The Red Reign: The True Story of an Adventurous Year in Russian

The Russian revolution is one of the vital issues of the world to-day. The political revolt, presenting, as it does, so many unique and dramatic developments, tends to distract the attention of the world from the broader, deeper, and certainly not less important, phases of the movement which are found in the social and economic upheaval. The working out of these forces—political, social, economic—in one stupendous movement, constitutes one of the great revolutions of history.

Revolution implies absolute change. Whether civil war, or intense parliamentary struggle, or both, is the method of accomplishment, is of small consequence. The ultimate outcome is the same. The present movement of the Russian people toward a changed condition of life is but the manifestation of underlying forces of history and destiny to which all nations must yield. Revolution in Russia during the first quarter of the twentieth century is as inevitable as the bursting of a Pelée or a Vesuvius; as inexorable and pitiless as an earthquake, or the passing of ancient empires.

Revolutions are not made. They are not built upon the propaganda of a political or economic cult. They do not depend upon the will of men—whether rulers or parliaments—as do wars. Revolutions are the result of internal unwholesomeness—disease rooted in the body politic, too deep to be poulticed out by ameliorating reforms. The Russian revolution would be viewed as a world catastrophe were it not that the disease, of which the revolution is but a symptom, is infinitely more of a world menace. That disease is autocracy. Autocracy is a system of government incompatible with twentieth-century civilization. Reforms which are reconcilable to Russian autocracy are inadequate to meet the present needs of the Russian people, and the meeting of these needs necessitates reforms of such far-reaching and radical a nature, that autocracy cannot admit them and continue to exist. Further, certain reforms and fundamental requirements are now so demanding and so acute that autocracy cannot much longer stand out against them. The period of transition from autocracy to constitutionalism, republicanism, or whatever the ultimate form of government accepted in Russia shall be, we call revolution. The word has no arbitrary meaning. It simply designates a period of national upheaval and struggle. In this sense the Russian revolution may be said to have come to a head on “Bloody Sunday,” January 22, 1905, and will culminate only with the capitulation, or overthrow, of autocracy. The abyss toward which the Russian government is now tending is but the Nemesis of history.

The constitution which was wrung from the hands of the emperor on the 30th of October, 1905, when the rising tide of revolution threatened the very palace gates, is being gradually modified and withdrawn piecemeal, and if the emperor has his way not a vestige of it will long remain. The fundamental rights of men, which it pretends to guarantee the Russian people, are as non-existent in the Russia of 1906 as they were in 1806, before the first faint mutterings of the coming storm had been heard. Not one, but all, of the guaranteed rights of that manifesto have been withdrawn under so-called “temporary” laws and regulations, and under the cloak of military law. The rights of free speech, writing, assemblage, inviolability of person and home, still remain utopian dreams of a distant day. This manifesto clearly and unequivocally guaranteed “freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of public assembly, and real inviolability of personal rights.” And yet of the approximately 486 members of the first Duma—the chosen representatives of the Russian people—one (Professor Hertzenstein) has been murdered by the “Black Hundred”; one priest excommunicated; two members have been beaten; ten are in hiding; five have been exiled; twenty-four are in prison; thirty-three have been arrested and searched; and one hundred and eighty-two are under indictment on the charge of treason. An obviously anomalous situation.