At the close of the disastrous war with the Japanese in 1905, the cry from the Russian people for a Congress, or some form of elective government, had been so strong that the Czar had to give in.  So he called the first Duma.  This body of men, as has been explained, could talk and could complain, but could pass no laws.  The first Duma had had so many grievances and had talked so bitterly against the government, that it had been forced to break up, and Cossack troops were called in to put down riots among the people at St. Petersburg, which they did with great ferocity.  All this time there had been growing, among the Russian people, a feeling that they were being robbed and betrayed by the grand dukes and high nobles.  They distrusted the court.  They felt that the Czar was well-meaning, but weak, and that he was a mere puppet in the hands of his German wife, his cousins the grand dukes, and above all a notorious monk, called Rasputin.  This strange man, a son of the common people, had risen to great power in the court.  He had persuaded the Empress that he alone could keep health and strength in the frail body of the crown prince, the Czarevitch, and to keep up this delusion he had bribed one of the ladies in waiting to pour a mild poison into the boy’s food whenever Rasputin was away from the court for more than a few days.  The poor little prince, of course, was made sick; whereupon, the Empress would hurriedly send for Rasputin, upon whose arrival the Czarevitch “miraculously” got well.  In this manner this low-born fakir obtained such a hold over the Czar and Czarina that he was able to appoint governors of states, put bishops out of their places, and even change prime ministers.  There is no doubt that the Germans bribed him to use his influence in their behalf.  It is a sad illustration of the ignorance of the Russian people as a whole, that such a man could have gotten so great a power on such flimsy pretenses.

The real salvation of the Russians came through the Zemptsvos.  These were little assemblies, one in each county in Russia, elected by the people to decide all local matters, like the building of roads, helping feed the poor, etc.  They had been started by Czar Alexander II, in 1862.  Although the court was rotten with graft and plotting, the Zemptsvos remained true to the people.  They finally all united in a big confederation, and when the world war broke out, this body, really the only patriotic part of the Russian government, kept the grand dukes and the pro-Germans from betraying the nation into the hands of the enemy.

It was a strange situation.  The Russian people through the representatives that they elected to these little county assemblies were patriotically carrying out the war, while the grand dukes and the court nobles, who had gotten Russia into this trouble, were, for the most part, hampering the soldiers, either through grafting off the supplies and speculating in food, or traitorously plotting to betray their country to the Germans.  With plenty of food in Russia, with millions of bushels of grain stored away by men who were holding it in order to get still higher prices, there was not enough for the people of Petrograd to eat.