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Russia, with already the greatest existing land empire and at least half the population not Russian, would have gained fresh territories with fresh non-Russian populations, putting the Mediterranean peoples, and above all Italy, in a very difficult situation indeed. It cannot be said that in the ten years preceding the War Russia did not do as much as Germany to bring unrest into Europe.
But for non-Russian readers, Turgenev's Russia is but a canvas on which the incomparable artist of humanity lays his colours and his forms in the great light and the free air of the world. Had he invented them all and also every stick and stone, brook and hill and field in which they move, his personages would have been just as true and as poignant in their perplexed lives.
They are his own and also universal. Any one can accept them with no more question than one accepts the Italians of Shakespeare. In the larger, non-Russian view, what should make Turgenev sympathetic and welcome to the English-speaking world, is his essential humanity.
The Jews showed that the traditional description applied to them, "stiff-necked," was not undeserved. While the Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and Armenians have undergone conversion in multitudes, they whose suffering by far exceeded that of any other "non-Russian" nationality remained, with insignificant exceptions, loyal to the religion of their fathers.
Color was imparted to these misgivings by the circumstance that the Allied governments were openly countenancing the dismemberment of the country by detaching non-Russian and even Russian elements from the main body.
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