The war was over. The march of armies had ceased; but the march of events, accelerated by the great upheaval, moved irresistibly on. Realizing that something must be done to pacify the people, a new and more liberal policy was announced, with de Witte, now Prime Minister, in charge. Russia was to have a National Assembly, a law-making body in which every class would have representation.

This Russian Parliament was to be composed of two bodies: an Upper and a Lower House. The one to be called the "Council of the Empire," the other the "Duma." These were to be convoked and prorogued annually by Imperial Ukase. The President, Vice-President, and one-half the members of the Council of the Empire (consisting of 178 members) were to be appointed by the Tsar; twenty-four more to be elected by the nobility and clergy, a very small number by some designated universities and commercial bodies; each Zemstvo (of which there are fifty-one) being entitled to one representative. The members composing the Duma, or Lower House, were to be elected by the Electoral Colleges, which had in turn been created by the votes of the people in the various provinces of the Empire for that purpose.

The two bodies were to have equal rights in initiating legislation. But a bill must pass both Houses and then receive Imperial Sanction in order to become a law; and failing in this, cannot come up again during the same session. Thus hedged about and thus constituted, it is obvious that a conservative majority was permanently secured and ways provided to block any anti-imperial or revolutionary legislation in the Duma. And when it is added that matters concerning finance and treasonable offences were almost entirely in the hands of the Council, we realize how this gift of political representation to the Russian people had been shorn of its dangers!

The first National Assembly was opened by the Tsar May 10, 1906, with the form and splendor of a court ceremonial. It was a strange spectacle, that solid body of 100 peasants seated on the left of the throne, intently listening to the brief and guarded speech of welcome to the "representatives of the nation, who had come to aid him in making laws for their welfare!" And the first jarring note came when not one of these men joined in the applause which followed.

The first Duma was composed of 450 members. The world was watching this experiment, curious to find out what sort of beings have been dumbly supporting the weight of the Russian Empire. Almost the first act was a surprise. Instead of explosive utterances and intemperate demands, the Duma formally declared Russia to be a Constitutional Monarchy. No anarchistic extravagance could have been so disturbing to autocratic Russia as was this wise moderation, which at the very outset converted Constitutional Bureaucrats into Constitutional Democrats, thus immensely strengthening the people's party at the expense of the Conservatives. The leaders in the Duma knew precisely what they wanted, and how to present their demands with a clearness, a power, and a calm determination for which Russia,—and indeed that greater audience, the world at large,—was quite unprepared. That this seriously alarmed the Imperial party was proved by an immediate strengthening of the defences about the throne by means of a change in what is called the Fundamental Laws. These Fundamental Laws afford a rigid framework, an immovable foundation for the authority of the Emperor and his Cabinet Ministers.

Repairs in the Constitution of the United States have been usually in the direction of increased liberties for the people. The Tsar, on the contrary, aided by his Cabinet and high Government officials, drafted a new edition of the Fundamental Laws suited to a new danger.

The changes made were all designed to build up new defences around the throne, and to intrench more firmly every threatened prerogative. The Tsar was deliberately ranging himself with the bureaucratic party instead of the party of his people; and the hot indignation which followed found expression in bitter and powerful arraignment of the Government, even to the extent of demanding the resignation of the Ministry. What was at first a rift, was becoming an impassable chasm.

If Count Witte had disappointed the Liberals by his lukewarmness and by what they considered an espousal of the conservative cause, he was even less acceptable to the Bureaucrats, to whom he had from the first been an object of aversion—an aversion not abated by his masterly diplomacy at Portsmouth, for which he received only a grudging acknowledgment. Whatever may be the verdict of the future, with its better historic perspective, whether justly or unjustly, Count Witte had lost his hold upon the situation; and the statesman who had been the one heroic figure in Russia was no longer the man of the hour. At all events, his resignation of the head of the Ministry during this obnoxious attempt to nullify the gift of popular representation was significant; and the name of de Witte is not associated with this grave mistake made by the master he has tried to serve.

The reforms insistently demanded by the Duma were as follows:—The responsibility of the Ministry to that body, as the representative of the people; the distribution to the working peasants of the lands held by the Crown and the clergy; a General Amnesty, with the release of all political prisoners; and the abolition of the death penalty.

This was virtually a sweeping demand for the surrender of the autocratic principle, the very principle the Fundamental Laws had just been revised to render more inviolable. The issue was now narrowed down within definite limits. It was a conflict for power, for administrative control, and it was a life-and-death struggle between the Tsar and his people.

Printed reports of the debates were sent broadcast, and for the first time since Russia came into being the peasantry saw things as they really were. They had always attributed their wrongs to the nobility, who, they believed, had cheated them out of their land and their rights under the Emancipation Act. But now it was not the nobility, not the hated Boyars who were cruelly refusing to give them land and liberty, but it was the Little Father, he whom they had always trusted and adored!

It is a critical moment when the last illusion drops from the eyes of a confiding people. The Duma at this moment was engaged in a task of supreme difficulty and responsibility. Millions of people hung upon its words and acts. A group of inexperienced but terribly determined men were facing an equally determined group of well-seasoned officials, veterans in the art of governing. Never was there greater need of calmness and wisdom, and at this very time a wild revolutionary faction was doing its utmost to inflame the passions of a peasantry already maddened with a sense of wrong and betrayal, who in gusts of destructive rage were burning, pillaging, and carrying terror into the remotest parts of the Empire.

Even while the Duma was demanding this larger measure of liberty and of authority over the Ministry, that body had already initiated and put in force new and more vigorous methods of suppression. Under M. Durnovo, Minister of the Interior, a law had been promulgated known as the Law of Reinforced Defense. Under the provisions of this law, high officials, or subordinates designated by them, were clothed with authority to arrest, imprison, and punish with exile or death, without warrant, without accusation, or any judicial procedure whatever.

On July 16, 1906, M. Makaroff, Assistant Secretary of the Interior, appeared personally before the Duma; and in answer to thirty-three interpellations concerning as many specific cases of imprisonment without resort to the courts, frankly replied: "Yes. We have held the persons named in prison for the time mentioned without warrant or accusation; and some of these, and many others, have been exiled to Siberia. But it is a precaution demanded by the situation and the circumstances; a precaution we are authorized to take by the Law of Reinforced Defense."

In October of last year (1905) the world was made glad by a manifesto issued by the Tsar containing these words: "In obedience to our inflexible will, we hereby make it the duty of our Government to give to our beloved people freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of public assembly, freedom of association, and real inviolability of personal rights." The Tsar had also, with the same solemnity, declared: "No law shall take effect without the sanction of the Duma, which is also to have participation in the control of the officials." Yet, Ministers and Governors General, or subordinates appointed by them, may at their own discretion imprison, exile, or kill in defiance of Imperial command, and find ample protection in the Law of Reinforced Defense!

The free handling of these governmental methods in the Duma, and the immediate world-wide publicity given to these revelations, if allowed to continue, must inevitably destroy the cause of Russian Bureaucracy. There were but two courses open to the Tsar. He must either surrender the autocratic principle, and in good faith carry out his pledges and share his authority with his people, or he must disperse a representative body which flagrantly defied his Imperial will. He chose the latter course.

Five days after the examination of M. Makaroff, on July 21, 1906, the first Russian Parliament was dissolved by Imperial ukase.

The reason assigned for this was that, "instead of applying themselves to the work of productive legislation, they have strayed into a sphere beyond their competence, and have been making comments on the imperfections of the Fundamental Laws, which can only be modified by our Imperial will."

The Tsar at the same time declared his immutable purpose to maintain the institution of Parliament, and named March 5, 1907, as the date of the convening of a new Duma.

A body of 186 Representatives, including the Constitutional and Conservative members of the Duma, immediately reassembled at Viborg in Finland, where, in the few hours before their forcible dispersion by a body of military, they prepared an address to "The Citizens of All Russia." This manifesto was a final word of warning, in which the people were reminded that for seven months, while on the brink of ruin, they are to stand without representation; also reminding them of all that may be done in that time to undermine their hopes, and to obtain a pliable and subservient Parliament, if, indeed, any Parliament at all be convoked at the time promised by the Tsar.

In view of all this they were solemnly abjured not to give "one kopek to the throne, or one soldier to the army," until there exists a popular representative Parliament.

The hand of autocracy is making a final and desperate grasp upon the prerogatives of the Crown. When the end will come, and how it will come, cannot be foretold. But it needs no prophetic power to see what that end will be. The days of autocracy in Russia are numbered. A century may be all too short for the gigantic task of habilitating a Russian people—making the heterogeneous homogeneous, and converting an undeveloped peasantry into a capable citizenship. The problem is unique, and one for which history affords no parallel. In no other modern nation have the life forces been so abnormal in their adjustment. And it is only because of the extraordinary quality of the Russian mind, because of its instinct for political power, and its genius for that instrument of power hitherto known as diplomacy—it is only because of these brilliant mental endowments that this chaotic mass of ethnic barbarism has been made to appear a fitting companion for her sister nations in the family of the Great Powers.

It is vain to expect the young Tsar to set about the task of demolishing the autocratic system created by his predecessors and ancestors. That work is in charge of more august agents. It is perishing by natural process because it is vicious, because it is out of harmony with its environment, and because the maladjusted life forces are moving by eternal laws from the surface to their natural home in the centre. And we may well believe that the fates are preparing a destiny commensurate with the endowments of a great—perhaps the greatest—of the nations of the earth.

Let it not be supposed that it is the moujik, the Russian peasant in sheepskin, with toil-worn hands, who has conducted that brilliant parliamentary battle in the Duma. Certain educational and property qualifications are required for eligibility to membership in that body, which would of necessity exclude that humble class. It is not the emancipated serf, but it is rural Russia which the Duma represented, and the vastness of the area covered by that term is realized when one learns that of the 450 members constituting that body only eighteen were from cities. It is the leaders of this vast rural population, members of ancient princely families or owners of great landed estates, these are the men who are coming out of long oblivion to help rule the destinies of a new Russia. Men like Prince Dolgorouki, some of them from families older than the Romanoffs—such men it is who were the leaders in the Duma. They have been for years studying these problems, and working among the Zemstvos. They are country gentlemen of the old style,—sturdy, practical, imaginative, idealistic, and explosive; powerful in debate, bringing just at the right moment a new element, a new force. Happy is Russia in possessing such a reserve of splendid energy at this time. And if the moujik is not in the forefront of the conflict, he, too, affords a boundless ocean of elementary force—he is the simple barbarian, who will perhaps be needed to replenish with his fresh, uncorrupted blood the Russia of a new generation.