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diplomacy of Bismarck and his successors down to Bismarck and William compel us to be critical of the Germans and their culture; for that matter Moltke himself well knew that the European nations could not be fond of the Germans.
17. The Reorganisation of Eastern Europe and Russia.
39. The difference between the West and Russia, as far as nationality and politics are concerned, has already been pointed out; in the West there are many nations and States; Russia has many nations, but forms one State. On a territory not larger though more densely populated, the West is a political organisation of numerous and highly cultured old nations; it represents politically, economically and culturally a more intensive organisation, a more intensive employment of all cultural forces, whereas Russia is still at the stage of extensiveness. The West is an organisation of autonomous national and State units, Russia has been a centralistic, absolutist organisation. It was by the lack of decentralisation that tsarism fell. For that reason also the revolution immediately proclaimed the autonomist war-cry of self-determination of nations, and the radical factions interpret the right of self-determination as the right to political separation; this program was bound to come up in a country so highly centralised by sheer force. In the West—what a variety of independent languages, nations and States; in tsarist Russia, though with a population of half that of the West—what a monotony of administration; and yet even the West is not sufficiently decentralised. Russia does not lack natural and historical variety of cultural forces, but tsarism was unable to stir up and organise these forces; that was the cause of its breakdown and disappearance. For that reason the revolution is still so negative, so lacking in constructive force. Tsarism did not prepare the Russians for administrative work.
From the national point of view Russia is a peculiar formation composed of many nations; a German author from one of the Baltic provinces published recently in Paris, under the name of Inorodec, a treatise on Russia, in which he enumerates 111 nationalities composing Russia, European and Asiatic. His purpose, like that of all Pangermanists, is to bring out the composite character of Russia and use it in the defence of the composite character of Austria-Hungary and Prussia; but between Russia on the one hand and Austria-Hungary and Prussia on the other there is a great difference, as far as the question of nationality goes.
The great majority of the peoples of Russia are uneducated and without national conscience; the Russians themselves have not developed to the point of national consciousness; the masses of the people have their religious viewpoint, and the intelligentsia, as far as it is Socialistic, does not feel nationally. The watchword of self-determination of nations is applied by the Russians to their various parts; hence the birth of so many republics, or rather communes; and, therefore, the solution of national and language questions in Russia is different from the European solution.
Out of this great number of nations very few, and those only in small part extend across the frontiers into other States, especially into the European States. In fact, only the civilized nations in the West of Russia do so (the Poles, Rumanians, a part of the Lithuanians and Letts); the overwhelming majority of the Russian nations are united within the boundaries of the Empire; and it must be noted that the nations of Russia are on the whole small, fragmentary, and, in addition to that, uneducated.
Russia for centuries pushed to the West, directly against that zone of small nations into which the Germans pushed in an easterly direction; in that zone, Russia, Prussia, and Austria met and struggled for domination over these small nations. At the same time Russia grew toward the East; that was the result of the pressure from the Asiatics and of Russia’s
