It is "Western" in this sense, that it is imbued
with current European ideas as to politics, economics, and law.
It has to a certain extent lost the simple faith and religious fervor of
the peasants, but the keynote of popular ideals has been faithfully
preserved by this class. It is still characteristically humanitarian in
its view of the world and in its aims. A book like that of Gen. von
Bernhardi would be impossible in Russia. If anybody were to publish it
it would not only fall flat, but earn for its author the reputation of a
bloodhound. Many deeds of cruelty and brutality happen, of course, in
Russia, but no writer of any standing would dream of building up a
theory of violence in vindication of a claim to culture. It may be said,
in fact, that the leaders of Russian public opinion are pacific,
cosmopolitan, and humanitarian to a fault. The mystic philosopher
Vladimir Solovieff used to dream of the union of the churches with the
Pope as the spiritual head, and democracy in the Russian sense as the
broad basis of the rejuvenated Christendom. Dostoyevsky, a writer most
sensitive to the claims of nationality in Russia, defined the ideal of
the Russians in a celebrated speech as the embodiment of a universally
humanitarian type. These are extremes, but characteristic extremes
pointing to the trend of national thought. Russia is so huge and so
strong that material power has ceased to be attractive to her thinkers.
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