Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/143

 very hopeful part. We hardly realise, I think, that Russia is only beginning to be. Russia has been forming. Russia has during the centuries of her long struggle on the great plain been gathering together the materials for a great existence, for some great new experiment in human life in this world of ours. The materials have been gathered together by a long series of conquests, by a long series of struggles, by great efforts in trade and colonisation. And now, as far as we can see, this part of the work is done. The materials are there and they are waiting for their elaboration. Russia has made her notes, she has outlined her plan, and now has come the time for her to write the great volume which she is destined to write in history.

I have said there are over one hundred languages in the Russian empire, but that does not mean that there are a hundred nationalities. A great many of these languages are spoken only by what we may call ethnic units which still linger in the region of mere folk-lore, which have not obtained any grasp upon civilisation, which are liable to assimilation, which will probably in process of time disappear as separate ethnic communities. In this way, in the north-west of Russia, Finnish tribes are being assimilated and are gradually disappearing. Many of these tribes are extremely interesting in themselves, and few parts of the world are so interesting for the ethnologist as is Russia, with its great variety of local customs, its myths, its religions, the wonderful traditions of many of the tribes in the Caucasus, the many strange customs, going back to ancient times, leading back to all kinds of strange and unexpected connections with older civilisations, so