A Short History of Russia

by Mary Platt Parmele

In the meantime the Japanese, irresistible as fate, were breaking down one after another of the supposed impregnable defences about Port Arthur; climbing over hills of their own dead, fathers, sons, and brothers, in order to do it. Within the beleaguered fort the supply of ammunition was running low, only one-quarter of the defenders were left, and disease was slaying and incapacitating these. Nearer and nearer came the rain of fire. In vain they listened for the booming of Kuropatkin's guns sweeping down from the north. In vain they watched for the smoke of the long-promised Baltic fleet approaching from the south. No rescue came. On the last night of the year, after consultation with his officers, General Stoessel signed the conditions of capitulation to General Nogi. The key to the Russian power in the East was lost. When the new year dawned the Japanese flag floated from the Citadel on the Golden Hill, and the greatest siege of modern times was ended.

On Jan. 1, 1905, General Stoessel wrote to his Imperial Master: "Great Sovereign, pardon us! We have done everything humanly possible. Judge us, but be merciful!" He then goes on to state the conditions which would make further resistance a wanton sacrifice of the lives of those remaining in the garrison.

St. Petersburg was stunned by the receipt of this intelligence; and every day added to its dismay: Oyama, leaving the captured fortress behind him, sweeping the Russians back from Mukden; Kuropatkin sending despairing messages to the Tsar, who, bewildered and trembling before his own subjects at home, was still vibrating between the two widely opposing influences—the spirit of the old despotism, and that of a new age which clamored to be admitted.

Rescript followed quickly upon rescript; one sounding as if written by de Witte, the other as if dictated by Pobiedonostseff; while alarming rumors were coming hourly from Moscow, Finland, Poland, the Crimea, the Caucasus; and the great fabric before which the world had trembled seemed threatened at every vital point.

In the midst of these colossal disasters stood a young man not fashioned for great events—from whom the world and the situation demand a statesmanship as able as Bismarck's, a political ideal as exalted as Washington's, a prompt and judicious dealing with an unprecedented crisis worthy of Peter the Great. And not finding this ample endowment, we call him a weakling. It is difficult for the Anglo-Saxon, fed and nourished for a thousand years upon the principles of political freedom and their application, to realize the strain to which a youth of average ability is subjected when he is called upon to cast aside all the things he has been taught to reverence,—to abandon the ideals he holds most sacred,—to violate all the traditions of his ancestors,—to act in direct opposition to the counsel of his natural advisers; and to do all these things at the dictation of men he has been taught not only to distrust, but to hold in contempt.

Chief among his counsellors is the Procurator Pobiedonostseff, head of the "Holy Synod,"—that evil genius of two reigns, who reminds him of the sacredness of his trust, and his duty to leave his divine heritage to his son unimpaired by impious reforms. Next to him stands Muravieff, the wise and powerful Minister of Justice, creator of modern Siberia, and member of the Court of Arbitration at The Hague, who speaks with authority when he tells him he has not the right to change a political system created by his predecessors; and still nearer than these are the Grand Dukes, a phalanx of uncles and imperial relatives surrounding him with a petrified wall of ancient prejudices. Confronting these imposing representatives of imperial and historic Russia are a few more or less discredited men, like M. de Witte and Prince Mirski, counselling and warning with a freedom which would once have sent them to Siberia, and with a power to which the bewildered Nicholas cannot be indifferent, and to which, perhaps, he would gladly yield were it not for the dominating sentiment about him. Many a man who could face a rain of bullets without a tremor, would quail and turn coward if subjected to the same test before such a cumulative force of opinion.

But this is not a crisis to be settled in the Council-Chamber, nor to be decided by convincing arguments, but by the march of events. And events were not slow in coming.

The assassination of the Grand Duke Sergius, uncle of the Tsar, and the most extreme of the reactionaries at Moscow, of which he was governor, was the most powerful argument yet presented for a change of direction in the Government; and others were near at hand.

The derangement of industrial conditions induced by the war pressed heavily upon the wage-earners; and the agitation upon the surface, the threatened explosions here and there, were only an indication of the misery existing in the deeps below. At all industrial centres there were strikes accompanied by the violence which invariably attends them.

On the morning of Sunday, Jan. 22d, an orderly concourse of workmen, in conformity with a plan already announced, were on their way to the Winter-Palace bearing a petition to the "Little Father," who, if he only knew their wrongs, would see that justice was done them. So they were going to tell him in person of their grievances. The letter of the preceding day ran thus: