July 22nd.
I went to see some of the peasant members in their hotel. They expect that the Duma will be dissolved.
July 23rd.
In this morning’s Retch there was a short paragraph stating that late in the night a rumour had reached them concerning the dissolution of the Duma; but it was not true. It was, however, or rather it is. The dissolution is a fact. I have just seen the official announcement in a special edition.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE DISSOLUTION OF THE DUMA
St. Petersburg, July 25th.
The dissolution of the Duma, although it had been predicted during the course of last week, and although the arrival of a large number of troops in St. Petersburg was known, came as a surprise. During the whole of yesterday the town was abnormally quiet. I went to the various clubs: the Labour Party Club, the Cadet Club, the Socialist Club. They were all deserted. Some of the members had left for Finland; others were holding meetings in various parts of the town. In the club of the Labour Party, which is in the Nevsky Prospect, nothing was left except the cold remains of a supper, a large portrait of the Emperor, a picture of the Dowager Empress, and a pastel of Spiridonovna. At the Cadet Club I saw the peasant Nazarenko; he was just starting for Finland. “Things are bad,” I said. “The life of a State is like the life of a man,” he replied, philosophically. “If there were no bad there would be no good, either.” Other visitors arrived and gathered together in knots, speaking with bated breath, as if they were under the cloud of some huge calamity. “Does it mean the end of the Monarchy?” I asked one man. “It means the end of the dynasty, in any case,” he answered.
In the evening I saw some Octobrists and Conservatives, and asked them their opinion. “The Government may be right in having dissolved the Duma,” one of them said, “but what is criminal on their part is the way in which they treated the Duma from the first, trying to discredit it in every possible way, and doing everything they could to provoke it to rebellion. Russia is an odd country, and everything is possible; it is possible that the country may quiet down if liberal reforms are at once put into practice; but I confess I have little faith in this, and if the country does not quiet down this Ministry will be directly responsible for any disasters which may happen.”
Some one else, more Liberal, said to me: “If I lose everything I possess, if my land is devastated and my house is burnt, I shall never blame the Cadets; I shall never cease to believe they might have managed things if they had been empowered to do so early enough—that is to say, last October.”
A third person, a landlord, said to me yesterday that the step was inevitable, because no Ministry, even were it composed of geniuses, and no Duma, even were it composed of angels, would be of the slightest avail until it was settled whether or no there is to be a new régime in Russia. You cannot, he argued, have the new wine in the old skins. It was no use having a Duma supposed to be working together with a power directly opposed to it and working in a diametrically opposite direction. As matters were, a law, if it passed through the Duma and the Council of Empire, had to be sanctioned by the x quantity who had the power in his hands at Court. And if it is said that it is not constitutional to inquire into the advisers of the Crown, it must be remembered that whenever in other countries advisers have been all-powerful, and have acted against the will of the people, the advisers have been forced to go, failing which the Monarch has been deposed. Now the question will be settled. Either the Government will prove it can govern the country and quiet it down—that is to say, it will prove itself to be strong—or it will prove its weakness and ultimately come to grief.