of Count Muraviev as his successor in January 1897, this tendency of Russian policy became less marked. In April 1897, it is true, when the Greeks provoked a war with Turkey, they received no support from St Petersburg, but at the close of the war the tsar showed himself more friendly to them; and afterwards, when it proved extremely difficult to find a suitable person as governor-general of Crete (see Crete), he recommended the appointment of his cousin, Prince George of Greece—a selection which was pretty sure to accelerate the union of the island with the Hellenic kingdom. How far the recommendation was due to personal feeling, as opposed to political considerations, it is impossible to say.
In Asia, after the accession of Nicholas II., the expansion of Russia, following the line of least resistance and stimulated Russia and Japan in the Far East. by the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway, took the direction of northern China and the effete little kingdom of Korea. A great part of the eastern section of the railway was constructed on Chinese territory, and elaborate preparations were made for bringing Manchuria within the sphere of Russian influence. With this view, the cabinet of St Petersburg, at the close of the Chino-Japanese War in 1895, objected to all annexations by Japan in that quarter, and insisted on having the treaty of Shimonoseki modified accordingly. Subsequently, by obtaining from the Tsungli-Yaman a long lease of Port Arthur and Talienwan and a concession to unite those ports with the Trans-Siberian by a branch line, she tightened her hold on that portion of the Chinese empire and prepared to complete the work of aggression by so-called “spontaneous infiltration.” From Manchuria, it was assumed, the political influence and spontaneous infiltration would naturally spread to Korea, and on the deeply indented coast of the Hermit Kingdom might be constructed new ports and arsenals more spacious and strategically more important than Port Arthur.
This grandiose project was unexpectedly destroyed by the energetic resistance of Japan, who had ear-marked the Hermit Kingdom for herself, and who declared plainly that she would never tolerate the exclusive influence of Russia in Manchuria. In vain the Russian diplomatists sought to overcome her opposition by dilatory negotiations, in the firm conviction that a small island kingdom in the Pacific would never have the audacity to attack a power which had conquered and absorbed the whole of Northern Asia. Their calculations proved erroneous. Convinced that the onward march of the Colossus could not be permanently arrested by mere diplomatic conventions, the cabinet of Tokio suddenly broke off diplomatic relations and commenced hostilities (February 8, 1904). For Russia the war proved a series of uninterrupted reverses both on land and on sea, until it was terminated by the treaty of Portsmouth in October 1905 (see Russo-Japanese War).
What contributed powerfully to the conclusion of peace was the fact that the Russian government was hampered by internal troubles. The old Liberal movement and the terrorist organizations which had been suppressed by Alexander III. were being resuscitated, and the liberal and revolutionary leaders, taking advantage of the unpopularity of the war, were agitating for the convocation of a Constituent Assembly, which should replace the hated bureaucratic régime by democratic institutions. With great reluctance the tsar consented to convoke a consultative chamber of deputies as a sop to public opinion, but that concession stimulated rather than calmed public opinion, and shortly after the conclusion of peace the Liberals and the Revolutionaries, combining their forces, brought about a general strike in St Petersburg together with the stoppage of railway communication all over the empire. Panic-stricken for a moment, the government issued a manifesto proclaiming Liberal principles and promising in vague language all manner of political reforms (October 30, 1905), and when the inordinate expectations created by this extraordinary document were not at once realized, preparations were made for overthrowing the existing régime by means of an armed insurrection. Many believed that the end of autocracy had come, and an extemporized Council of Labour Deputies, anxious to play the part of a Comité de Salut Public, was ready to take over the supreme power and exercise it in the interests of the proletariat. In reality the revolutionary movement was not so strong and the government not so weak as was generally supposed. Mutinies occurred, it is true, during the next few weeks in Kronstadt and Sevastopol, and in December there was street fighting for several days in Moscow, but such serious disorders were speedily suppressed, and thereafter the revolutionary manifestations were confined to mass meetings, processions with red flags, attempts on the lives of officials and policemen, robberies under arms and agrarian disturbances.
Notwithstanding the unsatisfactory results of the October manifesto the tsar kept his promise of convoking a legislative assembly, and on the 10th of May 1906 the first Duma was opened by his majesty in person; but it was so systematically and violently hostile to the government and so determined to obtain executive, in addition to its legislative, functions, that it was dissolved on the 23rd of July without any legislative work being accomplished. The second Duma, which met on the 5th of March 1907, avoided some of the mistakes. of its predecessor, but as a legislative assembly it showed itself equally incompetent, and a large section of its members were implicated in a well-organized attempt to spread sedition in the army by revolutionary propaganda. It was dissolved, therefore, on the 16th of June 1907, and the electoral law which had given such unsatisfactory results was modified by imperial ukase.
The third Duma was subsequently convoked for the 14th of November 1907. (D. M. W.)
Development of the Russian Constitution.—At the end of 1910 the Russian revolution, which seemed at one time to promise an overturn as complete as that of the ancien régime in France, would seem to have entered on a path of orderly and conservative development, and it is possible, now that the smoke of combat has cleared away, to form some estimate of the forces through the interplay of which this result has been achieved. At the outset the superficial resemblance between the revolutionary The Russian revolution. movement in Russia and that of 1789 in France was striking: there was the same breakdown of the Russian traditional machinery of government, the same general revaluation. outcry for control by a representative national assembly, the same gradual and reluctant concessions wrung from the crown under pressure of disaffection in the army, popular émeutes, the assassination of unpopular officials, and the burning of country houses by organized bands of peasants. Similar, too, was the revelation, when freedom of speech was at last allowed, of the unhappy effect of the long divorce of the intellect of the country from any experience of practical politics. But here the analogy breaks down. France in 1789, though its ancient provincial boundaries survived, had long since been welded into a nation conscious of its common interests; Russia remains a vast empire, composed of the most heterogeneous, sometimes even mutually hostile, elements, whose antagonisms were bound to be an element of weakness in any assembly truly representative of all sections of the people. In France the Revolution had been the work of the middle classes; in Russia an indigenous middle class has, comparatively speaking, no existence, the peasants forming the overwhelming majority of the population.[1] The supreme peril to the autocracy in Russia lay in the genuine grievances of the peasants, less political than economic, which had opened their minds to revolutionary propaganda. These grievances once removed, and their legitimate land-hunger satisfied, the peasants would become a bulwark of the established order, whatever that might be, as had happened in similar circumstances in Austria in 1849. As for the revolutionary “intellectuals,” without the lever of agrarian discontent they
- ↑ In 1897 only 15% of the population were engaged in commerce or industry, including the work-people. Of the middle class, moreover, a large proportion were Jews and Germans. The peasants numbered 75%.
