STORY OF THE CZAR.

North Otago Times, Volume CV, Issue 13931, 13 July 1917, Page 1

STORY OF THE CZAR.

Nemesis op power.

A CONGLOMERATION CP CATASTROPHIES.

w the world's history there are no records of sovrcignty fraught with ■such strange vecissitudcs, siie.li as murky tragedy, as those which tell of the rotors of Russia. The story of the Czar is like a conglomeration of the wild catastrophies of Elizabethan tragedies. Astounding extravagance

and contradictions of character, incredible impostures, conspiracies infinitely involved, stupefying changes of fortune are repeated from age to age, and too often they spring out of or end in wild orgies of lust and murder. The philosopher may say that the story of the Czars is a tale of tlio nemesis of absolute power. The Romanoffs, indeed, trace their line far back to the house ofßurik, the first of Russian dynasties, but that is no great matter.. Princo Burik lived if he ever lived, somo thousand years ago, and was probably a Norseman. The fust Romanoff camo to Moscow from Prussia, it is said, four hundred years after Burik was dead and gone. Russia becamo a united independe.it Empire under an autocratic Czar later still, and her first ruler was no Romanoff, but Diniitri of the Don, Prince of Moscow. For two centuries Russia, had lain under the ruinous domination »$. Tartar hordes. In 13S0 Diniitri formed a coalition of Russian princes and defeated the army of Tartars on the famous field of Kulkivo. It was one of the decisive battles of the world, for it determined for all time that Russia should be European, not Asiatic. Diniitri won Russia her right to freedim, independence and civilisation. The men of his dynasty, Ivan the Great and Basil and Ivan the Terrible, consolidated her power and shaped her government into air autocratic Empire.

The Coming of the Romanoffs. Ivan the Great succeeded to the throne when ho was throe years old. The country relapsed into anarchy, the court into barbaric vice. When Ivan assumed his power as Czar, Moscow was in flames, But no sovereign ever began his reign better. There was a clean sweep of the vicious or feeble administrators of the Regency, The country was given peace, justice, and prosperity. There were fifteen years of a golden age, Then suddenly it was all changed. The benevolent father of his people becamo an execrable tyrant. His existence became one vast orgy of murder and torture and lust.

If there were space or time in these days, a thrilling story might be told of the years between the death of Ivan tile Terrible and the rise of Peter the Great, of that enigma Boris

Godcnov, who made the peasants serfs, ami that most amazing of impostors the "false Dimitri" vagabond monk of son of a priest, who made a mistress of one of the princesses and married another, and plajrcd the Emporor as to the maimer born. ]>.? we must leave the "troublous tinu:;'' and pss to the coming of the Romanoffs. It was a rising of the people, headed by a butcher and a Prince, which made the first Romanoff Czar. Michael Romanoff was eloctod-for it was a vote of the whole nation that gave him |lm throne-in 1(118, lie was a prudent and successful administrator, and those qualities were inherited liy his son Alexis. A man of a different stamp stamp succeeded them when by a cmif. d'etat Peter the Great, who was not the next in succession, won the throne in 11184. Peter was a man of tremendous energy, ibodily and jnentnl, a savage in maimers, hardly human in liis morals, ruthless as Ivan the Terrible, and yet a man 'bom to rule. Jt is a popular error to suppose that he was the first ruler of Russia to see her need of tho commerce and arts and organisation of tho West, But lie camo when the time was ripe, and it is from him, from his foresight and his vast schemes, that Russia traces her influence as a European Power. Despot and Democrat. - When Peter the Great died tho descendants of Michael Romanoff were few, and in the eighteenth century the

fortunes of Russia lay in the hands of two Empresses, Elizabeth and Catherine 11. The less we sa yof then morals tho -better. Much might be isnid of their brains. It was Elizabeth, true daughter of Peter the Great,who .hated Germans as Russia hates them to-day, whose armies entered Berlin and nearly ruined Frederick' the Great, He was saved only by her death and the ascension of Peter TI., half a German in blood and all a German in everything else, a despicable creature, who having saved Prussia from defeat, was deposed and assassinated by the friends of his wife, Catherine 11., a Mcssalina, but a woman of extraordinary ability and force of will.

The son of two such parents as Petor and Catherine was not likely to be fortunate. It is probable that he was not sane. His childish, haphazard tyranny was puuished by assassination,, and his son, Alexande'r 1., succeeded, not without suspicion of complicity in his father's lnurdor. But Alexander I. is one of those mon about whom no historian can hope to tell the .wholetruth. No one was over quito suro of him. No one who knew him over professed to understand him. He was a proud and determined despot,, and he was a democrat. He' began '.his' reign yearing to liberate Russia, and left-it under a sterner tyranny than ever. Ho was not fifty when, "crush-, ed," as ho said,-"beneath the terrible' :burden of a crown," he died;"' Many

bolicved then, and the tale long' lingered, that he had -"ijiut .pretended death as a .veil for a life 4 of -lonely sanctity. ■] ~..'■.

There were no half mourners, no divided counsels in the mind of his successor, Nicholas I. An iron mlo was his one notion of government, and he is the last of the Czars 'who practised it with resolution "and success. Alexander 11, coining to the throne [after the disasters of the Crimean War, had all the harder task. His father had taken the greatest pains to bring him up in the pure air of despotUrn, but there wns in Alexander a natural kindliness which would not be stifled. No one of the House of Romanoff leaves upon the'page of history 1 so amiable a picture. Tt- was Alexander U. who emancipated the serfs, and no greater reform has ever been made by one act, Ho gave Russia, a new and milder penal code and a scheme of local self-government. But the ferment of the nineteenth century democracy worked too quickly. Alexander had just '.determined to concede 'further reforms, when he wis killed by Nihilist bombs.

Alexander 111, his son, could hardly have been conciliated by such a declaration of the policy of the reformers. He was not the man to bo frightened. Even if his father had not been so cruelly repaid for a liberal policy it is, indeed, unlikely that it would have had the support of Alexander 111, He was allowing,for the difference of period, much more like his grandfather, Nicholas. _ Resolute autocracy was his mode cf government, one nationality, one religion, one language, one system of administration, las ideals for Russia, But willi this went a stem hostility to all foreign influence, am] that, in the nature of the case, meant no friend-, ship for Germany, It is from his reign and his direction of Russian policy that we date the Franco Russian alliance. He died, as Czars are wont to die, worn out before his time, a man hardly fifty, broken down, despite a magnificent pliyique, by the bunion of empire, and it -passed to the shoulders of his son Nicholas 111.