*Journal de Genève.* Saturday, 1 July 1905, 1st edition.

The Tsar's Promises.

The Attitude of the Parties.

(From our special correspondent.)

St. Petersburg, 27 June.

.... "The liberals by no means conceal from themselves the imperfections of the Bulygin project; nevertheless they consider that it must be accepted in the interests of the cause of progress and order. The creation of the State Council, whatever restrictive clauses may be imposed upon it, will have an immediate result of incalculable significance: it will destroy the Chinese wall with which the bureaucracy has surrounded the tsar. Public opinion will at last possess a tribune from which it can speak without constraint. The State Council will be deprived of direct action on the government, granted, but the resolutions it passes will constitute a moral factor of such considerable importance that the government will be obliged to take them into account. Finally, the mere fact of the existence of a Chamber will have the most salutary influence on the bureaucracy.

"On the other hand, it must be clearly said that the Bulygin project represents the extreme limit of concessions that the present regime can grant. If the progressive parties refuse to adhere to it and continue their agitation to the utmost, a violent reaction will necessarily occur, of which a general upheaval will be the consequence. To reject the government project would be deliberately to reject the last remaining chance of resolving the present conflict between the nation and the bureaucratic regime in a peaceful manner."

(Italics in the original.)

Whom exactly the author calls "liberals" he does not say. The "radicals," according to him, are outraged by the parody of a constitution (the Bulygin project) and stand for "struggle to the utmost"; if the tsar sanctions the Bulygin project, "organise a general obstruction, refuse to go to the polls, boycott the candidates who come forward. The situation will become so difficult and threatening that the government will end by capitulating."

Kuzmin-Karavayev has opened a campaign against the radicals with his "open letter," calling for agreement to non-universal elections, renunciation of obstruction, abandonment of the "formula: all or nothing, at the risk of delivering the country to reaction and anarchy."