was by no means a solitary lawyer. He became deeply involved in lawyers’ voluntary associations. During the reactionary reign of Alexander III, the government generally tried to limit the rights of lawyers’ assistants, but there had been a revival of the bar in the second half of the 1890s, when Maklakov was starting his career. Young lawyers started “wandering clubs,” so-called because their meetings migrated from one member’s apartment to another’s. They talked about mutual problems and current affairs, but they also arranged for free advice to workers and peasants. Maklakov saw the wandering clubs as “breathing life” into the bar, trying to turn it from a group simply enhancing the members’ professional skills and prosperity to one that served society.39
Among their activities were confronting and overcoming technical legal restrictions on service in the provinces by lawyers from the capital cities who had not advanced from “assistant” to “sworn attorney.” The young lawyers largely succeeded, aided by the cooperation of judges who responded conscientiously, even though the presence of better representation for defendants increased their work. These trials in the provinces (Maklakov uses the term uezd, or “district”) were not only helpful for the accused but “the most outstanding school” for the young lawyers. Defense was not a matter of rhetorical razzle-dazzle but was aimed at ordinary jurors; the jurors created a businesslike mood that the lawyers had to echo. Later, on the stump in Duma elections, he was impressed by the voters’ similar seriousness of purpose.40
Lawyers involved in defense of political cases formed an association, and Maklakov naturally played a leadership role. On November 20, 1904, the association called for a constitution for Russia, and, according to fellow lawyer Iosif Gessen, Maklakov was quite proud of the lawyers for doing so.41 But the association took a new turn as a result of the tsar’s decree of February 18, 1905, which invited Russians to express their concerns about the state and its direction. The Union of Liberation responded with efforts to encourage the creation of other “unions” revolving around particular professions or concerns: there were unions for “agronomists and statisticians,” for “pharmaceutical assistants,” for “equal rights for Jews,” and so on. Galai lists fourteen such unions, to which others were added. The association of lawyers providing defense in political trials now embraced the spirit of the Liberation Movement.42
It isn’t clear whether Maklakov was very active in the lawyers’ association after it was enveloped by the Liberation Movement’s unions. Certainly in retrospect, Maklakov criticized it as having only one activity—the adoption of political resolutions, specifically what he called the “cliché template.” The cliché consisted of a call for a constitution drafted by a constituent assembly, in turn to be chosen by “four-tailed suffrage” (“four-tailed” was the liberals’ phrase for a universal, direct, equal, and secret franchise). He argued that the resolutions didn’t arise from any professional skill or expertise, but only from the fact of the intelligentsia’s having settled on the package. The peasant’s union43 had joined the cliché template, though, as Maklakov joked, they really wanted the landowners’ land and regarded calling for a constituent assembly with four-tailed suffrage as “a cheap price to pay for land.” In later chapters I’ll consider his affirmative objections to the cry for a constituent assembly and the liberals’ favored franchise, but for now it’s enough to say that Maklakov saw the outburst of these preprogrammed platforms from synthetic organizations as a natural result of the autocracy’s having so long stifled genuine expression of opinion.
People close to the process knew that they represented only themselves. But the ease with which the inexperienced and disturbed society submitted to the intelligentsia’s propaganda, and accepted any position, justified this imposture. Where there is not a true representative system, it’s easy not only to speak for others, but to be convinced that you’re expressing public opinion. The authorities’ long policy of preventing the organization of society yielded its fruit. Through the decree of February 18 [1905], they turned the intelligentsia leaders into spokesmen of the people’s will.44
In May 1899 Maklakov played a role at the Moscow Juridical Society’s celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of Alexander Pushkin’s birth. Unlike many ceremonial occasions, this one became famous in its own right. Sergei Muromtsev, a very distinguished older lawyer, later to be chairman of the First Duma, gave the main speech and used it to celebrate Pushkin as a seeker of freedom and independence. “Together with the memory of the poet we celebrate the victory won by Russian individuality over routine life and government tutelage.” This brought the wrath of God down on the society, or, more precisely, the wrath of Maklakov’s old foe N. P. Bogolepov, then minister of education, who closed the society, which was institutionally part of Moscow University. Before Muromtsev’s fateful speech, there had been a preliminary round of brief welcoming talks, including one by Maklakov. One of the preceding welcomers had argued that the society should not involve itself in politics. Maklakov used his time by responding to this, arguing that law always posed the question of its relationship to right. In recognizing that law doesn’t necessarily correspond to right, members of the society would have to discuss political values.45
It would be convenient to argue that Maklakov’s life as a practicing lawyer gave him a good understanding of the thinking of Russia’s people and of their true needs. Indeed, I think that is so. But we must be cautious: many of the other liberals were lawyers by trade but nevertheless prone to a doctrinaire utopianism quite alien to Maklakov.
MAKLAKOV WAS GENERALLY gregarious—obvious exceptions being the forced march to his law degree and his fateful neglect of his friend Nicholas Cherniaev. His friends included some relatively well-known Russians, of whom Tolstoy is by all odds the best known; and the archives include records of his romantic interests, some of whom were prolific letter writers.
He knew Anton Chekhov, and although he saw him at least once at the Tolstoys’, had known him before then. Among their bonds was the Zvenigorod area, where Maklakov owned hunting and fishing land and where Chekhov had lived as young man. Chekhov in fact looked for a country property near Maklakov’s, but, as he reported to Maklakov, the place he visited proved overpriced.1 When Chekhov came to meet Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana, the Tolstoys’ country estate, Maklakov happened to be on hand. Chekhov arrived on a morning train, and Tolstoy, who usually wrote in the morning, excused himself and asked Maklakov to show Chekhov around. After the tour, the two writers began to chat. Chekhov gave Tolstoy an account of his trip to Sakhalin to study the penal colony there. He had traveled through Siberia to reach Sakhalin, and Tolstoy somewhat oddly responded to Chekhov’s Sakhalin account by rhapsodizing about the miraculous grandeur of Siberia’s mountains, rivers, forests, and animals. Chekhov agreed, and then Tolstoy asked, with surprise and some reproach, “Then why didn’t you show it?” After breakfast, Chekhov shook his head and said to Maklakov, “What a person!”2
Maklakov and Olga Knipper, Chekhov’s wife. © State Historical Museum, Moscow.
Maklakov also knew Maxim Gorky, presumably through his (Maklakov’s) stepmother; Maklakov was evidently a prototype for one Klim Samgin, the main figure in a four-volume Gorky novel that is now largely forgotten.3 Maklakov was also a friend of the great opera singer Fyodor Chaliapin. The origins of their meeting are unknown, but it may have stemmed from Maklakov’s defense of Nikolai and Savva Mamontov in a securities trial,4 Savva being a wealthy backer of Chaliapin. When Chaliapin was dying in Paris in the 1930s, Maklakov was a frequent visitor, entertaining him with the latest political gossip.5
Chapters 1 and 2 mentioned Maklakov’s first meeting and early contacts with Tolstoy. Their friendship, together with Maklakov’s reading of his literary and philosophical works, provided the background for several lectures Maklakov gave after Tolstoy’s death devoted to Tolstoy’s