Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/89

 either in the country or in town. He is proverbial for his cruelty and greed, and the masses of the Russian people always remember him as the main cause of their sufferings during the times of serfdom. To these general considerations of the role of imported Germans in Russia must be added the work and influence of the Germans in the three Baltic provinces,—Courland, Livonia and Esthonia. They are usually called the German provinces, although in reality they never belonged to Germany, and the Germans there constitute less than two per cent of the population, which consists of Letts of the Slav race and of Esthonians of the Finnish race. Parts of this territory belonged in various epochs to Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Poland,—but never to Germany. Some parts formed, for short periods, small independent states; others became vassal states of one or another of the above-named countries. In the thirteenth century, the Teutonic Order of Knights Templars, under the pretext of extending Christianity, occupied portions of them, and, after bloody contests with the natives, ruled these portions, but as subjects of Swedish, Lithuanian, or Polish kings. They robbed the Letts and the Esthonians of their lands, and rented these lands back to them, somewhat as Irish landlords do. There exists no more miserable and oppressed tenantry anywhere in the world to-day, and the Russian military forces frequently had to suppress bloody local revolts against the German masters. During the eighteenth century, Russia annexed all these regions to her Empire, reorganized the descendants of the Knights as local nobility with all the special rights they claimed, and up to the present, has upheld all their privileges. This German nobility in the Baltic provinces is the only remnant of any nobility in the world which has retained all its mediæval privileges. The population of these provinces is over five millions, while the original Germans number less than forty thousand, with about sixty thousand attendants, who were imported to serve them. This nobility, especially the richest part of it, possessing, through entail, large landed estates, presents a curious social phenomenon. It is closely related to the Prussian Junkerdom by family ties, and, when there are two or more sons in a family, one is found in the Russian, and another in the Prussian state service. As a striking example of this, the war revealed the fact that the now famous German Field-Marshal von Hindenburg inherited and owned a large estate in Russia. Of course, the Russian people always doubted the loyalty of this nobility to Russian interests whenever Germany was concerned. There were many cases of proved treason, a most conspicuous one in the trial of the spy, Miassoyedov, and his co-workers.

Those of the Baltic barons who stay in Russia form a very strong social factor in Petrograd, one of the main props of the reactionary forces. They are closely connected with the imported German elements described above, and guide and aid them in every way. There is no doubt that this Baltic nobility and their special privileges and distinctions at the Court had a great deal to do with the general hatred of Germans in Russia.