than the Government. The Committees were put under suspicion of having revolutionary tendencies, and every effort was made to diminish their importance.
Even the Fourth Duma, elected, as it was, on the basis of Stolypin's electoral coup d'état and representing privileged classes, which had been through all its years of existence thoroughly obedient and willing to do all the Government might wish, was so humiliated and insulted that it was driven perforce into a revolutionary attitude.
Life had become intolerable. Everywhere there was suspicion of treason, and actual treason everywhere. Everywhere there was mutual hatred. And high over it all and as a symbol of it all was a dastardly Government and a putrescent Court anxious only for its own preservation at any price. If Russia on the eve of the Revolution was a living organism in its agony, the Monarchy was a putrifying corpse.
***
Now it should be clearly understood
