RUSSIA FROM WITHIN 



99 



of the Tsar, as well as his personal popu- 

 larity, unshakable. If ever a man missed 

 the chance of being called "The Great," 

 it is the unfortunate Nicholas. 



But while the wish of the people to 

 continue the war was steadily growing up 

 throughout Russia, the government itself 

 was sowing the seeds of its own undoing. 

 Every one has been amazed at the sud- 

 denness of the collapse of the old regime; 

 but such a collapse was logical and inev- 

 itable sooner or later. The Emperor's 

 government was undermined by the com- 

 plete incompetence of its administration. 

 In time of peace it might have gone on 

 in the same hit-and-miss way for years 

 and the peasants would have taken but a 

 meager interest, as few would have felt 

 directly the results of mismanagement in 

 any greater measure than normally. 



Wide-spread revolutions in Russia 

 have been difficult, because it has been 

 impossible to reach all of the people at 

 the same time on the same issue. The 

 war, however, did reach all the people at 

 the same time. After a year or two 

 nearly every individual in Russia had 

 been directly or indirectly touched in 

 some way. The soldiers at the front 

 knew that they had no ammunition and 

 few rifles in 1915, and they knew that 

 this shortage was due to the bad manage- 

 ment of the government. The people 

 knew that the railroads were not operat- 

 ing properly, and that, as a result, many 

 of them were obliged to go without food 

 and fuel during the winter months. This, 

 too, was charged to the government of 

 the Tsar. The scandals in regard to the 

 monk Rasputin became common prop- 

 erty, and by the fall of 1916 all of Rus- 

 sia, save the bureaucracy, favored mem- 

 bers of the autocracy, and the pro-Ger- 

 mans, was of the fixed conviction that 

 the people's troubles were due to this in- 

 competence. 



THE MOST REMARKABLE REVOLUTION IN 

 HISTORY 



Step by step this universal opinion had 

 developed in Russia until it had become 

 practically unanimous in cities, in the 

 country, and in the army. There was no 

 wide-spread cry for revolution, no de- 

 mand for a new Tsar, nor any national 



demand for the cessation of the war. All 

 the people wanted was a decent govern- 

 ment, which would continue the war effi- 

 ciently and in the interim enable them to 

 live somehow or other. 



There has never been such a remark- 

 able revolution in history. It has not rep- 

 resented plot and intrigue and ambitions 

 of individuals. It represented merely the 

 united desire of 180,000,000 people to 

 carry on a war in which they believed, 

 with the minimum of misery and with the 

 maximum of competence. Through stu- 

 pidity in some quarters and intrigue and 

 treachery in others, the Tsar steadfastly 

 refused to make the concessions required 

 to conduct the war and permit the people 

 to live. Pressure in the Duma became 

 acute. The Emperor ordered it dis- 

 solved. It refused to dissolve. Troops 

 were called out to restore order in Petro- 

 grad, where bread riots had started a 

 chaotic situation. The troops, being but 

 boys three or four months in uniform, 

 were of the people in opinion and de- 

 clined to shoot. Authority ceased, and 

 the Emperor, having nothing behind him, 

 accepted the ultimatum that he abdicate. 



Practically, without any serious con- 

 vulsion, the Empire disappeared. I sup- 

 pose one must call it revolution, but it 

 came so easily that it is hard to believe it 

 such. The change came like a ripe apple 

 falling from a tree. A few days of kill- 

 ing and hunting down policemen who 

 were loyal to the government marked the 

 end of any serious disorders in Petro- 

 grad. The rest of Russia quietly ac- 

 cepted what Petrograd had done. The 

 old order had disappeared overnight. 

 Now let us consider what remained. 



When the bread riots started there was 

 apparently no party or class in Russia 

 that was planning for the immediate 

 overthrow of the Tsar; all that any one 

 wanted was a more liberal and efficient 

 government. Even the leaders of the 

 Duma did not dream that the change 

 could be brought about without any ef- 

 fective resistance on the part of the old 

 regime. It all came in a day or two, and 

 the Provisional Government and its com- 

 mittee of twelve suddenly found itself in 

 control of the destinies of the former 

 Empire. 



