Naturally, the German composition and character of the Czar's court was reflected in the diplomatic service and in the most important departments of the Russian government, including the army. The Russian Secret Service was very largely in the hands of Germans and Russians who had married German wives. The same thing may be said of the Police Department. Many of the generals and other high officers in the Russian army were either of German parentage or connected with Germany by marriage ties. In brief, the whole Russian bureaucracy was honeycombed by German influence.
Outside official circles, much the same condition existed among the great landowners. Those of the Baltic provinces were largely of Teutonic descent, of course. Many had married German wives. The result was that the nobility of these provinces, long peculiarly influential in the political life of Russia, was, to a very large degree, pro-German. In addition to these, there were numerous large landowners of German birth, while many, probably a big majority, of the superintendents of the large industrial establishments and landed estates were German citizens. It is notorious that the principal factories upon which Russia had to rely for guns and munitions were in charge of Germans, who had been introduced because of their high technical efficiency.
In view of these facts, and a mass of similar facts which might be cited, it was natural for the democrats of Russia to identify Germany and German intrigue and influence with the hated bureaucracy. It was as natural as it was for the German influence to be used against the democratic movement in Russia, as it invariably was. Practically the entire mass of democratic opinion in Russia, including, of course, all the Socialist factions, regarded these royal, aristocratic, and bureaucratic German influences as a menace to Russia, a cancer that must be cut out. With the exception of a section of the Socialists, whose position we shall presently examine, the mass of liberal-thinking, progressive, democratic Russians saw in the war a welcome breaking of the German yoke. Believing that the victory of Germany would restore the yoke, and that her defeat by Russia would eliminate the power which had sustained Czarism, they welcomed the war and rallied with enthusiasm at the call to arms. They were loyal, but to Russia, not to the Czar. They felt that in warring against Prussian militarist-imperialism they were undermining Russian Absolutism.
That the capitalists of Russia should want to see the power of Germany to hold Russia in chains completely destroyed is easy to understand. To all intents and purposes, from the purely economic point of view, Russia was virtually a German colony to be exploited for the benefit of Germany. The commercial treaties of 1905, which gave Germany such immense trade advantages, had become exceedingly unpopular. On the other hand, the immense French loan of 1905, the greater part of which had been used to develop the industrial life of Russia, had the effect of bringing Russian capitalists into closer relations with French capitalists. For further capital Russia could only look to France and England with any confident hope. Above all, the capitalists of Russia wanted freedom for economic development; they wanted stability and national unity, the very things Germany was preventing. They wanted efficient government and the elimination of the terrible corruption which infested the bureaucracy. The law of economic evolution was inexorable and inescapable; the capitalist system could not grow within the narrow confines of Absolutism.
For the Russian capitalist class, therefore, it was of the most vital importance that Germany's power should not be increased, as it would of necessity be if the Entente submitted to her threats and permitted Serbia to be crushed by Austria, and the furtherance of the Pan-German Mitteleuropa designs. It was vitally necessary to Russian capitalism that Germany's strangle-hold upon the inner life of Russia should be broken. The issue was not the competition of capitalism, as that is commonly understood; it was not the rivalry for markets like that which animates the capitalist classes of all lands. The Russian capitalist class was animated by no fear of German competition in the sense in which the nations of the world have understood that term. They had their own vast home market to develop. The industrialization of the country must transform a very large part of the peasantry into factory artisans living in cities, having new needs and relatively high wages, and, consequently, more money to spend. For many years to come their chief reliance must be the home market, constantly expanding as the relative importance of manufacturing increased and forced improved methods of agriculture upon the nation in the process, as it was bound to do.
It was Germany as a persistent meddler in Russian government and politics that the capitalists of Russia resented. It was the unfair advantage that this underhand political manipulation gave her in their own home field that stirred up the leaders of the capitalist class of Russia. That, and the knowledge that German intrigue by promoting divisions in Russia was the mainstay of the autocracy, solidified the capitalist class of Russia in support of the war. There was a small section of this class that went much farther than this and entertained more ambitious hopes. They realized fully that Turkey had already fallen under the domination of Germany to such a degree that in the event of a German victory in the war, or, what really amounted to the same thing, the submission of the Entente to her will, Germany would become the ruler of the Dardanelles and European Turkey be in reality, and perhaps in form, part of the German Empire.
Such a development could not fail, they believed, to have the most disastrous consequences for Russia. Inevitably, it would add to German prestige and power in the Russian Empire, and weld together the Hohenzollern, Habsburg, and Romanov autocracies in a solid, reactionary mass, which, under the efficient leadership of Germany, might easily dominate the entire world. Moreover, like many of the ablest Russians, including the foremost Marxian Socialist scholars, they believed that the normal economic development of Russia required a free outlet to the warm waters of the Mediterranean, which alone could give her free access to the great ocean highways. Therefore they hoped that one result of a victorious war by the Entente against the Central Empires, in which Russia would play an important part, would be the acquisition of Constantinople by Russia. Thus the old vision of the Czars had become the vision of an influential and rising class with a solid basis of economic interest.
III
As in every other country involved, the Socialist movement was sharply divided by the war. Paradoxical as it seems, in spite of the great revival of revolutionary hope and sentiment in the first half of the year, the Socialist parties and groups were not strong when the war broke out. They were, indeed, at a very low state. They had not yet recovered from the reaction. The manipulation of the electoral laws following the dissolution of the Second Duma, and the systematic oppression and repression of all radical organizations by the administration, had greatly reduced the Socialist parties in membership and influence. The masses were, for a long time, weary of struggle, despondent, and passive. The Socialist factions meanwhile were engaged in an apparently interminable controversy upon theoretical and tactical questions in which the masses of the working-people, when they began to stir at last, took no interest, and which they could hardly be supposed to understand. The Socialist parties and groups were subject to a very great disability in that their leaders were practically all in exile. Had a revolution broken out, as it would have done but for the war, Socialist leadership would have asserted itself.
As in all other countries, the divisions of opinion created by the war among the Socialists cut across all previous existing lines of separation and made it impossible to say that this or that faction adopted a particular view. Just as in Germany, France, and England, some of the most revolutionary Socialists joined with the more moderate Socialists in upholding the war, while extremely moderate Socialists joined with Socialists of the opposite extreme in opposing it. It is possible, however, to set forth the principal features of the division with tolerable accuracy: