Violent reaction followed the dissolution of the Duma. The American mind can scarcely conceive of the degree of suppression employed by the Russian government. Nearly every liberal newspaper in St. Petersburg was immediately confiscated and many permanently suppressed. Not only radical journals, but moderate newspapers, like those edited by Professor Paul Miliukoff and Professor Kovalevsky, newspapers of dignity and spirit, untainted by commercial or ignoble motives, such as we in America cannot appreciate. Foreign newspapers,--from England, from France, from Germany,--were so rigidly censored that nothing about Russia worth reading escaped elimination. This aspect of the censorship was most farcical. The men who wrote the telegrams and articles remained in St. Petersburg. The things they wrote were lamp-blacked in every individual paper that entered the country. Personal correspondence was demoralized. The letters of private individuals were ruthlessly opened and frequently confiscated. And as for arrests, it seemed as if nine out of every ten men who had ever expressed a liberal opinion were marked for prison. It was estimated that six hundred political arrests were made in St. Petersburg alone during the week of the Duma dissolution. These wholesale arrests continued for weeks all over Russia. The governmental troops seemed to be in absolute control everywhere. The atmosphere of St. Petersburg was at first tense with expectancy that some change would come and turn the tables, but as days passed and the iron heel of the bureaucracy only pressed the harder over the land, liberal sympathizers became utterly discouraged and despairing. This was the situation when I went to Kronstadt on the Sunday of the fatal week. On that day all was quiet. So was it on Monday. Tuesday there were a score of rumors in the air, most of them wild and fantastic, but yet seeming indicative of something. Wednesday news of the Sveaborg mutiny reached St. Petersburg. The reports were hysterical. The Sveaborg fortress was reported fallen, and ships sent to recapture the batteries had themselves fallen under mutiny. Fighting was next reported at Reval, and at the same time from Sebastopol. All telegrams were favorable to the revolutionists. All eyes turned to Kronstadt. Kronstadt awaited the signal. Suddenly all communication was cut off between St. Petersburg and the centers of activity. Even the railroad to Helsingfors was broken--the bridge dynamited. The last reports that got through were entirely favorable to the mutineers, and, therefore, the assumption was that the telegraph, telephone, and railroad lines were held by the revolutionists.