Nicholas II reads Durnovo's memorandum (see
http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/history-the-durnovo-memorandum/ for a discussion):
"If the war ends in victory, the putting down of the Socialist movement will not offer any insurmountable
obstacles. There will be agrarian troubles, as a result of agitation for compensating the soldiers with
additional land allotments; there will be labor troubles during the transition from the probably increased
wages of war time to normal schedules; and this, it is to be hoped, will be all, so long as the wave of the
German social revolution has not reached us. But in the event of defeat, the possibility of which in a
struggle with a foe like Germany cannot be overlooked, social revolution in its most extreme form is
inevitable.
"As has already been said, the trouble will start with the blaming of the Government for all disasters. In
the legislative institutions a bitter campaign against the Government will begin, followed by
revolutionary agitations throughout the country, with Socialist slogans, capable of arousing and rallying
the masses, beginning with the division of the land and succeeded by a division of all valuables and
property. The defeated army, having lost its most dependable men, and carried away by the tide of
primitive peasant desire for land, will find itself too demoralized to serve as a bulwark of law and order.
The legislative institutions and the intellectual opposition parties, lacking real authority in the eyes of the
people, will be powerless to stem the popular tide, aroused by themselves, and Russia will be flung into
hopeless anarchy, the issue of which cannot be foreseen..."
http://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/evans/his242/Documents/Durnovo.pdf