Siberia, the Crimea and Bessarabia are all three interesting as countries and as Russian territories, but in a sketch of the Russian people they are unimportant. The true Russian stock falls into three great bodies, the “Bielorussi” (White Russians), the “Velikorussi” (Great Russians) and the “Malorussi” (Little Russians). They represent the North, the Centre and the South of Russia. Ethnologically, economically, and intellectually the White Russians represent the lowest type. They inhabit the Northern tracts from the borders of Poland, ancient Lithuania, and Novgorod. The governments of Minsk, Litav, and Smaljensk are their central provinces. Theirs is a poverty-stricken and, one might add, a slothful Russia. Agricultural facilities are limited, the soil is not very fertile, and the White Russian is not sufficiently industrious or persevering to improve it by rational farming. The people are more apathetic than elsewhere in Russia, and less inclined to adopt modern ideas with enthusiasm. These people become nervous and excitable only when menaced by a dearth of food; then their attitude is often much more dangerous than the tide of social revolution. At least the White Russian has kept his type fairly pure and in spite of alien neighbours he shows little trace of racial admixture.
The Little Russians, who inhabit the entire South of Russia, and from whose stock the famous Cossacks are sprung, differ most radically from their northern brothers. They are the excitable, hot-blooded, dare-devil Russians. In type the men are fine-looking and handsome almost without exception, and the women often exceedingly beautiful. Their language differs from other Russian speech by the extreme softness of the dialect (which is not unlike Serbo-Croatian), and their music and poetry are the finest in the Slav race. In the past the Little Russians were divided into many small and independent clans who outvied each other in reckless warlike enterprises. Of course the wonderful Cossacks always took the lead. They still occupy their original home on the Don and in Caucasia, and furnish the élite of the Russian Army, even as they once were the flower of the Little Russian tribes. Moreover, they preserved to the very last their freedom and their privileges in Russia. To-day one is accustomed to look upon the Cossacks as merely a body of men especially devoted to the Tsar, but, as a matter of fact, the Cossack people have had a most chequered and interesting past. Once they formed an independent warrior-nation, feared and courted by their neighbours; and so secure in their strength did they feel, that they even dared to answer the Turkish Sultan’s demand for submission with a letter of taunting derision (the well-known Cossack Ultimatum). They played a great part in the history of Russia, and each Russian ruler in turn endeavoured to assure himself of their support. After their final subjection to Russia (1851) the Cossacks gradually exchanged their political importance for their present military value. Tolstoi wrote about them as follows—though his remarks really apply to the whole of the Little Russian people: “Many years ago the ancestors of the Cossacks, who were ‘Old Believers,’ fled from Russia and settled on the banks of the Terek (Caucasus). They are a handsome, prosperous and warlike Russian population, who still retain the faith of their fathers. Dwelling among the Chechentzes, the Cossacks intermarried with them and acquired the usages, customs and mode of living of these mountaineers. But their Russian tongue and their ancient faith they preserved in all their pristine purity.... To this day the kinship between certain Cossack families and the Chechentzes is clearly recognizable and a love of freedom and idleness, a delight in raiding and warfare are their chief characteristics. Their love of display in dress is an imitation of the Circassians. The Cossack procures his admirable weapons from his mountaineer neighbours, and also buys or ‘lifts’ his best horses from them. All Cossacks are fond of boasting of their knowledge of the Tatar tongue. At the same time this small Christian people considers itself highly developed, and the Cossack only as a full human being. They despise all other nationalities.... Every Cossack has his own vineyard, and presses his own wine, and his immoderate drinking is not so much due to inclination as to sacred custom, to neglect which would be regarded as a kind of apostasy.... Women he looks upon as a means for promoting his prosperity. Only the young girls are allowed by him to enjoy any leisure: from a married woman he demands a life of drudgery from early youth to old age, and he is quite Oriental in expecting deference and hard work from his wife.... The Cossack who considers it unbefitting in the presence of strangers to exchange a kind or affectionate word with his wife involuntarily feels her superiority as soon as he is alone with her. For the whole of his house and farm are acquired through her and maintained by her labour and care....”
Between these extremes of Northern and Southern Russia, the Great Russian stands out like a beacon or an indestructible landmark. He represents the purest type of the Russian people, the children of “matyushfia Moskva.” Whatever Russia has produced in the way of true greatness in every sense of the words, has its cradle in Great Russia, and has been nursed at the breast of Mother Moskva. This truly Russian people inhabits the huge central tracts of Russia, and the governments of Moskva and Novgorod are their particular home. The Russian faith owes its beauty, the Russian ideal its purity to this people, and to the race they have given the All-Slav Ideal. And they are the only Russian people whose soul has two faces, an outer and an inner one. The Russian sculptor Tsukoff has symbolized them in a figure resembling a sunflower. It is as well to know that the Great Russian cannot live without sunflower-seeds. He calls them “podsolnushki.” Everything is smothered in “podsolnushki” shells—streets, floors of rooms and railway carriages, even the corners in the churches. Every Great Russian munches “podsolnushki,” and by temperament he himself is a “podsolnushki.” He has an outer shell and a kernel. In Russia the sunflower is queen of the flowers, and as the sunflower is among the flowers so is the Great Russian among the Russian peoples. He is the true “tsarkiya Rus.” The Tsar is the sun, the heart of the realm, and the Muscovite people are the “podsolnushki.” Each individual is only one among many, a particle, a seed for the propagation and glorification of his own race. Probably, the Great Russian has no equal in the world as regards idyllic simplicity. Not because he munches “podsolnushki,” crosses himself in tram-cars when passing a church, goes about in big boots in the heat of summer, and drinks vodka, wine and beer without regard to time or season, but because he is a true yeoman soul. He is quite indifferent to all that does not interest him personally. The surface of his soul is as hard and impervious as the shell of the sunflower seed. His face wears an imperturbable, changeless expression. To reach the kernel of his human soul one has to discard every formality, thrust aside every obstacle, and bite into it as if it were a sunflower seed. If you abuse him roundly and “have it out” with him, he suddenly shows himself in his true colours, the best and kindliest of souls; but if you handle him with kid gloves you will never get a glimpse of his inner nature. As an acquaintance the charm of the Great Russian consists chiefly in his sudden transition from sharp resistance to an unexpected exhibition of gentle, unaffected loveableness. The Great Russian has a strong natural talent for philosophy, but, metaphorically speaking, his philosophy is as vegetarian as his cooking has largely remained to this day. There is a scent of dried herbs, new-mown hay, and southern-wood about it; it recalls dark forests where the sunlight, piercing the rifts between the tree-tops, shines with golden-blue, unearthly splendour—a ray of the light Divine. His philosophy is innocent of blood like the saints of the old ikons.
This Great Russian people is the flower of Russia, the Sunflower, whose golden petals point the way for the future of the whole Russian nation.
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The problem of Russian culture has its roots in the Russian people, and not in the educated classes. The desire for culture has emanated from the people themselves, and the spirit they evinced has pointed the way for the educated classes in the great struggle for national culture within recent years. The educated man is the interpreter of the popular demand for culture, and of the intellectual wealth dwelling in the soul and mind of the Russian people. Almost the whole of Russian art and literature is derived from this source, and it has never shown the world so much the genius of the poet, painter, or the sculptor in question, as the genius of the Russian people that produced him; and the best that is revealed in Russian art is the face of the Russian soul with its manifold aspects of thinker, philosopher, and purely human being. Dostoievski, Tolstoi, Gogol, Gontsharoff, Tshekhoff, Gorki and Andreeff in poetry; Repin, Vasnetsoff, Tsukoff, Troubetzkoy and many others in the pictorial arts;—all have learnt what they had to tell from the soul of the people and the wisdom of this soul; and the Great Russian musicians have used the voice of the people throughout for the expression of their art. They are all of them merely interpreters of the rich fund of culture, the latent culture of the Russian people. This latent culture, in conjunction with the holy Russian faith, has advanced towards the highest development of human dignity and nobility, towards peace founded not upon blood, but upon love. The abuse the Germans have heaped upon Russian barbarism is merely the outcome of envious rage on the part of an inferior, who sees his artificial pseudo-culture endangered by another culture which blossoms from the depths of the human heart.
The non-Russian Slavs stood for a long time under the influence of German culture. With their characteristic aggressiveness the Germans represented their culture as the high-water mark of civilization and inculcated it everywhere with the same violence which at present distinguishes the advance of their invading hordes. Even nations possessing a peerless millennial culture, like the French and Italians, have found it difficult to escape their influence. But a sham must inevitably die of its own exposure. Every people, every nation has its own peculiar susceptibility, a kind of instinctive taste, which refuses to tolerate anything that does not appeal to its soul, and could act destructively upon it. The peoples of the West have for some time past boycotted the “Williamitic” culture, and only sundry isolated Slav peoples have admitted it—principally those who were practically dependent on Germany, and whose native culture was forcibly suppressed. The result was that a few years ago a non-Russian Slav knew his sentimental Schiller better than his Dante, Lenau better than his Pushkin, Kleist better than Shakespeare, and Gottfried Keller better than Dostoievski. In the Slav schools in Austria-Hungary the German language is obligatory as the official language (the other languages are to this day not permitted in the schools), German history is taught as the standard of national greatness and civilization and German literature and art as practically unique and unequalled. All that bore the hallmark “Made in Germany” was inculcated as ideal. Thus it was not at all strange that German culture has for a long time predominated among these Slavs. But the Slav instinct always hated this culture, though at first unconsciously, and sensed it as a false and treacherous enemy. Then Russia began her intellectual campaign among the Slavs. At first it was an uphill struggle, for the Government authorities placed every possible obstacle in the way of this propaganda. But when the Slav peoples realized that the Russian influence could only reach them as forbidden fruit, they began greatly to desire it. To the power of the State they opposed the power of their will and their instincts. This struggle is still in progress, but it has been uniformly successful in favour of the Russian influence. During the ’eighties the results of this influence began to show fruit, and since that time Slav intellectual and educational development has safely entered the fairway of Russian intellectualism. Art and literature have followed the lines laid down by Russia, and become more definitely Slavonic. The latent mental wealth and resources of the Slav nations have come to the surface and appear pure and unaffected and entirely free from German “angularity,” while their social problems betray a distinct kinship with the Russian social movement. In recent years this process of emancipation and affiliation has so far developed that it has entered the field of politics and materialized in the Russian protectorate over all the Slavs. This, however, required no propaganda—it arose out of itself, as will appear in the chapters dealing with the other Slav nations.