Russianism. But the liking of the Russians for us was less lively than our liking for them. Under Tsardom, their Government and bureaucracy were Conservative and legitimist. Tsar Nicholas I rejected pan-Slavism for legitimist reasons. The sympathies of Russia had long lain with the Orthodox peoples. As they were living under the hostile and non-Christian rule of the Turks, their liberation—including the conquest of Constantinople and of the Straits—became a Russian official policy. The Liberal section of the Russian public, on the other hand, would have nothing to do with the official policy and entertained none of the pro-Slav feelings which, in Russia as elsewhere, were propagated by a limited circle of Slavonic students and historians through whom knowledge of the Slav peoples and fellow-feeling with them spread to wider circles. Yet, even among the Russian masses, this fellow-feeling concerned only the Orthodox Slavs, the Serbs and the Bulgars. It drew strength from the ancient relationship of the Russian Church to Byzance.
Towards the Catholic and Liberal Slav races, official and Conservative Russia showed, on the contrary, reserve and even antipathy. From the time of Peter the Great, if not earlier, Russia had made friends with Prussia and Germany. The Russian Germans held, moreover, a strong position at Court. In the eighteenth century, when the Russian nobility was inclined to adopt French culture, Russian intellectual life became an odd Franco-German mixture. Subsequently, during the nineteenth century, German influence became more powerful and Socialism presently reinforced it among the younger generation. Until quite recently Russian knowledge of the culture and literatures of other Slav peoples was insignificant.
As her position in Europe and Asia demanded, Russia, a Great Power, proudly pursued a world policy in which the Balkans and Turkey played a notable part. Financial and political exigencies led her into the alliance with France, and ultimately into the Entente with England after long rivalry in the Balkans and Asia.
It was in these circumstances that the world war broke like a storm upon us. By it our former uncritical pro-Russianism was refuted and, I hope, dispelled. Our Slavism must not be blind. I, for my part, repudiate the pan-Russianism which, in the name of Slavdom and Slav policy, centres all hopes upon an imaginary Russia and is too often a mere pretext for Nihilist pessimism. All of us must hope that Russia will recover from her disintegration, but recovery and consolidation can
