VOL. XXIV., No. 144.—MARCH, 1877.
Copyright: Rev. I. T. Hecker. 1877.
THE RUSSIAN CHANCELLOR.[177]
The attention of the world is at present fixed upon Russia and upon the aged yet still active statesman who has directed her foreign policy for twenty years with an ability certainly very considerable, though it yet remains to be seen how far it will prove itself consummate and successful. It will help to an understanding of the career of this eminent Russian Minister of State, and of the present attitude of Russia, if we premise a condensed sketch of certain of the most prominent events in the civil and ecclesiastical history of this great and singular empire. It is difficult to find out the certain truth in regard to some of these important facts, and we therefore profess to claim for such statements as we may make, unless they relate to matters of known and undisputed history, only that probability which they receive from the authority of some one or more of the writers whose names we have mentioned in the foot-note annexed to the title of this article. This remark applies especially to facts relating to the schism of the Russian Church. We have never yet met with any professedly complete and minute ecclesiastical history of Russia. Mouravieff’s work is a professed history of the Russian Church, but it is compendious, and too partial to deserve entire confidence. It is much to be desired that some ecclesiastic of profound erudition in Russian literature, such as Father Gagarin or Father Tondini, would furnish us with a thorough and trustworthy narrative of all the facts which can be known in this obscure and interesting department of ecclesiastical history. In fact, we suspect that very much which passes current in the civil history of Russia as written by foreigners needs a critical sifting, and that a perfectly impartial and trustworthy history of that empire is yet to be written.
The Russian Empire embraces
one-seventh of the land-surface of the earth, or more than double the area of Europe, and European Russia is thirty times larger than England. The aggregate population is at least 75,000,000, including a hundred distinct tribes, among which more than forty languages are spoken. The ancestors of the dominant race were Scythians and Sarmatians, among whom the beginnings of civilization were to be found during the earliest part of the Christian epoch. It is a curious fact that a republic existed at Novgorod before the arrival of Rurik. The Russian dominant race is Sclavonian—that is, as ethnologists suppose, of Sarmatian origin. The present name of the country and people is not, however, indigenous. The Russian tribe was a branch of the Varangians, who were Scandinavians, and migrated into the country to which they have given their name in the ninth century. The name Russian is derived by some from Rurik, and by others from some one of various Scandinavian words signifying foreigner, wanderer, or scattered, in which case it would denote the migration of the Varangian horde from its former seat and its settlement in a foreign country.[178]
Rurik was the principal chief of these Varangians, the founder of a principality which was the germ of the future empire, and the father of the first line of the tsars. Other chiefs of the same tribe founded minor principalities, which formed together a sort of confederation, the successor of Rurik being recognized as Grand Prince. The city of Moscow was founded in the twelfth century. It was not until after centuries had passed that one united
kingdom was formed and increased by degrees to the vast magnitude of its modern proportions. The absolute, autocratic authority of the tsar was likewise a later development of the primitive form of government.