CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE DUMA.
There is at least one man in Russia who has reason to feel that his political judgment has been vindicated and his predictions verified by the assembling of the duma. It is Count Ignatieff, who, at the age of twenty-eight, framed the Pekin treaty and who, as minister of the interior (the highest cabinet position at that time), in 1881 formulated a plan for a national assembly. His scheme was to have three thousand representatives elected by the people, these representatives, gathered from all parts of the empire, to meet at Moscow and confer with the emperor in person in regard to legislative measures. In order to avoid the objections raised to so large an assembly, he proposed to divide the body into groups of one hundred each, these groups to meet separately. He secured the approval of the emperor, but the other members of the cabinet were so strenuous in their opposition that the emperor decided not to attempt the reform and Count Ignatieff resigned from the ministry. He warned his associates that a failure to recognize the demands of the people for representation in the government would simply delay the change and that it was better to yield before the demands became more radical, but the members of the bureaucracy, deaf to the appeals of the people and blind to their own interests, resisted, and as a result a duma is now in session at St. Petersburg, the bureaucracy finds itself an object of contempt and loathing, and the present emperor, like his predecessor, has to bear the sins of his advisers.
I called upon Count Ignatieff and found him still vigorous in spite of his grey hairs and advancing years. I was interested in him not only because he is friendly toward our country and speaks our language fluently, but more especially because he was a pioneer in a great movement and foresaw what many of the nobility even now fail to recognize, viz., that there is no place where arbitrary power can justify its existence. The tide of progress has swept past the Count, and he is now classed among the conservatives, but he deserves to be remembered because he had the courage to speak out when it required bravery to propose the taking of a step in the direction of popular government.
COUNT IGNATIEFF.
The duma is the result of the labors of hundreds, yes, thousands of Russian reformers, a few conspicuous, but the most of them unknown to fame, who for more than seventy-five years have been insisting upon constitutional government. It is one of the most remarkable bodies of men ever convened in a national capital, and I have been abundantly repaid for coming here. The duma must be seen to be appreciated; even more, to understand it one must not only see the members, but must know something of the struggle through which they have passed. I am satisfied that the czar himself is more liberal than his advisers and that, left to himself, he would long ago have made concessions which would have brought the throne and the subjects nearer together, but he has yielded so slowly and given so grudgingly that the people have become very much estranged. To illustrate this I need only cite the facts, first as to the election. St. Petersburg and Moscow are the political centers where the officials and the nobility have the strongest representation, and yet in the elections the constitutional democrats won an overwhelming victory in both these cities. In St. Petersburg the ticket which represented the emperor received only two thousand votes out of a total vote of sixty thousand, and in his home precinct, where three hundred voters were sent to the polls in court carriages, his ticket received only eighty votes! Could anything more clearly prove the frail hold of the government upon the people? And it must be remembered that they do not have universal suffrage in the cities, but a property qualification which excludes the poorest of the people, the very ones who have most reason to desire popular government.