Vasily Maklakov - Imperial Russia

Imperial Russia

Maklakov was the son of a Moscow ophthalmology professor. He studied with Sir Paul Vinogradoff towards Ph.D. in History at Moscow University; his thesis was dedicated to the political institutions of ancient Athens. The student was impressed by French political life during a visit to Paris in 1889 and spent most of his career attempting to establish a similar system in Russia.

Entering the bar in 1895, Maklakov expressed his admiration for the teachings of Leo Tolstoy and, at the novelist's urging, undertook the defence of the Tolstoyans persecuted by the government. He later authored a book about Tolstoy. Maklakov gradually made a name for himself as a brilliant orator with "a profound veneration for legal form". A high point of his legal career was the defence of Menahem Mendel Beilis, a Jew wrongfully accused of ritual murder of an Orthodox child in 1913.

Maklakov joined a moderate reform group in 1904 and played an active part in the organization of the Constitutional Democratic Party two years later, serving on its central committee. The most conservative of the Kadet leaders, Maklakov was anxious to preserve the party's unity, which appeared fragile in the face of his many ideological clashes with Paul Miliukov, reputed for his intransigent liberal individualism.

Maklakov was elected by the Muscovites to the Second State Duma in 1907 and served in the subsequent Dumas until the Revolution of 1917. In such memorable addresses as that delivered on the Yevno Azef affair, he tended toward conservatism, opposing alliances with revolutionaries. But he grew hostile to the government as the years passed and actively supported the Progressive Bloc, a coalition of liberal parties in the Fourth Duma that called for sweeping reforms.

In 1915 Maklakov published his most famous article, describing Russia as a vehicle with no brakes, driven along a narrow mountain path by a "mad chauffeur", a reference to either the Tsar or Grigory Rasputin. The extent of his involvement in the murder of the "mad monk" is a matter of keen debate. The mastermind of the assassination, Vladimir Purishkevich, claimed that it was Maklakov who supplied Prince Felix Yusupov with poison to murder Rasputin.

Following the February Revolution of 1917, Maklakov aspired to take the office of Minister of Justice in the Provisional Government. After the post went to another professional lawyer, Alexander Kerensky, Maklakov was put in charge of the government's "legal commission". He was heavily involved in the preparation of the elections of the Constituent Assembly, of which he was later elected a member.