Day of Terror in the Czar's Capital, by Ari Sclar

“Where was the Tsar yesterday?His children had come to seek him – him, the Father of his people – to tell him their wrongs and to crave his paternal help.They believed in their Tsar, did these simply folk, they believed him to be a good, kindly man, with a wife and babes of his own…They were mistaken – woefully, terribly mistaken.The Tsar, where was he? On such a day, if ever, it was the duty of the Russian Autocrat to prove himself a man and a Monarch – every inch a King.Nicholas II has not done that, and by his failure he has dealt a more serious blow to the principle of Tsardom than all the revolutionaries in Russia have yet dealt it.”

- “Day of Terror in the Czar’s Capital,” , January 23, 1905

1. What event is depicted in the above passage?

1. What is the point of the view of the passage?

1. A student is writing a paper with the thesis “The February/March revolution in 1917 was a spontaneous popular uprising that caught the Russian government by surprise.” Would this news article be useful primary source evidence in that paper? Explain