Thus the old vision of the Czars had become the vision of an influential
and rising class with a solid basis of economic interest.
III
As in every other country involved, the Socialist movement was sharply
divided by the war. Paradoxical as it seems, in spite of the great revival
of revolutionary hope and sentiment in the first half of the year, the
Socialist parties and groups were not strong when the war broke out. They
were, indeed, at a very low state. They had not yet recovered from the
reaction. The manipulation of the electoral laws following the dissolution
of the Second Duma, and the systematic oppression and repression of all
radical organizations by the administration, had greatly reduced the
Socialist parties in membership and influence. The masses were, for a long
time, weary of struggle, despondent, and passive. The Socialist factions
meanwhile were engaged in an apparently interminable controversy upon
theoretical and tactical questions in which the masses of the
working-people, when they began to stir at last, took no interest, and
which they could hardly be supposed to understand. The Socialist parties
and groups were subject to a very great disability in that their leaders
were practically all in exile.
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