United States or Chile ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It has crushed and trampled under foot the liberty that was won by the Russian people. The Bolsheviki pretend to act in the name of the people. Why, then, have they dissolved the Constituent Assembly elected by the people? They pretend to have the majority of the people with them. Why, then, this governmental terror that is being used in a manner more cruel even than in the time of Czarism?
Then came a committee from these soldiers to the doors of the Duma with the demand: "We have risen and helped the people overturn the autocracy. Down with czarism! Where do you stand?" President Rodzianko, speaking for the Duma, showed them his telegrams demanding a ministry of the czar responsible to the people, and said that they stood for a constitutional democracy. The soldiers were satisfied.
It was thus that Vera Zasulich attempted the assassination of the infamous Chief of Police Trepov. The movement to temper Czarism by assassination systematically pursued was beginning. In 1879 the Land and Freedom Society held a conference for the purpose of discussing its program.
Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven were subjects of little principalities. They received influence from other countries and contributed their share to the universal civilization like citizens of the world, without insisting that the world should, therefore, become Germanized." Czarism had committed atrocities. Tchernoff knew that by experience, and did not need the Germans to assure him of it.
That traditionally reactionary, bureaucratic body, composed of former Premiers, Cabinet Ministers, and other high officials, formally demanded that the Czar take steps to make the government responsible to the popularly elected assemblage. This was a small revolution in itself. The fabric of Czarism had cracked.
In this object Rasputin and his allies nearly succeeded. It was to avert this that practically all the social elements, both liberal and reactionary, united with the revolutionists in overturning czarism. What the plans of the dark forces were during the first year of the war cannot now of course be definitely known.
They believed that autocratic Russia's natural alliance was with autocratic Germany and Austria. Their hatred of Czarism led them to wish for its defeat, even by Germany, provided the victory were not so great as to permit Germany to extend her domain over Russia or any large part of it.
The assassination of Von Plehve, however, for the first time really weakened the government. Czarism was, in fact, already toppling. The new Minister of the Interior, Von Plehve's successor, Prince Svyatpolk-Mirski, sought to meet the situation by a policy of compromise.
The sailors, who but a few minutes before had sung a funeral hymn to Logvinov, and wept when they saw that they understood nothing, now became the docile executors of the orders of the Bolsheviki. And when they were asked, "Why do you do this?" they answered as in the time, still recent, of Czarism: "It is the order. No need to talk."
The first of these facts was the new aspect of Czarism, its changed status. Absolutism as a legal institution was dead.
Word Of The Day