Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/28

2 in country districts are European oases. Things technical, things practical, are for the most part European: railways, factories, and banks; commerce to some extent (including internal trade); army and navy; in part, also, the bureaucratic machine of state. It is true that any one whose first impression of this machine is derived from the Warsaw post office will find it extremely disagreeable. I need hardly say that European elements are everywhere intermingled with Russian, and after a little practice we learn to distinguish the transitional stages and the manifold combinations. Close observation and increasing knowledge enable us to detect the difference between that which has been directly imported from Europe and the native imitation or adaptation, so that we come to recognise how Russia and Europe merge in great things and in small.

After a time we shall obviously learn to detect the same contrasts in men as well as in things. European and Russian thought and feeling present themselves in the most diversified combinations. Before long the conviction is forced upon us that the Europeanisation of Russia does not consist solely in the adoption of isolated ideas and isolated practical institutions, but that we have to do with a characteristic historical process in virtue of which the Old Russian essence, civilisation, and modes of life are being transformed and destroyed by the inroad of the European essence, civilisation, and modes of life. The individual Russian undergoing Europeanisation experiences this contrast in his own intimate personality. Since the human being cannot live disintegrated, there is forced upon him the attempt to secure an organic connection between the Russian that he is by inheritance and the European that he is by acquirement, to secure as far as possible a unification of the two. The task is difficult! Try to picture to yourself vividly the contrast between the Russian peasant (and the peasant is still Russia), on the one hand, and the writer, the officer, the landowner, or the skilled technician, on the other—men who have been educated in Paris, Berlin, or Zurich, and who are familiar with the life of these cities. People differing thus widely have not merely to live side by side, but must think and work with one another and for one another!

The spiritual contrast between Russia and Europe is displayed in its fullest significance in the Russian monastery. Here we find the most genuine and the oldest Russian life,