The prison mirror. [volume] (Stillwater, Minn.) 1887-1894, 1892-01-21
StiuWater MINI, Thursday Jan. Fl, 1892.

over which the Car presides. we may well
rejoice that the Russian Government has at
it's head ruler as cautious. as resOlute, and
as devoted to peace as Alexander Ill. TO
put yourself in his place is the first rule for
judging anybody. If the Friends of Russian
Freedom. with whose general principles
every one must sympathize, were to be
called together in Washington or London to
reshape the constitution of Russia and TO
remodel the institutions of the nation ac-
cording to their own sweet will and pleas
ure, they would, perhaps, be able to
appreciate better the difficulties which con-
front the autOcrat of all the KusSias than
they seem to do at the present moment.
Seldom has there been greater contrast
between the semblance of power and its re-
ality than that which continually cOnfrOnts
the occupant of the Russian throne. Nom
inally the Gar is the Vicegerent of the
Almighty; his will is OmnipOtent through
out the whole of Northern Asia and Eastera
Europe, his slightest word has the force of
law. There exists no institution with
authority to withstand his ukase. nor is
there within the whole of his vast dOmin-
ions noble or demagOgue among all his
subjects whom he could not destroy with d
wave of the hand. The greatest army in
the world would march unhesitatingly even
to defeat and destruction if he chose to lift
his finger, and upon the meanest income of
the poorest of his peasant subjects he can
levy what tax he pleases. From Archangel
to Odessa from st. Petersburg to VIadivO-
stock. there exists no journalist upon whose
pen the Gar does not keep control; nor is
there any department of human activity,
religious or secular. in which the Gar has
~ fho irtf oe toto
venti0n. Yet as we contrast this illimitable
pOwer-in theory and upon paper-with the
actual impotence of the Czar to make anS
serious impression upon the great evils
which afflict his people, we are reminded
of the luckless king of Persia who. when
the triumphant MOslems Overran his en-
pire and made him prisoner. was left to
starve in his own treasury. All round that
Persian monarch were heaped diamonds
and emeraldS, and tOpaZeS, and pearls OF
incalculable value; wherever his eye turned
he saw nothing except gold and silver and
precious StOnes-but with the wealth of
Ormuzand the East about him. the wretch.
ed man pershed with hunger and thirst
l brought back from Russia a sense not
of the OmnipOtence of the Car. but the
very reverse. The Car, as he would be the
first to confess. is often as pOwerless to ef-
feet reforms and check abuses as he is to
modify the rigor of the Russian winter or
arrest the advance of the Russian influenza.
Those who have never been in Russia do
not realize the immensity of its area. and
the absence of those elements which, in
America and England, are relied upon to
effect changes and to initiate reforms.
There is an inertia about that great mass
which is like the Wis inertia of glacier. If
Stepniak. or Prince Krapotkin, or George
Kennan were Gar to morrow, they would
no more be able to transform the country
or eradicate the evils which are continually
being held up to the execratiOn of the world
than M. de Lesseps or Edison would be
able to quicken the march of the RhOne
glacier. They might, no doubt, clean it a
little here and there, and cut a gully. a
trench, or tunnel. but the vast inert mass
would battle all that dynamite or electricity
could effect. To bring Russia into line with
Western ideas they would have to use the
imperial prerOgative as unsparingly as
Peter the Great. Peter, that mighty Titan,
flung himself headlong at the task. Not
once in five centuries do we find a human
being of such stupendOus energy: his
thoughts were thunder bolts, his resolves
were like earthquakes. before which insti-
tutiOns and Kingdoms crumble into dust,
but how little. comparatively, he was able
to effect! He almost pulled Russia's head
off her body in his attempt to twist it round
from the Orient to the Occident; but many
students are of the opinion that Russia's
progress would have been all the more
steady if the pace had not been forced by
that revOlutiOnist on the throne. Such, at
least, is the opinion of the present Emperor
and the men who are around him. Not in
revolution, but in evolution. not in the viO-
lent forcing of Western and English ideas
upon an Eastern and Slavonic people. but
rather in permitting the silent growth and
development of the genius of the Russian
race. is their path Of duty. Of one thing
we may be certain. and that is that the
Friends of Russian Freedom would have to
apply many more pounds pressure per