In an address delivered in New York City on the 14th of January, 1908, Paul Milyukov, historian, statesman, and leader of the Constitutional Democratic party in the third Russian Duma, after reviewing dispassionately, from a liberal point of view, the unsuccessful attempt at revolution in the great empire of the north, summed up, in the following words, his conclusions with regard to the present Russian situation:
"The social composition of the future Russia is now at stake; the fate of future centuries is now being determined"; but, "wherever we turn or look, we meet only with new trouble to come, nowhere with any hope for conciliation or social peace. This, I am afraid, is not the message that you expected from me, and I should be much happier myself if I could answer your wish for information with words of hope, and with the glad tidings that quiet and security have returned to Russia; but I am here to tell you the truth."
Americans who have not followed closely the sequence of events in Russia since October, 1905, may feel inclined to ask, "Why should Mr. Milyukov take such a pessimistic view of the future, when his country has not only a representative assembly, but an imperial guaranty of political freedom and 'real inviolability of personal rights'?" The answer is not far to seek. A representative assembly that has no power, and an imperial guaranty that affords no security, do not encourage hopeful anticipations. Russia has never had a representative assembly, in the Anglo-Saxon meaning of the words; and as for the imperial guaranty of political freedom, it was written in water.
Twenty-seven months ago, when Count Witte reported to Nicholas II. that Russia had "outgrown its governmental framework," and when the Czar himself, recognizing the necessity of "establishing civil liberty on unshakable foundations," directed his ministers to give the country political freedom and allow the Duma to control legislation, there seemed to be every reason for believing that the crisis had passed and that the people's fight for self-government had been won; but, unfortunately, the unstable Czar, who would run into any mold, but would not keep shape, did not adhere to his avowed purpose for a single week. In the words of a Russian peasant song:
The Czar promised lightly to go,
And made all his plans for departing;
Then he called for a chair,
And sat down right there,
To rest for a while before starting.
Not even so much as an attempt was made to carry the "freedom manifesto" into effect, and before the ink with which it was written had fairly had time to dry, the rejoicing people, who assembled with flags and mottos in the streets of the principal cities to celebrate the dawn of civil liberty, were attacked and forcibly dispersed by the police, and were then cruelly beaten or mercilessly slaughtered by adherents of a national monarchistic association, hostile to the manifesto, which called itself the "Union of True Russians."[27] According to the conservative estimate of Mr. Milyukov, these "true Russians," with the sympathy and coöperation of the police, killed or wounded no less than thirteen thousand other Russians, whom they regarded as not "true," in the very first week after the freedom manifesto was promulgated. One not familiar with Russian conditions might have supposed that the Czar would use all the force at his command to stop these murderous "pogroms" and to punish the police and the "true Russians" who were responsible for them; but he seems to have regarded them as convincing proof that all true Russians would rather have autocracy than freedom, and, instead of insisting upon obedience to his manifesto and punishing those who resorted to wholesale murder as a means of protesting against it, he not only allowed the slaughter to go on, but, a few months later, showed his sympathy with the "true Russians" by telegraphing to their president as follows:
"Let the Union of the Russian People serve as a trustworthy support. I am sure that all true Russians who love their country will unite still more closely, and, while steadily increasing their number, will help me to bring about the peaceful regeneration of our great and holy Russia."[28]
Disappointed at the Czar's failure to stand by his own manifesto, and exasperated by the murderous attacks of the Black Hundreds upon defenseless people in the streets, the Social Democrats, the Social Revolutionists, and the extreme opponents of the government generally resorted to a series of armed revolts, which finally culminated in the bloody barricade-fighting in the streets of Moscow in December, 1905. Taking alarm at these revolutionary outbreaks, and yielding to the reactionary pressure that was brought to bear upon him by the ultra-conservative wing of the court party, the Czar abandoned the reforms which he had declared to be the expression of his "inflexible will,"[29] and permitted his governors and governors-general to "put down sedition" in the old arbitrary way, with imprisonment, exile, the Cossack's whip and the hangman's noose.
Long before the meeting of the first Duma the freedom manifesto had become a dead letter; and in July, 1906, when Mr. Makarof, the Associate Minister of the Interior, was called before the Duma to explain the inconsistency between the "inflexible will" of the Czar, as expressed in the freedom manifesto, and the policy of the administration, as shown in a long series of arbitrary and oppressive acts of violence, he coolly said that while the freedom manifesto "laid down the fundamental principles of civil liberty in a general way," it had no real force, because it did not specifically repeal the laws relating to the subject that were already on the statute-books. He admitted that governors-general were still arresting without warrant, exiling without trial, suppressing newspapers without a hearing, and dispersing public meetings by an arbitrary exercise of discretionary power; but he maintained that in so doing they were only obeying imperial ukases which antedated the freedom manifesto and which that document had not abrogated. In all provinces, he said, where martial law had been declared, or where it might in future be declared, governors and governors-general were not bound by the academic statement of general principles in the October manifesto, but were free to exercise discretionary power under the provisions of certain earlier decrees relating to "reinforced and extraordinary defense." These decrees, until repealed, were the law of the land, and they authorized and sanctioned every administrative measure to which the interpellations related, freedom manifestos to the contrary notwithstanding.[30]
The Czar's abandonment of the principles set forth in the freedom manifesto of October 30, 1905, put an end to what Mr. Milyukov has called "the ascending phase" of the Russian liberal movement. Count Witte, who had persuaded the Czar to sign the manifesto, was forced to retire from the Cabinet, and the new government, taking courage from the apparent loyalty of the army and the successful suppression of sporadic revolutionary outbreaks in various parts of the empire, returned gradually to the old policy of ruling by means of "administrative process," under the sanction of "exceptional" or "temporary" laws.