The criminal law had absorbed all the humane teaching of our time; 
it might also be useful to call to mind that no capital punishment for 
criminal offences existed in Russia, in which respect it differed from other 
European countries. Matters were worse in regard to civil law, for an enor- 
mous and important circle of interests of the population (landed property 
of peasants), in its main part, was excluded from it, and was under the 
jurisdiction of the “communal order”; the retrograde ideology coincided 
with the revolutionary in defending this aspect of landed property, which 
had remained as an inheritance of serfdom. But here too matters had 
improved of late. Stolipin had begun the emancipation of the peasantry. 
Another, though a lesser evil, consisted in the legal restrictions concerning 
limited liability companies, which tended to arrest Russia’s economic 
development. Nevertheless, the fundamental principles of civil rights, the 
security of property and contracts were solid and firm. 
The worst aspect of the Russian pre-revolutionary regime consisted in 
the inequality of rights of citizens. On the one hand, the extraordinary 
condition of the peasantry, and on the other the restrictions of rights 
on religious and partly on national principles (especially as concerning 
the Jews it led to exceptional consequences, morally and legally ruinous, 
and economically disfiguring). It must, however, be stated that in the 
first respect the special juridical condition of the peasants had already 
long ago begun to evaporate; and that even in the second matter — most 
backward of all — the liberation movement of 19o5 had brought to the 
Jews (who remained limited in most important rights), equal political 
rights. Furthermore it must be mentioned that in one particular domain — 
concerning half the population, the feminine half — the Russian civil law 
was a long way in advance of the European. 
TL. The Rise of the Bolshevic Regime. 
Bolshevism was not the heirloom of “Tzarism”. It was the consequence 
pf the old regime breaking down, i. e., of the revolution of February 1917. 
The prime evil was the insufficient firmness of the Russian State, 
reinforced by the not yet disseminated consequences of the liberation move- 
ment of 19ob (which had poisoned Court and society, more particularly 
the political intelligentcia), and it became more acute because of the failures 
of the extraordinary exertions in connection with the war. The tension 
having been tremendous, the break-down was bound to be fatal. The 
collapse of the front on the one hand, the military revolt at the rear on 
the other; in addition to this, the removal of the ruling head had paralysed 
all State life. The improvised new government from the very beginning 
proved impotent in the face of the armed rabble. At first the rabble aspired 
to nothing but to put an end to the war: but it soon fell under the in- 
J)