This hesitating attitude on the part of the Government encouraged other sections of the educated classes to give expression to their long pent-up political aspirations. On the heels of the Zemstvo delegates appeared the barristers, who discussed the existing evils from the juridical point of view, and prescribed what they considered the necessary remedies. Then came municipalities of the large towns, corporations of various kinds, academic leagues, medical faculties, learned societies, and miscellaneous gatherings, all demanding reforms. Great banquets were organised, and very strong speeches, which would have led in Plehve's time to the immediate arrest of the orators, were delivered and published without provoking police intervention.
In the memorandum presented to the Minister of the Interior by the Zemstvo Congress, and in the resolutions passed by the other corporate bodies, we see reflected the grievances and aspirations of the great majority of the educated classes.
The theory propounded in these documents is that a lawless, arbitrary bureaucracy, which seeks to exclude the people from all participation in the management of public affairs, has come between the nation and the Supreme Power, and that it is necessary to eliminate at once this baneful intermediary and inaugurate the so-called "reign of law." For this purpose the petitioners and orators demanded:
(1) Inviolability of person and domicile, so that no one should be troubled by the police without a warrant from an independent magistrate, and no one punished without a regular trial;
(2) Freedom of conscience, of speech, and of the Press, together with the right of holding public meetings and forming associations;
(3) Greater freedom and increased activity of the local self-government, rural and municipal;
(4) An assembly of freely elected representatives, who should participate in the legislative activity and control the administration in all its branches;
(5) The immediate convocation of a constituent assembly, which should frame a Constitution on these lines.
Of these requirements the last two are considered by far the most important. The truth is that the educated classes have come to be possessed of an ardent desire for genuine parliamentary institutions on a broad, democratic basis, and neither improvements in the bureaucratic organisation, nor even a Zemski Sobor in the sense of a Consultative Assembly, would satisfy them. They imagine that with a full-fledged constitution they would be guaranteed, not only against administrative oppression, but even against military reverses such as they have recently experienced in the Far East—an opinion in which those who know by experience how military unreadiness and inefficiency can be combined with parliamentary institutions will hardly feel inclined to concur.
It may surprise English readers to learn that the corruption and venality of the civil and military administration, of which we have recently heard so much, are nowhere mentioned in the complaints and remonstrances; but the fact is easily accounted for. Though corrupt practices undoubtedly exist in some branches of the public service, they are not so universal as is commonly supposed in Western Europe; and the Russian reformers evidently consider that the purifying of the administration is less urgent than the acquisition of political liberties, or that under an enlightened democratic regime the existing abuses would spontaneously disappear.
The demands put forward in St. Petersburg did not meet with universal approval in Moscow. There they seemed excessive and un-Russian, and an attempt was made to form a more moderate party. In the ancient Capital of the Tsars even among the Liberals there are not a few who have a sentimental tenderness for the Autocratic Power, and they argue that parliamentary government would be very dangerous in a country which is still far from being homogeneous or compact. To maintain the integrity of the Empire, and to hold the balance equally between the various races and social classes of which the population is composed, it is necessary, they think, to have some permanent authority above the sphere of party spirit and electioneering strife. While admitting that the Government in its present bureaucratic form is unsatisfactory and stands in need of being enlightened by the unofficial classes, they think that a Consultative Assembly on the model of the old Zemski Sobors would be infinitely better suited to Russian wants than a Parliament such as that which sits at Westminster.
For a whole month the Government took little notice of the unprecedented excitement and demonstrations. It was not till December 25th that a reply was given to the public demands. On that day the Emperor signed an ukaz in which he enumerated the reforms which he considered most urgent, and instructed the Committee of Ministers to prepare the requisite legislation. The list of reforms coincided to a certain extent with the demands formulated by the Zemstvos, but the document as a whole produced profound disappointment, because it contained no mention of a National Assembly. To those who could read between the lines the attitude of the Emperor seemed perfectly clear. He was evidently desirous of introducing very considerable reforms, but he was resolved that they must be effected by the unimpaired Autocratic Power in the old bureaucratic fashion, without any participation of the unofficial world.
To obviate any misconception on this point, the Government published, simultaneously with the ukaz, an official communication in which it condemned the agitation and excitement, and warned the Zemstvos, municipalities, and other corporate bodies that in discussing political questions they were overstepping the limits of their legally-defined functions and exposing themselves to the rigours of the law.
As might have been foreseen, the ukaz and the circular had not at all the desired effect of "introducing the necessary tranquillity into public life, which has lately been diverted from its normal course." On the contrary, they increased the excitement, and evoked a new series of public demonstrations. On December 27th, the very day on which the two official documents were published—the Provincial Zemstvo of Moscow, openly disregarding the ministerial warnings, expressed the conviction that the day was near when the bureaucratic regime, which had so long estranged the Supreme Power from the people, would be changed, and when freely-elected representatives of the people would take part in legislation. The same evening, at St. Petersburg, a great Liberal banquet was held, at which a resolution was voted condemning the war, and declaring that Russia could be extricated from her difficulties only by the representatives of the nation, freely elected by secret ballot. As an encouragement to the organs of local administration to persevere in their disregard of ministerial instructions, the St. Petersburg Medical Society, after adopting the programme of the Zemstvo Congress, sent telegrams of congratulation to the Mayor of Moscow and the President of the Tchernigof Zemstvo bureau, both of whom had incurred the displeasure of the Government. A similar telegram was sent by a Congress of 496 engineers to the Moscow Town Council, in which the burning political questions had been freely discussed. In other large towns, when the mayor prevented such discussions, a considerable number of the town councillors resigned.
From the Zemstvos and municipalities the spirit of opposition spread to the provincial assemblies of the Noblesse. The nobles of the province of St. Petersburg, for example, voted by a large majority an address to the Tsar recommending the convocation of a freely-elected National Assembly; and in Moscow, usually regarded as the fortress of Conservatism, eighty members of the Assembly entered a formal protest against a patriotic Conservative address which had been voted two days before. Even the fair sex considered it necessary to support the opposition movement. The matrons of Moscow, in a humble petition to the Empress, declared that they could not continue to bring up their children properly in the existing state of unconstitutional lawlessness, and their view was endorsed in several provincial towns by the schoolboys, who marched through the streets in procession, and refused to learn their lessons until popular liberties had been granted!