Yet what looked like the end of bureaucratic absolutism proved to be the destruction of the revolutionary party. Had the reformers of 1905 concentrated their energies upon the task of turning the new legislature into an adequate check upon the bureaucratic system, there is little doubt they would have succeeded. As it was their success in this direction was only partial. It is true that a Duma still sits at the Taurida Palace at Petrograd, but it is elected on a narrow property franchise, and its relations with the bureaucracy are as yet not properly defined; it criticises but it possesses no real control. This failure of the revolution was almost wholly due to the revolutionaries themselves, who, instead of confining their attacks to the Government machine, sought to undermine the entire structure of society and to overthrow the moral and religious ideals of the nation. Moreover, their attitude was entirely negative, and they possessed little or no constructive ability of any kind. Even the first Duma, which contained the ablest politicians among the reformers, did not succeed in passing acts of parliament, affirming the most elementary principles of civil liberty; and it damaged itself irreparably in the eyes of the country by refusing to condemn "terrorism" while demanding an amnesty for all political offenders. The unique opportunity which the first Duma afforded was frittered away in futile bickerings and wordy attacks upon the Government. Meanwhile, though a temporary truce was observed during the Duma's sessions, its dissolution on July 21, 1906, two and a half months after opening, was the signal for a fresh outburst of outrages on both sides. The country was fast drifting into anarchy; agrarian risings, indiscriminate bomb-throwing, _pogroms_, highway robberies carried out in the name of the "social revolution" and euphemistically entitled expropriation, outbreaks of a horrible kind of blood-lust which delighted in motiveless murder for the sake of murder, were the order of the day. The revolution was strong enough neither to crush the reactionaries nor to control the revolutionaries themselves. The foundations of the social structure seemed to be dissolving in a welter of blood and crime, and public opinion, which in its hatred of bureaucracy had hitherto sided with the revolution, suddenly drew back in horror from the abyss which opened out in front of it. Stolypin, the Strafford of modern Russia, who condemned the extremists of both sides, was called to the helm of the State; his watchword, "Order first, reform afterwards," was backed by the force of public opinion; and, as he stamped out the revolution with a heel of iron, the country shuddered but approved. The peasants were pacified by the remission of the hated tax, and by measures for providing them with more land; and Russia sank once more into her normal condition.