Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/163



HE Manifesto of the 14th of March to the Peoples of the World made an enormous impression all over Russia. It was felt that a new epoch had begun; that the beginnings of freedom and justice, sanctified by the Russian Revolution, were permeating foreign policy as well. It was a day of great joy, a festival for the Russian democracy. But the more gloomy was the outlook of the propertied and ruling classes. It was as severe a blow for them as the monarchical principle had received a fortnight earlier. In general, the Revolution was visibly departing from their ideas. It was taking a wholly unexpected direction. The propertied classes saw that it was threatening to pass them by without fulfilling their cherished dreams. Under the old régime they, the economic chiefs of the country, the big landowners and representatives of trade and industry, had had to take a second place. The Court aristocracy and the higher ranks of the bureaucracy had usurped their position and set a limit to their power in the State. The Revolution having swept away the throne and dispersed the bureaucracy, the propertied classes thought that at last they would be able to enter the field as leaders of the country, and come into their own. They imagined the Revolution as making smooth the way for the flourishing of capitalism and the triumph of industrial enterprise. The Revolution was to release them from the heavy guardianship of the bureaucracy; the war was to satisfy their dream of new markets, the annexation of Constantinople and the Straits, Armenia, Galicia, and undisputed power in the Balkans. They