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when their program was published, the hoary old lie that the peasants were loyal and contented was killed. The program of the peasants' deputies placed The Labor Group at the Extreme Left of the Duma.

VII..

THE DUMA.

On the 27th of April, fifteen months after the slaughter of Father Gapon's men, all eyes were turned once more to The Winter Palace. The Tsar had returned to Petersburg- the first time since the massacre to receive the newly elected deputies and to formally open The Duma. The red stains of Bloody Sunday had long before disappeared from the pavements, but the memory of that slaughter must have been fresh in the minds of the Deputies as they crossed the square.

Twenty thousand soldiers were massed about the palace, with the grandeur and power of the Tsar. By two o'clock all were in their places. On one side of the Throne Room were stationed the most loyal supporters of The Crown-generals and admirals, privy councilors and high officials - clothed in all the splendor of an oriental court. Down the center of the Hall was a narrow lane left for the royal procession. Beyond it was the dense mass of the people's deputies. The contrast was striking. On one side the scarlet coats, gold lace and jewelled decorations of the Autocracy. On the other side somber suits of black mingling with the dark gray cloaks of the peasants. The contrast in the faces and attitudes was even greater. The supporters of the old regime - faces puffed and eyes bleared by excess of luxury exchanged loud flippancies or stared insolently and cynically at the commoners across the room. There clean-cut intelligent-faced deputies conversed gravely with their colleagues. The peasants mostly were silent, their serious-almost mysticaleyes questioned everything. No word, no greeting crossed the Hall. The emnity between the two sides of the room was too apparent to permit even a semblance of courtesy.

With a flare of trumpets the Tsar entered and walked down the narrow lane dividing the two factions. There was a tedious religious ceremony and then the Tsar read his Speech from the

Throne.

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It was barely three minutes long, not one word of weight. The Tsar loved his people and trusted in God. That was all. Not one word of amnesty, not one word about the land, not a word about any of the hundred odd questions which were burning in the hearts of the people.

"And may God bless Me and you". So he ended. Officialdom cheered but the Duma was as silent as Death. If any deputy

was there who had been able to keep his faith in the benevolence of the Tsar as he crossed the blood soaked ground in front of the Winter Palace, he could no longer hold the illusion. A few words of sincerity would have put Nicholas firmer on his throne than hed had ever been, but e let the opportunity pass.

The deputies filed out in sullen silence and went to the Tavride Palace where their sessions were to take place. On its way to the Palace, the boat which carried them up the river, passed under the shadow of the Central Prison. From each window the prisoners those who by their heroism had made the Duma possible waved handkerchiefs and cheered the deputies as they passed.

Under such auspices Russia's first Parliament met. Sneered at by the officials, snubbed by the Tsar ---- cheered by the prison

ers.

Evidently the first thing for them to do was to make a Reply to the Throne Speech. A commission of thirty three was appointed for this work, eleven from the Right, eleven Cadets, eleven from the Labor Group. Every one expected that the Cadets would control the peasants and that the Reply would be moulded by them. But the report of the Commission when it was delivered was a surprise. It was an astounding document. Never in history has so respectable a body of men put their names to so revolutionary a paper. Beside it our own "Declaration of Independence" and the French "Rights of Man" sink into pallid conservatism. It demanded, besides the liberties promised by the Tsar in the October Manifesto, the abolition of the Upper House, the responsibility of the ministry, complete amnesty for all political prisoners, the expropriation of all property in land, and a new assembly elected by universal suffrage with power to constitute a democratic-republic. It was an elaboration of the program of the Labor Group. The Cadets, instead of managing the peasants, had been managed. The Reply was unanimously adopted by the Duma, the eleven members of the House opposed to it left the room not daring to vote against it.

The document having been adopted, several days were spent in discussing how it should be sent. One peasant deputy suggested telegraphing it to the Tsar, who had returned to the seclusion of his Palace at Tsarski Celo. Another proposed resolution binding the deputies not to leave the House, nor take any food, until Amnesty had been granted. But in the end, more moderate and roundabout methods were adopted and The Reply was despatched with due formality.

The following days were spent in oratory. It is not the custom in Constitutional Monarchies like Germany or England - for the Sovereign to answer the Reply to the Throne Speech. And no one knew what the Tsar would do. Speech making was

the order of the day. Deputies from all quarters of the Empire, from the Baltic Provinces and Siberia, from the frozen districts of the North, and from the shores of the Black Sea, exposed the grievances of their constituents. One after another they had their say, but the prisons were not opened, the crops were no better, and the clamour of the "unemployed" increased steadily. At length, to the surprise of every one, Gouremekin, the Prime Minister, took the floor and outlined the policy of the government. His tone was that of an irritable school master lecturing unruly boys on their deportment. His speech, denying point by point, the demands of the Nation, poured fresh oil on the fire of oratory and the Tavride Palace rang with angry eloquence. It became the custom to hiss down Ministers when they rose to speak. And once the Prime Minister of Agriculture replied to the demand of expropriation by offering to sell some fragments of the Crown Lands, The Labor Group left the Chamber in a body.

Denounciations of the Government waxed daily more bitter and came to a climax over two points. While the deputies were at work elaborating a law to abolish capital punishment, the news came that eight men had been condemned to death in the Baltic Provinces. Despite the protests of the Duma, the men were executed. At the same time there was a slaughter of Jews in Bialostok. The Duma sent a commission to investigate the affair, and their careful report traced the blame of the disorders to high officials in the central government.

During all this fruitless cursing of officials, the peasants deputies were becoming restless. They had been sent to the Duma with one main mandate to get the land for their constituents. Week after week slipped by and no progress was made. The` peasants began to send new deputies to see what was the matter, some 20,000 letters and telegrams from village meetings and groups of electors came to the members of The Labor Group, asking why the new law giving land to the peasants had not been passed.

As the pressure from without grew, they became more and more insistent on the floor of the House for the immediate discussion of the land question. This was a dangerous point and the Cadets wished to avoid it as it threatened to cause a split between them and The Labor Group. The Cadets were pledged to repay the landlords from the public coffers. The peasant, having always considered the use of the land as a natural right and the landlords as having cheated them out of it, were loath to pay for what they thought their own. Therefore the Cadets sparred for time and enforced more delay.

Not being able to accomplish any of the objects for which they had been sent to the Duma, The Labor Group decided on

"An Appeal to the People". Their proposed Appeal stated that the Duma was an impotent body, without power to get the reforms demanded, and as they were unable to accomplish anything against the Goverment, it devolved upon the people to overhrow the Government. It was a call to arms.

It was treason on the face of it. And the Cadets were faced by a dilemma of an open breach with the Labor Group or the abandonment of their constitutional tacties. They tried, as always, to avoid the crisis by compromise; and proposed a "statement" to the people, telling of their efforts to gain reforms and their failure to do so, but without any appeal. for a revolt. What the outcome of his debate would have been nobody knows.

The scene shifts to Vibourg, a little town over the border, usual one night, and the next morning they found the Tavride Palace occupied by troops and the Dissolution Manifesto nailed to the door..

The sceneshifts to Vibourg, a little town over the border,. in Finland beyond the reach of the Russian police. Hither flocked most of the expelled Deputies. The Dissolution was a surprise and no plans had been made. Some wanted to declare themselves a revolutionary government the government, and to call the people to their support, others said more could be accomplished by returning to their homes and explaining conditions to their constituents. Several sessions were held and no plan adopted, when news came that the Finish Government had decided to cooperate with Russian authorities and that arrest was imminent. What they were to do had to be done in haste. They decided on a Manifesto.

It was decidedly revolutionary in its tone, but incoherent and weak. It displayed the crimes of the government, the vain efforts of he deputies to get reforms and described the act of dissolution as treason against the Nation. It declared the Government outlawed, and in the name of the people repudiated all debts which it might acquire in its war against the nation. But it made no suggestion of a combined effort to overthrow the government. It called for passive resistance. It urged the people to refuse to pay taxes or to give recruits to the army. It ended with the pompous phrase, "Russians, in the approaching struggle your deputies will be with you".

The concrete suggestions were two: to refuse taxes and recruits. Very few people were foolish enough to act on these suggestions. The people as a whole do not pay taxes or enter the army these are individual acts. And each person who refused was pitting his strength single handed against the whole force of the Tsar. The general verdict now on this Manifesto is decidedly adverse. The Deputies should have either found some issue on

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which the people could have risen en masse or should have advised patience till such an issue arose.

In the Duma the Constitutional Democrats were weighed and found wanting. They controlled the Duma but accomplished no single reform. And it is not fair as has been done in many foreign papers to account for their failure by the interference of the Labor Group.. During the first two months of the Duma's life, the peasant and the workingmen deputies cooperated heartily with the Cadets. And it was not until two long months had demonstrated the impotence of the Cadets that they broke away from them and turned to their own leaders Aladin, Anikin and Jilkin. They had not been sent to listen to academic essays or pretty speeches. And when long inaction proved that nothing better could be hoped for from the intellectuals they began to do things themselves.

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The Cadets representative of Russia's bourgeoisie-failed to develop a "leader" what Carlyle calls a "king-man". A glance over the names of their best known deputies shows their impotency to face an active crisis. Muromsev, the President of the Duma, was a university professor, mild, kind and lovable. Roditchey and Betrunkevich were orators of a high quality, brave and upright men. Hertzenstein; murdered after The Dissolution, by the henchmen of the government, was a scholar, an undisputed authority on the agrarian questions. But none of them were leaders. Outside the Duma, Milikoff, Struve and Kovalevski were their strongest men, editors all of them; but not leaders. In the face of the gravest political crises they read scientific papers, deliverde glittering orations, or wrote rhetorical editorials. There was no Mirabeau amongst them.

But besides having no leaders, a graver weakness was that they had no conscious, well defined class behind them. The deputies at their right spoke clearly for all the forces of privilege and reaction, to the Left the Labor Group voiced unanimous. demands of eight millon peasants. But what did the Cadets represent? Russia has no bourgoisie like that of France in the Great Revolution; no capitalist class such as we have in America. The large part of the capital employed in Russian industry is owned by foreigners. The Constitutional Democrats in the first Duma had no class consciousness; some spoke in behalf of the poorer nobles, others voiced the discontent of the "intellecutals" and they had nowhere near the power back of them which a middle class party has in Western Europe or America.

Long before The Dissolution, the Cadets must have realized that their own strength was insufficient to force the granting of their demands. They had two courses open to them; to give up their program and support the government or to admit their own impotence and step aside. But they did neither and clung to

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