Vasily Alekseyevich Maklakov (Russian: Васи́лий Алексе́евич Маклако́в; May 22 [O.S. May 10] 1869 – July 15, 1957) was a Russian student activist, a trial lawyer and liberal parliamentary deputy, an orator, and one of the leaders of the Constitutional Democratic Party, notable for his advocacy of a constitutional Russian state. He served as deputy in the (radical) Second, and conservative Third and Fourth State Duma (Russian Empire). According to Stephen F. Williams Maklakov is "an inviting lens to which to view at the last years of Tsarism".
In February 1917 Maklakov was appointed as commissar in the Provisional Committee of the State Duma. In October 1917 he was sent to Paris as ambassador, but by the time he arrived there, the Russian Provisional Government no longer existed. He subsequently went on to organize the activities of Russian émigrés.
Vasily, or Basil, was the son of Alexey Nikolaevich Maklakov (1837 – May 1895), a Moscow ophthalmology professor, the inventor of ocular tonometry, a member of the zemstvo and the Moscow City Duma. His mother came from a noble and wealthy family, spoke three foreign languages, and played the piano. She had seven children and died when he was 11 years old. Vasily had a full-time governess, and he and his siblings learned to speak French fluently. He was interested in organic chemistry and bought a Bunsen burner. He studied mathematics and physics after he left the 5th Moscow Gymnasium in 1887. He was impressed by French political life and influenced by Count Mirabeau. During a visit to the famous World's fair in Paris with his father, French students took him to election meetings and introduced him to candidates.
Back home, Maklakov published an account of the "Paris Student Association" in Russkiye Vedomosti. Like Lenin and Ayn Rand, he was influenced by the death of Nikolay Chernyshevsky, a victim of injustice. In 1890, he raised money for the poor with concerts; he was arrested for his participation in the student movement and expelled from the university "for political unreliability". He spent five days in the Butyrka prison. Then, he went back to Paris with his stepmother, the author of children books, and he met with the anarchists and geographers Léon Metchnikoff and Reclus. Back home, Vasily organized a student economic commission and held his first political speech. He met with Leo Tolstoy and began to appear in newspapers, mainly because of the Russian famine of 1891–1892. In 1894, he joined the army in Rostow as a volunteer.
After his father had a talk about his son with the Director of Police Pyotr Durnovo, the trustee P.A. Kapnist suggested for Vasily to change faculties and to study history. Maklakov was seen as "a man of outstanding intelligence". After the ban was lifted, he graduated under Paul Vinogradoff, an eminent scholar and researcher of classical antiquity at Imperial Moscow University. Maklakov was offered to stay to prepare for the professorship but this was opposed. He then decided to choose for advocacy and graduated from the law faculty. His thesis was dedicated to "The impact of dependent land ownership on civil legal capacity at the end of the Carolingian period". After the death of their father, the brothers inherited Dergaykovo-estate near New Jerusalem Monastery.
In 1896, he entered the bar and became a member of the Moscow Law Society. It seems that he became the assistant of the Polish lawyer Alexander Robertovich Lednicki and collaborated with Fedor Nikiforovich Plevako (1842–1909), a distinguished attorney at law and judicial speaker. Maklakov and his brother and sister Maria moved to Zubovsky Boulevard, not far from Leo Tolstoy in Khamovniki District. Together, they walked or went to the baths on which Maklakov had an interesting account. At Yasnaya Polyana, outside Moscow, they discussed the fate of the Doukhobors. At the novelist's urging, he defended a "Bespopovtsy" in the Kaluga Governorate accused of blasphemy; later he defended a "Tolstoyan", who was accused of storing prohibited works of Tolstoy; that case ended with an extremely lenient sentence. Plevako, a real state adviser, owned a Jugendstil apartment building at Novinskiy Boulevard. Maklakov, divorced, lived there too; they both were friendly with Anton Chekhov visiting Moscow in May 1903. Chekhov's intention to spend the summer at the Maklakov estate at Voskresensk did not materialise, but Maklakov signed Chekhov's will. Maklakov owned several hunting dogs and a dacha in Zvenigorod according to Chekhov.
Between 1901 and 1905, Maklakov defended several political demonstrations but also profitable commercial cases involving major Russian enterprises. He was deeply interested in the rule of law. In 1904, he was the secretary and archivist of the opposition circle Beseda. Then, he participated in the Union of Liberation, a moderate reform group of around 23 men. It saw as its task to fight the autocracy and to introduce a constitutional system in Russia. It imagined the future of Russia only in the development of the existing system, an organic evolution, not in coups. The members had a zemstvo background, representing the landowning class and intelligentsia.
During the First Russian Revolution, the Tsar asked his cousin Grand Duke Nicholas to assume the role of dictator, but the Grand Duke threatened to shoot himself if the Tsar refused to endorse Sergei Witte's memorandum. After a ten-day general strike in October, Nicholas II had no choice but to take a number of steps in the constitutional liberal direction. In the October Manifesto, Witte advocated the creation of an elected parliament, which took the form of establishing the State Duma and the multi-party system. On 20 October 1905, Witte was appointed as the first Chairman of the Russian Council of Ministers (effectively Prime Minister), but the Kadets refused to join his cabinet. The Kadets doubted that Witte could deliver on the promises made by the Tsar in the October Manifesto since they knew the Tsar's staunch opposition to reform. On 9 November 1906, the cabinet issued a decree enabling Russia's 90 million peasants to start a complex process of transforming their property rights. On 24 November, by Imperial decree, provisional regulations on the censorship of magazines and newspaper was released. After an armed uprising in December 1905, the reactionary Pyotr Durnovo was appointed as Minister of Interior on 1 January 1906, a decision that was heavily criticized. The real ruler of the country was Dmitri Trepov. In the Russian Constitution of 1906, the Tsar gave up autocracy. In July, regretting his "moment of weakness", he dissolved the First Duma. The ministers remained responsible solely to Nicholas II, not to the Duma.
At the end of 1905, Maklakov joined the Freemasons when the right to form unions and private meetings was established under Nicholas II of Russia and thus the limitations on Freemasonry were lifted. Maklakov played an active part in the organization of the Constitutional Democratic Party (KD or Kadets), the first open political party serving on its central committee in October 1905. He promoted a coalition cabinet unlike Stolypin, Milyukov and Dmitri Trepov. Maklakov was elected by the Muscovites in the Arbat District to the Second Duma in February 1907, but he was more a lawyer than a deputy. He attracted attention with a brilliant speech about military field courts, dealt with Sergei Konstantinovich Gershelman, advocated the abolition of the death penalty and insisted on the inviolability of the individual. He was strongly opposed the signing of the Vyborg Manifesto, written by Pavel Milyukov. He tended toward conservatism, regretted the dissolution of the Union of Liberation, argued for a shift to the right and opposed alliances with revolutionaries. He hated long political meetings and did not like party discipline. He argued that as a political party the KD must prepare itself for government participation and so must be prepared to defend the rights of whatever sort of government if it wanted to be regarded as a serious political force and to concentrate on defending not only the rights of the people but also those of the state.