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Buzzsaw and The Shavings



Last Updated: 11/16/2009

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City: NORCO
State: CALIFORNIA
Country: US
Signup Date: 9/2/2004

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Monday, December 07, 2009 

Current mood:  productive
Category: Writing and Poetry
 The centre of the tempest, the Siberian himself, had but recently returned to the Empire after completing his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, relieving the weary foes of Rasputin of the slender hope that the starets might permanently tarry in Palestine. Despite the thunders of the press and the execrations of the deputy in the Duma, there still remained masses of the adherents of Rasputin in Petersburg and in the Empire, numbers of his deluded votaries that wept unceasingly until he might return from Jerusalem, and perhaps even some nobles, stalwart in their devotions to Rasputin, earnestly awaited his return to the Neva, still shaking off the waters of the Jordan. The precise date of the return of the Siberian was communicated via a telegram to Anna Vyrubova, a figure that endured the interior struggles of joy and revulsion over the return of the licentious Siberian to the Empire; she transmitted the intelligence to the circle of the Montenegrin princesses, and at length the Prime Minister Kokovtsov, made privy to the knowledge, resolved that he successfully complete the policy of Stolypin and hurl Rasputin again into the obscurity of the wilderness beyond the Urals.
 Kokovtsov arranged for a special train to collect him at the Petersburg station and thence boarded, he commenced a lengthy travel across the breadth of Russia towards the Crimea where the Tsar and the Empress remained amidst the rustic Tatar, the profusion of vines and the seclusion of the Black Sea coast. The Prime Minister bravely endured the interminable excursion and the violent motions of the carriages that must offend his slumbers, and a drawn and haggard Kokovtsov at length arrived before the gates of Livadia. There the Prime Minister was gifted with the tidings that Rasputin had indeed returned to the Empire and was expected at the palace that very day; the Prime Minister quitted his intentions to report before the Tsar and determined that he would summon a carriage and drive forth to encounter the debauched starets.
 The Prime Minister again endured the perils and discomfits of travel across the face of the Empire, submitted to the affronts of dust and the clamours of a creaking coach covering a rutted path of the Crimea. At length Kokovtsov encountered a multitude, issuing hymns and musical chants, bare-footed and attired in a rustic array  assembled upon the road, drawn towards an attraction at their centre, and he instantly presumed that he had located Rasputin. The teeming numbers spread forth as they advanced upon the carriage of the Prime Minister, pulled to the roadside; at length the figure of Rasputin, ever the starets, eyes the habitation of zeal and perhaps an overweening pride, his raven tendrils of hair flowing in ungoverned streams upon the breeze, again garbed in the holy attire of hair shirt and the attending implement of a mendicant’s staff, was discerned. The Siberian was carried forth the acclaim and the motions of the crowd and presently he sighted the coach of the Prime Minister, whom he recognised, and offered a passing salutations, before Kokovtsov, having thrown open a window of the cab, waved at Rasputin, inviting him to board the carriage. The Siberian discerned the motion, and dismissed the throng, announcing that the Prime Minister desired to speak to him; the starets then entered into the carriage as the multitude continued onward, still a society of song and reverence towards Rasputin.
 Kokovtsov informed Rasputin, who had seated himself opposite the Prime Minister in the coach that they had a matter of a great importance to discuss; the calculating Siberian determined that it was prudent to affect an appearance of humility and thence timidly inquired how he might serve the high minister of the Empire. Rasputin easily discerned the motions of unease that stole across the face of Kokovtsov that was followed by an expression of self-reproach, as the Prime Minister assailed the discomfit that Rasputin had inexplicably filled the Prime Minister. After some awkward moments had passed, at last Kokovtsov spoke. “You must know,” said the Prime Minister, “that we assumed you would remain in Jerusalem amidst the Holy Places…but you have decided to return and this creates difficulties.” Artfully Rasputin then provoked the temper of the Prime Minister by timidly inquiring over the nature of the difficulties, insinuating Kokovtsov advanced the joy of his adversaries; Kokovtsov sputtered and thence gave out over the dangers to which his health might be exposed if he returned to the wintry clime of Petersburg. The starets offered alternative perils to his health, that offered by assassins, before he resumed a more moderate and genial air, inquiring where he might rather foray to convalesce. The Prime Minister, rather reassured by the unexpected compliance of the Rasputin, then gave out, “I have a most profitable proposal to make to you.” Kokovtsov then drew the attention of the Siberian to a chest that lay between them in the carriage; “In this box,” he asserted, “is above two hundred thousand gold roubles…a vast sum, and one that would permit you to live in security and comfort for the remainder of  your life…they are yours if you agree to return to your native village in Siberia and never come to Petersburg again…you might buy your village and perhaps many others and rule as a virtual lord if you are so minded…now, what do you say?”...
2:54 PM 
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Sunday, December 06, 2009 

Current mood:  refreshed
Category: Writing and Poetry
 The clamour in the newspapers of Petersburg and the tempests issued by the editor over the conduct of Rasputin generated and issued echoes throughout the city and the politician must soon derive from the journalist the urgency and zeal a thousand articles had wrought. The voices of Responsibility that sought the coveted goal of the expulsion of Rasputin from the Court despaired of the attention of the Tsar and rather begged and beseeched the Imperial mother, the Dowager Empress Maria to employ her signal and unique voice to persuade Nicholas to expel Rasputin from Petersburg. Yet the old Empress loosed a melancholy sigh and streamed in copious tears, and could only reply to her crestfallen petitioners, “My daughter-in-law is irremediably ruining the dynasty and indeed herself…she believes in that false starets and it is vain to think we might yet depart from this route of ruin.”
 Amongst the most genuine and respected voices of  responsibility and repute in Petersburg was the President of the Duma, one Mikhail Rodzianko. This minister was of the most massive proportions, ursine and bearded, and he might have suggested to the cursory viewer a savage and violent partisan, brutish and rude, of Ivan the Terrible, a certain figure enrolled in the bloody ranks of the Oprichniki. But this impression must be immediately dissolved; Rodzianko was a conservative and mild figure and fixed to a position that must be identical to that of a Saxon rural squire had the Russian rather had been born  as a denizen of Buckinghamshire. Possessed of moral scruple and ever sensible of appearance and morality, the public exposure of  the misdemeanours of Rasputin were ever regarded by the President of the Duma as distasteful and unsavoury. These reproachful feelings only escalated when the political forum that was the Duma was rapidly converted into a chamber whose only purpose was to discuss and to decry the conduct of the Siberian. Rodzianko was at length impelled to pursue the matter of Rasputin with the Tsar, and thereafter, never desisting from his labours to secure an audience with his sovereign, at last obtained an Imperial interview. Ample stores of courage and audacity possessed by him, upon entering the study of Nicholas, the President of the Duma instantly broached the subject of Rasputin. Rodzianko informed the Tsar that the proximity of Rasputin to the throne was universally regarded as odious and obnoxious, though the cultivated minister moderated his tone with the dress of an assurance that he only spoke from 'love of Your Majesty.’ After further avowals of his fidelity to the Throne and to the Tsar, Nicholas bade Rodzianko to continue. Rodzianko then cited the report of Stolypin and the Tsar replied that he had not fixed much attention upon the document· “A great pity!” interjected Rodzianko, ‘for if Your Majesty had, this matter need not have surfaced.”
 Yet the gravity of Rodzianko and the abiding respect of Nicholas towards the President of the Duma and of his office must move the Tsar affected by the direct honesty of his minister. Another investigation of the conduct of Rasputin was commenced, offered to a Rodzianko, covered over in gratitude, to conduct. As soon as the new report had been complied and completed, largely a further elaboration of the incriminating document offered by Stolypin and was preparing to deliver the document, Rodzianko was confronted with the imperious demand of the Holy Synod to yield up the paper to its ecclesiastical authority. The President of the Duma was further impressed with the tidings that the Church acted upon the request and the interest of a person of august and lofty position. When Rodzianko inquired over the identity of the mysterious personage, it was returned to him that it was the wish of the Empress that had induced them to command the surrender of the report. The President of the Duma, not departing from his certainty, tartly rejoined, “I cannot reply with your request, as I must now remind you that the Empress is the Consort of His Majesty and is as much a subject as I am, and we are firstly commanded to follow his wishes and to obey his commands.”
 Alexandra, however was determined to thwart the appearance of the sheet of slanders and again exerted the dominion that she had long established over the compliant and malleable Nicholas and retrieved his allegiance for the starets. When the President of the Duma requested another audience when he might present the report, he was refused; Rodzianko, as determined as the Empress, thereafter sent the paper to Nicholas in the Crimea where he had retired with his family to the better collect the wan rays of the autumn sun at the Livadia Palace. It is certain that the Tsar read the report at last, but again no discernable motion against Rasputin was undertaken, and once more the aggrieved and sorrowful voice of the Empire might regret the subjection of the Autocrat of all the Russias towards his spouse...
3:12 PM 
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Saturday, December 05, 2009 

Current mood:  fascinated
Category: Writing and Poetry
 The tidings of the Jewish derivation of Bogrov was broadcast throughout Kiev, and the race of Abraham, easily sensible of an approaching calamity, hurried to gather their belongings and quit the city with rapidity, assembling in apprehension upon the railway station of Kiev, eager to elude a pogrom, intruding into any carriage that might conduct them forth from the city. Perhaps their expression of peril was heightened by the sudden appearance of a detachment of Cossacks, bearded, brazen and brandishing the whip, appeared by the platform of the station. This issue of hooves was commanded by Kokovtsov in order that the powers exuded by the fur cap of the steppe might prevent an exhibition of an urban violence and impair the visitation of  gory tempests; the policy of the new Prime Minister succeeded in the maintenance of calm in the city, although his fellow ministers assailed and decried the moderate act of Kokovtsov, preferring to answer the shot of Bogrov with the blood of Jews. Yet the Tsar expressed approval of the prudence of his new minister and rapidly confirmed him in office; in October of 1911, Nicholas, still comprised of expansive regard for Kokovtsov, genially invited the minister to Livadia Palace in Crimean shores in order that the policy of the Empire be discussed. The new minister was greeted with the esteem of the court and the amity of Alexandra who admitted Kokovtsov to her side and at this immediate proximity, the Prime Minister formed his essential opinion of the Empress. “She is a mystic figure, and one that now plays a central role in the history of the Empire of Russia,” he writes. He then relates the concerns of Alexandra over the attempts of Kokovtsov to emulate the manner of his predecessor  Stolypin and to ever recall his memory. “She said that I honoured his memory excessively and fixed too much attentions upon his accomplishments…I was informed that life continues, that is ever assumes a new form, and we must not worry nor be sorry over those who have already passed.” He then directly quotes his Empress and her dismissal of the previous Prime Minister; “’I am certain that Stolypin perished in order to vacate his seat on your behalf, and that is for the good of Russia,’”
 Yet the esteem and the regard of the Empress must persist but briefly; at length the office of Kokovtsov must contact that of the Siberian, and this must be at last fatal to his political career and his post of Prime Minister. The deeds and the conduct of Rasputin ever more rose into the public consciousness, no longer communicated in careful and calculated mutters and whispers. The greater population of Petersburg and the greater Empire at last discovered the scandalous behaviours and exploits of the Siberian; the journals and newspapers of Petersburg began to issue accusations and the reports derived of the teary and violated victim of the licentious starets. The florid correspondence of Alexandra that was addressed to Rasputin was secured in the form of copies by the leadership of the Octobrists and Guchkov, the head minister of that party worked with vigour to distribute them throughout Petersburg. Though Kokovtsov genuinely abhorred the conduct of Rasputin, he regarded the publication of the private epistles of the Empress as an assault upon the prestige of the sovereign and might have sought the suppression of the newspapers, but the solemn promises of the Manifesto were inviolate and were not to be abridged lest a new expression of revolt and upheaval be tempted.
 But Nicholas, who did not, nor could not understand the concept of the freedom of the press, supplied the want of an outright censorship by issuing an Imperial decree that barred the appearance of the name of Rasputin lest a fine be levied upon the editors of Petersburg. But the newspapers upon the Neva and their publishers were aware of  the fascination of the public over the debauched holy man, his further and undoubted powers to sell their journals, and to reap vast profits; they cheerfully continued to print the name of the Siberian and paid the modest fine. The lurid tales upon the page must be regarded as moderate as in comparison to the sensational tales that were spread by lips and malevolence on the streets of Petersburg, and soon Rasputin was installed in the Imperial bedchambers, the Tsar commanded to pull off the muddy boots of the Siberian before he fell onto the bed with the Empress on a carnal and a sensual deed. The Siberian, having ravished the exultant Empress, then advanced upon the bedrooms of the Imperial daughters, the voices of the Neva asserted with all the dignity of Truth, and there subjected them to rape, and enrolled them in a seraglio, where the ardent and smitten Grand Duchesses violently clashed with each other as they sought the undivided attention of the holy man of the wilderness...
3:13 PM 
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Friday, December 04, 2009 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjJ3HZRmyC8

Again me gerunds and adverbs are aided by a visual supplement.

3:24 PM 
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Thursday, December 03, 2009 

Current mood:  accomplished
Category: Writing and Poetry
 These were most prophetic words uttered by the minister as on the following day, Stolypin was the victim of an assassination. Upon that evening, the minister joined the Tsar and his two eldest daughters, the Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana to attend a performance of the opera, Tale of Tsar Sultan. Because of the Imperial presence, Nicholas and his daughters were preceded into the opera house by a massive expression of security and the forays of precaution that subjected the arena to an exhaustive search for implements of peril and it was thereafter assumed that the evening must be unmarred by bloody incident. The Imperial party appeared in ease and certainty at the grand venue of Kiev and repaired to their box that centrally overlooked the stage. Stolypin and the other high ministers of state were seated in the first row, directly behind the orchestra pit, and joined with fervour the applause that greeted the scene and the aria of the famed opera of Rimsky-Korsakov. During the course of the second intermission, Stolypin rose from his seat and turned to face the audience; upon a sudden, a youth in elegant full evening dress advanced down the central aisle, approaching the minister. As Stolypin fixed the man with a glance of suspicion, the young man speedily drew a revolver from the pocket of his coat and discharged the weapon directly into the Prime Minister. The Tsar clearly viewed the scene and some days later, again generated the material of a primary source, relating the melancholy event to his mother, the Dowager Empress Maria. “It was so hot, we decided to leave the box,” Nicholas began, “and at that movement we heard two sounds that seemed to suggest that something had been dropped….we returned to the box, expecting to see that perhaps an opera glass had fallen on someone…we saw a group of officers assembled and they seemed to be dragging someone…women were screaming and suddenly I beheld Stolypin, turning towards me, stretching out his arm, engaged in making the sign of the cross…only then did I notice he was very pale and that his uniform was bloodstained…he then slowly sank into a chair and unbuttoned his blouse.” Nicholas continues in his invaluable description; “Olga and Tatiana saw what happened and were very upset…unfortunately the assassin was then rescued from the fury of the crowd by the police…his teeth were already knocked out.” The audience united in a defiant rendition of the Imperial anthem, and thereafter, the Tsar departed the opera house with his daughters, the distraught Tatiana lost to incessant weeping.
 The first interview with the assassin revealed his name and station, one Mordka Bogrov, a stalwart revolutionary yet employed as an informant of the police and these connexions with authority were exploited to accomplish his murderous goal. Bogrov, soon to be delivered to the gallows, expressed a dismay with the salutary policies of Stolypin that were endangering the prospect of a second revolution and quenching the political fervour of the worker and the peasant, and determined that this menace to Utopia must be removed. He had been supplied with a police ticket and assigned the duty of guarding the minister, and under the cover of these impeccable credentials was easily admitted into the theatre, his firearm but minimally concealed. Yet it is also suggested that the assassination of Stolypin was also the act of the affronted reactionary, equally aghast over the policies of the Prime Minister as his socialist adversaries, and perhaps their avenue of connexions to the police was also exploited and intermixed in a season of mutual peril as both the revolutionary and the ardent monarchist laboured together to deliver Russa from the dastardly administration of Stolypin.
 Stolypin lingered on near a week before he yielded up his spirit, and the sorrows of the Tsar, genuine and intense, refused the sensible advice of his officers to quit Kiev, minded to inquire after the condition of his dying minister. He called upon the hospital where Stolypin lay, but the sorrows of his wife refused Nicholas admission to his bedside. The Tsar thereafter departed Kiev for a minor expedition upon the flow of the Dnieper, and returned to Kiev a three days later; there upon the pier he received the tidings that his minister had perished and shortly thereafter he attended the funeral service of Stolypin, the Imperial eyes as moistened as all others attending and the Tsar might have discerned in a remote and inward motion that perhaps the days and the future of the this last dynasty of the Three Romes was also lain into the crypt along with Stolypin. But this interior forecast must have been rapidly dismissed, as Nicholas turned to the filling of the vacant post of Prime Minister; one Vladimir Kokovtsov was appointed to the honours and responsibilities of the office upon the night of the assault upon Stolypin and thereafter laboured to avert the inevitable deed of violence and fiery vengeance that must be reflected upon a sheet of blood shed by the Jewish victim once the nationality of Bogrov was revealed...
3:44 PM 
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Wednesday, December 02, 2009 

Current mood:  distractable
Category: Writing and Poetry
 Yet Stolypin was not enrolled amongst the race of the perfect; by 1910, his purchase upon the esteem and the regard of the Duma was rapidly eroding. The Prime Minister perceived that he still dwelt in the accusation of the Court over his involvement in the great tempests of 1905 and was most ardent that he dissolve his connexions to revolution. With diminutive but yet disabling steps, Stolypin raised the contact of the Helsinki from any involvement in the affairs of Finland with the introduction of a bill into the chambers of the Duma that proposed to divide these matters between the Duma and an especial Imperial ministry; the party of the Kadets vacated their seats in the chamber at the presentation of the proffered law, the Octobrists, possessed of a greater portion of moderation, laboured to divest the bill of its deeper reactionary tint still, yet in a mood that smiled upon cooperation. The conduct of the Duma fired the exasperation of  Stolypin, he at once erroneously presumed that the Tsar had tired of his minister and had conspired with the parliament. Despite the previous expression of Nicholas, that his reigned over Russia, still largely subject to his Imperial will and refusing to admit the concept of resignation, the minister Stolypin yet submitted to the Tsar a request that he be relieved of his duties. The Tsar had not relented of this belief, and informed his minister of the damage that must accrue to his office, if the burdens of state might be so lightly overthrown. But the minister must have worked in vain to retain his reputation from a disrepute fixed upon him by the great and the mighty of the Empire, the great Princes of the Empire, seething at the pollution of the Duma, assailed Stolypin as a quiet revolutionary and a contagion arrived to steal away the sacred and inviolate authority of the Tsar that was the greatest and the most precious of all the ornaments attached to the Autocrat of all the Russias. 
 The Empress was soon thereafter enrolled amongst the foes of Stolypin; in 1911, the minister was alarmed and submitted to flights of apprehension that such a figure as Rasputin might be freely admitted into the Imperial presence. The issue was submitted to an exacting investigation by the command of the Prime Minister, and a devastating report of the crimes, the follies and the misdemeanours of the Siberian was at length presented to the Tsar. Nicholas perused the document, his face darkened with revulsion, yet did nothing and it was under his own initiative and impulse that Stolypin thereafter struck forth in action. The audacious minister summoned Rasputin to his chambers and issued a command that he depart Petersburg at once. Nicholas, perhaps relieved that the issue should be so suddenly and vigorously broached, offered his assent to the conduct of his minister. The Empress issued tears of protest, yet Rasputin departed, intending a pilgrimage to Jerusalem where, perhaps he might mix reverence and debauchery upon the sorrowful and dusty path where trod the woes of the Nazarene before a moment of prayer before the doors of the Sepulchre. Alexandra loosed streams of hatred upon the minister, ignorant of the divine service that the Siberian had tendered, the deliverance of the Tsarevich from a bold and certain Death he had secured. Stolypin was unaware of the relief and the assurance Rasputin engendered, and perhaps if the minister had been admitted to the bedchambers of Alexis and beheld the afflictions of the boy, regarded his sufferings and the hopes the Siberian offered and the seeming cure he accomplished, Stolypin might have relented of his intentions.
 But the cares and concerns of that minister were directed towards other matters; the weighty responsibility of the reform of a medieval and autocratic government was perhaps beyond the capacity of any mortal, and the once taut sinews of the health of the minister weakened and frayed. The ardent progressiveness of the Duma was matched by the retrograde superstition of the Tsar, his weakness and attachment to an impairing fatalism. Nicholas returned documents to the Prime Minister, his coveted signature withheld due to the signal intervention of an inner voice that refused its assent to a certain policy; “My conscience never deceives me,” he informed an incredulous Stolypin, “and I do know you assert that the Imperial heart is in God’s hands.” Again Stolypin must have considered resignation, once more the Tsar was approached and another season of acrimony passed between the two men. The former warmth that comprised the relationship of Tsar and Minister was rapidly chilled, Stolypin discerned the gathering disinterest of the Court, the malice of Nicholas excited by the independent conduct of his minister, the ensuing race of slights, the lack of a carriage that must be assigned him that followed and thence the rise of the fortunes of his adversaries in the Duma that impatiently expected his fall. The greatest evidence of his decaying status was revealed in September of 1911 when the Prime Minister travelled to Kiev to attend the dedication of a great statue of Alexander III; the Tsar who also attended the ceremonies was observed by his minister to be riding in a grand coach of state that was obscured by the number and variety of police and Cossacks, whilst the bare carriage in which Stolypin rode was virtually devoid of protection. “We are expendable,” the minister bitterly muttered to a companion in the coach...
3:16 PM 
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Tuesday, December 01, 2009 

Current mood:  quixotic
Category: Writing and Poetry
 The Tsar might even be grateful over the conduct of Zurabov; he at last discerned the moment the Duma might be again dissolved had arrived. A potent accusation of a plot against the person of the Autocrat of all the Russias was lodged against the Duma, the glittering panoply of his revenge against the odious parliament, comprised of an assembly of soldiers fell upon Petersburg and the doors to the Second Duma were shuttered shut, and the species of deputy who had brayed in the most immoderate tone, the race of the Social Democrat, were hurled into a frosty Siberian exile. Composed of satisfactions that he had avenged the slight offered his title and dynasty, he deferred to Stolypin in regards to the ensuing steps and matters. That Prime Minister again artfully employed his skills and talents; he greatly restricted the suffrage of the Empire, permitting the ballot only the country gentry and this straitened manner of election in late 1907 at length seated the Third Duma, a most conservative assembly of figures affrighted of revolution and devoted to the motions of Reaction. Yet the Third Duma retained an independent spirit and the orations of Stolypin were not greeted with the most universal of praises; however the Prime Minister might consider the Third Duma a proper partner in governance and administration and at last Stolypin commenced his great reforms, esteeming a more moderate season in the hall of the Tauride Palace. The minister promoted the foundation of a party, the Agrarians, to represent the interest of the peasant-farmer, he threw open the credit of the banks towards the rural denizens, and once the peasant had attained the blessing of a loan, Stolypin stimulated the discovery of the implementation of the newest agricultural techniques and encouraged the study of new methods to double and to treble the crop of the harvest and starve the revolutionary impulse that must follow in the train of famine. A careful and regulated capitalism attended by the establishment and the protection of the basic rights and liberties of the peasantry was practiced, and thereby, the Prime Minister assumed, the fidelity and loyalty of the countryside must be diverted from the Revolutionary who might speak in vain before the disinterested farmer, tilling at last his own ground and permitted to partake of the fruits that he had long toiled and laboured to secure for others.
 The reforming policy of Stolypin continued under the Third Duma; the Prime Minister regarded as essential to the growth and development of the Empire the colonisation and settlement of the vast and empty tracts to the east of the Urals. The construction of the steel intrusion into the depths of Siberia, the lengthy railway to the Pacific, had begun to attract the settler beyond the European reaches of the Empire, and this Stolypin was minded to encourage and to accelerate; the wise policy of the Prime Minister, who had established a governmental department of Emigration, offered benefits to the peasant who transferred his residence to Siberia. A guaranteed amount of land was granted the peasant and the monies of the State, offered as a subsidy, was provided the settler and the gaze of the Law might be averted as the peasant as he established his new residence and dug the plow into the earth of Siberia. The rounds of the tax collector were diverted from the locale of the settler and these stimulations to resettlement at length drew above two million migrants to the east of the green mounts of the Urals, and the Duma must applaud the wisdom of Stolypin. Yet, that parliament, recalling the previous conduct of the Prime Minister was minded to secure a portion of power and authority, securing as permanent its body, and, following the model of the ancient parliament upon the Thames, secured the possession of the state purse and the disbursement of monies. The Third Duma asserted its right to review the expenditures of ministers, and the sagacity of Stolypin recognised that parliament, certain of its position, its meaningful involvement in the operations of State and productive capacity, must be ever more minded to cooperate with the executive authority; assured of its permanence, the Duma generated a race of commissions and one of that number, concerned with the military expenditure, might at last forget the recent conduct of the State, recall the humiliation wreaked by the contest with the Mikado, the shame scattered upon the waters of the Straits of Tsushima and suddenly numbering themselves amongst the moist ardent patriots of the Empire, vote to approve a large military budget that even exceeded the request of the Imperial authority. Even the Tsar might tardily relent of his abiding hostility to parliaments and salute the Duma as a responsible partner of government. “This latest Duma I do not believe is interested in the seizure of power ,” Nicholas asserted, “and I see no occasion whatever for any conflict with it.” The Tsar compared the slower and more guarded motions of the current Duma with its imperious and volatile predecessors, tumultuous in their rise and violent in their fall, and salute its slowness as something immeasurably superior...
4:37 PM 
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Monday, November 30, 2009 

Current mood:  curious
Category: Writing and Poetry
 Dressed in the title of Imperial Prime Minister, Stolypin immediately applied his political beliefs upon the tasks of office; he discerned that a peasant in possession of his own land must be deaf and indifferent to the beguiling slogans of the revolutionary. The survival of the old Imperial order, Stolypin determined, depended on the liberation of the peasantry from the binds of poverty and the maladies of ignorance and anarchy. A new figure of the countryside, sober and industrious and strong, must replace the wastrel and the drunken as the rural face of the Empire, and provide the foundation upon which the course of a new age would stride forth. But these were accomplishments to be remotely accomplished in a day to be yet long possessed by the Future; the immediate concern was the restoration of order in the Empire, still sullied by the smoke and the blood of the terrorist and revolutionary, and Stolypin functioned in accord with his vigorous nature. The fiery tempests of the anarchist were quenched by the rapidly establishment of courts-martial in the rural reaches of the Empire, the miscreant submitted to a speedy arrest and trial, and above three thousand of the assassins and terrorists were dressed in what is termed the Necktie of Stolypin and hung from the gallows. He also confronted the undisciplined clamours of the Duma, where, prior to announcing the dissolution of that body, thundered forth over the cacophony of voice, “You want uproars, but we want a Great Russia!”
 Stolypin fastened lock upon the doors of the Tauride Palace and commanded the posting of decrees that announced the First Duma dissolved. Fired by astonishment and a teary rage, several deputies fled Petersburg in order to assemble in a clearing in the woods of Finland, in order in the security of remoteness, to decry the dastardly crime of Stolypin, and to encourage the nation to refuse taxation until the Duma was again restored. Yet the Russians, weary of tumult and currently devoid of the enthusiasms to pursue a second revolution, were uninterested in the fortunes of a remote and alien parliament. The Tsar cursed the troublesome Duma, execrated its rebellious members and might have terminated the distasteful political experiment in legislatures, but Stolypin reminded his sovereign that his signature upon the parchment of the Manifesto was a most solemn promise to his subjects and of the requisite necessity that a Second Duma be constituted, and Nicholas must greet with a grudging assent the wisdom and the policy of his capable minister.
 In February of 1907, after the season of elections, the reconstituted Duma assembled in the Tauride Palace, and it must be regarded that this second legislature abided even more in the motions of uproar and violence. The Kadets and the Octobrists were joined in the hall of the palace by the deputies and representatives of the Leftist Social Revolutionaries and the Social Democrats who had won above a third of the seats in the Duma after they had consented to join that parliament, the choice of the ballot secured through the animating energies of their supporters in the factories of Petersburg and Moscow; these radical figures regarded the podium before the Duma as a vehicle to assail and to decry the deeds of a criminal government and they entered in a constant exchange of blows with the Rightist reactionary, leaping from their desks in wild fury and igneous motions, roused by the sedition admitted into the Duma. Flying inkpots and descending fists rather more frequently dressed the air than the vocabulary of deliberation and administration, brawls and blood sullied the proceedings of the parliament, and the affronted and exasperated Stolypin again fastened his voice above the din to inform all that, “Your conduct only serves to supply a paralysis to government and its operations!” he bellowed. “You leave a message to posterity,” he continued, “and that is Hands Up! The government, I assure you, replies with the words, ‘We are not afraid!’”
 The Tsar again assailed the distempers of the Duma and once more wished its dissolution; he regarded with alarm the incendiary speeches offered by its radical deputies, fully and faithfully recorded in the journals and the newspapers and the impulse of revolt might again be expected in the Empire. The policy of Stolypin yet permitted the clamours to continue in the Tauride Palace, lest a particularly egregious act or accusation compel the closure of the parliament. “They but have to do a singularly mean or stupid thing,” Nicholas reflected, and then continued with an obvious satisfaction and relish, “and then they are gone!” That singular act was at last committed by one deputy, a Zurabov, who had risen from his seat and brazenly asserted that the government recruited soldiers only for the purpose of the suppression of the just complaint of the populace. The unwise Zurabov, his thundering voice rising to a crescendo, then called upon the warriors of the Empire to unfurl the red standard of revolution in the midst of an oppressed people and cast the Tsar and his ministers into destruction...
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Sunday, November 29, 2009 

Current mood:  distractable
Category: Writing and Poetry
 Receiving the tidings of the conduct of the Duma, the Tsar resolved to dissolve the Duma, but he regarded that his olden minister was unequal to such a arduous and even dangerous task. Goremykin resigned in July of 1906, and Nicholas was relieved of such a useless tool that must but provide the food and the fodder of the revolutionary impulse of the First Duma. A season of chaos of an interminable duration must be expected, the disparate aims and thousand contentions defying the operations of government, unless a figure of capacity and capability was found to replace the ineffective Goremykin; this coveted person was at last discerned in one Piotr Stolypin, a minister of distinction and indeed, perhaps the greatest statesman to ever serve a Romanov, and indeed the last chance Fortune and History offered that retrograde dynasty to procure a further race of days. Stolypin was man of immense dimensions, the generous flanks of his face covered in the profusion of a beard, his breast swollen in certainty and determination, generating impulses of energy and deed  that comported to his gigantic stature. He was an aristocrat of the Empire, but he never severed his homespun connexions to the rural domain into which he was born, a quality that permitted him to embrace realism and a prosaic lens, to regard that the survival of the monarchy depended upon its capacity to mate with the times and engender reforms, and this compound of a man must secure the instant respect of all come before him. The domain of esteem extended into the reaches of the foreign diplomat, and the British Ambassador, Buchanan, states of Stolypin, “he combines a strong character with a nature that was both simple and direct…a patriot…and a perfect minister with which to deal.” These qualities were easily discerned by Nicholas, and he would write to his mother, the Dowager Empress Maria, “This man I have truly come to like and indeed to respect.”
 Stolypin had been born in Dresden in 1862, arrived as his mother Natalia travelled through the domain of Saxony on a round of the great spas of the Germanies; his family was imbued in distinction and his father, one Arkady Stolypin, was a relation of the Russian author Lermontov, in addition to boasting the title, Commandant of the Kremlin. The lofty position and the august connexions of his father permitted Piotr Stolypin to enjoy a superlative education; he studied at the University of Petersburg and thereafter was early admitted into the halls of administration, before rising to the post of the provincial governor of Grodno at an early age that must attract attention as he desired, with no trace of guile or concealed motive, to quit Petersburg for the rural domain. The innumerable proofs of his talent and capabilities secured Stolypin the administration of the province of Saratov, and as the tumults of the Revolution of 1905 descended upon the Empire in violent scene and bloody tempest, Stolypin presided over an unseasonable calm in his province, artful in applying the reply of the police authority against the miscreant in his domain, and indeed it is presumed that the diligent minister had complied a police record of every man in his province. Stolypin might have been compelled, in the manner of his fellow governors to direct the fire of the governmental cannons upon one village that persisted in rebellion, yet he preferred to enter the locality and employ the persuasion words rather than the command of bullets and shot to ensure the rebel throw aside his rifles.
 These accomplishments at length secured his return to the central authority in Petersburg, where Stolypin was installed as the Minister of the Interior, serving under the ancient Goremykin. That elderly minister, confronted by the violence and perils of an ungoverned Duma, at last tendered his resignation from an unwanted office in May of 1906, and he must have been gratified by even the tardy assent of the Tsar. “The Emperor,” he had oft stated, “is insensible of the fact that the candles have already been lit about my coffin, and the ceremony must not long be delayed.” The windows of the office of the Prime Minister were then thusly thrown open, luring forth the deleterious reek of a decomposition, and Stolypin assumed the responsibilities of the Prime Minister in July of 1906 after he had been summoned to the Imperial presence and requested to assume the office. Stolypin initial resisted the appointment; he informed his Emperor that he was a particular specimen of the country, that he was ignorant of the nature of the society upon the Neva and begged that he be permitted to refuse the position, The Tsar was adamant, directing Stolypin to cast glance upon an icon that often functioned as the focus of the Imperial prayers; “Make the sign of the Cross,” Nicholas directed, “in order that we secure the aid of God at such an historic moment.” Stolypin dropt to his knees, the Tsar constructed the motions of the Orthodox cross above him, and thence the Emperor embraced and kissed the minister, and Stolypin rapidly and inevitably signalled his acceptance of the office of Prime Minister...
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Saturday, November 28, 2009 

Current mood:  curious
Category: Writing and Poetry
THE TIDINGS OF THE FALL AND THE PATH TO WORLD WAR I 

 The aftermath of 1905, the year of revolutionary tempests and rebellious upheavals that nearly succeeded in their errand and their goal of the ruin of the Autocracy was spoken in the prose of the October Manifesto that clamours and the figments of destruction had imposed upon the Tsar. That declaration, as I have earlier related, had decreed the instant foundation and establishment of a western parliamentary system upon the medieval soil of Russia, utterly ignorant of such alien concepts of political parties and the nature of a parliament; yet the political capacity of the Empire was roused from its slumbers by the labours of its ministers, their memories stained by blood and horrors and animated by the hopes and the intentions that the buffets of a stormy revolutionary season might never again descend upon the Empire. By 1906 their efforts had created two liberal parties prepared to function in the established system rather than operate from the shadows in the expression of the bomb and the deed of assassination; the party of the Octobrists, acknowledging the leadership of one Alexander Guchkov and loudly proclaiming their adherence to the spirit of the October Manifesto emerged to fill its share of the seats of the Duma. They were opposed by the Kadet Party, saluting the authority of one Paul Miliukov, an eminent historian and university professor of the Empire, yet also prepared to work in channels legally established.
 Yet despite their avowed intention to conduct themselves in a measured and responsible manner, the First Duma was a species of uproar and condemnations. The members of the parliament were invited to call upon the Tsar at the Winter Palace; the numerous natures of the Empire was expressed in the   multiplicity and variety of the legislative deputies were introduced into the opulent halls, the elegant minister in frock coat and silken cravat and the dishevelled peasant, recently translated from the sphere of the barnyard were intermixed as they advanced upon the throne, and their ungoverned motion and hostile demeanour must alarm the officials of the palace; Count Fredericks dismissed them as miscreants who must hurl themselves upon the person of the Tsar in order to draw blades across his Imperial throat, ever sensible of the hatred that dwelt upon their faces. Another minister of the Winter Palace trembled at the sight of a rustic of the countryside, appeared near the throne, who must recently have brayed out the destruction of the Tsar and brandished blade polluted in the blood of police and soldiers, and he expected that the peasant must soon hurl a bomb.
 The Tsar was easily persuaded that these figures that grudgingly genuflected before the throne were still possessed of the malevolent impulse towards a sedition and nourished evil and destructive intentions; these were the clear proofs that the concept of compromise was absent in the Empire, unknown to Autocrat and Duma, that the inflexible positions that had been wrought by the blows of revolution were matured into habit and tradition and must be expected to be maintained and persisted in. The Kadets assailed the later amendments of the Tsar in the construction of the Manifesto as warfare against the people and a member of that party, the volatile Rodishev, assailed law in Russia as but a species of a joke. “This last year has seen such sufferings,” he brayed forth, “as have not occurred since the age of Batu Khan!” This mood was assembled in great numbers as the Duma took its seats in the old Tauride Palace of Petersburg and commenced its first session. This resulted in the Address to the Throne, a presumptuous demand for an instant universal suffrage in the Empire, a political amnesty for all, the distribution of land to the peasants and the right of the Duma to review the appointments of the Imperial ministers and to dismiss them in favour of figures more amenable to the parliamentary body. The Tsar replied with refusal; he dispatched the doddering and ineffective Prime Minister Goremykin, weighted in years and debility to hush the tempests of the Duma and to sternly inform them that their demands were unacceptable. The ancient minister had but scarcely concluded his unwelcome oration when, inflamed by fury and zeal, a deputy flew towards the podium of Goremykin, spray of foam and a bellow parting his lips. “The minister will bow before the authority of the Duma!” the deputy called forth and the Duma greeted his defiance with acclaim and applause, and suddenly to oppose the government,  rather than to yield and give up a hard-won ground was converted to the most signal of political virtues. The great hall of the Tauride Palace was suffused with cries and demand, ever swelling in intensity, that all the dastardly ministers of the Imperial and executive authority resign, and Goremykin must ponder whether he might escape the chamber with little else than his life...
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