Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 08.djvu/192

RUSSIA in the heavy emigration of these people to the United States, also tended to throw many thousands of them into the ranks of the Social Democrats, which in turn brought on still more severe measures of repression against them from the government.

The weakness of the government, revealed by its inability to cope with the war situation in Manchuria, in 1905, served as the occasion for the first serious outbreak of revolutionary activities in Russia. Thousands of the Russian soldiers who had been taken prisoners by the Japanese, were exposed to the propaganda of the Socialist agitators in the Japanese prison camps, and when they returned to Russia, after the signing of peace, in August, 1905, they lost no time in joining in the demonstrations of the revolutionists.

In the previous January a large delegation of workers had presented itself before the palace of the Czar, in Petrograd, with a peaceful petition for certain reforms. The authorities made the almost fatal mistake of firing on the delegation, numbering some thousands, headed by a priest, Father Gapon, killing and wounding hundreds. This fateful day was ever afterward known as “Red Sunday.” It formed the starting-point of the real Russian revolutionary movement.

In February the Grand Duke Sergius was assassinated. Many smaller assassinations followed. More important still, strikes of the workers were called, and, in spite of severe repressive measures, tended to blend into one great, general strike. Finally the Czar signed a ukase calling into existence a popular assembly, the Duma, with little more than the right to hold debates, however. Still the strike augmented. In Moscow Leon Trotzsky, one of the Social Democrat leaders, organized the first Council, or Soviet, of Workingmen Delegates (see ), and this body proceeded to initiate an armed uprising.

By this time, Oct. 31, the Government was thoroughly alarmed, and now a decree was passed granting a genuine constitutional government.

Only gradually, however, did the disorders, by this time extending all over the empire, quiet down. The Moscow uprising was terminated only after severe bloody encounters between the police and soldiers and the revolutionists. Finally the elections were held and the Duma assembled in Petrograd. It was allowed to proceed unmolested, until the disorders had more or less ceased, and then, in July, 1906, the Duma was dissolved by an imperial ukase The decree frankly stated that the Duma had attempted to interfere with the fundamental laws of the country, which could only be changed by the will of the Czar, and this could not be tolerated.

Then followed a renewed spurt of activity of the secret revolutionary organizations, and high officials were killed almost daily. A new Duma was called, but the restrictions on suffrage were so arranged that there was little danger of the members again attempting to interfere with the prerogatives of the autocracy. It was a thoroughly subservient body, and so remained until after the outbreak of the World War, in 1914. Meanwhile the war on the revolutionary elements was continued with energy. The discovery that a large number of the chief leaders of the revolutionary organizations were the paid agents of the government, more than the repressive measures, tended to their utter demoralization, and in 1907 reaction was again triumphant in Russia. The leaders who had been compromised had taken refuge abroad, while those who found it possible to remain in Russia turned their attention to the Co-operative Movement, hoping to accomplish by economic action what they could not accomplish by terrorism or political action.

On July 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. It was Russia's policy to oppose and prevent the further expansion of the Austrian Empire at the cost of any of the Southern Slav peoples. Russia, therefore, began an immediate mobilization of her troops, which brought forth a protest from Germany, Austria's ally. On August 1, 1914, Germany declared war on Russia, and the great World War was precipitated. On August 6, 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Russia.

The Russian army had been reorganized on a more efficient basis since the Russo-Japanese War, though perhaps not so extensively as was popularly supposed among the public of the Allied countries. The Russian armies were able to hold their own against the forces of the Central Empires on the Eastern front for two years or more, but at a tremendous cost to the Russian economic structure. Nor would it have been possible for Russia to have accomplished as much as she did had the war not had popular support. Many of the former revolutionary leaders in exile returned to Russia to give their support, though the autocracy was short-sighted enough to have many of them arrested on their arrival.

It was within the inner government circles that the seed of ultimate disintegration germinated. Very soon after the outbreak of the war many of the