this network of limitations and exceptions unbearable, opening the door 
widely to any kind of chicanery and suppression. However, only a mere 
infant in politics, or a totally blind Jew-hater can maintain that the 
revolution was created by the Jews; these shopkeepers, artisans, dealers, 
physicians and lawyers, forming even in the reservations (for Jews) only a 
small proportion of the population, vanishing entirely in the mass of non- 
Jews in the rest of Russia, having no actual access to the leading centres 
of the State and of society, and not even dreaming of separating fron 
Russia. As much as one would try to increase the importance of the role 
which the Jews played in the revolution after its outbreak, they could not 
be the main source of it. 
In spite of all cited here, Russian society in the course of many decades 
longed for a Revolution. As always and everywhere, thousands of phan- 
toms here too tempted brains and hearts; but these phantoms received a 
special power under these circumstances because until the beginning of the 
present century, in one important respect, an “Old Regime" existed after 
all, for no representation of the people existed. There is no need to discuss 
here whether or not Parliament is an absolute public-weal; it is enough 
that, for the wealthy and educated classes of the population, it more and 
more became on oppressing subjective necessity, almost a mania; not in 
a lesser degree, the longed-for so-called liberties which generally were 
inseparable from Parliament: an ideal of much less relative worth. Finding 
itself in constant intercourse with Western Europe, where, partly in 
connection with Parliament, social-political life is so noisy and variegated, 
and life in general so intensively productive, Russia could not even feel 
and think differently. The danger in this situation lay in this that it 
created a frame of mind in society, which found its expression in the 
slogan: — from the “left” no enemies will come. When, however, the 
Japanese war broke out and Russia suffered a defeat, conditions arose, by 
which the longed-for revolution could have been accomplished, and it was 
accomplished; its results were: the representation of the people and the 
liberties. As is usually the case, neither the ruling power nor society 
conformed at once to the new conditions, on both sides they were misused 
or sinned against, what naturally called forth reciprocal irritation. Never- 
theless, the revolutionary romanticism, holding in its captivity the Russian 
consciousness for nearly a whole century, began to abate visibly and gene- 
rally; this everyone will confirm who during these vears lived in Russia 
and with Russia. 
Simultaneously, just when the unrest calmed down, an unprecedented 
revival took place in all spheres of life: in agriculture, in industry, in trade, 
in public education, in social progress; about this more will be said and 
more convicingly, in those pages of this book, which are devoted to various 
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