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

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During the year 1906, according to official figures, more than 36,000 people were killed and wounded in revolutionary conflict; over 22,000 suffered in anti-Semitic outbreaks, most of which were promoted by governmental agents; over 16,000 so-called agrarian disorders occurred. Political arrests were so constant that during at least two months of the year—January and July—the aggregate number of men and women dragged from their homes and imprisoned or exiled was estimated at 25,000 per month. Late in the summer of 1906 Premier Stolypin inaugurated the drumhead field courts-martial, which became immediately so active that according to an official statement issued on March 5, 1907, 764 persons had been executed—an average of five daily.

These figures loom large indeed when it is recalled that in France, during the Terror, only 2,300 heads fell from the guillotine block, and that during the entire French Revolution only about 30,000 lives were sacrificed.

Here is clear indication of constant activity on both sides. In spite of this loss of life, this spent and often misspent energy, unnumbered crimes against generations unborn, it must be admitted that the progress of revolution is never comparably swift to the movement of wars. By the very nature of revolutionary struggles they must drag. In England the Revolution lasted from 1640 to 1689; in France twelve years of constant conflict and struggle were followed by decades of unrest and periodic disturbance; in Italy the fight dragged on from 1821 till 1870; and so will the Russian revolution be prolonged. Compared with the revolutionary movements of history, however, Russia is making rapid progress. The stupendousness of the Russian situation, with a heterogeneous population of 142,000,000 of people scattered over an empire which includes one sixth of the territory of the world, makes an almost unreckonable problem—infinitely more vast and more complicated than the situation in France in 1789.