Page:Sarolea - Great Russia.djvu/81

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RUSSIA STANDS FOR LIBERTY
65

cisely happened to be a priest. If Father Gapon had been an honest man and an enthusiast, he would have succeeded where all the orators of the "Intelligensia" ignominiously failed.


III. Russia Stands for Democracy

The spirit of equality and brotherhood is universally prevalent in Russia, and I need hardly add that that spirit is the spiritual foundation of all democratic government. Strange as it may sound to the English theorist, Russia stands for democracy. To outward appearance the Russian Government is an autocracy, but that autocracy is of an essentially democratic nature. The Russian Empire is a huge peasant commonwealth, a federation of forty thousand democratic republics, thousands of which have retained the socialist and collectivist organization of the "Mir" or village community.

For the Russian is not like the Scot or the American a born individualist, rather is he a born Socialist. Now, individualism generally creates for itself an aristocratic or bourgeois or middle class form of society. The Socialist spirit finds its most fitting expression in democracy.