THE FERMENT IN RUSSIA.

Evening Post, Volume LXXI, Issue 135, 8 June 1906, Page 4

THE FERMENT IN RUSSIA.

That Russian disaffection has again reached an acute stage will not surprise any who have watched developments as reported day by day. Making every allowance for unauthenticated rumour and inevitable exaggeration, the provocation given by the authorities has been of tho most exasperating kind. Such partial concessions a*s have been promised havo been made so grudgingly, and have been so wantonly delayed, as only to emphasise the bitter antipathy of tho ruling classes to any instalment of reform. The Duma has been openly and repeatedly flouted. The reception of tho President by the Tsar reported on the May, and the' "cordial" interview, could not cancel the memory of the previous studied affront by his Imperial Majesty to the representative of the nation, especially as it had just been preceded by the Premier's insolent defiance of the Duma. The protest of that body failed to save the eight condemned "suspects" in the Baltic provinces, and its requisition for a hundred and eighty million acres of waste territory for the landless peasantry elicited an offer of one-eighteenth of the amount. No more has been heard of the "persistent" report of the sale of a vast area of royal forests to a German syndicate. It is possible that certain negotiations were m progress, and tliat popular indignation following their premature disclosure showed that the project was too dangerous for either party to attempt to carry out. On the 28th of last month news came from Odessa of widespread disaffection in the army at Sevastopol, where it was alleged a plot existed to murder the officers and seize the arsenal. The fleet, it was added, was entirely disaffected. To-day we read of very serious developments. Mea* sures, it would seem, had been taken to import seamen nnd firemen from tho Baltic. The responso of the mutineers was a threat to bring about international difficulties by blowing up tho foreign shipping in tho harbour ot Odessa. The effect on Russian commerce of such a threat, even if nothing should come of it, cannot but be seri' ous. Infantry with quickfirers aro guarding the harbour — a precaution which suggests the problem cri Juvenal — "Who is to look after the custodians?" Russia's methods of barbarism are sufficiently exemplified in the offer of blood-money to the Roumanians for the kidnapping of the leader of tho Kniaa Potomkin mutiny, who, with 163 of th& crew, had found an asylum under iho Roumanian flag.. The Duma has asked for an amnesty for these men ; but so far a deaf eav has been turned to every request of the kind. Hitherto tho Duma, if it has done little else, has acted as an escape-valve to relievo tho pressure of tho indignation of " the peasantry and keep the agrarian agitation within bounds. But the Tsar and tho Premier have attempted to close it down, with tho inevitable result. In the central southern provinces lying on the course of tho Volga tho peasants are preparing to tako forcible possession of the lands, and the authorities — late, as usual — propose to set aside three-and-a-half million acrc3 to appeaso the land-hunger. But a similar movement is reported from Grodno, iri Western Russia, not far from Warsaw, and probably is found on a smaller scale elsewhere. Altogether, the internal affairs of tho country seem to bo in a most unstable condition, with all tho materials present for another explosion.