Stolypin, Petr

Born Apr. 2 (14), 1862, in Dresden, Germany; died Sept. 5 (18), 1911, in Kiev. Russian state figure.

The scion of an old noble family, Stolypin graduated from the University of St. Petersburg. From 1884 he served in the Ministry of the Interior. From 1902 he was governor of Grodno Province, and from 1903 to 1906, governor of Saratov Province. He received the thanks of Emperor Nicholas II for his suppression of the peasant movement in Saratov Province.

On Apr. 26, 1906, Stolypin was named minister of the interior, a post he retained after he was named chairman of the Council of Ministers on July 8, 1906. He was instrumental in the suppression of the Revolution of 1905–07, encouraging the work of the field courts-martial and favoring the death penalty—the hangman’s noose came to be known popularly as “Stolypin’s necktie.” Under Stolypin, the government dissolved the Second State Duma and carried out the government coup d’etat of June 3, 1907. Stolypin proposed an agrarian reform, whose purpose was to create a kulak class that would serve as the bulwark of the tsarist regime in the countryside. He was fatally wounded by the Socialist Revolutionary D. G. Bogrov.