By Peter Struve.
[From The London Times.]
Prof. Peter Struve, editor of the monthly, Russian Thought, is
recognized as one of the most acute political thinkers in
Europe. He was one of the chief founders of the Constitutional
Democratic Party (the Cadets) and was member for St.
Petersburg in the Second Duma. He is also known as an
economist of great erudition.
PETROGRAD, Sept. 16.
The future historian will note with astonishment that official Germany,
when she declared war on Russia, was in no way informed of the state of
public opinion in our country.
This is all the more astonishing because not a single country to the
west of Russia maintains so close a communication with Russia as
Germany. The Germans, better than other peoples, could and should have
known Russia and her material resources, her internal state, and her
moral condition. When she declared war on Russia, Germany evidently
counted, above all, on the weakness of the Russian Army. There was
nothing, however, to justify such an estimate of the armed forces of
Russia. Certainly Russia had been beaten in the Japanese war, but in
that war the decision was reached on the sea, and after the fall of Port
Arthur the land war had no object. The Germans have probably convinced
themselves already how superficial was such an estimate of the forces of
Russia, but in reality their mistake was due to an entirely superficial
view of the national culture of Russia and an extremely elementary idea
of our internal development. The Germans did not believe that there is
in Russia a genuine and growing national civilization, and did not
understand that the liberation movement in Russia had not only not
shaken the power of the Russian State, but had, on the contrary,
increased it.
Not understanding this, they thought that any blow from outside would
tumble over the Russian State like a rotten tree. German aggression, on
the contrary, united the whole population of Russia, and by this alone
strengthened a hundredfold her external power. This, of course, would
have been the natural effect of any attack from without upon any sound
people or any State that was not in decomposition. But in this case
there was something else. Such a war as this could not fail to take on
at once the character both of a world war and of a national war. That is
why in this struggle with Germany and Austria-Hungary, elemental forces
united in one impulse and spirit both the Russian Radicals, with their
tendency to cosmopolitanism, and the extreme Nationalist Conservatives.
Nay, more than that, all the races of Russia understood that a challenge
had been thrown out to Russia by Germany that morally compelled her, in
the interests of the whole and of the various parts, to forget for the
time all quarrels and grievances.
This showed itself in the most natural and inevitable way with the
Poles, of whose national culture Germanism is the sworn foe. The
well-known manifesto of the Commander in Chief did not awake this
feeling among the Poles of Russia, but simply met it and gave it
support. Equally natural and elemental was the patriotic outburst that
spread among the Jews of Russia. In their case the political and social
Radicalism which we always find in the Jews turned by some sound
instinct against German militarism, which had shown itself the chief
cause and occasion of a world catastrophe.
The German declaration of war on Russia at once dispersed all doubts and
hesitations in the many millions of the population of the Russian
Empire. Some may put in the forefront of this war the struggle with the
uncivilizing militarism of Prussia. Others may see in it, above all
things, a struggle for the national principle and for the inured rights
of nationalities--Serbians, Poles, and Belgians. Others, again, see in
the war the only means of securing the peaceful future of Russia and her
allies from the extravagant pretensions of Germany. But all alike feel
that this war is a great, popular, liberating work, which starts a new
epoch in the history of the world. Thus the war against united Germany
and Austria-Hungary has become in Russia a truly national war. That is
the enormous difference between it and the war with Japan, whose
political grounds and objects, apart from self-defense against a hostile
attack, were alien to the public conscience.
There is one other consideration which cannot be passed over in silence.
In Russia many are convinced, and others instinctively feel, that a
victorious war will contribute to the internal recovery and regeneration
of the State. Many barriers have already fallen, national and political
feuds have been softened, new conditions are being created for the
mutual relations of the people and the Government. There is every reason
to think that some members of the Government--unfortunately, it is true,
not all--have understood that at the present time of complete national
union many of the old methods of administration and all the old
Government psychology are not only out of place, but simply impossible.
In one question, the Polish, this conviction has received the supreme
sanction of the sovereign and of the Commander in Chief, and a striking
expression in the latter's manifesto to the Poles. Further than this,
the actual attitude of Russian Liberals and Radicals toward a whole
series of problems and relations cannot fail to be changed. Thus the war
will help to reconcile and soften many internal contradictions in
Russia.
How far we are, with this state of public opinion and these perspectives
of the internal development of Russia, from those fantastic pictures of
civil disunion and revolutionary conflagration which were anticipated
before the war and have sometimes been, even since the war, portrayed in
the German and Austro-Hungarian press! Our enemies counted on these
domestic divisions, and they have made a bitter mistake. Constitutional
Russia, precisely because of the radical internal transformation which
it has experienced in the period that began with the Japanese war, has
proved to be fully equal to the immense universal and national task that
has devolved upon it. The national and political consciousness of Russia
not only has not weakened, but has wonderfully strengthened and taken
shape. As one who has had a close and constant share in the struggle for
the Russian Constitution, I can only note with the greatest satisfaction
the striking result of Russia's entry into the number of constitutional
States, a result which has so plainly showed itself in the tremendous
part that Russia is playing in the great world-crisis of 1914.