The Irish standard., 1917-11-10

Analysis OF Its History and Govern
ment Its Religious Composition
Progress in Education, Literature
and Art-Prospect Of Permanent
Freedom.
Russia of today as a subject of
study is not an enigma, but it is, to
say the least, very complex. We
know Italy from her beginnings as the
ancestral home of the fine arts, France
as the country which during the Mid
die Ages, especially the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, led European civili-
cation in progress and culture, and
England as the home of freedom,
SLOWLY broadening down from prece-
dent to precedent" But the vast en-
pire of Russia, with it's 182,000,000 of
people, occupying one-seventh of the
earths surface, partly European and
partly Asiatic in their origin, ruled
till our day by bureaucratic auto
cracy and spiritually fashioned, formed
and directed by the old Byzantine
Church, which broke from Rome in the
pick empire has been little understood
in our day and this perhaps because
of it's remoteness from the general
current of European civilization and
the further barrier of language, which
made study of it's life, institutions
and art we'll nigh an impossibility to
the general student and scholar
Like a great film, however, Russia
has been flashed upon our eye within
recent years, but it is a new Russia
that is sailing into port today amid
heavy breakers, it is true, and beset
by rocks and reefs that threaten its
safe and triumphant entry into the
harbor.
To understand the Russia of today
we should know something of its past
something of the soil which has
nurtured this unwieldy and threaten
ing giant, with one foot upon Europe
and the other upon Asia and with its
forehead barred to the icy currents of
the frozen north.
No need, however, to go back to
the beginnings of Russia in A. D. 1862,
nor tell of it's Mongol occupation be-
fore the coming of the Romanoffs
This would be but rehearsing the his
tory of most European countries. We
know full we'll that fickleness of for
tune has marked every dynasty, every
throne in Europe, since the days when
Romulus fixed his sovereignty on the
banks of the Tiber.
l have already spoken of the re-
moteness of Russia from the current
and influence of European civilization,
and this isolation and exposure to the
incursions Of lawless, predatory
hordes from Asia must be ever re-
membered and set down if we would
understand rightfully the difficulties
that beset Russian advancement
through the centuries that gave sta
bility and nationhOOd to the other
countries of Europe.
Peter the Great realized this iso-
lated position of Russia when he found
ed St, Petersburg in 1903 "as a Win
dow through which he could look out
upon western Europe" Moreover this
most practical of Russian sovereigns
visited the chief countries of Europe
and bore back to his Slavic kingdom
the advanced ideas, material and po-
litical, which he there found prevail
ing.
But intellectual sovereignty is far
reaching and difficult to supplant. We
still feel the influence of Athens,
though two thousand five hundred
years have interviewed since it's phil
osophers taught in the groves and it's
sculptors fashioned their dreams in
marble
So it took Russia several centuries
to find it's own soul-to attain intellec-
tual freedom--to make out of Russian
life songs and epics-to find in the
heart OF it's people the aspiration
which creates art, whether that art
takes the form of the lofty rhyme, the
dream in marble, or the glorification
of the canvas
1t is only when language is used
to express the highest thought of a
poWer-an instrument of true culture
1t will be remembered that Frederick
the Great of Prussia made French the
language of the Court and Heine, the
German poet, quit his native land for
the gay faubourgs of Paris. No Schil-
Ter or Goethe had yet appeared in
Germany How could they? In Rus
STA in the time of Catherine the Great
French philosophers and French. lit
erature and French art invaded and
took possession of Russia Indeed, it
is only a century-nay, less-since
Russia shook itself awake and realized
the possibilities of it's genius when
not stifled in the soil by erotic seeds.
Today the Russians do not say, 1--WE
are Russians and yet we have poetry"
but rather, 1--WE are Russians and
therefore we have poetry"
1t would take me too far afield here
To discuss why the government of
Russia has beer for centuries a
bureaucracy. It may be simply said
that the form of administration grew