Robert William Seton-Watson

“ To the West, Russia is a perpetual source of mystery and of fascination, and this is above all because we see in her development a tremendous conflict between opposing ideas—in the words of Soloviev, between “two ideals which embrace the entire economy of the human species.” The process which first became noticeable under Peter the Great has reached its crisis to-day, and upon its outcome depends the fate not merely of Russia herself, but of the Western world as well. ”

“ That such a programme was irreconcilable with Polish national claims—resting as they do upon a stubborn insistence on Poland’s extreme historic limits and a negation of the modern idea of nationality—served as an index of future conflicts, but was immaterial at a moment when the Polish State was still a distant dream. But, with Russian nationalism in the uncompromising form which dominated society in the last decade of Tsarism the conflict was immediate and fundamental. ”

“ Surely the “divine despair” which has prompted all classes of the nation at this supreme moment, must command not merely our heartfelt sympathy, but also a calm optimism which not all the uncertainty of the future can quell.
Mr. Alexinsky is already well known by his earlier volumes on “Modern Europe” and “Russia and the Great War”; “Russia and Europe” should be carefully read by the growing thousands who are eager to understand Russia’a relations with the West and to play their part in strengthening them still further. ”

“ Many of its adherents even went so far in their fear of new ideas from Europe, as to insist on regarding Russia as an Asiatic power and to urge her to seek her objective there rather than in Europe. Incompetence bred corruption and increasing paralysis of the body politic, and occasional attempts to mark time proved even more impractical than “resignation to the boldest constitution.”
Mr. Alexinsky brings out the influence of Russia’s wars in transforming the internal situation. In the war of 1812 the soul of the nation as a whole seems to have stirred for the first time. ”

“ For a generation past the struggle between Pole and Ukrainian has grown in acuteness, and has centred in the demand for Ukrainian schools and university and for a democratic franchise as a weapon of national defence.
Meanwhile, in the Russian Ukraine the old historic traditions smouldered under extremely unfavourable circumstances. For a brief moment national feeling raised its head in 1846, and a brilliant little group of writers created the Guild of SS. Cyril and Methodius at Kiev to further the twin ideals of nationality and democracy. ”

“ So sang Ševčenko, and his songs became the watchword of a new era for his race and set in motion forces as elemental and irresistible as the mighty waters of his own Dniepr. Hatred followed him beyond the grave, and on the centenary of his death the Tsar’s soldiers held back with their bayonets the crowds which sought to pay their tribute at his tomb. But on the same day in Tarnopol and in Lvov thousands of peasants gathered in his honour and hailed him as the re-awakened soul of a great nation. ”

“ Never even in the history of national movements was there a more perverse example of a government kindling, by its stupid intolerance, centrifugal tendencies among a population which might easily have been appeased with a tithe of what it afterwards came to demand. ”

“ Alexinsky brings overwhelming proof of the influence exercised by western ideas upon almost every Russian writer and political thinker of the last two centuries. Perhaps the most extraordinary feature in the whole conflict of ideas is the fact that the strongest opposition to western ideas came from elements which were themselves alien in origin. Absolutist and reactionary ideas in Russia were positively strengthened by the so-called process of Europeanization—and this not merely under Elizabeth and Catherine, but later under Nicholas I. and his successors. ”

“ In the Crimean War “it was not the Russian Army which was conquered at Sevastopol, but rather the social and political system of the old autocratic Russia. A serf-owning country could not hold out against more civilised states.” In 1878 the diplomatic failure which followed upon military success reacted upon popular psychology and strengthened the rival currents of autocracy and nihilism. In 1905 the Japanese adventure, more than any previous war the product of Tsardom and its attendant satellites, precipitated the internal crisis and made a change of system sooner or later inevitable. ”

“ It is characteristic of our superficial reading of history that we have long tended to regard autocracy as the very kernel of things in Russia. And yet autocracy is no more natural to Russia than to France ”

“ But the territory inhabited by Ukrainians stretches far beyond this border country, and its inhabitants were commonly known as Little Russians, or in Austria as Ruthenes, until gradually “Ukrainian” has come to be accepted as the national name. To-day their numbers are estimated at some twenty to twenty-five millions on Russian soil, occupying Podolia, Volhynia, Kiev, and Cholm, and stretching far to the east of the Dniepr to the Sea of Azov and beyond; four millions in Eastern Galicia and Bukovina and half a million in the Carpathian districts of Hungary. ”

“ Austria found it well worth her while to buy the support of the Poles by what almost amounted to creating a Polish political monopoly in Galicia. The whole administration was Polonised, and in education and the courts the Ruthene language was subordinated to the Polish; while the most determined attempts were made to undermine that stronghold of Ukraine national feeling, the Uniate Church, and to introduce enclaves of Polish colonists among the Ukraine peasantry. ”

“ Of the 103 seats for Galicia, 78 were assigned to the Poles, and only 25 to the Ruthenes, whereas, on a basis of population the proportions should have been nearly equal. None the less, the breach had been effected, and henceforth the Ukrainian Club was a factor which could not be ignored. The Galician capital, Lvov (or Lemberg) became the centre of an acute racial struggle. Situated in territory which is overwhelmingly Ukrainian, the town itself is mainly Polish, with a large Jewish minority, but is none the less a focus of Ukraine national feeling. ”

“ Even after the first check under Stolypin this continued, as is best shown by the fact that the number of copies of Ukrainian books printed rose from 191,000 in 1909 to 600,000 in 1911. Numerous educational and patriotic societies came into being, notably the Prosvita of Kiev; while the Zemstva and the co-operative unions devoted themselves with special energy to the neglected cause of national education.
In the first Duma the Ukraine Club consisted of 40 deputies. In the sphere of social politics their desires centred upon the land, for which every real peasantry has always hungered. ”

“ Alexinsky’s book is devoted to copious extracts from the mandates addressed by their constituents to the deputies of the First Duma; and he is fully entitled to assert that “only a people that has arrived at a high pitch of self-consciousness could have produced such documents as these.” ”

“ In all the greatest Russians there has been a trait of universality, and it is perhaps something of an accident that Tolstoi should have been credited with a monopoly of such ideas. Pushkin, the most national of Russian poets, was always a convinced Westerner, and Mr. ”