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28 PROBLEMS CONFRONTING RUSSIA
the Tsar the force of power " may not be in keeping with
the idea of a Parliament responsible to the nation and
to the nation only. But, with all its dreams about absolute
autocratic power, Slavophilism is, in the main, an
appreciation of Slavonic culture as it was before the invasion of
the Tartars, and before the reforms of Peter the Great,
and this rememoration of old Slavonic times bears distinctly
the stamp of democratic tendencies. The Russian and
Slavonic institutions were founded on a communistic ideal,
the Sobomost, a principle which manifested itself in the
Vetche, the ancient Slavonic Parliament, the village
community called the Mir, the working Artel, the Krugovaja
Poruka, and so forth. Moscow had to copy the rule of
the Golden Horde from a military point of view, and in
doing so she had failed to grasp the old Russian free
institutions of the republics of Pskoff and Novgorod, and crushed
them out of existence. But in the consciousness of the
Russian nation as a whole these free institutions continued
to play a part, and Slavophilism acknowledged them, with
a view to combine if possible the power of the sovereign
with the Duma. The cry for nationalism really meant a
development of the nation on the ancient principle of popular
sovereignty. The Vetche exerted, indeed, a paramount
predominance over all other powers in the State, including
the ruling princes, who had not only to submit to the control
of the Vetche, but were nothing more or less than its servants.
The prince only represented the executive, and remained
in power as long as he had the approval of the popular
opinion represented by the Vetche. If the Vetche differed
with him, he had to go in peace, and quickly, without any
revolution, owing to the fact that his dismissal was one of
the principles provided for by the constitution. The present
Revolution and the abdication of the Tsar bears,
unmistakably, a semblance to many an analogous occurrence in the
Russian rule of the past. The only difference in this case
consists in the change from Tsardom of a new pattern to
State rule of a time dating back some thousand years.
Thus the first phase of the Revolution has brought about
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