Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/16

4 land and Russia, which might have been expected to contribute to a better understanding of Russia and of the Russian people, had, on the contrary, an exactly opposite effect. From the very beginning of the rapprochement in 1907 it became the fashion to depict Russia and the Russian people with sentimental flattery. The previous conception of Russia as a backward country, with rotten political institutions and a monstrous despotism, was said to be biassed and false. Russia had to be "discovered" again. And since then Russia and the soul of Russia have been successfully "discovered" many a time. The real aim of these discoveries was not so much to give a full and veracious account of real Russia, as to blind the British people to Russian realities. So long as the political interests of the two countries were regarded as opposed, the sharpest and most implacable critic of Russian political institutions and public life used to be considered rather useful and therefore welcome. But when the Governments of Britain and Russia decided upon a common policy and a political rapprochement, a change of public opinion about Russia was deemed necessary. And that is precisely why the greater part of these "discoveries" of Russia and of that mysterious "Russian Soul" differ very little from the old-fashioned political art of applying "whitewash."

To reconcile the free British people with the Russian autocracy was, of course, no easy undertaking. Dislike of Russian political institutions was deep-rooted. A free and proud people like the British not only had a deep repugnance to the Tsardom, but could scarcely admire or like a people which was content to live and suffer under a rotten autocracy. But the political aims of the State demanded a reconciliation; and there is never any lack of imaginative genius when the "highest interests of the State" demand it. Thus it was that the very difficult problem of reconciling British public opinion with reactionary Russia was quickly solved, and with ingenious simplicity. The solution was the