After a long series of disillusions, rebuffs, and humiliations, the zeal of the revolutionary _Narodniki_[3] cooled. They were forced to the conclusion that their reading of the peoples' strivings was wrong, that their own impulsive action was distinctly baleful, and that the success of the cause for which they had sacrificed so much must lie in other directions.

Years after,[4] my friend Witte, together with several of his colleagues, when preparing the electoral law for the first Duma, fell into a like error. Regarding the peasants as the most conservative element in the Empire he gave them the preponderance in the Chamber and then found that he had wholly mistaken their temper and misinterpreted their aims. The mistakes made by the Kadets[5] ever since they organised their party were equally glaring and much more sinister. More than once this influential party had their own object and seemingly the fate of the nation well within their reach, but by misreading the character of their people and shaping their tactics congruously with this false conception they forfeited their chances. The first of these missed opportunities occurred immediately after Count Witte had jockeyed the Tsar into limiting his absolute power and convoking a representative assembly.

{6}

Entrusted with the task of governing, Witte's immediate aim was to establish on a solid basis constitutional government of a kind adapted to the nation's needs as he understood them, and he agreed with me in thinking that to give the peoples of Russia universal suffrage and parliamentary government, such as obtains in Britain, Belgium, and Italy, would be to feed a new-born child on roast beef and plum pudding. A Russian adaptation of the Prussian, or at most German, constitution, but without universal suffrage, seemed to him to meet the case adequately. But he could not hope to carry his programme without the support of public opinion, and public opinion, as he well knew, was eager for a democratic regime to be instituted at once and was, therefore, opposed to his tenure of office on the Russian principle that no bread is preferable to half a loaf. He requested me to sound my friends, the Liberals and the Jews, and to endeavour to secure their support. I was empowered to dangle before their eyes the perspective--which was no will-o'-the-wisp--that the power which his health would not allow him to retain more than eight or ten months would immediately pass on to them and that they would thank him right cordially and deservedly then for not having thrown open the sluices to the anarchic flood misnamed democracy.

I first addressed myself to the Jews, some among whom a couple of months before had assured me that they would accept gratefully a representative chamber, even if its functions were circumscribed, provided it was a viable organism of growth. But now scarcely had I opened my mouth when I received the emphatic answer, "No. The Jews will give no support to Witte. He is not their man. He is a mere bureaucrat, and no bureaucrat can play the rôle of reformer." Thereupon I tried suasion and held up before the eyes of the Jewish leaders the prospect of a Liberal cabinet after their own heart taking over the seals of power from Witte within a twelvemonth. This outlook soothed the hearts and sweetened the words of my friends, but their message was still a refusal, only it now ended with the words, "If Witte {7} had made his proposal sooner--it might have met with a different reception. But now--now the Jewish cause is indissolubly bound up with the revolutionary Bund. The Jews will owe their emancipation to force, and they will see to it that the force is sufficient to burst their bonds and give them all their rights." "And if they fail and pogroms recommence will the condition of the Jews be better?" I asked. "That is an unlikely supposition, in the Russia that has received the October Manifesto. Anyhow we are willing to run the risk."

I next went to the Liberals, who afterwards became the Kadets, and made my proposals to a group including MM. Petrunkevitch and Roditcheff. The conversation moved over the same lines as when I had reasoned with the Jewish leaders, with this difference, that the Liberals were more curious and asked for greater details. They finally said, "Witte is insincere. He is a bureaucrat. He is playing for his own hand. He flatters now the Tsar and now the intelligentsia. He has no programme; if he had, you would be able to unfold it even though he might not be able to publish it. You cannot give us any details. Therefore we will not support him. Let him resign and people may believe in his sincerity." "He will resign after the loan is floated next spring," I said. "And if in the meanwhile you do not support him, you will then have reaction." Never shall I forget the explosion of laughter produced by my words. "Dr. Dillon, we thought that you, at least, knew Russia well enough to grasp the fact that the days of reaction are over. Henceforth a reactionary movement in Russia is inconceivable." "If your assumption is correct," I retorted, "your decision is statesmanlike": and I took my leave and went back to the Winter Palace to carry the fatal message.

Witte, when I delivered the answers, said, "I am not altogether surprised that the Jews have thrown in their lot with the revolutionary gang, but I am pained. They received provocation enough to make them impatient, but none the less they are only making bad worse. They cannot win by force because the army is on the other side. As for the Liberals they are a conceited, short-sighted, unpractical lot. {8} You who know the situation are aware that I cannot stand the strain of office much beyond April next, when I hope to float the biggest loan recorded in history. After that I would have retired in favour of the Liberals. But if in the meanwhile they are against me I shall be thwarted and they will not be benefited. What fools they are! They are of the same clay as the men who made away with Alexander II. on the day when he had signed the decree promulgating a constitution. As for reaction, if only they knew how the high priests of the reaction are weaving their spells and uttering their incantations in the palace even now, and how impatient the Emperor is to give them their innings, salutary fear of the reaction would, of itself, have sufficed to convert the Liberals into supporters of my cabinet. But we shall all see how their attitude works out--and then the experience will be of no avail. It is an awful tragedy!" Not only did the Kadets not support Witte's domestic policy, but a number of their adherents repaired to Paris and endeavoured to dissuade the French government from advancing the money demanded by the Russian Premier! And the Jews played the same game in Berlin. On the part of candidates for power these tactics are unintelligible to the Western mind.

In the following summer those same Liberals, who had since formed themselves into a parliamentary party under the name of "Kadets," gave further proof of their lack not only of political sense but also of practical acquaintance with the bulk of their own people. They publicly promised the land to the peasants, whetting appetites and stirring up tumultuous passions which made the country deaf to the finer vibrations of the political voice, and ended by swamping all political issues and their exponents. It was the evocation of a spirit which they were unable to lay. Again, when the first Duma was dissolved by a quaking cabinet and an irresolute Tsar who had decided to entrust the reins to the Kadets, these amazing tacticians fled to Vyborg in Finland, set the imperial decree at naught, and threatened the government with penury, confident that the nation, whom it exhorted to pay no taxes, would make good the threat at any {9} and every cost. But this draft on the peoples' devotion was dishonoured. Taxes were collected as successfully as before, and the main results produced by the audacious move were the elimination of the Kadets from the ranks of candidates for the government which was about to have been handed over to them and the disqualification of some of their best men for seats in the Duma.

Finally it was the Kadets and their parliamentary friends who, when the March revolution of 1917 was in progress, weakly acquiesced in the abolition of the monarchy and the extinction of the Duma, reckoning upon the self-discipline and moderation of an anarchist people which acknowledged no restraints and knew not what measure means. But they knew not what they did.

It is hardly too much to affirm that if the parliamentary parties had understood their own people better they would not have swept away the regime root and branch, dissolved the Duma, which might conceivably still have been able to keep the various Russians together, and broken up the greatest political community in Europe.

The history of the revolution of 1917 in its technical aspect is the tale of a fatal psychological error and its sequel. It was the currency of the notion that the peasant was aware of the causal nexus between his situation of inferiority in the community and the vicious system of governance under which he lived that induced in the Duma leaders the belief that the political revolution which they were shaping and circumscribing would be welcomed as a boon by the masses. In itself the change as projected by them would have been beneficial. To free the country from the parasitical bureaucracy, to restrict the power of the Tsar, establish parliamentary government, and admit the people to a share in public affairs proportionate to their mental and moral equipment were among the aims of the Duma leaders. But the whole conception, elaborated by lawyers and professors, bore the stamp of the legal rather than the psychological temper. It lost sight of the peculiar workings of the peasants' psyche and of the narrowness of their intellectual {10} horizon. Its authors forgot that hardly one of the institutions of the Empire, economic or political, was rooted in its essential fitness and utility, and that the function by which society can assimilate what is helpful and reject what is pernicious was long since atrophied. They had no inkling of the decisive fact that the predatory character of the State had long since been assimilated by the people who were accustomed to rob the land of its fertility and were impatient to deprive the nobles of the land.