Still benumbed by these crushing blows, the Russians were bewildered by the electrical swiftness with which the campaign developed, moving on lines almost identical with those in the war with China, ten years before.  A miracle of discipline and minute perfection in method and detail, the Mikado’s army of little men first secured control in Korea, then the command of the sea.  Then one army division crossed the Yalu with three converging lines, moving toward Mukden, pressing a retreating army before them.  Then, still moving in the grooves of the last war, there was a landing of troops at Pitsewo, threatening Dalny and Port Arthur, the latter already isolated, with railroad and telegraphic lines cut.  Seeing the capture of Dalny was imminent, without a pause the Russians mined the harbor, docks and defences which had cost millions of dollars, and the city created by fiat was by fiat doomed to destruction.

Behind this life and death struggle with a foreign foe, another struggle nearer home was being profoundly affected by these unexpected calamities.  An unpopular war cannot afford to be an unsuccessful one.  This clash with Japan was distinctly the outcome of bureaucratic ambitions and policy.  It had not one single issue in which the people who were fighting its battles and bearing its burdens were even remotely interested.  And then again—­a despotism must not show signs of weakness.  Its power lies in the fiction of its invincibility.  Liberals and Progressives of all shades, wise and not wise, saw their opportunity.  Finns and Poles grew bolder.  The air was thick with threats and demands and rumors of revolt.

At this critical moment M. Von Plehve, the leader of the party of reaction, the very incarnation of the spirit of old Russia, of Pobiedonostseff and the Holy Synod, was in power.

In 1903 there had occurred a shocking massacre of Jews at Kishineff.  This culmination of a prolonged anti-Semitic agitation was quickly followed by an imperial edict, promising, among other reforms, religious liberty for all.  With M. de Witte, the leader of the progressive party, to administer this new policy, a better day seemed to be dawning.  But under the benumbing pressure of autocratic influences, and with his characteristic infirmity of purpose, the Tsar almost immediately removed M. de Witte, replacing him with M. Von Plehve, in whose hands the reforming edict became practically inoperative, and in fact all reforms impossible.

On June 15, 1904, General Bobrikov, the recently appointed Russian Governor of Finland, was assassinated by the son of a Finnish Senator within the walls of the Senate.  Quickly following this, July 28th, M. Von Plehve was killed on the streets of St. Petersburg by the explosion of a dynamite bomb.  The Tsar, recognized the meaning of these events, and quickly appointed Prince Mirski, known by his liberal tendencies, to Von Plehve’s place in the Ministry of the Interior.