# Great Russia/Chapter 4

​CHAPTER IV
THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF RACES
WE have seen so far that physical geography and economic geography are both on the side of tradition and conservatism. What can we learn further from the geographical distribution of races?
I
We have already emphasized the fact that for ten centuries Russia has been a debatable land, a terra nullius, open to all barbarians and to all nomads. For ten centuries these barbarian hordes have swept like torrents over the plain. But ever on the fertile steppe the green grass would grow again after the horse of Attila had passed. The forty-eight races which are scattered all over the empire represent the alluvial strata of these barbaric invasions. The ethnographical map of Russia tells us of the migrations and revolutions of races, even as the ​geological map tells us the revolutions of the crust of the earth. Tchoudes and Tchouvachs, Tatars and Tcheremissans, Kalmouks and Khirgiz, Finns and Samoyedes, Georgians and Lesghians, Persians and Armenians, Jews and Roumanians, Germans and Swedes, Poles and Lithuanians, Great Russians, White Russians, Little Russians—each unit of this Babel of nations is a living witness of a tragic past.
II
At first sight the geographical distribution of races seems to contradict the political lessons of physical and economic geography. Physical and economic geography proclaim the unity of the Russian Empire and the historical necessity of a strong central government. Ethnography, on the contrary, seems to proclaim the infinite diversity of the Tsar's dominions and the necessity of autonomy. It seems as if so many heterogeneous races could not possibly live under one power and one law.
But let us observe that these races are not only different, but irreconcilably hostile. And the instinctive hostilities of race are complicated by differences of language, of religion, and of habits. To compel all those races ​whom the vicissitudes of history have thrown together on the same territory to live in peace, we again must have an energetic, military, centralized government, which shall play the part of umpire and peacemaker, and which may refrain and repress spontaneous anarchy and civil war which are always ready to burst out. To all these people the Russian Empire has brought the same supreme benefit as the Roman Empire: Pax Romana, the Peace of the Tsar.
III
Therein precisely consists the civilizing part which Russia has played for centuries. Recent events, the anti-Semitic pogroms, the massacres of Jitomir and Odessa, the Beiliss trial, so far from contradicting this truth, only confirm it. As soon as, in consequence of the external disasters and the internal agitations, the Russian Government began to lose its authority, together with its prestige, as soon as it had to recall its regiments and to send them to the Far East, at once the destructive forces reigned supreme, and religious passions, racial hatreds, got free play. The Baltic peasants murdered the German barons, the Poles murdered the Russian officials, the Russian peasants ​murdered the Jews, the Tatar insurrectionists, as I saw myself in Tiflis, murdered the Armenians. I know full well that these massacres have been attributed to the Government itself, which wanted to create a diversion, carrying out the old device: Divide ut imperes. The massacres have been imputed to agents of the secret police, to the famous "black gang" or "tchornia sotnia." But I must frankly confess that I would rather believe in the most absurd legends of the Middle Ages, in the ritual murders, in the crimes of witches, than believe in the monstrous folly of a Government which would have organized those very riots and disorders which it was its vital interest to suppress. No doubt subordinate agents may have taken advantage of the prevailing anarchy to achieve their wicked ends; but they only obeyed their own evil instincts, not any order of the Government. How could the Government have organized massacres, when it had practically ceased to exist"? And let it not be said that such a design would be worthy of a "diabolical" Russian Government! For such a policy would not even deserve to be called "diabolical," it would be simply idiotic and imbecile, because any disorder would ultimately ​turn against the Government itself. And not even the Evil One has ever been accused of stupidity.
IV
No, in truth, the explanation is less monstrous. The lamentable recent events are simply the outbreak of what Taine has called "spontaneous anarchy," or the spontaneous generation of anarchy. It is the primitive instinct of race antagonism, fostered by pestilential German theories, the barbarous passions of the mob, which, hitherto dormant and latent, hitherto repressed by the iron hand of Government, suddenly burst out and swept everything before them as soon as that obstacle disappeared. If autocracy or a strong military power did not exist in Russia the massacres of Jitomir and of Odessa would alone suffice to demonstrate the necessity of its existence in the interests of humanity and civilization.
And thus we again have to revert to the same political conclusion: the ethnography of Russia teaches us exactly the same lessons as physical and economic geography the vital necessity of a strong government. It shows the danger, not to say the impossibility, of the ​principal article of the revolutionary programme—an absolute parliamentary régime on the most approved British pattern. The remedy might be worse than the disease; it most probably would kill the patient. A centralized Parliament in which twenty nationalities would be represented by twenty irreconcilable parties would deliver Russia to legal anarchy. And legalized anarchy has ever been the very worst of all forms of government.