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CHAPTER VII
PROSPECTS OF REGENERATION
According to the idea of the Russian extremists, who at
present hold the reins of "government, the future of Russia
lies in a Russian Federation of Republics. But the separate
parts of the gigantic territory of Russia are far too different
in their national conditions, their historic past, their racial
elements, state of culture, and development to wish to enter
such a complicated State organism as is necessitated by a
federative structure of republics.
The examples of the United States of America,
Switzerland, or the Commonwealth of Australia are of no avail as
object-lessons. These State organisations consist of members
equal in their cultural progress, and having grown together
organically by a slow and steady process of evolution. On
the contrary, the different parts of Russia have very little
in common in their political aspirations, and are even
opposed to each other by old historic feuds, by differences
of religion, economic conditions, and race. They have never
joined hands of their own free will, but have only been
welded together by the unifying rule of the Tsars of the
Houses of Rurik and Romanoff. Once such a central power
is non-existent and is not replaced by a power capable of
exercising the same function of centralisation, the Little Russians,
the Poles, the Lithuanians, Letts, Esthonians, Finlanders, the
Tartars of the South, the Caucasians, the Hebrews, the
populations of Siberia, and the half-civilised, partly nomadic tribes
scattered all over the different outskirts of Russia only desire
to be left alone to work out their salvation by their own
means and resources, and to be no longer interfered with by
an exacting rule from Moscow or Petrograd.
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