Vaishnavism

“ The Revolution in Sweden is, however, in one respect pre-eminent among the great crises known to history. Never was a revolution so thoroughly the work of a single man as that in Sweden. From beginning to end there was one figure whose presence alone infused life into a lukewarm people, and who, working upon the forces which had been forged by years of tyranny, shaped them gradually to his own commanding will. The Revolution in Sweden is the history of Gustavus Vasa. ”

“ One moment the peasantry were all in arms, burning to avenge their wrongs, and the next moment, just on the eve of victory, they scattered, each satisfied with promises that his wrongs would be redressed and willing to let other persons redress their own. What was needed above all else was a feeling of national unity and strength; and it was this feeling that from the very outset the young Gustavus sought to instil in the minds of the Swedish people. ”

“ Nevertheless, Vanzetti was as harsh in his judgments of the new Russia as he was of the old America. To his mind all governments were oppressive, whether they ruled in the name of proletariat, king, or constitution. His frequently expressed disbelief in the progress of the Russian Revolution, his contrary belief that “the Bolsheviki leaders’ dictatorship is an increased perfectioned exploitation of the proletariat,” constantly embarrassed the editors of the Daily Worker and the Labor Defender. ”

“ There was no rule—no rule laid down, at all events—for the recruiting of this double set of State servants. The Sovereign chose whom he would. Yet, practically, his choice was limited by the difficulty of finding, outside a certain social class, men fit to do the work. The Moscow policy strove to widen these borders and take in fresh blood, drawn from every class of society, even the humblest. These democratic tendencies were checked by the lack of sufficient intellectual development. ”

“ The Buddhist Mongol from Manchuria can carry a message to the far-off temples of the Himalayas, without cable tolls or cable censors.
Russia aflame with Bolshevism startled us. The propaganda had been going on a long time before we considered it a serious menace, because we did not believe that so many people could be trained to such absurd ideas by absurd promises. We did not understand the possibilities for united destruction in a vast, ignorant and subject people. We must understand Asia—or our children’s children will wash the pots in Asiatic sculleries. ”

“ The Vaishya is always in fear lest the Brahmin swindles him out of this, his only possession, and lest the Kshatriya usurps it by virtue of his superior strength of arms. For self-preservation, the Vaishyas as a body are, therefore, of one mind. The Vaishya commands the money; the exorbitant interest that he can exact for its use by others, as with a lash in his hand, is his powerful weapon which strikes terror in the heart of all. By the power of his money, he is always busy curbing the royal power. ”

“ But he did not lay that foundation of public liberty which the blood poured out by the Swedish people merited. Of all nations on the face of the globe none are more fitted by temperament for a republican form of government than the Swedes. They are calm, they are thoughtful, they are economical, and above all else, they are imbued with an ardent love of liberty. It is hard, therefore, to repress the wish that Gustavus Vasa had been allowed, at the diet of Vesterås, to lay aside the crown, and that in his place a leader had been chosen to carry on the good work on the lines already drawn. ”

“ The raising of Vasantasenā to a new status is an extraordinary event, which is dependent on an action of the new king Āryaka, who, as an overthrower of the former monarch, exercises the supreme right of sovereignty in favour of the lady, in defiance of the rules of caste. The political intrigue thus becomes a vital element in the play. ”

“ The Hindu type of mind may be easily recognized in the Slavonic intellectual type. By studying the revolutions of India one could easily understand possible convulsions in Russia. The most able authors state the Buddhist revolution to have arisen from a social rather than a religious reaction of the popular sentiment against the spirit of caste, against the fixed organizations of society. ”

“ Into this State must come the Chinese, Mongols, Tibetans, Afghans, the Mongol tribes of Turkestan, Tartars, Buriats, Kirghiz and Kalmucks. This State must be strong, physically and morally, and must erect a barrier against revolution and carefully preserve its own spirit, philosophy and individual policy. If humanity, mad and corrupted, continues to threaten the Divine Spirit in mankind, to spread blood and to obstruct moral development, the Asiatic State must terminate this movement decisively and establish a permanent, firm peace. ”

“ Sweden was impoverished, commerce was at a standstill, education had been neglected, and the dominions for which his people had poured out their blood during many years were lost almost in a single day. His career shows, if it shows anything, that prosperity is incompatible [Pg 221] with war. No man can serve two masters. So long as nations are in active and continued warfare, they cannot enjoy the blessings or even the comforts that belong to them in time of peace.
A like argument may be drawn from the reign of Gustavus Vasa. The early years of the Swedish Revolution were marked by bloodshed. ”

“ The three first deal with creation and events anterior to man’s appearance on earth. In this respect the Vaishnava list differs from the other two.{39} They only record the existence of men who attained greatness by the practice of virtue, and immortality by teaching the ways of God to man. The Vaishnavas brought God to earth, to mix and interfere in mundane affairs in a manner that neither the Aryan nor the Buddhist ever dreamt of, and so degraded the purer religion of India into the monstrous system of idolatry that now prevails in that country. ”

“ Black indeed were the clouds now gathering over the head of Sweden. Even the liberty-loving province of Dalarne had refused to strike a blow for freedom. Soon, it seemed, the whole of Sweden would be groaning under the burden of a foreign despotism. Yet such an issue was by the design of Providence to be averted. But a few days after the flight of Gustavus out of Mora news arrived that Christiern was preparing a journey through the land, and had ordered a gallows to be raised in every province. Rumor was rife, too, with new taxes soon to be imposed. ”

“ Their first and weightiest complaint was that certain rich men, stewards of the king, had bought up all the grain in their district, and had made a corner in it so that the poor man could not get enough to eat. Further than this, they protested against the king's practice of admitting into the kingdom all sorts of foreigners, "who have put their heads together to ruin the common people." This vehement lament aroused Gustavus to the gravity of his position, particularly as he learned that Sunnanväder was inciting the people to rebel. ”

“ Father is very proud of his ancient noble race, but right is right, and justice is justice. We wish to equal the Europeans in education and enlightenment, and the rights which we demand for ourselves, we must also give to others. This putting of stumbling blocks in the way of the education of the people, may well be compared to the acts of the Tsar, who while he is preaching peace to the world, tramples under foot the good right of his own subjects. Measure with two measures, no! The Europeans are troubled by many traits in the Javanese, by their indifference and lack of initiative. ”

“ They, of course, did not understand a single word of Ivan Vassilievitsch's speech.
"'Alas, for Young Russia!' Ivan dolefully remarks in another place:
"I thought to study life in the provinces: there is no life in the provinces; every one there is said to be of the same cut. Life in the capitals is not a Russian life, but a weak imitation of the petty perfections and gross vices of modern civilization. Where am I then to find Russia? ”

“ In 1493 war broke out again with Russia, and Hans resolved to seize this opportunity to make good his claims in Sweden. He opened negotiations once more with the disaffected members of the Cabinet, still hoping to make compromise with Sture; they hesitated, they promised, and then made new demands; and it was in the midst of this elaborate trifling, while the regent was in Finland conducting the Russian war, that Gustavus Vasa was born at Lindholm.
Affairs in Sweden were now fast coming to a crisis. The fitful struggle of a century had at last assumed a definite and unmistakable direction. ”

“ Vassili, not knowing the plot which his enemies were weaving, went on a pilgrimage to the Troitski monastery, with Ivan and Yuri, his two little sons. His attendants were a few intimate boyars, and a small number of servants. Shemyaká and Ivan rushed with all haste to Moscow and took possession of the city at night, through the help of confederates, who opened the gates to them. The Grand Prince’s mother, Sophia, and his wife were both captured; the treasury was pillaged; boyars faithful to Vassili were made prisoners and their property taken; wealthy citizens were robbed without ceremony. ”

“ Above all, however, any toleration would undermine the three pillars upon which alone his conception of the Russian empire can rest—autocracy, orthodoxy, and Russianism. For the preservation of this Asiatic, uniform, absolutist régime, or, better, of the omnipotence of hierarchy, it is above all necessary to keep the people in absolute subjection. This, again, is possible only when every chance of learning anything else than their own condition is closed to them. ”

“ The Sovereign had fresh companions—not even the comrades who had shared his perils and his triumphs, but beaten men, captives, rooted up from their own soil. Further, the whole aristocracy in the heart of this North-Eastern Russia, even that which had remained on its hereditary domains, lacked any sufficient consistency. ”

“ The questions of labour and rating were the only ones which played a decisive part in the matter, and prepared the birth of the monster called Kriépostnoïé pravo, the law of serfdom. One slavery involved another, and the 'service man,' shut up in his iron cage, forced it on the peasant, soon to be followed by the merchant and even the Churchman. We have seen that there was no distinction, in this country, between the urban and the rural populations. Here, again, is an abyss which parts the Russia of the sixteenth century from the rest of Europe. ”

“ The Hansa had other views, and the Scandinavian Powers had not the remotest intention of playing Poland's game. As soon as Derpt had fallen, the nobility of Revel had appealed to the King of Sweden. Gustavus Vasa, a dying man, remembered the humiliation imposed on him when Livonia had stolen away and left him to accept the peace of 1557, which the Tsar had refused to negotiate in person. ”

“ His political ideal was a nation containing only one nationality, one language, one religion and one form of administration; and he did his utmost to prepare for the realization of this ideal by imposing the Russian language and Russian schools on his German, Polish and Finnish subjects, by fostering Eastern Orthodoxy at the expense of other confessions, by persecuting the Jews and by destroying the remnants of German, Polish and Swedish institutions in the outlying provinces. In the other provinces he sought to counteract what he considered the excessive liberalism of his father’s reign. ”

“ To impress them with an idea of the vast population and wealth of Russia, and of the glory and power of the sovereign, Vassili ordered, on the day of presentation, that all the ordinary avocations of life should cease, and the citizens, clothed in their richest dresses, were to crowd around the walls of the Kremlin. All the young nobles in the vicinity, with their retinues, were summoned. The troops were under arms, and the most distinguished officers, glittering in the panoply of war, rode to meet the envoys. ”

“ And this can only be realized in a state of liberty and moral and social equality, free from all the obstacles which subordination, rank and riches throw in the way of man. "Our secret association," wrote Weishaupt, "works in a way that nothing can withstand it, and man shall soon be free and happy." ”

“ This was on the 27th of May, four days before the landing of Gustavus Vasa on the Swedish coast. [44]
The arrival of Gustavus Vasa marks an epoch in the history of Sweden. It is the starting-point of one of the most brilliant and successful revolutions that the world has ever known. Other political upheavals have worked quite as great results, and in less time. But rarely if ever has a radical change in a nation's development been so unmistakably the work of a single hand,—and that, too, the hand of a mere youth of four-and-twenty. ”

“ If the triumph of Bolshevism would mean barbarism in the West, in the East it would spell downright savagery. The sudden release of the ignorant, brutal Oriental masses from their traditional restraints of religion and custom, and the submergence of the relatively small upper and middle classes by the flood of social revolution would mean the destruction of all Oriental civilization and culture, and a plunge into an abyss of anarchy from which the East could emerge only after generations, perhaps centuries. ”

“ Ethnic cleansing has many faces, brutality is not its integrated feature.
The Wilsonian ideal of self-determination is rarely feasible or possible – though, when it is, it is far superior to any other resolution of intractable ethnic conflicts. It does tend to produce political and economic stillborns, though. Ultimately, these offspring of noble principle merge again with their erstwhile foes within customs unions, free trade agreements, currency unions. ”