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RACIAL AND RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE 4i
the existing local conditions of the different provinces of
the Empire and to conform with them.
It does not need much imagination to perceive that this
method of State administration was not suitable for the real
interests of the different parts of the Empire and for the
Empire as a whole. As a matter of fact, it was hopelessly
inefficient, apart from the cruelty it involved in subjecting
countries of the North and of the South to one pattern, which
was very ill-adapted to the vital requirements of the different
parts of the Empire. As a result, there was a constant
outcry from the various parts of the Empire for adjustment
in administration fitting the conditions of life of the provinces,
and evolved from local economic requirements and also
from the historic past. But these repeated and earnest
demands always fell upon deaf ears, as the Russian
bureaucracy felt its vital nerve imperilled by leaving anything to
the initiative of self-government and social
self-determination. Centralisation has exercised a terrible tyranny in
Russia, has occasioned untold sufferings, and has held
portions of the Empire and the whole in a state of
backwardness and inefficiency. Grave errors made by ruling from
one bureaucratic centre—on paper, as it were—a vast
Empire comprising one-seventh of the terra firma of the
globe, and purposely ignoring the differences of climate,
race, and religion of the individual components of that
Empire, were the result of intolerance, which is incompatible
with the principle of freedom.
Russian bureaucracy alleged that the granting of racial
freedom is incompatible with the desirable assimilation of
alien elements in a State in order to make its population
homogeneous. It supposed that the existence of different
races in a State involves a constant danger of its
disintegration.
However, it cannot be denied that the various races united
under one State rule, who have fought on a common
battlefield, and spurred by the same spirit of patriotism, feel that
they have had an opportunity once more of proving by their
devotion, even unto death, that they deserve equal rights
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