Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/117

 Situated on the borders of the Western world and containing countries of both Roman and Byzantine civilisation, with the former gradually absorbing the latter, Poland represented very different stages and types of civilised life. While in the West they lived on a more or less European level, in the south-east, on the fertile plains of Ukraina, frequently raided by the Tartars, the Poles carried on their pioneer work amidst constant warfare with the Nomads. A most adventurous, wild life, and most troublesome types of citizens developed there. And there arose great magnates who, like kings, had their own armies which they employed against the invaders, but sometimes also in the intestine troubles of the Republic. There also, in face of constant Tartar danger, a peculiar military organisation of Cossacks appeared on the Dnieper which, growing in strength and independence, itself became a great danger to the Republic.

The economic life of the country was very simple. Its commerce and its middle class having been ruined, the country lived almost exclusively on agriculture and on the export of grain through Danzig to North-western Europe. The community was composed practically of two classes: of free nobles and peasant serfs, its structure being thus simplified and reduced to a more primitive state. National education had at the end of the sixteenth century fallen into the hands of the Jesuits and its level had been gradually lowered. The mass of the gentry were brought up in ignorance and in very backward ideas. The ruin of the cities, which are everywhere productive centres of civilisation, contributed to the general abasement. The gentry had