Russian history

“ CONTENTS.
129 THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE. (Secret History of the Court and Government of Russia, under the Emperors Alexander and Nicholas. By H. SCHNITZLER. Two vols. Bentley: London.)
Russia is the most extraordinary country on the globe, in the four most important particulars of empire,—its history, its extent, its population, and its power.
It has for Europe another interest,—the interest of alarm, the evidence of an ambition which has existed for a hundred and fifty years, and has never paused; an increase of territory which has never suffered the slightest casualty of fortune ”

“ RUSSIAN philosophy of history, sociological analysis of the motive forces of evolution, and the attempt to grasp the laws that regulate the temporal succession of social phenomena, date from the time of Peter the Great, for they arose in connection with the reforms effected in his reign and in that of his successors. It is true that Russians have been without clear ideas concerning the existence of Russian philosophy of history and of philosophy of history in general. ”

“ The second Russia is that of the "Old Believers," of the fanatical haters of Europe's culture, civilization, and democracy. It is a truly mystic Russia, and its philosophy has never yet been adequately presented to the European or American reader.
There was a time, in the history of Russia's intellectual development, when some of the ablest exponents of Russian thought supported those conception of social and political inertness which usually go under the name of the Oriental philosophy of life. ”

“ 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? ”

“ It was the Princes, and their military and civil households; it was official Russia that was doing this. The people were still sowing and reaping, and sharing the fruit of their toil in common, unconscious as the cattle in their fields that a revolution was taking place, ready to be driven hither and thither, coerced by a power which they did not comprehend, their horizon bounded by the needs of the day and hour.
The elements constituting Russian society were the same in all the principalities. There was first the Prince. Then his official family, a band of warriors called the Drujina. ”

“ The internal history of Russia since the time of Peter the Great represents, in its international and domestic affairs, a continual struggle between the native population and German domination. Western civilization and culture were grafted upon Muscovite life by force and in fragments, instead of growing into it by the normal and peaceful influences of science, art, and commerce. ”

“ On a much greater scale than the expansion of France was the expansion of the already vast Russian Empire during this period. The history of Russia in the nineteenth century is made up of a series of alternations between a regime of comparative liberalism, when the interest of government and people was chiefly turned towards the west, and a regime of reaction, when the government endeavoured to pursue what was called a 'national' or purely Russian policy, and to exclude all Western influences. ”

“ Such, in brief, was the great conflict between the East and West, during which Moscow came into being as the supreme head, the living center and germ of Russian autocracy.
It seems to have been the extraordinary vitality of one family which twice changed the currents of national life: first drawing them from Kief to Suzdal, then from Suzdal toward Moscow, and there establishing a center of growth which has expanded into Russia as it exists to-day. ”

“ There has been no evolution of a Russian nation, but only of a vast governing system; and the words "Russian Empire" stand for a majestic world-power in which the mass of its people have no part. A splendidly embroidered robe of Europeanism is worn over a chaotic, undeveloped mass of semi-barbarism. The reasons for this incongruity—the natural obstacles with which Russia has had to contend ”

“ Unlike the English, who crawl cautiously along the rugged path of progress, looking attentively to the right and to the left, and seeking to avoid obstacles and circumvent opposition by conciliation and compromise, the Russian dashes boldly into the unknown, keeping his eye fixed on the distant goal and striving to follow a beeline, regardless of obstacles and pitfalls. ”

“ In no other modern nation have the life forces been so abnormal in their adjustment. And it is only because of the extraordinary quality of the Russian mind, because of its instinct for political power, and its genius for that instrument of power hitherto known as diplomacy—it is only because of these brilliant mental endowments that this chaotic mass of ethnic barbarism has been made to appear a fitting companion for her sister nations in the family of the Great Powers. ”

“ As for saying that the inhabitants of New Russia are nothing but Finns and Russified Turks, one might as well pretend that the 30,000,000 or 40,000,000 of North America are Red-skins who have learnt English and embraced Protestantism.
We must recognize that the Russian, almost as much as the Anglo-Saxon, has the instinct which drives men to emigrate and found colonies. The Russians do in the far East of Europe what the Anglo-Saxons do in the far West of America. ”

“ The Russian peasantry was an enormous force which was not utilized to its fullest extent. It included almost the entire rural population of Russia. The peasant was legally a freeman. He lived unchanged under the old Slavonic patriarchal system of Mirs, or communes, and Volosts. These were the largest political organizations of which he had personal cognizance. He knew nothing about Muscovite consolidation, nor oligarchy, nor autocracy. ”

“ A German by birth, a French-woman by intellectual tastes and tendencies—she was above all else a Russian, and bent all the resources of her powerful personality to the enlightenment and advancement of the land of her adoption. ”

“ The Russian Slavs were an agricultural, not a warlike, people. They fought bravely, but naked to the waist, and with no idea of military organization, so were of course no match for the Turks, well skilled in the arts of war, nor for the armed bands of Scandinavian merchants, who made their territory a highway by which to reach the Greek provinces. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every nationality in Russia has contributed to the intellectual wealth of the country, and it is in this blending of the whole country's thought that lies the glorious promise of a great Russia,—a promise that is bound to be fulfilled when the spirit of intellectual lethargy is conquered, and mystic Russia awakens from her slumber. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is, then, no easy thing to make a good history of Russia. It is no trifling enterprise to traverse this night of time, to compass, among so many contradictory and conflicting narrations, the discovery of truth. ”

“ Russia is, in itself, a land of contradictions. The proverb, that extremes meet, might have originated there. The Russian empire is too large and diversified to be characterised by a single epithet. It includes a larger number of distinct races blended together than any other country in the world: it is the home of almost unnumbered tribes, bound together by the tie of a common government, but separated from each other in every other respect. There you may see, in one nation, all the grades of civilisation, from the most primitive barbarism to the highest refinement. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 am expecting great things from Russia, and for us through Russia, for civilization and for God, and what I have written is being ever more and more widely felt by others also, and even expressed in daily papers, where at one time we should not have expected such a thing to be thought of in the midst of a great war. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If some of us are right in thinking of the Russians as a great race with a vast country of tremendous resources; who can in any way picture the great and wonderful possibilities of their future? It will be my task to try and show how little opportunity they have had as yet of getting their share of modern civilization, how imperfectly, as yet, the ethical side of their religion has been imparted to them ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of course, to know Russia means to learn something more about her than merely her economic life. In Russia's peculiar civilization there are numberless traits of extreme interest and highest fascination. ”

“ That Russia will live which has already renounced passive submission to another will and to the past, which will go to the West, accept its great experience, its forms of life, and which will live attentively following its work, revering its active Aryan culture which has set as its aim the unification of all mankind in one family. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is conflict, there is movement, there is progress, there is disappointment, there is hope, there is tragedy. In the vast process that is Russia, we find as it were cosmical forces at work, tremendous cosmical forces of good and evil, on a scale that we in our quieter empire are hardly able to realise. ”

“ Let us think of Russia with her bigness, her space, her consciousness of unity, and of the large thing, and remember we have all the possibilities of health and splendour that the Russians have if we will only face our problems and do the things which are obvious to all except to those who fight in the political arena for fighting’s sake.
To recapitulate:
(1) Russia has at least double the white population in her Empire that we have in ours. Why should we not take steps to transplant from over-crowded Britain to the less crowded parts of the Empire, and so get better families? ”

“ Looking back upon the past to the days of Ivan the Terrible and Queen Elizabeth, and reviewing the situation in the Russian Empire to-day, and, above all, looking forward to our immediate future, it seems to me that our countrymen in Russia have had a real mission to fulfil, and have done it worthily and well. ”

“ Therefore, if we go to the root of this matter, it comes to this: that the Russians are more broadly and widely human than the people of other European or Eastern countries, and, being more human, their capacity of understanding is greater, for their extraordinary quickness of apprehension comes from the heart rather than from the head. ”

“ One is the Russia of the sturdy, enterprising classes, of the progressive elements in every walk of life, fully alive to the opportunities of modern civilization; the Russia of the "intellectuals," of the enthusiastic and productive Zemstvo-workers in the field of education and social amelioration, school reform, co-operative movements, workingmen's and peasants' organizations. This Russia is revealed to us through the her rapid industrial growth, through her whole political and social development. ”

“ The world is now too busy to read voluminous history. The interminable details of battles, and the petty intrigues of courtiers and mistresses, have lost their interest. In this volume it has been our object to trace perspicuously the path which Russia has trod from earliest infancy to the present hour. The career of this empire has been so wild and wonderful that the historian can have no occasion to call in the aid of fancy for the embellishment of his narrative. ”