Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/27

Rh of the Revolution of 1905. As I was intimately familiar with all layers of society in this capital of the Tsars, where I had been in school and through the University, I soon had a close and accurate knowledge of what was developing. I had no doubt that a revolution was brewing, but a partial revolution, a restricted one, primarily initiated and activated by the liberal intelligentsia and secondarily supported by the socialistic groups, which profited by every national and political difficulty to agitate or to assist revolutionary movements.

The war disaster had proved the criminal negligence of the Government, which only maintained itself through the support of the secret police and the sternly disciplined army with the help of which it crushed all protests against incapable Ministers and provincial governors, who had been guilty of crimes or excesses that exasperated the people.

It is possible that this revolution, even without the participation and help of the hundred million of Russia's peasants, might have yielded some beneficial and lasting results, if it had not been for the secret police. This organization had its spies everywhere, many of whom simulated liberal ideas and thus worked themselves into the councils of the revolutionists, even at times assuming leadership and provoking encounters with the army that only entailed most severe repression on the part of the Government. During these encounters many revolutionists were killed, while the leaders in the movement were arrested by the police on identification by the spies. Then the tribunals, always handy tools of the despotic Government, sentenced them to death, to long years of banishment in Siberia or to prison.

In the Revolution of 1905 this activity of the political secret police, or okhrana, was particularly effective. Two