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102 PROBLEMS CONFRONTING RUSSIA
The Ukraine with Kieff, the cradle of ancient Russia,
possesses its own Little Russian language, its own literature,
and forms a cultural entity of its own. The Cossacks of
the Don, who in the past afforded refuge to those oppressed
by Turkish as well as Moscovian rule, and having enjoyed
autonomy, being individual freeholders of their land, form
a distinct cultural unity among the Russians. The same
may be said of the Cossacks of the Terek and Kuban and
Transcaucasia. Siberia, a storehouse of untold mineral,
agricultural, and forest wealth, and conscious of its brilliant
future as an economic factor in the world’s market for raw
products, food-stuffs, and other commodities, would deserve
an organisation of her own. The Tartar Khanat of the
Crimea, which by religion belongs to the Moslem world,
has its own traditions ; Finland, its own racial
configuration ; the Poles, their own proud historic past. The Baltic
provinces, by their racial diversity and their peculiar
economic conditions, have also a claim to be considered
as a separate entity in a more pronounced way than this
was accorded to them by the former Russian
bureaucracy.
It is well to bear in mind that the Revolution in Russia
had in the very beginning only the character of a national
protest against misrule, but soon degenerated into an
insurrection of the alien elements of Russia against the power
of the Great Russian centre. The Great Russians who have
welded Russia together by conquest and superior
statesmanship, having been the mainstay of the country, find
themselves in the minority in comparison with the people of the
other races of Russia taken together. Old Moscovia has
developed an appetite which has surpassed its power of
assimilation—a very dangerous position which now has a
strong bearing on the prospects of the future vitality of
Russia. There is, therefore, grave danger that the idea of
a federation of republics on the territory which up to the
present formed the Empire may lead to a repetition of
recent events in the Balkan Peninsula, where the Balkan
States, after having emerged from the centralising and
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