of the Duma.  Before adjourning for the Christmas holidays the Duma passed another resolution, aimed chiefly at Protopopov and Sturmer, protesting against the sinister activities which were undermining the war-making forces of the nation, and praising the work of the zemstvos and working-class organizations which had struggled bravely to sustain the army, feed the people, care for the sick and wounded, and avert utter chaos.

On December 30th, in the early hours of the morning, the monk Rasputin was murdered and his body thrown into the Neva.  The strangest and most evil of all the actors in the Russian drama was dead, but the system which made him what he was lived.  Rasputin dead exercised upon the diseased mind of the Czarina—­and, through her, upon the Czar—­even a greater influence than when he was alive.  Nicholas II was as powerless to resist the insane Czarina’s influence as he had proved himself to be when he banished the Grand-Duke Nicholas for pointing out that the Czarina was the tool of evil and crafty intriguers.  Heedless of the warning implied in the murder of Rasputin, and of the ever-growing opposition to the government and the throne, the Czar inaugurated, or permitted to be inaugurated, new measures of reaction and repression.

Trepov was driven from the Premiership and replaced by Prince Golitizin, a bureaucrat of small brain and less conscience.  The best Minister of Education Russia had ever had, Ignatyev, was replaced by one of the blackest of all reactionaries.  The Czar celebrated the New-Year by issuing an edict retiring the progressive members of the Imperial Council, who had supported the Duma, and appointing in their stead the most reactionary men he could find in the Empire.  At the head of the Council as president he placed the notorious Jew-hating Stcheglovitov.  As always, hatred of the Jew sprang from fear of progress.

As one reads the history of January, 1917, in Russia, as it was reported in the press day by day, and the numerous accounts of competent and trustworthy observers, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that Protopopov deliberately sought to precipitate a revolution.  Mad as this hypothesis seems to be, it is nevertheless the only one which affords a rational explanation of the policy of the government.  No sooner was Golitizin made Premier than it was announced that the opening of the Duma would be postponed till the end of January, in order that the Cabinet might be reorganized.  Later it was announced that the Duma opening would be again postponed—­this time till the end of February.  In the reorganization of the Cabinet, Shuvaviev, the War Minister, who had loyally co-operated with the zemstvos and had supported the Duma in November, was dismissed.  Pokrovsky, the Foreign Minister, who had announced to the Duma in December the rejection of the German peace offer, was reported to be “sick” and given “leave of absence.”  Other changes were made in the Cabinet, in every case to the advantage of the reactionaries.  It was practically impossible for anyone in Russia to find out who the Ministers of the government were.