l forces and brought
society to the verge of incurable anarchy and inevitable dissolution,
whereas the social and political history of Russia has been harmonious
and peaceful. It presents no struggles between the different social
classes, and no conflicts between Church and State. All the factors have
worked in unison, and the development has been guided by the spirit of
pure orthodoxy. But in this harmonious picture there is one big,
ugly black spot--Peter, falsely styled "the Great," and his so-called
reforms. Instead of following the wise policy of his ancestors, Peter
rejected the national traditions and principles, and applied to his
country, which belonged to the Eastern world, the principles of Western
civilisation. His reforms, conceived in a foreign spirit, and elaborated
by men who did not possess the national instincts, were forced upon the
nation against its will, and the result was precisely what might have
been expected. The "broad Slavonic nature" could not be controlled by
institutions which had been invented by narrow-minded, pedantic German
bureaucrats, and, like another Samson, it pulled down the building in
which foreign legislators sought to confine it. The attempt to introduce
foreign culture had a still worse effect. The upper classes, charmed and
dazzled by the glare and glitter of Western science, threw themselves
impulsively on the newly found treasures, and thereby condemned
themselves to moral slavery and intellectual sterility. Fortunately--and
herein lay one of the fundamental principles of the Slavophil
doctrine--the imported civilisation had not at all infected the common
people. Through all the changes which the administration and the
Noblesse underwent the peasantry preserved religiously in their hearts
"the living legacy of antiquity," the essence of Russian nationality,
"a clear spring welling up living waters, hidden and unknown, but
powerful."* To recover this lost legacy by studying the character,
customs, and institutions of the peasantry, to lead the educated classes
back to the path from which they had strayed, and to re-establish that
intellectual and moral unity which had been disturbed by the foreign
importations--such was the task which the Slavophils proposed to
themselves.

* This was one of the favourite themes of Khomiakof, the
Slavophil poet and theologian.

Deeply imbued with that romantic spirit which distorted all the
intellectual activity of the time, th