United States or Brunei ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
'Trust the Octobrists, he said cheerily. 'I'd rather trust our revolvers. The Banker's cigar fell from his mouth. 'An anarchist! like my nephew Simon! David began to realize the limitations of the financial intellect. He saw that to get ideas into Bankers' brains is even more difficult than to get cheques from their pockets. Still, there was that promising scapegrace Simon!
In addition there were some ninety members in the peasants' Labor Group, which were semi-Socialist. There were 117 Constitutional Democrats. The government supporters, including the Octobrists, numbered less than one hundred. From the first the attitude of the government toward the new Duma was one of contemptuous arrogance.
Chekanhov, if he were living now, instead of being maltreated by the people, would certainly be their well beloved champion, and perhaps represent them in the Duma; the timid Tokarev, in spite of his aversion to the ideas of the revolutionists, could find a place in the liberal party of the Reforming Democrats, or at least among the Octobrists; the unfortunate Varenka would not be worn out by her work as school-mistress, for she would be supported by the peasants.
After various conferences between Premier Lvov and the other Ministers, on the one side, and representatives of the Soviet, on the other side, a new Provisional Government was announced, with Prince Lvov again Prime Minister. In the new Cabinet there were seven Constitutional Democrats, six Socialists, and two Octobrists.
On the side of the Constitutional Democrats and the Octobrists, too, there were men of sterling character, distinguished ability, and very liberal minds. The selection of Terestchenko as Minister of Foreign Affairs was by many Socialists looked upon with distrust, but, upon the whole, the Coalition Ministry met with warm approbation.
Perhaps he would end by preaching the landlord's way passive Samooborona was better than none. But the Report refused to write itself. It was too dismal to confess he had not collected a kopeck or one recruit. He picked up a greasy fragment of a Russian newspaper, and read with a grim smile that the Octobrists had excluded Jews from their meetings.
'The political ideals both of Cadets and Octobrists were learnt chiefly from England, the study of whose constitutional history had aroused in Russia an enthusiasm hardly intelligible to a present-day Englishman. All three Dumas ... were remarkably friendly to England, and England supplied the staple of the precedents and parallels for quotation.
But when the Octobrists joined the Progressive Bloc against the Government, Protopopoff had shown himself quite radical and supported it. Quite unexpectedly, by the resignation of a vice president of the Duma, he rose to prominence by being elected to the vacant office. In the summer of 1916 he was one of a delegation which visited England, France, and Italy.
While every facility was given to candidates openly favoring the government, including the Octobrists, every possible obstacle was placed in the way of radical candidates, especially Socialists. The meetings of the latter were, in hundreds of cases, prohibited; in other hundreds of cases they were broken up by the Black Hundreds and the police.
This was the man who was finally to kick aside the last wedge shoring up the tottering walls of the Russian autocracy. Protopopoff, who had for the first time entered politics in 1908, being a cloth manufacturer of Simbirsk, was in that year elected a deputy to the Duma by the moderate Octobrists, a conservative body which usually sided with the Government.
Word Of The Day