Did Stolypin say: “In Russia, everything changes in 10 years, but nothing changes in 200 years”?

Let's figure out how fair it is to associate these words with the famous reformer.

In recent years, the phrase has often been found on the Internet: “In Russia, everything changes in 10 years, nothing changes in 200 years.” This expression with different numbers (5 years, 20 years) is also mentioned on "Answers from Mail.Ru", and in article by Nikita Mikhalkov. Most often, its authorship is attributed to the Prime Minister of the Russian Empire, Pyotr Stolypin. Let's find out whether Stolypin actually said this.

We could not find such words on the page dedicated to Stolypin in “Wikiquote", nor in the list of his famous phrases on the website Foundation for the Study of Stolypin's Heritage, nor in any other similar source. Apparently, relatively recently the quote was considered almost popular. This can explain why the order of words in it changes so easily, 10 years turn into 5 or 20, and 200 into 100 or 300.

Even 10 years ago, this phrase (without attribution to a specific author) was used in the introduction to interview historian Evgeny Anisimov for the newspaper of the Siberian Federal University, and economist Sergei Guriev mentioned it in comments in the Khodorkovsky case. On several resources, the writer Saltykov-Shchedrin was named as the author of the statement.

But we still managed to find the first documented mention of this phrase and even get confirmation from its author himself. It turned out to be a doctor and writer Maxim Osipov. Here is a fragment from his autobiographical story “In the Native Land”, which was published in 2007 in the magazine “Znamya”:

Medical care in Rus', as before, is very accessible, but not very effective: “Do you believe it,” the doctor said in neither a loud nor a quiet voice... that I never treat out of self-interest... Of course, I would put your nose on it, but it would be much worse. It’s better to let nature itself act. Wash with cold water more often, and I assure you that, without a nose, you will be as healthy as if you had one.” This is roughly how they treat people now: in five years a lot changes in Russia, in two hundred nothing changes.. Doctors and patients are still a great match.

Osipov reportedthat he wrote this phrase in his diary back in 2003 - it is quite difficult to imagine that four years before the publication of the story, any new details from Stolypin’s speeches or texts became known. Why this quote was attributed to him is an open question. Perhaps in the popular consciousness it overlapped with truly belonging Stolypin’s words: “Give the state 20 years of peace, internal and external, and you will not recognize today’s Russia.”

Incorrect quote attribution

What do our verdicts mean?