On the other hand you have the revolutionaries outside the Duma, who have no real notion of constitutional government either, attacking the Cadets with unbridled violence every day, because they say that they are the only bulwark against revolution. Therefore between these two dismal extremes we have only the Cadets; capable and well organised it is true; the question is, How long can they remain masters of such a situation?
June 2nd.
To-night I had a long talk with M. Aladin, the Radical deputy. He gives me a totally different impression from the usual Russian “Intelligent.” He has been Anglicised. I don’t mean to say this has made him superior to his countrymen, but it has made him different. He complained of the want of practical energy among the Russians. They had not got, he said, enough to satisfy an English child.
A friend was sitting with him—a musician, and at one moment they compared pistols, when the musician began gesticulating with a revolver. I felt nervous because Russians are so careless with firearms. M. Aladin said that in England there were precedents and prejudices about everything; here they were fighting in order to establish their precedents and their prejudices.
I asked him whether, since he knew England well, he thought political liberty was really a great advantage, and whether the great liberté de mœurs enjoyed by Russians did not compensate for the habeas corpus. He said he wasn’t certain whether political liberty was worth having, but he was convinced it was worth fighting for.
Nobody can possibly accuse this man either of talking nonsense or of being a doctrinaire, but he seems to me a square peg in a round hole, as Kislitzki was in the war.
He does not seem to evaporate in talk. His manner is mild, almost gentle, and you at once feel he has unlimited energy. That is to say, he is just the opposite of the ordinary “Intelligent” revolutionary, who is all words and no deeds.
CHAPTER XX
CURRENT IDEAS ON THE DUMA
St. Petersburg, June 3rd.
“The Duma is impossible,” said the Frenchman.