1907. Third State Duma deputies (most likely Cadets)
Sources: webpage and Lunapic
1. NOTES OF A PUBLICIST.
After the dissolution of the Second Duma (June 3, 1907) despondency, penitence and apostasy became the outstanding features of political literature. Beginning with Mr. Struve,1 continuing with Tovarishch 2 and ending with a number of writers supporting the Social-Democratic movement, we witness a renunciation of the revolution, its traditions and its methods of struggle, an effort in one way or another to steer a course more to the right.3
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The replacement of the Second Duma by the Third is the replacement of the Cadet who acts in the Octobrist manner by the Octobrist who acts with the help of the Cadet. Predominant in the Second Duma was the party of the bourgeois intellectuals who called themselves democrats where the people were concerned and who supported the government where the bourgeoisie was concerned. Predominant in the Third Duma will be the landlords and the big bourgeoisie who hire the bourgeois intellectuals for a make-believe opposition and for business services. This simple truth is borne out by the whole political behaviour of the Cadet Party and by the Second Duma in particular. Even the man in the street has now begun to grasp this simple truth: we shall refer to such a witness as Mr. Zhilkin whom it would be absurd to suspect of Bolshevik sympathies or of prejudiced and uncompromising hostility towards the Cadets.
In today's issue of Tovarishch (No. 351) Mr. Zhilkin conveys the impressions of a "cheerful" provincial in the following words:
The Octobrist landlords 4 I spoke to argue as follows: "It's all right to vote for the Cadets. The good thing about them is that they are tractable. In the First Duma they wanted too much. In the Second they backed down. They even made cuts in their programme. In the Third they'll give way still more. I daresay they'll come to some arrangement. Besides, to tell the truth, there isn't any Octobrist whose election we could ensure. Let the Cadets get elected. The difference between us isn't very great. They are sure to go to the right in the Third Duma... We're friendly with the Octobrists out of necessity... What public speakers or big figures do they have?"
2. THE THIRD DUMA.1
The government is garnering the results of the infamous crime which it committed against the people on June 3. The grotesque electoral law which, for the benefit of a handful of landlords and capitalists, completely distorts the will not only of the nation as a whole, but even of the enfranchised minority, has yielded the fruits that tsarism hankered for. At the time of writing this article 432 out of 442 deputies have been returned to the Duma, leaving another 10 to be elected. The results of the elections can therefore be deemed sufficiently clear. According to a fairly accurate estimate the members elected are 18 Social-Democrats, 13 others of the Left, 46 Cadets, 55 members of groups standing close to them, 92 Octobrists, 21 members of groups belonging to allied trends, 171 members of various Right-wing trends, including 32 members of the Union of the Russian People,2 and 16 non-party deputies.
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Thus we have a Black-Hundred-Octobrist majority in the Third Duma reaching the imposing figure of 284 deputies out of 432, that is 65.7% or over two-thirds of the total number.
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The election results only confirm our firm belief that Russia cannot emerge from her present crisis peaceably.
Under these conditions the immediate tasks confronting Social-Democrats at the present time are quite clear. Making the triumph of socialism its ultimate aim, being convinced that political freedom is necessary to achieve that aim, and bearing in mind the circumstance that this freedom at the present time cannot be achieved in a peaceful way, without open mass actions, Social-Democracy is obliged now, as before, to put democratic and revolutionary tasks on the immediate order of the day without for a moment, of course, abandoning either the propaganda of socialism or the defence of proletarian class interests in the narrow sense of the word. The proletariat represents the most advanced, most revolutionary class in modern society and in the Russian revolution has proven with deeds its fitness for the role of leader in the mass struggle. Therefore Social-Democracy is obliged to do everything it possibly can to retain that role for the proletariat in the approaching new phase of the revolutionary struggle, a phase characterized more than ever by a preponderance of political consciousness over spontaneity. To achieve that goal Social-Democracy must strive with all its might for hegemony over the democratic masses and for developing revolutionary energy among them.
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The Social-Democrats in the Duma will carry out all these agitational, propaganda, and organizational tasks not only through their speeches from the Duma rostrum but also by introducing Bills and making interpellations to the government. There is one important difficulty here however: to introduce a Bill or to make an interpellation the signatures of no less than thirty deputies are required.
The Third Duma does not and will not have thirty Social-Democrats. That is indubitable. Hence the Social-Democrats alone, without the assistance of other groups, can neither introduce a Bill nor make interpellations. Undoubtedly this makes matters difficult and complicated.
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There can be no question of the Cadets seconding the legislative proposals of the Social-Democrats for these Bills will have a pronounced propaganda character, will express consistently democratic demands to the full, and of course that will cause as much irritation among the Cadets as among the Octobrists and even the Black Hundreds.
And so the Cadets will have to be left out of the account in this respect too. In the matter of making interpellations and presenting Bills the Social-Democrats can count only on the support of groups to the left of the Cadets. Apparently they will number together with the Social-Democrats up to thirty deputies, thus providing the full technical possibility of displaying initiative in this direction. It is not, of course, a question of any bloc but only of those "joint actions" which, in the words of the London Congress resolution, "must exclude any possibility of deviations from the Social-Democratic programme and tactics and serve only the purpose of a general onslaught both against reaction and the treacherous tactics of the liberal bourgeoisie."
It upheld the tsarist autocracy, semi-feudal landlordism and the privileges of the nobles. It adopted the old monarchist-nationalist motto of serfdom days, "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationhood." The Union's principal method of struggle against the revolution was pogroms and murder. With the aid and connivance of the police its members openly and with impunity beat up and murdered revolutionary workers and democratically-minded intellectuals, broke up and gunned down meetings, organized anti-Jewish pogroms and hounded the non-Russian nationalities.
After dissolution of the Second Duma the Union split in two. The "League of Michael the Archangel," headed by Purishkevich, stood for using the Third Duma as a counter-revolutionary platform. The "Union of the Russian People" proper, headed by Dubrovin, continued the tactics of open terrorism. Both were abolished during the February Revolution (1917). After the October Socialist Revolution the former members of these organizations took an active part in counter-revolutionary insurrections and plots against the Soviet government.
3. POLITICAL NOTES.
Stolypin, the Black-Hundred landlords and the Octobrists all understand that they cannot remain in power unless they create new class supports for themselves.1 Hence their policy of ruining the peasants utterly and breaking up village communes forcibly in order to clear the way for capitalist agriculture at all costs.
4. THE THIRD STATE DUMA.
Cholera. The Duma (via Madrid 24, 10 PM): Telegrams sent to St. Petersburg from the eastern provinces state that cases of cholera are rising at an alarming rate across the whole region, being frequent the cases that terminate in a patient's death.
St. Petersburg: The newspapers inform that the majority of delegates preselected for the elections to the new Duma belong to the Cadets and to the extremist parties. The factory workers of Warsaw have preselected sixty Socialist candidates.
St. Petersburg: An imperial ukase fixes the date for the Duma elections to October 27, except in ten districts, St. Petersburg included, which will go to the polls on November 11. The date fixed for Poland is October 30 although its "Greek" (?) populace will vote on October 27.
(Gaceta de Madrid 24): The Czar will redact a new Constitution if the work of the Third Duma proves unproductive.
The elections in Russia. The last phase of the general elections in Russia will be completed in less than fifteen days. The current of public opinion seems to lean toward the Constitutional Democratic Party despite its opposition to the Socialists and its failed attempt to form a vigorous bloc with the Octobrists. The breakup of relations and goals between these parties is partly due to the Octobrists' fear that such a fusion would curtail their rights and also due to the opposition of Guchkov their leader who expressed himself clearly from the pages of his daily, Golos Mosky.
St. Petersburg (Madrid 1, 10 PM): The elections to the Third Duma yielded a mere 62 opposition deputies (including Cadets) out of 327 seats; the final results were 166 Conservative deputies, 99 moderate progressives and 64 Octobrists.
M. Maxinovitch the Head of Prisons was assassinated by a young woman under twenty years of age who carried out a death sentence of the Socialist-Revolutionary committees; she too was sentenced to death.
Triumph of the reaction in Russia. The satisfaction felt around the political circles of St. Petersburg regarding the results of the elections to the Third Duma can not be camouflaged. The circles foresee an adamant victory of the reaction which, with the combined assistance of a reactionary monarch and an even more reactionary government, will wipe out the few freedoms which on the back of blood and sacrifices the oppressed Russian people had managed to conquer. The Duma where the government will enjoy an ample majority will be presided by Mr. Khomyakov, one of Moscow's more prominent Octobrists. If the forecasts circulating about the political circles of the capital come true it is probable that the Russian Empire will once more become the scene of bloody and vengeful deeds for it is hard to believe that, despite the Czar, the government, the Duma and the Army, reactionaries all, beside the secret assistance of Germany and Austria, the people will let go, without putting up resistance, what on the back of so many efforts and sacrifices they had mustered to conquer. God save the unfortunate Muscovite people.
St. Petersburg (Madrid 11, 10 PM): An imperial ukase fixes the Duma's opening date for November 14.
Warsaw: A vast criminal organization operated inside the city's garrison. The discovery caused profound sensation. Nine officers and six civilians were thrown in prison, accused of passing important national defence documents to Germany.
(Madrid 14, telegram): The Russian Duma opened with great solemnity.
The New Duma (Madrid 15, 9:05 PM): Today (November 14!) the new Duma opened. A Te Deum was sung followed by the national anthem and repeated hurrahs. Nikolay Khomyakov was elected Duma president with three hundred and seventy-one votes for, nine against.
The Russian Duma. The Duma has been fully constituted. The latest official data yield the strength of the various parties in the Duma as follows: 195 traditional monarchist seats, 128 Octobrists, 4 moderate reformers, 37 democrats, 15 Polish nationalists, 12 socialist democrats, 27 leftists, 6 Islamists and 2 independents.
St. Petersburg (Madrid 15, 10 PM): A formidable blaze destroyed several workshops of the Baltic Arsenal. Four gunboats were seriously damaged. The losses are gauged to be 500,000 rubles.
(Madrid 20, telegram): The Russian revolutionaries have circulated the message that they harbour the intention of blowing up the Duma building with dynamite during a session whenever the opportunity presents itself. The message shocked the deputies of the Duma.
St. Petersburg: Duma deputies are subjected to a rigorous security check for fear of weapons being introduced inside the Chamber.
St. Petersburg: The Duma has rejected a motion to recognize the Czar's autocracy by 212 votes against, 146 for.
St. Petersburg (Madrid 6, 10 PM): A great scandal rocked the Duma. Several deputies were accused of participation in a vast conspiracy; they were compelled to exit the chamber and were thrown in jail. The socialist and democratic deputies protested and they too abandoned the chamber headlong. The resulting scandal was tremendous.
Russia and the United States (Madrid 9): Mr. Taft the War Minister of the United States had a very cordial private audience with the Czar, watched the Semenovsky Infantry Regiment parade, lunched at Tsarskoye Selo Palace, watched a session of the Duma from the imperial balcony, made several additional visits and departed directly for Hamburg where he will board the Geman liner President Grant bound for New York.
St. Petersburg (Madrid 15): A bill to make schooling compulsory has been tabled in the Duma.
St. Petersburg (Madrid 12, 10 PM): Revolutionaries set the palace and possessions of the Duma president on fire.
St. Petersburg (Madrid 24, 10 PM): The Duma refuses to approve the rebuilding of the Navy.
The Russian government submitted for the Duma's approval a bill of great importance and extraordinary consequence for the future. The bill proposes to lay down double track for the Trans-Siberian Railway. The work will be done in stages, the first to be finished in 1911. The cost of the whole project is put at 175,320,000 rubles.
St. Petersburg (Madrid 26, 10 PM): Stolypin the President of the Council of Ministers, Kokovtsov the Minister of Finance and Izvolsky the Minister of Foreign Affairs attended a lengthy secret session of the Duma's Expenditures Committee. The main item for discussion was the expenditures for the Navy. The representatives of the government conceded that Russia needs to own a strong navy without which she could not rank as a major power. The government is willing to examine as many amendments as may be presented, but wishes to carry out the programme for the Navy as soon as possible, for it deems this is of the most vital importance to Russia.
St. Petersburg: Nicholas II has held a private audience with a large commission of the Duma.
Terrorism in Russia. Individuals linked to the terrorist infrastructure were apprehended in several neighbourhoods of St. Petersburg. A group of socialists projected several assassinations, including those of Grand Duke Nicholas and of the Justice Minister. In recent days some fishy types ambled about the proximities of the Ministry of Justice Palace. On Wednesday (February 26) three waited vainly for the minister to come out. They tried again on Thursday and that's when the police rushed to detain them. Among the arrested are eleven group leaders and five women. The detentions occasioned a few misfortunes. At "Osbol" district a youth aware of being followed fired his revolver and injured two policemen. In the event he was detained. At "Morkeia" (?) two men arrested put up resistance; one had a revolver and the other a bomb. The latter is an Italian man named "Calirno" (see Chapter 12, Item 5, April 24, 1908). A girl named "Sadovaia" made a police agent her victim and managed to escape temporarily; later she was hauled before the authorities. Similarly another woman, elegantly dressed, was waylaid at Michael Plaza; she opened fire against a policeman and tried to commit suicide. On top of making two arrests, the police undertook a thorough inspection and found a big cache of weapons, great amounts of explosive substances, revolutionary correspondence and two police uniforms. An inspection was also made at the home of the millionaire "Deekoff" (?) the owner of a large number of steamers, but nothing of practical significance was found. It is believed that those arrested are in contact with members of the terrorist gangs organized and recently discovered in Finland. The Duma has voted important sums of money to relieve the victims of terrorism. An order of the day was recently approved in the Duma expressing profound indignation at terrorist attacks and their authors.
Moscow (Madrid 13, 10 PM): An underground printing press was discovered in the same building police headquarters occupied. The press housed more than a hundred tons of revolutionary literature.
Baku, Azerbaijan (Madrid 13, 10 PM): Captain Orlovski the local head of the secret police was murdered by four revolutionaries, one of whom was killed, another arrested and the other two escaped.1
This Russian webpage cites a newspaper report about a previous attempt on the life of Captain Orlovski that same year,
BAKU, February 19. At five o'clock in the evening two unknown persons attempted to hurl a bomb at Captain Orlovsky the head of the security department. Spotted by bodyguards the two fled and tossed the bomb over to Muslim passers-by. These, suspecting a find, went down to a basement to share it. An explosion followed and all were seriously injured. Meanwhile one of the fleeing assailants was detained; he was carrying a Mauser, a Browning and a hundred rounds of ammunition.
The Russian Duma. The Duma discussed the bill proposing that Russia's legation in Japan be upgraded to an embassy. Izvolsky the Minister of Foreign Affairs highlighted the need to give a new substance to Russo-Japanese relations. He demonstrated that Russia had not lost any vestige of her historical legacy. "The heroism of the Russian soldiers," he added, "has been safeguarded. Russia's unity is intact." Japan exhibits a trend toward peace, hence the relations between Russia and Japan can be framed in a conventional setting. The orator elaborated on their history. "Good relations with Japan," he continued, "will ensure the inviolability of the Far East frontier." The minister ended his speech expressing faith in the patriotic strength of the Russian people. With the exception of the socialist deputies, the Duma approved the bill unanimously.
St. Petersburg: The Duma has refused to grant credits for the Navy's obligations. The Czar ponders dissolving the Duma for having refused to concede the credits solicited for the fleet. The Emperor will remove Stolypin over their policy differences.
For Poland (Madrid 22, 10 PM): Polish-born deputies of the Duma and Polish-born members of the Council of Ministers have decided to table a bill requesting that the Polish language be taught at all seminaries in Poland.
Doctor assassinated (Madrid 22, 10 PM): Doctor Karavaev the leader of the Trudovik party in the Second Duma was assassinated by an individual who feigned illness, walked into the consultancy room and fired his revolver at the unfortunate doctor. Doctor Karavaev died of the wounds he received.1
After finishing miners school, his widowed mother sent Alexander away to a relative in Yekaterinburg who agreed to take full care of him for 5 rubles a month. Karavaev was enrolled in the Yekaterinburg gymnasium. From the 5th grade Alexander supported himself by tutoring after school hours and by the time he had reached 8th grade he became the main breadwinner for his mother and brothers when they moved to Yekaterinburg.
After graduating from high school in 1873 Karavaev entered the St. Petersburg Medical-Surgical Academy.
Karavaev did not join any revolutionary organization in St. Petersburg. In his opinion it is necessary to live among the people in order to know their needs and help them appropriately. He understood that the peasantry had no need of preachers of socialism but rather urgently needed teachers, physicians, nurses, agronomists and other specialists. He always pointed out that the peasantry was fully disorganized and unprepared for solving the socio-political problems which demanded time and careful consideration.
Karavaev dedicated every summer recess of the Academy to volunteering as a Zemstvo paramedic, a smallpox vaccinator, a male nurse, etc., and to additionally hold down a job to provide income for himself and for his family.
Karavaev graduated from the Academy in 1879 with honors.
In 1884 he passed the state medical exam and became a legal doctor of medicine.
Karavaev soon got a position in the St. Petersburg district Zemstvo working as a doctor, managing an outpatient clinic in the village of Mikhail Arkhangel and there also running a hospital for the treatment and prevention of infectious diseases.
Karavaev assisted the starving peasantry during the hunger of 1891-1892 plus the victims of a cholera outbreak. Furthermore he acted as council secretary for the Mikhailo-Arkhangelsk parish trusteeship and as a council member of the Farforovskaya Transfiguration Church parish trusteeship. He helped to get a primary public school in the village of Smolenskoye underway. He became a member of the United Trustees Orphanage, and as a doctor and trustee, visited the orphanage daily to monitor the condition and upbringing of the children.
In 1896 all industrial areas of central Russia were engulfed in a strike movement. Karavaev was sanctioned administratively for transferring money through an outpatient clinic to a widow weaver whose entire property had burned down in a blaze (EFC: the widow's husband may have been a revolutionary). Karavaev was sentenced to internal exile away from St. Petersburg for a period of three years.
Karavaev worked as a doctor for a private hospital of the Rechitsa district in the Minsk province. It was the only hospital for hundreds of miles around and it did not have an operating room or even a private office. He had to deal with everything from the most complex operations to providing veterinary care. And here he sought to engage in public life again. Thus, with the support of the peasantry and of the estate manager, he started to create a church-parish trusteeship whose main tasks were to be charity and education, but a local priest denounced him and the trusteeship was aborted. He then attempted to set up a teahouse and a reading room in the public school, both subsidized by the female owner of the estate, but the local priest again denounced him to the authorities. The police came, removed the books and shut the teahouse down.
Karavaev left the Minsk province and moved to the Ukrainian city of Yekaterinoslav (today's Dnipro) in the autumn of 1899. There he helped some factory workers create a Little Russian amateur troupe. In 1900 he established a People's House and headed its library section, classifying, acquiring and circulating books. The library was burned down in the Jewish pogroms of 1905.
Karavaev did not stay on the sidelines during the October events of 1905 in Yekaterinoslav. The populace responded to the Tsar's manifesto of Old Style October 17, 1905, with revolutionary demonstrations and barricades on the one hand, and Jewish pogroms on the other. He assisted the wounded in street battles and attempted to forestall the Jewish pogrom.
It became unsafe to stay in Yekaterinoslav; Karavaev was receiving distinct threats, and at the request of his friends, he departed. For some time he dwelled in Kharkov, then in Moscow, and from November 1905 to December 1906 in St. Petersburg where he engaged tightly with the peasant movement.
Karavaev's candidacy for the elections to the First State Duma could not be brooked owing to the martial law restrictions in effect.
The elections to the Second Duma were held under more favorable circumstances and in early December 1906 Karavaev returned to Yekaterinoslav and entered the election campaign as a party Trudovik. His rallies were a huge success and on February 7, 1907, he garnered forty-seven out of a possible seventy-eight collegial votes; and so he once more boarded a train bound for St. Petersburg, this time as the Yekaterinoslav city representative in the Second Duma. He was fêted with a grandiose farewell at the train station and on every stop along the way inside Yekaterinoslav province.
The exhausting work during the short-lived Second Duma (February 20 to June 3, 1907) affected his health and he returned to Yekaterinoslav seriously ill. After a short rest, however, he practiced from home; his clients belonged mainly to the democratic strata of the population. He also collaborated part-time in a working-class district hospital.
However the earlier threats on his life had not vanished and his enemies, the Black Hundreds, chose the easiest way to get rid of him.
The doors of his apartment were always open "for the suffering and needy"; and his killers knew it. On March 4 (17) two men called on Dr. Karavaev three times, ostensibly on behalf of a sick relative of theirs. At 9:00 o'clock in the evening they at last found the doctor home.
Alexander Lvovich Karavaev died on March 5 (18), 1908, from the gunshot wounds he had received the previous evening.
Russian sources: N. M. Korneeva's article, Alexander Lvovich Karavaev. Photograph on the right comes from the portal DniproCulture. Photograph on the left comes from the Russian Wikipedia.
St. Petersburg (Madrid 24, 10 PM): The Cabinet and the parties are feeling quite depressed ever since the parliamentary subcommission refused to approve credits to the Navy for the building of heavy cruisers. Friends of the Government full of optimism can not countenance the end of the debate and plan to exercise all their influence to persuade the Duma to rethink the matter and emit a more favourable verdict.
St. Petersburg (Madrid 14): The one hundred and forty deputies of the First Duma who signed the cocky Vyborg Manifesto are said to have been deported to the Isle of Hunger.
Internally exiled deputies (Madrid 13, 9:30 PM): A hundred and forty-seven deputies of the First Duma have been banished to Siberia on the Czar's orders.
St. Petersburg: There was a demonstration today protesting the forthcoming imprisonment of the First Duma deputies. The police charged into the demonstrators several times.
Feminism: A numerous representation of the weaker sex has solicited the Duma to grant women the same rights as men.
St. Petersburg (Madrid 17, 10 PM): Deputy Rodionov has died, the second deputy to do so since the Third Duma closed.
Incident at the Duma. An incident at the Duma session has become the talk of the town. The Budgetary Commission refused to approve a sum of 11,000 rubles which the Minister of Finance had illegally submitted to Nicholas II for approval ten days ahead of the session. Count Bobrinsky, a moderate Right, motioned the refusal to assert the Duma's rights as the arbiter of budgetary assignments. The motion carried on the votes of the moderate Right, the Center and the Left. But the Far Right through the mouth of its leaders announced that it would quit the session in protest because the motion violated the Czar's rights as Autocratic Sovereign. This declaration caused a great uproar and cries of "Get out!" from the opposition benches. Far Right representatives stood up and vacated the premises amid a formidable ruckus. The remainder of the Duma passed Bobrinsky's motion unanimously.
St. Petersburg: The Duma has voted against a proposal that convicts be led in shackles. The Minister of Justice disagrees.
St. Petersburg (Madrid 11, 10 PM): The Duma convened a secret session to discuss the reply of the National Defence Commission to the Minister of War's requested manpower for the Navy. The Minister requests 464,439 soldiers, an increase of 6,382 compared to the year 1907. The total number of soldiers in active service during peacetime would be 217,000 men, 18,000 frontier guards and 60,000 Navy personnel.
St. Petersburg (Madrid 19, 10 PM): Yesterday's Duma session was raucous. The president denied several groups the right of reply to the invectives hurled in the acrid aggressive discourse of a Minister. The president justified his decision on the expiry of supplementary turns according to the rules. Guchov the Octobrist leader imputed to some deputies the desire to filibuster. The Lefts welcomed these words with prolonged boos, hisses and jeers, triggering a monumental scandal.
St. Petersburg (Madrid 6): Nicholas II has sanctioned the loan of 200,000,000 rubles recently voted in the Duma.
Russia and her Army. The enormous sacrifices imposed on Russia during her war with Japan which eventually proved futile at the end of a disastrous campaign have led the Duma to consider that it is better to prepare a proficient Army long in advance than to leave everything to the last minute, as occurred in the recent war, and forfeit thousands of millions of rubles in an effort to redress a deficient organization, or more accurately said, an organized mess with its fatal flaws.
Faded the initial shock of the tremendous defeat on Manchuria's fields and resurgent with terror the domestic struggle against the autocratic governments of the Czar—which in peacetime had only embraced their self-enrichment at all costs, leaving the national honour to rest in the supreme hour upon the personal exertion of the poorly-fed soldier, belatedly or badly armed, altogether deprived of the defensive and offensive resources of modern armies—the Duma has perceived the malfeasance of neglecting the defense of the Russian territory and has conceded a portion of the credits requested for that purpose by the Minister of War.
Yet the credits required are of necessity enormous because out of the immense war matériel sent hurriedly to Manchuria nothing returned to the metropolis, so that now hardly a corps could be deployed on the defensive and be regularly supplied.
To begin with, the Minister seeks 92 million rubles to reoutfit military logistics and estimates in 1,000 million the sum needed to arm and organize the whole Army properly. The gigantic programme covers the equipment, uniforms, footwear, ambulance service, garrisons, military academies, boot camps, cavalry units, artillery upgrades, trains, etcetera, and the Duma, understanding that sacrifices must be made to preserve Russian power, has started upon the road of concessions and authorized the government to dispose immediately of 92 million rubles for stowage revamps, matériel repairs, construction of military warehouses and the improvement of roads on the western frontier.
This credit of 92 million rubles is a mere fraction of the concessions the Duma is willing to make. In upcoming months it will authorize the government to issue several domestic loans whose yield will be devoted exclusively to rebuilding the Army. Consequently, even admitting the current impoverished funds of the Russian Treasury, it can be asserted that within a few years Russia will own a real Army, not a virtual one, as was the case at the start of the war against Japan, and Russia will then play the role she ought to in Europe and Asia.
St. Petersburg (Madrid 22, 10:35 PM): The Duma will return to business next Wednesday (October 28).
A loan (Madrid 19): The Council of Ministers ratified the loan of 450 million rubles voted by the Duma. The Duma president withdrew his resignation.
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