of Centrists, adherents of the German People's party, and Democrats. The Majority Socialists had a plurality in the Assembly, and they still held the presidency of the republic. But power had passed from their hands; the government was once more essentially non-socialist. The Fehrenbach cabinet, curiously, had the support, on party lines, of only 175 of the 466 members of the Assembly. But at the Chancellor's solicitation the Majority Socialists and the National People's party agreed to refrain from acts that would embarrass the new government at the start; and when, shortly after the new Assembly convened (June 24), the Independent Socialists presented a resolution expressing lack of confidence, the ministry was decisively sustained. Only the divisions among the non-coalition parties, however, could be expected to enable a government so precariously situated to retain power for any considerable period. The ultimate equilibrium of political elements and forces remained to be disclosed. 5. RUSSIA CHAPTER XL THE SOVIET REPUBLIC AND ITS GOVERNMENT THE four or five years covered by the Great War saw a political transformation in central and eastern Europe which outdistanced anything of the kind experienced in western countries since the French Revolution. Under circumstances that have been described, Germany cast out the Hohenzollern dynasty, besides a group of lesser ruling families, and set up a semi-socialist republic. Overwhelmed in defeat, the Habsburgs lost their hold in Austria-Hungary, and the ramshackle Dual Monarchy fell apart into a republic of German Austria, a republic of Hungary, a republic of Czechoslovakia, besides important southern lands that passed in part to Italy and in part to the new kingdom of Jugoslavia. The disintegration of Russia in 1917-18 gave rise to a chain of new states stretching from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukrainia—all republics, and all equipped with, or bent upon attaining, written constitutions. The South Slav monarchies were merged in the Jugoslav kingdom, which is practically a greater and democratized Serbia. Rumania, although clinging to monarchy, substituted universal suffrage for the three-class electoral system borrowed at an earlier time from Prussia. Finally, Russia, driven by desperation born of defeat, misrule, and starvation, turned against tsarism, unseated the Romanovs, embraced republicanism, surrendered to a Bolshevist faction, and ended by setting up a political and social order which was without precedent or parallel in the history of that country or of the world. Governmental systems are still inchoate and political conditions extremely unsettled in all of these states when the present pages are written (1920). It would, therefore, be useless to attempt a description of the various governments which would be true to fact for any length of time, even if space permitted. One effort only will therefore be made in this direction, namely, a brief account of the political transformation in Russia and of the soviet system of government instituted in that country in 1917 - a scheme of public organization and control which will probably break down or pass gradually into something more in accord with old and familiar systems, but which in any event will have added a remarkable chapter to the history of man's political thought and endeavor. Russian Political Conditions before the Great War. A country of continental proportions, stretching ever monotonously before the eye, with the widest contrasts of heat and cold, flood and drought, opulence and misery; a chaos of races and creeds and a babel of tongues; historically in the main, but not wholly, European; geographically largely, but not entirely, Asiatic; a world within itself and a world between worlds - such is the land which we have heretofore known as Russia. The political power which brought this congeries of territories and peoples together had a continuous history from the opening of the fourteenth century, when the newly established principality of Moscow began to extend control over the political divisions around its borders, and likewise to push back beyond the Urals the rule of the Mongols which had lain heavy upon easternmost Europe for more than a century. The circumstances of the foundation of the Muscovite state and the general conditions prevailing in the Muscovite dominions throughout these six hundred years were altogether favorable for strong monarchy, indeed for absolutism. The state was originally built up by the subjugation of rival principalities. Every step in the later expansion of dominion an expansion which eventually brought under the Russian flag one sixth of the land surface of the globe - was accomplished by conquest or aggressive diplomacy. The Greek Church habitually looked to the tsar 2 for protection and in return upheld his claims to power. The Byzantine ideal led him to adopt the pomp and exclusiveness of an Oriental potentate. The country was remote, and, until late, the people were not touched by western influences. There were from time to time, it is true, some developments in the direction of representative and liberal government. The 1 The ascendency of Moscow dates, more precisely, from the reign of the grand duke Ivan I (1330-39). The Russian metropolitan transferred his seat at this time from Vladimir (whither he had moved from Kiev in 1229) to Moscow. 2 This term was first used as a coronation title in 1547, but it appeared in the Byzantine correspondence of the prince of Moscow somewhat earlier. same tsar, Ivan IV (1533-84), who became the greatest of Russian autocrats up to his time was the first to convoke a Zemski Sobor, or national assembly. This crude, tumultuous counterpart of the English Parliament and of the French Estates General never, however, gained the right to be regularly or frequently convened, and at best it was the organ of the boiars, or nobles, rather than of the nation at large. Furthermore, Peter the Great (1689-1725) brushed it aside; and, although not formally abolished, it was never thereafter called together. Catherine II (1762-96) set up a Grand Commission, composed of 564 persons chosen throughout the Empire, to assist in a recodification of the national laws. But the body was not intended to be a parliament, and its deliberations proved so profitless that it was disbanded with its main task still unperformed. Alexander I came to the throne in 1801 with liberal ideas. He had seriously considered giving the country a written constitution, to be prepared by an elected representative assembly. As tsar, he, however, drew back from the plan. Finally, Alexander II (1855-81) came to a decision to establish a partially elective national assembly with power to give preliminary consideration to legislative proposals; but he was assassinated twenty-four hours before the decree was to be promulgated. Only in the domain of local government was any real and lasting advance made toward popular control of affairs up to the close of the nineteenth century. Catherine II introduced elective municipal dumas, or councils, which represented all classes of the population. Alexander II, in addition to reconstructing the judicial system and further reorganizing municipal government,1 instituted two sets of elective zemstvos, or assemblies-district zemstvos, chosen by the landholders (including the newly emancipated serfs), and provincial zemstvos, composed of representatives of the several district assemblies within the province, and endowed with substantial legislative and fiscal powers.2 The twentieth century found autocracy still in the saddle. In a greater degree than ever before, however, it was on the defensive. The landholding classes both large owners and peasants were alienated by the favors shown by the government to the newer industrial interests, and in a series of reports in 1902-03 the zemstvos called loudly for a national parliament and for 1 On the system established see M. Kovalevsky, Russian Political Institutions (Chicago, 1902), 222-231. 2 It should be added that the peasant communes (mirs) were practically autonomous until Alexander III (1881-94) placed them under the supervision of wealthy landed proprietors.. many other innovations and reforms. On the other hand, the factory workers of the towns and cities were fast going over to socialism, and in 1898 a Workmen's Social Democratic party began to emulate the socialist parties of western countries. Important middle-class professional and industrial elements urged political reorganization on western lines, and in 1904 a small but active group of intellectual liberals organized a Union of Liberators as a political party. Added to these forces of opposition were the Poles, Finns, and other subject nationalities, whose first interest was to resist "Russification," but who saw in the political liberalization of the Empire the surest means of accomplishing their emancipation. The Russian defeats in the Far East in 1904-05 roused strong public feeling and gave the discontented elements an unexpected opportunity. An informal gathering of representatives of the zemstvos and dumas petitioned the tsar in November, 1904, to convoke a constituent assembly and demanded a national parliament; and after a period of evasion public disorders became such that the government was compelled, in self-defense, to take the desired action. In August, 1905, a constitutional decree called into existence a representative body known as the Imperial Duma; a manifesto of October stipulated that no law should become effective without this body's consent; a rescript of December practically conceded manhood suffrage. The political transformation thus auspiciously begun did not, however, work out satisfactorily. The restoration of peace in 1905 largely freed the government from the embarrassments which had compelled it to make concessions. The reform elements fell apart into parties - Liberals, Constitutional Democrats, "Octobrists," Social Democrats, Socialist Revolutionaries which squandered their strength in conflicts among themselves. The great landlords and other reactionaries set on foot a vigorous campaign for a restoration of the old régime. The upshot was that constitutional, parliamentary government was practically strangled at its birth. First, a decree of March, 1906, associated with the Duma, which now became merely the lower house of a bicameral legislature, an upper chamber in the form of the old Council of State, renamed the Council of the Empire, and composed of equal numbers of members appointed by the tsar and elected indirectly by certain privileged classes. The same decree excluded from parliamentary discussion the fundamental laws of the Empire, the composition of the legislative bodies, the army and navy, and foreign relations. When the |