Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/187

Rh Similar was the theological trend towards a "new learned monasticism," initiated by Dostoevskii and Ivan Aksakov. The writers of this school desired that the church should be liberated from the state in the interest of religion.

HE champions of reaction did not fail to recognise that the economic and financial regeneration of Russia was essential. Economic reform was to sustain and justify reaction. Tsar Alexander III led a far simpler life than his predecessors. Himself thrifty, he did not hesitate to check the extravagance of his relatives.

To restore order to the national finances, the ministers Bunge, Vyšnegradskii, and Witte increased the revenue by enhanced taxation and higher protective duties, and were able to overcome the deficit, although large sums were needed for the nationalisation of the railways. After the accession of Nicholas II, during the years 1895 to 1897, a large gold reserve having been accumulated, the gold standard was introduced.

Theocratic Russia, though spiritually exclusive, had to attract foreign and unchristian capital to the country, The reactionary tsar, nolens volens and despite the protective tariff system, had to pursue a Europeanising foreign policy. Owing to the ill success of the Turkish war conducted by Alexander II, his son was estranged from England and Germany. As we now know, after the Berlin congress Bismarck was quite erroneously regarded as the hereditary enemy ("the way to Constantinople is through the Brandenburg Gate"). The tariff war with Germany initiated in 1891 came to a speedy close in the autumn of 1893 with the suspension of the autonomous Russian tariff, and in January 1894 a most-favoured-nation treaty was concluded in Berlin. But with France Russia entered into an alliance, tsarist absolutism becoming leagued with the French republic, for in 1892 the Parisian bourse had extended its ægis over Russian paper.

Economic policy is apt to lead Russian diplomacy into difficulties. Since Germany is Russia's immediate neighbour, it is Germany that can supply Russia most freely and can buy from her most extensively. In actual fact Russia's trade with Germany is the largest; next comes England; China Rh