THE SOUL OF RUSSIA

HERE is a strange saying in Russia that no matter what hap

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pens to a man, good results to him thereby. No matter what hair-breadth escapes he has, what calamities he faces, what hardships he undergoes, he emerges more powerful, more experienced from the ordeal. Danger and privation are more beneficial in the long run than peace and joy. A nation of some fifty different races gradually melting into one, a country covering a territory of one-sixth of the surface of the earth and a population of 185,000,000, the Russians have remained to the outside world the apaches of Europe, wild tribes of the steppes. In the imagination of an average American or Englishman, Russia was something Asiatic, something connected with the barbaric East, a country beyond the horizon. It was considered as lacking in culture and civilization, and as a menace to the West. "Nichevo, sudiba!"— (It doesn't matter, everything is fate) replies a Russian, crossing himself. The whole psychology of the Slavic race is crystallized in these two impressionistic words.

What John Ruskin said in his famous historic essay applies to Russia: "I found that all the great nations learned their truth of word and strength of thought in war." Every great Russian reform has taken place suddenly as a consequence of some nationwide calamity. The Tartar invasion united Russia into one powerful nation; the Crimean War abolished the feudal system; the Russo-Turkish War gave the judicial reforms and abolished capital punishment; the Russo-Japanese War gave the preliminary form of Constitutional government in the Duma; the present war is opening the soul of Russia to the world by giving an absolute democratic form of government to the united Slavic race. The present

war will reveal that Russia the known has been the very opposite extreme of Russia the unknown.

The outside world is wondering how the Russian character will fit in with the aspirations of democracy. They cannot reconcile the Russia of pogroms and Siberia with the Russia of wonderful municipal theaters, great artists, writers, musicians and lovers of humanity. The world has known the tyrants like Plehve, Trepoff, Orloff and Stolypin, or others like Rasputin, Protopopoff and forgets that Russia has also produced geniuses like Dostoyewsky, Turgenieff, Tchaikowsky, Tolstoy, Moussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Mendeleyeff and Metchnikoff. The world has looked at Russia as a land of uncultivated steppes, of frozen ground, hungry bears and desperate Cossacks, and forgets that in actuality this is the Russia of the past very extreme surface and next to it is a Russia of great civilization and the highest art, unknown yet to the West generally.

One of the strangest peculiarities of Russian life is that you will find the greatest contrasts everywhere. Here you will see the most luxurious castles, cathedrals, convents, villas and estates; there you will find the most desolate huts of the moujiks and lonely hermit caves in the wilds of Siberia. Here you will meet the most selfish chinovnik, the most fanatic desperado or reckless bureaucrat; there you face the noblest men and women, supermen, physically and mentally. You will find that all Russian life is full of such mental and physical contrasts.

This is the dualism that confronts like a sphinx the foreigners. In the same way you will find that the Russian homes are full of contrasting colors, bright red and yellow, white and blue. The Russian music is the most dramatic phentic art ever created; it reaches the deepest sorrow and the gayest hilarity and joy.

Dreamy, romantic, imaginary, simple, hospitable and childlike as an average moujik, is the soul of the people. Nowhere is there a hint of those qualities which are thrown up as dark shadows on the canvas of his horizon. While with one hand Russia has been conquering the world, with the other she has been creating the most magnificent masterpieces of humanity. In the same generation she produces a Plehve and a Tolstoy, both in a way, true to national type.

In the popular American imagination, which invariably seizes upon a single point, three things stand out as representative of Russia: the moujiks, the Cossacks and the Siberian penal system. The vast unknown spaces between these three have been filled in with the dark colors of poverty and oppression, so that a Russian is looked upon as an outcast of evolution, an exile of the ages.

The Russia of the dark powers is past; thus soon will pass the Russian chinovnik, the Russian spy and the Russian gloom, who have been a shadow of the Slavic race. From now all the world will listen to the majestic masterpieces of the Russian composers, see the infinite beauty of the Russian life and feel the greatness of the Russian soul. Not only has Russia her peculiar racial civilization, her unique art and literature, and national traditions, but she has riches of which the outside world knows little, riches that are still buried. The Russian stage, art galleries, archives, monastery treasuries and romantic traits of life remain still a sealed book to the outsiders. Take for instance, Russian music, the operas of Rimsky-Korsakoff, the plays of Ostrowsky and the symphonies of Reinhold Gliere or Spendiarov and you will have eloquent chapters of a modern living Bible. No music of another country is such a true mirror of a nation's racial character, life, passion, blood, struggle, despair and agony, as the Russian. One

can almost see in its turbulent-lugubrious or buoyant-hilarious chords the rich colors of the Byzantine style, the half Oriental atmosphere that surrounds everything with a romantic halo.

The fundamental purpose of the pathfinders of Russian art, music, literature and poetry was o create beauties that emanated, not from a certain class or school, but directly from the soul of the people. Their ideal was to create life from life. Though profound melancholy seems to be the dominant note in Russian music and art, yet along with the dramatic gloom go also reckless hilarity and boisterous humor, which often whirl one off one's feet. This is explained by the fact that the average Russian is extremely emotional and consequently dramatic in his artistic expressions. Late Leo Tolstoy said to me on one occasion: "In our folksong and folk art is evidently yearning without end, without hope, also power invisible, the fateful stamp of destiny, and the fate in preordination, one of the fundamental principles of our race, which explains much that in Russian life seems incomprehensible for the foreigners."

Thus the Russian art and soul in their very foundations are already democratic, simple, direct and true to the ethnographic traits of the race. In the same way you will find the Russian home life, the peasant communities, the zemstvo institutions, offsprings of an extremely democratic tendency, perhaps far more than any such institutions of the West. Instead of the rich or noblemen absorbing the land of the peasants, we find in Russia the peasant commune succeeding to the property of the baron. An average Russian peasant is by far more democratic and educated, irrespective of his illiteracy than an average farmer of the New World. He has the culture of the ages in his traditions, religion and national folk-arts. Russia has more than a thousand municipal theaters, more than a hundred grand operas, more than a hundred

colleges and universities or musical conservatories. Russia has a well-organized system of coöperative banks and stores and a marvelous artelsystem of the working professional classes which in its democratic principles surpasses by far the labor union systems of the West. Herr von Bruggen, the eminent German historian writes of the Russian tendency as follows: "Wherever the Russian finds a native population in a low state of civilization, he knows how to settle down with it without driving it out or crushing it; he is hailed by the natives as the bringer of order, as a civilizing power."

I have always preached and continue to do so in the future, that Russia and the United States should join hands, know and love each other, the sooner the better. Russia needs the active spirit, the practical grasp of the things, which the people of the United States possess. Nothing will help and inspire an average Russian more than the sincere democratic hand of an American. A dose of American optimism and active spirit is the best toxin for free Russia. On the other hand, the American needs just as much Russian emotionalism, æsthetic culture and mystic romanticism, as he can give of his racial qualities.

The old system having gone, Russia is free to open her national, spiritual and physical treasuries. For some time to come neither Germany nor other European countries, will be able to go to Russia, for even if the war does not last long, its havoc will take years to repair. Endless readjustments will have to take place in each country affected by the war. Russia, being more an agricultural, intellectual-aristocratic country, will feel least of all the after effects the past horrors, therefore has the greatest potentialities. There is not only a great work, adventure and romance that waits an American pioneer in Russia, but a great mission which will ultimately benefit both nations. It should be understood that the