Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/107

Rh Russians, existed also among these foreigners, and often in greater degree. In the history of Europe, Boltin was able to point to not a few indications of barbarism. Urging his countrymen not to be too ready to esteem the foreign and the new, he insisted upon the superiority of prepetrine morals and institutions. Like Ščerbatov, Boltin was a conservative. He defended autocracy (an institution not unknown in the Europe of that day!). He displayed no enthusiasm for the humanitarians' demand that the peasantry should be enfranchised. It seemed enough to him that the power of the landlords should be maintained, a power to be benevolently exercised and strictly limited by law.

Both these adulators of Old Russia, Ščerbatov and Boltin, were Voltairians, and this is an instructive instance of the perplexing contrasts between Old and New Russia. The raskolniki had defended Old Russia against Peter. At the close of the eighteenth century, in the camp of the liberal friends to reform, the contrast between the old and the new was philosophically formulated, preference being given to the new. Catherine's morals were too loose for the taste of prince and general, but they supported her reactionary tendencies in politics. Rh