Leon Trotsky: 1905

interrogations, house searches, sentences of exile provoked terrorism but were unable to paralyze
completely even the mobilization of liberal society.
The last six months of Plehve's rule coincided with the beginning of the Russo-Japanese war. Popular
discontent quieted down, or rather entered a latent phase. A book calledVor der Katastrophe(Before the
Catastrophe) by the Viennese journalist Hugo Ganz gives an idea of the mood which reigned in
bureaucratic circles and in the upper reaches of Petersburg liberal society during the first months of the
war. The pre dominant mood was one of bewilderment approaching despair. "Things cannot continue as
they are!" But where was the way out? No one knew the answer: neither the high officials in retirement,
nor the famous liberal lawyers, nor the famous liberal journalists. "Society is utterly powerless. A
revolutionary movement of the people cannot even be thought of; and even if the people did move, they
would not move against authority, but against the gentry as a whole." Where, then, lay hope of salvation?
In financial bankruptcy and military defeat.
Hugo Ganz, who spent the first three months of the war in Petersburg, reports that the common prayer
not only of the moderate liberals, but also of many conservatives was: "Gott, hilf uns darn it wir
geschlagen werden" (Please God, let us be beaten). This did not, of course, prevent liberal society from
simulating a tone of official patriotism. In a whole series of ad dresses, the zernstvos and the dumas, one
after the other, all without exception, swore their loyalty to the throne and under took to lay down their
lives and property -- knowing well that they would not have to do it -- for the honor and power of the
Tsar and Russia.
The zemstvos and the dumas were followed by a shameful queue of professorial bodies. One after the
other they responded to the declaration of war by addresses in which the floweriness of the style -- a style
acquired in priests' seminaries -- harmonized with the Byzantine imbecility of the content. This was not
an oversight or a misunderstanding. It was a tactic based on a single principle: rapprochement at any
price! Hence the efforts to make the emotional drama of reconciliation a little easier for absolutism. To
organize, not in the cause of fighting the autocracy, but in the cause of serving it. Not to defeat the
government, but to seduce it. To deserve its gratitude and confidence. To become indispensable to it. A
tactic which is as old as Russian liberalism and which has not grown wiser nor more dignified with the
years. From the very start of the war the liberal opposition did everything to ruin the situation. But there
was no stopping the revolutionary logic of events. The Port Arthur fleet was destroyed, Admiral
Makarov was killed, the war shifted to the mainland; Yalu, Kin-Chzhou, Dashichao, Wa fangou,
Liaoyan, Shakhe -- all these were different names for one thing only, the humiliating defeat of the
autocracy. The government's position was becoming more difficult than ever before. Demoralization in
the government ranks made consistency and firmness in domestic matters an impossibility. Hesitation,
com promise, conciliation were becoming unavoidable. Plehve's death offered a favorable pretext for a
change of policy.
III
Leon Trotsky: 1905: CHAPTER 5 -- The Spring
Prince Svyatopolk-Mirsky, former chief of the gendarmerie corps, was called upon to establish the
governmental "spring."[This name, which acquired great popularity, was given by Suvorin, the editor of
New Times (Novoye Vrenzya), to the "epoch of rapprochement between the authorities and the people."]
Why? He would have been the last to be able to explain his own appointment.
This statesman's political personality emerges most clearly from interviews he gave about his program to
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