evious night's rally must have been echoing in many minds, ``If the Czar does not receive us. . . Then we have no Czar!'' 21 Between 800 and 1000 people had been killed the morning of January 22nd. 22 The Russians had finally been awakened; the Czar's historical momentum, his only support, was exhausted. Through the following months, universities closed down. Many government officials were assassinated, with little popular counter-revolutionary disgust. In Poland, the Russian language was successfully boycotted. In the Caucasus, Christian Armenians and Tartar Moslems joined in civil war against the Russians. 23 Mutinies within the military occurred. Most notably, the crew of the pride of the Black Sea fleet, the Potemkin threw their officers overboard, and attempted to help revolutionaries in St. Petersburg. The Czar remained as isolated in his own world as each peasant commune was to its own. In his diary, Nicholas wrote, ``A terrible day. Troops had to fire in many places of the city, there were many killed and wounded. . .'', unknowing that the people had actually amassed to meet him. Likewise, Lenin remained out of touch with Russia through the summer and into the autumn.In October, the country erupted into a unanimous strike against the Czar. Over the course of a few weeks, everyone from stock brokers to the Mariinsky corps de ballet quit working. The strike radiated out from St. Petersburg, to every large city, crippling the country. The police and military were powerless to operate, because no trains were in operation. By October 17th, Nicholas II's leadership was frantic. 24 Suppressing the unanimous revolt of an entire nation was impossible. On October 30th, the Czar signed the October Manifesto, a document drafted by Witte, granting freedom of speech and assembly, and the creation of the State Duma, an elected legislature with veto power over the Czar. 25 The revolution was complete; the autocratic rule by the Romanovs, almost...
