The Russian victories at Plevna and beyond the Balkans had been paralleled in Armenia. After many reverses caused by insufficient forces, reinforcements came. Mukhtar Pasha's army southeast of Kars was cut in two. Kars itself, situated in the midst of rocky hills and almost impregnable, was taken by storm, together with seventeen thousand prisoners and three hundred guns. Erzerum was invested.
The Porte was ready for peace. On the 29th of January the last shot was fired. On the 3rd of March the treaty of San Stefano was signed. Turkey seemed absolutely in Russia's hold. But the Great Powers, having let the war go on, now suddenly blocked Russia's plans and refused to allow the treaty of San Stefano to be carried out. A congress met at Berlin and restored Turkey to life again. All the gain that Russia made by the war was a part of Bessarabia and a small territory in Armenia, including Kars and Batum. The Russians were bitter in their complaints. It was said that "the Congress was a colossal absurdity, a blundering failure, an impudent outrage; that Russia had been mocked with a fool's cap and bells; that the honor of Russia had been trampled under foot and made a mockery."
The discontent which was felt in Russia began to express itself in revolutionary measures. Incendiary fires and assassinations became frequent throughout the land. Trouble again broke out in the universities. Anonymous pamphlets circulated everywhere; it was demanded that the people should be delivered from spies and secret police, that the press and speech should be free, that professors should be allowed to teach without vexatious restrictions, and that political prisoners should be pardoned. The Nihilist committees made proclamations to the army: "Depotism must fall sooner or later," they said, "but the crisis may not come for years, to the cost of many lives. It therefore depends on all honorable and thoughtful men in the army to hasten this result."
The excitement was increased by an order obliging every householder in St. Petersburg to keep a watchman at his door day and night to prevent the posting of seditious placards, and the spread of revolutionary pamphlets. The great cities of the Empire were declared in a state of siege. In one month seventeen thousand three hundred fires destroyed property valued at two million rubles. The life of the Emperor was attempted again and again. He was publicly declared to be the personification of a cursed despotism, of everything mean and bloodthirsty; his reign was denounced as a curse from beginning to end; the liberation of the serfs was called a delusion and a lie.
A slight relief was caused by the abolition of the hated "Third Section," or Secret Police, but still the Nihilists kept up their activity and threatened the Emperor with death unless he gave the country a constitution. At last their plots met with success. On the 13th of March, 1881, as the Emperor was on his way to the Winter Palace, he fell mortally wounded by an Orsini bomb thrown by a desperate man.
In the light of subsequent history it is quite possible that Alexander II., the emancipator of the serfs, and the victim of a political sect, "which does not represent the great voice of the nation, will be regarded by posterity as a martyr to the cause of the people."
The Reign of Alexander III and the Accession of Nicholas II.
The tragic death of Alexander II at the hands of the Nihilists, instead of appeasing the ruthless appetite of the Terrorists, seemed rather to inspire the members of the Revolutionary party with greater zeal in their crusade against the despotism of the Government. Extraordinary precautions were taken by the authorities to protect the person of the uncrowned Emperor, who, in nervous terror of assassination, spent his time in practical imprisonment in the somber pine-embowered palace of Gatschina,—the Russian Escurial—or in isolation at Peterhoff.
On the 23rd of March, 1881, ten days after the murder of Alexander II., the Executive Committee of the Revolutionary party published an address, in which the attention of the Czar was forcibly directed to the condition of the Russian people, and a powerful appeal made for remedial legislation.
"Inspired by ideals of truth and humanity"—so ran, in part, this celebrated document—"the Russian Revolutionary party chose for its aims the elevation of the Russian workman and peasant to a higher plane of intelligence, and did not concern itself with politics. . . . It was rewarded by cruel persecution on behalf of the Russian Government. . . . Hundreds and thousands were martyred to death, in prison, in exile and in mines, and the powers of the bureaucracy were enlarged. Impoverishment, and demoralization at sight of wealth thus easily gotten, resulted in perverted views of life, and had a terribly depressing influence on the people . . . The interests of the people were sacrificed to the interests of the ruling classes, among whom, arrogance and cynicism prevailed. . . . Hunted and baited, and situated so they could not attempt to carry out their cherished reforms, they were finally drawn into open conflict with the Government. The Russian Social Revolutionary party, scorning the pitiful existence of slaves, has determined either to perish or to crush the prevailing despotism, and owing to the inhumanity of the Russian authorities, there was no other way open but that of sanguinary conflict."
"A general amnesty for all political offenders" was also asked for, and "a convocation of the representatives of the whole of the people, for the examination of the best forms of social and political life." Then followed the stipulations concerning the methods of election; a protest against all restrictions calculated to interfere with the political liberty of the subject, and an appeal for the following provisional regulations:
Complete freedom of the press.
Complete freedom of speech.
Complete freedom of public meeting.
Complete freedom of electoral addresses.
"These being the only means by which Russia could hope to enter upon the path of peaceful and regular development."
"The answer to this petition, presentation of facts, and bill of rights," says Stepniak—the well-known author and Nihilist—"was the exiling of thousands to Siberia, fresh executions, fresh rigors against the press, and opposition to every liberal tendency." The 'Third Section' of the dreaded Secret Police was again re-organized, by Chief Plome, but under another name, and after the dismissal of Melikoff, deportation to Siberia without trial was resumed.
It had been hoped by Melikoff, and those of his following who believed in the constitutional doctrine of a liberal monarchy, that his reformatory project of the creation of a representative assembly would meet with the approval of the Emperor, who, previous to his accession to the throne, had zealously advocated conservative reforms, and had even tolerated the presumptive possibility of the establishment of some form of constitutional government. To the astonishment of Melikoff, however, and notwithstanding that the suggested change had received the approval of the Cabinet, the Czar hastened to assert his fixed belief in the principles of autocracy. He issued a manifesto nullifying the purpose of the convocation of an elective commission, "in so far as it was intended to satisfy popular craving for representative institutions," and clearly demonstrated that he was "opposed to even the rudimentary beginnings of popular self-government."