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Show ; j Short Study of Russia ! o : -V j 'Chicago Tribune.) j Theoretically the government of Russia is one of the simplest governments iu tlie world. 'Ihe czar, or emperor, is. in ihcory, an autocrat, who. as Peter Pe-ter the Great, described him. "has to give an account of his acts to no one on earth, bui h-.ts a power and authority to rule his stales and hinds as a Christian Chris-tian sovereign according to his own wiii and judgment." judg-ment." In him ate united the whole -executive, legislative, leg-islative, and judicial powers of th" country. An-, political power or autb.oriiv which is wielded by any other mi'ii or body of men is derived from him alone", and is recalled by him at any moment he j wishes. The laws by whi-h he has granted privi-I privi-I leges to all or any portion of his subjects are Hke-! Hke-! wise but trammels which he has imposed voluntarily upon his freedom rd action and which his arbitrary and sovereign will disregards or sets aside whenever when-ever he judges fit. But in Russia, as elsewhere, political practice often diverges widely-from political theory. 'Ihe autocracy is far from being so wholly capricious-and capricious-and arbitrary in the exercise of it.- power as might, be inferred from its theoretical basis. It is doubtless doubt-less true that there is an amount of caprice and uncertainty un-certainty in the making and administration of the laws of Russia which would not be tolerated by any great western nation. But for the most-part the Ru.-siaii government is. like its western neighbors, neigh-bors, a government according to old and well established es-tablished laws and customs laws and customs, loo, which, strange as the fact may appear to Englishmen English-men or Americans, a ve heartily approved by a vast majority of the Russian people so far as they un-dersta'M un-dersta'M them. The czar intrusts the administration of his realm to four great boards the holy synod, the committee of ministers, the council of state and the ruling senate. The holy synod has superintendence of religious matters;' The other ihree boards roughly rough-ly resemble the executive, legislative and judicial departments of constitutional governments. But (n the committee of ministers is not properly a cabinet. cabi-net. Besides the ministers, the granddukes and many other public-functionaries belong to it. There is no prime minister, and each of the thirteen ministers min-isters is responsible directly to the czar for tlie management of his department. They often differ widely regarding the policies the government ought to adopt, and still, greater differences crop' up in the: committee of minister's. The council of state,' which .usually has about sixty members, differs' even more from a true legislature legis-lature than the committee of ministers does from .a true cabinet. It does not initiate, enact, or even modify legislation. It merely examines projects of laws which are presented by the ministers and discusses dis-cusses "the budget, and the proposed expenditures for the. year! It is a conservative, not a deliberative, body. ' The senate promulgates all the laws of the empire. Otherwise it 'is almost wholly a' judicial body. It is regarded ifs" a supreme court ot appeal, yet its decisions may be revised by the council of state. . ... The principal exertrtive ' departments are the ministers of foreign affairs, of finance .of war, of the navy, of justice, and of the interior, and of these the ministry of' the Interior is in many respects re-spects the most important and powerful. The ministry min-istry of the interior has direction of the internal administration. The empire is divided into seventy-eight "'government?.'' nineteen provinces, and one section, the island of Sagalin. Certain of the governments gov-ernments or provinces are united into so-called "'general governments."' each of which is nited by a governor general who is considered the immediate representative of the czar, but who is, really, like the governors of . the governments and provinces, answerable to the minister of the interior.. Each government or' province is divided into administrative administra-tive districts. ' '- The administration of .the economical affairs of the provinces and districts, is in some measure guided by the zemstvos, which aro provincial and district ' assemblies elected by the peasantry, the householders in towns and the landed proprietors, i The body which met recently in St. Petersburg and petitioned the czar to give his people more liberal institutions was composed of representatives of these organizations. Associated' with the zemstvo in an executive capacity is a board called the "up-rava." "up-rava." The. cities and towns have municipal organizations or-ganizations which closely resemble the zemstvo and uprava of the province All the officials and institutions heretofore mentioned men-tioned are closely connected with and subordinated to the imperial bureaucracy. All of them have been created by the autocrat's decree; all of them are directly responsible to the authorities at St. Petersburg. Peters-burg. . ... We now come suddenly upon an institution which from time immemorial has lain at the foundation founda-tion of Russian social andpolitical life, but which, nevertheless, is one of the most extremely democratic demo-cratic institutions in the world. Iu his commune, or 'mir," the Russian peasant forgets he is the subject of an absolute autocracy and exercises rights of self-government as wide and substantial as those which the citizen of democratic New England Eng-land enjoys in his town meeting. The legislature of the mir is the assembly of all the community's heads of families. Its executive is not an official representing the bureaucracy, but the village cider, who is chosen by a majority vote of the assembly; and the assembly, with the elder deciding, discusses and decides all communal affairs. af-fairs. The most important of these affairs is the distribution at irregular intervals of the. land of the community; for all over Russia the land occupied occu-pied by peasants is owned, not 'by the. peasants themselves, nor by great landlords who rent it to them, but by the mir or commune to which the peasants peas-ants belong; aiid the amount of land which each Individual In-dividual or family may hold and cultivate is determined deter-mined from time, to time by the communal assemblies. assem-blies. There are J07,0T6 communes. in European Russia. They are required to pay taxes to the im penal government in proportion 'to. '.their populations, popula-tions, but they enjoy the privilege of raising the . money any way they please. The mlrs arc united into cantons, the assemblies of which transact the same kind of business as those, of the' communes. Formerly, the communes hardly experienced any inlcrfereco from the imperial government.- The Russian government, however, is constantly becoming becom-ing more and more centralized; and the same policy j which has practically destroyed the somi-indepc nd-! nd-! out governments of Finland, Poland and Baltic provinces also tends to bring the democratic mirs into direct subordination to the bureaucracy. S. (). D. |