Here is how “Rassvet” (8 VI 05) writes about the reception of the zemstvo delegation by Nicholas II.¹

“So it has come to pass! Representatives of society—some of whom (priests of their cherished ideals, long and steadfastly persecuted for them, as, for example, Prince Dm. Iv. Shakhovskoy, Petrunkevich, Rodichev, who only 2–3 years ago risked exile and were subjected to outrageous threats) are now received in the Peterhof Palace, speaking to the monarch, whom the bureaucracy shields from the zemstvo, about the true mood of the sorrowful country and of his subjects so stubbornly led astray; speaking of what has burned our hearts for so many irretrievable, vainly wasted years, what has long matured but was mercilessly cut down by official Petersburg, what brought us to Port Arthur, Mukden, Tsushima. And with a gentle gaze, with an outstretched hand, thanking for the ardent feelings that have finally led to this necessary and natural communion, the tsar goes to meet the best people of the land²..... and so on and so forth... ‘The ice has melted’³.... etc. etc.!!

Ibid. (8. VI. 05) List of persons (by surname) who authorized the zemstvo delegation. 200 surnames are named, with the addition “and some others.”⁴

Among the 200 are all the well-known zemstvo names: Shipov, S. A. | Muromtsev, Chelnokov, Shakhovskoy S. I. and D. I., Petrunkevich I. I. and M. I., Goncharov L. D. (Kaluga), M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky, M. V. Rodzyanko, etc., etc.

NB Rassvet No. 11 NB (or 11 VI).
Article by N. Stroyev: on the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, bourgeois democracy and the Social-Democratic Party, on the deception of the people, etc....⁵

Rassvet, 12 VI 05 (No. 93)... “From ‘Kiev Responses’ regarding the Kokovtsov commission.”⁶
— “P. Kh. Schwanebach invited the commission to look at the matter even more simply. The invitation of workers is merely—he pointed out—a little parade, satisfying the little vanity of the working masses.”

Ibid. “Can Sakhalin be given away?” III. Article by A. S.

A very rich island. “No, no! Over Sakhalin one can and must bargain!”
*Ibid.* “The Fundamental Question of the Workers’ Movement.” By V. Sadov.

“The process of the organic growth of the workers’ movement among us, despite the shattering lessons of the past, is still being distorted, subjected to extreme perversion”....
The barriers of the bureaucracy— “on the path to the natural and inevitable unification of the working class”—are not solid. “But while this process of unification and organization, encountering obstacles, breaks up into a whole series of separate currents, which already by virtue of their (?) crookedness (?) and abnormality (?), heat up (!!!) the tense atmosphere of our political life. And the result of the double game with the workers’ question by our leading spheres is evident: on the one hand, anger and bitterness among the working population, growing with each new phase in the development of the movement; on the other, the absence of an independent workers’ party that would be the exponent of the class needs of the proletariat.”...
“The factual inequality in every economic dispute between labor and capital makes itself painfully felt... by the proletarian.”
Characteristic, they say, is “the just-concluded movement for the 9-hour working day.”
The St. Petersburg workers presented this demand a month ago. “The example was set by the state-owned factories and workshops, where a 9-hour working day has already been established.” Strikes followed.
“A characteristic feature of this movement, as of the workers’ movement in Russia in general, was the absence of any kind of trade union organization. It proceeded without a general guiding plan, without the directing hand of a legally competent and authorized center. Perhaps, under the given conditions, a central institution uniting the workers would not even have considered it possible to declare a strike, and we would not have witnessed the unnecessary suffering and sacrifices, the inevitable companions of every economic disorder, of every struggle.
“If the movement had been raised, it would undoubtedly have proceeded with that discipline and steadfastness that characterize the strike movements of foreign workers, would have been conducted in a strictly systematic and deliberate manner, without outbursts¹

cements its bond with this Russia, exhausted by the blows of fate and by the troubled period, where tension will soon positively reach the point of explosion, if the chronic ailments are not allowed to appear before us in all their horror and nakedness.”

³ “The ice has melted. On the threshold of a rapidly dawning new era, every bold flap of wings lifts higher and higher into the clearing sky, from where the joyfully awakening Rus’ will already be outlined like a colorful carpet.”

⁴ In the same issue of “Rassvet,” on page 2, an article: “Zemstvo and City Figures at the Sovereign Emperor’s.” At the end of the article it says: “The Moscow deputation was authorized to go to the capital and speak by the following persons” (followed by a list of these persons). The delegation of 19 (6) June in Peterhof consisted of: P. A. Heyden, G. E. Lvov, N. N. Lvov, I. I. Petrunkevich, F. A. Golovin, P. D. Dolgorukov, N. N. Kovalevsky, Yu. A. Novosiltsev, F. I. Rodichev, D. I. Shakhovskoy, S. N. Trubetskoy, P. L. Korff, A. N. Nikitin, M. P. Fedorov.

⁵ “Rassvet” No. 92 of 24 (11) June 1905; article “The Historical Moment” signed: N. Stroyev.

⁶ In No. 93 of “Rassvet” of 25 (12) June 1902, in the section “Our Press,” excerpts from “Kiev Responses.”