Page:Leo Tolstoy - The Russian Revolution (1907).djvu/84

 Rh needed for the very best organisation of the Russian Empire is the continuation of the Duma which lately sat; while others say that what is needed is a Duma chosen by universal, secret, and equal voting; a third party say that what is needed is a Republic: and yet a fourth party declare that what is needed is not an ordinary Republic, but a Socialist Republic. And for the sake of this, you provoke a civil war!

You say you do it for the people's sake, and that your chief aim is the welfare of the people. But the hundred-millions for whom you do it, do not ask it of you, and do not want all these things which you, by such evil means, try to obtain. The mass of the people do not need you at all, but always has regarded and still regards you, and cannot but regard you, as useless grubs who, in one way or another, consume the fruits of its labour and are a burden upon it. Only realise to yourselves clearly the life of this hundred-million Russian agricultural peasantry, who strictly speaking alone constitute the body of the Russian nation; and understand that you all—professors and factory hands, doctor engineers, journalists, students, land-owners, women-students veterinary surgeons, merchants, lawyers and railway-men: the very people so concerned about its welfare—are all harmful parasites on that body, sucking its sap, rotting upon it, and communicating to it your own corruption.

Only imagine vividly to yourselves these millions, ever patiently labouring, and supporting your unnatural and artificial lives on their shoulders; imagine them possessed of all these reforms you are hoping to obtain, and you will see how foreign to this people is all that professedly for their advantage, you are aiming at. They have other tasks, and see more profoundly that you do the aim that is before them; and they express this consciousness of their destiny, not in newspaper articles, but by the whole life of a hundred-million people.

But no, you cannot understand this. You are firmly convinced that this coarse folk has no roots of its own,and that it will be a great blessing for it, if you enlighten it with the latest article you