European Russia

“ The movement goes on, and it is not primarily due to the density of population in European Russia. All Russia, excepting the few industrial regions, is under rather than over-populated. There is plenty of room. Why, then, should Russia increase? or why not? Russia has access to the empty heart of Asia. The old world is hollow at the core, and Russia has access to that great, wide hollowness, stands at the door of it and stares into the great emptiness. Then her people are wanderers; they have the wandering spirit. ”

“ That Europe had to be thankful to you that you so quickly had perceived the great future for Russia in the cultivation of Asia and in the Defense of the Cross and the old Christian European culture against the inroads of the Mongols and Buddhism, that it was natural that if Russia was engaged in this tremendous work you wished to have Europe quiet and your back free ”

“ Russia was so far Europeanised and since the days of Peter had been so closely involved in the European system of states, that after the end of the eighteenth century European influence became extremely potent in Russia, and all the more potent because Russia, through her internal development, had to encounter the same difficulties and to solve the same problems as Europe. ”

“ Massive unbroken extent by land is its leading character. And as this character extends to a large part of European Russia also, Russia is the only European land where there can be any doubt where Europe ends. The barbarian dominion of other European{523} states, a dominion beyond the sea, has been a dominion of choice. The barbarian dominion of Russia in lands adjoining her European territory is a dominion forced on her by geographical necessity. ”

“ In the eighteenth century, however, Russia began to take an increasingly important part in European affairs, and it is now a great force in the politics of the world. The realms of the Tsar which lie in Europe exceed in extent those of all the other rulers of the continent put together, and yet they are scarcely more than a quarter of his whole dominion, which embraces northern and central Asia, and forms together an empire occupying toward three times the area of the United States.
Movements of the Slavs during the period of the German invasions. ”

“ In home affairs Europeanisation was promoted by, the further annexation of European territories. Poland was European, was Catholic, so that the contrast between Europe and Russia was transported into Russia, was incorporated into Russian absolutist administration. This, too, was merely a reinforcement of a previous trend, for heretofore the Lutheran Baltic provinces had already supplied higher officials, soldiers, and politicians tinctured by European culture. ”

“ Our age has ceased to produce those strong, complete natures; but last century evoked them everywhere, even in countries where they were not needed and where their development was bound to be distorted. In Russia, men who were exposed to the influence of this powerful European current, did not make history, but they became unlike other men. Foreigners at home and foreigners abroad, spoilt for Russia by European prejudices and for Europe by Russian habits, they were a living contradiction in terms and sank into an artificial life of sensual enjoyment and monstrous egoism. ”

“ To account for this fact, we must remember the immense force of tradition and custom among a simple rural folk, also that very many Russians sincerely believe that their institutions and their national creed were destined to regenerate Europe. See, they said in effect, Western Europe oscillates between papal control and free thought; its industries, with their laissez faire methods, raise the few to enormous wealth and crush the [pg 307] many into a new serfdom worse than the old. For all these evils Russia has a cure; her autocracy saves her from the profitless wrangling of Parliaments ”

“ European Russia, with her yearly excess of from one million and a half to two million births over deaths, with the development of her industries and the formation of important commercial centres, progressed very rapidly and was about to become the pivot of European politics. ”

“ Moving silently and irresistibly toward the East, and guided by a subtle and far-reaching policy, who can foresee what will be the end, and what the ultimate destiny of the Empire which had its beginning in a small Slavonic State upon the Dnieper, and which, until a little more than a century ago, was too much of a barbarian to be admitted into the fraternity of European States.
The farthest removed from us in political ideals, Russia has in the various crises in our national life always been America's truest friend. ”

“ And now he discloses how Russia has ‘Europeanized herself’ and sums up the effects of European influences on the great Slav empire, past and present. ... We read that it is through the foreigner’s money and his novel forms of exploitation that the old state of things in Russia has been subject to a profound upheaval. Coming to the present war, the author says that all the democrats in Russia recognize in it the cause of liberty, external and internal. They see in the fraternity of Russia and the western nations a force tending to democratize and Europeanize their country. ”

“ There was a national instinct which impelled Russia eastward. Twice had Europe been invaded by Asiatic hordes, and, owing to its position, Russia was doomed to bear the brunt of the onset. Russia's history points out a ceaseless desire to be a European nation, to share with Europe its progress and its burdens. It is within a few years that the heir to the throne first visited the extensive Asiatic dominions. No czar had ever put foot in them. Until the reign of Nicholas I (1825-1855) , the Russian Empire spread eastward much as the United States expanded westward, by individual effort. ”

“ Hence, European learning involuntarily sees all that exists and is coming into existence in Russia thru the spectacles put on it by official Russia. The same official Russia comes to meet the European traveler upon every step of his journey, and guides him in such a way that he may be sure not to see below the general official Russian varnish what is actual and true. ”

“ Russia lowers across Europe from the east, patiently waiting, and not fearing central European alliance, confident some day, by natural expansion, of overshadowing all eastern Europe, and gathering at will and in its own good time all the Slavonic people under its suzerain guardianship. ”

“ I have numbered among my personal acquaintances several Russians who, burning with curiosity and eagerness, came to Europe as to the promised land, and yet hardly had they become settled there when they began to feel that European life was too uniform, too bourgeois, too orderly and philistine too monotonously grey. ”

“ Force of will has been long accumulating there, and is now in threatening manner awaiting its release. Russia is the one power that has durability in its body, that can still promise something—Russia the antithesis of the pitiable European system of small states and nervosity, which with the founding of the German Empire has passed into a critical state. ”

“ The European dominions of the Tsar are an unbroken plain. They contain no mountain fastnesses serving as a refuge for inferior races, and were thus fit arenas for a struggle for existence in which the most vigorous stem of the human family was sure to survive and to expand. And then, Russia lay on the highway of commerce between the East and West. The silks, spices, and sugar of China traversed her plains on their passage to mediæval cities, and the growth of local trade was fostered by the 35,000 miles of navigable river which the empire possesses. ”

“ At any rate, although suffering from an excessively centralized government and a form of constitution which did not allow the development of popular energies nor a sufficient education of the people, Russia was perhaps, half a century before the War, the European country which, considering the difficulties in her path, had accomplished most progress. ”

“ Apart from the initial handicap of having to fight on the defensive because of the comparative slowness of her mobilisation, Russia is the most advantageously situated of all European Powers for war on the grand scale. Britain is dependent on her command of the sea for her food and trade; the existence of both France and Germany more or less depend on supplies from the outer world. But Russia is self-contained. Her vast “lump” of empire can supply all her needs, from food and trade to an unlimited store of first-class fighting material. ”

“ And Russia is as heterogeneous in condition as it is in elements. It has accepted ready-made the methods of Greek, of Tatar, and of European; but has assimilated none of them; and Russian civilization, with its amazing quality, its bewildering variety of achievement in art, literature, diplomacy, and in every field, is not a natural development, but a monstrosity. The genius intended for a whole people seems to have been crowded into a few narrow channels. Where have men written with such tragic intensity? ”

“ I consider that the Russian philosopher of history has every reason to urge upon his nation that the situation is serious, the task difficult; but he has no occasion to doubt or to despair of the future.
§ 215.
EUROPE feels a lively interest in Russia and in the destiny of that country, as we can learn, not only from the daily press, but also from the numerous books written about Russia and from the attention paid to Russian literature.
For the nonce political interest predominates. European theocracy looks upon Russia as a natural ally. ”

“ Russia, however, could hardly then be called a modern state, for the political and social life still smacked of Asia rather than of Europe, and the Russian Christianity, having been derived from Constantinople, differed from the Christianity of western Europe. Russia was not to appear as a conspicuous European state until the eighteenth century. ”

“ We are told little of all that Russia has done for Christian civilization, through her victory over the Tartars, for European political freedom, through her victory over Napoleon, for the emancipation of small nationalities through her victories over the Turks. ”

“ Any sort of union among the nations of Europe appears impossible if it is meant to include Russia. Russia represents eastern mentality, which implies an unadmissible spirit of aggression and of conquest. It seems to be a law of nature on the old Continent that eastern nations should wish to expand to the west as long as they are powerful. Not to mention the great migration of nations which gave birth to mediaeval organizations, you may follow this law in the history of the Tartars, of the Turks, and of Russia herself. ”

“ Although by far the greater part of her dominions lies in another continent, Russia has had a pretty large finger in the European pie, and will in the future, no doubt, often mix herself up in European politics. ”

“ But other and stranger influences were at work compelling that people to act for itself; these are to be found in the perverse conduct of Alexander III. and of his agents. The policy of Russia towards Bulgaria may be characterised by a remark made by Sir Robert Morier to Sir M. Grant Duff in 1888: "Russia is a great bicephalic creature, having one head European, and the other Asiatic, but with the persistent habit of turning its European face to the East, and its Asiatic face to the West [220] ." ”

“ In Russia the intelligentsia participated in all these European endeavours, the slavophils, and the westernisers no less, taking the side of those who demanded a return to the past. From Rousseau, Herder, and many of the philosophers of history, above all from those of socialistic views, they learned that civilisation, that Europe, that the west, was falling into decay. ”

“ The European, one who lives in the present, has the current of his thought involuntarily directed towards the future, and anticipates the conclusions that will follow from the given historic premises. But in Russia he finds himself back in the past, often in the middle ages, finds himself in a life utterly different from that of the modern and progressive west. ”

“ Of all the European states, Russia is alike economically and socially the most predominantly agricultural, and we have to note in this connection the peculiar characteristics of Russian agriculture, which on the whole, and above all in the remoter areas, is still in an extremely primitive condition. It is natural that the great concern of Russia, the chief concern alike of the government and of the political parties, should be the peasant and his destiny. ”

“ Then again, most of the nationalities of the Empire are very largely led by Russian civilisation. They get their knowledge of modern European civilisation through Russian channels. The civilised values that they handle are derived very largely from Russian sources, are very often direct translations from the Russian. And this powerful combination of physical and moral factors in a very curious and subtle way binds these nationalities together in spite of their great divergencies, and in spite of features of Russian administration that very often arouse irritation, indignation, and protest. ”

“ Constitutional Russia, precisely because of the radical internal transformation which it has experienced in the period that began with the Japanese war, has proved to be fully equal to the immense universal and national task that has devolved upon it. The national and political consciousness of Russia not only has not weakened, but has wonderfully strengthened and taken shape. ”