Impossibility of a Russian Federation
Besides personal confidence or mistrust, there are also much deeper reasons of an objective kind which clearly show that the promises of the Russian groups are, in spite of their good will, absolutely unrealisable. One would need to be imbued with an absolute Bolshevist disregard for the laws of historical continuity to admit that Russia, by the mere force of a decree and solely by the good will of honest people, will straightway pass from being a country subject to Tzarist despotism and unaccustomed to the respect of rights, of personality, and of nationalities, to a régime of equality of rights and justice for all. There are no big jumps in History; and if they are attempted, they are paid for grievously. The proof of this is afforded by the happenings in Russia, which, it was boasted, had passed without bloodshed from the autocratic régime of the Tzar to the “freest régime in the world”—the Lvov-Kerensky régime; but streams of blood and unheard-of cruelties have followed. Russia has fallen to ruins under the despotic régime of Lenin and Trotsky.