At the head of the Department
of Agriculture, which was charged with responsibility for dealing with
agrarian problems, was placed Stishinsky, a large landowner, bitterly
hostile to, and hated by, the peasants. The composition of the new Ministry
was a defiance of the popular will and sentiment, and was so interpreted.
The Duma opened on April 27th, at the Taurida Palace. St. Petersburg was a
vast armed camp that day. Tens of thousands of soldiers, fully armed, were
massed at different points in readiness to suppress any demonstrations by
the populace. It was said that provocateurs moved among the people, trying
to stir an uprising which would afford a pretext for action by the
soldiers. The members of the Duma were first received by the Czar at the
Winter Palace and addressed by him in a pompous speech which carefully
avoided all the vital questions in which the Russian people were so keenly
interested. It was a speech which might as well have been made by the first
Czar Nicholas. But there was no need of words to tell what was in the mind
of Nicholas II; that had been made quite evident by the new laws and the
new Ministry. Before the Duma lay the heavy task of continuing the
Revolution, despite the fact that the revolutionary army had been scattered
as chaff is scattered before the winds.
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