sensation of the meeting. He not only denounced Sturmer as
a politician, but he produced the evidence which proved beyond a doubt
that Sturmer was receiving bribes from the food speculators; the
specific case he brought up showed that Sturmer, through his
secretary, had offered to shield certain bankers under indictment for
a substantial consideration. Sturmer immediately took steps to
dissolve the Duma. But the czar, whose signature he needed, was at the
front. For the moment he was delayed.

During this interval another sensation occurred. General Shuvaiev,
Minister of War, and Admiral Grigorovitch, Minister of Marine,
appeared in the Duma, and declared themselves on the side of the Duma
and the people. This settled the fate of Sturmer. On his way to the
front to procure the signature of the czar to the proclamation
dissolving the Duma he was handed his dismissal.

His successor was Alexander Trepov, also an old-time bureaucrat, but
known not to be affiliated with the dark forces. It was hoped that he
would conciliate the angry people. But Trepov never played an
important part in later developments; the fight was now between the
Duma and the people on the one hand and the Minister of the Interior,
Protopopoff, on the other. This battle now began in earnest and was
destined to be fought out to a bitter finish.

With a brazen fearlessness which must be credited to him, Protopopoff
now arraigned himself openly against the whole nation and the Duma,
with only the few hundreds of individuals constituting the dark forces
behind him. But these sinister forces included Rasputin, the
all-powerful, the czarina, and, unconscious though he himself may have
been of the part he played, the czar himself.

Protopopoff now began persecuting the members and the leaders of the
social forces as though they were the veriest street agitators for
Socialism. Next he endeavored to have Paul Milukov assassinated, but
the assassin repented at the last moment and revealed the plot. Then
he gathered together former members of the Black Hundreds and
recruited them into the police force and trained them in machine-gun
practice. And finally he renewed the energy with which he had begun to
organize revolutionary disorders among the workers.

All Russia was against him, even to the great majority of the members
of the Imperial family. His own mother had warned the czar that
disaster threatened him. As early as December, 1916, the Grand Duke
Nic