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22 PROBLEMS CONFRONTING RUSSIA
trying to evade all legal restrictions imposed upon them.
The Chancellor, Gortchakoff, was credited with saying:
" La loi est la pour etre violee ! " And Pushkin sarcastically
remarks :
V Rossiji njet sakona,
V Rossiji stolb i na stolbje korona
(" In Russia there is no law but the pillar on which rests
the Crown ")—an allusion to the emblem of the Ministry
of Justice and to the supreme power of the Tsar.
But criticism directed against the Russian bureaucracy
touches in a far greater measure the principle of it than the
personnel which represented it. It is well worth while
remembering that the Russian bureaucracy was recruited
chiefly from the Russian nobility, which has carried upon
its shoulders the affairs of the State and of the learned
professions, literature, and art, and has produced a series
of patriotic, essentially Russian men, who were ready to
devote their lives to the public welfare, enlightenment, and
culture.
In addition to bankruptcy in the conduct of the war,
the utter lack of organisation in the food problem and the
constant discontent with the rule of the Tchinovnik, it was
also the Tsar’s failure to understand the political
requirements of the moment which caused the State structure to
fall. In the moment of the great ordeal, the whole nation
felt it an imperative necessity to be at one with their august
ruler. It was obviously the paramount duty of the ruler
to bring about such a union ; it was the specific and
psychological moment for eliminating any political dissatisfaction
and for granting the most liberal reforms. Such action
would have done double good, by giving to the Russian
nation a better constitution and more satisfactory conditions
of life, and at the same time raising the spirit of the nation
to fight with all its strength aga’nst the enemy.
Unfortunately, just the contrary happened. The Emperor
surrounded himself with Ministers and Councillors who
proved to be incapable, and lacking in broad-minded states-
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