being an intellectual movement, is also a nationalist movement. In other words the French nation, although distracted by civil dissensions, was a homogeneous unit, and it is this unity which made the revolution invincible. So much was this homogeneity the characteristic of France that it was one of the chief accusations against the Girondists that they were "federalists." The revolutionary wars were made in the name of the "Republic one and indivisible."
Russia, on the contrary, is a huge heterogeneous mass, composed of irreconcilable elements. The centrifugal forces in a revolutionary crisis must always be stronger than the centripetal. And the aim of the Russian Revolution is not like the aim of the French, "La République une et indivisible," but the division and dissolution of the Empire. The different nationalist elements may combine for that end—nationl separation—an end perfectly legitimate from their point of view—but their interests and tendency are different, nay, contradictory. Once separation granted, there is great danger that the Catholic Pole may turn against the Polish Jew, the Tatar against the Armenian.
(e) The conjunction of events in 1789 and
