Russia

“ In the very soul of Russia the mystery is stirring; here the restlessness, the eagerness, the disappointment, the vision of the pursuit is working; and some who are outside her gates she has drawn into that same search. ”

“ John. “I gave my heart to Russia. She is a woman. Behind her eyes are forests of pines and unexplored darkness; in her hand she carries blossoms. She is the mother of nations.” “How do you feel Russia?” ”

“ In the bustle of a custom-house, charged with fretfulness and impatience and meanness, Russia sets forth her belief in a life beyond the grave and her conviction that the ideals presented by the picture are the noblest known to mankind. ”

“ Russia, alone, remains absolute in name, but the absolute has been shattered even there—it is supported only by bayonets and drawn swords. Every now and then a sullen sound is heard, dying away to be renewed in deeper tones ”

“ The social condition of Russia is like a tideless sea, whose sullen quiescence is broken from time to time by terrific storms which spend themselves in unavailing fury. Reaction follows upon every forward motion, and the advance made by each succeeding generation is barely perceptible. ”

“ Her mind seemed incapable of exhaustion, and notwithstanding the number of her successive favorites, with whom she entered into the most guilty connections, no monarch ever reigned with more dignity or with a more undisputed sway. Under her reign, notwithstanding the desolating wars, Russia made rapid advances in power and civilization. She protected commerce, excited industry, cultivated the arts, encouraged learning, promoted manufactures, founded cities, dug canals, and developed in a thousand ways the wealth and resources of the country. ”

“ In this strange adventure of spiritual discovery, in the great march of these manifold groups of men into the unseen future, I believe that all the nationalities of the Russian Empire will combine as a choir of many voices with many wonderful instruments, to sing a joyful song of conquest over the mystery which surrounds us all. ”

“ I shall confine myself rather to the greater and nobler objects of your attention, horses and dogs, my favourites in the brute creation; also to foxes, wolves, and bears, with which, and game in general, Russia abounds more than any other part of the world; and to such sports, manly exercises, and feats of gallantry and activity, as show the gentleman better than musty Greek or Latin, or all the perfume, finery, and capers of French wits or petit-maîres. ”

“ One wrote: "The heart trembles with joy. Russia is like a stranded ship which the captain and the crew are powerless to move; now there is to be a rising tide of national life which will raise and float it."
Such was the prevailing public sentiment in 1861, when Emperor Alexander affixed his name to the measure which was going to make it forever glorious—the emancipation of over twenty-three million human beings from serfdom. ”

“ A Russian feels himself at home everywhere within Russia; and, in a political sense, this rambling disposition of the people, and the close intercourse between the inhabitants of the various provinces to which it leads, contributes to knit a closer bond of union between the people, and to arouse and maintain a national policy and a patriotic love of country. ”

“ This new and energetic and growing Russia, that was for the first time conscious of her great power and her great resources, that threw itself as a people heart and soul into the work of civilisation, had around it a great variety of nationalities, and it is a very remarkable thing that during the nineteenth century in Russia there was not only a very great and very brilliant Russian national movement, but several other national movements were either revived or began their work on the territory of the Russian Empire. ”

“ Russia was known by those who knew it best to have been always in fact democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the intimate relationships of her people that spoke for their natural instinct, their habitual attitude toward life. ”

“ All Russia seems but one vast monument of his genius. He gave her six new provinces, a footing upon two seas, a regular army trained on the European system, a large fleet, an admiralty, and a naval academy; besides these, some educational establishments, a gallery of painting and sculpture, and a public library. Nothing escaped his notice, even to such minutiæ as the alteration of Russian letters to make them more adapted to printing, and changing the dress of his subjects so as to be more in conformity with European costume. ”

“ Ah, my friends, if these men had but sought first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; if the great wealth, and the wonderful industry and prudence of Russia had been but spent in doing justly, and loving mercy, what a rich and honourable country of brave and industrious Christian men might Russia be ”

“ There have been changes in holy Russia--many great and amazing changes consequent upon war and its disasters. Russia is no longer the great power that she once was supposed to be. Many events that have startled the world have occurred since that day when I first enfolded my silent love within my arms. ”

“ Perhaps the reader may feel nothing as he reads, but all who know and love Russia, and are stirred by thoughts of its life and people will feel that it was abundantly worth while to write down such a simple incident. They will understand and feel that stirring within, which Russia never fails to achieve again and again for those who have once lived and moved amongst her peasantry, and come under her strange spell and felt her charm. ”

“ Russia is in fact 145 million peasants—ploughing and praying. And here once again one is reminded of the Middle Ages. Cross the Russian frontier and you enter the mediaeval world. Miracles are believed in, holy men are revered as saints, thousands of pilgrims journey on foot every year to Jerusalem, which is to every true believer the centre of the universe and therefore becomes at Easter almost a Russian city. Russia is the most Christian country in the world, and her people are the most Christ-like. ”

“ Russia is not a nation, but a bewildering conglomerate of nations, speaking every language—Polish, Finnish, Roumanian, Swedish, German—professing every form of religion—Pagan, Buddhist, Mahometan, Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic—with every degree of civilization, from the nomadic semi-savage tribes of the Steppes to the progressive Finns, with their Parliament of women and their universal popular education. ”

“ The youngest among the civilizations, and herself still only partially civilized, Russia is one of the most—if not the most—important factor in the world-problem to-day, and the one with which the future seems most seriously involved. ”

“ Russia shows us the curious spectacle of a race that is credited with the possession of high qualities, that has not been outrageously ill-treated in the immediate past, and that is only slightly inferior in concrete civilisation to its rulers, increasing so rapidly as to be thought a danger to the Empire. ”

“ Russia is one huge process of evolution, in which all these various nationalities play a very important and very hopeful part. We hardly realise, I think, that Russia is only beginning to be. Russia has been forming. Russia has during the centuries of her long struggle on the great plain been gathering together the materials for a great existence, for some great new experiment in human life in this world of ours. ”

“ Our knowledge of Russia has been gained from two sources—histories and books on government telling us of official and court life, and the Russian novelists. One class of writer deals with a few exalted personages, the other class tells us of the common people. Really, there is no history of Russia, for such history as we have concerns the figures of the Imperial dynasties and their satellites. ”

“ No foreign influence shall exist in Russia under any form whatever. To maintain this position the Russians have sacrificed more than any people in Europe; and in many senses they have accomplished more. ”

“ Visitors to Moscow in Lent are seldom shown this really interesting sight, much more humanly interesting than the Kremlin, the churches and museums. For Russia can boast of very little antiquity in her civilisation or her buildings. Much more interesting than her little past is her present.
At the fair all is Russian—even the oranges and lemons come from the groves of South Russia and the Caucasus. One gets another glimpse of the Russian 107harmony, the harmony of which the winter, the forests, the church, the peasants, the beggars are integral parts. ”

“ Perhaps I am mistaken, but my impression is that a great many Americans think of Russia as an enormous, limitless field covered with eternal snow and ice, deserted, almost uninhabited, where severe Winter reigns all the time and where people can live only when dressed in heavy overcoats made of bear fur. ”

“ 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? ”

“ From Rurik to Nicholas III. the policy of Russia has been determined by its thirst for the sea. Every great struggle in the life of this colossal land-locked empire has had for its ultimate object the opening of a door to the ocean, from which nature has ingeniously excluded it. ”

“ Various are the opinions entertained respecting the origin of the name of Russia. Some maintain that it is derived from one Russus, a prince of the Poles, and brother or nephew of Lech, as though he himself had been a prince of the Russians. Others again derive it from a certain very ancient town, named Russum, [1] not far from Great Novogorod. Some also derive it from the dark colour of the people; and some think that, by a change in the word, Russia has received its designation from Roxolania. ”

“ In the opinion of the average Englishman, Russia is identified with reaction. The Russian moujik we are told is a clumsy, unwieldy giant, who is only beginning to stretch his limbs. Russia moves as slowly as her own rivers, so sluggish that it is almost impossible to tell in which direction the currents move. ”

“ From these rude, scattered and discordant populations, the empire of Russia quite suddenly sprang into being. Its birth was one of the most extraordinary events history has transmitted to us. We have seen that the Normans, dwelling along the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic, and visiting the most distant coasts with their commercial and predatory fleets, had attained a degree of power, intelligence and culture, which gave them a decided preëminence over the tribes who were scattered over the wilds of central Russia. ”

“ The Russians took possession of the city, prosecuted the war vigorously through the summer, and the tzar, on the 20th of October, which was his birthday, received the gratifying intelligence that every foe was quelled, and that the Russian government was firmly established on the shores of the Caspian. Well might Russia now be proud of its territorial greatness. The opening of these new realms encouraged commerce, promoted wealth, and developed to an extraordinary degree the resources of the empire. ”

“ Doubtless this city is more favored by nature for commerce, for safety, and for dominion, than any other spot on the face of the earth; and we cannot wonder that Russia should cast greedy eyes upon it as one of the centres of its rapidly increasing Empire. ”

“ Russia is not to-day what she was half a century ago. She has developed enough to know her strength and power, and her soldiers are probably the finest in Europe—because the most practical and physically enduring. ”

“ Russia, and certainly a very much more active one. There remains Russia, with its enormous population and its astonishingly extensive territory. Russia has ample room for ten times her present population, and she has it at her back door, as it were. She has no oceans to cross. The railway goes all the way or can go all the way from Petrograd to the uttermost ends of her earth. She has also calm, and can develop without worry. As an empire, compared with ours, she has tremendous advantages. ”

“ Russia is ethnologically a unique state. I speak of European Russia; the British Empire of course contains in its various trans-oceanic dominions and colonies many more nations and fragments of nations and races, but Great Britain is in the main English, whereas Continental Russia, though the Russians are in an overwhelming majority, contains many nations, of which several are numerous, and moreover nations which possess their own culture and traditions. ”

“ During the nineteenth century Russia became a very active participant in western civilisation, and there was an extraordinary development of civilisation in Russia, expressing itself in a very great variety of ways, in literature, in art, in economic and social life and in the development of political forms. ”

“ The Russians alone number about 110 millions, and these millions occupy a vast country reaching from the snows of the far North, to lands where the orange-trees bloom all the year round. The Russian holds that his dear “little mother Russia” is the most beautiful land of all the earth. ”

“ In Russia, Nature has been less prodigal in her gifts; and the real interest of the country centres in its public institutions, the religious observances of the people, and the progress of civilization under a despotic system of government. Of these I have endeavored to give you such impressions as may be derived from a sojourn of a few weeks in Moscow and St. Petersburg—necessarily imperfect and superficial, but I trust not altogether destitute of amusing features. ”