The Russians are Europeans living on the broad and largely artificial border between Europe and Asia. Rudyard Kipling said, ''East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.'' The Russians and their history are living proof that such facile generalities are stupid and dangerous. In this respect as in so many others Russian history is unique. In a very large sense history is the study of change in human affairs. If there were no change, if history did repeat itself, if it were merely, as Henry Ford once said, ''one damn thing after another,'' than there would be no reason for studying it.
History never repeats itself.
There seem to be certain observable cyclical trends in national developments, but nothing is ever exactly the way it was before. Change is the guts of history. It makes life worth living and history worth studying. Arnold Toynbee in his twelve-volume Study of History has developed the theory that most civilizations developed through a process of challenge and response. This fits in with other notions that history is one long argument, that conflict and confrontation is endemic, is natural to the human species.