THE SLAV IN EUROPE. T HE accounts of the recent trials
in Servo. have probably disgusted all who read them, and have possibly led some persons to look askance on a race in whose borders such things can happen. But the Slavonic race in its various branches is increasing more rapkilly than any civilised race known in history, and we must accept the fact of this growth in Europe as something, for the present at least, final, and not to be argued with or gainsaid. The Russian Empire now numbers a hundred and thirty millions, and though these numbers include Germans in the extreme West and Mongols in the extreme East, yet the mass are pure Slays, presenting thus a homogeneity rare in history. But, in addition to Russia, we have Slavonic offshoots over a large European area, which render the future of much more than half Europe certainly Slavonic. The troubles in Austria have reminded us of the Slav kingdom of Bohemia, but it is not in Bohemia only that the German is face to face with the Slav ; he is so in Galicia, in Carinthia and Carniola, while the Magyar is surrounded by an ever-iucreasing Slav population in the land of his birth. In the Balkan Peninsula it is a case of whether Slav or Greek shall inherit the lands made desolate by the Turk, and few who have studied the ques- tion in the light of recent history can doubt that it will be the Slay. We need not quote that hackneyed saying of Napoleon—" Cossack or Republican "—it is more to the point to say that, whatever the future political forms of Europe may be, her actual population will be largely, if not predominantly, Slavonic, and that this fact may mean a different Europe from that known in history. For where, from the point of view of numbers, is the counter- balancing element to the Slav to be found ? France is stationary, and very nearly so are Spain and Portugal. Germany is full, and can only maintain herself in comfort by reason of the American outlet for her surplus. Austria is actually a ground for Slav, as against German, increase. Italy, like Germany, sends her surplus over the Atlantic. The great future of English-speaking people is not in Europe, but in America and the Southern seas. The Norse people are hemmed i. by barren lands and are probably increasing faster in the North-West of the United States than at home. Now, if we set against these facts the actual growth of Russia herself, the in- crease of Slays in Central Europe, and the probable future of the Slays in the Balkan Peninsula, we cannot fail to see that, within a measurable period, the Slavonic element in European society will preponderate in the balance.
What effect will this racial reconstruction of Europe exert on mankind ? It will be a long time before we shall realise that if we want to find the great seats of the historic peoples of Europe we shall have to look beyond Europe, to Teutonic North America, to Latin South America, to Teutonic Australasia. Yet this will, so far as one can see, certainly be the case within another century, assuming the present general drift of things to continue. In the first place, for the first time in Europe, a large majority of its people will be entirely free from the traditions and law of the Western Empire. How much that means only a student with a powerful historic imagination can say, for Rome still holds us in thrall more than we know ; its masters "still rule our spirits from their urns," its conception of law, of pro- perty, of individual " rights " is ours in the main. But Russia and her Slavonic satellites have never owned allegiance to this dead Power ; their course of evolution has been different. The readers of the great Russian novels, particularly those of Turgenev, have observed the constant clash of Russia with the West, the perpetual conflict between the Western revolutionary influence which gave birth to what is falsely known as "Nihilism," and the old, shiftless, religious, good-natured, indolent Slav spirit, penetrated by a kind of communistic sentiment so sharply opposed to the individualism which Western Europe derived from Rome. There will, we are inclined to think, be in the first place a marked decline of the spirit which has created formal and positive law, and which has sharply defined legal obligations. Whether this will prove a benefit to mankind will depend on the great problem as to whether the Slays can reduce the tremendous centralised Power which rules the majority and threatens the liberty of the minority to decent pro- portions, and can reform the Eastern Church without injury to the religions life of the people. This question cannot be answered till we have answered that other question as to whether the proclivities of the Slav are towards democracy, or whether he is made to be trod upon by autocratic power. We must always recollect that the Slav is half Asiatic, that his feet are both in the Occident and the Orient, that he can hardly be approached from our point of view, and that, if democratic, his democracy will take a, very different aspect from that, for instance, of America. We incline to believe that he will be democratic, with more than a tinge of his communistic idealism. Historically, one of the chief factors in the production of Russia was the great republic of Novgorod, as another was the non-Roman and powerfully emotional Christianity introduced into Kiev more than a thousand years ago, which lies to-day, underneath all the splendid ceremonialism, at the very core of the Russian nature. The power and prestige attaching to the Czardom itself is largely due to the fact that it led the people in the emancipation from two centuries of Tartar rule. The present centralised Govern- ment of Russia, as created by Peter the Great, is super- imposed on great layers of democratic institutions, the mir and the zemstvo, utterly at variance with the powerful bureaucracy, but still there, ready to become the organs of a very curious democratic life. In Bulgaria, which though not purely Slav, is closely allied to Slav life, we have the most complete, if rudi- mentary, democracy in Europe, and that ideal is, we imagine, shared by the Slavonic peoples generally. If we may take the tone and spirit of the chief Russian novelists, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoievsky, as representing the genius of the people, we should say that a democratic temper, with more in it of fraternal feeling than the nations inheriting from Rome know, will prove to be the dominant temper of the Slay. The true Russian is, to quote one of the Fathers, naturaliter Ch,ristianus to a far greater degree than the peoples of Western Europe. He may not talk so much about " fraternity " as the Frenchman, but be will feel it as the Frenchman never did, and never will. How far the rush of modern indus- trialism which is now invading Russia, and which, when the Turk is cleared out, will invade the Balkans, may effect this spirit of passiveness and of gentle kindliness it is hard to say. Modern business cannot be conducted on the lines of a Russian mir, and it is in this strange contest between the old religious Slav disposition and the modern forms of life that the interest in Russia con- sists; and a more interesting situation was perhaps never revealed in history. It may be that not only industry, but the very strenuous grip of the political forces which bind Russia, give to her people the discipline and order that she needs ; and that the Slav race would perish of mere indolent good-nature were it not for this bitter but needed tonic.
The interest of the problem is enhanced by the fact that the Slav is still an unknown quantity. The rest of us have strutted on the stage of history for centuries ; and great work as France, England, Germany, Austria, Italy may yet have to do, the measure of our respective capacities is taken, the national type is fixed, the character is known. Even America, which is more fluid and which has not yet finally crystallised, has sufficiently indicated her leading motives and general nature. But, until the great Russian and Polish artists arose, the Slav was dumb and unknown, and they have only arisen in our time. At one bound the Slav has placed himself at the front in music and romance, which we might have expected from his nature. But Dr. Brandes, in his remarkable study of Russian character, tells us that the Slav i8 also practical and realist ; so that, while Asiatic on one side, he does not share in the purely dreamy quietism of the true Oriental. This is a remark- able combination of qualities, which bids us hope for solid contributions from the Slav to the happiness and progress of mankind. But first must come some painful surgery. The corrupt limbs of public life must be lopped off, the blank mind of the dumb masses must be aroused and enlightened, the race must be penetrated by the rude breath of political and spiritual freedom. In a word, the Slavonic people, who claim the succession to the Byzantine Empire, must purge themselves of Byzantinism.
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