What is a "ministerial leapfrog"?

There is such a child's play, she is called a leapfrog. Participants in it alternately jump through their partners, standing in a bent position. This is how the Cabinet of Ministers of the tsarist government looked like in the last pre-revolutionary years. The newly appointed minister did not manage to occupy the highest position in the bureaucratic hierarchy, as he immediately turned out to be below, giving way to his successor.

The appearance of a new winged phrase

The author of the expression "ministerial leapfrog", which became winged and firmly entrenched over a certain period of the history of tsarism, is a prominent politician of the early twentieth century, a monarchist and a Black Hundred Vladimir Mitrofanovich Purishkevich. This is how he characterized in his speech at the meeting of the State Duma, the frequent change of ministers and their continuous reorganization from one department to another.

"Ministerial leapfrog? What is it? "- can only ask in bewilderment of our contemporary, not experienced in matters of history, but the witnesses of that era immediately understood what was being discussed, because for such a sharp expression, Vladimir Mitrofanovich had every reason. Over the two-year period from 1915 to 1916, the chairman of the Council of Ministers, three times the minister of war and six times the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, changed his order four times. The ministerial leapfrog paralyzed the work of the whole bureaucratic apparatus. His positions weakened by the war and outbursts of social discontent, both in the center and on the ground, were finally undermined.

Ministerial leapfrog - causes and manifestations

In those years, the supreme power, which did not want to seek ways to cooperate with the opposition and simultaneously did not dare to suppress its actions, was rapidly losing credibility. This situation was the result of a profound political and social crisis that emerged in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century and reached its highest point during the First World War.

One of the manifestations of the crisis was a phenomenon that went down in history under the name of "rasputin". The ministerial leapfrog has to him the most direct relation. Its name was received by the name of Grigory Efimovich Rasputin, who appeared in St. Petersburg in 1907, the "holy elder" and "prophet". Despite the fact that the "old man" was barely forty-two years old at the time, he managed to penetrate into the palace in such a short time and become one of the closest people to the royal family.

"The Gray Cardinal" from Gorokhovaya Street

Inclined to religious mysticism, the Empress Alexandra Fedorovna and Nicholas II himself quickly fell under the influence of Rasputin, who was able to inspire them that with his prayers he is able not only to restore the health of the incurably diseased heir to the throne, but also to ask God's blessing for the entire current reign. This allowed him to actively influence the adoption by the sovereign of the most important decisions, including those related to personnel policy, and become a sort of "gray cardinal".

The metropolitan surroundings of Rasputin

Such a circumstance was not slow to take advantage of scams of a variety of suits and levels. They flocked from all over the country to a house on Gorokhovaya Street, where in the last years of his life he rented Rasputin's apartment and from where the whole "ministerial leapfrog" was initiated. Among those whose names the agents of the secret police pointed out in the list of persons who were frequent guests of the "old man" are representatives of exchange and banking circles, reactionary politicians, prominent Black Hundreds and simply high-ranking adventurers.

Acts of the "Elder" and his entourage

Pursuing their own selfish goals, all these people used Rasputin as an intermediary between them and the royal family, thus achieving the desired appointments and making other decisions that are beneficial to them. Through him there were replacements of some ministers by others, and also personnel questions of all levels of the state apparatus were solved . "Ministerial Leapfrog", the period of which is limited to 1915-1916, was just the tip of the iceberg, a phenomenon open to millions of eyes.

The true scale of all behind-the-scenes cases committed by the "holy old man" and his entourage was much wider. Blaming them for the riots that arose in many departments and caused the economic crisis in the country, many researchers believe that it was Rasputin who inclined the sovereign in 1915 to assume the post of commander-in-chief, which had a detrimental effect on the course of hostilities.

Conspiracy to save the monarchy

"Ministerial Leapfrog" was completed in February 1917, when on a wave of bourgeois revolution the Emperor was forced to abdicate. But even earlier, during the whole of 1916, in the monarchical circles of the capital, a conspiracy against Rasputin was ripe. His goal was to save Nicholas II from the pernicious influence of the "old man" and prevent the collapse of the autocracy in Russia.

Leading the conspirators were prominent monarchists, such as Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, Prince Yusupov and State Duma deputy F. M. Purishkevich - the one who introduced the expression "ministerial leapfrog" into circulation. Their plan was realized on the night of December 17, 1916. Cunningly luring Rasputin into the basement of the Yusupov Palace, converted for this occasion in a small but elegant salon, they committed murder.

Posthumous fire and water

To hide the traces of the crime, the corpse of the "old man" was drowned by them in Malaya Nevka not far from Elagin Bridge. However, what they did soon became public. Rasputin's body was removed from the water and buried in Tsarskoe Selo in the presence of the entire royal family. But two months later, on the order of the Provisional Government that came to power, the remains were exhumed and burned in the boiler room of the Polytechnic Institute. They did this to stop the possibility of pilgrimage to his grave of former admirers.

The agony of the great empire

Looking back, we can clearly conclude that the "ministerial leapfrog" characterizes the period that has become the agony of a dying state. It was not only the monarchical system that had become obsolete and incompatible with the twentieth century that collapsed before our eyes: a system corrupted from within by corruption, which brought to power people who not only devastated the treasury, but also were not capable of any reasonable management of the country.

The Bolsheviks who rushed to power did not hesitate to take advantage of the spiritual blindness of the people's lack of moral guidelines. In Russia of that period, they found fertile ground for their anti-Christian, and in fact, anti-human and anti-human propaganda. Historical evidence unequivocally suggests that the "secret" of their political success lies precisely in the fact that the Bolsheviks did not have to fight the state system that had the ability to resist them. At that time, the greatest country in the world was hopelessly sick and became easy prey for a handful of political adventurers.

One of the external manifestations of her illness was the notorious "Rasputin". This shameful phenomenon finally compromised both secular power and the clergy. Unfortunately, a similar phenomenon too late received a proper assessment of the representatives of the progressive thought of Russian society. As a result, dark destructive forces hidden in the depths of the masses found a way out and, released to freedom, overthrew the state, the church, and the intelligentsia itself.