THE LAST OF THE ROMANOFFS
THE crowning act of the drama of the Romanoffs has a peculiar irony. One
could well imagine a Romanoff of the seventeenth or eighteenth century
making a ferocious struggle against the democratic forces which now
threatened the autocracy. For those older monarchs power had been a
means of obtaining wealth, of enlarging their individual pleasures to
royal or imperial proportions, and they would use all the machinery of
despotism to maintain their splendid privileges. But in proportion as
the democratic menace grew in the nineteenth century the voluptuous
selfishness of the Russian monarchs diminished. The serious, almost
ascetic, standard set up by Alexander I lingered in the imperial
palaces, and it seemed that the less personal gratification the monarch
received from his autocratic power the more resolutely he fought to
retain it. The last of the Romanoffs was one of the most sober and
industrious of his line; and his reign was disgraced by a more bloody
and cruel coercion than had reddened the reign of any of his predecessors.
Nicholas II, son of Alexander III and Princess Dagmar of Denmark, is one
of those tantalising personalities whom one knows to be in themselves
far removed from subtlety, yet whom one cannot honestly pretend to
understand. He came to the throne an unknown man, eagerly scrutinised by
every moderate reformer in Russia. He departs from it with his
personality and actions still largely enveloped in mystery. This
obscurity is, as I said, not due to any depth or subtlety in the mind of
the Tsar; it is due rather to the weakness of his character. Two sets of
influences surrounded him, bending to their will his frail personality
and substituting their cupidity or prejudice for his native impulses.
The inner circle was that of his family, in which his mother and uncles
were the leading and most mischievous figures. The outer circle was the
ring of adventurers or reactionaries whom the strength of his older
relatives or the febrility of his own character invested successively
with ministerial power. Beyond these, again, were the religious
charlatans who at times preyed upon the superstition of the Tsar and
Tsarina, the great body of ecclesiastical and other officers whose
interest it was to maintain the existing system, and the doctrinaire
conservatives who, with purblind eyes, insisted upon the isolation of
Russia from the progress of the world. Through this maze of intrigue and
influence it is difficult to reach the personality of Nicholas II with
confidence, and the fierce partisianship of writers on both sides in the
great struggle increases our task of disentangling the precise parts in
the final catastrophe.
It seems, however, to be an error to regard the last of the Romanoffs as
a mere puppet, a tearful and hysterical implement, of the reactionary
influences which surrounded him. Nicholas had not the robustness of his
father, whose dwarf intellect had been lodged in the frame of a Russian
giant, but he was stronger than many literary portraits of him suggest
to us. His education had been severely controlled. Distinguished experts
had taught him those branches of culture--law, history, and political
economy--which were deemed necessary in a successor of Alexander III,
and a rigorous physical training had braced the comparative feebleness
of his person. He swam and rowed with skill, he played tennis and
hunted, and throughout his reign he loved a long walk, often of ten or
fifteen miles, and would at times burden himself with all the equipment
of a common infantryman. It is said that the sabre-cut on the head which
he received from a Japanese fanatic in 1891, when he made a tour of the
Empire and further Asia, injured his brain and led to nervous
instability; but this is one of the many statements of revolutionary
writers which have not been checked by sober criticism. He came to the
throne in 1894, a cool, self-possessed, carefully-educated young man of
twenty-six, and some hope was excited in the breast of moderate Russian
liberalism.
To this it may be added that throughout his reign Nicholas II adhered to
a sober and industrious standard of life. Here, indeed, the writers of
the opposing schools begin to differ. That he was a man of comparatively
simple and sober tastes none disputes. His table was temperate and
conspicuous for old Russian dishes. He spent his leisure in the domestic
circle, playing dominoes or billiards in the metropolitan palaces,
sharing walks or rides or sails with his family in the provinces. He
opened every day with religious observances, had the family ikons
brought on voyages, and rigorously kept the fasts of the Church.
But his industry and attention to affairs are differently represented.
Conservatives picture him a model of severe self-sacrifice. He worked,
they say, without secretaries, ten or twelve hours every day. He
minutely studied and annotated every document. He wore his pencil to the
stump--the conservative pen records this with awed amazement--and then
gave the stump gravely to his son. One imagines him relaxing from the
cares of Empire but for an hour in the evening. The revolutionary
writers, however, depict him differently. They represent that he
attended impatiently to serious affairs and spent an abnormal proportion
of the day in the petty amusements of the domestic circle. The truth
lies between the extremes. Nicholas II was industrious, and he attempted
to discharge his functions very seriously within the limits of his
narrow and mediocre conceptions.
His people were not long in doubt as to the nature of his ideal. It was
the ideal which each Romanoff of the century had naively conceived
afresh; a complete retention of the autocracy coupled with a benevolent
intention to help his people. On the day of his father’s death Nicholas
issued a manifesto in which he promised to promote “the progress and
peaceful glory of his dear Russia and the happiness of his faithful
subjects.” To the deputies who came to congratulate him he said that--as
his foreign minister, M. de Giers, also assured foreign Powers--he would
maintain his father’s policy. Plainly the young Emperor approached his
task with the customary confidence of youth. He would avoid the error of
his predecessors and, by wise moderation, disarm the malcontents and
sustain a benevolent despotism.
But Nicholas soon discovered that the last reign still survived in such
power as to admit no new experiments. His mother, the Dowager-Empress,
was a harsh and arrogant woman, uniting to her political ignorance and
incompetence a fierce resolution to have her husband’s policy
sustained. Nicholas’s uncles, the Grand Dukes Sergius and
Alexander, were of the same harshly despotic temper, and
Pobiedonostseff, the head of the Holy Synod, was the enthusiastic
supporter of their wishes. These four, with the reactionary ministers
Plehve, Muravieff, and Brezobrazoff (later Admiral Alexieff and others),
whom they gradually discovered and promoted, formed what came to be
known as the “Immortal Seven,” the caucus which led the
dynasty to its destruction.
Nicholas was not married at the time of his accession. It was not until
November that he married Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt, who entered
the Orthodox Church and adopted the name of Alexandra Feodorovna. It is
said that at the last moment the Dowager-Empress took a violent dislike
to her and enlivened the palace with lamentable exhibitions of her
violent temper. It is at least clear that in the earlier years the
Tsarina had no influence. Only in the last phase did she, by her
pro-German leanings and her ignorant susceptibility to the intrigues of
religious adventurers, contribute to the downfall of the monarchy.
Nicholas was crowned at Moscow on May 26th, 1895, and a terrible
catastrophe clouded the very opening of his reign. Hundreds of thousands
of peasants flocked to Moscow for the festivity, and for the presents
which were promised them, and they spent the night packed into the field
of Khodynski. A panic arose amongst them, and about a thousand of
them--some say several thousand--were trodden under foot or
cast into the ditch and perished. It was a bad beginning, and the Tsar
soon made matters worse. In July nearly two hundred delegations brought
to his palace the congratulations of every class of his people, and
faint and respectful suggestions of reform were inserted in the bouquets
of traditional compliment. From the province of Tver, especially, came a
demand for liberal institutions, and the Emperor received it with a
smiling disdain which showed how little he understood his country. These
were “foolish dreams,” he said; he would devote all his
strength to the welfare of his country, but he would, “with equal
firmness, maintain the autocracy.”
A few reforms were introduced. Count de Witte fought his way to the head
of the Treasury and improved the finances. The immense flow of paper
money was checked, and gold was accumulated at the banks or put into
circulation. Ukases were passed which directed the building of model
houses for the workers, and regulated to some extent their condition in
the growing industries of Russia. New railways were built and canals
projected. The army was partly reorganised; the administrative and
judiciary institutions of the Empire extended to Siberia, the
development of which was energetically pushed; a measure to give
separated married women the control of their property was passed;
education was further enforced, though in this respect the reform was
weakened or undone by the desperate efforts of the clergy to wrest the
elementary schools from the Zemstvos.
These reforms, however, like those of the preceding reigns, were trivial
in comparison with the mighty needs of Russia, and it was now felt by
all but the incurable conservatives and the parasites of the autocracy
that self-government, through popular institutions, was the first and
essential condition of reform. On this issue the dynasty, or the
misguided group who undertook to guide its fortunes, staked its
existence. How far any of the reactionaries really believed that the
autocracy was for the welfare of the Russian people it is not our place
to consider here. The antagonistic forces moved slowly toward the field
of battle.
With the general policy and personal adventures of Nicholas II I am not
concerned. The whole interest of the story is now concentrated in the
growth of the conflict which will presently put an end to the Romanoffs.
It suffices to say that Russophilism and Pan-Slavism continued to act
together, and were equally responsible for the fall of the dynasty.
Nicholas II professed a humane dislike of the coercive policy of his
father, and in some respects, in the early years, the zeal of officials
in persecuting dissenters was moderated. But the facts of the entire reign
are within the memory of my readers and their ghastly inconsistence with
this humane profession need scarcely be emphasised. Never since the
Middle Ages had the Jews suffered so brutally at the hands of their
Christian masters. Unscrupulous officials and bodies of ignorant men
like the “Black Hundreds” soon learned that massacre and pillage of the
Jews were looked upon with favour at the palace, and the repeated
“pogroms” are in themselves an indelible disgrace upon the name of
Nicholas II. The Russianisation of the Poles--for which Russia pays
heavily to-day--and the Lithuanians was maintained with all the earlier
brutality, and in regard to the Finns Nicholas II incurred a peculiar
stigma. He had at his accession sworn to respect the rights and the
constitution of the Finns, but before long his officials tore up his
oath and began to strip the vigorous little people of its nationality.
Hardly a year of the Tsar’s reign passed without some callous violation
of his solemn promise, done with his express authority. The whole Empire
must, in spite of every obligation, be squeezed into the Russian mould.
The only extenuating feature of this section of the Tsar’s work that one
can suggest is that the Russian people generally were in accord with
this harsh and unjust procedure.
The imperialistic tendency which led to this injustice equally shaped
the disastrous foreign policy of Nicholas II. There can be little doubt
that the Tsar desired a continuance of the peace which Russia had
enjoyed during his father’s reign, and for my part I am ready to
recognise his sincerity in issuing a summons to a Peace Congress (August
24th, 1898), the aims of which Nicholas defined in a personal letter
(January 11th, 1899). It was, as we now know, Germany which chiefly
frustrated that well-meant effort. The Tsar remained friendly with
Germany, which then wavered between a Russian and an English
_entente_, while further strengthening his alliance with France.
But the Tsar’s desire of peace was, from the general practical point of
view, rendered nugatory by his imperialistic policy. In the Balkans he
maintained that policy of secret and subtle infiltration which prepared
the way for a conflict with Austria. Alexander III had in effect retired
from the Balkans, disgusted at the ingratitude of the principalities
Russia had helped to set up. Nicholas II resumed the policy of disguised
penetration, and it is not too much to say that the southern Slavs felt
almost as much apprehension at the shadow of Russia as at the
encroachments of Austria. It was, however, the imperialist adventures in
the Far East which contained the gravest danger and were least
respectable in principle.
It was entirely natural that Russia should spread along its
Trans-Siberian line, develop its vast domains in Asia, and seek ice-free
ports on the eastern coast. This national ambition was, however,
complicated by sordid speculations on the part of men and women who,
directly or indirectly, had influence over the Tsar. Revolutionary
writers say that the Dowager-Empress herself speculated heavily in
Asiatic properties, and at least it may be regarded as certain that the
Grand Dukes and adherents of the court sought fortune in that direction.
From Siberia these cupidities reached out toward Manchuria and Korea,
and had large and vague designs upon helpless China. Russia--so the
formula ran--was the heir of Dchingis Khan and Timur. It had a
“divine mission” to impose its Kultur upon Asia. The very
thin strain of Tatar blood in the veins of Russia was at length
discovered to have some value.
[IMAGE: img366.jpg The Tsarina Alexandra]
The Chino-Japanese War occurred in the first year of the reign of
Nicholas II, and the rise of an Asiatic power in the path of Russian
ambition caused a momentary concern. Japan must be promptly checked, and
at the close of the war Russia bluntly refused to allow Japan to occupy
any of the territory it had seized. Germany astutely watched and
fostered the dangerous adventure which diverted Russia from Europe to
the Far East. Under cover of its supposed protection of China, Russia
then established itself in Manchuria, secured (with money borrowed from
France and England) a financial hold on China, and in 1898 obtained a
long lease of Port Arthur and Talienwan. The cold anger of the Japanese
at this piece of perfidy was little disguised, and presently Russia was
requested to carry out its promise to evacuate Manchuria. From its new
ports, it was plain to all, Russia would spread to Korea. The other
European Powers now joined in the protest of Japan, and Russia sought to
gain time by long negotiations, while it pressed the development of Port
Arthur and Dalny. These devices Japan, in 1904, sternly cut short by
making war.
The documentary evidence in regard to those aspects of the
Russo-Japanese War which concern us here is in the same unsatisfactory
condition as so much of the evidence on which we must rely in this
chapter. It awaits the impartial sifting of history. The suppression of
truth in Russia throughout the reign of Nicholas II had the inevitable
effect of provoking abroad a stream of something more than the truth.
Writers and orators of revolutionary parties do not usually make calm
and conscientious reflection on the statements they repeat, and in every
country of the world the Russian writers found a large public eager to
hear sensational stories about the court and the bureaucracy. It is at
present entirely impossible to select with any confidence the reliable
statements from the mass of legends which were published in Europe and
America by the critics of the dynasty. Their fellows in Russia were, we
shall see, being butchered in thousands, and were in tens of thousands
suffering an agony which they often terminated by suicide; and, on the
other hand, many of the chief agents of this bloody system were
undoubtedly corrupt adventurers or cynical egoists. In the vast
anti-Romanoff literature, therefore, we cannot look for judicious
impartiality, and if the reader misses from this chapter many a
picturesque legend which he has read in the scorching pages of
revolutionary writers he must not be surprised. The history of that
appalling reign is still to be written.
As far as the Russo-Japanese War is concerned we need not hesitate to
admit three points. The first is that the Tsar, if not some of his
ministers, sincerely believed that the little nation of the Far East
would never have the audacity to fight mighty Russia; and that Germany
encouraged the Russian court in this view. Japan was bluffing, the Tsar
was assured, and he might pursue his eastern extension under cover of a
hollow and dilatory diplomatic negotiation. The second clear point is
that this eastern extension of Russia was very largely due to the
corrupt and selfish ambitions of influential individuals. Stories about
the investments of the Dowager-Empress or the Grand Dukes or other
persons of the Tsar’s circle may or may not be true. There is fair
evidence that the speculative fever penetrated the court. In any case
the “divine mission” of Russia in the Far East was as hollow
a pretence as the divine mission of Germany in the west in 1914. The
third established point, and the one of most importance for our purpose,
is that members of the imperial family and servants of the reactionary
regime made vast sums of money by a corrupt diversion of goods and funds
from the purposes of war to their private purses.
The knowledge of these facts came to thoughtful people in Russia as the
ignominious campaign dragged on from month to month. Public opinion,
startled by the success of what they had been taught to regard as a
tribe of “monkeys” against their great army, looked for hidden reasons
of Russia’s failure, and they were brought to light. It was known that
aristocratic officers gambled and rioted in the Asiatic towns; it was
known that trained regiments of the regular army were kept at home to
coerce Russia while crowds of reservists were hurried out to meet the
deadly Japanese fire; it was known that the large sums extorted from the
people for the prosecution of the war were to a great extent diverted;
it was known that Count de Witte and Count Lamsdorff had tried to avert
war, and that Manchurian affairs had then been entrusted to a favourite
of the palace-clique, Admiral Alexieff. Before the war was half over the
revolution was again aflame in Russia, and it grew daily.
We are told by writers who seem to have had the confidence of the
revolutionaries that the complete suppression of overt criticism by
Alexander III and his son had led to the formation of a new and very
powerful secret movement. It had branches in all parts of Russia, and it
is said to have had as many as three million members in the year 1904.
Twelve men of distinguished ability directed its propaganda, and many
wealthy Russians, disgusted at or injured by the atrocious system which
Nicholas II maintained, devoted their whole fortunes to its work. Many
of the stories told of its secret action are melodramatic and
improbable, but it cannot be doubted that a vast and well-organised
movement existed, not unlike the secret republican organisation which
was then being formed in Portugal. The Russian movement, however, was
not definitely republican. It aimed at converting the Tsar, under
pressure of his people, to constitutional views. It resented and
despised the turbulent movements of the students and Socialists, and it
countenanced assassination only in very grave and carefully-selected
cases. We are told that its agents repeatedly placed on the Tsar’s desk
letters in which the situation was fully described and Nicholas was
urged to make peace with his people by granting a constitution and
casting off the influence of the Dowager-Empress.
The early agitation was crushed with the customary brutality. One of the
most repulsive adventurers of the time, Plehve, had become Minister of
the Interior, and under his genial lead the police and magistrates fell
upon every suspicion of revolt. Over the greater part of Russia the
protection of civil law had been virtually suspended since 1881. Under
what was called “The Regulation for Reinforced Protection” suspects
might be at any time arrested and imprisoned, journals suppressed, the
civil courts entirely ignored. In the year 1903 nearly 400 men and women
had been arrested under this barbarous system, and it was estimated that
there were already more than 100,000 in the jails of Russia and in
Siberia. The work had continued, however, and the revolutionaries boast
that in the very year before the war, the year when they seemed to be
feeblest, they circulated two million pamphlets among the Russian people.
As the agitation grew with the war, Plehve retorted with increased
savagery; and on July 28th (1904), he was, in spite of his extraordinary
precautions, assassinated. The murderer, Sazonoff, was sentenced only to
twenty years’ imprisonment, and Nicholas reduced this to fourteen years.
The revolutionaries claim that they warned the Tsar that he answered
with his life for the life of Sazonoff. It was, at all events, made
plain to the Tsar by the press of Europe that his system of ruling was
regarded as barbarous.
A more moderate man, or one who claimed at least to have some sympathy
with liberalism, Prince Sviatopolk-Mirski, was put in charge of the
ministry of the interior, and the struggle passed to a new phase. On
November 19th the police of St. Petersburg permitted a large meeting of
members of the provincial Zemstvos, and a deputation of these was
allowed to see Prince Mirski. They demanded free parliamentary
institutions and manhood suffrage, and the Prince undertook to lay their
demands before the Tsar. It is reported that the Dowager-Empress, the
Grand Dukes, and the reactionary ministers violently opposed any
concession, and we must assume both that they would be consulted and
that they would give this advice. The Tsar was nervous and timorous,
physically and mentally unequal to the great burden which now lay upon
him. On December 12th he issued a ukase in which he promised reforms,
but he described the demands of the representatives of the Zemstvos as
“inadmissible” and inconsistent with “the fundamental laws of the
Empire.” The bulk of his people were, he said, “true to the old
foundations of the State-organisation,” and he would protect them from
the intrigues of agitators.
The battle continued. A great meeting at St. Petersburg was addressed
openly by writers and scholars of distinction, and amongst the crowd the
cry “Down with the Autocracy” was heard. Petitions and demands for
representative institutions rained upon the Tsar from all classes of
his subjects. Strikes and riots filled the daily press. On January 9th
the notorious Father Gapon led 300,000 workers to the Winter Palace, to
lay their grievances before the “Little Father,” and before evening the
snows of St. Petersburg were stained with the blood of thousands. There
were spurts of revolt at Kichineff, Odessa, Moscow, and even Kronstadt.
On February 4th the Grand Duke Sergius, the most corrupt of the
reactionaries, was assassinated. Prince Mirski resigned and was
succeeded by Bulygin. Before the new minister was established, the Tsar
issued a new ukase affirming the autocratic principle, but Bulygin
insisted that he should modify this act of mad defiance, dictated by the
palace-clique, by issuing on the same day a promise to convoke a
consultative assembly of representatives of the people. He appointed a
commission of inquiry, and in reply to a deputation from a second
conference of the Zemstvos he announced that a National Assembly would
soon be granted. The long-expected ukase appeared on May 10th. It opened
on a note of repentance:
“A State cannot be solid unless it holds as sacred the traditions
of the past. We have failed in this, and God has punished us. The
sovereignty of ancient Russia was indissolubly bound up with ‘the
voice of the land,’ with the representatives of the people
assembled in council.”
For the first time the Romanoffs perceived that, centuries before their
dynasty was cradled, Russia had had a past, and a democratic past.
But the project of the new assembly, the first Duma, turned this avowal
into derision. The business of the representatives of the people was
merely to examine proposals which would be laid before the Imperial
Council: the Tsar alone could initiate and pass legislation. By further
regulations, in fact, the members of the Duma were put at the mercy of
the conservative Senate. The autocracy was maintained in all its
mediævalism. Liberals and radicals now united in a fierce demand of
reform. Russia was paralysed by a general strike and the suspension of
traffic. More than a million workers were on strike. In a momentary
panic the Tsar directed Count de Witte to draw up a list of reforms, and
on October 30th (1905) he issued the famous ukase which has since given
a name to the vast body of moderate Russian reformers (the
“Octobrists”). He would grant manhood suffrage, real national
representation, freedom of speech and religion, and so on. As usual, the
first breath of liberty let loose a passion of discussion.
The radicals and independents united to form the powerful body of the
Constitutional Democrats (the “Cadets,” or K.D.s). A council of labour
deputies was formed with the express purpose of holding the supreme
power when the Tsar had been deposed.
In brief, Russia was seen aflame with revolution. There were mutinies in
the fleet at Kronstadt and at Sevastopol, and the audacity of the more
radical elements led, at Moscow, to the futile and pathetic rebellion in
which large numbers of students lost their lives. The revolution was
premature. The troops were unprepared for revolt on such an issue as the
constitution, and the “Black Bands” everywhere aided the police and
dipped their hands in the blood of Jews and radicals. The active
rebellion was truculently suppressed, and the jails were packed to
suffocation. His reactionary advisers urged the triumphant Tsar to
refuse all concessions, but the rumble of the more moderate malcontents
was still heard on every side, and the promise of some sort of national
assembly had to be carried out.
It was in these circumstances that, on May 10th, 1906, Nicholas opened
the first Duma. The name had been invented by the reforming minister of
Alexander I, Speranski, and it represented the measure of popular
representation which might have been regarded as satisfactory in those
semi-feudal days. For a civilisation of the twentieth century it was
ridiculously inadequate, and it soon proved only a channel for the
comparatively safe release of the boiling, sentiment which filled the
country. Before the Romanoff dynasty fell it was customary for polite
journalists and essayists to explain that the excesses of the radicals
frustrated the work of the new institution. It is unhappily true that
the left wing of every reform-movement uses a rhetoric which is little
in accord with its loud insistence on justice, but in this case even the
work of moderate members of the Duma was obnoxious to the authorities.
Day by day the state of the Russian jails, the gross conduct of police
and military authorities, and the barbarous practices of their
subordinates were brought to light. Week by week men waited, and waited
in vain, for the further instalments of reform which had been promised.
The Duma grew more and more vehement in its attacks upon the Government.
The Cadets formed the majority of its members, and they formulated their
demands for adult suffrage, real parliamentary institutions, the
abolition of capital punishment, a political amnesty, the suppression of
the Imperial Council, and the expropriation of the large land-owners.
Goremykin, a tool of the palace-clique which had put him in the place of
Count de Witte, refused to comply, and on July 23rd the Tsar dissolved
the Duma. The measure was a failure, and Goremykin had to surrender his
place to Stolypin. The ejected Cadets retired to Finland, and appealed
to the people to refuse to pay taxes or render military service: for
which, three years later, they were condemned to imprisonment and the
loss of their civil rights.
Stolypin had the ingenious idea of severing the great mass of the
peasants from the radicals by separate concessions, and in October and
November the Tsar appealed for their support. They were put on the same
footing as other classes in regard to the right of entering the public
service or schools, the issue of passports, and in rural elections. They
were released from obligatory residence in the district in which they
were registered, permitted to take away their share of the communal
property, and protected from punishment without trial. By these means,
and by tampering with the electoral law (which he dare not yet alter)
Stolypin secured a second Duma in which the Cadets were greatly reduced.
Instead of 185 seats they now had only 108. But they still formed the
largest party, and their leader Golovkin was President of the Duma. In
face of their demands the Tsar authorised Stolypin to offer the
crown-lands and imperial estates to be shared amongst the peasants, but
the radicals were not appeased, and on June 14th, three months after the
opening of the Duma, Stolypin demanded a secret session in order to
consider an indictment of the Social Democrats, whose number had
increased to 77 at the last election. Almost the whole of them were
charged with complicity in a plot to undermine the loyalty of the army
and navy.
The Duma was still overwhelmingly radical--a sufficient commentary on
the Tsar’s claim that the mass of his people clung to the old
traditions--and refused to lend itself to this manœuvre. Two days
later, June 16th, Nicholas again asserted his power and dissolved the
second Duma. It was, he declared, not representative of the “Russian
spirit” and would not support his government in suppressing disorder. To
make it more representative of this Russian spirit, which was supposed
to animate the bulk of the population, he narrowed the electoral
qualifications, in violation of his 1905 ukase, and reduced the
membership from 524 to 442. The Cadets now sank from 108 to 45, the
Socialists from 77 to 17. The conservatives rose from 60 to 100, and the
Octobrists from 31 to 110. Liberalism, of one shade or another, still
greatly outweighed conservatism even in this mangled representation of
the Russian people; and assassinations, strikes, and fiery rhetoric
impressed upon Europe the grievances of those who were excluded from
representation. In the year 1907 there were 627 executions, and about
70,000 were sent into exile. In 1908 there were 786 executions, and the
number of exiles rose to 180,000. The population of the jails of Russia
rose from 91,000 in the year 1904 to 174,000 in the year 1910.
This was the “comparative tranquillity” which the chroniclers of Russian
events ascribe to the country between 1907 and 1917. Quarterly notices
of the number of political executions were put into small type in
English and American journals, and from the sombre silence that brooded
over the land there issued at times the lurid message of assassination.
In 1909 occurred the astounding revelation of the secret-police spy and
professed Socialist Azeff, and it became known that outrages were
instigated by the police in order to strengthen their system. The former
head of the police had to be sentenced to five years’ imprisonment; the
head of the secret police of St. Petersburg was assassinated. In 1911
Stolypin was permitted by the Tsar to suspend the Imperial Council and
the Duma, so that he could avail himself of the clause of the
constitution which enabled him to pass laws while the councils were not
sitting; and on September 14th, while Nicholas sat in his box in the
opera at Kieff, he had the horror of witnessing the murder of his
complaisant minister. Still he clung to his poor rags of autocracy.
Still religious adventurers and spiritist mediums plied their lucratic
charlatanry in the palaces. Still the flower of the young generation
rotted in the overcrowded jails or languished in Siberia. The jails had
a “maximum accommodation” for 107,000 prisoners, and in 1910
about 180,000 men and women were crowded into them. Typhus flourished in
them. Suicides of prisoners rose to 160 in a single month. The most
brutal outrages were committed on young women and men.
These facts one learned, as I experienced at the time, by a laborious
comparison of the statements of little-read writers and statistics. To
the world at large a different picture was offered. Men were told how,
in 1906, a group of affrighted Polish peasants, headed by an abbess,
came to St. Petersburg to inquire if it was really true that (as zealous
Roman Catholic proselytisers had told them) the Tsar had made his
submission to the Pope. They saw a minister, on Easter morn, and to
their solemn salutation, “Christ is risen,” he blunderingly replied,
“Good Day”; and their hearts sank. But they also saw Nicholas, and to
their faltering religious salute he replied cheerfully, “In truth He is
risen,” and they fell sobbing at his feet. Or it was the festival of
Poltava in 1909, when Nicholas, seeing his carriage surrounded by a
dense throng of peasants, alighted and talked familiarly with them for
two hours. And there was the story of how at Christmas, 1912, when the
members of the Duma were presented to him, he summoned the shrinking
peasant-deputies from the last row and honoured them above the others.
Nicholas II knew quite well what was happening in Russia. His small mind
thought that tasting the food of soldiers and sailors--before a
camera--visiting the hospitals, and embracing carefully-selected
peasants would save the autocracy in the twentieth century.
The five-year period of the third Duma expired in 1912, and the new
election proved a victory for the conservatives. The Octobrists had
ventured to resist the demand of the clergy that the elementary schools
should be handed over to them, and the popes had fiercely and
unscrupulously canvassed the peasant-electors. Still, however, 285
Octobrists and other radicals faced the 155 members of the Right, and
small measures of reform had to be passed. They were inadequate, and the
year 1913 saw another great wave of disturbance. The number of strikers
rose to 460,000. At Kieff a great gathering of representatives of all
the towns of the Empire condemned the Government. The Octobrists united
with the other radicals of the Duma and, by 146 votes to 113 (many
abstaining) condemned the ministers for not proceeding in the path of
reform. But I need not run in detail over events which are still fresh
in the general memory. These brief notices will suffice to indicate that
the spirit of progress lived and grew in spite of every effort of
Nicholas II to strangle it.
The conflict entered upon its last stage. That Nicholas II wanted war,
however much he may have hoped to profit by the aid of France and
England, we have no reason whatever to believe. Nor is it possible as
yet to pass a sober opinion upon the charge that he intended, when the
war dragged, to make a separate peace with Germany. That his German wife
was won by the miserable adventurer Rasputin, and some of his ministers
by German bribery, seems clear enough; and, although he had been second
only to the Kaiser in the vigorous lead of his nation until the end of
1916, there is grave reason to think that he was then won by the prayers
of his family and intrigues of his ministers. But the Russian revolution
was not based on this theory as much as is generally believed. The mass
of the people were bewildered by the war, and have not since shown any
great zeal to prosecute it. The educated malcontents were, as we saw,
thoroughly organised and ready to grasp any pretext for a successful
revolution. Only a minority of military men and liberal politicians were
essentially moved by the failure of the dynasty to arm Russia
efficiently and prosecute the war.
The food-supply was the immediate ground of the revolution. On February
8th, when the five-year period of the Duma of 1912 approached its term,
the Tsar was urged to extend its life, as was done in other countries.
The Tsar refused, and he spoke of elections in the coming fall. The
suspicion that he was going to proceed irregularly coincided with a
shortage of grain in the large cities, especially Petrograd (as the
capital was now named), which was gradually stirring the anger of the
people. We may assume that the revolutionary organisation exploited this
anger with all their power, and especially undermined the loyalty of the
few regiments which were left at Petrograd.
On March 8th the people of Petrograd, especially the women, began to
throng the streets, and the workers to quit the factories. Rodzianko,
the President of the Duma, summoned a conference on the food-question,
and he and Professor Milyukoff, the second hero of the revolution,
strongly criticised the incompetence of the ministers. Rodzianko, a
former officer of the Guards and husband of a Golitzin princess, was a
noble of distinction, but he was an Octobrist and a friend of the
people. The crowds were still larger in the streets on March 9th; and on
Sunday, the 11th, they turned out in immense numbers and fraternised
with the few troops who were visible. The guards, however, were
imperfectly won, and on the Sunday afternoon they fired a volley into
the crowd and about a hundred were killed or wounded. It is one of the
strangest testimonies to the amazing condition of Russia that the crowds
remained on the streets and said, sympathetically, to the soldiers: “We
are sorry for you, brothers, you had to do your duty.”
On the Monday morning it became known that the Tsar had suspended for
two months the sittings of the Duma and the Imperial Council, and the
revolution was inaugurated. Troops to the number of about 30,000 marched
upon the arsenal, distributed arms to the people, and fought the police
and the loyal troops. The Progressives and the Socialists formed a
committee of twelve of their ablest representatives, including
Rodzianko, Milyukoff, and Kerenski; and Rodzianko telegraphed to the
Tsar a peremptory demand for a new government. The fight with the
police, who mounted the roofs with rifles and machine-guns, was
continued on the following day, but the public buildings fell one by one
into the hands of the revolutionaries, and about midnight of the 13-14th
the enterprise was crowned by the submission to the Provisional
Government of the Preobrajensky Guards. Moscow soon sent its adhesion,
and the troops in the field gradually assured the new government of
their allegiance.
Nicholas II was with the army, at the headquarters of General Russky,
when the alarming news from Petrograd reached him. He would return to
the capital, he said; but at Bolgoe station he was quietly persuaded to
return to Pskoff. There, in a small, dimly lighted room, the last of the
Romanoffs received the delegates of the people--M. Gutchkoff and a
conservative member of the Duma. It is said that Nicholas asked calmly
what was required of him, and, when he was told that he must abdicate,
he at once demanded a piece of paper. He would not, however, resign the
crown to his son, as they wished. He would not be parted from his son,
he said: and it is probable that he was moved by his deep affection for
the boy. He would leave the throne to his brother Michael. The fateful
document was there and then composed, and Nicholas II signed away his
power: signed, as it proved, the death-warrant of the Romanoff dynasty.
He remains ambiguous in his last imperial pronouncement. In words of
singular dignity and detachment he answers the call of the Russian
people to lay down his autocracy, and he prays for a speedy victory over
Germany. But for the ghastly, unforgettable horrors which stain his
reign we could find words of admiration for the last weak descendant of
Michael Romanoff.
[The End]
End of Project Gutenberg's The Romance of the Romanoffs, by Joseph McCabe