48 Facts About Pyotr Stolypin

Pyotr Stolypin served as the third prime minister and the interior minister of the Russian Empire from 1906 until his assassination in 1911.

Pyotr Stolypin's tenure was marked by increased revolutionary unrest, to which he responded with a new system of martial law that allowed for the arrest, speedy trial, and execution of accused offenders.

Pyotr Stolypin was a monarchist and hoped to strengthen the throne by modernizing the rural Russian economy.

Pyotr Stolypin argued that the land question could only be resolved and revolution averted when the peasant commune was abolished and a stable landowning class of peasants, the kulaks, would have a stake in the status quo.

Pyotr Stolypin was born at Dresden in the Kingdom of Saxony, on 14 April 1862, and was baptized on 24 May in the Russian Orthodox Church in that city.

Pyotr Stolypin's family was prominent in the Russian aristocracy, his forebears having served the tsars since the 16th century, and as a reward for their service had accumulated huge estates in several provinces.

Pyotr Stolypin's father Arkady Dmitrievich Stolypin, was a general in the Russian artillery, the governor of Eastern Rumelia and commandant of the Kremlin Palace guard.

Pyotr Stolypin grew up on the family estate Serednikovo in Solnechnogorsky District, once inhabited by Mikhail Lermontov, near Moscow Governorate.

In 1881 Pyotr Stolypin studied agriculture at St Petersburg University where one of his teachers was Dmitri Mendeleev.

Pyotr Stolypin entered government service upon graduating in 1885, writing his thesis on tobacco growing in the south of Russia.

In 1884, Pyotr Stolypin married Olga Borisovna von Neidhart whose family was of a similar standing to Pyotr Stolypin's.

Pyotr Stolypin spent much of his life and career in Lithuania, then administratively known as Northwestern Krai of the Russian Empire.

From 1869, Pyotr Stolypin spent his childhood years in Kalnaberze manor, built by his father, a place that remained his favorite residence for the rest of life.

In 1876, the Pyotr Stolypin family moved to Vilna, where he attended grammar school.

Pyotr Stolypin served as marshal of the Kovno Governorate between 1889 and 1902.

Pyotr Stolypin's thinking was influenced by the single-family farmstead system of the Northwestern Krai, and he later sought to introduce the land reform based on private ownership throughout the Russian Empire.

Pyotr Stolypin was promoted seven times, culminating in his promotion to the rank of state councilor in 1901.

In May 1902 Pyotr Stolypin was appointed governor in Grodno Governorate, where he was the youngest person ever appointed to this position.

Pyotr Stolypin is known for suppressing strikers and peasant unrest in January 1905.

Pyotr Stolypin gained a reputation as the only governor able to keep a firm hold on his province during the Revolution of 1905, a period of widespread revolt.

Pyotr Stolypin was the first governor to use effective police methods.

Pyotr Stolypin advocated for a new track of the Trans-Siberian Railway along the Russian side of the Amur River.

Pyotr Stolypin dissolved the Duma, despite the reluctance of some of its more radical members, to clear the field for cooperation with the new government.

Pyotr Stolypin allowed the signers to return to the capital unmolested.

On 25 August 1906, three assassins from the Union of Socialist Revolutionary Maximalists, wearing military uniforms, bombed a public reception Pyotr Stolypin was holding at his dacha on Aptekarsky Island.

Pyotr Stolypin was only slightly injured by flying splinters, but 28 others were killed.

Pyotr Stolypin changed the rules of the First Duma to attempt to make it more amenable to government proposals.

On 8 June 1907, Pyotr Stolypin dissolved the Second Duma, and 15 Kadets who had associated with terrorists were arrested; he changed the weight of votes in favor of the nobility and wealthy, reducing the value of lower-class votes.

Pyotr Stolypin introduced land Denmark-style reforms to allay peasant grievances and soothe dissent.

Pyotr Stolypin proposed his own landlord-sided reform in opposition to the previous democratic proposals which led to the dissolution of the first two Russian parliaments.

Pyotr Stolypin's reforms aimed to stem peasant unrest by creating a class of market-oriented smallholders who would support the social order.

Pyotr Stolypin was assisted by Alexander Krivoshein, who in 1908 became Minister of Agriculture.

In June 1908 Pyotr Stolypin lived in a wing of the Yelagin Palace where the Council of Ministers convened.

Pyotr Stolypin tried to improve the lives of urban laborers and worked towards increasing the power of local governments, but the zemstvos adopted an attitude hostile to the government.

Pyotr Stolypin wanted to ban Rasputin from the capital and threatened to prosecute him as a sectarian.

Tsar Nicholas II decided to look for a successor to Pyotr Stolypin and considered Sergei Witte, Vladimir Kokovtsov and Alexei Khvostov.

Pyotr Stolypin's reforms produced astounding results within a few years.

Pyotr Stolypin traveled to Kiev despite police warnings of an assassination plot, as there had already been 10 attempts to kill him.

Pyotr Stolypin was shot twice, once in the arm and once in the chest, by Dmitry Bogrov, a Jewish leftist revolutionary.

Pyotr Stolypin rose from his chair, removed his gloves and unbuttoned his jacket, exposing a blood-soaked waistcoat.

Pyotr Stolypin gave a gesture to tell the Tsar to go back and made the sign of the cross.

On his request, Pyotr Stolypin was buried in the city where he was murdered.

Outraged, Pyotr Stolypin challenged Rodichev to a duel, but Rodichev apologized to avert it.

Some have argued that Pyotr Stolypin was correct to "wager on the strong" class of successful peasant farmers: evidence from tax returns supports this, showing a significant minority of peasants paying increasing taxes from the 1890s, a sign of higher productivity.

In "Name of Russia", a 2008 television poll to select "the greatest Russian", Pyotr Stolypin placed second, behind Alexander Nevsky and followed by Joseph Stalin.

Pyotr Stolypin is seen by his admirers as the greatest statesman Russia ever had, the one who could have saved the country from revolution and the civil war.

On 27 December 2012, a monument to Pyotr Stolypin was unveiled in Moscow to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth.

Pyotr Stolypin is portrayed in the opening scenes of the 1971 British film Nicholas and Alexandra, fictitiously taking part in the Romanov dynasty tercentenary celebrations of 1913 before being assassinated later in the film, two years after his actual assassination.