A brand of hopeless mental and moral inferiority is set upon Russian
achievements; and the coming events of her internal changes, however
appalling they may be in their magnitude, will be nothing more impressive
than the convulsions of a colossal body. As her boasted military force
that, corrupt in its origin, has ever struck no other but faltering
blows, so her soul, kept benumbed by her temporal and spiritual master
with the poison of tyranny and superstition, will find itself on
awakening possessed of no language, a monstrous full-grown child having
first to learn the ways of living thought and articulate speech. It is
safe to say tyranny, assuming a thousand protean shapes, will remain
clinging to her struggles for a long time before her blind multitudes
succeed at last in trampling her out of existence under their millions of
bare feet.
That would be the beginning. What is to come after? The conquest of
freedom to call your soul your own is only the first step on the road to
excellence. We, in Europe, have gone a step or two further, have had the
time to forget how little that freedom means. To Russia it must seem
everything.
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