of the sacred elements for the Communion. The congregation endeavoured to turn the students out, and a general fight ensued, one of the students using a church banner as a weapon against his assailants. Revolutionary proclamations containing such phrases as "Down with the Tsar" and "Down with the rotten officials were meanwhile thrown on the cathedral steps, and a red flag was exhibited with an inscription protesting against the punishment of students by making them serve in the Army as common soldiers. The police now interfered, and after a fight in which many persons were injured, about 700 students were arrested. Forty-five Russian authors signed a protest against the "atrocities committed by the Cossacks and police in the capital and other Russian towns," appealing "to the Press of the world to give the utmost publicity to these lamentable facts."

Shortly after attempts were made on the life of M. Pobiedonostzeff, the procurator of the Holy Synod, and M. Bogoliepoff, the Minister of Instruction, by men stated to have been chosen by lot by the students to avenge the excommunication of Count Tolstoi and the severe steps taken by the Government to suppress the agitation in the Russian universities. Adjutant General Vannovsky, a member of the Council of the Empire, was then appointed Minister of Public Instruction in the place of M. Bogoliepoff, the Tsar stating in a rescript issued on this occasion that experience had shown such defects in the Russian scholastic system that a thorough revision and improvement of it had become necessary, and that he had accordingly appointed General Vannovsky to co-operate with him in this work. The first step taken by the new Minister was to re-open the Russian universities for the purpose of allowing meetings of students to decide whether they would prefer to undergo their examinations then or in the autumn. About 2,000 students assembled at St. Petersburg and decided that the examinations should be postponed until the autumn in order to enable those who had been sent away to take part in them. Meanwhile the Minister addressed a circular to all the universities and public schools of the Empire, inviting them to suggest such changes as they might deem desirable in the existing system. This also was a new departure, as hitherto the initiative of all changes in education was entirely in the hands of the officials of the central administration.

The pacification produced by these measures, however, was only momentary. Wholesale arrests, domiciliary visits, and seizures of documents took place at St. Petersburg early in May, and revolutionary proclamations were scattered broadcast throughout the city. Three hundred workmen were arrested at Ekaterinoslaff for taking part in a riot, ostensibly against the Jews, and were flogged with birch rods by order of the Governor. Some of these so-called workmen turned out to be students in disguise. At Tiflis a crowd of students and workmen displayed

a red flag and attacked the police, and was only dispersed after many persons had been killed and wounded on both sides. A strike also took place at the Imperial Naval Arsenal; the troops had to be called in, and order was only restored after much bloodshed. On November 17 General Vannovsky received a deputation of the students at Moscow. He told them, in reply to their request that the students who had been expelled should be allowed to return, that this permission had been already granted to all whose expulsion had been due solely to the students' agitation, but that a larger proportion of Jewish students than that prescribed by regulation could not be admitted, that the question of superseding the bureaucratic Council of Inspection by boards of professors would be considered, and that as regarded freedom of meeting the existing rule, under which students' meetings are only allowed if presided over by a professor chosen by themselves, was considered amply sufficient.

Two letters addressed to the Tsar by Count Tolstoi, who, although he had been excommunicated by the Holy Synod on account of his religious opinions, still possessed immense influence among his countrymen, were secretly circulated in Russia in the spring. The first was an eloquent protest against the religious persecutions of the Russian Government, which in official publications was represented as a model of toleration. The Count said in this letter that he had long had it in his mind as a sacred duty, before he died, to try to open the eyes of the Tsar to "the senseless and terrible cruelties" which were being perpetrated in his name. "Thousands of the best Russians, sincerely religious people, and therefore such as constitute the chief strength of every nation, have been already ruined, or are being ruined, in prison and in banishment. . . The flower of the population, notwithstanding all hardships and privations, have quitted their fatherland for ever in terror of the remembrance of all they have had to undergo there. . . . All these wish and pray for one thing only, and that is the permission to leave Russia and to go where they may safely worship God as they understand Him, and not as ordered by the authorities, most of whom recognise no God whatever. . . Do not take counsel with the men who have ordered this persecutionwith Pobiedonost zeff, who is a man behind his time, cunning, obstinate, and cruel, nor with Sipiagin, a man of mediocre abilities, frivolous and unenlightened." In conclusion the Count gave the following advice to the Tsar: (1) To revise and abolish the contradictory and shameful laws now existing in regard to persecution in the name of religion, which have long ceased to exist in every other country except Russia; (2) to put an end to all persecution and punishment for departure from the religious creed of the State, and to liberate all persons imprisoned and exiled on account of their faith; and (3) to reconsider the question of how to reconcile the requirements of conscience in religious matters with the demands of the State-as, for example,

the refusal to take an oath and to perform military service; not to punish such dissent as a crime, but try to reconcile the inconsistency, as was done in the case of the Mennonites, by compulsory labour in exchange for military service, and a solemn declaration to speak the truth in courts of law instead of the usual oath.

In his second letter to the Tsar Count Tolstoi, referring to the assassination of the Minister of the Interior and the riots in the university towns, asserted that these incidents were not the result of revolutionary agitation by demagogues, but of discontent with the existing order of things which had already spread to millions of the working classes. The fault rested not with the leaders of the movement, but with the Administration, which, since the murder of Alexander II., had pursued a reactionary policy, in the belief that "salvation was only to be found in a brutal and antiquated form of government. He therefore recommended a programme of reforms of which the following is a condensation :

In the first place, the peasants (who constitute the vast majority of the population) should be placed on a footing of legal equality with other citizens; for which purpose it would be necessary: (1) To abolish the absurd institution of rural administrators (zemsky natchalniki), which has no raison d'être. (2) To repeal the regulations governing the relations of master and man, which would then be subject to the ordinary law of the land. (3) To liberate the peasantry from all oppressive impositions, such as the necessity of obtaining passports in order to move from one place to another, the duty which falls solely upon the peasants of billeting soldiers and providing country carts for purposes of transport, and the obligations connected with the rural police. (4) To abolish the unjust system of collective responsibility of peasants for each other's debts, and to remit the land redemption payments, which have long since covered the real value of the land; and, above all, (5) to do away with corporal punishment, which is useless and degrading, and which is now retained only for "the most industrious, the most moral, and the most numerous class of the people."

In the second place, it was necessary to cease to apply the so-called reinforced measures of public safety, which destroy all existing laws, place the people at the mercy of stupid, cruel, and, for the most part, immoral officials, promote spying and secret denunciation, and cause and encourage the frequent employment of brutal violence against workmen who have disputes with their employers and landlords.

Thirdly, education and teaching should be freed from all obstacles (1) No differences should be made between people of different social stations with regard to facilities for education, and books which are allowed to be read by others should not be forbidden to the common people. (2) Teachers in schools

should not be prevented from giving instruction in the language spoken by their pupils; and it was supremely important that (3) all persons who had not been deprived of their civil rights, and who were desirous of undertaking educational work, should be permitted to conduct schools of all grades. If there were no difficulty in the way of establishing private schools, both for the lower and higher courses of instruction, the Russian students who are dissatisfied with the order of things in the Government educational institutions would leave them for the private establishments which answered their requirements.

Fourthly, all restrictions on religious liberty must be abolished: (1) All laws should be repealed which provide punishment for any withdrawal from the Established Church. (2) The establishment and the opening of chapels and churches for the Old Believers and of houses of prayer for Baptists, Molokani, Stundists and other sectarians should be freely permitted. (3) Permission should be given for holding religious meetings, and for preaching all forms of belief, except those which teach men to commit unnatural crimes, such as castration, murder, and suicide, and (4) persons of various religious beliefs should be allowed to bring up their children in the form of faith which they believe to be the true one.

In Finland the policy of Russification was vigorously pursued, notwithstanding the persistent opposition of the people, and even of the majority in the Council of State at St. Petersburg. A powerful minority, headed by M. Pobiedonostzeff and the Minister for War, maintained the scheme of Russifying the Finnish Army (see ANNUAL REGISTER, 1899, p. 307), and the Tsar adhered to his decision in the matter, although M. Witte, the Minister of Finance, strongly opposed the scheme, and a monster petition, signed by 471,131 persons, was presented to the Finnish Senate on September 30, representing that the edicts promulgating the scheme constituted "a far-reaching infringement of the fundamental laws of the Grand Duchy, that Finnish citizens, in being forced to serve in Russian regiments, will be deprived of "one of the most important rights accorded to every Finnish citizen-the right to live under the shelter of the laws of Finland," and that "it will be impossible to recognise the edicts as legally binding."

The persecution of Polish children in Prussia (see p. 278) caused intense indignation not only among the Poles in Russia, but among the Russians themselves. The German arms were pulled down and trodden under foot at the German Consulates of Warsaw and Moscow, and the Russian Press was full of violent attacks on the Prussian Government. A movement was also started for boycotting German goods in Russian Poland.

In October a committee appointed by the Tsar to report on the best means of celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the defence of Sebastopol recommended that the fortifications of the

city should be reconstructed, and restored as far as possible to the same condition as they were in at the time of the siege, that the principal trenches used by the French and English should be restored so as to present a complete picture of the scene of the struggle, and that monuments should be erected on the battlefields of Inkerman, Balaclava and the Tchernaya.

The completion of the Siberian Railway was announced to the Tsar in November by a letter from M. Witte stating that this railway, of which the first sod was turned by his Majesty at Vladivostok on May 19, 1891, would now be open "for temporary traffic" as far as Port Arthur, and that he hoped the remaining work to be done would be completed in two more years, and the railway be opened for permanent regular traffic. The Tsar, in his reply, rightly described this as one of the greatest railway undertakings in the world; but, owing partly to the fact that the Government was plundered in the most shameless manner by certain individuals responsible for the construction of the line, and that many millions more would have to be expended upon it before its safety could be guaranteed under ordinary working conditions, it was doubtful whether the economic results would afford sufficient compensation for the immense sacrifices incurred in its construction. One of the sources of compensation was expected to arise from the emigration into Siberia of the surplus population of European Russia. But the condition of the peasantry did not give much hope of any such emigration on a large scale, unless assisted from the public funds, which were not in a condition to bear the heavy charges that would be thereby entailed. The harvest was considerably below the average of the past five years, the peasants had to sell their crops in many cases for the means of paying their taxes, and the diminished purchasing power of the rouble added to the general impoverishment. Under these circumstances the Russian peasant was not likely to be enterprising or inclined to start a new life, besides which he had scarcely any education, and it was part of the policy of his Government to encourage him in intemperance, as its chief source of revenue was derived from the drink traffic.

In foreign affairs the most important question of the year was the policy of Russia with regard to Manchuria. In the early part of the year a draft treaty virtually establishing a protectorate over the whole of Manchuria, as well as over Chinese Turkestan and Mongolia, was pressed upon the Chinese Minister at St. Petersburg. By this treaty Russia was to determine the strength of the army to be maintained in Manchuria by the Chinese after the completion of the Manchurian Railway, all Chinese officers complained of by Russia were to be cashiered, no foreigners other than Russians were to be employed in the police or in connection with the sea and land forces of Northern China, and no mining, rail