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110 would dawn the day of the Great Russian Revolution, compared with which even the French Revolution would have been only a minor episode.

III

it is entirely misleading to say that "to scratch a Russian peasant is to find the Tartar," it is entirely true to say "that if you scratch the Russian nobleman you find the Byzantine." And if it is pretty easy to understand the moujik, even though you may never have seen a single exemplar of the type, it is extremely difficult to understand a Russian Intellectual, even though you may have met him in every corner of Europe, either as a rich absentee or as a poor refugee.

When, seven hundred years ago, the Crusaders first came into touch with the Greek Empire, they were bewildered by the mental complexity and perversity of the rulers and of the people of Byzantium. And the Byzantine soon became a byword for duplicity and perfidious subtlety. There is a great deal of the Byzantine about the educated Russian. Like the mediæval Greek, he is elusive and evasive. He is a bundle of contradictions. You never