of the year, was already developed and I, therefore, hastened my return to Harbin.
The impending strike, however, caught me en route and caused such difficulties in transportation that I just managed to get through to Harbin. Here we learned that in some of the cities of Russia and Siberia the strike had been marked by street barricading and the fighting of workmen and University students with the police and the army. Then, throughout the whole vast Empire, suddenly a foreboding silence fell. The straining ears of the listening Government and of its spies and executioners recognized and knew it well; but the police, the gendarmes and the Tsar could do nothing against this hush, for it was a thing not to be caught and against which the machine guns and the rifles of the Tsar could not shoot.
Finally, Nicholas was obliged to yield, but only under the pressing advice of his Minister of Finance, Count Witte. On October 17, 1905, he issued a manifesto, giving to the Government parliamentary form; but, in doing so, he drafted the statute creating the Duma in such a manner that the importance, influence and authority of this much-needed institution were very greatly and discouragingly diminished.
As a matter of fact, the Imperial manifesto satisfied nobody. On the one hand, the reactionaries were furious over the fact that the Government had yielded; while, on the other, the revolutionists were displeased and disenchanted, inasmuch as the manifesto neither granted amnesty and liberation to the political prisoners nor settled the grievous agrarian question of land ownership, which was of such great importance to the peasants forming 85 per cent, of Russia's population.
This general discontent with the Tsar's ukase manifested itself almost immediately in the two distinct camps.
