The sun., 1902-03-09


! ton, owing to the sentimental objections
! of the electorate OF the States which In
| anxious not TO hurt the feelings OF the little
brown brother This being the case and
q system OF neutrality-suspicious. having
been inaugurated, the advice Of an on
locker who has seen a good deal Of govern
ment in Oriental countries is to interfere
as little as possible with the customs, pre-
judices and religions of the Filipinos and
TO keep a tight hold NJ. w. II.
Russian Political Institutions.
Hitherto English and American stu
dents Of Russian political institutions have
had to rely almost exclusively on the we'll
known book by Mackenzie Wallace, or on
| q translation Of the French treatise by
Anatole Leroy Beaulieu. The aim Of both
these works, however. Is rather to depict
things as they are than to explain how
| they came into existence. What was needed
was an account of the evolution OF the
70 supply the want Is made by Prof. MAE
ZINE KovALEvsKY in a volume entitled
Russidn Political Institutions CThe Univer-
! sity Of Chicago Press.) The greater part
OF the volume is devoted to an exposition
Of the growth Of Russian institutions from
the beginning Of Russian history to the pres
ent time. but the author has added two
interesting chapters which deal respec-
lively with the relations Of Poland and OF
Finland to the Russian Empire.
We may say at once that the purport OF
the book Is TO demonstrate that Russia 8
experience with the European institutions
which she has pretended to adopt, has.
until now, done scarcely anything toward
extirpating from her soil the unbounded
despotic power which is common to all
Eastern monarchies. In Russia this power
has merely changed its outward as
poets; the single head Of the monarch
has taken on the hundred arms Of Briareus.
A bureaucracy with its power centred in
one head-a bureaucracy such as plagued
the European Continent during the sew
| enteenth and eighteenth centuries-is the
present form Of the Russian polity. Prof.
Kovalevsky considers, therefore, that the
turning point in Russia's internal devel-
opment came with the restrictions imposed
on the bureaucracy, when Alexander ii.
undertook to create a system OF local
self government The reaction which en-
sued aimed 10 shore up the bureaucracy,
and to prevent the remodelling of Russia s
central institutions on the same principles
OF autonomy. The author OF this book has
no doubt that the difficulties with which
Russia is confronted. which arise from
her present internal conditions, have no
other cause than the violent interruption
OF the evolution which, under Alexander
III had begun in favor Of a Constitutional
monarchy. The only loser by continued
evolution in the same direction will be the
bureaucracy. a fact which accounts for
the hostility Of Russian bureaucrats toward
so-caled European ideas
Without attempting to follow the author
through the conjectural history Of the
races which succeeded one another on
the soil Of European Russia. we begin with
an incident which should be referred. ap-
parently, TO the first half Of the ninth CEN
tury, when the Slavs of Novgorod sent
to the Varegs and invited a certain RuTik
from the people called Russ" TO become
their Prince Who were the Varegs? The
Danish historian Thompson. has shown
that the word Vdreg la a Slavo- Russian
form Of Scandinavian word, Wering. or
Wordnp. The names Of the first rulers
of vareg origin in Russia are Scandinavian.
Thus Rurik himself appears in Scandi-
navian agas as Hrorek: Askold, the Vareg
invader Of Kiev, as Hoskulde. The reason
why the Slavs Of Novgorod appealed to
Scandinavian Princes instead Of 10 others
lies in the fact that for some years the
varegs, as appears from Byzantine and
Arabian annalis,s, had been in the habit
OF descending the Dnieper in order to reach
the shores Of the Black Sea. and thence
Constantinople. The Arabian writer. Ibn
IL d..
whom he speaks of as half traders, half
warriors. The oldest Russian chronicles
and some Latin ones. speak Of military
bands who. In the service Of chiefs like
Askold sought for booty in Constantinople
and Of Russ embassy's reaching Byzance,
and being sent thence to the son of Charles
the Great, the Emperor Louis le Debon-
naire. The last fact is commemorated
under the year $50, and the Latin chronicler
adds that the men who composed this
embassy were identified with Sveonians,
or Swedes. At a time when the Vikings
were founding new realms In Iceland,
Normandy and Sicily, it is not surprising
that they made themselves equally well
known in eastern Europe by expeditions
half warlike, half commercial. Some of
them settled with their followers in Nov
gorod; others on the White Lake and In
Tzborsk; others again, on the Dnieper in
Kiev These last were soon subdued by
Oleg, a member of the family of Rurik.
who in this way united the northern and
the. southern principalities. Prof, Kova-
levsky does not undertake to give even a
short sketch Of the way in which the Vareg
principalities OF Russia. combined for a
time under a single head, broke up after
the death Of Yaroslav. the son of Vladimir
the Holy. so-called for having introduced
Greek Christianity into Russia. We are
merely reminded that from the eleventh
century Russia was split into a large num-
ber Of great and small principalities, all
under the rule of representatives Of the
dynasty OF Rurik, and under the more or
less nominal hesdship of the Grand Duke
Of Kiev. The Russian system of dp-
pondoes thus resembled the feudal system
which prevailed In western Europe at the
same period. Such a system weakened,
of course, Russia S power of resisting foreign
invaders.
We are cautioned against assuming that
the scheme OF government established in
tho Russian principalities of the eleventh.
twelfth and thirteenth centuries was auto