The Duma monarchist who took the tsar's abdication and became an ideologue of the White movement
At the tsar's train in Pskov, Shulgin — unwashed and unshaven for four days — appeared before Nicholas II in a dirty jacket. A member of the suite told him: 'We will not forget this little jacket of yours.'
Vasily Shulgin was a leading conservative politician in the late Russian Empire, a deputy in the II, III, and IV State Dumas and editor of Kievlyanin, who championed Russian nationalism and constitutional monarchy. In March 1917 he traveled to Pskov with Alexander Guchkov and personally received Nicholas II's abdication, but could not avert the revolutionary catastrophe. During the Civil War he served as an ideologue of the White movement, then emigrated to Yugoslavia; in 1944 he was arrested by Soviet forces and spent 12 years in Vladimir Central Prison. Amnestied in 1956, he remained in the USSR, wrote memoirs, and appeared in the 1965 documentary The Verdict of History, a living witness to the old order who was defeated but never submitted.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1907–1917Deputy, II, III, IV State Dumas (Volhynia)
- 1913–1917Editor, Kievlyanin newspaper
- 1915Co-founder, Progressive Bloc; led Progressive Nationalists
- 1917.3With Guchkov, received Nicholas II's abdication in Pskov
- 1918–1920White movement propagandist and ideologue; editor of Rossiya and Velikaya Rossiya
- 1920–1944Exile in Yugoslavia; wrote memoirs Dni and Three Capitals
- 1947–1956Sentenced to 25 years; served 12 in Vladimir Central Prison
- 1956–1976Amnestied; lived in Vladimir, wrote Lenin's Experiment, starred in The Verdict of History
Related historical events
- 1917.02–07The February RevolutionDuma deputy who received the abdicationIn March 1917, he received Nicholas II's abdication in Pskov with Guchkov.
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionWhite movement ideologueDuring the Civil War, he served as a propagandist and ideologue of the White movement.
Wartime crisis and the Progressive Bloc
The 1911 assassination of Pyotr Stolypin and the 1913 Beilis affair deepened divisions among right-wing nationalists. Shulgin and Dmitrii Pikhno criticized the unfairness of the trial that accused Menahem Beilis, a Jewish worker in Kiev, of ritual murder. In 1915, 22 deputies from the Duma right, led by Shulgin, broke with the more radical nationalists associated with the Black Hundreds and formed the Progressive Nationalists group. Shulgin volunteered for the front in the First World War and was wounded. As military defeats and distrust of the government mounted, the Progressive Nationalists allied with the Constitutional Democrats, their former opponents. After the Russian army's defeat in the summer of 1915, Shulgin argued that the government had to concede power; the Progressive Bloc called for a united government enjoying public confidence and changes to administrative practice. Its program also proposed ending political and religious persecution and discrimination against ethnic minorities, including Jews, but Shulgin did not actively support these demands or the proposal for Polish autonomy. He favored continuing the war until victory and remained a monarchist, while supporting Pavel Miliukov's 1916 attack on the government. These positions combined loyalty to the tsar with demands to replace the wartime government.