736 



RUSSIA. 



in the earlier months of 1882 was greater than 

 in 1881. 



At length, toward the end of May, and just 

 before the dismissal of Ignatieff, it was publicly 

 made known that the Government was re- 

 solved to punish severely all outrages against 

 Hebrews and their property, and dismiss gov- 

 ernors and other officials who failed of their 

 duty in this respect. 



During the twelve months of Ignatieff's min- 

 istry he not only set on foot many commissions 

 of investigation into the causes of social and 

 political disorders, but he took positive steps 

 to loosen some of the fetters which aggravated 

 certain sections of the nation. The difficulties 

 with the Vatican were terminated to the content- 

 ment of the Catholics, who form 72 per cent of 

 the population of Poland. The matter was not 

 finally settled until the visit of Minister Giers 

 to Rome in the autumn. The Pontiff obtained 

 the right, withheld for many years, to nomi- 

 nate to vacant Polish sees. The use of the Po- 

 lish language was allowed in the Catholic semi- 

 naries in Poland, where Polish and Russian 

 were both made obligatory, and even in the 

 seminary in St. Petersburg. The Poles received 

 permission, retracted after the retirement of 

 Ignatieff, to have a newspaper and theatre in 

 St. Petersburg. Of greater importance were 

 the concessions granted to the Old Believers 

 and other sectaries, who number over 14,000,- 

 000, and constitute the most industrious and 

 law-abiding class of the population of Muscovy. 

 Practical measures for the solution of the liquor 

 question were taken under Ignatieff. Plans 

 were adopted for the migration of peasants 

 from unproductive districts. With the Finance 

 Minister he established a land-bank. 



Ignatieff marked out for himself a clearer 

 and more comprehensive policy than his pre- 

 decessor, Melikoff. He was a Panslavist, but 

 not an Old-Russian of the type of Katkoff and 

 Pobodonoszeff. He formed plans which he 

 thought would end the revolutionary crisis 

 and satisfy the aspirations which have been 

 seething in Russian society for half a century, 

 and can no longer be confined by repressive 

 measures. Another man with creative inten- 

 tions would not have taken office on the pledge 

 of the May manifesto, affirming the inviola- 

 bility of the autocracy. Ignatieff, to realize his 

 ideas, had to extricate himself from his false 

 position, and resorted to the wiles which had 

 earned him, when in Turkey, the epithets of 

 "father of lies" and "Menteur Pasha." He 

 never commanded the confidence of the public, 

 nor did he gain that of his imperial master, 

 though he came to be considered indispensable 

 as the " tamer of the Nihilists." by the ener- 

 getic action of the police in unearthing revolu- 

 tionary conspiracies, and the fact that no at- 

 tempt on the life of the Czar occurred. The 

 outbreaks against the Jews and the Germans 

 were permitted, not merely as an escape-valve 

 for agricultural distress, but as a development 

 of the anti -European spirit. Ignatieff was wise 



enough to see that the empire could not be 

 preserved, much less extended over the other 

 Slavs, by recasting everything in the Musco- 

 vite mold. Hence he encouraged the revival 

 of national Esthonian and Lithuanian senti- 

 ments, relaxed the restrictions on the Poles 

 and their religion, and endeavored to place the 

 persecuted sectaries on the same legal footing 

 as the Orthodox. Ignatieff was obliged to pre- 

 sent his main scheme prematurely, because his 

 influence with the Czar was already shattered. 

 It was to give the Russian people a voice in 

 the government, but was prefigured as the re- 

 vival of an ancient Russian institution which 

 had nothing in common with European consti- 

 tutionalism. This old representative institu- 

 tion was the Zemski Sobor, or National Assem- 

 bly, the convocation of notables, which the 

 Czars before Peter occasionally ordered when 

 they wished an indorsement of their acts by the 

 estates of the empire. Pobodonoszeff, Pro- 

 curator of the Holy Synod, the Czar's old tutor, 

 who has constituted himself the guardian of 

 autocracy, warned the Emperor of the intent 

 and consequences of this disguised constitu- 

 tional innovation. The Cabinet voted against 

 the project, and Count Ignatieff asked to be re- 

 lieved of his post. On the 12th of June the 

 Czar gave him his dismissal, and appointed 

 Count Tolstoy Minister of the Interior. 



The new minister appointed to deal with the 

 problem of Nihilism, and the causes of discon- 

 tent, was the same who, by introducing the 

 classical system of Katkoff in the higher 

 schools, when Minister of Instruction from 

 1866 to 1880, had aggravated the political fer- 

 ment which he sought to destroy, and first 

 caused it to take the form of revolutionary 

 Nihilism. Among the thousands of students 

 who were left hopeless and breadless by the 

 change in the academical standard, the nucleus 

 of the Nihilistic party was formed. The revo- 

 cation of these rules was the first remedial 

 measure of Melikoff. Tolstoy's elevation indi- 

 cates the close of the epoch of remedial reform, 

 and of the immediate prospect for any kind ot 

 representative government. The representa- 

 tives of the policy which the Czar chose to 

 follow Katkoff, Pobodonoszeff, and Tolstoy 

 promise to restore the filial devotion of the 

 Russian people to the Czar, and their fidelity 

 to the national Church, by rigidly repressing 

 all independent political and religious thought. 

 The measures of Ignatieff for the relief and pro- 

 tection of the sects were rescinded. An act of 

 the Holy Synod allowing the appointment of 

 popes without any seminary training indicates 

 the reliance of the ruling party on ignorance 

 to retain the people within the fold of the Or- 

 thodox Church, and upon persecution to drive 

 back the sectaries. The new minister, whose 

 policy was to preserve the autocracy and the 

 bureaucratic system, its concomitant, applied 

 himself assiduously to reforming the abuses in 

 the administration, which had become more 

 flagrant than ever under Ignatieff, whose com- 



