Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/159

Rh Russians had to fight steamboats with sailing vessels. In the days of the first Napoleon the Russians had been able to meet their enemies on comparatively equal terms, but now their schools were behind the age and their technical knowledge was consequently deficient. The army had been severely affected by deficiencies of administration. Bravery on the battlefield does not suffice to secure victory. For this end, highly trained officers and men, improved instruments of offence and defence, and an adequate supply of food, medicines, and stores of all kinds, are no less essential. There must be foresight. The history of the Crimean War teaches us how the inward corruption of theocratic obscurantism had affected army administration. When we study that history we realize the truth of Bělinskii's dictum concerning the whole regime of Nicholas 1, that it was "a corporation of enthroned thieves and brigands."

A comprehensive survey of the entire period of reaction under Nicholas and his predecessors fills us with astonishment at the incapacity of the Russian reactionaries. We recognise how little they were competent even to promote their own interests, how unable they were to attain to so much as a partial grasp of Russia's historical evolution or to secure an organic picture of their country in its relationships with the world at large. Nicholas never ceased to regard revolution as the product of agitation, as the work of isolated demagogues and secret societies. His advisers took the same view. The crown and the government held that it was enough to enforce police methods of repression, mechanically imitating reactionary Europe. Nicholas followed the petty example of Metternich and his anti-revolutionary reaction, and followed it with identical results.