A LETTER TO RUSSIAN LIBERALS 203
in leg-al proceedings, and in the Local Governments, and in the Universities, and in Government service, and on the Press. In the Press they hinted at what they were allowed to hint at, and kept silence on matters they had to be silent about, but they printed whatever they were told to print. So that every reader (not privy to the whisperings of the editorial rooms), on re- ceiving a Liberal paper or magazine, read the announce- ment of the most cruel and irrational measures unaccom- panied by comment or sign of disapproval, together with sycophantic and flattering addresses to those guilty of enacting these measures, and frequently even praise of the measures themselves. Thus all the dismal activity of the Government of Alexander III. — destroy- ing whatever good had begun to take root in the days of Alexander II., and striving to turn Russia back to the barbarity of the commencement of this century — all this dismal activity of gallows, rods, persecutions, and stupefaction of the people, has become (even in the Liberal papers and magazines) the basis of an insane laudation of Alexander III. and of his acclamation as a great man and a model of human dignity.
This same thing is being continued in the new reign. The young man who succeeded the late Tsar, having no understanding of life, was assured by the men in power, to whom it was profitable to say so, that the best way to rule a hundred million people is to do as his father did — that is, not to ask advice from anyone, but to do just what comes into his head, or what the first flatterer about him advises. And, fancying that unlimited auto- cracy is a sacred life-principle of the Russian people, the young man begins to reign ; and instead of asking the representatives of the Russian people to help him with their advice in the task of ruling (about which he, educated in a cavalry regiment, knows nothing and can know nothing), he rudely and insolently shouts at those representatives of the Russian people who visit him with congratulations, and he calls the desire.
