The Russian
autocracy as we see it now is a thing apart. It is impossible to assign
to it any rational origin in the vices, the misfortunes, the necessities,
or the aspirations of mankind. That despotism has neither an European
nor an Oriental parentage; more, it seems to have no root either in the
institutions or the follies of this earth. What strikes one with a sort
of awe is just this something inhuman in its character. It is like a
visitation, like a curse from Heaven falling in the darkness of ages upon
the immense plains of forest and steppe lying dumbly on the confines of
two continents: a true desert harbouring no Spirit either of the East or
of the West.
This pitiful fate of a country held by an evil spell, suffering from an
awful visitation for which the responsibility cannot be traced either to
her sins or her follies, has made Russia as a nation so difficult to
understand by Europe. From the very first ghastly dawn of her existence
as a State she had to breathe the atmosphere of despotism; she found
nothing but the arbitrary will of an obscure autocrat at the beginning
and end of her organisation.
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