Russia a new frontier on the West. According to the situation, and under the Secret Treaty with Roumania (August 17, 1916) to whom the whole Bukovina (including the Ruthenes) Transylvania and the Banat were promised, this new Western frontier would, in harmony with Russian policy towards the Poles, have included Galicia, Poznania and perhaps a part of Prussian Silesia; though, as far as I can discover, the project was not worked out in detail.
An indication of the way official Russia looked upon Slav questions was also given by General Alexeieff. With him I had a conversation or, rather, a controversy upon Russia and the world situation. He was a cautious man of critical mind who, though Conservative and narrowly Russian in his views, would not have hesitated even to sacrifice the Tsar for the sake of saving Russia. He was one of the first to realize, as early as 1915, that the Russian army could not stand up to the Germans; and, therefore, at the time when I met him, there could be no question of his entertaining any serious Slav policy. Upon our people in Russia he looked with a critical eye, and the confusion about them in Petrograd displeased him. On Europe, on us and the Austro-Hungarian people, his views were hazy. At the beginning of the war he had imagined that Austria-Hungary could be divided into States serviceable to Russia. The Czechs were to extend to Trieste and Fiume on the Adriatic, and thus to take over a large part of German Austria, including Vienna, but were only to get a bit of Slovakia, as far as Kosice, while being presented with a lot of Magyars—that is to say, according to the Russian plan, the Czech State was to have a non-Czech majority. Serbia was to extend northwards to the Russian frontier as far as Uzhorod. Since the Tsar had promised to help Serbia, her northern frontier must march with that of Russia Of the Magyars, Alexeieff took no account, though at first even he had reckoned upon their detaching themselves from Austria, in which case he would have felt no compunction in sacrificing to them his “Slav Brethren.” The Russians had long had a chance—indeed, it should have been their duty—to pursue a Slav policy towards the Poles and the Little Russians; but the policy they actually followed forms at once a sorry chapter in Russian history and a proof of how un-Slav Russia really was. Tsarist Russia was not Slav but Byzantine, and perverted by Byzantine decadence.
K
