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

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The constitution which was wrung from the hands of the emperor on the 30th of October, 1905, when the rising tide of revolution threatened the very palace gates, is being gradually modified and withdrawn piecemeal, and if the emperor has his way not a vestige of it will long remain. The fundamental rights of men, which it pretends to guarantee the Russian people, are as non-existent in the Russia of 1906 as they were in 1806, before the first faint mutterings of the coming storm had been heard. Not one, but all, of the guaranteed rights of that manifesto have been withdrawn under so-called “temporary” laws and regulations, and under the cloak of military law. The rights of free speech, writing, assemblage, inviolability of person and home, still remain utopian dreams of a distant day. This manifesto clearly and unequivocally guaranteed “freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of public assembly, and real inviolability of personal rights.” And yet of the approximately 486 members of the first Duma—the chosen representatives of the Russian people—one (Professor Hertzenstein) has been murdered by the “Black Hundred”; one priest excommunicated; two members have been beaten; ten are in hiding; five have been exiled; twenty-four are in prison; thirty-three have been arrested and searched; and one hundred and eighty-two are under indictment on the charge of treason.ssss1 An obviously anomalous situation.