Revieic of Reviewt, I/ll/OS. 



History of the Month. 



433 



black with thunder clouds, nor is there at present 

 any rift in the Cimmerian darkness that covers the 

 land of Muscovy. The dykes have burst, the re- 

 volutionary flood is surging over the outlands — the 

 Baltic provinces, Poland and the Caucasus — and 

 ominous symptoms threaten the tranquillity of Rus- 

 sia proper. To cope with such a situation by mere 

 acts of repression, arrests here, hangings there, and 

 the like, is as futile as an attempt to bale out an 

 inundation with pails. Xothing can be done till the 

 dykes are mended. In other words, Russia will 

 steadily sink deeper and deeper into anarchy unless 

 the Government can create or restore among its sub- 

 jects a conviction that the very existence of civil 

 society demands the rallying of all the moral forces 

 of the community against the social peril. The 

 existing garrison of the citadel of law and order 

 is manifestly too weak to stem the torrent. New 

 reinforcements must be obtained somehow, and the 

 only available allies are in the enemy's camp. Nor 

 will they come over to the autocracy excepting on 

 their own terms. The Tsar will have to concede 

 these terms or they will sullenly acquiesce in the 

 spread of the welter of anarchy which threatens to 

 drown Russia in blood. Moscow will be as much 

 a city of the dead as Warsaw, and Russia will 

 perish with the autocracy. 



The Government is at death grips 

 At Death Grips with murder. The policy of Re- 

 VVitti Murder. pression from above is parried by 

 a policy of Assassination, whole- 

 sale and retail, from below. Policemen and soldiers 

 are shot down like partridges in the streets of War- 

 saw — on one day thirteen policemen, four police- 

 sergeants, seven gendarmes, and four soldiers were 

 shot dead, and eighteen wounded. General Minn, 

 the commander of the terrible Semeonovsky Regi- 

 ment, which trampled out the Moscow rising in 

 blood, is coolly stalked by a young girl, with a re- 

 volver in one hand and a bomb in the other, and is 

 shot dead as he sat on a bench in Peterhof railway 

 station beside his wife and daughter. Bombs are 

 thrown at the Governor-General of Warsaw, and he 

 is /lors de combat with concussion of the brain. Re- 

 \iilutionary Committees levy blackmail, enforced 

 l)v murder, in the Baltic provinces, until the Ger- 

 mans, the economic backbone of the district, are 

 flving for their lives across the frontier. General 

 Trepoff is said to have narrowlv escaped death by 

 ooison. In St. Petersburg itself, as M. Stolypin, 

 he Prime Minister, is giving an official reception at 

 his house on the Islands, four assassins drive up 

 disguised as a General and his suite, demand ad- 

 mittance, and, on being refused, hurl a couple of 

 bombs into the ante-chamber, w^hich, exploding, 

 shatter the house and kill thirty-three persons, con- 

 founding the guilty and innocent, women and chil- 

 dren, in one common holocaust. M. Stolypin es- 

 caped uninjured, but his little son and daughter 



Professor Milyukoff, 



One of the leaders of the Constitutional 



Democratic Party. 



were shattered almost to death by the explosion, 

 and three of the assassins were blown to bits. The 

 Emperor expresses his dismay, but the Revolu- 

 tionists calmly announce future executions on a still 

 ghastlier scale, nor do they lack agents who go wil- 

 lingly to death if by dying they can purchase the 

 death of the enemy. And so the terrible death 

 grapple in the darkness goes on day and night, nor 

 is there anyone who can predict how it will end. 



M. Stolvpin appears to be a strong. 

 The Progress j,^^, ^g'soiyte ,„an, who refuses to 



the Struggle. be terrorised into the abandonment 

 of a policy of reform. The new 

 Duma is to be elected in due course, with strict 

 regard to the letter of the fundamental law. The 

 Crown lands are to be distributed among the peas- 

 ants, education is to be made universal, and at the 

 same time the law is to be enforced. The Cadets, 

 or Constitutional Democrats, have somewhat dis- 

 credited themselves by ;ibandoning the path of 

 legality in issuing their Wiborg manifesto. The 

 Tsar was within his right in dissolving the Duma, 

 and it was a tactical error to reply by advising =■ 

 refusal to pav taxes. The taxes continue to be paiu. 

 That is a salient fact of the situation. The Ex- 

 chequer received in the first five months of this veai 

 _£9, 500,000 more than in the corresponding period 

 of 1905. Add to this the astonishing fidelity of the 

 majority of the troops. At Sveaborg and at Cron- 

 stadt there have been' bloody mutinies, but in both 

 places, as previously at Sevastopol, the mutinies 

 were drowned in blood. Whatever may be thought 

 of the merits of the dispute, it is impossible not to 



