The struggle between autocracy and democracy in Russia, which culminated in the successful revolution of March 1917, was one of the longest and bitterest contests of its kind in history. For more than a century Russia’s progressive forces stubbornly and tirelessly labored for the destruction of the most despotic governmental system on earth. Perhaps no national movement for freedom has undergone a bloodier series of experiences. Certain it is that no revolutionary movement has had a harder task before it than the Russian; for no autocracy in the modern world was as firmly and powerfully entrenched as Czarism. The birth of democratic ideas in Russia dates back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Autocratic Russia had come to France in order to defeat her imperial ambitions. In return, France communicated to her conqueror the ferment that was to prove the doom of Russia’s imperial autocracy. The Slavic officers who went back to their native land after the Napoleonic wars carried with them the germ of the Russian movement for freedom and democracy. Laden with pregnant thoughts borrowed from western Europe, these revolutionary pioneers returned home, where serfdom was still flourishing and liberty unknown, determined to work for a change in the Government.
256 pages
