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Again he was invited back to court and then he set about building up his influence into a political machine that was never again to be broken, even after his death, until it became necessary for the reactionaries themselves to help destroy the autocracy itself in order to purge Russia of the spirit of Rasputin. Rasputin, not the revolutionary movement, brought about the downfall of czarism.
It scorned the slow, legalistic methods and resolutely answered the terrorism of Czarism by a terrorism of the people. It maintained a special department for carrying on this grim work. Its Central Committee passed sentences of death upon certain officials, and its decrees were carried out by the members of its Fighting Organization.
All classes, with the exception of the bureaucracy, wanted the abolition of Czarism and Absolutism and the establishment of a constitutional government, elected by the people on a basis of universal suffrage, and directly responsible to the electorate. Upon the economic issue there was less agreement, though all parties and classes recognized the need of extensive change.
They demanded an eight-hour day and the right to organize unions and make collective bargains. In addition to these demands, they protested against the Balkan War and against militarism in general. Had the great war not intervened, a tragic interlude in Russia's long history of struggle, the year 1914 would have seen the greatest struggle for the overthrow of Czarism in all that history.
Possibly some of them were, but it by no means follows that because they desired Russia's defeat they were therefore consciously pro-German. They were not pro-German, but anti-Czarists. They believed quite honestly, most of them, that Russia's defeat was the surest and quickest way of bringing about the Revolution in Russia which would overthrow Czarism.
To stir up political, religious, and racial passions in Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan, and India, especially against England, required no original planning by Trotzky or Lenin. Czarism had already done these things for generations, and full information lay both in the Petrograd archives and in the brains of surviving Czarist agents ready to turn their hands as easily to the new work as the old.
It is no reflection upon Rodzianko's honesty, or upon his loyalty to the people, to say that he was appalled by the development of the struggle. He sympathized with the people in their demand for political democracy and would wage war to the end upon Czarism, but he feared the effect of the Revolution upon the army and the Allied cause. Moreover, he was a landowner, and he feared Socialism.
"'The point of view of German Democrats coincides with that of German imperialism. German predominance means for us a far greater danger than Czarism, because Czarism prevents the German army from marching on Paris, and thus protects the banner of France, which in spite of all mistakes and errors, is still the most revolutionary.
Once more Russia had spoken for democracy in no uncertain voice. And once more Czarism committed the incredible folly of attempting to stem the tide of democracy by erecting further measures of autocracy as a dam.
Is it any wonder that Paul Axelrod, who was one of the representatives of Russia on the International Socialist Bureau prior to the outbreak of the war, has been forced to declare that the Bolsheviki have "introduced into Russia a system worse than Czarism, suppressing the Constituent Assembly and the liberty of the press"? Or that the beloved veteran of the Russian Revolution, Nicholas Tchaykovsky, should lament that "the Bolshevik usurpation is the continuation of the government by which Czarism held the country in an iron grip"?
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