The Spirit of Russia/Volume 1/Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
§ 34.
TOWARDS the end of the reign of Alexander III, constitutionalist aspirations grew stronger. During the last days of the tsar's life the draft of a constitution was circulated in manuscript, and after his death the demand for a constitution was openly voiced in some of the zemstvos. Nicholas II, the new tsar, seized the opportunity to declare categorically to the representatives of the nobles who came to congratulate him on his wedding that he would uphold the foundations of autocracy no less firmly than his father.
Two days later there was circulated in St. Petersburg a plain answer to this program of Nicholas II. In reply to his declaration of war against liberal aims it was asserted: "You have begun the struggle, and the battle will not be long delayed."
In fact, there was little delay.
The repressive policy of Alexander III was continued, and was in many respects made more drastic than ever. In the new tsar, however, there was lacking the harsh but widely recognised authority of Alexander III, whose father’s assassination had been regarded as a partial justification for the use of repressive measures. Under Nicholas, no serious attempt was made to solve the great social problems that were crying for solution, the agrarian question and the need for reform of the corrupt administration being ignored. Despite the continuous increase in the number of operatives, nothing was done to promote labour legislation. The activities of the schools, of scientific corporations, and of the press, were officially restricted. Before long it was generally recognised that the tsar, unlike his father, had no will of his own, and that Nicholas was in effect a prisoner in the hands of Pobědonoscev and the sordid clique of Bezobrazov, Saharov, Aleksěev, etc., whose mouthpiece was Katkov's newspaper.
A more irritable and revolutionary mood began to prevail, not among the intelligentsia alone, but likewise among the operatives and the peasantry. During and after 1895 there were serious labour troubles; in 1896, the great strike of 30,000 textile workers took place in St. Petersburg; the Jewish workman became organised in the social democratic "Bund." In Minsk, during the year 1898, was constituted the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.
Remarkable and characteristically Russian was the opposition movement in the universities, for by 1899 these had become positively impregnated with revolutionary feeling. The government retaliated by repressive measures, students who participated in the movement were forcibly enrolled as soldiers, and this increased the ferment.
Professors and writers of advanced views now took their places boldly in the front ranks of the opposition. I may recall the protest of the literati against the inhuman treatment of the people by the police and the Cossacks on March 17, 1901.
The socialists were opposed to individual revolutionary acts, their aim being to promote the economic organisation and strengthening of their party ("the economists") ; but as the number of organised workers increased, ideas of a mass movement for political revolution began to prevail. The various opposition parties drew closer together, so that a peculiar political alliance resulted, and constitutionalist liberals cooperated more harmoniously with the working class and with the resurgent terrorists than had seemed possible in previous campaigns. The terrorist groups of the Narodnaja Volja had undergone disintegration, but in the year 1901 this body became renascent as the Social Revolutionary Party. In contradistinction to the Social Democratic Labour Party, the Social Revolutionary Party advocated the weapon of terrorism, reviving in its "fighting organisation" (boevaja organizacija) the traditions of the "executive committee." Under pressure of this party, whose propagandist activities were pursued mainly among the peasantry, the social democrats, too, for the nonce recognised terrorist attacks as permissible in exceptional circumstances. Throughout the various revolutionary parties there was manifest a tendency to unite for common measures, and seeing that all revolutionary parties are socialistically inclined there was general agreement that in Russia political revolution was to pave the way for social revolution. The Russian Marxists, and above all the revisionists, were busily at work. Orthodox Marxism and economic materialism were tempered by revisionism, so that the state was recognised as possessing equal rights side by side with the conditions of economic production. Marxist aloofness from "mere" politics came to an end; the economic campaign against the bourgeoisie was abandoned; operatives, capitalists, and great landlords were unanimous in their demand for political reform.
The bourgeoisie and the liberal aristocracy took the lead, pushed forward by the working class and by the peasantry. Struve, the revisionist social democrat, founded at Stuttgart in the year 1902 the periodica "Osvoboždenie" (Deliverance), whose publication was continued until October 1905. In January 1904 the constitutionalists established the "Sojuz Osvoboždenija" (League of Deliverance), which was to organise for joint action all the radical and revolutionary parties of Russia. The task was far from easy, for in Russia each nationality has its special program; but for a time at least community of need enforced community of effort.[1]
In September 1905 the League of Deliverance was transformed into the Constitutional Democratic Party.[2]
War against the tsar opened in 1901 with the assassination of Bogolěpov, minister for education. In 1902. followed the murder of Sypjagin, minister for home affairs, who during his thirty months of office had ordered the arrest on political grounds of 60,000 persons. The turn of Pleve came next (1904): the assassination of Grand Duke Sergius followed; the attempt on Pobědonoscev miscarried.
Apart from these isolated terrorist deeds the organised workers made ready for a mass struggle. From the day of Nicholas Il's advent to the throne, continuous increase in the strength of the political opposition was noticeable, culminating in the widespread revolutionary movement of the year 1905.[3]
Doubtless the tsar's government and advisers marked the threatening storm, but they continued to hope that petty concessions would suffice to save absolutism. In a manifesto promulgated in March 1903 the tsar made a few obscurely formulated promises; in June 1903 the Poles were granted the privilege of giving religious instruction in the Polish tongue. But there was no change in administrative methods; discontent continued to increase in Russia proper, in Finland (where Bobrikov, the governor-general, was assassinated on June 16, 1904), in Caucasia, and universally. Svjatopolk-Mirskii, appointed Pleve's successor on September 8, 1904, wooed "the confidence of society," but his attitude towards the zemstvo congress in Moscow showed how weak was his liberalism. A great impression was made throughout the country by this congress. At first authorised by Svjatopolk-Mirskii, it was subsequently prohibited at the instigation of Pobědonoscev and some of the grand dukes. Held none the less on November 19, 20, 21, 1904, it demanded a constitution, extensive administrative reforms, and general measures of social utility.
The mass revolutionary movement may be considered to date from the procession of St. Petersburg operatives led by the pope, Gapon. The workmen organised by Gapon in St. Petersburg, like those organised by Zubatov in Moscow, were loyal subjects of the tsar. Reinforced by some of the social democrats, they made their ingenuons demonstration in front of the winter palace.
It is true that the assembly was dispersed by the imperial troops, but bloody Sunday, January 22, 1905, was nevertheless the defeat of absolutism. It is proved that the workers went in peace to the winter palace, the only disorders occurring on the Vasilii-Ostrov, where some barricades were erected and some stores of arms plundered. Excitement was greatly increased by the slaughtering of the defenceless people. Strikes were general in towns and country districts. Bulygin's ministry endeavoured to pacify the country, and in the beginning of March was promulgated a manifesto containing a rescript to the minister (instructing him to summon deputies to consider legislative proposals) and a ukase to the senate (granting the right of petition to the ministerial council); but these concessions failed to restore tranquillity. The sanctioning of religious freedom in April produced a better impression. The preparations for the organisation of a panrussian peasant league, and the congress held by this body in Moscow from August 14th to 16th, could not fail to convince the government that Bulygin's plans were an anachronism.
During the summer of 1905 the whole country was in an uproar—not alone Russia proper and the Russian capitals, but in addition Poland and the Baltic provinces. The disorders in Livonia, in Finland, and in Caucasia, were especially grave; and the ferment extended even into Siberia. For these reasons, immediately after the close of the Japanese war in the peace signed at Portsmouth on August 16, 1905, a constitution was granted on August 19th, based upon the decrees of March, and the law concerning the establishment of the national duma and the electoral law were promulgated. Bulygin's constitution, however, which granted the people and the popular representatives no powers beyond those attaching to a consultative parliament, never came into existence, for the zemstvo congress refused to accept it, whilst the great strike in October showed what the working classes and society at large thought of the matter. It may indeed be said that this was not simply a strike of the working class, but a strike of society at large. Employers and merchants made common cause with their employees. In the railway strike which determined the issue, middle-class officials were on strike just as much as workmen. The October strike was a magnificent protest of united Russia against tsarism.[4]
The seriousness of the revolutionary aims was proved by the organisation of the council of workers' deputies which from the thirteenth of October for fifty days conducted the movement in St. Petersburg. The council did not consist solely of workmen and socialists, but was an attempt at the deliberate fusion of all oppositional and revolutionary energies.
The October strike was followed on October 17th and 30th by the promulgation of the October constitution. The tsar renounced his absolutist authority; he granted to the national duma legislative and constitutionalist rights; he conceded inviolability of the person, freedom of thought and utterance, the right of public meeting, and the right of combination.
On November 21st Pobědonoscev retired on pension. The chief procurator of the holy synod had understood the signs of the time. After the promulgation of the constitution the metropolitan of Moscow instructed the popes of his diocese to preach sermons favouring reaction, but on October 29th the Moscow clergy issued a public proclamation against their spiritual chief.
All classes, all schools of political thought, were united in the struggle against absolutism.
The town operatives and those of the rural industrial centres constituted the main strength of this first mass revolution in Russia, the various sections of Marxists working hand in hand with the social revolutionaries.
After the October strike and after the promulgation of the constitution the peasants rallied to the side of the workmen, and their lead was followed by the radical intelligentsia in the zemstvos. At the close of the year the movement among the peasantry assumed a threatening character, and in the course of 1906 it took the form of innumerable local riots and acts of violence directed against landowners Hence the landowners and the nobility soon cooled towards the revolution, and joined forces with the government, which had in the meanwhile gathered strength.
The middle and higher bourgeoisie participated in the struggle for freedom; manufacturers and other employers continued to pay wages to men on strike; the salariat joined with workmen and peasants in carrying out the decrees of the revolutionary committee. Even by the moderate parties the revolution was recognised for a time as the power that had gained the victory over absolutism.
All the universities participated in the uprising, students and professors, authors and journalists, following the best traditions of Russian literature and publicism.
The new spirit prevailed likewise among the clergy, for the altar could no longer sustain the burden of the tottering throne. A liberal group of clergy, formed the Brotherhood of Defenders of the Renovation of the Church, and as the outcome of their impulsion the synod called upon the government to summon a council. In conformity with this demand a committee was appointed to supervise the necessary preliminaries.
The tsarist system was torn by internal dissensions. The commander-in-chief against Japan had, under the eyes of the victorious enemy, to offer resistance to the camarilla. Thousands of officers and soldiers, wounded, crippled, shattered in health, had had bitter experience of the effects of tsarist absolutism. They suffered in mind no less than in body, these soldiers and officers who, for all their self-sacrificing spirit, for all their courage, were compelled to withdraw shame-stricken from the Asiatic theatre of war. To the wide plains of Russia there now returned thousands upon thousands of cripples, and soldier peasants to the number of hundreds of thousands, who would relate to coming generations the sins of tsarist absolutism.
In the navy, dissatisfaction was even more rife than in the army, as was shown by the mutiny of entire ships complements.
All classes and schools of thought, the peoples of all nations alities, differing in language, tradition, civilisation, and religion, united against the common enemy, displaying a splendid natural unity in face of the unnaturalness of theocratic despotism.
Nineteen hundred and five was the logical sequel of eighteen hundred and sixty-one. The liberation of the peasantry had removed the broad foundation of absolutism. The peasants, from among whom the operatives were recruited, had imbibed the teachings of the intelligentsia, and with horny hands they now realised the hopes of Radiščev and the best of his successors. The revolution of 1905 was not evoked by the defeat upon the great battlefields of the far east: it was the continuation of the decabrist rising; it was the fusion of the countless isolated struggles of the terror; it was the fruit of philosophic and political enlightenment.
Gor'kii, proletarian and barefooted vagabond, was literary spokesman of the victorious revolution.
§ 35.
THE Romanovs had been in no hurry to grant a constitution, although it was to the zemskii sobor that they owed their own election to the Russian throne.
But one who recalls how in my own land of Austria the political omnipotence of absolutism was relinquished hesitatingly and as it were drop by drop, one who knows the history of reaction under Napoleon, of the Bourbon restoration, and of similar restorations in other countries, would hardly expect anything better of tsarism.
The October manifesto was merely the promise of a constitution. Fulfilment ought to have been effected in accordance with the best European models and through the instrumentality of the legislative assembly; but the worst European models were those chosen for imitation by the tsar and his advisers.
Under Witte a ministerial council was formed to act as cabinet (November 1, 1905), the suffrage was somewhat extended (December 24,1905), and Bulygin's duma statute was improved. The council of state was transformed to constitute a kind of senate (March 5, 1906), being enlarged by the addition of elected members, the tsar reserving the right of appointing the president and of nominating members in equal number to those elected.
The duma assembled on May 10, 1906. On May 6th a new revision of the fundamental laws was published, to specify in particular the legal position of the tsar, for whom was reserved the exclusive right of initiative in the alteration of the fundamental laws. The promulgation of these fundamental rights took place quite autocratically, by way of ordinance.
The first duma was elected by indirect suffrage. The rural constituencies were comparatively numerous, and while it is true that the preference thus given to the country over the towns was in conformity with Russian conditions, it is obvious that the government speculated upon the political apathy of large rural areas and upon the lack of political training in these. Moreover, special powers were assigned to the landowners.
Nearly half the members of the first duma were peasants. To be precise, on June 13th, of 478 deputies, 204 were peasants, this being 45·5 per cent. The other members were adherents of the intelligentsia. Speaking generally, from Russia proper and from the electorates of the other national sections, the best elements were sent to the duma. No more than two illiterates were elected.
On May 10th in the winter palace, the duma was opened by the tsar with a speech from the throne. Muromcev, a cadet (vide infra), the man who during the reign of Alexander III had been dismissed from the chair of Roman law at Moscow university, was elected president.
Before and still more during the elections occurred the formation of the first publicly and legally recognised political parties. As a matter of course they were at this time inchoate, for program and organisation could only be developed and tested in actual working. One hundred and five of the deputies were independents.
It need hardly be said that all three sections, the right, the left, and the centre, were represented in the duma, and that each of them consisted of several subsections. In the first duma the party of the right was the weakest. At the outset there were a few independents really belonging to the right, who subsequently constituted themselves as a group of progressists, twelve in number; these progressists led the opposition, which was friendly to the government. The left and the centre formed a very large anti-governmental majority.
The left, too, at first consisted of independents. About one hundred of these combined to form the Labour Party (trudoviki). To this belonged the few social democrats and Social revolutionaries in the house, for some had been elected although both these parties had boycotted the duma. Not until later were some social democrats elected in Caucasia in conformity with the tactics of the minority of the party. They formed an independent group in the duma, comprising seventeen deputies. The social revolutionaries did not constitute a distinct party.
The centre consisted of four sections. The main body contained the constitutional democrats, 160 in number. There was a small body of democratic reformers; there was a party of "peaceful renovation"; and there were the members of the union of October seventeenth. The centre groups became known as "cadets" from the initial letters of the name of the largest section among them ("constitutional" in Russian being spelled with a k—the "K.D.'s" were termed the "kadets").
The five national parties, the Poles, Esthonians, Letts, Lithuanians. and Little Russians, acted in common as the League of Autonomists. There were about seventy of this group, but its numbers fluctuated greatly, as its members adhered to other parties from time to time.[5]
From the very first the government and the bureaucracy were hostile to the duma. Doubtless the demands of that body were of a radical character, but the ultra-revolutionary parties, and in especial the social revolutionaries, had expressly renounced terrorist methods; and moreover, all the revolutionary parties, Social Democratic Party, Social Revolutionary Party, and the League of Deliverance. had undergone notable changes amid the new conditions.
In the Social Democratic Party two groups had been constituted, a "majority," consisting of advocates of revolutionary methods, and a "minority" (led by Plehanov and others), desiring to use social democratic methods, and to have recourse to revolution in exceptional cases only.[6]
The majority desired to boycott the duma, but the minority wished to participate in the elections.
The social revolutionaries were subdivided into the moderate folk-socialists (also termed young narodniki or neo-narodniki) and the terrorist "maximalists"; there was also a centre group in this party with indeterminate trends.[7]
The first duma had two leading tasks to perform. It was necessary to solve the agrarian problem. Not merely must political liberties be legislatively secured, but the control and the reform of the administration must be placed upon a sound basis. In the address submitted in response to the speech from the throne, both these demands were voiced. An agrarian program was sketched, aiming in principle at the abolition of private property in land; legal and administrative guarantees were demanded for the fundamental rights; there was to be an amnesty for political offenders.
After the elections Witte was replaced by Goremykin. The address was answered by a declaration of war, and the duma was dissolved on July 10th. The agrarian program was the immediate cause of the dissolution. The government having reiterated in decisive terms its dissent from the duma's proposals, the duma issued a manifesto to the people, and was dissolved on that account.
Goremykin's cabinet came to an end with the disappearance of the duma, and Stolypin, who had been minister for home affairs under Goremykin, now became premier.
At this juncture one hundred and eighty members of the duma met in Viborg, and resolved to issue a manifesto to the people, urging them to refuse the payment of taxes and to resist enrolment in the army. This manifesto was not signed by the duma as such, but by the individual members who issued it. Proceedings were instituted by the government against the signatories, and these were consequently excluded from the second duma.
The life of the first duma lasted barely three months, and from July 10, 1906, to February 20, 1907, Russia was without a duma.
The reactionary measures of the government had disastrous results. Whilst political revolutionary sentiment increased and spread throughout the country, there spread in addition an unpolitical anarchy, manifesting itself in murders and in the theft of public and private moneys. Thereby political agitation was rendered extremely difficult, above all for the revolutionary parties.
Courts martial were instituted by the government as a protective measure. These courts acted promptly, but with great injustice. It is known that in quite a number of cases innocent persons were executed.
Military justice was, of course, blind on suitable occasions. It proved impossible to discover the assassins of Herzenstein, a member of the duma, although it speedily became known that the deed had some criminal association with the League of the Russian People.
The disorders among the peasantry continued. The harvest of 1906 was a very bad one, and in consequence of hunger, the mužiks' ancient enemy, the countryfolk became profoundly discontented. Owing to the extremity of need, political demands were forgotten. The political agitation carried on by the radical and revolutionary parties secured but little attention, more especially seeing that the government, desiring to forestall the next duma, undertook on its own initiative to deal with the agrarian problem. Consequently, after the harvest of 1906, the ukase was promulgated which exercised decisive influence upon the organisation of the communes and upon the position of the peasant as landowner. By the ukase of October 5, 1906. the peasants were placed upon the same footing as other classes in respect of the subdivision of family property and in respect of freedom of residence, the power of the mir over the individual peasant being thereby broken. By the ukase of November 9, 1906, every head of family was empowered to claim from the mir his share of land, to be held as private property. To carry out these decisions "committees for supplying the peasants with land" were established, and upon them officials and landowners held a decisive majority (ten votes as against three peasant representatives). By the labours of the committees, with the assistance of the Agrarian Bank, the government was able to appease the peasantry before the assembly of the second duma. A contributory cause of the pacification was doubtless the influence of the cavalry patrols dispatched to various districts. But it is unquestionable that the government's agrarian legislation diverted the attention of the peasant towards the notable changes which the law of November 9th and the associated reforms in the judiciary, the educational system, etc., effected in his life.[8]
In the towns and industrial districts, excitement among operatives was comparatively intense, an accessory cause of disturbance being the industrial crisis which began in the autumn of 1906.
By concessions to the old believers and the sectaries the government endeavoured to assume a liberal aspect, but despite this the general mood remained antagonistic. Although by the new suffrage system introduced by Witte on December 11, 1906, and by certain decrees issued by the senate, the passive suffrage (eligibility for election) was falsified in order to secure the defeat of undesired candidates, an opposition majority was returned to the second duma. The government was indeed able to ensure that what had been lacking to the first duma, a properly organised right, should now come into existence. On the other hand, many more social democrats and social revolutionaries were elected to the second duma. The right consisted of twelve members of the League of the Russian People, forty-three moderates (among whom was the Party of October Seventeenth), and fifty independents.
To the centre belonged ninety-six constitutionalist democrats, the president (this time Golovin) being again chosen from among this group, forty-six Poles, and one member of the Party of Democratic Reform.
The Cossack group, numbering seventeen members, occupied an intermediate position between the centre and the left.
The left comprised sixty-nine social democrats, thirty-seven social revolutionaries, a hundred and three members of the Labour Party, and fifteen young narodniki.
The Mohammedans, twenty-eight in number, inclined towards the left.
The second duma lasted but a few days longer than the first, from March 5th to June 16, 1907. It was natural that superstitious persons should regard it as a sign of ill omen when on March 15th the ceiling of the chamber fell in. Apart from this, thoughtful politicians and good observers had reason to expect that in the case of the second duma also the vital threads would soon be cut. From the outset it was the aim of the right to provoke the majority by reactionary and partisan proposals and to demonstrate that the duma was unworkable.
On June 1st the government demanded suspension of parliamentary immunity in the case of sixteen deputies who were declared to be criminal conspirators, and demanded further that thirty-nine members of the Social Democratic Party should be excluded from the house. The committee appointed to discuss the question was unable to come to a decision, and on June 16th the second duma was dissolved by a manifesto from the tsar, who adduced various grounds of censure, among which the chief were that the duma refused to express condemnation of murders and acts of violence and refused to surrender conspirators against the state and the throne.
On the day of the dissolution the government arbitrarily issued a new electoral law. The number of deputies was reduced to 437; the suffrage of the towns, the operatives, and the peasants (nearly half the electors), was enormously reduced, whilst the power of the landed gentry and the zemstvo bureaucracy was greatly increased. The third duma, therefore, was predominantly aristocratic, a duma of conservative great landowners. The party of the right, and the centre comprising the Octobrists (107), together controlled nearly three-fourths of the votes; the cadets (56) and the greatly reduced radicals and revolutionaries had become a small minority; in addition the cadets had lost a number of their best men. The social democrats held no more than seventeen seats, the Labour Party and the young narodniki no more than sixteen, whilst the social revolutionaries had boycotted the third duma. The economic crisis of 1906 found its logical continuation in 1907. Once more the crops failed in many administrative districts; the effects of the industrial crisis were manifested in several strikes; and, in the south, to all these evils was superadded an epidemic of cholera. The extent to which Russia suffered economically is indicated by the decline in the population of Odessa, a decline amounting to 100,000.
The elections were concluded on October 1st, and the third duma met on October 2nd. The nature of the new situation was promptly shown by the election of the president and his aides. Homjakov, Octobrist and governmental henchman, a descendant of the celebrated slavophil, was chosen president, and the vice-presidents were likewise members of the right.
During the debate upon the address, Bishop Mitrofan demanded recognition of the tsar's autocracy, a proposal rejected by the house; but Stolypin in his declaration expressed the same idea in a somewhat masked form, whilst in the preamble to the declaration the autocracy was recognised clearly enough. Stolypin uttered grave threats against the revolution and the parties of the extreme left.
The character of the third duma was shown most clearly in the election as deputies of nearly sixty clerics of various grades; but Petrov, a liberal priest, who with a few other clerics had adhered to the opposition in the second duma, failed to secure re-election.
Aided by the majority in the duma, Stolypin's government did all that was possible to restore the old regime. The nobility and in particular the conservative and reactionary landed gentry, now reaped a renewed harvest. The government and the church (the synod) rescinded all the liberties that had been granted. The press, the schools, the unorthodox, priests and officials of liberal views, were harassed and their convictions were outraged. The third duma, like its predecessors, debated the political rights of citizens and the fundamental right of the individual, for these important factors of the constitution had been dealt with by the tsar alone and in a partial manner. Arrests continued in large numbers, so that the prisons were crowded with political "criminals."
Collective trials of a positively ludicrous character were deliberately undertaken. On December 12, 1907, the social democratic "conspirators" of the second duma were sentenced; and on the same day the trial of the 169 deputies of the first duma was begun—of course these, too, were condemned.
The fourth duma, elected in 1912, was similar in composition. The left, however, had gained in strength. The united efforts of the government and of the synod, intervening openly and directly on three occasions through the instrumentality of an electoral board, did not secure the expected majority.
§ 36.
IF we desire to understand absolutism and the revolution we must examine the methods of the counter-revolution somewhat more closely.
The October strike alarmed and confused the government of the tsar. In 1848, in a similar manner, the Viennese government lost its head, and at the outset yielded ground before the revolution. The disordered state of the Russian government was most conspicuously displayed in its dealings with the press laws.
On the strength of the October manifesto, Russian journalists assumed without further parley that freedom of the press had been established. Faced by this pressure, in December 1905 the government abolished preventive censorship as far as the towns were concerned, and made a few other liberal concessions, whilst leaving intact certain old oppressive regulations and supplementing these by new. In actual fact, after October 1905, St. Petersburg journalists wrote with a freedom which is still unknown in Austria. Not merely were the predecessors of the reigning tsar criticised without reserve, but for a time even Nicholas II was subjected to more cautious criticism. Large freedoms were likewise assumed as far as books were concerned. As if between night and morning the book market was transformed. Works previously prohibited, both native and translated, were now freely published. and often simultaneously by several firms. Thus were promptly circulated in large numbers the writings of Radiščev, the decabrists, Herzen, Kropotkin, Černyševskii, etc.; the confiscated works and the censored portions of the works of Dostoevskii, Turgenev, Tolstoi, etc.; the writings of Marx, Lassalle, Plehanov, etc.; the works of Spencer, Strauss, Feuerbach, Spinoza, Diderot, and Voltaire; the pamphlets and larger books issued by the socialist publishing house in Stuttgart; and so on. Russia was furnished with a supply of revolutionary literature for the coming epoch of reaction, and not until later could there be leisure for the quiet perusal and digestion of the vast quantities of matter rapidly issued from the press.
But after certain vacillations in the revolutionary direction, the government collected its forces, and towards the end of December 1905 tsarism initiated a deliberate counter-revolution. Above all, the government endeavoured to save absolutism by obscure and ambiguous utterances. This relates more especially to the concept of autocracy (samoderžavie), which may be interpreted in the sense either of European monarchy or in that of Byzantine despotism. The government seized every opportunity of stressing the latter aspect, whereas the constitutionalists naturally interpreted the term as signifying nothing more than constitutional monarchy.[9]
It is for this reason that certain journalists and statesmen have asked whether Russia possesses a constitution at all. Certainly Russia has a constitution—but it is one based upon the Prussian model.
The police and the administration endeavoured to save their customary absolutism by the most ludicrous expedients, nor was it long before the government proceeded to a formal restriction of fundamental rights. For example the right of public meeting was left intact, but preventive censorship over advertisements was retained and it thus remained possible to restrict the effectiveness of electoral meetings.
Laws and ordinances concerning freedom of the press, freedom of conscience (the right to change one's religion), freedom of combination, freedom of study and teaching, were unceasing topics of parliamentary and journalistic discussion. In the beginning of November 1909, Stolypin withdrew the proposals for toleration which had been laid before the duma in the previous summer. Many similar instances might be given.
Freedom of speech and writing was repressed after the ancient manner. The list of books and newspapers confiscated between October 30, 1905, and January 1/13, 1909, fills 160 large octavo pages. Books and pamphlets which could be published in 1905 and 1906 were again prohibited (works of Tolstoi, Kropotkin, etc.).
The history of the duma suffrage shows what the absolutist administration was capable of. It suffices in this connection to compare the first and second dumas with the third, or to read a report of the doings of the government in individual elections.
The electoral law of June 16, 1907, was issued by arbitrary decree, although in the state fundamental law it is expressly stated in several paragraphs that the tsar is competent to promulgate laws only in conjunction with the duma (and the council of state). In the relevant section (87), which is modelled upon § 14 in the Austrian constitution, the regulation of the suffrage is expressly removed from the tsar's competence, but the coup d'état was carried out in defiance of this specification.
The electoral law, with its electoral geometry, may in the political field be compared in the artistic and the aesthetic field with the Moscow Vasilii Blažennyi (the cathedral of St. Basil, built in the reign of John the Terrible).
A pamphlet exists recording all prosecutions instituted against deputies to the first duma. The members of almost all the parties were prosecuted for one reason or another. Similar prosecutions were initiated against the liberal deputies of the second and third dumas. Even the octobrists were too "red" for the police!
Reports concerning the "white terror" constitute a permanent rubric of the daily press from 1906 onwards. The white terror began with the suppression of the December revolt (1905), which in Moscow was characterised by fierce barricade fighting. The "days of freedom" of October and November had passed away. Not merely was the revolution suppressed, but in most of the larger towns (eighty-five are enumerated) with the connivance of the police there occurred the well-known pogroms directed against the Jews, but in some cases also (as in Tver and Tomsk) against the intelligentsia.
My pen is reluctant to describe the infamies of this reign of terror. In actual fact, everyone in Russia is still [1913] an outlaw. It may be said without exaggeration that during the white terror the fear of death ceased to exist. It had been driven away by pogroms; by the death sentences of courts martial and field courts martial; by arrest and martyrisations in the prisons and on the road to Siberia; by the extremities of cruelty and torture; by the frequency of suicide in the prisons; by illness, epidemic disease, and famine. During the first year of the constitution, from October 1905 to October 1906, 22,721 persons suffered physical injury in pogroms and other civil disorders.
In August 1908 Stolypin the premier informed Stead the English journalist that the number of executions averaged fifteen per month. Kropotkin promptly contested this statement in the Times, and subsequently in The Terror in Russia (1909) he published a critical compilation of the facts concerning the methods recently employed by the government and the police. I extract the following data:
| Death Sentences. | Executions. | |||||
| Courts Martial | 1905 | . . | . . | . . | 96 | 32 |
| Courts Martial„ | 1906 | . . | . . | . . | 773 | 280 |
| Courts Martial„ | 1907 | . . | . . | . . | 1,432 | 508 |
| Courts Martial„ | 1908 | . . | . . | . . | 1,835 | 802[10] |
| Field Courts Martial August 19, 1906, to April 20, 1907 | — | 676 | ||||
| Field Courts Martial January to March 1909 | . . | 396 | 235 | |||
These data refer only to civilians.
The government alleged in excuse that in consequence of the revolution there had been a great increase in murders and in crimes against property. On June 3, 1909, th following data referring to murder and attempted murder were laid before the duma by the government.
| Persons murdered | Persons wounded. | |||||||
| 1905 | (Middle of October to end of December) | 222 | 217 | |||||
| 1906 | . . | . . | . . | . . | . . | . . | 1,126 | 1,506 |
| 1907 | . . | . . | . . | . . | . . | . . | 3,001 | 1,076 |
| 1908 | . . | . . | . . | . . | . . | . . | 1,820 | 2,083 |
The reader can study all these cruelties in Kropotkin's record. I will content myself here with referring to the letter from Lomtatidze, the duma deputy imprisoned in Sevastopol, a translation of which was published in the "Daily News" 'of April 13, 1909. This simple report of what was personally seen and experienced, influences our imaginations more powerfully than such a work as Andreev's widely circulated The Seven that were Hanged. In his pamphlet entitled The Hanging Tsar Tolstoi stigmatises the cruelties of tsarist repression.
What explanation can be given of the massacre in April 1912 at the Siberian gold mines of the Lena company, when the soldiers killed 270 workmen on strike and wounded 250 others? In earlier days, it is true, even more persons were executed. Under the father of Peter the Great, Alexis Mihailovič, the executions of coiners alone numbered 7,000. If we turn to England we find that during the reign of Elizabeth there were more than 89,000 executions. The executions under Nicholas have not yet attained so high a figure, but (even if we leave the victims of the Japanese war out of consideration) more human lives than 89,000 have already been sacrificed by the fault of the government. Consider all the victims, beginning with the thousands who perished on the Hodynskoe Field at the coronation of Nicholas II; consider the premature deaths in Siberia and in the prisons; and consider all those who have been slaughtered in pogroms. . . . Does the tsar know all that is done in his name? Does he countersign thousands of death sentences without reflecting what these terrible figures mean? Whether he knows or not, whether he reflects or does not reflect, in any case the official defenders and legalist supporters of tsarism will find it hard to continue their justification of absolute monarchy. Yet this was the tsar who summoned the peace congress at The Hague.
I am aware that the blame for all that happened does not attach to the tsar and his government alone. A large section of society, cultured as well as uncultured (for the officials instrumental in carrying out the white terror belonged to the intelligentsia), demanded and cooperated in these brutal methods of repression. The white terror was supported by a vigorous agitation in the press. The reactionary journals, which during the years 1904 and 1905 had joined with the others in clamouring for reforms and legality ("Novoe Vremja," "Svět," "Graždanin," etc), had now become the journalistic and literary defenders of blood-stained reaction.
In 1906 was constituted the terrorist League of the Russian People, with its branch organisation, the Party of Active Struggle against the Revolution, whose reactionary agents and organisations, composed of the dregs of society, became notorious throughout the world after the Kishinev pogrom, under the name of "black hundred." Those only who have read at least one issue of one of the party organs, such as the "Russkoe Znamja" or the "Věče," can fully grasp the limitless barbarism of these groups; but some idea can be gleaned from the antisemitic journals of Vienna and Prague, which borrowed freely from the columns of the "Russkoe Znamja." In the Reichsrat, Brežnovský, through his interpellation of December 17, 1906, rendered accessible the contents of a Russian pamphlet entitled The Secret of Jewish Policy, its Methods and its Results, ascertained with the Aid of Science and of Pseudo-liberalism. It need hardly be said that Russia, like other countries, possesses also a silk-hatted mob. There were to be found university professors willing to write lying pamphlets and lying books, to furnish historical and social arguments justifying the doings of the black hundred. In these compilations all who display any tincture of liberal sentiment, and in especial all freemasons, Jews, Englishmen, and revolutionaries, are not merely denounced, but are represented as the spawn of an antirussian inferno.
There exists documentary proof that the police and various other instruments of the government, including some of the high officials, did not merely neglect to suppress the pogroms, but positively furthered and organised these atrocities. It has been demonstrated that the League of the Russian People was privy to the murder of Herzenstein, to that of Jollos, etc. We read, for example, in the "Věče": "O Russians, save Russia while salvation is yet possible. The death of Herzenstein cannot atone for all the murders of our Russian men, whose blood still calls for vengeance"!!!
The League of the Russian People had various branches and brother organisations, among which may be mentioned the League of the Archangel Michael, led by the notorious deputy Puriškivič. This league sent the monarchical sections a description of students who had disturbed lectures at the mining institute, and did everything in its power to promote denunciations.
It was the deliberate aim of the League of the Russian People to bring about the salvation of the fatherland by the use of such means as have been indicated. With this end in view absolute monarchy, Orthodoxy, and the Russian national spirit were to be strengthened, thus reviving Uvarov's trinitarian doctrine. At the congress of all the affiliated organisations held in October 1909, among the demands voiced were the re-establishment of the patriarchate, the annexation to Russia of Finland and of the Chelm administrative district, the expulsion of the Jews (who were not even to be allowed to write Russian), and so on. In a word, the demand was a panrussian, "For God, Tsar, and Fatherland."
Shortly after the issue of the October manifesto, Nicholas II received a deputation from the League of the Russian People. The spokesman, the notorious President Dubrovin, begged the tsar not to relinquish his autocracy. In response Nicholas pledged himself in words borrowed from Katkov, saying: "I shall continue to reign as autocrat, and to no one but God shall I render account of my doings."[11] Accepting the offered badge of the union, he said: "Tell your friends that with God's help and the assistance of the League of the Russian People I hope to destroy my enemies."
It was reported in the newspapers that after this audience Stolypin begged leave to resign. It must be remembered that in the legal proceedings initiated on account of the murder of Herzenstein, Dubrovin was cited by the Finnish court as an accessory. He preferred not to put in an appearance, and it was stated in the press that Theophil, the tsar's new spiritual adviser, had interceded on his behalf.
Contemporary tsarism and the counter-revolution cannot be properly understood without taking into account police participation in crime through the instrumentality of provocative agents. The history of the agent Azev is known in its main lines. This man served both the police and the social revolutionaries, organising not only the attack on Pleve but also that upon Grand Duke Sergius. Let the reader reflect upon the significance of this, that tsarism, in its desire to quell the revolution, should be willing to sacrifice its own adherents, persons of such distinction. Nor was Azev the first, for he was but one instrument in a system. In the reign of Alexander III, Sudeikin, chief of the ohrana, endeavoured to persuade the terrorist Degaev to join with his associates in the assassination of Tolstoi (then minister for home affairs) and of Grand Duke Vladimir. This would enable Degaev to betray the secret society with real efficiency, Sudeikin would be promoted to the ministry, and could then protect the person of the tsar. Degaev, under the influence of liquor, betrayed himself to a comrade, who declared that Degaev must kill Sudeikin if he wished to avoid being put out of the way. Degaev assassinated Sudeikin and escaped to America.
The government of the tsar-pope, the man whose rule was of God and for God, the man who was not responsible to the duma but to God alone, this government continued for a lengthy period, for the safety of the tsar to employ Azev the assassin, and continued to do so after Azev's murderous handiwork had been plainly proved and publicly stigmatized.
The work of the counter-revolution and the promotion of police absolutism were in the hands of a widely ramified "black cabinet," which supervised all domestic and foreign correspondence. The most highly placed dignitaries were not exempt from the attentions of this cabinet.[12]
The facts that have been adduced suffice for the condemnation of tsarism in the past as well as in the present, for the condemnation of the entire system. Theocratic cæsaropapism cannot be justified if it can be upheld only by such means—it cannot be true that the absolute tsar governs by God's grace, it cannot be true that God commends obedience towards the tsar, it cannot be true that such obedience is enjoined by conscience. The existence of the white terror under Nicholas proves that section four arbitrarily incorporated by him in the state fundamental laws, the section referring to the theocratic essence of the tsar's supreme authority, is false. Absolutism has no foundation either in religion or morals.
The deduction we have to draw from this reaction which has now lasted for many years applies also to the state church, the theoretical and practical basis of tsarism. From the first the church has defended tsarism against the opposition and against the revolution, and now the church has approved the reaction, has approved the black hundred, has availed itself of the services of that body in the interest of reaction. Finally, in the elections for the fourth duma, the church openly intervened on the side of reaction. The synod, Sabler the chief procurator, and the hierarchy, organised the.election of numerous members of the clergy, in order to secure the presence in the fourth duma of a clerical party far larger than the one which had existed in the third, and it was designed that these clerical deputies should be led by some of the hierarchs, who were likewise to secure election. But the result of the elections was a disagreeable surprise to the reactionary ecclesiastics, for whereas there had been forty-four priests in the third duma, there were but forty-three in the fourth.
The aim of the synod and the hierarchy was to transform the clergy into thoroughly pliable police tools of the anticonstitutionalist reaction. With this end in view a program was drafted whose two main points were as follows. In the first place, the clergy were to be paid by the state, to make them economically independent of the ecclesiastical authority; thus priests, like other officials, would become entirely subject to the good will of the government. Secondly, there was to be a modification in the educational system. The spiritual academies were already fitted to the purposes of reaction. By the curriculum of these seminaries, persons being trained for the priesthood were for practical purposes completely cut off from secular literature and thought, and were trained entirely in the spirit of theology.
But further changes were in contemplation.
Hitherto at the seminaries priests and teachers had been educated side by side, but seminaries were to become purely theological schools, for the training of priests alone, in order that the pupils at these institutions could no longer have the chance of adopting a secular career, for the more efficient and energetic young men were now refusing to take orders, and the church was suffering greatly from a dearth of candidates for the priesthood.
From the clerical side the same aim was followed in the proposed reorganisation of the church schools which had been founded during the reign of Alexander III. The curriculum in these schools had at first lasted two years, and had subsequently been extended to three. They were now to be transformed into institutions containing six classes, and were to give a purely theological general education, so that it would be impossible for pupils to pass from them into other schools.
These suggested reforms were a return to the plans of Archbishop Antonii. They imitated the training given in Catholic theological schools. The state church was to return to the middle ages, to the prepetrine Moscow of the patriarch-tsar Filaret. It was the hope of the reactionaries that the reintroduction of the patriarchate would subserve the same end, although the majority of the clergy expected it to strengthen the church and to emancipate the church from the tutelage of the state. At court, medieval superstition was dominant, as was shown by the Rasputin affair and by other indications.
If the white terror forces on us the conviction that tsarist absolutism is not a divinely ordained institution, we learn also from the sanction which the church is so ready to give to absolutism that the latter has no justification in appealing to God and to God's will for its policy and for its existence.
§ 37.
THE moral and legal justification of the revolution manifests the legal and moral danger of absolutisrn to society and to the state, and shows how impossible it is to transform absolutism by peaceable measures—for aristocracy and absolute monarchy have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
A sanguinary revolution as the ultimate means of escape from an existing system of coercion can never be faultless, quite apart from the consideration that in every revolution those co-operate who are not chiefly aiming at the overthrow of absolutism. The Russian revolution committed faults, thereby giving absolutism specious grounds for reaction. We shall have to consider this matter in fuller detail, but it may be said here that even though it be necessary to admit that the revolutionary tactics of expropriation were erroneous, there is no ground for considering that the political revolution which aimed at the overthrow of absolutism was responsible for the occurrence of the innumerable acts of theft and robbery. The anarchical conditions which ensued upon the revolution were the fault of the government and of its police. The official education of the masses had produced general instability; the repressive measures practised by the organs of state, to which mendacity and crime had for many decades been welcome weapons, had trained up the present generation of expropriators and pogromists, and had made the most barbarous hooliganism a scourge throughout the country.[13]
Discussion concerning the nature and significance of the revolution was carried on by all parties; the tactics of the struggle were criticised; the question as to the chief justification for the revolution was mooted; and the results of the revolution were appraised.
After the revolution a serious crisis affected Russian society.
The more conservative elements on the liberal side were content with what had been gained, and complained of the utopianism of the radicals. To the reactionaries it seemed that the prevalence of marauding and of expropriation by robbery warranted, not merely repressive measures, but a return to absolutism
The radical parties considered the constitution inadequate, but even within these parties there existed notable differences of opinion. Some hailed the frustration of the revolution almost with satisfaction, as sustaining their theory that political methods of reform were of no avail; others contended that the continuance of the revolution demanded by the more radical was needless.
The reaction, however, supplied more water to drive the radical mills. It was monstrous that the political organisation of the social democrats should be prohibited. Owing to this prohibition, the social democrats, who as deputies were legally immune, were forced to engage in clandestine activities. In like manner the agitation of the social revolutionaries was driven underground. Even lawful working-class organisations, trade unions co-operatives, and institutes for working-class education, were persecuted.
Most of the revolutionary leaders were put out of action by the repression, but their places were taken by others. For about a year[14] a revolutionary mood has been conspicuous, not in journalistic utterances alone, but likewise in renewed strikes and demonstrations.[15] Even the reaction seems to have wearied of its executioner's work; fatigue became apparent by 1910, even if there was no purposive change for the better. Nor were the peasants fully satisfied with the government's agrarian program and with the way in which that program was carried out.
After the numerous political and economic strikes, manufacturing industry required peace and security, and the capitalists were consequently inclined to seek security and peace at the hands of reaction, though reaction endangered their own existence. The home market for manufactures was improving, business was taking a favourable turn, the national revenue was increasing rapidly from 1908 onwards, and the reaction secured ready help from capitalist entrepreneurs. Even in this quarter, however, were heard isolated protests against reaction.
In literature and philosophy, after the revolution, those tendencies were strengthened which, as we have already seen, were characteristic of the prerevolutionary epoch, namely mysticism and a return to religion. With this religious revival was associated a turning away from revolution. The loudest preachers of these movements were deserters from the Marxist camp; but among the narodniki and the social revolutionaries Dostoevskii and Solov'ev now enjoyed enhanced prestige.
In literature, decadence became conspicuous in the form of irritable and stimulating sexuality; the boundary between art and pornography was often blurred; even among young people at school, clubs and societies for the promotion of "free love" came into existence ("Saninism," after Arcybašev's Sanine). The disciples of decadence delighted in religious mysticism.
Whilst by one section of the intelligentsia, during this period of disillusionment with the revolution, crude hedonism came to be accepted as a logical consequence, and to be regarded almost as a means of salvation, another section succumbed to declared pessimism, which frequently culminated in suicide. Among the young, in fact, there was a positive epidemic of suicide.
It may well be considered that all these phenomena subserved political and ecclesiastical reaction. Hence, in the progressive camp, they were felt to be reactionary and were resisted on that ground.
Despite these morbid manifestations, there have on the progressive side been encouraging symptoms of resanation. The experiences of the revolution have diffused so much light that thoughtful persons have subjected the programs of their respective parties and movements to critical revision, and have endeavoured to bring about an organic expansion of such liberties as have been won. A sense of renovation has spread and strengthened, the newer tasks have been recognised, and work on behalf of the realisation of general progress is being joyfully continued.
- ↑ The names of the parties affiliated to the League of Deliverance aptly characterise the political situation. They are as follows: 1. Russian Social Democratic Labour Party; 2. Social Revolutionary Party; 3. Polish Socialist Party; 4. General Jewish Labour Union; 5. Social Democracy of Poland and Lithuania; 6. Proletariat (a Polish socialistic party); 7. Lithuanian Social Democratic Party; 8. Lettish Social Democratic Labour Party; 9. Union of the Lettish Social Democracy; 10. Little Russian (Ukrainian) Social Democratic Party; 11. Little Russian Revolutionary Party; 12. Georgian Social-Federalist-Revolutionary Party; 13. Armenian Social Democratic Workers' Organisation; 14. White Russian Socialist Union; 15. Armenian Revolutionary Federation; :6. League of Deliverance; 17. Polish National League; 18. Finnish Party of Active Resistance.
- ↑ As early as 1891 there had come into existence a party of "popular rights" which aimed at uniting the liberals and the revolutionaries, but this organisation had little political influence.
- ↑ The following data of proceedings against political offenders give a picture of the growth of the revolutionary movement after Nicholas' ascent to the throne.
Year. Legal proceedings. Number of
Persons.Administrative
Proceedings.Number of
Persons.1894 158 919 56 559 1895 259 944 90 623 1896 309 1,668 67 561 1897 289 1,427 122 1,474 1898 257 1,144 149 1,004 1899 338 1,884 166 1,325 1900 384 1,580 144 1,363 1901 520 1,784 250 1,238 1902 1,053 3,744 347 1,678 1903 1,988 5,590 1,522 6,405 The information is derived from the secret reports of the ministry for justice, which were published by the social revolutionaries. The arrests made by the police during the year 1903 under Pleve's regime numbered 64,000.
- ↑ The figures in the following table will give a sufficient idea of the importance of the movement. Political and economic strikes are taken together.
Year. Number of Strikes. Number of workers on Strike. Absolute. Percentage of
Factories affected.Absolute. Percentage of
Workers affected.1895 68 0·36 31,195 2·01 1896 118 0·62 29,527 1·94 1897 145 0·75 59,870 3·99 1898 215 1·13 43,150 2·87 1899 189 0·90 57,498 3·83 1900 125 0·73 29,389 1·73 1901 164 0·96 32,218 1·89 1902 123 0·72 36,671 2·15 1903 550 3·21 26,832 5·10 1904 68 0·40 24,904 1·46 1905 13,995 93·20 2,863,173 163·80 1906 6,114 42·20 1,108,406 65·80 1907 3,573 23·80 740,074 41·90 1908 892 5·90 176,101 9·70 1909 340 2·30 64,166 3·50 According to "Proletarii," the organ of the Social Democratic Labour Party, iu September 1906 the number of Russian socialists (paying members of organisations) was as follows:—
Russians.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..31,000 Poles.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..26,000 Letts.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..11,000 Bund.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..30,000 In Germany it may be pointed out there are about 400,000 subscribing members of the socialist party; in Saxony alone there are about 39,000. In Italy the party numbers about 45,000 members.
- ↑
Outside the duma there were yet other parties. At the beginning of 1906 eleven parties had been constituted with a definite program. I. Right and Raactionary: 1. Moderate Progressists; 2. National Economists; 3. Panrussian Commercial and Industrial Union; 4. Union of October Seventeenth; 5. Party of Law and Order; 6. Constitutional Monarchists (Tsarists). II. Centre: 7. Constitutionalist Democrats; 8. Liberals; 9. Radicals. Ill. Extreme Left: 10. Social Democrats; 11. Social Revolutionaries.
At the end of 1906 twenty-three parties and combinations were enumerated. l. Conservative and Reactionary: 1. Russian Monarchist Party; 2. League of the Russian People; 3. Russian Association. II. Centre: 4. Commercial and Industrial Union; 5. Union of October Seventeenth. Ill. Liberal Democrats: 6. Party of National Liberty (Constitutionalist Democrats); 7. Party of Democratic Reform; 8. Liberals; 9. Radicals. IV. Revolutionaries (Extreme Left): 10. Russian Social Democratic Labour Party; 11. Social Revolutionaries; 12. Populist Socialists (Young Narodniki); 13. Bund (Jewish); 14. Social Democracy of Poland and Lithuania; 15. Lithuanian Social Democracy; 16. Ukrainian Revolutionary Party; 17. Lettish Social Democracy; 18. Polish Socialists; 19. Armenian Revolutionary Party; 20. Georgian Social Federalists; 21. Old Russian Peasants Union; 22. Railway Union; 23. Teachers Union. This is not an exhaustive list of parties and combinations, for only the most important and the strongest have been specifically enumerated.
- ↑ Further details regarding the social democrats will be found in § 152, and regarding the social revolutionaries in § 167.
- ↑ In a circular issued by the police department in the beginning of January 1907, the following groups and parties are specified as revolutionary groups and organizations: 1. Social Revolutionaries; 2. Anarchist Communists, lrreconcilables. Mahaevcy; 3. Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, both "majority" and "minority"; 9. General Jewish Workers Union in Poland, Lithuania, and Russia (including the Bund, chiefly influential in the west); 5. Polish Socialist Party, Social Democrats of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, Proletariat; 6. Armenian Party of Federalist Revolutionaries (Drošak or Dašnakcujutn); 7. Georgian Party oi Federalist Revolutionaries (Sakartvelo); 8. Finnish Party of Active Resistance; 9. The independent organisations of the Military Revolutionists, the Zionist Socialists (Poalei Zion), and the League of Deliverance.
- ↑ Notable was the law of June 19, 1910, by which the peasant whose property had not been partitioned since the liberation was declared a property owner. Notable, too, were the subsequent laws of 1910 and 1911, whereby heads of families were made sole proprietors. Other members of the family, who had hitherto been entitled to a share, were now deprived of their co-proprietary rights without compensation.
- ↑ The fundamental law of May 6, 1906 runs as follows (§ 4): "To the tsar of all the Russias appertains supreme autocratic authority. God himself commends us to obey the tsar's authority, not from fear alone, but also as a duty imposed by conscience." (For the text of 1832 vide supra, pp. 109–110.) We see that in 1906 the term "absolute" has been dropped, but that there is express insistence upon "autocracy." Members of the duma discontinued the oath of fealty to "his tsarist majesty and autocrat of all the Russias." In drafting the constitutional charter, the government did everything it could to avoid the use of European constitutionalist or parliamentary terminology; the expressions, constitution, parliament, and chamber (palata), are not employed.
- ↑ The figures for November and December are not included. These data may be compared with those relating to executions under Alexander III, which numbered 26 in thirteen years. In 1909 the minister for home affairs issued a circular to the governors of the administrative districts recommending that in order to tranquillise the country the death penalty should be inflicted as seldom as possible. The following figures relating to the period from August 1, 1910, to September 1, 1912 (old style), show the result of this circular.
1910. 1911. 1912. Totals. Trials followed by death sentences . . 81 136 81 298 Number of persons sentenced to death 185 2936 214 692 Sentence modified . . . . . . 81 136 81 298 Executed . . . . . . . . . . 29 73 83 185 - ↑ Metternich had also held the view that to sovereigns alone belonged the guidance of the destinies of nations, and that to God alone were princes responsible tor their action.
- ↑ After the death of Pleve, Lopuhin, chief of police, whose name became so widely known in connection with the Azev affair, when examining Pleve's papers discovered a copy of one of his own letters. At an earlier date, Loris-Melikov had had occasion for urgent complaint because his correspondence was not safe from the secret police.
- ↑ It was reported in the newspapers of December 12, 1912, that according to reports issued by the ministry for home affairs between January 14, 1907, and November 14, 1912, there had occurred 38,094 attacks by armed persons, and that in the course of these 1,719 officials and 5.997 private individuals had been killed, while 2,499 officials and 5,747 private individuals had been wounded. During the first ten months of 1913 there were 2,148 attacks by armed persons.
- ↑ This work was written in 1913.
- ↑ The number of persons engaged in political strikes during the last eight years has been as follows:—
1905.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
1,083,000 1906.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..515,000 1907.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 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