Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/294

268 needed as a protection against external enemies and also as a means for allaying internal disorders. Aksakov thus explains the genesis of the foreign Variag state as a necessary evil. Per se the Slavs, and above all the Russians, are "people without a state."

Thus in the course of history Russia was organised by two great social forces, that of the country and that of the state, and the history of Russia is the history of the relationship between these two forces. In the Kievic epoch the state element was still weak. The princes stood at the head of the free communes; the communes had their deliberative assemblies (věče); the relations between commune and prince were peaceful, and peaceful also were the relations between the separate communes; the deliberations of the princes constituted the foundation of the subsequent zemskii sobor.

The state element was strengthened by the Tatar inroads and by the internal dissensions of the princes. Moreover, it was to the interest of the communes to liberate themselves from the princes, since these were adopting feudal methods of organisation. There thus came into existence the unified state of Muscovy, whereby the country, too, was fused into a single whole through the amalgamations of the communes. Aksakov does not fail to admit that the example of the khan of Tatary suggested absolutism to the grand prince of Moscow; but in this absolutism he contemplates the single state and the single country of Russia as a whole, the individual věčes being replaced by the zemskii sobor, the territorial assembly.

Aksakov was reconciled to the state of Muscovy, and he gives full recognition to the election of the Romanovs. In 1612 Russia was in a condition similar to that which obtained in 862. Once again there was no state, and once again the country elected a ruler, not from without this time, but from within.

The state of Peter and his successors was repudiated by Aksakov as an imitation of the European state. He consoled himself with the hope that the existence of this state would prove no more than a transient episode in the history of Russia. He considered that the year 1812 and the liberating deed of Moscow proved that Russia (country and people) was still