CHAPTER X CURRENT IDEAS IN ST. PETERSBURG ST. PETERSBURG, _January 27th_. People are now saying that the revolutionary movement in Russia has suffered a complete defeat. I do not share this point of view; my reason is not based upon prophetic discernment into the future, but on what has happened in the past. If we are in the presence of a stream and note the beginnings of its turbulent course, and then observe that it has met with the obstacle of a dam and burst through that obstacle, and that this occurrence has been repeated six times, with the result that every time the dam has been burst the stream has gathered in strength, when this dam is made a seventh time we are justified in concluding that as the dam is the same in kind as it was before, and the stream also, the stream will break through it a seventh time, although every time the dam was made the onlookers made the observation that the progress of the stream was definitively impeded. Now this is precisely what has happened with regard to the Russian revolutionary movement up to the present time. And we are now witnessing an act of a drama which began in 1895. The course of events was like this: When the Emperor Nicholas II. came to the Throne a deputation of the Zemstva were told that their moderate demands for the beginning of reform were senseless dreams. Upon these words the first dam was built, and it took the form of universal repression. In December, 1904, the ukase, embodying the nullified projects of Prince Mirsky, was immediately followed by a threatening Manifesto, and a second dam was made. This dam, however, was ineffectual, and it was followed by the rising of the workmen of the 9th of January, and when this meeting was dispersed by the troops, and a third dam constructed, people said—and among them people who lived here and ought to have known better—that the Russian revolution was over. February 18th saw the publication of the two contradictory Manifestoes and the Boulygin project, and during this time the dam took the shape of the Trepoff dictatorship, which, as General Trepoff is a competent man, proved to be for the time being more effectual than the obstacles which had hitherto been employed. However, in spite of this there came the incidents of the mutiny on board the _Kniaz Potemkin_ and at Kronstadt and Libau. This was followed by the concession of the law giving the Duma on August 6th, which was accompanied by a law forbidding public meetings. A fourth dam had been made. But the current only increased in strength. The Agrarian movement began. The Labour movement increased. Meetings took place everywhere till the dam burst, owing to the fact that the whole of Russia went on strike in October, 1905.