Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/194

168 Ever since Muscovy had become great through its victory over the Tatars, dominion over Asiatic peoples, extension of Asiatic empire, had consciously or unconsciously been the Russian goal. The south and the east of the existing empire were Asiatic, and the same might be said of the north. Rule over Asia had been extended step by step. In 1701, during the reign of Peter, Siberia had been entirely incorporated; there had been wars with Turkey and Persia, the two greatest Mohammedan realms, and these wars had been the opening of a struggle still undecided; Crimea and Caucasia had become Russian; Central Asia and the Amur region had been occupied; in Asia, now, Russia was coming into contact with her European rivals, was awakening the slumbering empire of China, and was unchaining the energies of the watchful island realm.

It is indisputable, therefore, that Asia is of profound importance to Russia. So far as this is true, there is nothing particularly striking about Uhtomskii's program. Even the utopian romanticism of panasiatism would have been by no means censurable if the advisers of the future tsar had conscientiously weighed the pros and cons of the Asiatic problem. But the most characteristic feature of Uhtomskii's work was the incredible superficiality with which he estimated the Asiatic powers, and above all Japan. While the coming tsar was indulging his panasiatic dreams, the Japanese were learning all that was to be learned from Europe; and with the aid of European civilisation they were able to force upon Russia the peace of Portsmouth (U.S.A.).

Defeat was sustained in Manchuria, not by the Russian soldier, but by Russian army administration, the Russian general staff, the St. Petersburg court and its diplomacy, the Russian bureaucracy—in a word, the whole regime of Pobědonoscev. Nonchristian, unbelieving Japan overthrew Orthodox, Holy Russia.

I do not consider that the Japanese performed any deeds of extraordinary strategic significance, and their financial resources for the conduct of the war do not seem to have been very considerable (cf. Helferich, Das Geld im