Russia under the Old regime

3H

was the government itself which helped accomplish the seemingly impossible, namely an alliance of all shades of public opinion, from the Slavophile right to the socialist-revolutionary left, which under the name 'Liberational Movement' (Osvoboditel'noe Dvizhenie) in 1902-5 at long last wrung a constitution out of the government.

That the existing legislation, far from stamping out revolution actually contributed to it, did not escape perceptive contemporaries. Among those who foresaw the disastrous consequences of such policies was Lopukhin, the ex-Director of the Police Department, who has been cited before. In 1907 he wrote prophetically:

Given its lack of elementary scientific notions of law, given its acquaintance with public life only as it manifests itself within the walls of military academies and regimental barracks, the whole political outlook of the ranks of the Corps of Gendarmes boils itself down to the following propositions: that there are the people and there is state authority, that the latter is under constant threat from the former, for which reason it is subject to protective measures, and that to execute these measures any means may be used with impunity. When an outlook such as this happens to coincide with a poorly developed spirit of service responsibility and the lack of sufficient intelligence to make sense of complex public occurrences, then observations based on this outlook confine themselves to the external manifestations of these occurrences and fail to assimilate their inner meaning. Hence, every public occurrence assumes the character of a threat to state authority. As a result, the protection of the state as carried out by the Corps of Gendarmes turns into a war against all of society, and, in the final analysis, leads to a destruction also of state authority, whose inviolability can be assured only by a union with society. By widening the gulf between state authority and the people, it engenders a revolution. This is why the activity of the political police is inimical not only to the people; it is inimical to the state as well.34

In the theory, of course, the crown might have reverted to the Muscovite system, expropriating all private property, reharnessing the classes in service or tiaglo, hermetically sealing off Russia from the rest of the world, and declaring itself the Third Rome. Such a transformation would have enabled Russia to close the loopholes which made mockery of its police system. But to have done so required a veritable social and cultural revolution. Given their upbringing, the leaders of imperial Russia were not the men to carry out such an upheaval. This required entirely new people, with a different psyche and different values. The system of repression just sketched is usually labelled in the historical literature as 'reactionary'. However, techniques are neutral. Methods of suppressing dissidence can be applied by regimes of a 'left' orientation as readily as by those considered 'right'. Once tried and proven successful,