Historical Impossibility of an All-Russian Federation
The history of centuries, customs and habits, rooted usages and popular psychology are much more effectual than the best intentions and decrees, which in the most favourable circumstances can only bring about an external change. But under the mask of the latter the Past continues to exist. We have already shown that in the proposal itself of the Russian Political Conference, under a new phraseology, there is concealed at the bottom the psychology of the Tzarist bureaucracy, of which the Russian Political Conference has not succeeded in freeing itself. If the old psychology is so sturdy in the minds of the best sons of Russia, who are accustomed to direct themselves according to the best theoretical conceptions, and who have been brought up in the atmosphere of European ideas, what then can be expected from the over-excited instincts of ignorant masses reared in utter contempt of another’s personality and rights?
It is certain that the rebirth of Russia will coincide with an extraordinary upheaval of the nationalist wave, a quite natural upheaval after the humiliation of national dignity suffered by Russia, an upheaval of which all that is foreign and non-Russian will be the inevitable victim. This wave will clear the ground for Messrs. Mandelstam, Sazonoff, Kerensky, Schreider, etc. M. C. Nabokoff will incontestably allow himself to be carried away by that wave, and if Admiral Koltchak and General Denikin do not, at least those that will come after them, perhaps M. Briantchaninoff, will benefit by it.