Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, June 1885

Transcriber’s note: table of contents added by the transcriber.

It is easier to write about the Russian advance at the present day than it was a few years back. The ground has been cleared of much of the rubbish which formerly encumbered it. Not long ago the apologists of Russia were wont to compare the progress of her arms in Central Asia with the progress of our own in India. We were warned of a certain law of nature which impelled civilisation to advance on barbarism, and were asked to hail with sympathy, rather than view with suspicion, the extension of a Power which, as it swept on in its resistless course, diffused the blessings of order, of knowledge, and of commerce over a vast region hitherto sunk in a savagery of the worst description. But public opinion is now somewhat changed. No one questions that Russia is entitled to great credit for the civilising influence that has attended her progress, for the large benefits she has conferred upon humanity in her career of conquest through Central Asia. By crushing the Turcoman raiders, indeed, and by abolishing the slave markets of Khiva and Bokhara, she has restored peace and prosperity to districts which were groaning in misery, and has earned the gratitude of thousands of terror-stricken families. Whatever may happen in the future, she has gained imperishable glory in the past by her victories of peace along the desolated frontier of Khorassan; but here the register of her good deeds must end. To suppose that she launched her forces across the Caspian in 1869 and engaged in Central Asian warfare with a view to these beneficent results, is to ignore the whole spirit and character of her policy. Fortunately there is now no room for misconception. Her soldiers and statesmen have recently laid bare her springs of action with a plainness that is almost cynical, but at the same time with a fulness of detail that must carry conviction to all unprejudiced minds. It was during the Crimean war, we are told, that Russia first realised her false position in regard to England. In her schemes of aggrandisement in Europe she was liable to be met and thwarted at every turn by British alliances and British influence; and when engaged in war she was open to our attack in every quarter, in the Black Sea, the Sea of Azof, the Baltic, or the coast of Georgia, without any possibility of retaliation. If she was to develop in due course, as had so often been predicted, into the leading Power of the world, it was thus absolutely necessary that the inequality complained of should be redressed. Some weak point in our armor must be discovered. Some means must be found to shatter the palladium of our insular security. Hence there arose the idea of creating a great Oriental satrapy, under Russian administration, which should envelop the north-west frontier of our Indian Empire, and from which, as occasion might arise, pressure could be exerted, or, if necessary, armed demonstrations might issue, which would neutralise British opposition in Europe, and would place our policy on the Bosphorus or elsewhere in subordination to her own. In former times, as is well known, elaborate schemes have been discussed at St. Petersburg for the actual invasion of India, and, if we may judge from the utterances of the Moscow press and the fervid letters of certain Russian generals, the same exalted ideas still prevail in many military circles; but assuredly no such extravagance has been apparent in the careful plan of trans-Caspian operations hitherto adopted by the Russian Government, which has, on the contrary, been of the soberest and most practical character.