The Soviet is the Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates; it is to their influence that must be ascribed much of the present chaotic condition of the country.
One of the great faults of the Government which has succeeded the Empire has been to allow the return of all these dangerous agitators who had taken refuge beyond the frontier of the great empire and who were only worthy of Siberia. Korniloff was the well-known chief of the Cossacks and also the ex-commander and chief of the Armies. He, with true insight, saw the danger his country was running; seeing her drifting to anarchy he did all he could to make Kerensky act firmly. The latter refusing to do so, he took the affairs into his own hands, but failed, and was to have been tried for revolt. Had Korniloff been lucky he might have saved his country.
There remains yet one hope in the powerful chief of the Don Cossacks, Kaledin, under whose orders is the south of Russia. May he succeed in restoring a firm Monarchy.
The reform of certain matters necessary to our century ought to have started from above.
It is certain that if the Emperor had wished to listen to the advice that sensible people had given him, instead of listening to his wife and the little clique of ignorant and blind reactionaries which surrounded her—and from the heart of which she insisted on recruiting the ministers, etc.—the goal would have been reached.
It was in vain that Grand Duke Nicholas wrote to the Emperor denouncing the plot that was forming against him and so near him; it was in vain that several times he came to see the Tzar trying to convince him; but it was all to no avail.
The task of reform would not have been easy for anyone; and was quite beyond the powers of Nicholas II. The fault was partly due, it is said, to the fact that the early education of the Emperor was never that of a child who had, in perspective, the heavy task of governing a great empire, but mainly in the man himself.
Russia needed an intelligent, energetic ruler, full of action and decision, and not this victim of an invincible obstinacy, often a symptom of crass stupidity. It would have been necessary that he should have had enough force and courage to have dismissed the insolent, the incapable, the Germans at heart if not in race who surrounded and dominated him.
But let us return to 1905. The partisans of the aristocracy greatly deplored the fact of Prince Troubetzkoy and his followers being received by the Emperor.
The Protestants, and even some Russians with advanced notions, held this to be sublime, a great step towards liberty and deliverance. The part played by Troubetzkoy and his friends resembled that of those nobles who, at the beginning of the Great French Revolution, abandoned their king and themselves became the first victims of the infuriated mob. The mere fact of their having been received by the Emperor was sufficient to cause the latter a great loss of prestige in the eyes of the masses. Nothing could have had a more disastrous effect on them, and to think of those malcontents being well received—the last people who should have been.