were practically powerless, the more so as their political activity consisted mainly in “building theories for an imaginary world.” The bourgeois revolutionists of France had all been philosophes, but their philosophy had at least paid lip-service to “reason”; the Russian revolutionists who formed the majority of the first and second Dumas, as though inspired by the exalted nonsense preached by Tolstoi,[1] subordinated reason to sentiment, until—their impracticable temper having been advertised to all the world—it became easy for the government to treat them as a mere excrescence on the national life, a malignant growth to be removed by a necessary operation. In 1909 the number of exiles for political reasons from Russia was reckoned at 180,000; but the third Duma, purged and packed by an ingenious franchise system, was in its third year passing measures of beneficent legislation, in complete harmony with the government. It is proposed to trace briefly the steps by which this result was obtained.
In order to explain the course of the revolution which came to a head in 1905 it is necessary to say a few words about constitutional Previous reforms. plans and liberal experiments, initiated from above, which had preceded it. Of the ancient zemski sobor (assembly of the country) it is unnecessary here to say much, though Nicholas II. was pressed by the more reactionary elements to model his parliament on this rough equivalent of the Western states-general. The zemski sobor, which had played a considerable part in the struggle of the tsars against the great boyars in the 17th century, had met but once since the days of Peter the Great.[2] The origin of the present constitution of Russia must be sought, not in this ancient and obsolete institution, but in the artificial constitution elaborated by Mikhail Speranski (q.v.) in 1809 at the instance of the emperor Alexander I. Of Speranski's plan only the establishment of the Imperial Council (January 1st, 1810) was realized in his lifetime.[3] In 1864, however, the emperor Alexander II. carried the scheme a step further by the creation of elected provincial assemblies (zemstvos), to which in 1870 elected municipal councils (dumas) were added. The opportunity thus given for debate naturally stimulated the movement in favour of constitutional government, which received new impulses from the sympathetic attitude of the emperor Alexander II., his grant in 1879 of a constitution to the liberated principality of Bulgaria, and the multiplication of Nihilist outrages which pointed to the necessity of conciliating Liberal opinion in order to present a united front against revolutionary agitation. In January 1881 Count Loris-Melikov, minister of the interior, proposed to convene a “general commission” to examine legislative proposals before these were laid before the Imperial Council; this commission was to consist of members elected by the zemstvos and the larger towns, and others nominated in the provinces having no zemstvos. The plan was approved by Alexander II. on the very morning of his assassination (February 17th, 1881), but it was never promulgated. The new tsar, Alexander III., was an apt pupil of his tutor Pobedonostsev (q.v.), the celebrated procurator of the Reaction under Alexander III. Holy Synod, for whom the representative system was “a modern lie,” and his reign covered a period of frank reaction, during which there was not only no question of granting any fresh liberties but those already conceded (e.g. the principle of the separation of the administrative and judicial functions) were largely curtailed. The result of this policy of repression, associated as it was with gross incompetence and corruption in the organs of the administration, was the rapid spread of the revolutionary movement, which gradually permeated the intelligent classes and ultimately affected even the stolid and apparently immovable masses of the peasantry.
The movement came to a head, as a result of the disasters of the war with Japan, in 1904. The assassination of the Influence of the Japanese War. minister of the interior Plehve, on the 14th of July, by the revolutionist Sazonov was remarkable as a symptom mainly owing to the widespread sympathy of the European press of all shades of opinion with the motives of the assassin. It was clear that the system with which the murdered minister's name had been associated stood all but universally condemned, and in the appointment of the conciliatory Prince Sviatopolk-Mirski as his successor the tsar himself seemed to concede the necessity for a change Meeting of zemstvos. of policy.[4] In November, with the tacit consent of the police, a private assembly of eminent members local zemstvos and municipal dumas was held in St Petersburg to discuss the situation. The majority of this decided to approach the crown with a suggestion for a reform of the Russian system on the basis of a national representative assembly, an extension of local self-government, and wider guarantees for individual liberty. The day on which the deputation laid these views before Prince Mirski was hailed by public opinion as recalling the 5th of May 1789, the date of the meeting of the French states-general at Versailles. The emperor, however, whatever his own views, was surrounded by reactionary influences, of which the most powerful were the empress-mother, Pobedonostsev the procurator of the Holy Synod, Count Muraviev and the Grand-duke Sergius. The imperial ukaz of the 12th of December enunciating reforms affecting the peasants, workmen and local zemstvos failed to satisfy public opinion; for there was no word in it of constitutional government. Petitions continued to flow in to the emperor's cabinet, praying for a national Agitation and outrages. representation, from the zemstvos, from the nobles and from the professional classes, and their moral was enforced by general agitation, by partial strikes, and by outrages which culminated at Moscow in the murder of the Grand-duke Sergius (February 4th, 1905). In the imperial counsels the resisting forces still seemed to have the upper hand. Prince Mirski resigned, his resignation being immediately followed by a reactionary imperial manifesto reaffirming the principle of autocracy (February 18th). Bulygin, Mirski's successor, had no knowledge of this until after its publication; he hastened to the tsar and obtained the issue on the same day of a rescript which, while reserving the “fundamental laws of the empire” inviolate, stated the emperor's intention of summoning the representatives of the people to aid in “the preparation and examination of legislative proposals.” A commission of inquiry, under the emperor's presidency, was now established to elaborate the means for carrying this promise into effect. On the 6th of June, in reply to a deputation of the second congress of zemstvos headed by Prince Trubetzkoi, the emperor promised the speedy convocation of a National Assembly. When, however, on the 6th of August, the new law was promulgated, it was found that the “Imperial Duma”[5] was to be no more than a consultative body, charged with the examination of legislative proposals before these came before the Imperial Council, the duty and right of passing them into law being still reserved for the autocrat alone. The members of the Duma, moreover, were placed at the mercy of the government by a clause empowering the Directing Senate to suspend or deprive them. The promulgation of this truncated constitution was greeted by a furious agitation, culminating in September in a general strike, rightly described as the most remarkable political phenomenon of modern times. For days the whole mechanism of civilized existence in Russia was at a standstill, all intercourse
- ↑ “Tolstoi observed that that was argument and reason, and that he paid no attention to them; he only guided himself (he said) by sentiment, which he felt sure told him what was good and right!”—Interview with Metchnikoff in Sir Ray Lankester's Science from an Easy Chair, p. 43.
- ↑ In 1767, when Catherine II.—in a mood of encyclopaedist enlightenment—summoned it. The meeting confined its attention to economic questions, and had no political character whatever.
- ↑ In his speech at the opening of the first Polish parliament at Warsaw in 1818, Alexander I. publicly announced his intention of granting free institutions to Russia.
- ↑ Sazonov's sentence of twenty years' hard labour was commuted by Nicholas II. to fourteen years.
- ↑ Duma = council, assembly (dumat, to think over, reflect upon). The name was first suggested by Speranski, under Alexander I., for the suggested parliament of delegates from the zemstvos and local dumas.
