Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/39

 do not know how long ago this may have been, or when and how the differentiation between the various Slavic stocks began. This much seems clear, that in the ninth century differentiation was already far advanced.

In this connection it is unfortunately essential to touch upon the question of the so-called primitive home and primitive condition of the Slavs, it being premised that by the term "primitive home" we are to understand the last region in which the Slavs existed as a unified stock. The latest researches suggest that this region lay northward of the Carpathians, between Warsaw and Cracow on the one hand and Chernigov and Kiev on the other. From this region, migrations may be supposed to have started in the second century of the Christian era.

If this view be correct, if the alternative view that the unified Slavs had their home on the lower Danube or elsewhere be dismissed, it is clear that the Kievic realm may have contained the primitive Slav population; but it is also possible that the Slavs, starting their migrations from Kiev or its neighbourhood, may have returned to occupy or to reoccupy Kiev after numerous wanderings and when many centuries had elapsed.

Nothing can be said here regarding the civilisation of the primitive Slavs, or regarding the influence exercised on them by the Celts, the Baltic peoples, etc., for these are matters concerning which hypotheses are only now being formulated.

. Many Slav and Russian historians have described the Russians and Slavs of earlier days (contrasting them with the Teutons and the Latins) as unwarlike, as people of pacific and dovelike nature, and as democratic lovers of freedom. It is true that early German and Byzantine writers who made acquaintance with the Slavs and the Russians bear witness to their love of liberty and to the gentleness of their disposition. It is necessary to discriminate. Unwarlike, liberty loving, pacific, and democratic, are not interchangeable terms. As far as concerns the idea democratic, we must remember that when used by a Byzantine writer of the sixth century (Procopius) or even of the tenth century (Constantine Porphyrogenitus) the word has an anarchistic flavour—and we actually find that a tendency to anarchism has been ascribed alike to the ancient and to the modern Slavs.

For the remote epoch we are discussing I shall make use of the term "negative democracy." By this I understand the