Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/50

38 festo permeated by fear of the popular anger and unrest, he promised an immediate convocation of the Duma and announced his intention of requesting the people's representatives to help the Government in their efforts to save the country.

In its spirit and in the circumstances of its issue this manifesto was on the whole a repetition of the famous October manifesto of 1905. But, whereas the unrest of 1905 was followed by revolutionary changes, the unrest of 1915 did not produce similar results. In effect, the crisis of 1905 took place during a great war; that of 1915 during a greater war, a war with more disastrous possibilities. The people were too much oppressed with the sense of failure and disaster and too much preoccupied by their eagerness to relieve the situation, to think of revolutionary changes. They had too much to do in taking over their new duties and responsibilities in the organisation for victory. The crisis of 1915 did not lead to revolution because the people and the army were not yet ripe for revolution. Only when they were faced with the failure of all their efforts to achieve victory—partly in co-operation with the Tsar's constantly-changing Government, partly in defiance of it—only when they saw that their last endeavours were only leading in the end to greater internal, political, and economic chaos, only then did the Revolution emerge.

The revolutionary crisis of 1915 aimed at a better organisation for victory; the Revolution of 1917 began the struggle for peace. I am convinced that the future historian of the Revolution will adopt my view that the Revolution began with the crisis of 1915, and that the time from 1915 to 1917 was its bellicose period. During this time its hopes and activities were directed towards victory in the war against Germany and Austria. Be this as it may, the fact is that the Galician disaster and the submission of the Tsardom to the popular demands inspired the people with new and great hopes that victory was possible, and led to a revival of