Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/18

 6 Russian literature, which was then widely translated and read. Russian literature helped to show many people that the real soul of Russia had nothing in common with this fallacious, essentially contemptuous and "sugary" legend of "Holy Russia." It exposed the lie that the Russian people were content with the abject conditions of their life; that in curious contradiction with the rest of mankind they enjoyed, as it were, inwardly with a sweet suffering, oppression and misery, the squalor and poverty of their existence.

But in spite of the positive influence of Russian literature the justification of Tsardom made ever greater progress during the war. It is true that in the Grand Alliance of Western Democracies Russia was given the rather modest function of a "Steam Roller," but all that was spoken, and all that was written in newspapers and books, about Russia during the war was intended to convey the idea that we had always made a big mistake about her and that there was nothing objectionable in Russia's political institutions. With the exception of a small remnant of the Liberal and Labour Press the whole British Press exalted Russia's Government, her political institutions, and her public life. The Alliance added to the justification of Tsardom a certain amount of official politeness and indeed of flattery.

It is, therefore, not astonishing that people in this country were perplexed when the Revolution came about.

When the Russian Workers and Soldiers tore down the crumbling pillars and rotten institutions of what was being glorified in this country as Holy Russia; when the Autocracy became in a few hours a sad memory, and the "Little Father" was reduced to the proportions of a mean-spirited nonentity, the people of England, who had been taught to believe that this dark corner of Russia was the real and "Holy" Russia, were greatly bewildered. The speedy and complete liquidation of the Tsardom was astounding and painful to the followers of the Holy Russia school. They asked them-