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Updated: May 15, 2025
When the cry of "Down with the Tsar" takes the place of the humbly spoken "Little Father" what becomes of the Tsardom? When the terms "Liberty" and "Equality" become the jest of the workshop, upon what basis can a modern democratic state depend? This criticism of "eternal truths" is destructive criticism, and destructive of much more than the "truths." It is more destructive than sedition itself.
Had the imperialist Tsardom emerged triumphant from the struggle, the reactionary forces at the Conference would have been enormously strengthened; little would probably have been heard of the independence of Poland; Constantinople would have fallen into Russian hands; the Balkans and Asia Minor would have become, in fact if not in name, Russian protectorates; and there would have been found little scope for self-determination along the shores of the Baltic or in Eastern Europe.
This powerful organization is likely enough to go back to Russia if Lenin and Trotsky fall. The latter are doing their utmost to safeguard themselves, but they are weaker than the Tsar was. The Tsardom had most of the brains and abilities of the Russians at its disposal, but Lenin has driven nearly all the educated and trained minds out of the country.
They have added industrial pursuits to agricultural, possess flour mills, timber mills, and plough their farms with German implements. They are aggressively German in sentiment, language, character and Kultur. That in brief is the history of one type of German colonization in the Tsardom. There is another at which it may not be amiss to cast a glance.
The master-idea of the policy of Ito, with whom I had two interesting conversations on the subject, was to strike up a close friendship with the Tsardom, based on community of durable interests, and to bespeak Russia's help for the hour of storm and stress which one day might strike. The Tsar's government was inspired by analogous motives.
The concessions then made by my friend, the late Count Witte, to the German Chancellor, drained the Tsardom of enormous sums of money and rendered it a tributary to the Teuton. But it did much more. It supplied Germany with a satisfactory type of commercial treaty which she easily imposed upon other nations.
None the less, it is symptomatic of feelings which are still inarticulate and of currents which flow beneath the surface, that more than once of late the Russian Press has called for a defensive and offensive alliance between the Tsardom and Japan.
For all these firms and enterprises and individuals from the Fatherland scattered over the length and breadth of the Tsardom were welded together in one vast organism by far-seeing politicians who canalized every important current of the nation's life and imparted to it the direction which German interests required.
In the troublous times when the Poles overran the Tsardom of Muscovy, she took advantage of the occasion to annex a considerable amount of territory, and her expansion in this direction went on in intermittent fashion until it was finally stopped by Peter the Great.
I shouldn't wonder if poor Prince Zastrow has been the victim of something of the sort. It is quite possible that expiring Tsardom had a finger in the pie. At any rate, there was a Russian officer in the Castle the day he disappeared. I should very much like to see the sort of explanation he could give of the affair, if he chose."
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