# Russian Realities and Problems/The Nationalities of Russia

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THE NATIONALITIES OF RUSSIA
I
It would not be right to say that the Nationalities of Russia are entirely unknown in England. During the last few years especially a great deal has been said and written about a number of the nationalities under Russian rule. The Finnish, Polish, Armenian, Jewish and Georgian questions have all been discussed in England. But there is one disadvantage in the mode of discussion that has hitherto prevailed in this country. These questions have been viewed not as a whole, but in segments. They have been seen as moments, as phases in some great dim struggle of which the full meaning is hardly realised. Most of the questions have been dealt with from a purely political point of view. The sufferings of Finns, Armenians, and other nationalities of Russia have been loudly proclaimed. We have heard of their grievances, we have heard the voice of their complaint, but we have rarely heard, the voice of their joy or the accents of their daily life.
Now I do not think we can fully understand the meaning of any one of these questions, if it is wrested entirely from its context. Appeals have been made to our human instincts. The generous sympathies of English men and English women have been enlisted on ​behalf of many causes. But if we were to put some of these causes side by side and compare them, we should find ourselves confronted by perplexing anomalies. Consider together, for instance, the Finnish and the Jewish questions, or again the Armenian and the Georgian questions. You will discover strange contradictions that are at first sight startling and perplexing. You will ask questions and will probably arrive at broader and more general conclusions. Your humane instincts will be vindicated. The impulse of sympathy will still be strong, but it will be intelligent and clear.
When I think of the nationalities of Russia, I do not think first of all of political struggles, of debates in the Duma, or of newspaper articles. I think of certain more intimate aspects of the lives of these very numerous and varied peoples, of certain episodes which show the way their thoughts are tending, without regard to the vicissitudes of political conflicts. Politics are necessary, whether we like or dislike them. But politics are a system of relations, and we cannot understand relations unless we first of all realise what bodies they are between which the relations subsist.
I remember reading two or three years ago a book by a Tartar mullah, named Musa Bikiev, who is called by many admirers in Russia the Luther of Islam. The book was on a very technical subject, the subject of fasting when the days are long. As you know, during the month of Ramadhan the Mohammedan must fast from sunrise to sunset, and this particular theological question was discussed by Musa Bikiev in this book. But the work is not wholly a dry theological treatise. The writer describes a journey he took in Finland. He ​had interesting conversations with a Finnish professor of the Mongolian language. He visited Tammerfors, the Manchester of Finland, and records his admiration for Finnish education, Finnish institutions, and Finnish industries. Then he took a journey further north still, to Tornea, not very far from the Polar circle, at the head of the Gulf of Bothnia, and there with a party he ascended a hill and saw the midnight sun. The sight of the midnight sun evokes from Bikiev a very fine passage on the majesty of God, and then he returns to his difficult theological question—how can Mohammed's precepts on fasting that had in view a hot country like Arabia, with its long nights, be observed in the land of the midnight sun? Bikiev was born in the Russian empire at Kazan on the Volga. He saw the midnight sun also in the Russian empire, and the fact that impressed me was, that it was the extreme diversity of social and geographical conditions prevailing in the empire that quickened in him this interesting process of thought, that stimulated his fruitful work of theological inquiry.
Then I think of a young Buriat scholar, a member of a semi-nomad tribe in the east of Siberia. One evening in Petrograd I walked with this young Buriat along the banks of the Neva, and he described to me a very interesting visit he had made to the great Buddhist monastery of Lhassa in Tibet. He told me of the wonderful library of Buddhist works and of the magnificent image of Buddha Maitreya in the monastery, and then he went on to tell me of his very interesting attempt to transliterate his Buriat-Mongol mother-tongue by means of Roman characters. That again ​was a curious instance of the varied mental processes that are going on among the nationalities within the Russian empire. On the one hand a keen interest in Tibet, the home of that type of Buddhism which the Buriats profess, and on the other a hunger for Western civilisation that led to an attempt to adopt the Latin alphabet to the Buriat language.
I recall, again, a young Georgian who lived and studied in Petrograd, and in order to earn a living he secured a post as proof-reader on a Russian newspaper. But the chief interest of his life was to translate Sophocles from Greek into Georgian verse. These are the things I like to think about when I think of the nationalities of Russia.
The number of languages spoken within the Russian empire is something over a hundred, and the number of languages spoken will give some idea of the very great variety of grades of culture and of civilisation there are within the empire. There are almost as many grades of culture and civilisation as there are grades of climate upon that great plain. If you take, for instance, the alphabets of the various newspapers published in the Russian empire, you will see what an extraordinary variety of forms of culture are intermingled there. You have the Gothic letters in the German, Swedish, and Finnish papers. Then you have the Roman characters in Polish and Lithuanian. You have the Hebrew alphabet in the Yiddish and Hebrew press and literature. You have the black square Armenian characters, and you have the beautifully rounded Georgian characters, you have the Arabic alphabet for the Tartar and the Kirghiz languages, you ​have the Mongol characters for the Buriat language, you have Russian characters for Great Russian, Little Russian, and White Russian, Each of these alphabets represents a very different type of culture. The Russian alphabet stands for the old Byzantine culture. The Gothic characters stand for the Germanic culture of the north-west of Russia. The Armenian and Georgian alphabets represent the ancient civilisations of Transcaucasia. The Arabic alphabet stands for the great Mohammedan culture which dominated the middle east and still has great power there. The Mongol alphabet, which is ultimately derived from the Syriac alphabet, shows how the Semitic culture of Mesopotamia impinged at one time on the ancient civilisation of China.
Then you have an extraordinary variety of forms of speech. Several great families of languages are represented. You have the Indo-European family, including Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Lettish, Swedish, and also German, so far as it is spoken in Russia. Then you have what is called the Finno-Ugric family, including the Finnish of Finland and the Finnish languages of the east of European Russia, and also the languages related to Hungarian on the borders of European Russia and Siberia. You have the Tartar or Turkish languages, represented by Kazan Tartar, Azerbaijan Tartar, Crimean Tartar, Bashkir, Sart or Uzbeg, Kirghiz and Turkoman. You have the Mongolian family, including Buriat and Kalmyk, which latter is spoken near the mouth of the Volga. You have the Manchu family, represented by the languages of Tunguses and other tribes in Siberia. You have the ​strange and curious languages whose origin and connections are yet hardly known in the far east of Siberia—some languages apparently related to the languages of the North American Indians and others to the language of the Esquimaux. Then in the Caucasus you have those extremely interesting languages related to Georgian, and also to Armenian, languages which are believed by the scholar who knows them best, Professor Marr, of Petrograd, the son of a Scotch father and a Georgian mother, to form what he calls a Japhetic group, which is a kind of cousin to the Semitic group of languages. Thus the languages of the empire represent an extraordinary variety of linguistic tendencies and of lines of linguistic evolution. Within this broad expanse of Russian territory men have elaborated various forms of speech, which mean various ways of thinking, various ways of looking at the world, various efforts to rise to a spiritual consciousness. All these tendencies have gone their own varied ways in the course of history. They have come into conflict, they have influenced each other, and now we find this wonderful variety of forms of speech and forms of thought, of spiritual reaction, all linked together in the vast territory of the Russian empire, all linked together in one complex Imperial organisation,
I think if we realise this we shall realise one very important fact. I wish we could at last get out of the way of thinking of Russia as a huge piece of the map, as something flat, and given, and static, and solid, and stationary. Russia is not that. Russia is a process. Russia is one huge process of evolution, in which all these various nationalities play a very important and ​very hopeful part. We hardly realise, I think, that Russia is only beginning to be. Russia has been forming. Russia has during the centuries of her long struggle on the great plain been gathering together the materials for a great existence, for some great new experiment in human life in this world of ours. The materials have been gathered together by a long series of conquests, by a long series of struggles, by great efforts in trade and colonisation. And now, as far as we can see, this part of the work is done. The materials are there and they are waiting for their elaboration. Russia has made her notes, she has outlined her plan, and now has come the time for her to write the great volume which she is destined to write in history.
I have said there are over one hundred languages in the Russian empire, but that does not mean that there are a hundred nationalities. A great many of these languages are spoken only by what we may call ethnic units which still linger in the region of mere folk-lore, which have not obtained any grasp upon civilisation, which are liable to assimilation, which will probably in process of time disappear as separate ethnic communities. In this way, in the north-west of Russia, Finnish tribes are being assimilated and are gradually disappearing. Many of these tribes are extremely interesting in themselves, and few parts of the world are so interesting for the ethnologist as is Russia, with its great variety of local customs, its myths, its religions, the wonderful traditions of many of the tribes in the Caucasus, the many strange customs, going back to ancient times, leading back to all kinds of strange and unexpected connections with older civilisations, so ​that in the far north of Siberia you may find curious reminiscences of the wisdom of the Ganges, all kinds of curious relics of customs, half familiar to us and half unknown. But on the other hand there are several ethnic units which have by various means in various ways grasped the apparatus of civilisation for themselves and have attained the rank of nationalities, and it is with these nationalities that I particularly wish to deal in these lectures.
The position of the nationalities of the Russian Empire is not quite so strange, not quite so foreign, as it seems at first sight to Englishmen. After all, there is a very close analogy with our British Empire. Take the ordinary Russian University, such Russian Universities as those of Petrograd and Moscow. You will find there in certain respects a very close analogy even with Cambridge; I mean so far as the character of the students goes. Here in Cambridge there are, or were, English students from various countries, there are Scotchmen, Irishmen, South Africans, English and Dutch, there are Indians from various parts of India, there are French Canadians and British Canadians, there are many from the Straits Settlements, from Australia and New Zealand. You will find something of the same kind of thing in Petrograd or Moscow: you will find not only Russian students there but Poles, Armenians, Georgians, Tartars, and lately even Turcomans, who in a work published in England about thirty years ago were called, quite rightly, "the man-stealing Turcomans." The difference between the British Empire and the Russian Empire is that in Russia there are no dividing oceans. If we could ​think of the British Empire as being all of a piece, with all its great variety of people jostling each other on a great plain, we should realise more clearly the national problems of the Russian Empire. Russia has, as it were, its Irish problem, its South African problem, its French-Canadian question, its colonial question; and all these questions are juxtaposed and intermingled very closely and are all entangled in a most extraordinary way with the question of the Russian population which is spread all over the Empire and very often cuts through the territory occupied by other nationalities. You have this great plain which is in a sense a sea. with the Russians as the great colonisers, with the nomad tribes as the pirates who in the long run were subdued and tamed to Russian rule.
How did this very complex organisation, called the Russian Empire, with its great varieties of nationalities, come to be what it is?
I don't want to tell over again the story of Russian history, which has been very ably set before you in several lectures during the week, but there are two or three points to indicate which have a bearing on my subject. If you will remember, first of all a number of loosely organised Slavonic tribes coalesced and formed at Kiev a State which for a time flourished, and was then swept away by the Tartar invasion. Then these Slavonic tribes who by this time were known as Russians transferred their centre to the upper Volga and the Oka river, and afterwards established a new centre in Moscow where they began to collect the scattered fragments of the Russian people. The Russian ruler at Moscow subdued the various Russian principalities ​around him, and gradually formed a strong national unit. Then using Moscow as a kind of fulcrum he began the great work of expanding over the great plain, a very curious expansion which apparently by a strange historical necessity could not stop until the limits of the plain were reached. The Moscow rule extended southward, and subdued the Tartars. Then it began to extend westwards, and came into contact with the Poles. There was a great crisis. There seemed to be a danger of the Russian state disappearing entirely under the blows of the Poles and the Swedes. There was absolute anarchy and absolute disorganisation, and the Russian state was saved by the heroism of the Russian people who took the work of evicting the invaders into their own hands. Then the work of building up began again. It continued throughout the seventeenth century, continued slowly, with a tendency towards the west, towards the Baltic, and with a steady tendency towards the Black Sea, and then finally Peter the Great, by a stroke of genius, decided upon a new capital. He wanted a new fulcrum for the more critical leverage of the century that was to come. He founded Petrograd, and using Petrograd as a lever Russia continued her work of expansion along the Baltic seaboard. First of all the Baltic provinces were secured. Then the northern shore of the Black Sea was secured by the annexation of the Crimea in the reign of Catherine the Great. Next the kingdom of Georgia became annexed to Russia by the voluntary act of its own ruler. That was the beginning of the conquest of the Caucasus. Then after the shock of the Napoleonic wars, during the nineteenth ​century, Russia completed her great work of expansion by extending out to the far east of Siberia and by conquering Central Asia. Just before the Napoleonic wars there happened that very tragical and very strange and mysterious thing, the partition of Poland, the three partitions of Poland, which placed a very large territory in the west and south-west under the rule of Russia.
During the nineteenth century Russia became a very active participant in western civilisation, and there was an extraordinary development of civilisation in Russia, expressing itself in a very great variety of ways, in literature, in art, in economic and social life and in the development of political forms. This new and energetic and growing Russia, that was for the first time conscious of her great power and her great resources, that threw itself as a people heart and soul into the work of civilisation, had around it a great variety of nationalities, and it is a very remarkable thing that during the nineteenth century in Russia there was not only a very great and very brilliant Russian national movement, but several other national movements were either revived or began their work on the territory of the Russian Empire. You have heard of the magnificent Polish revival that gained its power and its pathos from the intense suffering of the Poles who had lost their inheritance. The nineteenth century saw the beginning and the rich development of the Finnish national movement. In the Caucasus, the ancient civilisations of Armenia and Georgia, which had sunk into decrepitude, which had lost their vigour and their power, were revived very largely because of ​the contact of this old stream of civilisation with the new stream of Russian civilisation. Then, little by little, through the force of example, or the force of local conditions, there arose other national movements. Russia became the centre of the very interesting and very manifold Jewish movement. Then there came the Lettish and Esthonian movements, and in the Baltic region farther eastward arose a Mohammedan or Turkish movement. Then finally even some of the tribes of Eastern Siberia were touched, and there appeared the faint beginnings of a national movement among the Mongol Buddhists.
All these movements are very varied. Some are very strong. Some have a very clear perception of their objects. Some have already produced very definite results, and can show a record of bright achievement. Others are weak and feeble. Some of the movements draw their vigour from sources of their own. Others are dependent almost entirely upon Russian civilisation, drawing their material from Russian civilisation translated into their own tongue, and using it as a stimulus of the national force of their own people. Some are independent of Russian civilisation. Some are more or less dependent. Some are dependent partly on Russian and partly on Western civilisation. Some are dependent exclusively on Russian civilisation for the material with which they are building their new national home.
There is an extraordinary variety in these movements, and where there is movement there is conflict, there is conflict with the dominant people, with the Russians, or rather less with the people than with the ​policy of the Government. Then there are fierce conflicts of the various nationalities amongst themselves, and the quarrels between the nationalities"are very often much more violent than the conflict between Russia and any of the nationalities. There is conflict, there is movement, there is progress, there is disappointment, there is hope, there is tragedy. In the vast process that is Russia, we find as it were cosmical forces at work, tremendous cosmical forces of good and evil, on a scale that we in our quieter empire are hardly able to realise. And in this cosmical struggle there is tragedy, deep tragedy, and I think the note of tragedy will never be entirely absent from Russian history, because of the greatness of Russia, because of the tremendous task that lies before this group of peoples on the vast plain that stretches between the Baltic, the Black and the White Seas, afar to the Pacific and the frontiers of the Chinese Empire and the borders of Persia. There is tragedy in this. We cannot eliminate the tragedy, but at the same time, in spite of conflict, which comes from movement, in spite of suffering, which is due to participation, in the very great, very complex, historical process, in spite of baffling enigmas and crushing disappointments which we find ourselves unable to explain, in spite of all this there is joy in Russia, the joy of all these peoples of various origins, of various hopes, of various faiths, uniting on that vast expanse to create new types of rich human lives, to produce some new manifestation of the power of the human spirit which shall bring wealth and power and happiness to the world. For the sake of that great joy the pain and the tragedy can be borne.
THE NATIONALITIES OF RUSSIA
II
After the outbreak of the war, there was a wonderful scene in the Russian Duma. One after another, deputies representing various nationalities of the Empire arose to declare the devotion of their peoples to the great cause for which Russia had gone to war and their determination to make every effort and every sacrifice in order that Russia with the allies should secure the victory over Germany and Austria. It was an amazing scene. To me it was a revelation. Through study I had come to the conclusion, the fixed conviction, that underlying all the divergent interests of the nationalities there was a sense of unity. For years we had heard of suffering and oppression, for years we had heard of protests from all sides of the Empire against police and government measures of all kinds, and it appeared on a superficial view that there was no general interest at all, that the various nationalities were simply waiting for an opportunity to break away from Russia, that Russia at the first shock might fall asunder. That I could not believe, but these declarations in the Duma showed me as I had never realised before that Russia with all her variety was one, and that in a great moment of history, when she realised her purpose and her ​destiny, her sons felt suddenly, and with a great joy, that they had a common aim. Much has happened since then, many sad things, many disappointing things. In some cases the enthusiasm is not so strong as it was then, but the fundamental fact remains, the fact that we have to take account of to-day, that all these various nationalities, in spite of their divergencies, constitute a unity.
In what does this unity consist? First of all, in all this apparent chaos and welter of things and races there are certain harmonising facts. There is a certain proportion. There are definite regions which are mutually complementary, economic regions, geographical regions; the basins of the great rivers, the mountains, and various parts of the plain, all constitute separate regions which in a curious way balance each other or interlace and supplement each other. But the chief factor in the unity of the Russian Empire is the Russian people, first of all, because of its numerical preponderance. Of the 170 millions of inhabitants of Russia, nearly one hundred millions are Russians of one kind or another, and this fact constitutes one of the great differences between Austria and Russia. In Austria there is no one nationality that very largely outnumbers the others, whereas in Russia you have this tremendous numerical preponderance of the Russian element. The influence of the Russian element is felt everywhere, because of the activity of the Russians, because the administrative organisation is in their hands, because their language is spoken in all the ends of the Empire. It is the language of administration. It is the main language of trade, of intercourse between ​the various nationalities, and you will find that the Russian language influences very deeply the present-day languages of nearly all the nationalities of the Empire, just as English strongly influences present-day Welsh. Then again, most of the nationalities of the Empire are very largely led by Russian civilisation. They get their knowledge of modern European civilisation through Russian channels. The civilised values that they handle are derived very largely from Russian sources, are very often direct translations from the Russian. And this powerful combination of physical and moral factors in a very curious and subtle way binds these nationalities together in spite of their great divergencies, and in spite of features of Russian administration that very often arouse irritation, indignation, and protest. On the one hand, you have Russian administration, a very complex organisation, a very deep-rooted organisation, which is now undergoing a change, is very slowly and with great pain adapting itself to new economic and social conditions, is being loosened so as to allow greater space and room for economic and national development. This administrative organisation does, as a matter of fact, hold to a large extent the nationalities together. On the other hand, partly aided by this administrative organisation, partly thwarted by it, you have the extraordinary energy of Russian civilisation, which has very quickly outrun the political organisation, which has developed by leaps and bounds, which by an innate vigour of its own does most constantly affect every inhabitant of the Empire, and catches all the nationalities in the sweep of one great historical tendency.
​Then again, Russian civilisation, while it has an assimilating effect, while it seems to mould the various peoples of the Empire after one type, has at the same time the effect of creating a new variety. First of all, you have an apparent assimilation. You find the old customs disappearing and people becoming simply modern. You find a dreary monotony in dress, in habits, in amusements. You see the cinematograph in all corners of the Empire, flashing out the same pictures that are shown in Paris, and London, and New York. The gramophone in the Urals drones out Tartar songs, and it all looks very melancholy and very depressing. But at the same time, under this appearance of assimilation there he stimuli which provoke to new action all the elements of variety. The first stage is the new fashion. The second stage is the new initiative, in each region and in each nationality. There is first of all mere imitation, and then a growing realisation that these new civilised values can be adopted by the particular nationality, can be made their own by the various nationalities of the Empire, and can be used as elements of entirely new creations. That is the marvellous fact, that while the old varieties are disappearing a very wonderful new variety is arising, taking up into itself all the most vital elements of the old variety, and carrying them on to an entirely new era of civilisation. The Russian people, then, constitutes the chief factor in the unity of the Empire.
Now I have a very difficult task before me. I have to describe in the very short time that remains at my disposal some of the nationalities that compose the Russian Empire. I must admit that this Summer ​School has filled me with deep admiration. During the past week I have seen you, ladies and gentlemen, taking in a knowledge of Russia in rapid deep breaths, and the keen interest you are displaying in a country to which I am deeply attached has touched me enormously. I may say the same on behalf of my Russian friends who have come here to lecture to you. Still the task I have before me is very difficult, and the number and variety of the nationalities of Russia is so great, that I cannot hope to do more now than to note some of the leading features in a few typical national questions.
Look first of all at the Russians, of whom there are nearly one hundred millions in all, of all types, the Great Russian, the Little Russian, and the White Russian, the three great divisions of the Russian people. You have heard in other lectures the history of the elements that made up the Russian people, of the wandering Slav tribes which gradually assimilated a great many of the peoples of the plain. Thus in the north and centre, in Great Russia, there is a very large admixture of Finnish blood, whilst in the south, among the Little Russians, there is a large admixture of Turkish blood. The White Russians of the West are considered by many scholars to be the purest specimens of the Slav race now living. I shall not dwell at length on the Great Russians, of whom a great deal has been written and been said, but I should like to say something about the Little Russians. You have perhaps heard something of the Ukraine movement. You know that the Austrian Government, during this war and before it, has published maps indicating that ​as the result of a German victory they hoped for the creation of a Ukrainian State, comprising a part of Galicia and a very large part of Southern Russia. I have seen pamphlets written by Little Russians, or Ruthenians, or Ukrainians, as they are variously called, which advocate plans very much of the same kind. I must admit that the Ukraine movement is a very puzzling movement, because if you look at the Great Russian and Little Russian languages you will see that practically there is hardly more difference between them than between English and Scotch. When I was in Galicia last year, I spoke with Ruthenian peasants. I spoke Russian with slight modifications and they spoke their own language, and we understood each other perfectly. I had much more difficulty in understanding a cabman in Newcastle the other day than I had in understanding these people, although their language is declared to be a distinct language from Russian and a distinct literature is being created in this language. The fact of this difference in language is used as an argument sometimes by extreme Ukrainians for the establishment of a separate Ukraine State, and sometimes by the more moderate Ukrainians as a plea for the establishment at any rate of a separate administrative region for the whole of the Ukraine, or the greater part of Southern Russia. It is a very difficult question. There are certain differences of tradition, very powerful differences, between the Great Russians and the Little Russians. Their folk-songs are different, their music is different, and their temperament is different. In some respects the Southern Russian is the Irishman of Russia. Then, again, there ​are differences of historical tradition. There never was an actual distinct Little Russian State in the complete sense of the word. In the Middle Ages, when the tide of Tartar invasion began to recede, the Southern Steppes were overrun by Cossacks, some of whom were Great Russians, and some of whom were Little Russians, that is, they spoke the Southern Russian dialect. They formed a military organisation whose allegiance swayed between Muscovy and Poland. They lived a very free and interesting life. They were altogether a most interesting people, but there never was a Little Russian State in the full sense of the word. There were differences in the development of civilisation. There were differences in the church organisation, which in Southern Russia was much more democratic. There were and are very great differences in land tenure, and there were certainly very great differences in spirit, and all these factors have created a marked distinction between the Great Russian and the Little Russian.
But again after the Southern Steppes had been conquered by Russia, and after the region had been gradually drawn into the general life of the Russian Empire, a certain unifying, a certain assimilating process went on, and the southern regions began to fed themselves more and more a part of a larger whole. Then in the early part of the last century arose a movement to promote the literary development of the Little Russian language, and the movement received a powerful stimulus in the work of a very talented poet, called Taras Sherchenko, whose poems have almost become folk-songs among the Little Russians of to-day. This movement did not constitute any danger to the Russian ​Empire. It might have developed into a movement like the Provençal movement in France. But when reaction set in after the great reforms of the early sixties, the Russian Government took alarm, and the language movement in Little Russia was very largely suppressed. It was only permitted to print and publish in Little Russian fiction or poetry, and that not in the orthography chosen by the people themselves, but in the orthography of the Great Russian language. This aroused strong protest amongst the Ukrainians: the leaders of the movement were arrested and exiled. Then the movement passed to Galicia, where the eastern section of the population is Little Russian or Ukrainian. Lemberg became the new centre and Galicia became what the Ukrainians called the Piedmont of the Ukrainian movement. This development found favour with the Austrian Government, which saw in it partly a bulwark against Russia and partly a means of checking the growth of Polish power in Galicia. Then later on it was taken up by Germany as a means of impairing the unity of Russia.
In 1905, the embargo on the Ukrainian language was removed in Russia, great activity was developed, various works appeared, newspapers, novels, histories, poetry, translations, and so on in great quantities, and the Ukrainian movement gained a new life in Russia. Demands were presented for the autonomy of Ukrainia, but the conception of the boundaries of the new state varied considerably. Moreover in the last fifty years the Great Russian language has made great progress over the whole of Southern Russia, and although the population of Southern Russia is now in ​the bulk Little Russian, there is a big streak of Great Russian population amongst the Ukrainians. Sometimes there are islands of Great Russians, sometimes they are to be found in broad strips, and the language spoken in the towns is not the Little Russian but rather a variety of Great Russian with Jewish and occasionally Polish and Little Russian elements. It is a harsh language. It is a kind of new dialect of Great Russian, and you will find that as economical development progresses, as the industrial centres in Southern Russia increase, as the population migrates and mingles with other elements, the confusion will grow greater—you will find a sort of admixture between Great Russian and Little Russian, and the process of assimilation will develop more rapidly. And all this makes it difficult to determine how far any independent Ukrainian civilisation is possible in Southern Russia. I think the natural tendency is for the Russian literary language to gain the upper hand, even if all the present administrative restrictions were removed, because the removal of administrative restrictions would give Russian civilisation even greater power than it has now. At the same time it is perfectly obvious that if there is a genuine demand for instruction in Ukrainian in the schools, if it is found that Ukrainian children grow more rapidly into intelligent citizens if they receive primary instruction in their mother-tongue, if there is an increasing development of Ukrainian literature—it seems to me perfectly obvious that no administrative obstacles should be put in the way of the movement; and then my opinion is that ultimately, after very considerable vacillations, this Southern Russian language ​movement might, in the great complexities of the Russian Empire, again assume largely a Provençal form; and as for the questions of administration, local government and so on, I think they might be solved in connection with the general tendency of decentralisation within the Empire. I do not wish to say anything absolutely definitive about the Ukrainian movement, because I am not entirely convinced by the very strong arguments of my friend Dr Struve; and at present I should like to leave the question open.
As to the White Russians, their dialect is so little different from Great Russian that it is hard to imagine that a White Russian movement of any considerable extent could arise. There is an incipient movement which is now being used by the Germans as a means of propaganda in Vilna, because the Germans wish to emphasise even minor distinctions within the Russian nation.
Coming to the non-Russian nationalities, in the north-west, we have Finland. I simply cannot discuss at length the Finnish question in the short time we have this morning, but there are two or three things I should like to say. First of all, Finland is mainly populated by the Finnish people, who are composed of three Finnish tribes, who, driven there by the northern movement of the Slavs, in their turn drove the Lapps to the far North. The Finnish people of Finland are not isolated. Their territory is geographically and geologically distinct from the neighbouring Russian territory, but they themselves as a people are by no means wholly isolated. In fact, they became a unity as the result of the competition between Sweden ​and Russia around the Gulf of Finland. In the early days of Russian history, the Russians fought constantly with the Swedes, and the Finnish tribes passed sometimes under Russian rule, sometimes under Swedish rule, until finally Swedish rule was established in the whole of what is now Finland and over all but a certain portion of the Finnish people, who were left outside, in the governments of Archangel and Olonets; these were Orthodox, whilst the Finns in Finland were first of all Catholics and then when the Reformation came became Lutherans. Thus the main body of the Finns were almost exclusively under the influence of Swedish civilisation, and there was practically no Finnish movement until after the Finns came under Russian rule. The very peculiar conditions under which Finland became incorporated into the Russian Empire, with complete internal autonomy, with a kind of ring-fence separating the Finns from the rest of the peoples of the Empire, made it possible to develop within Finland a very interesting and a now very strong national movement, which first of all fought very hard against Swedish predominance. Swedish was the dominating language of the State, the language of the aristocracy, of the towns, of culture and of civilisation generally; and then, when the Finns suddenly discovered in the thirties, through the labours of the scholar, Elias Lönnrot, that they had a great national epic, there was a sudden uprush of national pride amongst the Finns, a great many people in the towns who had hitherto called themselves Swedes suddenly discovered that they were Finns, adopted the Finnish language and adapted it to literary purposes, ​and then began the great contest for equal rights for the Finnish language within Finland. It was won by the Finns, and Swedish and Finnish gained equal rights in public life. The Finnish movement rapidly developed and during the last thirty years its progress has been most extraordinary, and so the Swedes, who were once predominant, find themselves being elbowed out of the land in which they were masters. The new Finnish literary language is in spirit, though not in structure or vocabulary, Scandinavian. It has produced literature, not great, perhaps, but very interesting, with a number of talented authors, of whom the novelists, Juhani Aho and Arvid Järnefeldt, are probably the best, some excellent poetry, some very interesting art, and also an extraordinarily effective scientific apparatus, an apparatus of learning of which the University of Helsingfors is the active centre. In the last few years, the autonomy of Finland has been limited in many ways. There has been a conflict between the Finns and the Russian Government. I cannot enter into the details of this conflict now, but I can only say that amongst the nationalities of the Empire the Finns occupy a very peculiar and so far distinct place, and as to their assimilation by the Russians or any other people in the world there is no question whatever, because there is no people in the world so tenacious of their nationality as the stubborn hard-headed Finns.
Then south of Finland you come to the Baltic Provinces, which include three nationalities, the Germans, who are in the great minority but hitherto have had nearly all the power in their hands, the Esthonians, and the Letts. The Esthonians and the Letts have in ​common their general subjugation to the Germans who, by means of the Order of the Sword, a branch of the Teutonic Order, conquered them in the thirteenth century and after fierce battles subdued them and held them in serfdom until the beginning of the last century. But there is a great deal of difference between the Esthonians and the Letts in spite of the community of their historical experience and their long subjugation to German ciolture. The Esthonians are related to the Finns, and the common people of Esthonia and the Finns understand one another perfectly well, although the educated Finns and Esthonians understand one another with greater difficulty. The Letts are an entirely different people, and are akin to the Lithuanians who live farther south. The Esthonians and the Letts owe the beginnings of their own culture to their hard training under the Germans. There are no people in the world who hate the Germans more than the Esthonians and Letts do, because of the bitterness of their serfdom. The hatred is simply elemental. If you look into the past history of the Letts and Esthonians, you will find that occasionally the Barons were on excellent terms with their serfs, treated them kindly, provided education for them, and helped them in various ways; but the general effect of serfdom was so cruel that what it was can only be realised by seeing the vindictive hatred of the Letts and the Esthonians for their former masters. The hatred of the Letts was expressed in the most violent form in the Lettish revolution of 1905, which was followed by cruel repression in the early part of the following year. The new civilisation of the Letts and the Esthonians is partly ​of German origin and partly Russian, but the intercourse of both peoples with the Russians is growing closer, and they are subjected more and more to the influence of Russian civilisation and culture.
Then south of the Letts, you have the Lithuanians, in the governments of Vilna and Grodno, and the Suwalki government in the kingdom of Poland. I wish I had more time to tell you about the Lithuanians. They are one of the most interesting peoples in the Russian Empire. Their language is extremely old, with forms as old as Sanscrit, and I have an idea that the Lithuanians have stayed near their original home during the whole course of their existence. There is a curious feeling about them. Their neighbours call them sorcerers and wizards. Up to the seventeenth century they worshipped their gods in groves and had an institution of vestal virgins, who kept the sacred fire burning. There were prophets and soothsayers, and there were curious manifestations of tree-worship. Then the history of Lithuania and its contact with the Teutonic Order is extremely interesting, but all that wonderful story I have no time to tell now. The Lithuanians, too, have lately developed their national movement, with its newspapers, novels, poems, and its apparatus of propaganda.
I have left myself hardly time to speak of one very important question, that of the Jews, but I must ask your very careful attention to this for just a few moments longer. I have not spoken of the Polish question for two reasons: in the first place it has been already admirably expounded to you by Mr Roman Dmowski and other lecturers during the week, and, ​in the second place, the Polish question stands on a quite distinct plane from the question of the other nationalities of the Russian Empire. The question of which I have now to speak is one of which very much is heard in England: it is a burning question, and indeed I think it the most difficult question in the whole Russian Empire, and that is the Jewish question. The greater part of the Jews came into the Russian Empire with the partition of Poland, and the region they were compelled by law to inhabit comprises the western and southern provinces of European Russia, the so-called Pale of Settlement, which through the vicissitudes of the war has been abolished, I hope for ever. Now the Jewish question is so very difficult, it is such a tragic question, that it cannot be discussed only in terms of current politics; it cannot be understood if it is made the subject of invective on either one side or the other. It is too deep. It cannot be treated casually or flippantly, and one thing I should like to establish is that while the Jewish question is most acute in Russia it is not only a Russian question but a world question, and, even if the present political disabilities of the Jews in Russia are removed, the Jewish question will not have been finally solved. The Jewish question, constantly present and ever evading solution, is one of the very strange experiences by which the human race in persistent self-questioning is finding its way to a clearer knowledge of itself. It is a difficult question. The finest of the Jews realise this difficulty, and it has led some of them to adopt as their ideal Zionism, or the establishment of a Jewish centre of civilisation in Palestine. But in Russia the Jewish question is most acute, first of all ​because nowhere else are there so many Jews in a compact mass, and in the second place because of the marked inadequacy of Russian administrative methods as they are brought to bear on the complex necessities of the case. These are the two elements which make the Jewish problem in Russia so acute and perplexing. On the one hand you have the cruel and intolerable oppression of the Jews. You have the perpetual humiliation and irritation of the Jews in the small towns, who have no room for expansion, who live poor and miserable lives; you have the long long tale of their bitter suffering, and at the same time you have such facts as the growing power of the Jewish element in finance in Petrograd and Moscow, in banking, and commerce, and industry, and the very powerful influence of the Jews in the intellectual life of the Russians. You have these two sides, and both these sides must be clearly borne in mind. But the interesting thing in Russia is that the very intensity of Jewish suffering in Russia stimulates the efforts of the Jews, and of those who understand who the Jews are and what they are, to find a real solution. These efforts go in various directions. On the one hand there is a constant fight to secure elementary rights of existence in Russia on a level with the other inhabitants of the great plain, and at the same time there is an effort, which is now largely crowned with success, to bring about a new Jewish national revival, and the inner life of the Jews in Russia is extremely interesting because of this conflict of aims and ambitions, and because in the long run this movement is illumined by a spiritual light. I believe that after the war, after the great struggle not ​only with the enemy but with ourselves, with our own limitations, is fought through, after the war is won, not only will the Jews secure in Russia the conditions for a tolerable existence, but I believe that other nationalities, including many of whom I have had no time to speak, those twenty millions of Russian Turks, who are now awakening to a new national life, the Armenians, the Georgians, and all the rest, who are struggling towards a new civilisation,—that all these nationalities will secure liberty for themselves and liberty to co-operate to the full extent of their powers, and with a complete confidence in the value of their own contribution, in the great work which this enormous and complex Russian Empire is called to accomplish. In this strange adventure of spiritual discovery, in the great march of these manifold groups of men into the unseen future, I believe that all the nationalities of the Russian Empire will combine as a choir of many voices with many wonderful instruments, to sing a joyful song of conquest over the mystery which surrounds us all.