P. A. Stolypin

The journal Russkaya Mysl’ (Russian Thought) was not a “Cadet monthly” and positioned itself as a journal of the “national Russian culture”. P. A. Stolypin was comprehended on its pages not only as a sharply political and controversial fi gure (P. B. Struve, A. S. Izgoev, A. A. Kizevetter, A. A. Kaufman, etc.), but as a reformer and creator of a new cultural way of life under the battle-cry of building Great Russia.

The article presents a rhetorical analysis of published speeches of P. A. Stolypin, an outstanding statesman of Russia of the beginning of the 20th century, which were presented in the State Duma and the State Council in 1906–1911.

The image of P. A. Stolypin, who was burdened by the task of agrarian changes in the country, still remains the object of the “arguments of the parties”. As a rule, one of the arguments ‘for’ or ‘against’ Stolypin’s agrarian policy is drawn from the content of L. Tolstoy’s letters of 1907-1909 to the reformer and his only reply. All these letters date to the most intense period of the land “revolution” in the sovereign state, which only started half a century after serfdom had been abolished.

In the article the image of P. A. Stolypin is analyzed on the material of The Red Wheel, Diary R-17, memoires and essays by A. I. Solzhenitsyn. The authors trace the course the writer took while working on the artistic presentation of the image of one of the most prominent Russian state fi gures of the 20th century; they show Solzhenitsyn’s artistry in endeavoring to reveal to the reader all the “prominence”, “expressiveness” of this great person, as well as the signifi cance of Stolypin’s destiny for the future of Russia.