he was condemned by the Central Committee of the KDP-PDS. Miliukov resigned from his duties as chairman of the Central Committee. After the expulsion of Wrangel's army from the Crimea, he abandoned his attempts to overthrow the Bolsheviks by force.

From 1920, Milyukov lived in Paris, worked as the editor-in-chief of the newspaper of the Russian diaspora, Latest News. He put forward the concept of "the gradual evolution of the Soviet political system into a democratic one." In 1922, during a speech in Berlin, he was shot at by Russian monarchists. The bullet was taken over by V. D. Nabokov, a member of the Central Committee of the KDP-PDS, who covered it with his body. With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Milyukov declared solidarity with the USSR. In recent years, he lived in small towns in the south of France.