Anyone who is still dubious about the causes which led
to the fall of the Tsardom should read The Ochrana, Memoirs of the Last Tsarist Chief of Police (Herren, 15s). Nothing could illustrate more clearly the fatuity, the incompetence, the obstinate clinging to bygone methods which distinguished the Russian bureaucracy. The Ochrara was the Secret Police which continually meddled in politics. It employed spies everywhere—yet it never knew anything. Shortly before the Tsardom crashed Mr. Vassilyev, author of this book, assured the Empress that "a revolution was quite impossible in Russia." Although the plot against Rasputin's life was common talk in several sections of Petrograd society, the Ochrana knew nothing about it, and was as completely taken by surprise when the Elder (who is incorrectly called the Monk) was murdered as it was when the soldiers began to mutiny in March, 1917. About Mr. Vassilyev, who died after escaping from the Bolsheviks and after earning his livelihood as a railway porter in France, one would not wish to say any- thing unnecessarily harsh. His blind loyalty to the old system and his pathetic conviction that it collapsed only through being too lenient even provoke pity. And he certainly left behind him a most enlightening volume.
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