workers to meet the attacks of the government with armed resistance, the
leaders of the peasants and the city proletariat were ready to take their
places in the vanguard of the fight. On the other hand, the signers of the
Viborg appeal for passive resistance manifested no such determination or
desire, though they must have known that passive resistance could only be a
temporary phase, that any concerted action by the people to resist the
collection of taxes and recruiting for the army would have led to attack
and counter-attack-to a violent revolution.

Feeling perfectly secure, the government, while promising the election of
another Duma, carried on a policy of vigorous repression of all radical and
revolutionary agitation and organization. Executions without trial were
almost daily commonplaces. Prisoners were mercilessly tortured, and, in
many cases, flogged to death. Hundreds of persons, of both sexes, many of
them simple bourgeois-liberals and not revolutionists in any sense of the
word, were exiled to Siberia. The revolutionary organizations of the
workers were filled with spies and provocateurs, an old and effective
method of destroying their morale. In all the provinces of Russia field
court martial was proclaimed. Field court martial is more drastic than
ordinary court martial and practically amounts to condemnation without
trial, for trials under it are simply farcical, since neither defense nor
appeal is granted. Nearly five hundred revolutionists were put to death
under this system, many of them without even the pretense of a trial.

The Black Hundreds were more active than ever, goaded on by the Holy Synod.
Goremykin resigned as Premier and his place was taken by the unspeakably
cruel and bloodthirsty Stolypin, whose "hemp neckties," as the grim jest of
the masses went, circled the necks of scores of revolutionists swinging
from as many gallows. There were many resorts to terrorism on the part of
the revolutionists during the summer of 1906, many officials paying for the