CHAPTER I.

THE SLAV RACE.

Slav Characteristics—Slav Power in the Past—The Decline—The Dawn?

Although the Slav race does not appear as a united state or Union, it certainly forms a family of nations linked by ties of blood, the tradition of centuries, similar language and customs, and especially by ties of mutual love and sympathy. It is the greatest and most powerful of the European races, yet to this day it does not hold the pride of place which is its due and which it once held. Not the precedence of mere strength, which is surely sufficiently represented by Russia, but the place due to a people of recognized culture, who have not yet been justly appreciated in spite of overwhelming proof of their intellectual gifts. Slavs are still popularly supposed to be a mentally undeveloped host of semi-barbarians and troglodytes. Of course the educated public of Europe has long abandoned this attitude; but it has done little to spread a more just and liberal view among the people at large.[1] The German scholars made it their business to lay stress on “Slav barbarism” wherever possible, to obscure the bright and glorious pages in Slav history, and to emphasize everything that can be taken as a proof of savagery and arrested development. Unfortunately, no one has written at such length about the Slav question, or attached so much importance to it, as the German scholars, with the result that other European nations have derived their views from them—so much so that one might almost say that _German_ opinion on the Slavs has become the opinion of Europe. Constant unrest in Russia, and the consequent reprisals of the authorities afforded a welcome pretext for misjudging the Slavs, and the ordinary public of Europe came to know of them only as mediæval inquisitors with Siberia as their great torture-chamber. No one seemed to realize that these revolutionary movements, no less than the insurrections in other Slav countries, merely represented the resistance of a virile people craving enlightenment against autocratic barbarism; and that it is obviously unfair to judge the Slavs by the deeds of their _oppressors_, who in every case have followed the German methods cultivated by their governments in most Slav countries, and imported into Russia by Peter the Great. On the other hand, if the Slav nations are judged by the _soul of the people_, and not by their rulers and state-systems, they show a high standard of civilization and a trend towards culture of a kindly, humanitarian type, which promises to be a far better contribution to Western European progress than the much-advertised German “Kultur.”

Certainly the Slavs have not yet attained to their full stature as a race. At present they are passing through a period of strong ferment, but the wine that has so far resulted from this ferment gives excellent ground for the hope that when the Slavs have solved their various national and economic problems they will prove themselves the equals of the other cultured nations of the world.

In the world of politics they must attain the degree of power necessary to safeguard their racial individuality and the freedom of the Slav peoples. This power must stand in due proportion to their capability for intellectual progress, and should in itself be a guarantee for the peace of the world in the future. For the Slav is not naturally domineering, and has no craving for power as a mere means of aggression. He belongs to a kindly race, melancholy, as shown in the national poetry in which his soul finds expression. He has a craving to love and to be loved, and would fain join the other European nations as a friend and brother. His strength will be the strength of love. Russia has neither need nor desire to extend her boundaries further. The Balkan Slavs only wish to accomplish their own destiny quietly within the borders of the _Slav Sphere_, and the rest of the Slavs desire their freedom—_only their freedom_. And when this is accomplished, the Slav Colossus will no longer constitute a danger to Europe, but a safeguard. His political power will only threaten those who would tamper with the foundations of peace from mere lust of dominion.

* * * * *

In the present crisis the Slav race is by no means seeking a return to the past. The past has seen the Slavs masters of a great empire and a real menace to the rest of the world. If one were to take the political map of Europe and indicate upon it the frontiers of the ancient Slav Empire, the Slav race would appear like an irresistible deluge. The huge Muscovite Empire, almost the whole of Austria-Hungary, the whole of the Balkans, two-thirds of the German Empire, part of Italy, and a large part of Scandinavia—all these once formed the Slav Empire. Historical maps show the single triumphant word “Slavs” (“famous” or “glorious” ones) inscribed over all these countries throughout the centuries. Their history and development can be traced back to 400 B.C.

The Taurians that guarded the Golden Fleece were Slavs, as were the men of the Baltic with whom Phœnicians and Greeks traded for amber. The forest lands of the North, that grey home of magic, wisdom and valour, hang like a dark background full of strange possibilities behind sunny Greece and clear-headed, practical Rome—and this was the Empire of the Slavs in the past, the Gardariki and Iotunheim (Giant-land) of the Norsemen. From one century to another they played a part of increasing importance among the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe and were feared as a strong, homogeneous race. Their power reached its zenith towards the end of the fifth century, before the tidal wave of the Hun invasion swept over Europe. At that time they held the mastery from the Alps to the mouth of the Elbe, and from the Baltic to the Black Sea. They were then one great people divided into several tribes speaking slightly differing dialects; but only a fraction of their number—the inhabitants of the present Dalmatia—was subject to the Emperor Nepos. The invasion of the Avars, who took possession of a large strip of the Slav possessions between the Danube and the Dniester, made the first breach in the unity of the great Slav family. Henceforth they were known as Northern, Eastern, and Southern, Slavs, and began to form separate nationalities. In the age of Charlemagne these nationalities had already crystallized into independent states, whose power and prosperity are recorded in history. The strongest of these was eventually Poland, extending far into the Russia of to-day. The Moravian Empire of Svatopluk, the Empire of Serbia, the kingdom of Croatia, and the Slavicized Bulgars in the South, together with the Grand-Dukedom of Muscovy (and the Wendish kingdom in North Germany), complete the family of Slav States. It would take too long to enter into the historical importance of all these states, but it is a characteristic proof of their power that not only European, but Asiatic, nations courted their favour.

Some of the main trade routes of the world led from Northern Europe through the heart of Russia to Byzantium (the “Mikligard” of the Sagas)—and Asia. Slav, Norwegian, Tatar and Arab traded peacefully together on the banks of the Volga, and sundry passages in the Norse Sagas as well as the journal of an Arab trader give us vivid glimpses of those days. Somehow these searchlight pictures of the Slavs and their country, recorded with positively journalistic freshness and love of detail, do not corroborate the biassed accounts of German historians. But this world-power which Russia alone has developed steadily up to the present day began to wane among the other Slav nations soon after the first Crusade (1097). Already in 1204 (the fourth Crusade) Slavonia, Croatia, Dalmatia and Bosnia were incorporated in the German (Holy Roman) Empire, together with Hungary, Istria, Carniola and Carinthia. Under the Hohenstaufens, Bohemia and Moravia also became vassal states, and in the fourteenth century the victorious Osmanlis robbed the Bulgars and Serbs of their independence. With the exception of Russia, Poland alone maintained her independence, until the first partition in 1772, followed by the second in 1793. The third and last partition in 1795 sealed her fate, and the Poles were parcelled out under Russian, Prussian and Austrian rule.

* * * * *

The partition of Poland was the beginning of the complete political, and to some extent even the national, decay of the non-Russian Slavs. Just as Russia began to spread her mighty pinions, the Slavs under alien yoke fell deeper and deeper into an apathy of gloom, only broken from time to time by rare flashes of patriotism, or a tempest of revolt. The book of history lay open before them with its pages of gold and black; but to their aching eyes the black ever loomed larger than the gold, and they yielded to a despondency that knew no comfort and saw no escape. And, while they were thus sunk in apathy, their rulers brought strong pressure to bear on them, so that they might eradicate the stamp of their nationality, not only from their faces, but from their souls. Germany and Austria scented the Eastern question, and divined that in its solution the Slavs might renew their strength. So they determined to approach the problem supported by a totally emasculated and denationalized Slav following. To this end they strove above all things to turn the Slavs into docile citizens of a Germanic Empire; for from the days of Charlemagne the German has reiterated the parrot-cry that the Slav is barbarous, obstinate, dangerous and ugly, and that his only chance of salvation lies in merging his identity with that of the German of the Empire. It is a fact that during this period the Slavs did nothing to help themselves. A great weariness weighed upon the people, no less than upon the educated classes, and they were preparing to reconcile themselves to the fate that had already befallen their brothers, the Serbs and Bulgars. But the progress of history did for the Slavs what they failed to do for themselves. Napoleon, the personification of destruction for the whole of Europe, brought salvation to the Western Slavs, for he re-awakened them to a sense of national self-consciousness, and so prepared the way for the long and bitter struggle they have waged since then against their oppressors. As soon as these struggles commenced Russia, who had hitherto regarded the ruin of her brothers with equanimity, began to take an interest in their sufferings, and to afford them strong moral support.

These struggles, however, could not bring immediate relief. The Slavs knew full well that the way to freedom is long and has to be won step by step. The problem of the Near East, which advanced one stage with the liberation of Serbia, must first be solved in every phase and detail to clear the way for a solution of the purely Slav problem. Europe cannot take a vital interest in this problem before the Balkan problem is disposed of, and the conditions for the liberation of the Slavs so far fulfilled, that the difficulty can be solved in the ordinary course of the progress of civilization.

The psychological moment seems to have arrived, and the Slav question deserves to be fully put forward. Surely the British public, which has entered into the present crisis with such splendid spirit, will not withhold its interest from the Slav question, more especially as England will have a strong voice in the matter when the final settlement comes to be made.