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Совет министров Российской империи перед Февральской революцией (конец 1916 – начало 1917 гг.)
The article treats the Russian imperial government, headed by Aleksandr Fedorovich
Trepov and Nikolai Dmitrievich Golitsyn, on the eve of the February Revolution. It focuses
on the reasons and mechanism for changing ministers and prime ministers; on
influences on the cabinet emanating from different parties, including the “dark forces”;
and on the confrontation between the autocracy and the “liberal society” over the issue
of the cabinet. Contrary to previous scholarship on the government’s collapse before
the February Revolution, the article maintains that the crisis of the Council of
Ministers reached its peak in December 1916. Early in 1917, Nicholas ii, who had previously
relied on the cabinet’s interaction with the State Duma, decided to shift the government
in a more conservative direction. He refused to make concessions to the liberal
opposition, and he even prepared a coup d’état to create a new system of autocratic
power in Russia, hoping that a right-wing cabinet would rely on the right-wing majority
of the State Council and on significant group of moderate-right Duma deputies
formed around the national fraction. He therefore dissolved the lower chamber and
changed the procedure for passing bills by stipulating that they convey the opinions of
not only the majority, but also the minority (meaning the right minority) of deputies. The article shows that an important role in evaluating plans to change the configuration
of the government was played by the murder of Grigorii Rasputin. His influence,
direct and indirect through the Empress Alexandra Fedorovna, on ministers and their
appointments had precluded a consistent conservative policy. In general, the government
was in a slightly better situation at the end of February 1917 than it had been in
December 1916. The autocracy now had a strategy for extricating itself from the government
crisis, but the measures it was contemplating demanded a lot of time to implement,
so the revolution interrupted the government’s strategy.