A few illustrations will suffice to make clear the nature of this terroristic retaliation:  In March, 1902, Sypiagin, the Minister of the Interior, was shot down as he entered his office by a member of the Fighting Organization, Stephen Balmashev, who was disguised as an officer.  Sypiagin had been duly sentenced to death by the Central Committee.  He had been responsible for upward of sixty thousand political arrests and for the suffering of many exiles.  Balmashev went to his death with heroic fortitude.  In May, 1903, Gregory Gershuni and two associates executed the reactionary Governor of Ufa.  Early in June, 1904, Borikov, Governor-General of Finland, was assassinated by a revolutionist.  A month later, July 15th, the infamous Von Plehve, who had been judged by the Central Committee and held responsible for the Kishinev pogrom, was killed by a bomb thrown under the wheels of his carriage by Sazanov, a member of the Fighting Force.  The death of this cruel tyrant thrilled the world.  In February, 1905, Ivan Kaliaiev executed the death sentence which had been passed upon the ruthless Governor-General of Moscow, the Grand-Duke Serghei Alexandrovich.

There was war in Russia—­war between two systems of organized terrorism.  Sometimes the Czar and his Ministers weakened and promised concessions, but always there was speedy reaction and, usually, an increased vigor of oppression.  The assassination of Von Plehve, however, for the first time really weakened the government.  Czarism was, in fact, already toppling.  The new Minister of the Interior, Von Plehve’s successor, Prince Svyatpolk-Mirski, sought to meet the situation by a policy of compromise.  While he maintained Von Plehve’s methods of suppressing the radical organizations and their press, and using provocative agents to entrap revolutionary leaders, he granted a certain degree of freedom to the moderate press and adopted a relatively liberal attitude toward the zemstvos.  By this means he hoped to avert the impending revolution.

Taking advantage of the new conditions, the leaders of the zemstvos organized a national convention.  This the government forbade, but it had lost much of its power and the leaders of the movement ignored the order and proceeded to hold the convention.  At this convention, held at St. Petersburg, November 6, 1904, attended by many of the ablest lawyers, doctors, professors, scientists, and publicists in Russia, a resolution was adopted demanding that the government at once call representatives of the people together for the purpose of setting up a constitutional government in Russia.  It was a revolutionary act, a challenge to the autocracy, which the latter dared not accept.  On the contrary, in December the Czar issued an ambiguous ukase in which a number of concessions and reforms were promised, but carefully avoiding the fundamental issues at stake.

VI