The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Slav NationsThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Slav NationsAuthor: Srdan TucicTranslator: Fanny S. CopelandRelease date: March 12, 2017 [eBook #54348]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: E-text prepared by Brian Coe, Turgut Dincer, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SLAV NATIONS ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The Slav NationsAuthor: Srdan TucicTranslator: Fanny S. CopelandRelease date: March 12, 2017 [eBook #54348]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: E-text prepared by Brian Coe, Turgut Dincer, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)
Title: The Slav Nations
Author: Srdan TucicTranslator: Fanny S. Copeland
Author: Srdan Tucic
Translator: Fanny S. Copeland
Release date: March 12, 2017 [eBook #54348]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
Credits: E-text prepared by Brian Coe, Turgut Dincer, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SLAV NATIONS ***
The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Slav Nations, by Srgjan Pl. Tucić, Translated by Fanny S. Copeland
The Daily TelegraphWAR BOOKS
The Daily TelegraphWAR BOOKS
THE SLAV NATIONS
Cloth1/- neteachThe Daily TelegraphWAR BOOKSPostfree1/3eachHOW THE WAR BEGANBy W. L. COURTNEY, LL.D., and J. M. KENNEDYTHE FLEETS AT WARBy ARCHIBALD HURDTHE CAMPAIGN OF SEDANBy GEORGE HOOPERTHE CAMPAIGN ROUND LIEGEBy J. M. KENNEDYIN THE FIRING LINEBy A. ST. JOHN ADCOCKGREAT BATTLES OF THE WORLDBy STEPHEN CRANEBRITISH REGIMENTS AT THE FRONTTHE RED CROSS IN WARBy Miss MARY FRANCES BILLINGTONFORTY YEARS AFTERThe Story of the Franco-German War By H. C. BAILEY With an Introduction by W. L. COURTNEY, LL.D.A SCRAP OF PAPERBy E. J. DILLONHOW THE NATIONS WAGED WARBy J. M. KENNEDYAIR-CRAFT IN WARBy S. ERIC BRUCEFAMOUS FIGHTS OF INDIAN NATIVE REGIMENTSBy REGINALD HODDERTHE FIGHTING RETREAT TO PARISBy ROGER INGPENTHE FIRST CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIAN POLANDBy P. C. STANDENTHE BATTLES OF THE RIVERSBy EDMUND DANEFROM HELIGOLAND TO KEELING ISLANDBy ARCHIBALD HURDTHE SLAV NATIONSBy SRGJAN PL. TUCICSUBMARINES, MINES AND TORPEDOESBy A. S. DOMVILLE-FIFEWITH THE R.A.M.C. AT THE FRONTBy E. C. VIVIANMOTOR TRANSPORTS IN WARBy HORACE WYATTHACKING THROUGH BELGIUMBy EDMUND DANEOTHER VOLUMES IN PREPARATIONPUBLISHED FOR THE DAILY TELEGRAPHBY HODDER & STOUGHTON, WARWICK SQUARE,LONDON, E.C.
The Daily TelegraphWAR BOOKS
HOW THE WAR BEGANBy W. L. COURTNEY, LL.D., and J. M. KENNEDY
THE FLEETS AT WARBy ARCHIBALD HURD
THE CAMPAIGN OF SEDANBy GEORGE HOOPER
THE CAMPAIGN ROUND LIEGEBy J. M. KENNEDY
IN THE FIRING LINEBy A. ST. JOHN ADCOCK
GREAT BATTLES OF THE WORLDBy STEPHEN CRANE
BRITISH REGIMENTS AT THE FRONT
THE RED CROSS IN WARBy Miss MARY FRANCES BILLINGTON
FORTY YEARS AFTERThe Story of the Franco-German War By H. C. BAILEY With an Introduction by W. L. COURTNEY, LL.D.
A SCRAP OF PAPERBy E. J. DILLON
HOW THE NATIONS WAGED WARBy J. M. KENNEDY
AIR-CRAFT IN WARBy S. ERIC BRUCE
FAMOUS FIGHTS OF INDIAN NATIVE REGIMENTSBy REGINALD HODDER
THE FIGHTING RETREAT TO PARISBy ROGER INGPEN
THE FIRST CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIAN POLANDBy P. C. STANDEN
THE BATTLES OF THE RIVERSBy EDMUND DANE
FROM HELIGOLAND TO KEELING ISLANDBy ARCHIBALD HURD
THE SLAV NATIONSBy SRGJAN PL. TUCIC
SUBMARINES, MINES AND TORPEDOESBy A. S. DOMVILLE-FIFE
WITH THE R.A.M.C. AT THE FRONTBy E. C. VIVIAN
MOTOR TRANSPORTS IN WARBy HORACE WYATT
HACKING THROUGH BELGIUMBy EDMUND DANE
OTHER VOLUMES IN PREPARATION
PUBLISHED FOR THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
BY HODDER & STOUGHTON, WARWICK SQUARE,LONDON, E.C.
BYSRGJAN PL. TUCIĆEnglish Translation byFANNY S. COPELANDHODDER AND STOUGHTONLONDON NEW YORK TORONTOMCMXV
RUSSIAN NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS
THE SOUTHERN SLAVS OF THE DUAL MONARCHY
Thetask of writing a book on the subject of the Slav nations has afforded me very great pleasure, and I hope my work will succeed in its object and arouse the sympathies of the British public for my race. In preference to giving long disquisitions, I have purposely adopted a simple narrative tone in sketching some of the most interesting points in the national life of the Slav peoples. I have only touched upon historical events in so far as this was necessary for the context, and owing to lack of space I have been unable to do more than allude to Slav art and literature. On the other hand, a good deal of valuable information on this subject will be found in the epilogue “Buried Treasures,” which the eminent Serbo-Croat essayist, Mr. Dimitrij Mitrinović has kindly placed at my disposal.
As I am at present completely cut off from my sorely-stricken country, I have been unable to apply for permission to quote from certain books that I have consulted, but I feel sure that my literary colleagues, Dr. Dragutin Prohaska, Niko Županić and Dr. Gjuro Šurmin, will not objectto my having had recourse to their works in the interests of our race.
I am also indebted to Mr. Frano Supilo, the leader to the Croatian people, as well as to my above-mentioned friend, Mr. Dimitrij Mitrinovič; of the Serbian Legation in London, for several valuable hints.
My special thanks are due to my translator, Mme. Fanny S. Copeland, and Miss Ella C. Seyfang, who have given me invaluable assistance in my work.
THE SLAV NATIONS.
Slav Characteristics—Slav Power in the Past—The Decline—The Dawn?
Althoughthe Slav race does not appear as a united state or Union, it certainly forms a family of nations linked by ties of blood, the tradition of centuries, similar language and customs, and especially by ties of mutual love and sympathy. It is the greatest and most powerful of the European races, yet to this day it does not hold the pride of place which is its due and which it once held. Not the precedence of mere strength, which is surely sufficiently represented by Russia, but the place due to a people of recognized culture, who have not yet been justly appreciated in spite of overwhelming proof of their intellectual gifts. Slavs are still popularly supposed to be a mentally undeveloped host of semi-barbarians and troglodytes. Of course the educated public of Europe has long12abandoned this attitude; but it has done little to spread a more just and liberal view among the people at large.1The German scholars made it their business to lay stress on “Slav barbarism” wherever possible, to obscure the bright and glorious pages in Slav history, and to emphasize everything that can be taken as a proof of savagery and arrested development. Unfortunately, no one has written at such length about the Slav question, or attached so much importance to it, as the German scholars, with the result that other European nations have derived their views from them—so much so that one might almost say thatGermanopinion on the Slavs has become the opinion of Europe. Constant unrest in Russia, and the consequent reprisals of the authorities afforded a welcome pretext for misjudging the Slavs, and the ordinary public of Europe came to know of them only as mediæval inquisitors with Siberia as their great torture-chamber. No one seemed to realize that these revolutionary movements,13no less than the insurrections in other Slav countries, merely represented the resistance of a virile people craving enlightenment against autocratic barbarism; and that it is obviously unfair to judge the Slavs by the deeds of theiroppressors, who in every case have followed the German methods cultivated by their governments in most Slav countries, and imported into Russia by Peter the Great. On the other hand, if the Slav nations are judged by thesoul of the people, and not by their rulers and state-systems, they show a high standard of civilization and a trend towards culture of a kindly, humanitarian type, which promises to be a far better contribution to Western European progress than the much-advertised German “Kultur.”
Certainly the Slavs have not yet attained to their full stature as a race. At present they are passing through a period of strong ferment, but the wine that has so far resulted from this ferment gives excellent ground for the hope that when the Slavs have solved their various national and economic problems they will prove themselves the equals of the other cultured nations of the world.
In the world of politics they must attain the degree of power necessary to safeguard their racial individuality and the freedom of the Slav peoples. This power must stand in due proportion to their capability for intellectualprogress, and should in itself be a guarantee for the peace of the world in the future. For the Slav is not naturally domineering, and has no craving for power as a mere means of aggression. He belongs to a kindly race, melancholy, as shown in the national poetry in which his soul finds expression. He has a craving to love and to be loved, and would fain join the other European nations as a friend and brother. His strength will be the strength of love. Russia has neither need nor desire to extend her boundaries further. The Balkan Slavs only wish to accomplish their own destiny quietly within the borders of theSlav Sphere, and the rest of the Slavs desire their freedom—only their freedom. And when this is accomplished, the Slav Colossus will no longer constitute a danger to Europe, but a safeguard. His political power will only threaten those who would tamper with the foundations of peace from mere lust of dominion.
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In the present crisis the Slav race is by no means seeking a return to the past. The past has seen the Slavs masters of a great empire and a real menace to the rest of the world. If one were to take the political map of Europe and indicate upon it the frontiers of the ancient Slav Empire, the Slav race would appear like an irresistible deluge. The huge Muscovite Empire, almost the whole of Austria-Hungary, the wholeof the Balkans, two-thirds of the German Empire, part of Italy, and a large part of Scandinavia—all these once formed the Slav Empire. Historical maps show the single triumphant word “Slavs” (“famous” or “glorious” ones) inscribed over all these countries throughout the centuries. Their history and development can be traced back to 400B.C.
The Taurians that guarded the Golden Fleece were Slavs, as were the men of the Baltic with whom Phœnicians and Greeks traded for amber. The forest lands of the North, that grey home of magic, wisdom and valour, hang like a dark background full of strange possibilities behind sunny Greece and clear-headed, practical Rome—and this was the Empire of the Slavs in the past, the Gardariki and Iotunheim (Giant-land) of the Norsemen. From one century to another they played a part of increasing importance among the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe and were feared as a strong, homogeneous race. Their power reached its zenith towards the end of the fifth century, before the tidal wave of the Hun invasion swept over Europe. At that time they held the mastery from the Alps to the mouth of the Elbe, and from the Baltic to the Black Sea. They were then one great people divided into several tribes speaking slightly differing dialects; but only a fraction of their number—the inhabitants of the present Dalmatia—was subject to the Emperor Nepos. Theinvasion of the Avars, who took possession of a large strip of the Slav possessions between the Danube and the Dniester, made the first breach in the unity of the great Slav family. Henceforth they were known as Northern, Eastern, and Southern, Slavs, and began to form separate nationalities. In the age of Charlemagne these nationalities had already crystallized into independent states, whose power and prosperity are recorded in history. The strongest of these was eventually Poland, extending far into the Russia of to-day. The Moravian Empire of Svatopluk, the Empire of Serbia, the kingdom of Croatia, and the Slavicized Bulgars in the South, together with the Grand-Dukedom of Muscovy (and the Wendish kingdom in North Germany), complete the family of Slav States. It would take too long to enter into the historical importance of all these states, but it is a characteristic proof of their power that not only European, but Asiatic, nations courted their favour.
Some of the main trade routes of the world led from Northern Europe through the heart of Russia to Byzantium (the “Mikligard” of the Sagas)—and Asia. Slav, Norwegian, Tatar and Arab traded peacefully together on the banks of the Volga, and sundry passages in the Norse Sagas as well as the journal of an Arab trader give us vivid glimpses of those days. Somehow these searchlight pictures of the Slavs and theircountry, recorded with positively journalistic freshness and love of detail, do not corroborate the biassed accounts of German historians. But this world-power which Russia alone has developed steadily up to the present day began to wane among the other Slav nations soon after the first Crusade (1097). Already in 1204 (the fourth Crusade) Slavonia, Croatia, Dalmatia and Bosnia were incorporated in the German (Holy Roman) Empire, together with Hungary, Istria, Carniola and Carinthia. Under the Hohenstaufens, Bohemia and Moravia also became vassal states, and in the fourteenth century the victorious Osmanlis robbed the Bulgars and Serbs of their independence. With the exception of Russia, Poland alone maintained her independence, until the first partition in 1772, followed by the second in 1793. The third and last partition in 1795 sealed her fate, and the Poles were parcelled out under Russian, Prussian and Austrian rule.
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The partition of Poland was the beginning of the complete political, and to some extent even the national, decay of the non-Russian Slavs. Just as Russia began to spread her mighty pinions, the Slavs under alien yoke fell deeper and deeper into an apathy of gloom, only broken from time to time by rare flashes of patriotism, or a tempest of revolt. The book of history layopen before them with its pages of gold and black; but to their aching eyes the black ever loomed larger than the gold, and they yielded to a despondency that knew no comfort and saw no escape. And, while they were thus sunk in apathy, their rulers brought strong pressure to bear on them, so that they might eradicate the stamp of their nationality, not only from their faces, but from their souls. Germany and Austria scented the Eastern question, and divined that in its solution the Slavs might renew their strength. So they determined to approach the problem supported by a totally emasculated and denationalized Slav following. To this end they strove above all things to turn the Slavs into docile citizens of a Germanic Empire; for from the days of Charlemagne the German has reiterated the parrot-cry that the Slav is barbarous, obstinate, dangerous and ugly, and that his only chance of salvation lies in merging his identity with that of the German of the Empire. It is a fact that during this period the Slavs did nothing to help themselves. A great weariness weighed upon the people, no less than upon the educated classes, and they were preparing to reconcile themselves to the fate that had already befallen their brothers, the Serbs and Bulgars. But the progress of history did for the Slavs what they failed to do for themselves. Napoleon, the personification of destruction for the whole of Europe, brought salvation to the Western Slavs,for he re-awakened them to a sense of national self-consciousness, and so prepared the way for the long and bitter struggle they have waged since then against their oppressors. As soon as these struggles commenced Russia, who had hitherto regarded the ruin of her brothers with equanimity, began to take an interest in their sufferings, and to afford them strong moral support.
These struggles, however, could not bring immediate relief. The Slavs knew full well that the way to freedom is long and has to be won step by step. The problem of the Near East, which advanced one stage with the liberation of Serbia, must first be solved in every phase and detail to clear the way for a solution of the purely Slav problem. Europe cannot take a vital interest in this problem before the Balkan problem is disposed of, and the conditions for the liberation of the Slavs so far fulfilled, that the difficulty can be solved in the ordinary course of the progress of civilization.
The psychological moment seems to have arrived, and the Slav question deserves to be fully put forward. Surely the British public, which has entered into the present crisis with such splendid spirit, will not withhold its interest from the Slav question, more especially as England will have a strong voice in the matter when the final settlement comes to be made.
I. Russian Landscape and the National Character—Rurik to Peter the Great—German Influence—The Russian Awakening.
II. Siberia—White Russians—Little Russians—Great Russians—Cossacks—The People of the Sunflower—Made in Germany—The Reaction.
Roughlyspeaking, there are 172 million Slavs in the world. 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. The mountain fastnesses and precipices of the Urals, the green slopes of the Caucasus, the Siberian wastes, the grey shores of the Baltic and the sunny shores of the Euxine—the Volga and the Don, and even the sacred steppes—to him they are all beautiful, to him they reflect the image of his soul and his feelings. The Western traveller will find some difficulty in understanding this passionate love of the Russian for his country, and will feel21tempted to draw sharp comparisons between the degrees of beauty in the various districts. But the landscape of Russia is as peculiar as the Russian people. It is as Russian as the Russian himself. There is probably not another country in the world where the climatic and geological conditions have so deeply influenced the inmost character of the people, even to their external features. Where the landscape is beautiful and the climate sunny, the handsome noble Russian type prevails; whereas the cold, inhospitable tracts produce the characteristic wide-faced, flat-nosed type. Yet there is a strange resemblance between the rough type and the handsome type analogous to that which a careful observer cannot fail to notice between the different types of Russian landscape. For though the steppe is grey, and the fields of Caucasia are green, yet both are animated by something that wears the same countenance, breathes the same purely Russian atmosphere, and is suffused with the same wonderful charm. It is the charm of perfectly balanced contrast. The soil of Russia has a soul like the soul of her children, for whom she cares and lives and breathes. This soul appears everywhere the same; it exhales the same perfume from the dry grass of the steppe as from the Crimean groves of syringa.
The Russian soil is fertile, inexhaustively fertile, as if it were conscious of the millionsdependent upon it. Metaphorically speaking, this soil produces its gifts out of itself, and offers them lavishly to its children. The Russian never works more than he is obliged to—he need not wrestle with the soil, he need only not forget it. But he tills it with love; he does not force the gifts of Nature, he coaxes them from her, and where these fruits do not appear on the surface, he seeks them in the heart of the earth, and goes down the coal-shafts and lead-mines with the same serene confidence with which he ploughs the sunlit surface. Is he not still with his “little mother”?
The Russian is a farmer by nature. The great industrial developments of the last decades have resulted automatically from the natural wealth of the country, but the true Russian reaps little benefit from this industrial boom. His commercial gifts are not great, and he has been content to leave the business exploitation of the country in the hands of foreigners, so long as he makes his own little profit. Mills and factories are “German monsters” in his eyes, and he prefers to give them a wide berth. But latterly there has been a great agitation in favour of the resuscitation of all home industries. The Russian has grasped the fact that his policy of sentiment in business will have to be modified to suit modern times, and that the welfare of the people must not be dependent on foreign middle-men. The present great conflict withthe Germans, who have hitherto so largely monopolised Russian industry, will doubtless do much to further this movement towards industrial emancipation.
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The History of Russia begins practically with Rurik (862) who is supposed to have come from Scandinavia and laid the foundations of a Russian state.2At the coming of Rurik the Russians were split up into many separate communities under independent chiefs. Rurik introduced a new spirit of united organization, and all efforts towards establishing a Russian Empire date from him. Of course it was inevitable that this founding of an Empire should involve much opposition, revolt, war, and bloodshed. Each district was proud and jealous of its independence, and only yielded after a hard and bitter struggle. During the period of Empire-making Russian history abounds in such bloody episodes. The Grand-Dukedom of Muscovy wasthe largest of the Russian petty States and in every way the best equipped, so that the task of organization naturally devolved upon it, together with the fruits of victory. Six centuries of ceaseless struggle against foes from without and within bring us from Rurik’s day to the accession of Ivan Vassilievitch III. (1462-1505), who is regarded as the founder of Russian Tsardom. He incorporated the still independent principalities of Twer, Moshnik, and Vologda with the Grand-Dukedom of Muscovy, defeated the powerful Republic of Novgorod, and freed himself completely from the Tatar yoke (1480). In 1472 he married Zoë, a daughter of Thomas Palaeologus, the brother of the last Byzantine Emperor. European customs were first brought into Russia through this princess, and the double-headed eagle of Byzantium introduced in the Russian coat of arms. The celebrated Uspenskij and Blagoveshchenski Cathedrals in Moskva were built in the reign of Ivan Vassilievitch III. He promulgated a decree pronouncing the realm henceforth united and undivisible by law, and was the first Russian ruler to assume the title of “Tsar of all the Russias.” Christianity, introduced by St. Vladimir (980-1054), had by this time fully blossomed forth as the national religion, so that we can date the foundation of “Holy Russia” of to-day in all her greatness from the age of Ivan Vassilievitch III.
During the following ages the power of Tsardomincreased and finally reached its zenith with Peter the Great, who may be called the first of the modern Russian Tsars. He applied his own acquired Western knowledge to Russia, and enormously improved the general status of the realm. In his reign Russia began to play her part as a political and military power, for it was he who founded the Russian navy and mercantile marine. He was a ruthless autocrat, and many pages of his reign are traced in blood; yet with him autocracy was not so much a matter of sentiment as of dire necessity. He loved his Russian people passionately, but said that it was a people who had to be made great by force. Confident in the inalienable national character he saw no danger in importing foreigners wholesale to help in the building up of Russian administration. He surrounded himself with German advisers, appointed Germans to responsible offices, and freely admitted the German element into Russia as a means of spreading “culture.” In many ways German thoroughness proved a most useful asset in carrying out the Tsar’s intentions. On the other hand it gave rise to a dynasty and an autocratic aristocracy of foreign stock who failed to understand the Russian people, and whose influence proved disastrous to civilization and intellectual freedom in Russia.Outwardly, Russia became a world-power under Peter the Great, butinternallyit fell a prey to a system of spiritual slavery, which has been perpetuatedeven to recent years by the successors of Peter and their councillors, the descendants of German immigrants.Here lies the true cause of the revolutionary movement of more than a century.The last three Tsars of Russia—the two Alexanders and the present Tsar—have taken steps to eliminate the great evil, and if, so far, they have only been partially successful, the fault lies not with them nor with the Russian people, but with thestill Germanmind of their advisers. The abolition of serfdom, repeated constitutional manifestos and the introduction of the Duma system are momentous steps towards a brighter future. But the gate to this future can only be fully opened with the conclusion of the present war.
Although Russia has acquired millions of non-Russian subjects—chiefly through the Crimea, Bessarabia and her Asiatic possessions—she has never lost her purely Russian character. The laws concerning land purchase are so constituted that the territories belonging to the heart of Russia cannot to any great extent pass into non-Russian hands, which accounts for the fact that these parts of the Empire have remained essentially Russian. Siberia holds an exceptional position, and is to-day a great colonial provincewith a mixed population. Every year the wealth and fertility of Siberia become more and more apparent, and instead of being bleak and uninhabited, this country is now distinctly populous. The horrors of Siberia as a penal colony are becoming a thing of the past, and only the perpetrators of grave crimes are still condemned to labour in the lead-mines and languish in the Katorga (penal servitude). Convicts who are simply exiled to Siberia are able to earn a comfortable livelihood under tolerable conditions—apart from the loss of liberty and vexatious police supervision. Thus it often happens that time-expired convicts prefer to remain in Siberia, and eventually find not only a home but prosperity in the new country.
Siberia, the Crimea and Bessarabia are all three interesting as countries and as Russian territories, but in a sketch of the Russian people they are unimportant. The true Russian stock falls into three great bodies, the “Bielorussi” (White Russians), the “Velikorussi” (Great Russians) and the “Malorussi” (Little Russians). They represent the North, the Centre and the South of Russia. Ethnologically, economically, and intellectually the White Russians represent the lowest type. They inhabit the Northern tracts from the borders of Poland, ancient Lithuania, and Novgorod. The governments of Minsk, Litav, and Smaljensk are their central provinces. Theirs is a poverty-stricken and,one might add, a slothful Russia. Agricultural facilities are limited, the soil is not very fertile, and the White Russian is not sufficiently industrious or persevering to improve it by rational farming. The people are more apathetic than elsewhere in Russia, and less inclined to adopt modern ideas with enthusiasm. These people become nervous and excitable only when menaced by a dearth of food; then their attitude is often much more dangerous than the tide of social revolution. At least the White Russian has kept his type fairly pure and in spite of alien neighbours he shows little trace of racial admixture.
The Little Russians, who inhabit the entire South of Russia, and from whose stock the famous Cossacks are sprung, differ most radically from their northern brothers. They are the excitable, hot-blooded, dare-devil Russians. In type the men are fine-looking and handsome almost without exception, and the women often exceedingly beautiful. Their language differs from other Russian speech by the extreme softness of the dialect (which is not unlike Serbo-Croatian), and their music and poetry are the finest in the Slav race. In the past the Little Russians were divided into many small and independent clans who outvied each other in reckless warlike enterprises. Of course the wonderful Cossacks always took the lead. They still occupy their original home on the Don and in Caucasia, andfurnish theéliteof the Russian Army, even as they once were the flower of the Little Russian tribes. Moreover, they preserved to the very last their freedom and their privileges in Russia. To-day one is accustomed to look upon the Cossacks as merely a body of men especially devoted to the Tsar, but, as a matter of fact, the Cossack people have had a most chequered and interesting past. Once they formed an independent warrior-nation, feared and courted by their neighbours; and so secure in their strength did they feel, that they even dared to answer the Turkish Sultan’s demand for submission with a letter of taunting derision (the well-known Cossack Ultimatum). They played a great part in the history of Russia, and each Russian ruler in turn endeavoured to assure himself of their support. After their final subjection to Russia (1851) the Cossacks gradually exchanged their political importance for their present military value. Tolstoi wrote about them as follows—though his remarks really apply to the whole of the Little Russian people: “Many years ago the ancestors of the Cossacks, who were ‘Old Believers,’ fled from Russia and settled on the banks of the Terek (Caucasus). They are a handsome, prosperous and warlike Russian population, who still retain the faith of their fathers. Dwelling among the Chechentzes, the Cossacks intermarried with them and acquired the usages, customs and mode of living of these mountaineers. But their Russiantongue and their ancient faith they preserved in all their pristine purity.... To this day the kinship between certain Cossack families and the Chechentzes is clearly recognizable and a love of freedom and idleness, a delight in raiding and warfare are their chief characteristics. Their love of display in dress is an imitation of the Circassians. The Cossack procures his admirable weapons from his mountaineer neighbours, and also buys or ‘lifts’ his best horses from them. All Cossacks are fond of boasting of their knowledge of the Tatar tongue. At the same time this small Christian people considers itself highly developed, and the Cossack only as a full human being. They despise all other nationalities.... Every Cossack has his own vineyard, and presses his own wine, and his immoderate drinking is not so much due to inclination as to sacred custom, to neglect which would be regarded as a kind of apostasy.... Women he looks upon as a means for promoting his prosperity. Only the young girls are allowed by him to enjoy any leisure: from a married woman he demands a life of drudgery from early youth to old age, and he is quite Oriental in expecting deference and hard work from his wife.... The Cossack who considers it unbefitting in the presence of strangers to exchange a kind or affectionate word with his wife involuntarily feels her superiority as soon as he is alone with her. For the whole of his house and farm areacquired through her and maintained by her labour and care....”
Between these extremes of Northern and Southern Russia, the Great Russian stands out like a beacon or an indestructible landmark. He represents thepuresttype of the Russian people, the children of “matyushfia Moskva.” Whatever Russia has produced in the way of true greatness in every sense of the words, has its cradle in Great Russia, and has been nursed at the breast of Mother Moskva. This truly Russian people inhabits the huge central tracts of Russia, and the governments of Moskva and Novgorod are their particular home. The Russian faith owes its beauty, the Russian ideal its purity to this people, and to the race they have given theAll-Slav Ideal. And they are the only Russian people whose soul has two faces, an outer and an inner one. The Russian sculptor Tsukoff has symbolized them in a figure resembling a sunflower. It is as well to know that the Great Russian cannot live without sunflower-seeds. He calls them “podsolnushki.” Everything is smothered in “podsolnushki” shells—streets, floors of rooms and railway carriages, even the corners in the churches. Every Great Russian munches “podsolnushki,” and by temperament he himself is a “podsolnushki.” He has an outer shell and a kernel. In Russia the sunflower is queen of the flowers, and as the sunflower is among the flowers so is the Great Russian amongthe Russian peoples. He is the true “tsarkiya Rus.” The Tsar is the sun, the heart of the realm, and the Muscovite people are the “podsolnushki.” Each individual is only one among many, a particle, a seed for the propagation and glorification of his own race. Probably, the Great Russian has no equal in the world as regards idyllic simplicity. Not because he munches “podsolnushki,” crosses himself in tram-cars when passing a church, goes about in big boots in the heat of summer, and drinks vodka, wine and beer without regard to time or season, but because he is a true yeoman soul. He is quite indifferent to all that does not interest him personally. The surface of his soul is as hard and impervious as the shell of the sunflower seed. His face wears an imperturbable, changeless expression. To reach the kernel of hishumansoul one has to discard every formality, thrust aside every obstacle, andbiteinto it as if it were a sunflower seed. If you abuse him roundly and “have it out” with him, he suddenly shows himself in his true colours, the best and kindliest of souls; but if you handle him with kid gloves you will never get a glimpse of his inner nature. As an acquaintance the charm of the Great Russian consists chiefly in his sudden transition from sharp resistance to an unexpected exhibition of gentle, unaffected loveableness. The Great Russian has a strong natural talent for philosophy, but, metaphorically speaking, his philosophy isas vegetarian as his cooking has largely remained to this day. There is a scent of dried herbs, new-mown hay, and southern-wood about it; it recalls dark forests where the sunlight, piercing the rifts between the tree-tops, shines with golden-blue, unearthly splendour—a ray of the light Divine. His philosophy is innocent of blood like the saints of the old ikons.
This Great Russian people is the flower of Russia, the Sunflower, whose golden petals point the way for the future of the whole Russian nation.
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The problem of Russian culture has its roots in the Russianpeople, and not in the educated classes. The desire for culture has emanated from the people themselves, and the spirit they evinced has pointed the way for the educated classes in the great struggle for national culture within recent years. The educated man is the interpreter of the popular demand for culture, and of the intellectual wealth dwelling in the soul and mind of the Russian people. Almost the whole of Russian art and literature is derived from this source, and it has never shown the world so much the genius of the poet, painter, or the sculptor in question, as the genius of the Russian people that produced him; and the best that is revealed in Russian art is the face of the Russian soul with its manifold aspects of thinker, philosopher, and purely human being. Dostoievski,Tolstoi, Gogol, Gontsharoff, Tshekhoff, Gorki and Andreeff in poetry; Repin, Vasnetsoff, Tsukoff, Troubetzkoy and many others in the pictorial arts;—all have learnt what they had to tell from the soul of the people and thewisdomof this soul; and the Great Russian musicians have used the voice of the people throughout for the expression of their art. They are all of them merely interpreters of the rich fund of culture, the latent culture of the Russian people. This latent culture, in conjunction with the holy Russian faith, has advanced towards the highest development of human dignity and nobility, towards peace founded not upon blood, but upon love. The abuse the Germans have heaped upon Russian barbarism is merely the outcome of envious rage on the part of an inferior, who sees his artificial pseudo-culture endangered by another culture which blossoms from the depths of the human heart.
The non-Russian Slavs stood for a long time under the influence of German culture. With their characteristic aggressiveness the Germans represented their culture as the high-water mark of civilization and inculcated it everywhere with the same violence which at present distinguishes the advance of their invading hordes. Even nations possessing a peerless millennial culture, like the French and Italians, have found it difficult to escape their influence. But a sham must inevitably die of its own exposure. Everypeople, every nation has its own peculiar susceptibility, a kind of instinctive taste, which refuses to tolerate anything that does not appeal to its soul, and could act destructively upon it. The peoples of the West have for some time past boycotted the “Williamitic” culture, and only sundry isolated Slav peoples have admitted it—principally those who were practically dependent on Germany, and whose native culture was forcibly suppressed. The result was that a few years ago a non-Russian Slav knew his sentimental Schiller better than his Dante, Lenau better than his Pushkin, Kleist better than Shakespeare, and Gottfried Keller better than Dostoievski. In the Slav schools in Austria-Hungary the German language is obligatory as the official language (the other languages are to this day not permitted in the schools), German history is taught as the standard of national greatness and civilization and German literature and art as practically unique and unequalled. All that bore the hallmark “Made in Germany” was inculcated as ideal. Thus it was not at all strange that German culture has for a long time predominated among these Slavs. But the Slav instinct always hated this culture, though at first unconsciously, and sensed it as a false and treacherous enemy. Then Russia began her intellectual campaign among the Slavs. At first it was an uphill struggle, for the Government authorities placed every possible obstacle in the way of thispropaganda. But when the Slav peoples realized that the Russian influence could only reach them as forbidden fruit, they began greatly to desire it. To the power of the State they opposed the power of their will and their instincts. This struggle is still in progress, but it has been uniformly successful in favour of the Russian influence. During the ’eighties the results of this influence began to show fruit, and since that time Slav intellectual and educational development has safely entered the fairway of Russian intellectualism. Art and literature have followed the lines laid down by Russia, and become more definitely Slavonic. The latent mental wealth and resources of the Slav nations have come to the surface and appear pure and unaffected and entirely free from German “angularity,” while their social problems betray a distinct kinship with the Russian social movement. In recent years this process of emancipation and affiliation has so far developed that it has entered the field of politics and materialized in theRussian protectorate over all the Slavs. This, however, required no propaganda—it arose out of itself, as will appear in the chapters dealing with the other Slav nations.
Russian Slavdom—The Mir—Stress and Famine—The Duma—Russian Literature—Gogol, Tolstoi, Dostoievski—Realistic Ideals—The Russian Soul.
Theeminent Russian publicist Menschikoff, in one of his works on Russian nationalism, writes the following: “In a world-wide sense only we Russians are Slavs and—unfortunately—so far no one else. The other Slav nationalities are so dismembered, so stupidly and artificially kept apart and hostile among themselves, that they scarcely count either politically or otherwise. The majority of the Outer Slav nations are still under the German, Hungarian or Turkish yoke, and at present they are quite unable to shake off this yoke. There are many reasons for the decline of the Western Slavs, but the principal one is thenegativetype of their character and the consequent tendency to dissensions and mutual jealousies.... Even as regards national culture, Russia—in spite of all her internal miseries—takes the lead among the Slav nations. In every respect she has the right to say: ‘I am Slavdom.38’”
The somewhat bitter tone adopted towards the other Slav nations in this dictum might easily be modified by an appeal to evidence, but, for all that, Menschikoff’s remarks are correct in essentials. The truth of his assertion as to the world-wide importance of the Russians and the relative unimportance of the other Slavs to-day must be freely admitted. And that is why a special interest attaches to the question of the Russian people. It is too early in the day to judge of the full significance of the Russians as a factor in the world’s development, for they have scarcely yet come into their own. The birth of the Russian people has been in progress for the last century. First the head appeared—Russian literature, and then slowly, deliberately, the giant body—theRussian people, who are gradually attaining to political and national self-consciousness.
Till 1861 the Russian people led an embryonic existence within the womb of Holy Mother Russia. A nobility of mixed Mongolian, German, British, French and even Negroid (Pushkin) stock ate, breathed and thought for the people. Most foreigners imagine that the Russian people were “emancipated” in 1861. But this emancipation was only partial, and more apparent than real; for though serfdom had been abolished, there still remained the heavier yoke of the “Mir”—a conservative, iron-bound institution, which has greatly hindered the development of the Russianpeople by restricting the liberty of the individual. Strictly speaking, the “Mir” was the village or parish, but in an economic sense it was the association of several families under one head. The Slavophil writers, Homiakoff and the brothers Kirieyevaki, with their followers down to Pobyedonszeff saw in the “Mir” a guarantee, not only for the welfare of Russia, but for all the world. They believed the “Mir” to be that economic communism and moral brotherhood which Western Social Democracy is vainly trying to discover in other ways. They held that the “Mir” was destined to assure the future of the Russian people and to afford it the means of solving all the social problems of the world in accordance with the laws of justice and of love. Russian literature is full of poems, treatises, and religious contemplations in praise of it. Even the greatest Russian minds, such as Dostoievski himself, were smitten with this idea. No “Western” doctrine was potent to disabuse the Russians of their fallacy. Nature herself had to come to the rescue, destroy the chimera and lead Russia back to the high road of common sense and progress.
It happened very simply. The periodic famine arose in Russia, and the vast Empire, the “granary of the world,” had no bread for millions of her honest, hard-working children. They could not understand how there could be a famine in a fertile, sparsely populated country,whilst the teeming populations of the Western countries had enough to eat. The starving Russian people argued that the famine was caused by an insufficiency ofland, and that they had been cozened in 1861 when the land was divided up between the nobles and the peasants. The result was a growing ill-feeling against the ruling classes, to whom the peasantry still had to pay “redemption-dues” either in money or in kind. In accordance with ancient custom the “Mir” periodically divided the land among its members. Obviously, in many communities there was not enough land for each member. Result—Famine. The “Mir” was self-governing, and had the same powers over its members as formerly the lord of the soil. It exercised a paternal jurisdiction, punished with blows, or with banishment to Siberia, divided the land, collected taxes, issued travellers’ passes, and often made itself arbitrarily unpleasant. During the ’nineties it became increasingly evident that the “Mir” constituted a moral and material danger to the people. Poor harvests followed by famine were the bane of the people from 1871 till 1907 and even as lately as 1911.
Space forbids me to enter into the agrarian crises—questions of reform, experiments and reactions, which loom so large in the pages of modern Russian history. Suffice it to say that all this led up to the revolution in 1905, and thatin consequence of this revolution the Government decided upon a step it might equally well have taken in 1861. In 1906 the Government decided partially to dissolve the “Mirs,” and by establishing freehold farm properties owned byindividualsit created the yeoman farmer class with full civic rights. This reform which was only fully carried through in 1911, marks the beginning of a new political era for the Russian man of the people. It is still too soon to feel the consequences of this truly great reform to their full extent. The Russian peasant has scarcely got used to his new position of individual freedom, and has not yet learnt to give effect to his political and social will. There can be no question of a constitution so long as the “Muzhik” has not attained to the full stature of a citizen and agriculturist. In Russia we speak of a “first Duma,” a “second Duma,” a “third Duma,” whereas no one in the rest of Europe would speak of a “first,” “second,” or “third” Parliament, but simply of “the Parliament.” These “first,” “second,” “third” and now “fourth” Dumas are simply so many editions of one and the same Duma, with each edition more rigorously pruned by the Government, till the merest shadow is all that remains. At this moment the entire social structure of Russia is analogous to this Duma-system. The Russian world of intellect is no more entitled to represent the Russian people, than the fourth Duma is torepresent the first. The Russian intellectuals may speak in the name of the people, but their word is really no better than a third-hand account. Even when there is no attempt at falsification, they always stand at a certain distance from the people. Whatever the great Russian realists have written concerning their own people is merely intuitive conjecture from a distance. A poet projects his own world into the people. The psychology of the great Russian writers of fiction is atendency, an illusion based not on exact, but on intuitive knowledge of the people. Russian realism borders on the visionary, and on mysticism. Europe has hitherto failed to discern the actual foundations of this poetry in its relation to Russian life, and has simply allowed herself to be fascinated by the “keen psychology” of the writers. The result has been a false impression. The facts are really different—instead ofreal truthfulnesswe find in the Russian writer a realistic tendency, areal ethical resentment; thence the increased “keenness” of his psychology, the critical touch in his imagination, which gives such a striking effect of verisimilitude. European critics have never detected the seam in the fabric of the Russian novel; they have accepted the masterpiece as the outcome of a single creative inspiration. Even though Russian realism comes nearer to life than that of any other literature, still it is more art than life.
Proof of this is to be found in Gogol’s privatecorrespondence. He frequently complained that nobody would send him “copy” from Russian life. He begs in vain for hints, anecdotes and descriptions; he has to “invent” his stories, and is ashamed of having to “deceive” his reader. In his immortal comedy, “The Revising Inspector,” Gogol satirizes his own “untruthfulness,” and in Hlestakoff, the great adventurer, who is mistaken by every one for the real revising inspector, he ridicules himself. For the sake of the people Gogol consents to play the “revising inspector!” But Gogol’s “untruthfulness” is simply creative genius. An eminent Tolstoi student, Osvianiko-Kulikovsky, has plainly asserted that even Tolstoi was not of the soul of the people but of the soul of the gentry. Tolstoi is a “barin” (landlord) and he thinks and feels only as abarin. Turgenyeff was blamed even during his lifetime for writing about Russia without knowing it; for he practically never lived in Russia.
The inmost soul of the Russian people has, however, found an excellent representative in Dostoievski. “Do not judge the Russian people”—pleads Dostoievski—“by the atrocious deeds of which they have often been guilty, but by those great and holy matters to which they aspire in their depravity. And not all the people are depraved. There are saints among them, who shed their light upon all, to show them the way.”
Dostoievski himself was such a light and such asaint. His works reflect the character of the Russian clearly and faithfully as it is:
“In the Russian man of the people one must discriminate between his innate beauty and the product of barbarism. Owing to the events of the whole history of Russia, the Russian has been at the mercy of every depraving influence, he has been so abused and tortured that it is a miracle that he has preserved the human countenance, let alone his beauty. But he has actually retained his beauty ... and in all the Russian people there is not one swindler or scoundrel who does not know that he is mean and vile.”
Dostoievski further adds: “No! The Russian people must not be judged bywhat they are, but bywhat they aspire to be. The strong and sacred ideals, which have been their salvation from the age of suffering, are deeply rooted in the Russian soul from the very beginning, and these ideals have endowed this soul for all time with simplicity and honesty, with sincerity, and a broad, receptive good sense,—all in perfect harmony.”
Concerning the part the Russian people are destined to play in the world, Dostoievski wrote the following:
“The Russian people is a strange phenomenon in the history of mankind. Their character is so different from that of the other peoples of Europe that to this day Europeans have failed to understand it, and misconstrue it at every turn.All Europeans move towards the same goal. But they differ in their fundamental interests, which involve them in collisions and antagonisms, whereby they are driven to go different ways. The ideal of a universal humanity is steadily fading from among them. The Russian people possess a notable advantage over the other European nations,—a remarkable peculiarity. The Russians possess the synthetic faculty in a high degree—the gift of feelingat onewith the universe and a universal humanity.The Russian has none of the European angularity, he possesses the gift of discernment and of generosity of soul.He can adapt himself to anything and he canunderstand. He has a feeling for all that is human,regardless of race,nationalityorfundamental ideas. He finds and readily admits reasonableness in all that contains even a vestige of true human instinct. By this instinct he can trace the human element in other nationalities even in exceptional cases. He accepts them at once, seeks to approximate them to his own ideas, ‘places’ them in his own mind, and often succeeds in finding a starting-point for reconciling the conflicting ideas of two different European nations.”4
This characteristic is so general and so true, that all other opinions on the character of a great people must take second place. It finds room for the Cossack with his nagaika and for Tolstoi with his gospel. It embraces every aspect of the human soul. Dostoievski himself possessed the synthetic faculty, the wonderful gift of universal understanding. He could make it clear that a crime may be a holy deed, and holiness mere prostitution, even as he succeeded in fusing Russian Christianity with the Tatar “Karat”5in one soul. Whence came all these paradoxes in the one man? On one occasion he wrote: “I am struggling with my petty creditors asLaokoon wrestled with the serpents. I urgently require fifteen roubles. Only fifteen. These fifteen roubles will give me relief, and I shall be better able to work.” Here lies the secret of the Russian synthesis in Dostoievski. Mental work is restricted by hard external circumstances. The inherent tendency to despond when in trouble is one of the greatest dangers to the Russian. He would fain lead the contemplative life, and hesitates “to take up arms against a sea of troubles.” To combat this he has had to lash himself into a state of hard practical efficiency. The Russian must grow strong against himself before he can again take up his ideal of an aggressive inner life. It is once more a case of Laokoon and theserpents. For this very reason Tolstoi’s teaching did not appeal to Dostoievski. When he had read a few sentences of this doctrine he clutched his head and cried: “No, not that, anything but that!” A few days later he was dead, and the world will never know what was gathering in his mind against the great heretic. But Dostoievski’s works are really in themselves a most vehement refutation of the Nazarene doctrine—it is as if he had prophetically discerned Tolstoi. Dostoievski solves the contrast between European culture and Christianity in accordance with both the Church and culture. He bows before the miracle, the mystery, and authority, and thus creates the union between material culture and Christian culture. He accepts the world as a whole, even as the Russian people take it.
Tolstoi denies the divinity of Christ and the entire synthesis of Russian philosophy. But even Tolstoi could only have been born in Russia. Personally he liked being accepted by the Russian peasants as one of themselves. The figure of the “Muzhik” is inseparable from Tolstoi’s doctrine, because Tolstoi’s doctrine is inseparable from the Russian people. It lives in the Great Submerged, who are as far removed from Western culture in fact as Tolstoi himself is in theory. Russian law courts have to deal every day with people who refuse to pay taxes, to serve in the army, or to acknowledge the“pravoslav” clerical authority. The Church calls these people “Shkoptzi,” “Molokami,” or “Hlisti.” There are about twenty million of them. They style themselves “White doves,” “The New Israel,” “Doukhobortzi.” In principle they are “pure Christians” like Tolstoi. Both have the same “tone” of soul. Dostoievski says of Tolstoi that he was one of those who fix their eyes on one point, and cannot see what happens to the right or to the left of that; and if theydowish to see it they have to turn with their whole body, as they invariably move theirwholesoul also in one direction only. This correctly observed obstinacy is the very opposite to the synthetic gift and generosity of soul mentioned before, and this peculiarity of the Russian mind has often been called “Maximalism,” to denote the rigid criterion, which loves no happy mean, but always goes to the utter extreme.
Many Western writers, among them the British author Bering, have asserted that the Slavs have no strength of will. This view is erroneous and harmonizes neither with Tolstoi’s tendency to extremes, nor with Dostoievski’s universal charity. It applies only to such phenomena in Slav life as are accessible to the European tourist, as, for instance, technical undertakings and colonial enterprise; for in this matter the Slav is naturally not so well qualified as the Englishman.
The Russian soul, and consequently the character of the Russian people, is many-sided and paradoxical in its obstinacy and its generosity. It is the historical outcome of such extremes as are represented by yellow positivist Mongolism, and gentle altruistic Christianity. But the soul of the Russian people has not yet clearly found itself, like the souls of the Western nations; first, because the head has not yet acquired control over the body; secondly, because the work of enlightenment and emancipation is only being completed by the present war. Hitherto it has laboured in its birth-throes. It has been a Laokoon wrestling with serpents.
I. The Contrast—National Character of the Poles—Our Lady of Csenstochova—Dancing Peasants—Galician Poles—Selfish Policy—Austria a Slav State.
II. The Poles in Russia—Russia’s Repressive Measures—The Slav Ideal—A Better Understanding—The Poles in Prussia—The Iron Heel—Law of Expropriation.
III. Csech Characteristics—Professor Masaryk—Jan Huss—Slav Puritans—The Hradćin—Modern Politics.
Roughlyspeaking the Group of the Northern Slavs includes twenty million Poles and eight million Csechs. Numerically, therefore, they are the greatest of the unliberated Slav peoples. Bohemia and her sister-country Moravia are under Austrian rule, while Poland has been dismembered and partitioned between Russia, Germany and Austria. At one time both countries were great and flourishing, and played a prominent part in history. In 1526 the Csechs51acknowledged the Hapsburgs as their ruler,6and Bohemia’s political decay and gradual loss of independence date both from this point. The first partition of Poland in 1772 deprived the Republic of liberty. Her dismemberment was finally completed and sealed by the third partition in 1795, and henceforth the Poles were even deprived of the possibility of co-operating as a nation.
The Csechs and Poles have both passed through a national tragedy, but of the two the Polish tragedy makes a stronger appeal to the imagination, because of the contrast between their former greatness and their present position, the high level of their culture, and the lofty principles at stake in the Great Polish Revolution. The Poles fell victims to the foreign yoke just as their civilization, their culture, and theirespritwere on the fairway to rival the intellectual splendours of France under Louis XIV. They were a brilliant people—mentally and intellectually refined, but physically decadent, and quite incapable of surviving their political freedom. They yielded to listless sentimentality and bewailed theirlost greatness instead of fighting to retrieve it. You may love the Poles with yourheartbut never with your reason! In this they are the very antithesis to the Csechs whom you cannot love except with your reason. You may admire them for the culture they have so laboriously won, but you cannot love them for it.
To the German and Austrian the Csech presents a comic type. But no one looks upon the Pole as comic; you hate him or you love him, but you cannot ridicule him—there is something great and tragic about him. The Russians who hate him forpoliticalreasons are fired by religious fanaticism. They hate the Jesuitical principles of the Pole. The Germans hate the Polish want of management, and “Polnische Wirtschaft” (“Polish management”) is a German idiom. But no one would insult Polish idealism and the innate nobility of the Pole. He compares with the Csech as Don Quixote with Sancho Panza. He is a dreamer and visionary who prostrates himself before an invisible shrine and awaits the miracle of salvation and liberation. This life of dreams has endowed the modern Pole with hyper-sensitive nerves, dogmatic onesidedness, and extreme passivity. Lost in the contemplation of their royal past, the Polish people wait in breathless silence for the first bird-note to herald the dawn of freedom that shall dispel the night of tribulation.
But, while the conscience of the nation languishes, crucified in the bitter suffering of a Messianic ideal, the Masses—the common people—are sane and sturdy; they live and multiply far removed from the griefs of the Classes. Their hard life has made them dull and unfeeling; caught in a world of factories, mines, and social democracy, they are only interested in their own immediate concerns and personal pleasures. Anything beyond that they expect from the mediation of “Bogarodjitza” (Mother of God).
Wijspianski, a fine Polish dramatist, has strikingly sketched the national character in one single scene in his play “Wesele” (The Wedding). The people are dancing their Polonaise and Mazurka, with gay cockades and ribands on their shoulders. The pretty bride leads off with her herculean bridegroom. Suddenly Yasiek rushes in upon the dancers and cries, “To arms! rise and rebel, for Poland!” But the couples—as if bewitched—continue to dance thenationalmeasure. Yasiek, bitterly disappointed, sees his hopes blighted and, choked with despair, he sinks to the ground. But the couples go on dancing, and he istrampled to deathby the feet of those whom he came to lead to freedom. This scene epitomises the position of affairs in modern Poland—the despair of the great lord with his pedigree, broad acres, and capital, who has absolutely no hold over the plain people because they have turned away from him. Theyhave lost their rights, their land and their traditions; the only link between the two is the Catholic ideal, the ideal ofPolishCatholicism, which is hallowed in the image of Our Lady of Csenstochova, whose brow is encircled with the crown of the ancient Queens of Poland.
The younger generation in Poland has realized that this link between the Classes and Masses must rest on a surer foundation.
Between the aristocracy and the masses has arisen the class of theeducated poor. These people are mainly of Russian descent, but the sons of Polish Jews form an important proportion and have acquired considerable influence, chiefly in the journalistic world. This young Poland saw itself confronted by a great vanished Polish age of romanticists and poets, with pronounced aristocratic and Catholic sentiments. The whole intellectual struggle of the modern democratic generation consists in an attempt to find contact with this past. Science also is endeavouring to reconcile the spirit of the present with the spirit of the past, and hopes to prepare the future development of an individualistic Polish culture on this foundation.
The contrast between German and Polish culture is the contrast between the culture of the masses and the culture of the individual. The principal social feature in mediæval Germany wasfeudalism. Germany was ruled by a number of feudalprinces, Poland by a number of aristocraticfamilies. But thisrégimeproved disastrous to Poland. A state where individuals rule by mutual consent is bound to develop differently from one where families rule without any mutual consent. In the expansive Western monarchies the power of the State increased, while the aristocratic republic of Poland steadily declined. The main reason for this difference probably lies in the geographical position of Poland. It lay too far from the West—too far from Rome and its culture.