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Russia's Awakening


Durham Chronicle report on the March Revolution in Russia


The month of March, 1917, will go down through history as a period during which there was enacted one of the most sudden and startling changes ever brought to pass in the progress of the human race. We are living too near the date of the Russian Revolution to realise even faintly all that this mighty event portends in the life of our planet, and can but guess whither it will lead the many peoples of the great Russian Empire, and the part they are destined to play in the new world that will emerge from the present war.

Newspaper writers in both hemispheres have tried to bring home to their readers something of the immense significance of last week’s happening in the Tsar’s dominions: but obviously they are grappling with a problem that is too big for the contemporary historian, and all comment necessarily fails in the attempt to deal with a subject that transcends our powers to envisage. The suddenness and completeness of the break from Russia enslaved to Russia free has been staggering in its effect.

So firmly were the forces of reaction entrenched, so insidious and powerful was German influence in the ruling class throughout the Empire, that only a political earthquake of the most shattering description could bring the old order to the ground. That such a disturbance should happen while Russia was absorbed in the greatest military struggle in her history seemed utterly impossible.
But the earthquake has come, and, wonder of wonders, the whole fabric, supported upon foundations that were deemed immovable, has come clattering down, giving place as if by magic to the beginnings of a structure whose dimensions bid fair to surpass anything hitherto conceived in the dreams of the political visionary.

The material with which to build the future Russian State is so abundant, so varied, and so rich in its possibilities of adaptation and development that we search the world’s annals in vain for a precedent to indicate what Russia regenerated may become a generation or two hence, and the part she will play in the affairs of both the Old World and the New. Not even the French Revolution, from which issued the complete transformation of Western Europe in every sphere of life, can afford any conception of the new trend of human development that may follow from the seed now being sown in the richest field hitherto untilled by the plough of progress. Here is a promising domain for experiment in every direction on the lines, novel and enterprising which must needs suggest themselves to all men as a result of the upheaval of the present war. Whether it be under a constitutional monarchy or as a republic that Russia begins afresh to work out her destiny her future will be one of absorbing interest to those who believe that the time has come for a great step forward in the “political development of every one of the nations engaged in the military struggle now drawing to a close.

No less fascinating is the vista opened up when we attempt to picture the industrial and commercial expansion which must ensue in a country so wealthy in natural resources and in population. Science and art are as yet in their infancy in Russia. What may their achievements yet be when they are freed from the blighting influences which have repressed intellectual advancement as a growth dangerous to the tenets of reaction! To great hopes for the future will be joined great hopes for the present in that the awakening of Russia will hasten the end of the international struggle by which it has been brought to pass. Germany has laboured long and unceasingly to drive Russia into the acceptance of peace, by fostering internal weakness. Her efforts in this direction have at last been fully and finally defeated.

The boot is on the other foot now, for she has not only failed in the attempt to bolster up Russian despotism, she has indirectly been the means of showing how Prussian despotism may in return be reduced to impotence. The German people may be more deeply imbued with the worship of authority than their Russian neighbours, but with famine and defeat staring them in the face, and the force of this great example before them, it is not impossible that they too may yet shake off their shackles.

Date: 23 March 1917

Author: Durham Chronicle

Where to find this: Durham County Record Office

Contributed by Daniel Hyatt

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