Russian Politics on the Eve of the 1905 Revolution: A Critical Assessment.

[AlexieNichole]

Today is the 101st anniversary of the Manifesto announcing the creation of a consultative Duma, during the time of Tsar Nicholas II (based on Old Style dates)

[griffh]

It is a full month later but I must congradulate you on your desire to celebrate, what would have been the possible salvation of Russia, not that Russia is doomed, but I congradulate you on your desire to celebrate what could have been the bloodless transition to a constitutional monarchy and further to the complete establishment of the democratic freedom of the great Russian peoples.

[Tania]

Hear, Hear, agreed, in memory of what might have been !

Tatiana+

[AGRBear]

Some years ago I remember eading a short bio of a German-Russian who had been a member of the First Duma and it was very revealing.  I wish I could remember where I saw it because I'd love to quote some of his first hand knowledge of  the Duma.  Until I find it,  does anyone have any articles or  know of any books by people who were not  pre-revolutionary Bolshviks who were invovled?

AGRBear

[Nadya_Arapov]

The title of the article posted below is Russia's Struggle with Autocracy by Vladimir Simkhovitch, published in the March 1905 issue of the academic journal Political Science Quarterly, (Vol. 20, No. 1) Published in the US in 1905 it is no longer covered by copyright.

The author, Dr. Vladimir G. Simkhovitch, was a Russian scholar who came to America where he worked as a Professor of Economic History at Columbia University.

It is a rather long, but interesting read about Russian politics at the time, given from the vantage point of an educated, moderate Russian liberal, not an aristocrat or a Bolshevik. Dr. Simkhovitch’s words are actually very prescient in many ways, and in some instances it is easy to forget that he wrote these words not in 1917 or 1918, but in 1905.

Dr. Simkhovitch wrote this in February 1905, just months after the Minister of the Interior, Vyacheslav von Plehve, was assassinated, and just days before the assassination of Grand Duke Sergei. It should be remembered that it wasn’t until later that year when the Tsar’s hand was forced by the Russian Revolution of 1905, and the disastrous Russo-Japanese War, that the Tsar reluctantly issued the October Manifesto which resulted in the creation of the First Duma.

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Because of the absence in Russia of freedom of the press, private letters circulate from hand to hand in hundreds of copies. Three years ago, such a letter from a well-known Slavophile, publicist, and financier commanded interest because its writer was a man generally regarded as a faithful adherent of autocracy. The letter was written soon after von Plehve's predecessor Sipyagin (the Minister of the Interior) was killed by a Russian student named Balmasheff. Today it seems to deserve a modest place in Russian political literature...Here are a few of its passages:

"I am writing under the depressing influence of the murder of Sipyagin. I can bear the sad testimony that a part of the public is utterly indifferent, while on the other hand the masses are happy. Yes, political assassinations have become an everyday occurrence, almost a sport. The public sees with its own eyes the growing power of the revolution and the total failure of the authorities. A crowd can be dispersed, students exiled, the newspapers silenced, but what can one do with creatures that are willing to sacrifice their own lives and know how to shoot?

…You must agree that for the government this struggle is hopeless. The government may refuse to capitulate and may stubbornly continue the present policy...Well, the revolutionists will not capitulate, either. Assassinations will continue, and with each new victory of the Revolution our social demoralization and our consciousness of the total helplessness of the government will grow. It is easy to see that the logical end of it is the fall of the autocratic regime, for the very simple reason that a constitution is the only way out of this awful situation. In other words, the revolution will outlast our present so-called conservative tendency and will force a capitulation.
This is the more probable because, first of all, the present bureaucratic regime has absolutely no future…all the living forces of our society hate the present regime heart and soul, and there are good grounds for this hatred. This regime has for years levied real war upon its own people. Its motto is extermination of everything spiritual, extermination of all social self-reliance, extermination of all opposition to bureaucracy even if this opposition is sincerely devoted to autocracy and is loyal to the fundamental principles of our government. Our bureaucracy insists that no one shall dare to reason for himself, that everyone shall be silent and obedient. Nor is that enough; the system demands that every Russian be completely indifferent to the fact that Russia is rapidly growing destitute and barbarous..."


Of chief interest in this letter is the fact that three years ago (1902) its writer regarded Russia as already in a state of revolution. Any one of us, witnessing political murders in his country, might regard the situation as grave…but this man of affairs recognizes, not in a statement made on the spur of the moment, but in a carefully developed argument, that these systematic murders are the Russian Revolution, bound to drive the government to concessions and bound to end in a constitution...

…Circumstances now do not favor an old fashioned revolution. If it succeeds, it succeeds in spite of them...Writing at a time when events are moving fast in St. Petersburg, it would be dangerous to attempt to forecast even the immediate future. In estimating the chance of success through moral pressure, it must be borne in mind that no contemporary European government places so small a value on human life as does the Russian. The shooting of 1000 or even 10,000 insurgents would occasion little discomfort to the Czar's bureaucracy. Participants in peaceful demonstrations have been clubbed to death in Petersburg, flogged in Vilna, shot in the back while fleeing to Zlatoust…

There has been nothing in past history to lead the Russian insurgents to believe that by sacrificing themselves en masse they would exercise the slightest moral pressure on the government. The government has been used to it. At the Imperial Coronation ten years ago 6000 men and women were trampled to death; the Czar was in favor of an investigation; but it was pointed out that an investigation would unearth graft as the cause of the catastrophe, and the investigation was dropped. Many thousands of harmless and peaceful Chinese were drowned in the Amur (River) by order of a Russian general a few years ago. No investigation was even suggested. The outcry throughout Europe about the Kishineff affair (a brutal massacre of Jews at Kishinev on Easter 1903), about the Dogger Bank affair (the accidental sinking of a British ship by the Russians during the Russo-Japanese War), and about dozens of other affairs, were simply incomprehensible to His Majesty's government.

... The Russian revolution is...a revolution of all classes of society against autocracy. This does not mean that the Russian opposition forms one compact body; there are innumerable oppositional organizations, with different programs and different tactics, from the mildest liberals to extreme revolutionaries of the bomb-throwing variety. But they have learned their lesson and they know that their strength is in working together…their subconscious desire (is) to appeal to the widest possible constituency. Therefore one finds socialists in the highest aristocracy and among the largest landowners…That is why such natural enemies as the old-fashioned free-trader and the socialist are friendly so far as the political struggle is concerned; that is why there is an invisible bond between many high dignitaries of state in His Majesty's immediate entourage and the extreme revolutionists. That is why bomb-throwers sympathize with the Zemstvos, and the Zemstvo presidents displayed little grief over the death of von Plehve.

[Nadya_Arapov]

No more clean-cut illustration of this could be had than a plea for Plehve's murderer which appeared in a recent issue of the Osvobozhdenie, the central organ of the Russian liberals and the Russian Zemstvos. The Osvobozhdenie is strongly opposed to political murder and the anonymous author of the plea states emphatically and repeatedly in his letter that he is on principle an enemy of terrorist methods. On what then does he base his plea? Here is his argument:

"Everybody sees that Russia is on the eve of a constitution...The general policy is (now) a liberal one. Whence the change? Did Plehve lose faith in the omnipotence of his crushing system and decide to change it? No. Did his enemies get rid of him by some intrigue? No; quite the opposite; it was Plehve who got rid of (Sergei) Witte. Did His Majesty get rid of Plehve's bloody system of oppression? The facts are against it. His Majesty generously promoted Plehve's chief helpers...What then was it that in a moment changed fundamentally the attitude of the government to the people?...The bomb of Sozonoff, Plehve's assassin, pointed out to His Majesty that the continuation of the reactionary regime was an impossibility. This bomb affected the thinking apparatus of the men in Russia's ruling spheres. No matter how much one may be opposed to terrorism, there is no way of denying the facts..."

This reasoning, though easily answerable, is interesting because of the light it throws on the psychology of the man behind the argument. It indicates the sympathetic bonds that unite all the forces of the Russian opposition. It explains why, in the first and only case of political murder that was submitted to a Russian jury, in the case of Vera Zasulich in 1878, the accused was declared not guilty. It explains the social psychology of such facts as the following: In August 1904, an attempt was made in the city of Belostok to kill the chief of police, P Metlenko...October 21 another attempt was made. The chief of police was fired upon six times, on a crowded street, and one of the shots wounded the victim. The would-be assassin escaped. There was a large crowd of witnesses, but nobody attempted to stop the murderer. On July 4 of the same year, in a crowded street of Elizavetpol, the vice-governor of the province, Andreyeff, was killed by five revolver shots in broad daylight. Hundreds saw the murder committed, but the murderer escaped. In exactly the same way Governor Bogdanovich was killed last year. Broad daylight; plenty of witnesses; the murderer escaped. Precisely so were killed Boguslavski in Igdyr and Colonel Bykoff in Olta, and precisely so the murderers escaped. So was wounded the Governor Prince Obolensky and many others. Here again the people in the streets not only did not stop the murderers but evidently helped them to escape.

One cannot assume from these instances that the bulk of the Russian opposition is terroristic in its nature. They only go to prove that the perpetrators of terrorist crimes, if their victims are particularly hateful oppressors, can count upon a very wide circle of sympathizers among average Russian citizens. This is why it is often made to appear that the whole Russian revolutionary movement is tainted with anarchism....

The Russian terrorists call themselves socialists, and they declare their intention to continue their socialistic inclinations, but nevertheless the historian of the Russian Revolution would show a distinct lack of any historical or psychological sense if he should even for a moment regard socialism as a serious issue in the present Russian Revolution. Pre-revolutionary socialism is but a manifestation of general pre-revolutionary radicalism; it is the poetry of the revolution. It is not a tendency that springs from the bottom of the social structure; it is rather a passionate, although vague, desire on the part of the privileged few to assimilate themselves with the many...Really socialistic, of course, are the social democratic organizations of workingmen in the Russian industrial centers. These are doctrinaire Marxists, and their organizations are strictly opposed to terrorism. The terrorists, on the other hand, are far from being proletarian in their character and composition.

…The Russian social democratic organ Iskra calls the present moment the honeymoon of
the opposition, a moment of revolutionary exaltation when the democrats regard themselves as socialists, liberal figures as democrats, weak bureaucrats as liberals, and moderate reformers as revolutionists. It certainly is an epoch the like of which Russia has never seen...


(There was) a tremendous spread of revolutionary sentiment toward the close of the 1870s...We all remember those days. We all remember the tremendous revolutionary agitation and the draconian reprisals that led up to the terrible deed (Alexander II’s assassination). But the amount of political crimes in those days, though by no means insignificant...was nevertheless small as compared with the extraordinary outbreak of political crime in our own day, as is shown by the following statistics from Alphons Thun, "Geschichte der revolutionaren Bewegung in Russland (1883)."

Years 1871-1881
Political Cases: 84
Persons involved: 784

This, however, was only a prelude. The figures for the years 1894-1903, which coincide with the first decade of the reign of Nicholas II, are given in the following extract from a report - no. 4511 - sent by the Russian secretary of Justice to the Council on the Empire on Jan 28, 1904.

1894-1903
Political cases: 8468
Persons involved: 36,914

The bulk of the Russian workingmen are in the ranks of the Revolution, they are well organized and take part even in student demonstrations...It is impossible to deny that the revolutionaries are with the workingmen, and the workingmen with them. The revolutionists are also with the peasantry; but is the peasantry with the revolutionists? To a limited extent only. The government, for dynastical reasons, has jealously and systematically prevented the spread of education and enlightenment among the people. Has His Majesty's autocratic government profited by it? Not in the least...

[Nadya_Arapov]

On account of its political and geographical position, Russia was forced to be a military power. "Military power," is a relative term…For Russia it meant to keep up the race with highly civilized, rich, and industrially developed countries like Germany and England. But a poor agricultural Russia could never meet the demands, could never command the necessary resources. The Russian government was therefore forced to encourage the capitalistic and industrial development of the country. The program was to have their cake and eat it, too, which was obviously a difficult proposition. The Czar's government was desirous of having a rich country, i.e. industrially developed, yet governed autocratically; a people rich, yet illiterate and ignorant; a land of capitalistic enterprises, yet without personal freedom or initiative and under minute regulations of paternal government…Russian capitalism was not strong enough to alleviate substantially the burden of militarism, because capital was too seriously bled and hampered by an irresponsible autocratic bureaucracy. The burden had to be borne by the people, which under the weight of the bureaucracy, was rapidly growing destitute. Famine became chronic, the population degenerated...

The growing poverty of the peasants drove increasing numbers from the fields into the factories or into the city occupations. Here new worlds were opened to them, in which the labor agitator served as interpreter and guide. In the cities the peasants soon became class-conscious. They became sometimes trade-unionists, sometimes Socialists, but invariably antagonistic to the autocratic regime. As such large numbers became involved in the labor movement, it was out of the question to arrest them all, or exile them all, and His Majesty's government invented a procedure for which the Russian revolutionists will never cease to be grateful. To free the cities from agitators, the government sent these agitators in large numbers back to their home villages. Where the revolutionists of the upper classes had failed, viz. in propaganda among the peasantry, the government helped them generously by sending tested agitators, factory hands from the peasant class, to disseminate revolutionary ideas among their own kind.

Everybody that was not blind could see that the Russian internal situation was getting more serious every day, and that only very broad and liberal reforms could stay the storm of disaffection. But the Czar's government did not choose to consider the internal situation as serious. Nor did the government choose to consider seriously the demands of the Japanese; and Russia was plunged into an unfortunate war. It is said that one of the strong arguments of the war party in His Majesty's council was that war would clear up the Russian atmosphere, that it would weaken the opposition, and unite all classes of society in patriotism and loyalty to the throne. What profound ignorance of actual Russian social conditions! The government overlooked the fact that…if by any stretch of imagination it regarded itself as a government for the people, it was not so regarded by the people…

The war has consolidated the Russian opposition forces, the defeats have made revolutionists of the mildest liberals, and even of reactionaries. The men and women who have sent their sons to die on the battlefields of Manchuria can not but take a profound interest in the way affairs have been managed during the war. The total incompetence of the government has become more evident every day …Every day the war continues to bring new burdens, new causes for dissatisfaction, new curses upon the head of the government. While on the other hand the conclusion of a peace without honor and the return of the dissatisfied army to European Russia will be sure to swell the ranks of the revolution...

Prince E. N. Trubetskoy, a leader of the rightwing of the South-Russian liberals, has published an article, in which we are told:

"It is neither our army nor our navy that has suffered defeats. The defeats were those of the Russian bureaucracy. The bureaucracy has been searching for an enemy; but it did not notice the foreign enemy, because its attention had been diverted into another channel; it was constantly haunted by the ghost of an internal enemy. It saw its enemy in every man not created in its own likeness; it found treason in every man who placed dictates of his own conscience above the commands of the bureaucracy. It silenced everyone who would have raised a warning voice in time - who would have told the truth to the throne. And now we are reaping what we have sown. It is time, at last, that we should take account of the dangers that threaten us if we do not wish to be taken unawares. Our bureaucracy with its principle, divide and conquer, constitutes a danger not only to our exterior relations but also to our inner life..."

For making such a public statement Prince E.N. Trubetskoy was called a "traitor"...This attack was answered by Prince E.N. Trubetskoy's brother, Prince Sergius Trubetskoy, a famous professor of the Moscow University, who in his reply did not mince matters. He plainly told the Russian public that for almost a quarter of a century political adventurers and scamps had been exploiting and undermining Russian patriotism...that they had replaced the law and authority by arbitrariness and by an autocracy of obscurants, and that a quarter of a century of organized and systematic espionage, of systematic abuse of Russian society, could not go by without a trace; that it had, in fact, produced in human hearts feelings of hatred and of wrath. Such statements have become common in the Russian press…

Especially remarkable are the articles of M. Menshikoff. In one he points out that...for half a century Russia endeavored to stop the progress of Western Europe, by serving as the main stronghold of West-European reaction. And what has been the result? The natural resources are exhausted, the forests cut down, the fields sterile, the noblemen are ruined, and the peasants run to cold Siberia leaving behind them a trail of corpses. The race of domestic animals has degenerated; famine has become permanent; cholera, starvation, typhoid, and syphilis are decimating the population. Mortality is growing, reaching the figure of 40 to the thousand, while in Western Europe the figure is reduced to 16 or even 13 (to the thousand)...

Official Russia, another issue of the same paper tells us, tries to assure the whole world that the laws of nature are not written for Russia, that what would kill a German is good for a Russian; that all is well in Russia. But the truth is not kept from foreigners. England, America, France, Japan, etc., have all sent excellent cultured men to investigate Russia. They know Russia's defects, know its sad "unpreparedness," Russia only is deceived, and it deceives itself.

[Nadya_Arapov]

...The meeting of the Russian Zemstvo presidents and the demands formulated by them constitute an epoch in Russian history. The meeting proved, first of all, that the bulk of Russia's landed aristocracy, so far as it is not identified with graft and bureaucracy, is on the side of the revolution. The assembly was fully representative of what is best, most honorable, most influential, most educated in Russia. The resolutions adopted were signed by names so respected in Russia as those of Shipov, Petrunkevitch, Prince Lvov, Baron Stuart, Baron Budberg, Professor Karishev, Prince Dolgoruky, (Alexei) Stakhovitch, Count Heyden, Prince N. S. Volkonsky, Novosiltsev, Kuzmin-Karavayev, Prince M. V. Golitsyn, Prince D.T. Shakhovskoy, etc. The Zemstvo presidents pointed out the abnormal state of things in the empire, the abyss that separates the people from the government, the personal caprice and arbitrariness which characterize all the actions of Russian officialdom, and the utter lack of legality. They demanded a bill of rights and a constitutional form of government…
 
In passing these resolutions the Zemstvo presidents made themselves, according to Russian law, political criminals, liable to be punished by exile to Siberia...The action of the Zemstvo presidents was a signal. It revealed to the revolutionary forces their own strength.

All social forces that had no perfect secret organizations and that desired to make common cause with the revolution registered this decision of theirs publicly. So on December 5, at a banquet, 485 engineers and captains of industry endorsed in the strongest possible terms the demand for a constitution as the most essential condition of Russia's industrial progress. In the speeches of the evening the necessity for an active struggle with autocracy, a struggle to the finish, was pointed out. Sozonoff and Sikorski, the murderers of Plehve, were characterized as heroes of the great struggle with autocracy, and in their honor all present rose from their seats. And who were those present? Young students or nihilists? Far from it. Fifteen were generals, scores were owners, presidents, or directors of the largest industrial undertakings in the empire, and the rest were reputable engineers. Similar action was taken by other representative bodies of Russian citizens. Notable were the resolutions adopted by 400 members of the St. Petersburg Bar at a meeting held in the town hall, by 112 professors of the University of Moscow, by a meeting of 676 St. Petersburg literary figures, by faculties of different universities, by the city council of Moscow, and by the Zemstvo meetings of the provinces of Yaroslav, Poltava, Vyatka, Moscow, Orel, Kaluga, Chernigoff, etc.

How was this agitation met by His Imperial Majesty?...A special cabinet meeting was held in Tsarskoe Selo on December 2 (15) to determine the policy of administration in regard to the demands of the people. Prince Sviatopolk-Mirski proposed enlarging the council of the empire, now consisting of ex-cabinet members, ex-governor-generals, and Grand Dukes, by admitting to this body some elected members of the Zemstvo - a measure which could scarcely satisfy the people - but His Majesty was not even inclined to grant as much as that. He sided with Muraviev, the Secretary of Justice...Muraviev's argument, according to the "Matin" (a well-informed French publication), was the old argument of Katkoff and Leontyeff: "The Russian Czar by his authority and according to the fundamental laws of the empire has the right to do everything except to limit his (own) authority; an autocrat cannot cease to be an autocrat." The same argument was used by Pobedonostsev (a jurist and adviser to the Czar), who in addition pointed out that "the Czar is also head of the church; that he not only has to be guided by political considerations but has also to consider the interests of the church; and that these interests are bound to suffer from any limitation of the absolute autocratic power of its head…the limitation of autocracy is also the infringement of a divine law, because the Czar as head of the church and autocrat holds these offices by the Grace of God..."

The Czar nevertheless was obliged to make concessions to Sviatopolk-Mirski - concessions regarding the general judicial situation of the peasantry, the local municipalities, the labor question and sundry other questions - but he decided to make no concessions whatsoever that would involve any limitation of his autocratic powers and prerogatives. Moreover, he showed personal ill-will and lack of appreciation of the gravity of the situation.

Early in December (1904), Prince P. N. Trubetskoy, the marshal of the nobility of the province of Moscow, had a frank talk with His Majesty, and told him that he had come to the conclusion that "this is not a riot, but a revolution." His Majesty has been told the same thing a great number of times during the last three years by some of his most loyal subjects and by his ablest statesmen. Nevertheless he chose to snub and deliberately challenge the most moderate and peaceful elements of the revolutionary movement. On December 20 the Czar received a petition of the Chernigov provincial Zemstvo, begging him to convoke freely elected representatives of the Zemstvos, and to command them to draw up independently and freely a project of reform which would answer the well-known needs of the Russian population. His Majesty's answer, as officially announced, consisted of the following remark written on the petition (which was returned) in his own handwriting:

"I consider the action of the president to be arrogant and tactless. Questions of state administration are of no concern to the Zemstvos..."

Little hope was left after this for a peaceful solution of the grave situation, but whatever hope lingered in the hearts of certain mild liberals vanished after the long expected manifesto of the Emperor was published on December 26 (1904).

To begin with this manifesto was accompanied by a very curious official document, legally utterly invalid. It may have been meant to be either an Imperial ukase or a ministerial ordinance, but since no signature was attached to it, it was neither. It was an anonymous governmental threat. It explained that all the demands and petitions for legality and a constitution were "inadmissible in the face of the sacred foundations of the laws of the empire and the indestructible elements which form the government." All meetings of an anti-governmental character were therefore stopped. Presidents of Zemstvos, city councils, institutions and societies were therefore warned of their liability if they should allow the corporations over which they presided to discuss the questions of government. The newspapers were also ordered to produce "the necessary calming effect on public life, which has deviated in recent times from its proper course."

[Nadya_Arapov]

As to the signed Imperial Manifesto…It begins with the assertion of undeviated maintenance of the autocratic regime, which is the point at issue and the only point of interest to the Russian people. The promises of the Czar regarding reforms are couched in language so abstruse and vague that they may be construed as meaning something or nothing, as future circumstances may demand. After declaring the undeviating maintenance of autocracy, the manifesto promises to give special attention to the peasantry. The other reforms, or rather promises of reform, are set forth under eight heads and are in substance as follows:

1. Adoption of legal measures against arbitrary acts of officials.
2. Widening of the scope of the local work of Zemstvos.
3. Independence of the courts.
4. Protection of labor and attention to the question of the introduction of state insurance for workingmen.
5. Revision of so-called exceptional laws and limitation of the discretionary power of administrative officers.
6. Protection of the fundamental law of the empire establishing religious tolerance.
7. Legislation to limit the rights of foreigners in Russia.
8. The removal of unnecessary restrictions on the press.

All these promises, so far as they are of any political significance, are utterly incompatible with an autocratic regime. For instance, the promised measures for safeguarding the existing law, for the securing the independence of courts and for limiting the discretionary power of administrative authorities, are, in a despotic regime, simply meaningless words. Similar laws were passed by Alexander II, and these amounted to nothing, because there was no guarantee that they would not be repealed or modified, and because their enforcement was in the hands of a corrupt bureaucratic hierarchy. Even the motives set forth in the manifesto prove how meaningless the whole document is.

Article 5 reads: "That there should be a revision of the exceptional laws which were decreed at the time of an unparalleled outbreak of criminal activity on the part of enemies of public order, and the application of which was attended by a grave extension of the discretionary power of the administrative authorities."

Now it was probably known to His Majesty that, so far as "criminal activity on the part of the enemies of public order" is concerned, no period of Russian history can compare with the present day. Suffering particularly from the arbitrary power of the highest administrative authorities, who represent the arbitrary power of the Czar, His Majesty's subjects have indicated their resentment by killing two successive secretaries of the interior...but it is obvious that the arbitrary power of the Czar's secretaries and their subordinates can not be limited without limiting the source of all arbitrary power…

Article 7, announcing the expulsion of foreigners, so far as their presence is not manifestly needed by the state,

...Scarcely a measure which is likely to be helpful to the industrial development of Russia.

Article 8 promises to remove all "unnecessary restrictions" of the press, and to place printed speech within clearly defined legal limits.

It remains to be seen what restrictions will be regarded as "necessary," and how much free scope the legal limits will leave to the press.

This manifesto, which perhaps would have pacified the public a year ago, excited profound indignation throughout Russia…It must not be forgotten that it was published just at the time when Port Arthur (controlled by the Russians) was about to surrender to Nogi (a Japanese general), when the remnants of the fleet in the Far East were being wiped out, when two hundred and forty-nine districts of European Russia had already been mobilized, and when Russian industry was almost paralyzed by the war. Under these conditions, the manifesto altogether missed its object. The reactionary press alone was glad. Inspired by the government, it waged war against the idea of parliament. The bureaucracy and its two organs, the Grashdanin and the Moskovskia Vedomosti, maintained that a parliament would stand like a stonewall between the sovereign and the people…The demands for guarantees of life and liberty were not recognized by the bureaucracy as popular demands, but were regarded as caprices of intellectual malcontents. It rested with the common people to show that this was not the case, and the great political strike (Bloody Sunday) took place.

The story of the strike is well known...It was, according to eyewitnesses, a most orderly, and well-behaved crowd, desirous only to petition His Majesty for political rights. The petitioners, it has been officially admitted, were not armed. They came with their women, their children, and their indigent parents. They came to tell their sovereign that they were human beings and that their endurance had its limits. They came to ask for his protection. They came to beg him to rescue them, to give them means of working out their own salvation, to free them, to allow them to share in the government of the country...The humble petitioners, their wives, and their children were met with volley after volley of lead from rifles and machine guns; they were pursued in their flight by Cossacks. Quiet has been restored at St. Petersburg, and is being restored in the same fashion in other Russian cities.

It is claimed, on behalf of the Russian government, that the gathering of the workingmen was unlawful, and that the people of St. Petersburg had been especially warned to remain in their houses, but in Russia so many things are unlawful…and the people were not warned and had no reason to expect that such an assembly of Russians would be met by the Russian government like foreign enemies arrayed for instant battle. In other countries gatherings of a really dangerous character, riotous mobs recruited from the dregs of a metropolitan population, are scattered, after due notice, with no greater damage than a few bruised shoulders and broken scalps. After meeting a body of laborers led by a priest with such intense and indiscriminate butchery, after refusing to quarter to men, women, and children, His Majesty's government must naturally be prepared to take the consequences of its action…

As to the revolutionists, whose number is growing daily…His Majesty's government seems to be fully aware of the dangers confronting it. We are told that the Czar is ready to make some further concessions to pacify the public. He has also appointed an insignificant but very much hated police official, Trepov, to serve as Governor General, and incidentally as lightning conductor, if it is to prove necessary to divert popular vengeance from the throne…

The climax is not yet reached, but it will probably be reached soon. His Majesty's government faces an unpleasant dilemma. If it continues the war, it will increase the general dissatisfaction; if it mobilizes more districts, it will revolutionize them. If, on the other hand, it asks for peace, it will have on its hands at home a defeated army, which has suffered much graft from maladministration. The officers and the men of this unfortunate army are as little likely to strengthen the cause of autocracy at home as autocracy is likely to strengthen Russia's prestige abroad.

Vladimir G. Simkhovitch.
February 1905.