Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/140

114 afraid of "jacobinism," and because Gogol had been able to torment and starve himself back into Orthodoxy.

NDER Alexander and Nicholas, Russian national consciousness continually expanded, increasing finally to a highly developed chauvinism, of which Uvarov's program was the expression.

The development of Russian national consciousness dates back to the eighteenth century. In opposition to the reforms of Peter, and in opposition to the favouring of foreigners characteristic of the court, Russian peculiarities were defended against foreign influences by historians and other writers, by Tredjakovskii, Lomonosov, .Sumarokov, L'vov, Lukin, Ščerbatov, and Boltin. There was a natural reaction against the extravagances of Gallomania, and antifrench feeling was accentuated in the struggles against the French republic and the Napoleonic empire. The Frenchified Russian aristocracy became alienated from the regicides. and Russian authors lost the taste for French literature and philosophy. The strengthening of national feeling in Russia was analogous to what was taking place in Germany, the movement being intensified in both countries by linguistic changes, by the purification of the native tongue. In Russia, as in Germany, there was a reaction against French supremacy.

For the Russians the problem of the written language was one of peculiar importance. Only through the reforms