Great October Series: Little Interest in the Great October...the Russian Soul

As I write these words I have found the world to hold little interest in the historical event known as Great October...Russian leader Vladimir Putin cares little for past history unless it benefits him and his party...Putin desires to correlate Russian pride with the victorious battles over then Nazi Germany during World War II...he is also a big fan of utilizing the Russian Orthodox Church as a sense of shared belonging.  Although in both cases...there is no argument regarding the basic need of a collective sense for the people of Russia.   Nazi Germany during World War II despite funding from American Industrialists and Financiers needed to be destroyed.  Although no matter the reason there doesn't seem to take much to rally the Russians against their historical foe...those despicable Teutons.   Of course faith is a good thing...in general the Russian people are religious by their very nature...Even so, the Russian Orthodox Church has its own demons...the role it played leading up to revolution...and its failure to demonstrate repentance for said contribution.  The Church worked hand in hand with Tsar Nicholas II...a doomed King whose reign would soon be a historical footnote.  The Russian Orthodox Church and its head the Holy Synod had supported the Tsar's terror and massacres under the pretense of maintaining the Tsar's rule... 

Conversely, Great October can be seen a great source of pride for the Russian people...demonstrating to the world its steadfast desire regarding life, liberty, freedom and dignity.  The Russian people fought and died for this cause for decades.  The rise of Lenin...holds no correlation toward those ends.  In fact if truth be told...Lenin's writings and motives during the year 1917 can be best described as alot of deceptive nonsense...he himself was more of a flim flam man than a statesman...a man summoned to speak falsehoods in order to gain confidences...a man willing to sell his very own soul to achieve his own gains...setting the stage for seventy years of darkness in which the Russian people roamed.   The Russian people should never be ashamed for their efforts to depose the Tsar and bring forth the light of a new dawn.  If the good people of Russia were guilty of anything...it would be they have a trusting soul...easily mislead by those who share the term "TRUST ME".


Being that Soviet rule was so horridly despicable...the Russian people forgot the reasons and causes for revolution...forgot about the Tsar's abuse of his autocracy and the call for its end.  Not just from workers and peasants as it is so often stated...but from men of his own court, some of his most trusted advisors, his own mother, his sister in law, engineers, doctors, professors, students and many more.  Most all of Russia...except for his Budoir Council, the Tsar's wife, the Holy Synod and others who maintained benefit by Nicholas' continuing rule.

Current Historians deem supporters of the desire to depose the Tsar and their efforts toward freedoms as being fanatics or elements of Lenins...as criminals...and other disparaging terms meant to minimize and deter honorable intentions and good will.  The Russian spirit can not and should not account for the greedy self righteousness of individuals in either case...whether it be Tsar Nicholas II or Lenin and his lot of professional revolutionists. 

The irony of all this...Putin's unwillingness to remember the glory of the Russian spirit and its willingness to shed blood and die for the idea of freedom and dignity, contemporary historians disparaging words toward those who supported discourse and actions toward a new Russia, the silence of the Russian media adhering to aforementioned policy, the rise and return of the role in government by the Russian Orthodox Church without a mere mention of repentance for its role in the causes of revolution, the canonization of Tsar Nicholas II washing the bloody hands of both Romanov and Church leaders....leads Russia to a mindset that the desire of freedom and dignity can never come from its people...only from those who either are born into power, grasp power, and or are given power...

Yet be advised!...the Russian people are an intelligent lot, crafty and wise...and although Putin and the Church run rampant with suggested directions toward self improvement and pride...the Russian people are patient and willing to allow for self described champions of the people to do whatever they are determined to do...all the while knowing in their heart, in their soul...they, the Russian people, built a foundation for individuals seeking freedom and dignity that can at anytime be uncovered...utilized for future use when the bonds of tolerance are bent beyond reproach.

Great October Series: Helsingfors Meeting...Tsentrobalt speaks

“it was in its commune-like self-government that Tsentrobalt really came into its own, realizing the radical, democratic and egalitarian aspirations of its garrisons and working people, their insatiable appetite for social recognition, political activity and public debate, their pent up yearning for education, integration, and community.  Almost overnight, the ship’s crews, the naval and military units and the workers created and practiced a direct democracy of base assemblies and committees.”     Russian Historian Israel Getzler

Tsentrobalt Speaks
The Closed All-Baltic Congress reveals its work

It took twenty-two days of discussion within the Closed All-Baltic Congress...on June 15, 1917, the  Congress ended with their work completed.  Tsentrobalt's Charter and the operating policy regarding its new relationship with fleet command has been finalized.  
The time has now come to address the fleet and share with its members the focused outcome.  On a bright June day, a gathering of sailors at Senatskaya Square in Helsingfors would receive the word of its leaders.  The agenda...exposure to the protocols.

Although....there would be other topics to discuss and address at this meeting of the Helsingfors Sailors Deputies together with The Ships Committees.

The call to arrest Admiral Kolchak...

Comrade Chugunov took the podium and reported to the General Meeting of an article, that in such a respected newspaper as Izvestia of the Petrograd Soviet of Soldiers and Workers Deputies, appeared detailing clear malicious slander on the part of Baltic Fleet Admiral Kolchak.  Admiral Kolchak indicated that the Baltic fleet is in the service of the German General staff and that the delegation of the Baltic Sea Fleet made for the complete disorganization of the Black Sea fleet.  Chugunov asked the Assembly to require Admiral Kolchak account for the damaging insult toward the responsible Baltic Fleet.

Admiral Kolchak

After the issue was expressed by several speakers illuminating it from all sides, the meeting unanimously, with 7 abstentions, adopted the resolution proposed by Comrade Chugunov for the next edition.

The resolution stated..."After full consideration of the issue of slander in the press by Admiral Kolchak: his attempting to influence the country, in which he inferred 'that the Baltic fleet is in the service of the German General staff.'  Admiral Kolchak was also quoted as believing he is being forced to leave his post as Commander of the Black Sea Fleet.  Holding responsible and deeming the delegation of the Baltic Fleet culprits.  Kolchak added, "The Baltic Fleet which the German General staff commanded influenced the disorganization of the Black Sea Fleet and inspired teams to arrest him and his commanding officers of the Black Sea Fleet."  Such slander only worked against the Admiral. The sailors knew the rebellious spirit derived from a much deeper consciousness...as exhibited by the sailors of the Black Sea at Odessa in 1905, 1912 and in Sebastopal 1905, 1906, 1912 and 1917 

The meeting of the Helsingfors Sailors delegates together with the Ships Committees concluded to call on the appropriate authorities to consider all the above malicious slander of Admiral Kolchak…and based upon said slanderous lies toward the Baltic fleet to demand of the authorities to arrest him so that justice prevails.

Another topic for discussion...

...the question concerning the dismissal by the High Command of Commander in Chief of the Baltic Fleet Admiral Maksimov and the appointment of Admiral Vederevsky.as his replacement. 

Admiral Maksimov

It was then Comrade Chugunov the speaker invited the assembled to hear from the Chairman of the Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet…comrade Pavel Dybenko.

Chairman Dybenko spoke to the cohesiveness of working with Admiral Maxismov...

and the opposite phenomenon of entering in discussion with Admiral Vederevsky.

As for Admiral Maxismov

Admiral Vederevsky

Dybenko shared with the assembled the mandate approved by the interim Government which separated the sphere of action of the commander and the fleet.

Dybenko pointed out that the adoption of paragraph 14 was approved by the fleet wide congress of the Baltic Fleet.

But…as Admiral Vedervsky cancelled the adoption of paragraph 14 this prompted the congress’ action.

Dybenko also read out the telegram Admiral Vederevsky sent to the interim Government which clearly stated his opposition of the selection for the post of chief of the 1^st brigade battleships…Captain 1^st rank Zarubaeva.  If this post is selected…not appointed he would resign his duties.    

Dybenko pointed out more than 25 speakers insisted upon the selection of this post be approved by elected vote of the fleet and not by appointment of the interim government.

At the end of the debate…the assembly voted unanimously with one abstention adopted a resolution by Comrade Kireev as follows:

“Recognizing the principle of election on the ships positions is the only correct way  which alone leads to the realization of democracy.  The Helsingfors Sailors parliamentary in conjunction with marine committees commit to this principle and will defend this decision with all available means”

Great October Series: A response to Socialist Worker...Comrades of the Sea

https://socialistworker.org/2017/09/27/comrades-of-the-sea

Re: The article on the comrades-of-the-sea

Although the article shares the revolution experience via the eyes of Albert Rhys Williams and others...the tale of the "comrades of the sea" is one which includes glory as well as tragedy...

The sailors of the Tsar's fleet would indeed become known as the "armed fist" of the Russian Revolution.  Although, only studying the fleet's actions during the year 1917  provides an incomplete picture...a false understanding of what Trotsky referred to as the "glory and pride" of the revolution.

Beginning prior to 1905...the fleet was formulating its actions.  Understanding an ideal eloquently expressed by Zinaida Vassilievna Konopliannikova, at her trial for the murder of General Mien...an aide de camp of Tsar Nicholas II guilty of unmercifully slaughtering of 100's demonstrators at St. Petersburg in October of 1905 and following up with the massacre of thousands of Russian Citizens who rebelled at Moscow in December 1905 and January 1906. 

A portion of her full statement:

"I saw clearly that the autocratic and bureaucratic super structure rests on the armed force of the Government, and is able to maintain itself only through the constant practice of bloody terror, on the part of those steering our ship of State.  And life itself has taught me as follows: you cannot create anything new without first destroying the old; if you cannot pierce and idea with a bayonet, neither can you resist the power of the bayonet with ideas only."

So it came to pass at least twelve years earlier than 1917...the fleet would stand in the vanguard in the fight for liberty, freedom, and dignity. 

Professor Reussner...a Russian national teaching at Berlin University stated in 1905.

"It was the sailors and their history that would naturally place them at odds with the ruling government.  The mutinies of the sailors, which were then numerous, were not due to bad food but to revolutionary agitation carried on for years in the navy.  The Russian army was forced to become a political arm of the party that supported absolutism against the then popular will.  Many in Russia believed the sailors’ movement would accomplish the most important part in the approaching struggle for liberty.  While others, whose lot were cast in the Old Guard, classified the sailors as rebels and murderers.  In the end, the sailors convictions should have ensured them a place in Russian history as men who were heroes willing to sacrifice their lives for their country not as 'elements or fanatics'."

In the early months of 1905...Revolts in the Baltic lands, Baku, Moscow, St. Petersburg and other regions have all shaken the Tsar's rule to its foundations.  Even some of the Tsar's most trusted officials acknowledge with baited breath the Tsar had lost his way.  Dissent is not limited to the workers, peasantry, and others...but from engineers, professors, students, including the Tsar's own mother, and from the most loyal of subjects...high officials within his government. 

In May of 1905 an article appeared in the Quarterly Review followed by another in the National Review; entitled simply "The Tsar"...

Reading the article one comes to know, as many Russians did in 1905, the understanding;

                          "the sun began setting on the Romanov rule"

Moving forward during the years between 1905 and 1917...the sailors were active in the struggle for liberty and dignity...Revolts and rebellions would become a continuous theme for the sailors. 

In 1905-1907 Kronshtadt, Odessa, St. Petersburg, Reval, Sebastopal and Vladivostok all saw the actions of the revolting sailors.  Tsar Nicholas II orders the press share that the manifestations of these uprising were due to bad food and discontent of a "few" officers.

A major revolt happened in 1912...a revolt swept under the rug of historical significance by both the Tsar and Lenin...

The Tsar could not allow for the rebellion and its widespread ramifications to become known...and Lenin could not allow for a political consciousness to be developed by anyone other than himself...history is surely written by winners as Napoleon suggests.

In one sense the 1912 revolt, had it had time to mature, had a more amazingly daring object in view than that which led to the revolutionary mutiny on the battleship Kniaz Potemkin in June of 1905.

The purpose of the naval plotters were to seize the imperial yacht Shtandart, while the Tsar and imperial family were being conveyed from Yalta to Sevastopol en route to Tsarskoe-Selo.  The Tsar was to have been compelled to abdicate or abrogate his autocratic power and proclaim a limited monarchy and a constitutional regime.

The seizure of the imperial family was to have been the signal to a mutinous the Baltic squadron, the crews of which were to have murdered or arrested all their officers and attacked Kronstadt and St. Petersburg simultaneously.

Besides ruthlessly suppressing the action...Tsar Nicholas II decree's a special order issued to officers of all grades of the Black Sea fleet, forbidding them under pain of degradation and dismissal to discuss the political unrest among themselves or with civilians, of even with their own wives.  The whole commissioned personnel were compelled to sign a pledge to this effect.

Historian Alan Woods, during his investigation came across an Ohkrana report from 1915 that put forth the summation that the sailors of the Baltic fleet had created their own independent political vision...one that was separate and without influence from the Petrograd's Political bodies.

From before 1905 through up to the year 1917 one see's blood spilled from not only the sailors but from active individual Russians who gave their lives for the concept of individual freedoms, liberty, dignity...

All the while, Lenin played chess or as other "Professional Revolutionists" sat pondering Russia's future all vying for some sort of authoritative value to the movement.  The people of Russia acted; knew what they desired...they did not need for Lenin and his associates to tell them...

The sailors of the Tsar's Navy continued to openly challenge the Tsar's rule...and in 1917...the most famous freely elected body came into existence.

Tsentrobalt or the Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet.

Pavel Yefimovitch Dybenko is elected its Chairman and leader.

The following are three quotes from Dybenko in the early years of 1917.

"The fleet and its political view for a responsible social democracy did not derive from university trained theoretical knowledge, nor an understanding for legal opportunisms.  Moreover the sailors may not have had their own printing press or enough of the elite literature thought necessary for complex thinking.  Nevertheless the sailor’s classroom and their views were crafted by the many confrontations with Tsarism." 

"The Baltic fleet should be united, so its voice can be clearly heard by the government"

“Recognizing the principle of election on the ships positions is the only correct way  which alone leads to the realization of democracy.  The Helsingfors Sailors parliamentary in conjunction with marine committees commit to this principle and will defend this decision with all available means”

The government had essentially lost its authority over the men of the Baltic Fleet.

Dybenko believed in the abilities of the enlightened minorities believing they clearly heard the protestations and understood the plight of the Russian people, the suppression, the massacres...

It is important to recall that the efforts of the sailors responded to the desires of the Russian citizens...becoming the force necessary to take on the Tsar's bayonet...

Lt. Colonel Roustam Bek wrote

“…from a purely strategically point of view, actions required great secrecy; therefore for a certain period there was almost no information about it.  Nonetheless, the part played by the Baltic Fleet during the Revolution was of great importance.  It must not be forgotten that the victory of the Revolutions in February, March, and in October 1917, was due chiefly to the activity, firmness, and self-sacrifice of the members of the Baltic Fleet.  The period from 1905 to 1917 represented a solid history of repeated revolts and rebellions by the determined sailors in their efforts to overthrow the existing social structure"

Tsentrobalts Pavel Dybenko...and the fleets newly formed independence would be challenged by Alexander Kerensky and the Executive Committee during the events in July...the challenge and brash deeds to Kerensky as Trotsky recalls came from Tsentrobalt in Helsingfors not Kronshtadt!

Lenin, Trotsky and others see that Tsentrobalt and its leader Dybenko would be its ticket to power.  Lenin stated;

"an insurrection would be impossible without the sailors of the Baltic fleet"

So the guise begins...as Noam Chomsky and G.P. Maximoff tell their readers...Lenin perpetuated grand fraud upon the people of Russia...declaring his leadership would stand for liberty, freedom, and dignity...Lenin wrote numerous declarations regarding these understandings...Lenin lied!

Lenin sent to Helsingfors supporting politico's like Anton Ovseenko and others to influence Dybenko in order to garner his support...Lenin also sent to Dybenko...Alexsandra Kollontai...the black raven of the Russian peoples rebellious ideals.   She courted Dybenko...shared Lenin held Russia's best interest in his pocket...a famous relationship for the history books...more accurately a swindle of confidence. 

While in Kresty during July and August...Dybenko heard more from Lenin's conspirators...Trotsky, Kamenev, and Lunarcharsky.

All said...Dybenko was invited to the table of the powerful elite...not realizing he was being used.  Truly believed in Lenin's declarations...

Fast forward to Gatchina Palace...while Dybenko was in the lower floors of the palace speaking to the Cossacks...Kerensky was in conversation with General Krasnov...the latter recalled:

Kerensky declaring that "Pavel Dybenko was his enemy."

Why not Lenin or Trotsky?...

Great October was realized!...the efforts of the peoples of Russia and the sailors armed fist combined to force, to realize social change.

Unfortunately for Russia, under the banner of the peoples revolution...Lenin et al would go on to destroy the gains of Great October...to exploit their efforts for personal gain and power.

For any future actions taken against an autocratic regime...the movement toward realization of freedom should be wary of individuals who sit in the rear...all the while declaring they know what is best! 

Lenin and Trotsky would go on to do away with Dybenko and the power of the fleet.

But that is a tale for another day.

Great October Series: Remembering the Romanov's...Reactions are equal to Actions

After many years of investigating the causes of the Russian Revolution.  Causes swept away by the distortion of Russian contemporary historians....ascribing to anyone who wishes for dignity and freedom the designation of criminal.  Furthermore, it is was often said that the Russian people, those who supported revolution, were anti-religious zealots...rebels against the lords will.
One should not forget the outright support of the Tsar and his oppressive rule by the Holy Synod...it wasn't as if the Russian people did not have faith (quite the contrary; the Russian people are very religious) it was just fact that the terror imposed upon the people by the Tsar was directly supported by the church causing an understandable lack of trust in the church's leadership.  Ultimately the revolution would succeed.  Albeit hijacked by Lenin and his supporters who did go on to replace the autocratic system of the Tsar with an autocratic system of their own.  One whose tyranny turned out to be especially horrific.
The millions of Russians who stood for freedom and liberty...who bled and died for an ideal...including the sailors of the Tsar's fleet; would be placed in historical context as fanatics of Lenin's soviet system.
Of course nothing could be further from the truth.
Yet even so, after the Soviet system fell...Russia's response to quickly forgive the Tsar's atrocities...the terror that led to Revolution...astounded me.  The Russian church having swept under the rug their own role in abetting an evil ruler for their own benefit...canonized Tsar Nicholas II and his family...washing away the blood that had stained both the Romanov's and the leaders of the churches hands.
Still today there has been no repentance given by church leaders in regard to their role during the Tsar's oppressive actions and his tyranny.


Therefore, in maintaining the memory for reasons of Revolution...I have reprinted Ms. Konopliannilova's statement in full to her judges on August 26, 1906...on trial for the murder of General Mien the leader of the punitive actions and atrocities committed against the revolting Russian citizenry during and after the uprising in Moscow 1905-6

                                             Zinaida Vassilievna Konopliannikova

"I, a member of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists, and at the present time a member of the Fighting Organization of the Northern Section of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists, have shot Mien.  These are the reasons that forced me to commit this act: I think all of you remember the days in the month of December last, when General Mien and Rieman treated Moscow like a conquered enemy's territory.  I shall not speak much about it.  The newspapers and magazines have devoted much space to those days, and there are special books already that tell the whole story.  Hundreds of people were killed in Moscow.  Why, I ask, were those people in Moscow killed?  Was it because the ignorant and poor workers, fooled by the provocateur manifesto of Nicholas II and by the provocateur policy of his Government, raised the banner of revolt against their oppressors under whose yoke they have slaved for centuries?  I have killed Mien as the murderer of the fighters for freedom, as the murderer of innocent people whose blood has been shed on the streets of Moscow.
"In times of peace Mien was busy training the soldiers.  He tried to get in closer touch with the soldiers, in order to directly exert his influence over them and cultivate in them slavish obedience and loyalty to the criminal Government.  In this fashion was he training them as future murderers of their brothers and their own fathers.  I shot Mien as the commander of the Semionovsky Regiment, who inculcated in the peasant soldiers the spirit of active hostility toward the movement of the masses for their emancipation.
"Nicholas II, like Ivan the Terrible, has surrounded himself with a staff of cruel bodyguards.  People like Mien, or the notorious Orlov of the Baltic Region, or Trepov, the organizer of massacres, surround his throne.  The hands of everyone of them are stained with the blood of the people.  In killing one of Nicholas' bodyguards I want to remind him that just as the pillars of his throne are being hewed down, so may in time the throne topple itself.
"During the cross examination I was asked, "Who gave you the right to kill?"  As a member of the Socialists-Revolutionists I will give the same answer my comrades have given before me.  The party has decided to respond to the bloody terror practiced by the Government, with red terror.  The terror in which the party resorts to has been forced upon us by the Government.  The terror practiced by the party has been called into existence through the fault of the Government.  And as one who comes from the ranks of the people, --I am of common descent: my father is a soldier, my mother a peasant woman,--I ask you in the name of the people; "Who gave you the right to keep us for centuries in ignorance and poverty, in prisons and in exile, who gave you the right to send us to the gallows, and to shoot, and kill us by the hundreds?  Who gave you that right?  You yourselves took it by virtue of your might, you have legalized this right by laws of your own making, and the clergyman have sanctioned this right for you.  But now a new right is coming into being, a right which is by far more humane than your heartless law.  You have declared a relentless war against this right which is bound to prevail in the future.  You know well that with the extinction of your inhuman law, you, who feed upon it like jackals feed on the carcasses, will also perish.  And we who come from the people, we, fighters for the peoples' liberty, have the courage and the right to fight you, the representatives of autocratic and bureaucratic lawlessness, we feel in us the physical and moral strength to fight for our rights with armed force.
"I shall tell briefly the story of my life.  As soon as I completed the course of study in the teachers' training school, I was sent to teach in one of the remote corners of the Province of Lifland, in one of the schools maintained by the Government.  The Government was occupied, as it still is, with the russification of the Baltic provinces, and for this purpose schools were built and Russian men and women were sent to teach the natives.  The locality where I taught was very poor.  On three sides it bordered upon forests and on the fourth side was Lake Paypus.  The landscape was dreary, with nothing but fir and aspen trees.  The natives were exceedingly poor.  They had no land.  Alexander II, if I remember aright, freed them without giving them any land.  All the land remained in the hands of their barons and in the hands of the Government.  They lived on what the lake yielded, that is their only occupation was fishing.  As one who had grown up in poverty, I was not startled by their poverty, I only marveled how people could live under such conditions without fighting for a better future; how one could live without a single ray of light or hope on the dark horizon!  But outside of the school I could not work as I did not know the native tongue.  In school I suffered morally because I had to conduct the studies in Russian.  It was painful to see a little pupil look at me so helplessly and pitifully when I demanded that he speak only Russian.  'Why can't I speak my own language?' was the question I could read in his sad eyes.  It was painful to hear 17-18 year old boys, in the higher grades, boys who did not know their own history abounding in facts and events, relate for me the history of the family feuds among the descendants of Oleg and Rurik.  I do not mean to say that any people who think it necessary and proper to study the language and history of the neighbors with whom they are in close touch, should not do so.  But the russification of the Baltic Provinces has tended to retard the national and cultural development of the Provinces. After working in Lifland for a year, I went to teach Russian children in the school supported by the Zemstvos, in the district of Peterhoff, in the Province of Petersburg.  Conditions here were such: in front of the school lived a gendarme, behind the school lived a police official, on the mountain nearby lived a priest, nest to him a clergyman, and all of them were constantly reporting me to my superiors.  If I arranged popular readings or discussions of the most innocent nature, the clergyman reported to the inspector that 'the school teacher was engaged in discussions and readings which had nothing to do with the regular school work,' the priest kept busy writing to his superiors that the teacher was founding sects, spreading Tolstoy's doctrines, and demoralizing the younger generation.  If I arranged theatrical performances, the police official and gendarme would immediately get busy.  As a consequence, the inspector, the school board and the Governor were constantly calling on me for explanations.  Two and a half years I taught in that village, until the school board finally dismissed me.  I gave up my profession without regret.  As a result of my experiences, I have come to the following conclusions: I cannot share with the people even that meager knowledge which I myself possess, I cannot open the eyes of the people to the conditions in which they exist, I cannot point out to them the real causes of their misery.  I saw under such circumstances one could not even dream about the harmonious development of the spirit and intellect of the individual.  I saw the necessity for first creating the conditions under which the development of what is best in human nature will be possible.  I saw the prime necessity for the struggle with the autocratic and despotic Government.  I became a revolutionist.
"Soon after I was dismissed, they arrested me.  I spent a year in jail and in the fortress.  They released me, and two weeks later arrested me again.  This time they kept me eight months.  After I was freed for the second time, I fled abroad.  Abroad, as well as after my return to Russia, I worked as a member of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists.  Under the influence of the jail and the persecutions of the Government, the revolutionary spirit was definitely strengthened in me.  I saw clearly that the Tsar, if not a tyrant and a despot, is a tool for the enslaving of the masses.  To govern, from the autocracy's point of view, means to rob, burn and kill.  The history of the Russian people is written in letters of blood.
"I saw clearly that the autocratic and bureaucratic super structure rests on the armed force of the Government, and is able to maintain itself only through the constant practice of bloody terror, on the part of those steering our ship of State.  And life itself has taught me as follows: you cannot create anything new without first destroying the old; if you cannot pierce and idea with a bayonet, neither can you resist the power of the bayonet with ideas only.  I became a terrorist.
"The autocratic and bureaucratic regime is approaching its end.  Already the defeat of the Government during the senseless Japanese War has shown that it is nearing its downfall.  The strike which took place in October frightened the Government.  To pacify the country, the Government declared that it would give the country liberty.  At the same time, while it was promising the people freedom, the Government was sending punitive expeditions to the villages and organizing bloody massacres in the cities.  This strange period of 'liberty' did not last more than a month.  Again leaden clouds of repressions appeared on the horizon.  The people were not appeased.  The Government decide to create a Duma as a support for the rotting foundations.  Neither the organization of the Black Hundreds nor any other attempts of the Government to call a conservative monarchical Duma were of any avail.  The Duma proved a liberal one.  At one time the Government suffered the just attacks of the Duma,--as it saw no serious harm in being called names,--but its patience was exhausted when the members of the Duma decided to issue a manifesto to the masses confirming the confiscation of privately owned land.  The owners began to talk, the rulers became excited, and the Duma was disbanded.  Now we are again living through a period of repressions.  But all these measures of the Government are futile.  No repressions, no arrests, no jails, no exile, no gallows, no hard-labor, no punitive expeditions, no massacre can check the movement of the masses who are rising!
"You will sentence me to death.  But wherever I die,--on the scaffold, in exile, or elsewhere--I will die with one thought:  'Forgive me, my people!  There was so little I could give you--only my life.'  And I shall die with the firm faith that the day will come, when, as the poet has it,
                                     'The throne will topple over,
                                      And the Sun of Liberty will rise
                                      Above the vast plains of Russia.' "

 
 

Great October Series: Remembering the Romanov's...Reactions are equal to Actions

After we read about the high Russian official's indictment against the Tsar in May of 1905...(previous post) Nicholas II refuses to budge...in fact he clings tighter to his legacy and his oppression increases.  Case in point, we leap ahead in time to October 31 of 1905 to St. Petersburg...a procession of many Russian citizens; workers, students, woman and children are demonstrating in remembrance of January 22.  Red Sunday..then one Colonel Mien brutally and without mercy shot down...dispatched to death the demonstrators and threatened to burn down the technological university with the students inside.  Tsar Nicholas II is so pleased with the Colonel's repression of the "threatening" demonstration...he appoints Min to become one of his aides de camp.

The Tsar's stubbornness is hardly romantic...death and destruction pave the way to his continued rule...Revolutionists begin to stir and openly defy this cold and brutal murderer who holds tight to his so called divine rights and narcissistic advisors...

As one leader of the St. Petersburg Central Committee of Labor Vera Sasuvitch eloquently declared the Tsar's government was making its way over the corpse's of the workers, students, and other dissenters making it  necessary that the workers demonstrate their formidable strength by moving toward political strikes...a sign of solidarity of with all who oppose the Tsar's will.
She exclaimed    Down with the Tsar
                            Down with courtmartials
                            Down with death penalties
                            Down with the state of war against its people throughout Russia!

And war it was...65,000 Russian citizens had either been killed or wounded in the year 1905 during the epic struggle against a system that was well aware of its inadequacy's yet refused to acknowledge a one.
A struggle for rights and dignities that would continue for another twelve years!...Thousands of peasants and workers would die...numerous families destroyed...yet one Romanov's death is a sin without reproach?...

Of course the disaffection of the Russian citizens; their demonstrations and revolts against the Tsar' rule had nothing to do with dissatisfaction of his abilities or ill regard toward his excuses that 'gods' will demands he should rule. Thus according to Tsar and his corrupt advisors, those rascally Jews were the culprits...they should suffer for their dispositions and evil influences over the masses...(an age old and absurd distraction of actual problems)

And in 1905 behold the Massacre's of the Jews!...The Tsar acknowledges and will "Personally Thank" those who organized such atrocities...Men like the Governor of Odessa General Koulbars and the governors of  Kesheneff and Bessarabia to name two. The Jews are in fear of more slaughter to come as one witness the pouring of kerosene onto...the lighting afire of rabbi's and the sacking of synagogue's in Odessa looking for loot...cash or any other items of value...Odessa's streets were drenched in blood!

Moving south toward Moscow...a revolt of what can only be described as one being massive in size.
The uprisings prevailed for a time as the leaders of the revolt, fighters for liberty, outwitted and outmaneuvered the forces of the Tsar.  But the Tsar's Cossacks are numerous and enjoyed the strengthening of their position by the many reinforcements who deployed to the region.  Conversely, the revolting mass had only local supporters and others from nearby localities to join them in engaging  in this most unequal of confrontations.
The numbers of rioter casualties climb as thousand of rebels are gunned down by the Tsar's forces...in all
six thousand rioters are killed...fourteen thousand wounded.   Numbers that will surely rise as this rebellion finds its way to an end.  Rioters in one quarter of Moscow offer to surrender if the Tsar will allow for mercy of his punishment...the aforementioned aide de camp of the Tsar...ex Colonel now General Mien...who but a few months earlier ordered the merciless killings of the many whose procession of outspoken honor for those who called upon the Tsar for a better Russia...now would deal with the so called fighters for liberty in Moscow.  Agreeing to mercy...General Mien would mercifully hang thousands of the surrendering rioters on the entry roads to Moscow...he did...so that all could see the wisdom of what happens when one raises his fist against the Tsar!

This excessive action by the Tsar and his henchman General Mien would not be forgotten...the General would immediately become the target for assassination by individuals deemed terrorists by the Tsar and fighters for liberty and freedoms by the people...
And so General Mien's date with destiny would come to pass...

General Min's wife was due to arrive at Komsomolskaya having taken the train from St. Petersburg.
She was returning to Moscow after having spent the better part of her August at their dacha residence.
Having dealt with such bloodshed and horror...General Mien looked forward to this joyful reunion with his wife.   General Mien also declared to his guard he wanted to enjoy this moment with his wife alone without the accompaniment of the guard stating he felt as if he were a prisoner in their presence...so he dismissed them.
Newspaper dispatches shared the tale of how upon the arrival of the General's wife, this merciless and blood thirsty man, tenderly and affectionately embraced his wife...then passionately kissed her and turned to see about her luggage.

It was then that a young woman of 28 years old by the name of Zinaida Vassilievna Konopliannikova

....approached the General shooting him five times...three in his back and two in his side.
General Mien mortally wounded...fell dead on the platform.
It was noted that Ms. Konopliannikova, the revolutionist guilty of the crime would subsequently be sentenced to death...and that she was horribly tortured during her execution.  What should have been instantaneous death took more than half an hour due to the bungling of her executioner who failed to properly secure the rope.
More emphatically, during her trial, Ms. Konopliannikova stated to her judges:
“I saw clearly that the autocratic and bureaucratic superstructure rests on the armed force of the Government, and is able to maintain itself only through the constant practice of bloody terror, on the part of those steering our ship of State.  And life itself has taught me as follows: you cannot create anything new without first destroying the old; if you cannot pierce an idea with a bayonet, neither can you resist the power of the bayonet with ideas only”

Her understanding that to embrace the desire of freedom and dignity would not be enough...An armed force would be necessary to affect change...change in which individuals in government, intellectuals, professors, engineers, students, workers, peasants and many others in Russia desired and desperately cried out for.  

And so...it came to pass that many in Russia believed the sailors’ movement would accomplish the most important part in the approaching struggle for liberty.  While others, whose lot were cast in the Old Guard, classified the sailors as rebels and murderers.  In the end, the sailors convictions should have ensured them a place in Russian history as men who were heroes willing to sacrifice their lives for their country not as “elements or fanatics."

History shares the sailors embarked on a twelve year run that would force the abdication of the Tsar.  
Its movement held dear by those who sought freedom...hardly the criminal element that contemporary historians describe...a movement not created by bad food or immobility of the fleet but a movement that became known as the "armed fist of the revolution" culminating in its freely elected organization named Tsentrobalt and the ascension of its leader in the person of Pavel Yefimovitch Dybenko. 

  
  

Great October Series: Remembering the Romanov's...Reactions are equal to Actions

In the early months of 1905...Revolts in the Baltic Regions, Baku, Moscow, St. Petersburg and other regions have all shaken the Tsar's rule to its foundations.  Even some of the Tsar's most trusted officials acknowledge with baited breath the Tsar had lost his way.  Dissent is not limited to the workers, peasantry, and others...but from the Tsar's most loyal of subjects...high officials within his government.  In May of 1905 an article appeared in the Quarterly Review followed by another in the National Review; entitled simply "The Tsar"...
Portions of both articles, as written below, reveals evidence of someone with close intimate knowledge of the Tsar, his motives, and actions...below one can read the published articles for oneself; take in the views of a
close associate; come to know, as many Russians did in 1905, the understanding;
                                    "the sun began setting on the Romanov rule"

The End of the Autocracy 
A Severe Indictment of the Tsar
By a Russian High Official

Since Nicholas II dismissed his one statesman, renounced all rational policy and took to governing a sixth of the terrestrial planet as the spirits moved him, events have been literally chasing each other with bewildering rapidity.  Sudden historic changes are frequently confronting us as irrevocable facts, and before we can even guess their significance or gauge their trend they are followed by happenings more fateful still.  Thus it is hard to realize that the autocracy, with no constituent assembly to harm it, is already in its death throes; that the autocrat is a life prisoner, albeit there has been no flight to Copenhagen or to Darmstadt: and that the nation is in intermittent revolution without the stimulus of an August 10.  And those startling events constitute hardly more than the prelude to the drama.  Indeed, we dread to speculate on the scene of blood and fire which may be unfolded to our gaze when the curtain is next rung up on the death dirge of a system and an epoch.

Though Aaron counted upon Jehovah's help and wielded a magician's rod, he could do little more than make calves when the statesman Moses was not at his elbow.  And a Russian autocrat today without a prudent mentor is but a leaf whirled by the wind, helpless and pitiable.  Monarchs in trouble appeal forcibly to the imagination, Nicholas of Russia no less than Charles of England or Louis of France, perhaps even more than they.  No doubt forgiveness becomes a Christian nation, and our people if allowed would gladly forget as well as forgive.  But, unhappily, Nicholas's actions keeps their wounds form cicatrising.  There is no balm for their hurts, no light for their minds, no respite for their souls.  Thus wittingly or unwittingly, with or without moral responsibility, the Tsar is become the one hindrance to the well-being of our people, and every man of intelligence in the land is confronted with the Sphinx question; is it expedient that a whole nation shall suffer for the sake of one individual and if not is it a crime to help the millions at the risk of affronting the one?

Offering up the Life Blood of Others
Nitzschean in tenor, emphatic in form, is the answer given by the Tsar himself:
"Sit ut est aut non sit Russia!"...(let it be as it is, or let it not be Russia!)
And after each massacre of his loyal people, misnamed a battle, he inflates his chest and tells the world that the is undaunted still and will carry on the fearful struggle to the end, bravely sacrificing ever more blood and ever more money.  Bravely? Is it his own blood then?  Ah, no; that the ichor of a race of gods--inviolate and inviolable.  He offers up only the life blood of other scores of thousands of his people to whom his voice is the decree of doom.  And the money he squanders is neither his own nor that of his house, but merely the hoarded milliards of his French Allies.  For the Prince of peace wages war by proxy, and is generous and brave at the expense of others.  But now the proxies are growing tired of their respective parts.  French investors decline the honor of financing the campaign, while our people refuse to supply the food for the cannon.  Not that Russians are grown faint-hearted.  For a real king in a heroic age would have died willingly: for their country or a noble idea...they are capable of laying down their lives today.  But Nicholas II, even at hsi best, fails to inspirit them.  Devoid of faith, they behold him in unlovely nakedness, stripped of the garb of a hero.  No enthusiasm thrills their hearts in response to the blissful smile on his twitching lips as he raises aloft the tawdry image of his heavenly protege, St. Seraphim, devoutly blesses them and solemnly wishes them luck--luck on their journey to a horrible end.  St. Seraphim's blessing!  It might be a curse of Satan's, aggravated by a sneer.  But even the masses are not deceived.  Although benighted they feel in their own dim way that it is not for the public well that they are drafted to Manchuria.  persistence in this war means the material impoverishment of the people and the arrest of its moral and intellectual growth.  And the whole nation is aware of it.  Even to his own dynasty, the interests of which the Tsar takes so tenderly to heart, his action bodes no good; it has already turned his guards into gaolers, and transformed his palace into a prison.  Thus devoid of an intelligible goal--selfish or unselfish--and fraught with direst evils, it can no longer be termed a policy: it is an irrational whim, the plain symptom of diseased will which in an absolute monarch is like the power of Zeus in the hands of a simpleton.  Of this we are nearly all conscious; even ultra-absolutists admit it among themselves; but we stop short of words.

A Monstrosity
Yet there are times when inaction is a crime.  That one man should abuse the power given him for the good of all, and leisurely dispatch hundreds of thousands of his fellows to kill, be killed, and spread intense misery far and wide for a mere personal caprice, is in truth a monstrosity for which there is no name in human language no penalty in human law.  In pre-revolutionary France profound horror was aroused by the tale that returning from the chase the jaded monarch sometimes refreshed his body in a bath of warm human blood.  A gruesome legend!  But one is bound to confess that if it had been literally true the scenes accompanying it would have been less horrible and the results following it less mischievous than some of the deed for which our mild mannered monarch has been allowed to make himself responsible.  We can hardly conceive the maddening pain endured by our wounded soldiers abandoned for days and night to freeze, to famish, to fester to death with no word of comfort from their fellows, or huddled together in filthy trucks like bleeding carcasses of swine and oxen.  To these obscure heroes death; even though aggravated with a few hours' tortures, would have been a heaven sent boon.  Of such martyrs to imperial folly there were whole armies.  And at home people whose name is legion are even now perishing of hunger that one man's notion of personal dignity, repudiated by the bulk of the Russian race, should be realized.  In Eastern Siberia, for example, gaunt famine has begun its work, and bands of peaceful men, women, and children are entering upon their last ordeal  and "dying for the Tsar."

"Dying for the Tsar"
Yet amid their own intense sufferings our kind hearted people felt a lively sympathy for their "Little Father."
Nay, they entertain it still.  For their minds have no poison bags for the storing up of malice to feed late revenge.  Of a forgiving disposition, they are loathe to quench the smoking flax.  It is only when the smoking flax threatens to suffocate them that the instinct of self preservation absorbs the dictates of loyalty, and they trample out the smoldering fibre.  When I first took up the pen to describe the situation; Plehve was at the height of omnipotence, enjoying the fruits of his victory over Witte.  A few weeks later Plehve and his system were savagely blown into the region of history amid semi public rejoicings.  This attitude towards crime, the result of moral aberration, is a misfortune, perhaps the most terrible that has overtaken our people since the war began.  Under normal rule we shall recover from the financial effects of our reverses much sooner and more thoroughly than Europe imagines.  For the recuperative forces of our people are almost miraculous.  But the ravages of the ethical malady will prove less amenable to treatment.  And as yet no remedy is being applied.  On the contrary, the people are being goaded into violence, while terror has almost usurped the place of law.  When Plehve had vanished, the Grand Duke Sergius steered the ship of State, standing harsh and defiant behind the man at the wheel.  He had just flung in the face of our people the base calumny that they had sold their Tsar and their God for Japanese and English gold; in the face of that people whose blood and substance had and his were recklessly squandering.  And a few weeks later Sergius, like Plehve, was ruthlessly, criminally, cut down in the height of his triumph, the nation again looking on without disapproval. Now in the connivance at lawless violence lurks a danger, the insidiousness of which few people realize.  Personally I fear that unless its progress be speedily stayed it may lead to moral paralysis of the nation.  Thus
spiritually as well as materially we are "dying for the Tsar."
For it is he, and he alone, who is technically answerable.  There is now no successor of Plehve, no kinsman of Sergius, to share with him the moral burden.  Nicholas II stands conspicuously alone.  Skillful flatterers indeed he has many, but no helpful friend.  From motives which it would be impertinent to analyze the few he had left him for the time or definitely forsaken him.  Grand Dukes, favorites, Ministers have withdrawn from the partnership once so lucrative now so dangerous, taking elaborate precautions to advertise the fact, urbi et orbi. (to the city and to the world)  Some of them point to the sickly figure of the Tsar and all but cry "Ecce homo", (behold the man)  Almost the first to go was the Grand Duke Vladimir, who, I am told, after the massacre of Red Sunday defended himself in America and English journals.  The responsibility for the shooting, he exclaimed, was not his but that of Prince Vassilchikoff, who refused point blank to obey the humane grand-ducal order to cease firing on the people, and refused with perfect impunity.

The Conversion of a Grand Duke
Next among the runaways from the sinking ship of autocracy is the ambitious Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovitch.  This personage is the one Nationalist member of our Imperial family whose zeal burns for genuine Russian civilization untouched by the contagion of western culture.  He displayed his patriotic hatred of foreigners by organizing the recent raid against their mercantile shipping, and showed his love of Russia by promoting the Yalu concession, which was to have enriched himself and ruined Japan.  "utile cum dulci" (useful and sweet)  The political apostasy of this promising prince was, perhaps, the unkindest cut of all.  For he owed many of the best things he possessed to the Tsar, while the Tsar was beholden to him for many of the pernicious counsels he had received and most of the evil counselors he had trusted.  Married to the sister of Nicholas II, the Grand Duke Alexander used and abused his great but precarious influence to recommend Bezobrazoff and Alexeieff to his imperial brother in law, who, caught in the lime of flattery, allowed these adventurers to ride rough shod over Russia.  But the times have changes, Alexander Mikhailovitch has now become a Liberal, and is bruiting his conversation abroad.  Again, it is known that in his unregenerate days, which have so lately and suddenly ceased, this illustrious personage hated the Jews as Saul of Tarsus hated the Christians.  In this he and Sergius were at one.  But since the Revolution began he has had his Damascus, and the scales having fallen from his eyes, he has found salvation.  He is no longer a militant Antisemite.  God having presumably made the Jews, the Grand Duke is willing henceforth to let them pass for men of an inferior race.  Thus, a few weeks ago, he proposed that in one important point they should be differentiated from convicts, and his friends marveled at his broad mindedness.

Attitude of the Dowager Empress
But by far the most noteworthy sign of the times is the departure of the Dowager Empress herself from the camp of the absolutists, if one may describe thus clumsily her mild assent to counsels prompted by common sense, and her gentile but persevering disapproval of measures which, besides harming the nation, endanger the dynasty.  Whether solicitude for the son, or pity for the people, supplied the motive is a matter of indifference to outsiders: the step was well warranted by both.  This distinguished lady, whose inborn tact and savoir faire have often stood her instead of political foresight, has sorrowfully parted from her son and daughter in law at the most critical moment in their lives.  But Cassandra's prophecies were not more vain or true than hers.  The syren's voice of the wife goes straight to the husband's heart, while the warnings of the mother leave the son unconvinced.  And the wife's exhortations are but the echoes of the son's neurotic visions.  In her naive dreams there is no place for prosaic fears, and her fond ambition is blind to obstacles and to consequences.  It would be rash to criticize without knowing the order of considerations that moved her to turn a deaf ear to the voice of the Dowager Empress.  But it is not easy to imagine any rational grounds on which her own sister reasoning, advising, beseeching, should have been also put out of court without a hearing.  The widowed Grand Duchess Sergius, whose vision long experience has sharpened, and whose motive have been chastened by severe suffering, has over and over again sought to impress upon her crowned sister the fact that there are times when true conjugal affection is more effectually shown by judicious hindrance than by uncritical incentive.  Of the views held by the Grand Duchess few among those who move in inner Court circles are ignorant, and nearly all express surprise that the young spouse, who declined to listen to the warning voices of her sister and mother in law, did not at least inquire into the facts and the motives that prompted their utterance.  But Fate, which itself is sightless, makes a point of blinding its destined victims.

A Victim of Fate
And chief among those victims is Nicholas II.  Our Tsar is one of those typical rulers sent in periods of national transition to peoples fore doomed to be slung into pulling down the tottering fabric of the past.  The mischievousness of such a man's influence is generally in inverse ratio to the lethargy of his people, reaction here being proportionate to action...In Nicholas II it kept pace with the growth of the disease of his will until it reached its present point and became unbearable.  For many years he was characterized by weakness of will, which is now brought into painful relief by a convulsive craving for strength.  The feebleness is evidenced in his chronic state, the fitful force in his transitory moods.
That ailment has been aggravated by injudicious but well meant efforts to cure it.  A soft feminine voice, uttering loving words and bracing exhortations in the language of Shakespeare, stimulated him to endeavors which took a wrong direction.  Nicholas having dismissed his ambitious Minister, the halo of the Tsardom departed from him, and he thenceforward submissively hearkened to the soft, sweet voice in the boudoir.  "Show them that you are a real Monarch, whose word is law.  You have issued your commands, now see that they are executed.  They taunt you with a weak will.  Let them feel its force!"  And Nicholas responded to the stimulus.  For if he lacks the sensitive conscience which wakes the sinner up, he possesses certain of the virtues which lull to sleep, and foremost among them that languid sweetness which enables a husband to celebrate his wedding almost every day of his life.  And it is possibly to the qualities underlying this soft passivity, which the son of Priam combine with personal dash, that Nicholas owes his predilection for the society of women, priests, charlatans, and children, and his shyness of the society of strong, honest men.

Next, the second half of the article on...
The End of the Autocracy
A Severe Indictment of the Tsar
By A Russian High Official

All thinking people are combining against the autocracy.  The engineers were the first to form a permanent association, including every member of the profession in Russia, and to demand a legislative Assembly.  A thunderbolt was hurled against them in the shape of an order forbidding them ever to meet again; for Nicholas II was once more impelled to show himself a real monarch, and to smite with might.  But the engineers, deaf to the echo of the soft voice from within the boudoir, gathered together to discuss politics heedless of prohibitions.  The Government may say what it likes, but we will do what we like, was the meaning of their procedure.  their example was followed by academicians, professors, barristers, men of letters...in a word, by all the groups and sections of thinking, writing and articulate Russia.  The white heat of a generous passion for equity, justice and equality is rapidly fusing all the elements of our people into a nation, one in its opposition to the Tsar, and every day brings fresh examples.  Less than a week ago the members of the outer Bar of St. Petersburg at their general meeting passed a resolution condemning the autocracy in terms of unprecedented violence.  The labor and agrarian troubles, it said, having been "provoked by a policy of injustice culminating in misery and ignorance, call not for coercion, but for a thorough overhauling of our economic relations which the nation alone can effect.  But, unmindful of the well being of the people, and anxious only to uphold its own power, the present Government is swiftly conducting the nation to hopeless anarchy and appalling disaster."
Seraphim of Saroff, whom the Imperial couple had raised to the dignity of a saint, had rewarded their confidence by bestowing upon them a male heir.  Their trust in the spiritism of Phillippe had been disappointed, their belief in the science of Schenk had brought disillusion; but when they confided in the orthodoxy of Serphim their tearful prayer was heard and the Tsarevitch saw the light of day.  therefore the orthodox spirit of ancient Muscovy should quicken autocracy and find adequate expression in the historic State document that was being elaborated.

The Tsar's Manifesto
No one suspected what was coming, and still less through whom it would come.  Thorough preparations were made in accordance with the evangelical principle; let not thy right hand know what thy left hand had done.  And then the thunderbolt was launched.  The critic will doubtless read the Manifesto with the indulgent eyes when he learns that is was the handiwork of a devoted wife, whose wish born thought sere shaped by a loyal seaman.  Prince Putyatin, with the help of Shirinsky Shikhmatoff, actually worte the Manifesto by which the destinies of 140,00,000 human beings were to be decided.  Prince Putyatin and Shirinsky Shikhmatoff!  Who..the English reader may inquire...are they?  Who, almost every Russian would ask, are these wire pullers behind the scenes?
Intelligence, a political writer once affirmed, is requisite in order to write any important State document; but one may say without flattery that the members of the Budoir Council have satisfactorily proved the contrary. They have produced a piece of literature which smells less of midnight oil than of incense.  It might be the work of an under taught, over zealous neophyte.  For a well balanced Christian mind would hardly have begun by belittling the Deity for whom so much is confidently expected.  In the first sentence of the Manifesto our people are informed that, "it has pleased Divine Providence, whose ways are inscrutable, to subject Russia to heavy ordeals."  It has certainly pleased the Tsar to treat Russia thus, but it sounds impious to identify him with Deity.  Autocracy, however, has long been fond of the device.  Thus, on the day after Paul, the prototype of Nicholas II, had been murdered by a number of his trusted dignitaries, his son and successor, Alexander I, who was privy to the conspiracy for deposing his father, issued a manifesto which ran: "It has pleased Divine Providence to call away our dearly beloved father, the Tsar Paul Petrovitch, from life to death."  Europeans might feel shocked to see Divine Providence dubbed a regicide, but we Russians are accustomed to the sight.  In like manner the Deity was piously saddled with the responsibility of several other murders...especially those committed by Catherine II.

The Pietistic Lines of the War
And it is the same pietistic lines that the war is conducted.  One might almost say that our rulers hope too much of God or of his Saints.  When Admiral Togo's torpedo boats first damaged our battleships we grew angry had Te Deums (We praise thee God hymns) chanted.  And to repeated torpedo attacks we answered by multiplying prayers.  The Japanese prepared for the campaign by dispatching troops and we answered by opening our folding icons and raising aloft our religious banners and crosses while bending pliant knees.  Our commanders on being appointed went about to the holy places, from monastery to monastery, watching and waiting.  St. Seraphim was the general favorite, and image makers and monks did a brisk trade.  Kuropatkin pilgrimaged thus for fourteen days, and garnered in a gallery of icons unto the destruction of the enemy.  Then foreigners admired us. "What a religious people these Russians are! The Japanese are advancing towards Tu-ren-chen, yet the pious Muscovites are still engaged in prayer."  and the Commander in Chief, not yet satisfied with his piety and his collection of folded images, kept on pilgrimaging.  Finally he started.  And from many of the stations on the long way came telegraphic messages announcing the edifying tidings to all: "Arrived in Zlatoust. Heard mass.  Received icons."  And our people or Press rejoiced exceedingly.  At last, with a waggon load of holy images, he set out hopefully.  Admiral Skrydloff also watched and prayed and collected images against the impious enemy.  And yet our society, wise in its generation, says the enemy chose the better part. 
And the Manifesto which thus credits Providence with the consequence of the Tsar's misdeeds then gravely proceeds to announce a line of action calculated to yield an abundant harvest of still more calamitous results in the future, which will in turn be fathered on its Deity.  Thus control of the Pacific is indicated as the goal of his policy and object of his war, our predominance there being represented as hardy less necessary to Christendom that to ourselves.  Alas, all Christendom and all Russia immediately denied the statement with emphasis and unanimity.  Our people refused to sacrifice their blood or money for Manchuria, while the nations of the globe resolutely shrank from entrusting their interests to the care of our Tsar. But upon Nicholas II, these manifestations made no impression.  He seems to have lost none of his certitude that it is he who is right and the human race that is wrong, and none of his determination to force upon humanity what he deems good for it.

Internal Reforms
The question of internal reforms was next dealt with in a spirit which it is hardly an exaggeration to call ferocious.  As Providence had been confounded with the autocrat, so the nation was identified with the "evil minded leaders of the revolutionary movement," and the masses were exhorted to help to uproot sedition at home.  The Emperor struggling against this whole people.  If the theory of the theocracy underlying this home made Manifesto were correct, what a monstrous notion of God and Tsar would result!  The inscrutable Deity demanding hecatombs of the monarch's subjects and the monarch sending them to the slaughter with a degree of blitheness which Abraham standing over Isaac might have piously admired.
The Rescript, courtiers openly asserted, was the result of a Ministerial revolt, a modern and humane substitute for a Palace revolution.  The Emperor presumably took this view, for he never convoke the Council again.  People asked and still ask, "Will it be repeated?"
That same Friday evening the document was printed and published, and people who, having read the Manifesto in the morning, perused the Rescript in the evening, asked themselves whether the Empire was governed, like the Manichaean world, by a good principle and a bad.  For it was no manifest that Nicholas II was the nominal chief of two bodies moving in diametrically opposite directions: of the Council of Ministers in an outer chamber, and of the Boudoir Council in an inner chamber; and within the space of 24 hours he had first sanctioned the views of the one, and then assented to the plans of the other.  What was to become of it all?
From that moment onwards the autocrat has been struggling to free himself form the meshes of the net.  Whether he felt humiliated by the successful strategy of his Ministers, or was stimulated by the maxims of the Boudoir Councils is immaterial; important is the fact that he repented having signed the Rescript, and resolved to undo as far as was possible what he had done.

A Deplorable Picture
In the Far East our Naval and Military operations have been unsuccessful; at home our working men inaugurated a series of strikes, the upshot of which only a prophet can foresee: in the provinces our peasantry are shaking off the bonds of ages, and have been led against the land owners, whose houses they are pillaging and burning, and whose estates they are seizing: all our students and professors and many of our scholars have struck work; and the inhabitants of our towns are petitioning the Minister to allow them to create a civic guard for defense against the attacks of the police, and are meanwhile arming themselves.  In a word, our administration may be likened to a factory of which all the steam power is used up by the friction of the many wheels and all the income spent in buying oil to lubricate them.  At any moment most of what we have and are may disappear in fire and flames.
And the leader of the nation during this terrible crisis is a sickly youth of arrested development and morbid will, whose inability to govern might perhaps pass unnoticed if he would but allow any man of intellect or will power to grabble with the jarring elements.  This however, he refuses to permit, while allotting to obscure soldiers and seamen, tricksters and money grabbers, a share of the supreme power to the detriment of the nation.  The mental and moral impotency of this well intentioned mar-plot, who cannot be said to have had even experience, unless ten year of uniform failure could impart it, is one of the common place of conversation in town and country.  Even the rough and ready droshky drivers say of him that he has been thrust among rulers like a pestie among spoons.  Yet apprised of his impotence by the Boudoir Council he wishes to will, and takes the volition for the deed.  No occurrence, no event, makes a lasting impression on his mind.  Abroad our armies may be scattered, our ships sunk; our credit ruined; he is serene in spite of it all.

Absolutism Must Go
But the position is no longer endurable.  The crisis can now end in one way only...in the disappearance of that absolutism the advantages of which I hoped...vainly hoped, alas! to see rescued for the sake of the nation.  At present the one question which to my thinking may still be profitably discussed is whether, while there is yet time, the autocrat will voluntarily dissociate the future of his dynasty from that of the autocracy.  Will he cast his semi-divine privileges overboard in the storm to save his position in the Empire and perhaps what he values even more than his position?  That is a matter which primarily, almost exclusively, concerns, himself and his inspirers of the Boudoir Council, who still fancy that windmills may be turned with a hand bellows.  The other interested party, the nation, whose prisoner Nicholas II may be truly said to be, has already chosen its route...the shortest road to the goal, and will travel along resolutely.  It is for those who advise Nicholas to say whether he will desist from the policy of provocation now being pursued in his name.  When the nation has been fully aroused it will be too late.  And the time still left for reflection seems lamentably short.
Argument and persuasion have unhappily proved fruitless.  His nobles petitioned him, his Zemstvos memorialized him, every class, every profession and element of our population besought him to reform the administration and admit the people to a share in the government.  for a moment he appeared to listen, and then turned away.  Almost every nation on the globe adjured him to put an end to the unprecedented horrors of a wanton war.  Again he seemed to pay attention, but he soon moved aside and talked of something else.  For the whole world is wrong and Nicholas alone is right.  The individual who goes up the the clouds in an air filled balloon does not see himself ascending, but only his fellow men sinking away into insignificance.  The unnerved young man completely shut off from the world and without even a peep hole to look through, knows better what should and can be done there than the intellect of our people, the wisdom of the world.
For he is buoyed up by the encouragement and admiration of the Council of the Boudoir.  In his thirst for approval he dismissed several advisers and chose others; but the new ones repeated the warnings of their predecessors.  He then appointed a Council of Ministers in order to escape from the importunity of Witte, but his entire Council as one man not only offered him wholesome advice, but took care that he should adopt it.  And now he convokes it no more. "Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute." (this is only the first step that costs)  His own relatives, the political Grand Dukes, have abandoned him.  They suddenly stopped short in their onward course, wheeled round, and bowing respectfully to the Liberals made their profession of faith.  His own mother talked with him, exhorted and implored him to see things as they are.  Then she too finally ranged herself on the die of the moderate Reformers.

Millions at the Mercy of One Man
A nation of 140,000,000 is ordered about and experimented upon by this irresponsible young man, whose commands are known to be literally ruinous, and are suspected of being sometimes irrational.  A vast concourse of human beings are at his mercy.  His whim turns hundreds of thousands of citizens into orphans, beggars, and corpses.  And the living vainly mourn for the dead and murmur at their own lot, all the outcome of a whim, the passing whim, of a sickly creature who himself needs guidance and guardianship.  And the whole world watches this unprecedented spectacle with thrilling interest, with alternating hope and fear, with spontaneous sympathy and sorrow; for his people, his victims, with touching resignation act as their own executioners.  Thus between our country and progress, between our people and well being, between the world and peace, rises up a sorry fragment of volition, a driftless whim, an irrational impulse.  Nothing but that.  Yet in the twentieth century that infinitesimal obstacle is found to be insurmountable.  A private citizen who should mismanage his paternal estate as Nikolai Alexandrovitch misrules his Empire would be temporarily deprived of the control of his property, treated as a minor, and place under tutelage.  But the soul crippled Prince, by whose orders hundreds of thousands are crushed, impoverished, brutalized, and killed is inviolable.  Every expedient that human ingenuity, chastened by latter day ethics, could devise, has been tried and tried in vain.  His Ministers have warned him: his people have besought him; Grand Dukes have left him, his own mother and his wife's sister have dissociated themselves from him, and some of them ask the world to take note they are washing their hands of the autocrat, hoping to benefit the dynasty.  To no purpose.  The grain of sand still stops the motion of the wheel.  The articulate millions are fraternizing, combining and organizing.  Their forbidden congresses are held in the light of day, and eloquent philippics delivered against the autocracy and the autocrat.  For the people are beginning to pay as little heed to arbitrary edicts as the authorities pay to law.  "Silent leges."  By the early summer the intelligent classes will have been welded into a homogeneous mass, responsive to the slightest signal from the centre.  And against the wishes of this new Russia it may well be doubted whether any administrative machine could work even though it guarded by the mightiest army that ever followed a leader.  For the prisoner of Tsarskoye, however, there would still remain one, but only one issue; the unleashing of the blind forces of the peasantry against the few millions of the literate.  This barbarous expedient, unfortunately, deserves mention, for it has often been threatened and partially tried of late.  For the sake of humanity one hopes it may never be seriously resorted to.  For if the wild beast dormant in our peasants be once stung to violence, woe to our ill starred country.  Elemental chaos, primeval welter, paralyzing terror would result.  No concession would then avail to stop the advances of the destructive avalanche as it swept away historic landmarks and blotted out men and institutions, neither the disappearance of the autocrat, nor the abolition of the autocracy, nor even the establishment of a democratic republic.
At present a peaceful consummation is still possible at a reasonable price...the autocracy must go.  The Boudoir Council may no longer play havoc with the nation.  If to the Tsar's thinking, a Parliament, a council of Ministers, an experienced statesman, are one and all harmful; then he must be taught that a hole and corner Government, carried on by unknown adjutants, knavish favorites, and disreputable quacks, is incomparably more so.  And it must and shall cease, be the cost what it may.  Autocracy has heated it palace with sparks, and must now do penance in the ashes.  As for its last representative, whose reign has been a ten years' illness, and whose Empire is a cross between a poor house and a hospital, his fate can happily still be shaped by his kindred and friends.  But they have not time to lose.