The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order: 1905-1922

by Edmond Taylor

As the Prime Minister drove the streets of the town behind the Imperial carriage, Rasputin, it is said, suddenly called out “Death is after him! Death is driving behind him.” The next night, Stolypin was shot down by a terrorist in the local opera house, under the eyes of the Czar and of his two eldest daughters. It was to prove one of the most fateful political crimes in modern history — in part because it removed the only serious stumbling block in Rasputin’s path — but it provides a somewhat double-edged argument to historians who believed in the unqualified primacy of the individual leader as the ultimate molder of history. It is true that the history of Russia, and therefore of the world, might have been very different if Stolypin had lived longer.