Great Russia/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
THE GEOGRAPHICAL ORIENTATION OF RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLITICS
I
IF there is one eternal and universal instinct in human nature, it is the irresistible impulse which attracts the inhabitants of northern countries to the sunny climes of the South and the East. It is the heliotropic instinct which directs the flower towards heat and light. It is the instinct to which Goethe has given immortal expression in the "Song of Mignon." It is the instinct which for ages has transformed Italy, the land of beauty, into a land of servitude. It is the instinct which has directed the colonial expansion of Great Britain, and which in our own day has been drawing Germany to the East.
II
With no other nation has this "Drang nach Süden" and this "Drang nach Osten" been so natural and so intense as with the Russian people. For no other nation has been so disinherited by Nature, no nation has been so entirely bereft of heat and light. In the empire of the Tsar there are only two regions which are not subjected to the dominion of winter, the Crimea and Transcaucasia. Hence the value and prestige which for every Muscovite attach to those "Diamonds of the Crown." Hence the great part which these southern provinces have played in the Russian poets and novelists, in Pushkin's "Caucasian Prisoner," in Lermontov's "A Hero of our Time,"[1] in Tolstoy's "Cossacks." The Crimea and Transcaucasia are to a Russian what Switzerland and the Riviera, what Italy and Greece, are to an Englishman or a Teuton.
Geography itself therefore seems to be in Russia the accomplice of that "Drang nach Osten" and that "Drang nach Süden" in which we in the West have only seen a spirit of aggression. It is a most significant and far-reaching fact that the three great rivers of Russia, the Dnieper, the Don, and the Volga, all flow eastwards and southwards. As these three rivers are the vital arteries of Russia, as they are the three great routes of migration and invasion, the three highways of commerce, as they have determined the direction of the whole history of the Russian people—we may say that Russia, in "orientating" her foreign policy southwards and eastwards, has not only obeyed an instinct common to all that lives and breathes, but has merely followed the trend of her enormous rivers, carrying slowly but surely the destinies of those Northern Barbarians towards the Sunny South.
III
But in addition to the heliotropic instinct characteristic of all Northern peoples, in addition to the "oriental" trend of the great rivers, there is still another potent impulse which has given its direction to Russian history, and which an Englishman ought to be the last to ignore, and that is the desire to possess a free outlet to the sea—the sea which, so far from separating nations, binds them together, the sea which will bring Russia nearer to the cradle of religion and civilization, which will transform the agricultural Russia into a commercial and industrial Russia, which will bring trade and wealth, freedom and power.
Remember the famous page where the Greek historian describes the solemn and blessed moment when, after long months of expectation and suffering, the Ten Thousand Companions of Xenophon finally perceived the sea, the supreme object of their desires. Θάλασσα! Thalassa! the cry which two thousand years ago burst from the breast of the Greeks, has also been the sacred cry of the Russians! Thalassa! This cry sums up their whole history. For Russian history in modern times is nothing but an endless "Expedition of the Ten Thousand," a long effort to reach the "open Sea." Thalassa! expresses both the past and the future of the people; all the realities which they covet and all the ideal things which they dream of.
IV
For the aspirations of religion combine to strengthen and to sanctify the blind desires of political instinct; for the "Drang nach Osten" will not only bring material wealth, the contact with civilization; it also means the realization of the religious destiny of Russia. The protectorate over Turkey and Asia Minor will be the enfranchisement of the Slav nations of the Balkans, of the Orthodox brethren weighed down by the cruel yoke of the Turk, and it will involve the protectorate over Byzantium and Jerusalem, the two holy cities of the "Pravoslavs."
The Oriental and Asiatic policy of Russia is, therefore, not a policy of adventure and conquests. It is a natural and national policy. From the Russian point of view it is a perfectly legitimate and indeed a necessary one. The will of Peter the Great, whether it be authentic or not, corresponds to a political reality; it is the sacred inheritance and the historic mission which Russians for the last three centuries have transmitted from generation to generation. The struggle for the possession of Constantinople, "Tsargrad," both the capital of the Cross and of the Crescent, is the only one which has always rallied all the subjects of the Tsar, all political opinions, and all political aspirations. The conservatives, the Church, and the peasantry desire this policy because it must ensure the triumph of Orthodoxy. Liberals and "Occidentals" and intellectuals desire it because it will compel Russia to emerge from her isolation, and must bring her nearer to the centres of civilization. Realists and Jingoists desire it because it must bring with it wealth and empire!
V
All these desires and all these dreams suffered a terrible check ten years ago through the disasters in the Far East. Therein mainly resides the pathetic interest of the Russo-Japanese War. Therein also lies largely the explanation of the internal convulsions which followed. For generations Russia had been advancing slowly but surely towards the ultimate goal of what she considers her "historic mission." Like a weary traveller, exhausted by a long march, and who, arriving near the end, wanting to make one supreme effort to hasten on the desirable consummation—falls down prostrate, in view of the promised land—even so the Russians, on the eve of achieving their dreams, after patiently waiting for centuries, were suddenly seized with a feverish impatience and tried to precipitate events. They failed, and they paid for their impatience with the temporary ruin of their hopes, with unheard-of disasters and with a tragic revolution.
- ↑ This has just been added to Alfred A. Knopf's series of translations from the Russian.