Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/221

 even European culture can be conceived only in connection with nationality and that every nation represents one of its aspects; but they differed from Soloviev in their estimate of Western civilization, and insisted on its onesidedness and want of stability; they discovered, on the contrary, original and renovating principles of completeness and progress in Russian culture, based on "true equity," "внутренняя правда" which must be freely spoken out by the people; and they opposed to it the "external justice" of the state ("внҍшняя правда"). These views were applied especially by Aksakov to Russian history: according to him, the principle of "true equity" is incorporated in the community and manifests itself in the mutual love and solidarity of its members; these communities invited, of their own free will, the princes, who founded the Russian state with its external justice; and thus Land and State became the principal elements of Russian history; their relation was subjected, however, to some changes, by which Russian history can be characterized during the four periods of its existence, consecutively centred in Kiev, Vladimir, Moscow and St Petersburg; but this union between Land and State was not broken up till the last of these periods: even Moscow represented it, after having contributed to the unification of the State, and it was only Peter the Great who violently introduced the declining civilization of the West into Russia and thus created a growing divergence between the Russian people and the "cultured" classes—a divergence which must be removed.

This idealistic conception of Russian history could