Stolypin

W. Bruce Lincoln. Romanovs Autocrats of All the Russias. New York: Doubleday, 1981.

The excerpt is taken from pp 665-666.

​Out of those parliaments came Stolypin (1862-1911), third prime minister. However, he was assassinated at a performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tale of Tsar Saltan at the Kiev Opera House in the presence of Tsar Nicholas II and his two oldest daughters, the Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana.

“Stolypin understood that the government must work with the Duma and sought to strike an alliance with the Right and the Center, while attacking and weakening the militant Left, whose positions he once bluntly summarized by the phrase, ‘hands up!’ To that position he replied, ‘Don’t try to scare us.’ ‘What you want are great upheavals,’ he told the militants scornfully. ‘But what we want is a GREAT RUSSIA!’ To emphasize that point, he proceeded to propose some of the most dramatic social and economic legislation in Russia’s history.” Lincoln, 666

According to Lincoln, the legislation was a success, a fact Lenin lamented. One can work with moderates and conservatives but not mad dogs.