The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 23, 1905. THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVI, Issue 201, 23 August 1905, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 23, 1905. THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION.

For the cause that lacks assistance. For the wrong that needs resistance. For the future in the distance. And the good that toe can do.

For some weeks there has been a lull in the violent outbursts of revolutionary activity that marked the earlier months of this year in Russia. For tliis comparative quiescence there have been two chief reasons. The extreme severity of the repressive measures adopted by the Autocracy has sufficed to cow the disaffected populace in many quarters. Current events take a long time to become history in Russia, and it is only after a long interval that the truth about the brutal massacres in St. P.teiSburg and Moscow, Lodz and Riga, ano last of all in Odessa has become generally known. But though temporarily successful, these sanguinary excesses are the last despairing struggle of tyranny; and they have certainly gone far to quench the feeble flame of loyalty in many a Russian heart. Among the moro intellectual classes, ever since the famous Congress of the Zemstvos clostd the tendency has been to wait for the Czar's next mow; and while the plans for the long promised Constitutional Assembly were being drafted there seems to have been a tacit agreement to wait upon the course of events. Now at last the Czar's National Parliament has been established, and the people see that they have been once more deluded. So far as any real share in the Government is to be allotted to the people it will be confined mostly to the ignorant peasants who can be trusted not to attempt interference with the privileges of Absolutism. Lest any doubt should be left in the public mind as to his intentions, the Czar has actually decreed that the "intellectuals"—the lawyers, doctors, and university professors—who took part in the recent agitation for reform shall be denied the franchise. We need hardly say that this sweeping- sentence includes all the foremost men in Russia, and nothing more than this was needed to convince the world and the subjects of the Czar that the Autocracy will never of its own will abdicate ths tyrannical rights it ( has so long exercised over the people of Russia.

Though the Russians have little reason to trust even the good intentions of the Czar, the majority of them seem to have clung desperately to the hope that something good would come out of the new constitution. In their disappoint•nent, they have naturally relapsed into their old attitude toward the Government; and so we learn that violent outbreaks are once more on the increase in various quarters of Russia. It is sig nificant that the most revolutionary districts are those in which the largest manufacturing centres are to be found. In the vast agricultural regions of central and northern Russia the peasants are too ignorant, and they are scattered over too wide an area to organise their forces effectively against their masters. But in the great manufacturing citi,? and seaports, where men's intelligences are sharpened, and their interest in public life roused by constant contact with their fellows, the "Will of the People" and other revolutionary bodi-s have found their ablest and boldest follower,. Indeed, we may go so far as to say that the revolution with which Russia is already seething is more an industrial than a "socialist" upheaval. This is the reason that strikes and political outbreak. are so constantly confused in our cables. Throughout Russia to-day the workmen are in the van of the revolutionary movement Not even the cen_orship of the press and the strict limitation of the right of free speech have availed to keep the Russian wage-earners in ignorance of the advances made and the privileges possessed by their fellow workers in other countries; and the trades unions in Russia to-day play the part that wa9 allotted 20 years ago to the countless committees and revolutionary societies with which the country was then honey-combed. Ministers like Ignatieff and Plehwe, and heads of police like Trepoff, have gone a long way toward stamping out the old Nihilist organi.n tion. But so far no military violence or administrative tyranny has enabled the Autocracy to grapple successfully with the industrial movement for pro<ress and reform which is to all intents and purposes the Revolution in Russia to-day. How far this great revolt of the workers against their brutal masters will carry the country, it is still impossible to predict. But just now the omens are more threatening and por'entous than ever before. It is not that the tyranny of the autocracy is more crushing or more cruel than it was ten years ago. The danger liechiefly in the fact that the people of Russia are coming at last to understand that no remonstrance and no prayer will accomplish anything for them; and that to appeal to the Czar is sheer waste of time. At the last session of the famous Zemstvo Congress at Moscow, the leaders of the reform movement declared that henceforth they must appeal not to the Throne but to the people; and it is difficult to see how the people can get their way with- ! out resorting to violent measures. The conception of government entertained by the Czar appears to be that Russia is his private estate, and that he bas the right to manage it for himself and the Grand Dukaa, oi whom it has been

written that "no such greedy unscrupulous hangers-on of royalty have ever been known to hi-tonr." Whatever we may think of the Czar himself it is manifestly impossible that the people of Russia can gain their jti£t rights till the rule of tbe corrupt Grand Ducal hierarchy is broken. And it seems th-t nothing short of the fate of Duke Sergius is likely to have any effect upon their conduct or character. More than this, though the Czar seems to understand that the Grand Dukes are in danger, he does not appear to realise that they may drag him to destructioa in their fall. "Nich-l-s of to day," says a Russian writer, "is the Nicho.as of ten years ago; a niLd, nerve-shattered youth, incapable of clear hard thinking, who walks through life with the settled smile of a somnambulist moving serenely over dizzy dills." It is dimcult to say how much of the Czar's obtuseness is due to sheer stupidity and how much to obstinate fatalism; but though he still perseveres "with the serenity of the somnambulist and the smile of the seer" in refusing jusiice to his people, the fool's paradise in which he dwells may at any moment crumble to the earth around him in the shock and din of a terrible awakening.