It is conceivably possible for a
monarch of genius to put himself at the head of a revolution without
ceasing to be the king of his people. For the autocracy of Holy Russia
the only conceivable self-reform is--suicide.
The same relentless fate holds in its grip the all-powerful ruler and his
helpless people. Wielders of a power purchased by an unspeakable
baseness of subjection to the Khans of the Tartar horde, the Princes of
Russia who, in their heart of hearts had come in time to regard
themselves as superior to every monarch of Europe, have never risen to be
the chiefs of a nation. Their authority has never been sanctioned by
popular tradition, by ideas of intelligent loyalty, of devotion, of
political necessity, of simple expediency, or even by the power of the
sword. In whatever form of upheaval autocratic Russia is to find her
end, it can never be a revolution fruitful of moral consequences to
mankind. It cannot be anything else but a rising of slaves. It is a
tragic circumstance that the only thing one can wish to that people who
had never seen face to face either law, order, justice, right, truth
about itself or the rest of the world; who had known nothing outside the
capricious will of its irresponsible masters, is that it should find in
the approaching hour of need, not an organiser or a law-giver, with the
wisdom of a Lycurgus or a Solon for their service, but at least the force
of energy and desperation in some as yet unknown Spartacus.
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