being colonial, must needs be "extensive." But this is not all. At one time the economic culture of the United States was very "extensive" and it remains so in part up to the present. But the special feature of Russia as contrasted with the United States in this respect is the peculiar combination in her "extensive" colonial culture of the new with the old, of a certain freshness, so to speak, with a certain ancientness. The famous dictum of Goethe which was originally used by him with reference to the United States—"America, you are better off than this old Continent of ours.…In the pulsing hours of life you have no inner qualms of useless recollection or vain strife[1]"—was once applied with great emphasis to Russia by the most brilliant Russian political thinker of the days of Alexander II, Alexander Herzen. Nevertheless, when applied to Russia the words are historically untrue. For in the development of Russia the Middle Ages and the Modern Period are so to speak simultaneously present, combining to form a strange amalgam. But this statement in its turn needs correction and limitation. The Middle Ages are less complex, more featureless and more colourless in Russia than in other European countries.
This combination of the colonial and the ancient, which has just been described as the peculiar feature of Russian life, may be traced through all fields of
- ↑ "Amerika, du hast es besser, als unser Continent, das alte….
Dich stört nicht im Innern
Zu lebendiger Zeit
Unnützes Erinnern
Und vergeblicher Streit."
(Goethe.)
