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
"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.' "
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