Page:Sarolea - Great Russia.djvu/75

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RUSSIAN v. GERMAN CULTURE
59

sian history which have arrested the attention of historians and publicists. Popular Russian history continues to be written, as if Nihilism and regicide, as if persecutions and pogroms were the one normal and characteristic development of the Russian people. We are told little of the nobler traditions of the Government, of the deeper instincts of the people. We are told little of all that Russia has done for Christian civilization, through her victory over the Tartars, for European political freedom, through her victory over Napoleon, for the emancipation of small nationalities through her victories over the Turks. It is just as if Great Britain were to be judged solely by her pitiful failure in Ireland, or as if the evictions of small crofters in the Highlands were described as the characteristic event of Scottish history.


VI. Necessity of Distinguishing Between the Government and the People

We have already cautioned the student of Russian history against the axiom that every nation has the Government it deserves, and deserves the Government it has. That axiom is only true, and even then only partially true, when the people, as is the case in Prus-