Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/123



HE suppression of the 1905 Revolution was followed by a period of the darkest reaction in Russia. The reaction, which followed immediately after the prorogation of the second Duma and Stolypin's coup d'état, had a curious and very sinister feature. Unlike the traditional reactionary policy of Russia, which contented itself with a series of brutal and clumsy persecutions of all revolutionary activities—with banishments, executions, imprisonments, and other tortures—this new reaction was marked by a series of reforms aiming at a systematic strengthening of all counter-revolutionary forces. The greatest energy and determination were put into the agrarian reforms, whose central purpose was to increase the class of small landowners in the villages. By this means it was hoped to frustrate the growth of the revolutionary movement, which had always been bound up with the struggle for land—either arising out of it, or developing into it. The traditional revolutionary ideals of Russia were expressed in the famous battle-cry ""land and freedom"; the more modern Socialist and revolutionary ideas only reversed the order, crying "freedom and land."

The period between 1907 and 1911 was the darkest and most critical time in Russia's history. It was however a period of remarkable prosperity in the economic sense. And from 1912 onwards a gradual decline of this feeling of social depression became manifest. Notably the Labour movement, which had been crushed out by the cruel hand of Stolypin, began to show some signs of returning life. Trade Unions and Co-operative Societies were making visible progress. The fourth Duma once more contained a