Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/49

 regeneration of their country. It will help you to a still clearer understanding of the situation if you make yourselves acquainted with the structure of legislative institutions in Russia.

Let us begin with the electoral Law. Bismarck is said to have called the Prussian electoral system the most wretched in the world. I should think that the Austrian system before 1905, before the granting of universal suffrage, was still worse than the Prussian. And I may say that the Russian system is much worse than the Austrian. The system of Russian representation is purely artificial and depends entirely on the Government. For voting purposes the population is distributed into separate groups, called "curias." The principle accepted in Russia is this—the more democratic and numerous the group is, the more their electoral power is limited. There are three "curias" in the towns and as many in the country; the least democratic, the moderate, and the most democratic. Thus, for the towns these are: (1) wealthy capitalists, (2) the middle class of citizens, (3) the working classes; and, for the country districts, (1) the large landed proprietors, (2) small landed proprietors, (3) the peasants of the Russian communities. The vote, except in six large cities like Petrograd, Moscow, Kiev, Odessa and so on, is not recorded by the constituencies themselves but by special electors chosen by the constituencies. The number of electors given to the various constituencies varies in opposite proportion to the number of the population. Thus for instance one-fifth of a million of landed gentry have the right to choose 2594 electors, one-half million of wealthy citizens choose 788