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102 PROBLEMS CONFRONTING RUSSIA
to rule over illiterate masses than to keep educated people
in control. The whole trend of the Russian Revolution has
now solved this controversy. The masses of the Muzhiks
and Tovaristschi (peasants and revolutionary compeers)
more easily fell a prey to extreme socialism and anarchy
as their utter lack of education prevented them from
discerning the fallacies of such subversive doctrines. They
formed a plastic and inert material in the unscrupulous
hands of socialistic wire-pullers.
The policy of Russification assumed that people not
belonging to the nationality of the ruling centre cannot be
relied upon as long as they have not been stamped with
the impression of the dominant race. This policy, of
course, entailed endless suffering, and, as a direct result of
the persecution inflicted, local patriotism became more
than ever tenacious of self-expression, and struck its roots
still deeper into its native soil. So it was in Finland,
Poland, the Ukraine, the Caucasus, the regions inhabited by
the Tartars, and in the Baltic Provinces. The supposition
that people of different races cannot be trusted by the
overruling Central Government is nothing short of a
testimonium paupertatis and the uneasiness of a bad
conscience. If, instead of being a slave-driving taskmaster, the
Central Government had applied its energies towards
furthering the welfare of all its dependent races, combining
and co-ordinating with them in goodwill, tolerance, and
freedom, there would have been no fear of a breach of
allegiance. The three racial units forming the Swiss
Republic, and the many ethnographical elements which are
component parts of the United States of America, form
solid blocks from which there is no danger of
dismemberment. The Alsatians, who have never been subjected by
France to denationalisation, being allowed to remain a
German-speaking race, are, up to the present time, French
in their sympathies, for the simple reason that they were
content under tolerant French rule. The British Empire
comprises in its fold very different races who are all always
ready to fight together for the sake of the Empire. The
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