On December 30th, in the early hours of the morning, the monk Rasputin was
murdered and his body thrown into the Neva. The strangest and most evil of
all the actors in the Russian drama was dead, but the system which made
him what he was lived. Rasputin dead exercised upon the diseased mind of
the Czarina--and, through her, upon the Czar--even a greater influence than
when he was alive. Nicholas II was as powerless to resist the insane
Czarina's influence as he had proved himself to be when he banished the
Grand-Duke Nicholas for pointing out that the Czarina was the tool of evil
and crafty intriguers. Heedless of the warning implied in the murder of
Rasputin, and of the ever-growing opposition to the government and the
throne, the Czar inaugurated, or permitted to be inaugurated, new measures
of reaction and repression.
Trepov was driven from the Premiership and replaced by Prince Golitizin, a
bureaucrat of small brain and less conscience. The best Minister of
Education Russia had ever had, Ignatyev, was replaced by one of the
blackest of all reactionaries. The Czar celebrated the New-Year by issuing
an edict retiring the progressive members of the Imperial Council, who had
supported the Duma, and appointing in their stead the most reactionary men
he could find in the Empire.
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