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COSMOPOLITISM v. NATIONALISM 53
were depreciated as against work done abroad. The whole
situation was marked by extreme prejudice and not based
upon the practical requirements of self-conscious existence.
Against this weakness in national self-appreciation, a
natural reaction arose in the form of Slavophilism founded
by Aksakoff, Khomjakoff, Katkoff, and others. Their idea
was the superiority of the Slavonic race. They considered
that Western European culture was rotten to the core, and
that the Slavonic world, headed by Russia, was destined
to discover a new mode of life, new ideas, and to reorganise
the whole civilised world. Their teaching was even more
theoretical and of a more speculative nature than that of
the " Westerners," since it could not be substantiated by
facts. The blindness of their exaggerations was only too
patent. If they opposed Western European civilisation
and culture to proclaim Slavonic ideals as superior in every
way, they were bound to prove this challenge right and
well-founded. Russia could not, as it were, make good her
claim, owing to several centuries of Tartar domination and
misrule, which had retarded her entry into the field of
progress with other civilised nations.
Every nation has a natural right to the preservation of
her own individuality, to belief in herself, and to combat
against foreign intellectual and physical domination ; it is
in this respect, therefore, that Slavophilism and
Russo-philism had unquestionably a sound footing. But soon
this sound tendency of national self-appreciation became
aggressive and intolerant towards other races. The
programme of the Slavophiles : Autocracy, Orthodoxy, and
the Cult of the Race, was carried into practice in the
distorted form of a rigid bureaucratic centralisation at the
expense of any local self-government, of a denial of religious
equality in favour of the prevailing influence of the Russian
Orthodox faith, and of a system of forcible Russification
to the limit of persecuting other races of the Empire. The
Nationalistic Press denounced in turn the Finlanders, th e
Little Russians, the Tartars, the inhabitants of the Baltic
Provinces, the Caucasians, and especially the Jews, advocat-
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