Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 132.djvu/10

4 have come under Russian rule almost without a musket-shot, because these regions were inhabited by savage wandering tribes who had no hold on the soil, and made no objection to the advent of settlers. Some of them, such as the Tchouvasses, Mordvins and Tcheremisses of the Volga, are already half Russianized; others, like the Samovedes and Kirghiz, remain pagan or Mohammedan; but all are on perfectly good terms with their governors, and seem, indeed, never to have had anything to complain of. Other large districts, such as the Tatar khanates of Kazan and of the Crimea, have, indeed, been conquered, but conquered almost of necessity, being held by semi-civilized Mohammedan states between whom and the Muscovite frontier population it was found practically impossible for peace to subsist. Georgia was not conquered at all, but handed over to the czar by its last king, who could not defend it against his Mohammedan neighbors. The only acquisitions, therefore, on which the charge of deliberate aggression can be based are those of Finland and the Baltic provinces, Poland, the south-western provinces conquered from Turkey, and the districts recently occupied in Turkestan (omitting the trifling conquests in Transcaucasia made from Persia). A few words may suffice for each of these.

All these territories, except Turkestan, were conquered when conquest was still the order of the day in Europe, and regarded as the natural reward, even where it had not been the original object, of a war. Our present sentiment, which condemns the transference of a population to the rule of a victorious alien state, is extremely modern, and far from universally dominant: witness the case of north Schleswig and the general desire of the French, in and before the summer of 1870, to annex the purely German districts on the left bank of the lower Rhine. In the case of Finland, Russia had this excuse, that while it was held by a foreign power St. Petersburg, lying close to the Swedish border, was at the mercy of an invading force. Finland, moreover, has, ever since her submission, been treated with singular consideration. She retains her laws, her two languages, her metallic currency. Her free constitution, never abolished, has of late years been recalled to active life; no attempt has been made to Russify her people or institutions; she spends all her own revenues and costs Russia a considerable sum besides. The story of Poland offers a sad contrast to this generosity, and it is mainly her cruelties there that have drawn on Russia the aversion of western Europe. Nothing can excuse those cruelties, worse even than those of which we were guilty in Ireland in 1798; or the French in Algeria. Several points, however, may deserve to be noticed. One is, that in the original partition of Poland Russia did no more than was done by Austria and Prussia. A second is, that there existed an ancient and bitter hatred between Russians and Poles, dating from the days when the latter, then the stronger power, had nearly crushed the national existence of Russia. Further, the democratic party in Russia in 1863, seeing in the division between the peasantry of the Lithuanian provinces, who had no Polish sympathies, and the nobles who had, an opportunity of inflicting a blow upon the nobility generally, hounded on the government against the insurgents. And the government itself was stimulated to greater harshness by its fear of the revolutionary spirit which had made Warsaw an outpost. To stamp out the conspiracies which were always simmering there, seemed to them necessary for the safety of Russia itself.

The acquisitions of Asiatic territory made in 1828 from Persia and in 1829 from Turkey were less considerable than might have been expected, considering the weakness of the beaten party. We need not set this down to generosity — generosity was not a feature in the character of Nicholas — it was due to the sense that annexations were not really for the conqueror's interest, who had enough on his hands already. The war of 1828-29 was not a war of aggression, but arose out of the conduct of Turkey towards the 