Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/65

 interesting is not the general contrast, but the determination and delineation of the far more subtle points of resemblance and dissimilarity. But that is not my task in the present lecture. I wished merely to allude to this and to emphasize its importance.

I shall now pass straight on to the period when Russia, becoming one of the European "Great Powers," forced an outlet to the Baltic. In order to appreciate Peter the Great's work one must bear in mind that at the beginning of the seventeenth century, at the epoch of so-called "confusion," Polish troops inundated large regions of Russia and that at this epoch there were plans, partly effectuated, to submit the region of Novgorod to Swedish domination; and there arose an even more strange project, to make Russia an English dominion under James I as Protector and Emperor. The documents concerning this project were recently examined scientifically by a learned Russian woman, Madame Lubimenko, who, I should like to remark, has made some valuable contributions towards our knowledge of earlier Anglo-Russian relations. From such a political downfall characterized by projects nearly annihilating Russia as an independent State, what an uprush under Peter the Great!

The moment when this occurred is, when regarded from the purely economic point of view, marked by no fresh departure. Changes occur only in certain methods and measures of state-interference with economic life, and the speed of the development of that life is