It was proved that Malinovsky was a provocateur in the pay of the Police Department, and that many, if not all, of his speeches had been prepared for him in the Police Department by a former director named Beletzky.  The exposure made a great sensation in Russian Socialist circles at the time, and the fact that it was Nikolai Lenine who had proposed that Malinovsky be chosen to sit in the International Socialist Bureau naturally caused a great deal of unfriendly comment.  It cannot be denied that the incident placed Lenine in an unfavorable light, but it must be admitted that nothing developed to suggest that he was guilty of anything more serious than permitting himself to be outwitted and deceived by a cunning trickster.  The incident serves to show, however, the ease with which the extreme fanaticism of the Bolsheviki played into the hands of the autocracy.

VII

While Bolsheviki and Mensheviki wrangled and disputed, great forces were at work among the Russian people.  By 1910 the terrible pall of depression and despair which had settled upon the nation as a result of the failure of the First Revolution began to break.  There was a new generation of college students, youthful and optimistic spirits who were undeterred by the failure of 1905-06, confident that they were wiser and certain to succeed.  Also there had been an enormous growth of working-class organizations, large numbers of unions and co-operative societies having been formed in spite of the efforts of the government.  The soul of Russia was once more stirring.

The end of 1910 and the beginning of 1911 witnessed a new series of strikes, such as had not occurred since 1905.  The first were students’ strikes, inaugurated in support of their demand for the abolition of capital punishment.  These were quickly followed by important strikes in the industrial centers for economic ends—­better wages and shorter working-hours.  As in the period immediately preceding the First Revolution, the industrial unrest soon manifested itself in political ways.  Without any conscious leadership at all this would have been inevitable in the existing circumstances.  But there was leadership.  Social Democrats of both factions, and Socialists of other groups as well, moved among the workers, preaching the old, yet ever new, gospel of revolt.  Political strikes followed the strikes for immediate economic ends.  Throughout the latter part of 1911 and the whole of 1912 the revolutionary movement once more spread among the masses.

The year 1913 was hardly well begun when revolutionary activities assumed formidable proportions.  January 9th—­Russian calendar—­anniversary of Bloody Sunday, was celebrated all over the country by great demonstrations which were really demonstration-strikes.  In St. Petersburg fifty-five thousand workers went out—­and there were literally hundreds of other smaller “strikes” of a similar nature