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i9I6] PROTOPOPOFF’S INSANITY
reactionary and what is more an incoherent reactionary.
There was a stormy meeting at which his former political
friends called on him to resign his post and on his
refusal struck him out of the party. He had many
bitter things to hear. One man only amongst those
concerned really understood the situation, and this was
Schingareff. In his capacity as doctor and as a good
and charitable man he made an urgent appeal to
Protopopoff: " Listen to me, Protopopoff; you are ill,
very seriously ill. Give up all your occupations, go
home, put yourself into the hands of good doctors, go
into a nursing home if necessary, and come back to us
cured; you will be received by all of us with open
arms." This voice of a friend went, of course, unheeded,
and Russia endured the shame of possessing, for five
months and at a most critical hour, a Home Secretary
suffering from tabes and on the high-road to creeping
paralysis. The wretched man was completely off his
head when he was executed by the Bolsheviks after a
few months’ confinement in the Peter and Paul fortress.
Abroad people have often been surprised—in
Conservative circles especially—that the monarchical regime
and the good and honest Emperor himself, did not
find any supporters when the Revolution broke out;
that all Russia should in a few hours have sided with
the most Radical ideas, the most violent measures. I
myself, as I said above, have frequently and bitterly
criticised later on the chameleonism of the upper classes
of Russian society. But in pronouncing judgment
one ought to take the months immediately
preceding the revolution into consideration. The most
steadfast partisans of the monarchical regime, the
most devoted servants of the Sovereign were then
dominated by one feeling only, that of deep and bitter
humiliation. "Things cannot go on like this; in some
way or other this must end!" Such were the words
one heard on all sides.
Now if this was the state of mind in Russian
Conservative circles, what must the excitement have been
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