Читать книгу The Red Reign. The True Story of an Adventurous Year in Russia онлайн

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“I would say to Count Witte,” said M. Timirassiroff, “how can I subscribe my name to that which I know nothing about?”

“You, sir,” the premier would reply, “are occupied with your own department, your own ministry, you cannot know all the cards.” (A favorite phrase with Witte.)

“If I do not know all the cards, then show them to me. I am not merely head of my ministry, I am also a member of your cabinet.”

This Witte never would do. And in the attitude of mutual suspicion, each member at sixes and sevens with the premier and with the other members of the cabinet, all working individually and often at cross-purposes; in this blind but truly Russian way the Witte ministry staggered on—to its fall. Similarly is Russia as a whole reeling toward the abyss. A ministry falls a thousand times more easily than a dynasty, but a dynasty following the same mad tactics that wrecks ministry after ministry must sooner or later collapse also. Follies that pass understanding are laid to the door of the house of Romanoff, and after the revolution had once broken over Russia, every serious person knew that the time element was all that remained as a subject for speculation. This is a big factor, however. The moment marked by this X stands elusively in the distance and between the present and it are weary miles that a nation must tramp, miles marked by many a mirage which like the vision of the oasis in the desert cruelly deceives the faint and exhausted traveler.