the Russian government made a striking gain when in the spring of 1915 Great Britain and France agreed to the Russian acquisition of Constantinople, the Straits, and the adjoining littoral at the peace settlement. Italy, which joined the Entente at the end of August 1916, acquiesced in the arrangement.
While the Russian command made its share of military mistakes, the political mistakes of the Russian government proved to be both greater and more damaging. Nicholas II and his ministers failed to utilize the national rally that followed the outbreak of the war. In fact, they continued to rely on exclusively bureaucratic means to mobilize the resources of the nation, and they proceeded to oppress ethnic and religious minorities in the areas temporarily won from Austria as well as in home provinces. In particular, they failed to make the necessary concessions to the Poles. Russian defeats, the collapse of Russian supply, and the utter incompetence of the war minister, General Vladimir Sukhomlinov, as well as of some other high officials, did lead, to be sure, to certain adjustments. The Duma was finally called together in August 1915 for a short session, Sukhomlinov and three of his colleagues had to resign, and the government began to utilize the efforts of society to support the army. These efforts, it should be added, which were led by public figures and industrialists such as Guchkov, had developed on a large scale, ranging from work in the Red Cross to widespread measures to increase production of military materiel. The Zemstvo Union and the Union of Towns, which joined forces under the chairmanship of Prince George Lvov, and the War Industry Committee, led by Guchkov, became especially prominent.
But the
the entire membership of the Duma, except the extreme Right and the extreme Left, and which won majority support even in the State Council. Instead he came to rely increasingly on his wife Empress Alexandra and on her extraordinary advisor, the peasant Gregory Rasputin. Moreover, in spite of the protests of ten of his twelve ministers, the sovereign unwisely took personal command of the armed forces, which had been commanded by his relative Grand Duke Nicholas, leaving Alexandra and Rasputin in effective control in the capital. Thus a narrow- minded, reactionary, hysterical woman and an ignorant, weird peasant - who apparently made decisions simply in terms of his personal interest, and whose exalted position depended on the empress's belief that he could protect her son from hemophilia and that he had been sent by God to guide her, her husband, and Russia - had the destinies of an empire in their hands. Ministers changed rapidly in what has been described as a 'ministerial leapfrog,' and each was more under Rasputin's power than his predecessor. Eventually, after Rasputin's assassination, one of them claimed communion with Rasputin's spirit! That assassination, long and gruesome, took place at the end of December, 1916. It was engineered by a leader of the extreme Right, a member of the imperial family, and another aristocrat related to the imperial family by marriage, who each tried to save the dynasty and Russia. As the year 1917 began, there were rumors of a palace coup that would restore sanity and leadership to the imperial government. But a popular revolution came first.
XXXII
THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF RUSSIA FROM THE 'GREAT REFORMS' UNTIL THE REVOLUTIONS OF 1917
The last sixty years of Imperial Russia are not only in themselves a period of great historical interest: they are significant for other countries and other periods. The pattern of this period in Russia has repeated and is repeating itself elsewhere. It is not only in Russia, and not only in Europe, that the impact of the nineteenth- or twentieth-century West on a backward country has caused distortions and frustrations, has released revolutionary forces. New countries have been drawn into the world capitalist economy, into the rapid exchange of goods and ideas. The loss of centuries has to be made up in a few years. Improved communications, public order and sanitation increase population faster than output. The impoverished masses become more impoverished. The new ways create a new intelligentsia. The shrieking contrast between the old and the new drive a part of the intelligentsia to revolutionary ideas, and if political conditions make this necessary, to conspiratorial organization. The force which keeps such societies together is the bureaucracy. It holds the power, the privileges and the means of repression. From it and through it come such reforms as are permitted. It is outwardly impressive. It weighs heavily on the backs of the people. But like cast iron, though heavy it is also brittle. A strong blow can shatter it to pieces. When it is destroyed there is anarchy. Then is the moment for a determined group of conspiratorial revolutionary intellectuals to seize power.
Whether the general well-being of the peasantry had shown improvement or decline - whether there had been within the peasant mass a tendency to draw together or to draw apart - still, as the day of revolt approached, there was no doubt of the existence in the countryside of a morass of penury sufficiently large, an antithesis between poverty and plenty sufficiently sharp, to give rise to whatever results might legitimately be bred and born of economic misery and economic contrast.
Who lives joyfully, Freely in Russia?
The 'great reforms' made a division in the economic and social development of Russia. Even if we disregard the peculiar Soviet periodization, which considers Russia as feudal from the late Kievan era until the eman-
cipation of the serfs and capitalistic from the emancipation of the serfs until 1917, the crucial significance of the 'great reforms' must still be emphasized. In particular, these reforms contributed immensely to the economic changes and the concomitant social shifts which characterized the empire of the Romanovs during its last five or six decades and culminated in its downfall.
Every social class felt the impact of the 'great reforms' and of their aftermath. The gentry, to be sure, remained the dominant social group in the country. In fact, as already indicated, both Alexander III and Nicholas II made every effort to strengthen the gentry and to support its interests. Court circles consisted mainly of great landlords. The bureaucracy that ran the empire was closely linked on its upper levels to the landlord class. The ministers, senators, members of the State Council, and other high officials in the capital and the governors, vice- governors, and heads of various departments in the provinces belonged predominantly to the gentry. With the establishment in 1889 of land captains to be appointed from the local gentry, Russia obtained a new network of gentry officials who effectively controlled the peasants. A year later the zemstvo 'counterreform' greatly strengthened the role of the gentry in local self-government and emphasized the class principle within that government. In the army most high positions were held by members of the landlord class, while virtually the entire officer corps of the navy belonged to the gentry. The government supported gentry agriculture by such measures as the establishment in 1885 of the State Gentry Land Bank which provided funds for the landlords on highly favorable terms.
Nevertheless, the gentry class declined after the 'great reforms.' Members of the gentry owned 73.1 million
