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20 PROBLEMS CONFRONTING RUSSIA
and thousands of soldiers had been armed with simple
sticks instead of rifles, and a miserable shortage of
ammunition prevented Russia from opposing the German invasion,
there could only be one opinion, namely, that the
Government was hopelessly at fault, and should be taken to task
as soon as the war was over. The Revolution would have
broken out sooner if it had not been for the pressing on
of the enemy, and the necessity for avoiding anything that
could weaken the power of resistance.
That the Revolution has come before the end of the war
was rather in the nature of an accident, and has only
indirectly a bearing on the causes which brought it about.
It was the unsatisfactory distribution of food, the hunger
of the masses, who could not pay the enormous prices
entailed by the shortage of the available stocks, and it was
nothing short of madness for the ministers of the Cabinet
to refuse the co-operation of the Zemstvos in the
distribution of food. Only when the first shots were heard in the
streets of Petrograd did the Government announce that
the organisation of food supplies would be handed over to
the local bodies. That death-bed repentance came too late.
The reason why Mr. Protopopoff, the Minister of the Interior,
declined the offer of the Zemstvos is not quite clear.
Probably it was simply due to fear that the importance of the
bureaucracy would be minimised by the co-operation of
members of representative institutions.
The rule of the bureaucracy has of old been a sore point
in Russia. There has always been an abyss between the
nation and the bureaucracy. They have never understood
one another. The bureaucracy ruled the nation in a spirit
which the latter could not understand, and even hated.
This antagonism was patent to every one, and formed a
constant danger which might at any moment lead to a
violent outburst of national discontent.
Bureaucracy is a form of government which, of course,
is odious to any one who believes in the virtue of
self-government and in the principle of the election of the rulers of
the State and their responsibility to the nation. But in
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