More on the War (2)

It was a strange situation. The Russian people through the
representatives that they elected to these little county assemblies
were patriotically carrying out the war, while the grand dukes and the
court nobles, who had gotten Russia into this trouble, were, for the
most part, hampering the soldiers, either through grafting off the
supplies and speculating in food, or traitorously plotting to betray
their country to the Germans. With plenty of food in Russia, with
millions of bushels of grain stored away by men who were holding it in
order to get still higher prices, there was not enough for the people
of Petrograd to eat.

As you were told in a previous chapter, the German, Sturmer, was made
prime minister, probably with the approval of the monk, Rasputin.
Roumania, depending on promises of Russian help, was crushed between
the armies of the Germans on the one side and the Turks and Bulgars on
the other, while trainload after trainload of the guns and munitions
which would have enabled her armies to stand firm was sidetracked and
delayed on Russian railroads. "Your Majesty, we are betrayed," said
the French general who had been sent by the western allies to direct
the army of the king of Roumania, when his pleas for ammunition were
ignored and promise after promise made him by the Russian prime
minister was broken.

Of all the countries in Europe, with the possible exception of Turkey,
Russia had been the most ignorant. The great mass of the people had
had no schooling and were unable to read and write. It was easier for
the grand dukes and nobles to keep down the peasants and to remain
undisturbed in the ownership of their great estates if the people knew
nothing more than to labor and suffer in silence. There was a class of
Russians, however, the most patriotic and the best educated men in the
state, who were working quietly, but actively, to make conditions
better. Then too, the Nihilists, anarchists who had been working
(often by throwing bombs) for the overthrow of the Czar, had spread
their teachings throughout the country. Students of the universities,
writers, musicians, and artists, had preached the doctrines of the
rights of man. While outwardly the government appeared as strong as
ever, really it was like a tree whose trunk has rotted through and
through, and which needs only one vigorous push to send it crashing to
the ground.

It is generally in large cities that protests against the government
are begun. For one thing, it is harder, in a great mob of people, to
pick out the ones who are responsible for starting the trouble. Then
again it is natural for people to make their protests in capital
cities where the government cannot fail to hear them. A third reason
lies in the fact that in large cities there are always a great number
of persons who are poor and who are the first ones to feel the pinch
of starvation, when hard times arise or when speculators seize upon
food with the idea of causing the prices to rise. Starvation makes
these people desperate--they do not care whether they live or
not--and, as a result, they dare to oppose themselves to the police
and the soldiers.

There had been murmurs of discontent in Petrograd for a long time.
This was felt not only among the common people, but also among the
more patriotic of the upper classes. In the course of the winter of
1916-17, the monk, Rasputin, as a result of a plot, was invited to the
home of a grand duke, a cousin of the Czar. There a young prince,
determined to free Russia of this pest, shot him to death and his body
was thrown upon the ice of the frozen Neva.

About this time the lack of food in Petrograd, the result largely of
speculation and "cornering the market," had become so serious that the
government thought it wise to call in several regiments of Cossacks to
reinforce the police.

These Cossacks are wild tribesmen of the plains who enjoy a freedom
not shared by any other class in Russia. They are warriors by trade
and their sole duty consists in offering themselves, fully equipped,
whenever the government has need of their services in war. They were
of a different race, originally, than the Russians themselves,
although by inter-marrying they now have some Slavic blood in their
veins. Their appearance upon the streets of Petrograd was almost
always a threat to the people. Enjoying freedom themselves and liking
nothing better than the practice of their trade--fighting--they had
had little or no sympathy with the wrongs of the populace, and so were
the strongest supporters of the despotic rule of the Czar. At times
when the Czar did not dare to trust his regular soldiers to enforce
order in Petrograd or Moscow, for fear the men would refuse to fire
upon their own relatives in the mob, the Cossacks could always be
counted upon to ride their horses fearlessly through the people,
sabering to right and left those who refused to disperse.