The Old Regime and the Revolution 
in Russia. 
By Joseph Bickermann. 
CONTENTS: The Old Regime and the Revolution; The Instability of Society; 
Society and Power; Russia had not an “Old Regime”; Russian Justice; Local 
Self-government; Russia — a Democratic Monarchy; Russia's National Stability 
despite of the Variety of its Races; Revolutionary Dispositions in Russia; Duma; 
War and Revolution: The Revolution was not necessary. 
L 
in the appearance of the famous book by the Marquis de Tocque- 
ville these two ideas — the Old Regime and the Revolution — have 
become inseparable. If somewhere a revolution takes place, it is, one 
maintains, because an Old Regime existed in this country previously, 
whereby the latter is understood not simply as the political structure 
which was before, but an obsolete structure, a regime which had outlived 
itself; just such an interpretation of the Old Regime gives the possi- 
bility of combining it with the Revolution in the same way, as the cause 
is combined with the effect. In various cases, and by various people 
in the same case, a defect or defects of a society which proved unfit to 
live, are being discovered in different conditions. Either, the domi- 
nating nation oppressed nations subordinate to it, which, after having 
grown and become strenghtened, had cast off the yoke and together 
with it upset the whole structure of the Empire, or the higher spheres 
of society had oppressed the lower without consideration, and thereby 
called forth the explosion. Or the whole policy, i. e., all its juridical 
forms became obsolete and remained behind life which developed and 
became more complicated, and which was also compelled by upheavals 
to create for itself this space, which the vainly awaited reforms did 
not bring forth. Weighty and important defects were in any case to be 
found in the old society, and had to be found. These qualitative conceptions 
are easily transferred into the domain of quantity, and then by the inten- 
sity of the explosion and the enormity of destruction, one judges the 
degree of the worthlessness of the Old Regime. If, as in Russia, the 
decay is so great as to seem incredible, one takes it as an obvious proof 
that the policy destroyed by the Revolution, was rotten to the core. 
Such a conception of revolutions and their origin, satisfies first of all 
the necessity of causative and, precisely, historical causative explanation 
of historical events: if the anterior predetermined the posterior, then 
everything is in order, and there is no need to rack one’s brains. This, 
on the other hand, contains in it the justification and the sanctification 
of everv revolution. where and why it should not take. which certainly