RUSSIAN DEVELOPMENT

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4311, 21 March 1901, Page 4

RUSSIAN DEVELOPMENT

111 the opening year of the twentieth century suggestive things are happening in Russia.- In other countries, up. to tho last year of the nineteenth century, there wore-uncertainties in the dynastic religious and social spheres; hut “Holy Russia” was the one great'Power serenely free from doubt in all these respects, and powerful with a force growing daily stronger. The tentacles of its advance only got further away from the centre of its strength to prove that increasing attenuation over long distances was actually a cause of increased power. Up to tho end of 1900 more was nothing in Europe or Asia like the solidarity of Russia. proof against anything that might befall. Now, in tho first quarter of 1901, the capital has been bo hard gripped by a rising, ostensibly a students’ alone, really of students largely supported. that it took the .whole military force of the city to check the outbreak. The insurgents showed their teeth as Russian insurgents have never before done in their history. ‘‘Down with the Czar,” j “Death to the' rotten bureaucracy,” are! war cries unfamiliar in the Russian capi- j tal; and when tho breaking of the sacred | Icons is the accompaniment, in a riot ! of sympathy with the Russian prophet of ! freedom, it is indeed' time to wonder! what may happen next. ' |

Hitherto-the Nihilist minority alone! has defiled the name of tho Czar, andj sneered at the religious belief .of the Rus- \ sian millions. Once, indeed, it went so; far as to take the life of a reigning Em-! peror; but the solidarity of Russia, duo; to the public veneration for the Church, and its virtual head, the Czar, was in no way affected. The latter was the “Little! Father,” tho former was the one divine' thing on the earth. With such a people tho persecutions of Finnish Lutherans,! of Polish Roman Catholics, of Stundists,: Doukhobofs and Jews, were popular.

Pobedonostzcff, the strongest and most capable Minister of the inferior that Russia has seen for years, openly proclaimed the doctrine of religious intolerance, and “that good man.” Stead, worshipped him for the sincerity of his religious' opinions. Russia was with him. Therenin” might be rotten, justice might; be blind even to the truth, freedom was! obviously the -mockery of the shadow of a name ; but what did it matter, so long j as Russia was holy, tho Icon a power, I and the white Osar the “Little;

Father”? The Russian Colossus advanced to conquest through plagues and famines, unimpaired by tho devastations of either. Many Englishmen trembled when they saw this Colossus established in the Far East in all -his solidarity. They felt fie had outflanked the great wall of the Himalayas, and thought ho was equal ' to the task of striking at the great, cit- / ies of the plain of Hindustan. The idea, largely supported as it has been, is of I course absurd, for the frontier of India itl not turned by the Russian position in j Manchuria. On. the contrary, it is far harder to take an army in via Tin- ! kestan (as has been glibly talked of) i

from China, than over the Alghan passes from the central Asiatic plateau. But the error is useful as measuring the general estimate of Russia as an Umpire destined never to weaken from internal causes. The riot in St. Petersburg may have been a small thing, easily put down as these sorb of suppressions go. But inasmuch as it has aimed a blow in or.cn daylight at the thrce| sacred institutions of llussa, the Czar, the Church and the Tchin, by which the simple millions of people are kept contentedly strong in the midst of darkness, that riot may turn out to bo the beginning of one of the greatest revolutions of tbo new century.