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i9I6] M. STURMER PRESIDENT OF COUNCIL 393
—of M. Gennadiev, who later on was accused, judged
sentenced, and who spent the period of the Bulgarian
war on the damp straw of a prison cell. "The poor
man" was only set at liberty when the French troops
arrived in Sofia. Hence the great deal in wheat ended in
nothing, and only then did they think out other methods
of procedure, less crooked and more fruitful. But much
valuable time had been lost; the victorious offensive of
the Germans in Galicia and Poland had begun, and those
Bulgarians who were our enemies were encouraged in
their attitude by the events of the war, which seemed to
be turning decidedly in favour of the Central Empires.
My arrival in Petrograd almost coincided with a
significant and much-discussed change in the
composition of the Russian Cabinet: the aged M. Goremykin
was at last allowed to retire, and his place was taken
by M. Sturmer, an old member of the Council of the
Empire, who had never occupied any very important
post, and who was reputed to be ultra-reactionary. In
the more or less Liberal and enlightened circles of
Petrograd this appointment was sincerely deplored, as
it was looked on as a challenge thrown by the Court
at public opinion. Subsequent events have proved that
this view was well-founded ; but at that period I did
not entirely share the pessimism of my Petrograd
friends. I had incidentally heard of Sturmer’s work at
the outset of his great career, which was spent in the
province of Tver. The provincial assembly of the
Zemstvo, reputed "red," saw the elections of the
president of this Zemstvo wrecked twice running by the
central authority; the third time the Home Secretary
himself appointed a president (he was entitled to do
this by law) in the person of M. Sturmer, a local landed
proprietor and an eminently Conservative
Councillor-General, an elective post which he combined with a
Court function in the capital equivalent to that of
deputy head-clerk to the Registrar. In Tver every one
expected that the new president would persecute all the
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