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THE DEGENERACY OF THE REVOLUTION 57
of autocracy, orthodoxy, and nationality as the necessary
conditions for the life of the Russian people. Autocracy has
gone, nationality no longer plays any role in Russia, having
been superseded by a sort of cult of the different racial
individualities of the many races of which the great Russian
State organism is composed. Even orthodoxy has ceased
to occupy the important part assigned to it by the Slavophile
idea.
A Russian is endowed with a full share of intellectual
power, talent, imagination, and idealism, but he is wanting
in a proper appreciation of the sound common sense necessary
for the proper conduct of public affairs. In his dreamy
idealism there is no place for the most pressing needs of the
moment. A Russian does not even care about practical
success, he hankers after the latest original ideas which have
taken possession of his imagination. Much that he has ever
achieved in State construction in the past has been done by
allowing himself to be brought into contact with steadying
influences from abroad, which he succeeded in blending with
his own character to practical purpose. Thus he has found
from outside sources just that which is lacking in his own
character and has in so doing been able to accomplish great
things.
Russian history began with the fusion of Slavonic and
Finno-Mongolic races, but even then public affairs suffered
from internal internecine strife. The Vetche, the old form
of popular council, were only too often converted into a sort
of bear-garden where no union or agreement could be reached
for lack of the faculty of compromise in matters concerning
public interests. Realising the utter impossibility to rule
themselves and to live in peace and order, the Slavonic
tribes invited Rurik, a Scandinavian warrior prince, to
occupy, so to say, the chair and to lay down the law which
should be obeyed by every one. The arrival of this foreign
element was a great boon to Russia as forming the cementing
and binding element, stiffening the central administrative
power, and keeping the unruly spirit of the masses in check.
But soon the old Slavonic vice of disorder and disunion
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