Two hundred years after the baptisms at Kiev, Russia was overwhelmed by the Mongolian invasion. Asia returned to demand its prey and to seize the young Christian territory, which was already gravitating toward Europe. Pagans from the beginning, the Tartars became Mohammedans, remained wholly Asiatic, and introduced oriental customs among their Russian subjects. Not until the fifteenth century, when the Renaissance was dawning upon western Europe, did Russia begin to throw off this Tartar yoke. They freed themselves by a succession of strong efforts, but very gradually. The Crescent did not disappear from the Volga until 1550, leaving behind it traces of the oriental spirit for all time.
The Russian people were now crushed by an iron despotism, made up of Mongolian customs and Byzantine ceremonies. Just emancipated from foreign oppression, they were forced to cultivate the soil. Boris Godunof condemned them to serfdom, by which their whole social condition was changed in one day, with one stroke of the pen,—that unfortunate St. George’s day which the muzhik would curse for three hundred years to come.
In the next century Russia was invaded from the Occident. Poland obtained one-half of its territory and ruled at Moscow. The Poles were afterwards expelled, when the nation could take time to breathe and assert itself again. Naturally, it then turned toward Asia and its own traditions.
Now appeared upon the scene a rough pilot in the person of Peter the Great, to guide the helm of this giant raft which was floating at random, and direct it toward Europe. At this epoch occurred the strangest of all the experiments tried by history upon Russia. To continue the figure, imagine a ship guided towards the West by the captain and his officers, while the entire crew were bent upon sailing for the East. Such was the strange condition of affairs for one hundred and fifty years, from the accession of Peter to the death of the Emperor Nicholas; the consequences of which condition are still observable. The sovereign and a few men he called to his aid abjured oriental life entirely, and became Europeans in ideas, politics, language, and dress. Little by little, the upper classes followed this example during the latter part of the last century.
During the first half of the present one, the influence of Europe became still stronger, affecting administration, education, etc., drawing a small part of the masses with it; but the nation remained stolid, rebellious, with its eyes turned toward the East, as were the prayers of their Tartar masters. Only forty years ago the Western light illumined the highest peaks alone, while the broad valleys lay buried in the shadows of a past which influences them still.
This entire period presents a condition of affairs wholly unique. An immense population was led by a small class which had adopted foreign ideas and manners, and even spoke a strange language; a class which received its whole intellectual, moral, and political food and impetus from Germany, England, or France, as the case might be;—always from outside. The management of the land itself was frequently confided to foreigners—“pagans,” as the Russian peasants called them. Naturally, these foreigners looked upon this country as a vast field open to them for the collection of taxes and recruits; and whose destiny it was to furnish them with everything necessary in carrying out their projects,—their diplomatic combinations on the chess-board of all Europe.
There were, of course, some exceptions—some attempts at restoring national politics and interior reform; but total ignorance of the country as well as of its language was the rule. Grandparents are still living in Russia, who, while they speak French perfectly, are quite incapable of speaking, or at least of writing, in the language of their grandchildren.
Since the time of Catherine, a series of generations living in the Parisian elegance and luxury of the days of Louis XV., of the Empire, and the Restoration, have suffered with the French all their revolutionary shocks, shared in all their aspirations, been influenced by all their literature, sympathized in all their theories of administration and political economy;—and these do not even trouble themselves to know how a muzhik of the provinces lives, or what he has to endure. These political economists do not even know how Russian wheat is raised, which Pushkin declares to grow differently from the English wheat.
So the people, left to themselves, merely vegetated, and developed according to the obscure laws of their oriental nature. We can imagine what disorder would arise in a nation so formed and divided.
In France, historical events have gradually formed a middle class; a natural connecting link between the two extremes of society. In Russia this middle class did not exist, and is still wanting, there being nothing to fill the intervening space. The whole depth of the abyss was realized by those Russians who became enlightened enough to understand the state of their country during the latter years of the reign of Alexander I.