centres of the West, and, last not least, her isolated existence during almost
a thousand years in the past, — all this made of Russia a world by itself,
getting gradually more and more into touch with the European world,
but for all that remaining in the minds of the European people in the
beyond, the exotic. The great war might have put an end to this state
of affairs, had Russia, the old Russia, outlived it. The struggle between a
certain superior strata of Russian society against the historical rulers which
lasted a whole century, has in its turn greatly contributed to this alienation.
Russian liberty lovers of all shades have for so long repeated that something
unseen and unheard of was happening in Russia, that finally the European
mind got accustomed to look upon the inhuman, the brutal, the beastly, as
a normal product of Russian soil, and as the becoming condition of the
Russian. And this is the exact way in which an indifferent onlooker in
Europe views what is happening in Russia even now: formerly it was the
Tzar’s knout that lashed the Russian back, — now it is the Bolshevics.
The convenience of such a conception is obvious. In the first place it
enables the conscience to sleep soundly and securely; there were deformities
before, there are some now; the evil is habitual, there Is no reason for
disquietude. In such a frame of mind there is also no reason for being
anxious for oneself: Bolshevism is in Russia and for Russia. It is an
endemic disease; so one may trade with Bolshevics, one may look with
curiosity and even with sympathy from one’s own cosy comfort at them
while they are creating a new world of their own over there, this disease
is far removed from wus, it wont infect us, — thanks to thee, oh Lord, who
hast fashioned us differently. In this photographically exact reproduction
of an average European, the greatest menace to all contemporaneous culture
is hidden. I should be the last to deny that the man of the West greatly
differs from the Russian; history has created in the European peoples more
sobriety, perspicuity, consistency and perseverance in the pursuit of a chosen
aim. But just this makes the fiasco of the attitude of Europe towards the
Russian disaster all the more evident. For reason and conscience must fall
asleep; the world must be screened from a man’s view by party, ideological,
racial or some other sort of rubbish to make it possible for him to identify
former Russia, ‘which indefatigably built her national, her State life, with
the international Bolshevic mob, the like of which cannot be found anywhere
over the whole extent of the world’s history even during epochs of gravest
disturbances. Europe does not observe in Bolshevism its singularity, she
does not recognise in it. her own self, her own reverse: her own doctrine
of class antagonism, her own reckless struggle of parties, her own attempts
at saving the world, her own greed, her own consistency leading to cruelty.
This complacency forcibly reminds one of the ancient saying: Whom the
gods want to destroy, they rob of their reason.
NE J
