Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/17

Rh discovery of "Holy Russia." It was declared that Russia was unlike other countries which are "hopelessly plunged in commercialism and materialism." It was declared that her mystical, religious and unpractical inhabitants, and her institutions, must not be judged from the materialistic Western point of view. Autocracy would certainly be abominable for the Western peoples, and for Western culture. In Russia it was quite different. Russia suffered under the autocracy in a material sense, but that was the mystical way of her spiritual perfection. And so on. Thus the "Holy Russia" school not only justified the autocracy but even glorified it. The legend about the Tsar as the "Little Father" of the millions of Russian peasants was cleverly disseminated. The Tsardom was no longer a nightmare and a curse. It became the mystical focus of Russia's spiritual life.

The theory of Holy Russia and the discovery of the mystical Russian soul, with its semi-religious relations to the Tsardom, were at first received in England rather sceptically. But politically it was too convenient a conception to give way before scepticism. It fulfilled its function of relieving the conscience of the people and making the rapprochement with the Tsardom plausible. As always happens with convenient theories of this sort, the legend of a Holy Russia and its Little Father was easily swallowed by an undiscriminating public opinion.

At the time of the outbreak of war there was hardly a single spiritual barrier left to an alliance with Russia. Ten years ago, before the discovery of "Holy Russia," it would not have been so easy to fight in comradeship of arms with Tsarist Russia. The United States, which had remained somewhat sceptical of this theory that Russia for the sake of her spiritual perfection needed the blessing of Tsardom, waited until the Revolution made it possible for her to join Russia and Russia's Allies.

In the course of the war the real Russia emerged. It became better known in Western Europe thanks to