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of the progressive Russian patriot is this: to the best
of his ability he would shake off foreign influences.
But at the same time that he considers that what this
brings in its train is ruinous to national originality and
growth, he sees that the Russians are less advanced than
the inhabitants of any of the European countries except
Turkey.[1] However strongly he may complain, like
Tchatski, the celebrated typical Russian in Griboyédof’s
“The Misfortune of Having Intelligence,” that Moscow
imitates Paris in manners and customs, in language and
modes of expression, in fashions and follies, nevertheless,
like Tchatski, he winds up by turning abruptly on
the Russians themselves, who feel that they are only fit
to be imitators, and who, when a man has five or six
ideas by means of which he rises above the people, and
dares to express them freely, fall upon him like
barbarians. All the attacks on the intellectual supremacy of
the foreigners become at last an attack on that Russia
which submits to and finds its profit in it. Tchatski,
in his last soliloquy, utters the painful cry, “It is also
my fatherland.” And thousands have ended with this
cry of distress.
In other words, the progressive Russian who desires
the broadening and development of the nationality of
his people, and that the foreign element should be kept
at a distance, soon comes to the conviction that the
fragments of Western European culture in his land are
always worth more than the unquestionable national
roughness and the equally national barbarity. He
cannot indeed distinguish between the people and the
government, for a great people have the government they
deserve. He sees that for whatever finer culture,
scientific insight, and artistic taste he himself possesses, he
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