The German race has been moving to the east for more than ten centuries, and has swallowed up or subjugated more than one Slavic people. The Muscovite State, especially since the 17th century, has moved to meet the Germanic Drang nach Osten, and, having become Russia, finally collided with the militant German State of Prussia and its rival-ally Austria along the entire western frontier. Since as early as the 18th century, the rivalry between Russia and Austria (which in this respect was already supported by Prussia) for influence in the Balkan peninsula has been evident. Among the German public the idea of the necessity of subjugating the Danubian-Balkan lands to German influence is very widespread. From the extensive literature in which this idea is expressed, we will point out only a few examples, taking them from authors of various parties and of significant reputation.

We are sorry that we do not have at hand the collected works of List, the honored founder of national economy in Germany, and therefore we must deprive the reader of the instructive opportunity to become acquainted with the force, not only of his ideas, but also of his expression on the question with which we are dealing. We will present his thoughts on the basis of Roscher's exposition in The History of National Economy in Germany, pp. 987-988, keeping his references to the complete collected works of his predecessor. List takes as the basis of his economic calculations for the German nation the political union of Central Europe under Prussian hegemony. Even the "littoral states," that is Holland, Denmark, and the countries up to the Balkan mountain range should take part in this alliance, so that a Germany would be created bordering on four seas: the North, Baltic, Adriatic, and Black (Collected Works, II, 211). Such a Germany would be a threat to France and Russia, who therefore appear dangerous to the German economist in that they both seek to enlarge their own "incomplete nationalities" by the incorporation of German lands (II, 442). "Worry and a genuine revulsion as regards Russia take especial hold of List," says Roscher. "He compares it to a ferocious beast which only lies quietly while digesting the food upon which it has gorged itself (strictly speaking -- prey, Frass), or while refreshing itself by sleep, or while lying in wait for a new prey. If this beast should, by a strange quirk of nature, obtain a human head, then it would become even more terrible, for it would be able to follow its bestial instincts with more skill and consistency and with apparent moderation." (II, 315). In Roscher's The Principles of National Economy we read: "Our emigrants to Russia, America, Australia, and Algeria depart from the fatherland with everything they have, and for the most part they are lost to us; they become consumers and producers for alien peoples who are often our rivals and enemies. The matter would turn out quite differently if we were to send the German settlers to German colonies which could be established, for example, in the fertile but sparsely populated parts of Hungary, in Poland and the Polish provinces of Prussia, and finally, in those parts of Turkey which in the future, God willing, will become the inheritance of Germany. Here, by means of colonization, it might be possible to found a new Germany which would surpass the old one in size, population, and wealth, and which would form with it the most reliable rampart against any danger from the Russians and the Poles. We would be able to avail ourselves of this land, for the exclusive use of our national economy, exactly as the United States makes use of the Mississippi valley and the Far West." (Roscher, op. cit., Russian transla-l, Vol. I, Sect. 2, 323).

In 1863 the Socialist Ferdinand Lassalle wrote to Rodbertus, the former minister, that he had read with pleasure, in a pamphlet by a Prussian, the words: "I hope that I shall live until that time when Germany will receive the Turkish inheritance, and when legions of German soldiers or workers will stand at the Bosphorus." As regards the non-Germanic peoples who thus would be under the German soldiers or workers, the famous demagogue expresses himself in this way: "No, I am not at all an adherent of the principle of nationality. I demand the rights of nationality only for the large civilized nations, and not for the races whose entire right consists in that of being assimilated by the former." (Letters of F. Lassalle to C. Rodbertus-Jagetzow, 56-57).

Lassalle's words show that the German Socialists were far from renouncing a militant attitude toward their neighbors to the southeast. And in reality, many of the German Social Democrats as well, even members of the International, reveal a completely chauvinistic nationalism with regard to the Slavs, as was particularly evident during the last Slav War against Turkey. We refer the reader especially to the speeches and pamphlets of Liebknecht (The Eastern Question, or Shall Europe be Cossackized and The Eastern Debate in the Reichstag). At first sight it would appear that people such as Liebknecht stand for "international interests as against the principle of nationality, which divides peoples." They are against Russian despotism, which oppresses all peoples, especially Poland, the restoration of which these men demand in the interests of the freedom of all Europe. And one might find that their sympathies and antipathies, though they are somewhat onesided and expressed rather strangely, are in any case basically humanitarian in principle. But after carefully reading these speeches and comparing them with the actual living conditions of the peoples between the Elbe and the Black Sea, it becomes clear that in these Socialists and internationalists there lives the same old spirit of the Henry the Fowlers and Henry the Holies and other destroyers of the Slavs.

These gentlemen are against Russia, but in equal measure they are for Austria and even for Turkey. Austria is dear to these strange internationalists as part of a "mighty dam which the Germanic world has erected from the North Sea to the Adriatic against the Slav." These humanists consider the Turkish oppression of the Slavs to be a fiction and declare that "not one Southern Slav can be shown who would actually aspire to freedom." Of all the Slavs, an exception is made only for the Poles, but obviously only because the Poles are the enemies of Russia. In this judgment of course democrats such as Liebknecht fail to see that behind Poland there are the non-Polish peasant peoples such as the Lithuanians, Byelorussians, and Ukrainians, and that there is just as little reason to give them to a restored Poland as to keep them under the despots of Russia. The conditional sympathies toward Poland of men such as Liebknecht give one good grounds to suspect that were Poland to become independent with its own policy, and be not merely a weapon in the German Drang nach Osten, then even the Liebknechts would regard it in the same way as do the Roschers, that is as a field for German colonization which was slipping from their hands. And in fact, each day we see in the German press, especially that of democratic-progressive leanings, the shedding of tears over Poland when they deal with Russia, and outcries against the Poles when they treat Posen, for example.

All of this shows how little good will the Slavic peoples can expect even from the democratic-progressive parties, including a significant portion of the Social Democrats, who even recently still shared the point of view of the Lists, fulminating not only against Russian tsarism, but also against Russian "nihilism," and calling such people as Herzen and Bakunin tsarist agents. Herzen gives an excellent description of this mixture of the spirit of the Saxon emperors with the new cosmopolitanism and socialism of the German revolutionaries. . . . Considering List's idea that Russia would become even more dangerous if it developed a "human head," we do not consider it superfluous to repeat here the words of Herzen: "There are limited minds with narrow national hatreds; they hate without reasoning. Read the articles of the German democrats who brag of their cosmopolitanism, and then observe closely their malicious hatred of everything Russian, of everything Slav. . . . If this hatred were accompanied with a desire for Russia and Poland to be free, for them to break their chains, I would understand this. This is not at all the case. Just as the medieval people, hating the Jews, did not wish their improvement, so every step in our progress as a State only redoubles the hatred of these limited, tightly sealed minds." Describing the German emigrants of the Revolution of 1848, Herzen says (Works, Vol. VII, 311-312) "All the German revolutionaries are great cosmopolitans, they have outgrown the nationalist point of view -- and all are filled with the most annoying, the most stubborn patriotism. They are prepared to accept a universal republic, to wipe out the borders between States -- however Trieste and Danzig must belong to Germany." (In order not to lengthen this article we omit examples of the curious way in which the German liberals and revolutionaries of 1848 regarded not only the Slavs, but also Italy, which apparently, on the basis of cosmopolitan-cultural considerations, should have subordinated to Austria). . . .

In view of such an attitude on the part of Germans of various parties toward their eastern neighbors, it is not surprising that from time to time there arises in all of Europe talk about a forthcoming battle between Germans and Slavs for the possession of the land between the Elbe, the Adriatic, and the Black Sea. Such a battle is in fact not impossible. True, there are people who find that it will be prevented by the triumph of socialism in Germany as well as in Austria and Russia; and that even if before this political clashes were to lead to an extension of the German political or even ethnographic borders to the detriment of the Slav States and peoples, the basic interests of the nations would suffer little from this. Without any doubt, the abolition of despotism in Russia and the destruction of its centralization (if not of the alliance of peoples now enslaved by it) and the restoration of the autonomy of the Polish provinces (of course of the truly Polish provinces, and not of the historical Polish State) are a pressing necessity for the further progress of Europe. But this work of liberation must be done in the interest of the peoples of Russia and by their own forces. Only thus can it be accomplished with success. History has shown that when such a project is undertaken from the outside, no good comes of it. Harm is done not only to those liberated, but also to the liberators, and even to the idea of freedom itself. Thus when the French, in the course of the Great Revolution, undertook to liberate their eastern neighbors through military campaigns, they betrayed themselves and the idea of revolution to Napoleon! The same would happen to the Germans if they, even if led by the Lassalles and the Liebknechts, not to mention the Bismarcks, were to undertake the destruction of Russia and the restoration of Poland. This is all the more true since Lassalle's statement about the German soldiers at the Bosphorus and Liebknecht's about the "dam erected by the German world against the Slav" show that far more nationalistic chauvinism and expansionistic ferment of an inevitably monarchistic nature is left among the German liberators than even among the French Jacobins of the period of the Great Revolution.

That is why there is no ground for people with socialist ideas to look optimistically at the near future of relations in Central Europe, or to place their hopes in German Social Democracy. The Socialists of the Slav nationalities, especially Germany's close neighbors, the Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles, Czechs, and Slovenes, must organize the demos of their peoples for independent battle against their local social and economic feudal lords, a large proportion of whom are German. In this way, the fruits of battle would be preserved for these peoples, and not lost to outside "benefactors." Only such an independent organization of Socialist parties among Germany's neighbors will guarantee the success of socialist ideas among these peoples. At the same time, to use the image of Liebknecht, "a mighty dam" will be created against chauvinism and feudalism even among the German masses, a dam which will also be useful for them, for it will safeguard them against the domination of Napoleons and Bismarcks. . . . There is no doubt that just as the unification of Italy and Germany, by setting limits to French expansionism, encouraged the development of peace-loving and cosmopolitan ideas in France, and drew the French toward internal problems, so the transformation of Austria, Russia, and the Balkan countries into political federations in which each people would have the opportunity to develop freely, would halt Germany's militaristic aspirations in the east, and would benefit the population of Germany itself.

Unfortunately many, even in Slav countries, think far more about the possibility of halting German expansion exclusively by a similar military power, such as Russia, than about a lasting organization of the peoples threatened by Germany. In this they mistakenly cite the examples of Piedmont and Prussia as having halted the expansionist aspirations of France. These hopes placed in Russia, the mystical notions about the clash between Russia and Prussia as the representatives of two worlds (which we find equally on the German and the Slav sides), and the insufficient comprehension of the expansionism of the Germans to the east, all arise from an inadequate analysis of the Germanic movement to the east and of the role of the Russian State toward its western border areas and neighbors.

The movement of the Germans to the east and their clash with the inhabitants, who are primarily Slavs, does not represent a mystic struggle between cultural principles. This is only a part of a general movement on the European continent in which the Slavs themselves participate, one determined by the most tangible conditions, which can be expressed graphically by statistical data. It is a stream of colonization from the more to the less densely populated countries. The expansionist aspirations which every State has are usually most successful when they coincide with the direction of colonization of its people. In this way both the French people and France as a State had their Drang nach Osten, which has been halted recently by the stopping of the increase of population in France. For these very reasons of population pressure, the Franks pressed upon the Saxons and the Bavarians, and these upon the Slavs and the Lithuanians. For the same reasons, among the Slavs, the Poles pressed upon the Lithuanians, Byelorussians, and Ukrainians; the Ukrainians upon the Khazars and the Polovtsi and other steppe peoples between the Dnieper and the Don; and the Great Russians upon the Finnish and other tribes of the Volga area, and further on to the east as far as the Pacific Ocean. In this movement the power of the State very often only gave the final seal to the phenomenon which was accomplished by means of colonization.

The expansion of the Muscovite State in the west is of a quite different character. This expansion, transforming a Muscovy hardly known to Europeans into a huge Russian empire, occurred with such amazing rapidity in the course of some 150 years (1654-1815), that it dazzles observers who do not at once realize its causes. However, understanding it will lead to comprehension of much that is both historically and practically important. Since in this case there was no colonization, the causes are usually supposed to be either an extreme talent for aggrandizement and the diplomatic skill of the the Muscovite State, that mystical ability to "gobble up" about which German patriots speak with horror, and not without envy, or else the mystical gravitation of the peoples of the western half of Russia toward the Muscovite center, a gravitation about which Muscovite patriots boast as the result of their military and diplomatic talents. However, the incorporation of the Ukraine, Byelorussia, the Baltic provinces, and Lithuania into the Russian State can by no means be explained by the theories of the German or the Muscovite patriots. In essence it is the result of nothing other than the eastward pressure of more western peoples: that of the Germans on the Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians; of the Poles on the Lithuanians, Byelorussians and Ukrainians; and that of the Turks on the northern shores of the Black Sea, which they took from the Ukrainians at the end of the 15th century.1 Seeking to understand the details of the military-diplomatic history of the annexation by Muscovy of the whole western half of Russia, one is amazed chiefly by the lack of ability of the Muscovite strategists and diplomats. Continually the Poles and the Turks, the Swedes and the Germans beat or deceived them, but just the same, the result was an amazing extension of their State. Obviously an underlying cause must be concealed here, and this is nothing other than the above mentioned movement to the east of the States and peoples more to the west of the lands incorporated into Muscovy. In the 16th and 17th centuries this pressure was strong enough to produce a class stratification along national lines which in turn destroyed the national unity and the energy necessary for self-defense in Lithuania and the Baltic provinces, and in Byelorussia and the Ukraine aroused sharp reaction against the aristocratic and imperialistic elements moving in from the west. At the same time, the eastward moving groups were not sufficiently strong (the Germans because of the distance from their homeland, the Poles because of their natural weakness and of the necessity to fulfill a double role: defense in the west and aggression in the east) to assimilate the native elements and to make a solid barrier against Russia's attempts to extend its borders in the direction opposite to that of its natural stream of colonization. A study of the history of Pan-Slav ideas among the western Slavs, from Juraj Krizanic (17th century) to the present, shows that these ideas were a reaction against the aspirations of the Germans, Hungarians, Turks, and Greeks to dominate the Slavs. Similarly, an unbiased study of the history of the peoples of Russia's western borders shows that Muscovite Pan-Russism was a reaction to Polish hegemony, especially since the second half of the 16th century. Up to that time, Ukrainians such as Prince Constantine Ivanovich Ostrozhsky very faithfully fought against the Muscovites when these attempted to detach the provinces populated by Byelorussians and Ukrainians from the Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian federation to which they belonged.

The formation of this federation was largely caused by the need of defense against a German movement to the east which weakened the antagonism which had long existed between the members of this federation, and which, together with clericalism, originally caused the Poles to summon the Teutonic knights to the mouths of the Vistula and the Nieman. Many centuries later the heirs of the Teutonic knights gave the initiative for the final divisions of Poland. We will remind our readers of facts which are usually overlooked in a general history of Russia, namely that in the 13th century Polotsk was several times seized by Germans from Riga until it united with the Lithuanian State; that at the end of the 14th century the Teutons approached Brest and occupied not only Kaunas, but also Grodno, until they were beaten back near Grünwald by the combined forces of the Poles, Lithuanians, and estern Russians (1410).²

Now we ask the reader to imagine what would have been the national and social fate of the population occupying the huge pentagon between the Baltic Sea, the Western Dvina, the upper Dnieper, and the Pripet, had Polotsk, Grodno, and Brest, as far back as the 14th and the beginning of the 15th century, remained under the Teutonic knights! It is doubtful whether the Great Russians would have kept for themselves that window into Europe which they required, a window which Novgorod represented in earlier times and which, after its destruction by the so practical and far-seeing (sic!) Moscow, had to be replaced with tremendous efforts by St. Petersburg.

The unification of Lithuania with Byelorussia in the 13th-14th centuries and then of Lithuania, Byelorussia, and the Ukraine with Poland in the 15th-16th centuries halted the German Drang nach Osten in the regions of the Dvina, the Vistula and the Nieman, but the mouths of these rivers remained under the Teutons. The fate of the Polish and Lithuanian peoples in the west was already decided to their disadvantage. Moreover, within this union lay the seeds of its destruction, although from the end of the 15th century there was yet another reason for its existence: the necessity for the Ukraine to defend itself from a new eastward drive, that of the Turks from the mouth of the Danube to the northeast, which induced the Ukrainians to strengthen the union with Poland in 1569. For a long time the Poles had their own Drang nach Osten toward Lithuania, Byelorussia, and the Ukraine, which manifested new strength after the union of 1569. It is this Polish Drang, in addition to the pressure of the Turks and the Tatars, which rendered the complete independence of the Ukraine impossible, and made it seek an alliance with Muscovy. The idea of such an alliance was already current in the 1620's, and was realized in the Pereyaslav Articles of 1654. Both the Ukrainians and the Muscovites, in word as well as thought, envisioned the enlargement of the minimum Cossack Ukraine (to the Sluch or Horyn River) by the annexation of all the Ukrainian and Byelorussian (Ruthenian in the terminology of the time) lands, including Lviv and Vilna, from the Polish State.

The narrowmindedness of the Moscow politicians, skillfully exploited by the Poles, was the chief reason why these projects were not accomplished in the 17th century. When the Ukraine turned to the tsar of Muscovy with a proposal to be accepted into "an alliance and protection," Moscow was faced with the question, not of the conquest of new regions, but of cooperation with its new partner, which was politically autonomistic, democratic, and even revolutionary, and in the religious sphere, dissident. But autocratic, aristocratic, and clerical Moscow did not understand its task. Obviously it could not do so in the 17th century if it still has not been able to up to the present. It carried on a policy of conquest, or one of legitimism and conservatism; it entered into diplomatic compromises with conservative Polish elements; combatted the "revolutionary" elements in the areas which were united to it; and thereby delayed the separation of Poland's non-Polish provinces until the end of the 18th century, when it had to yield Ukrainian Galicia to the heirs of the Holy Roman Empire. At the same time, the successors of the Teutonic knights took possession of nearly all the spoils lost by belligerent Germanism in the battle of Grünwald. Muscovite politicians showed still less understanding of their role in the Baltic provinces. As far back as the 16th century the Muscovite sovereigns began to press in this direction, continuing that policy of pure conquest which brought it to die fratricidal destruction of Novgorod and Pskov, these Great Russian outposts in the region of the Baltic Sea, and the conductor of culture into Russia. Already in the Livonian War of Ivan IV the possibility appeared of basing the Muscovite Drang nach Westen upon an uprising of the Latvians and Estonians against their Teutonic conquerors. But the Muscovites burned and plundered, and took as many Latvians and Estonians into captivity as Germans, arousing a general horror which aided the Teutons who, with the help of Poland, drove them from Livonia. When in the 18th century Peter I repeated the offensive of Ivan IV, he at first followed the example of his "Terrible" predecessor. The idea of obtaining support from the native element was suggested to him, of course not by a Latvian or Estonian, but by the Baltic German Patkul, the representative of those German nobles who were dissatified with Swedish rule. Sweden had taken Livonia away from Poland and, with true political wisdom, began to strengthen its position in the new provinces by granting protection to the masses. In this they would have succeeded had it not been for the Muscovite invaders. These preferred to recognize and strengthen the privileges of the German feudal lords. Since the time of Catherine II this policy has been superceded by one of "Russification" for which here, as in all of western Russia, there is no basis.

This lack of understanding on the part first of Moscow and then of St. Petersburg of the role in the west, this Muscovite militarism, legitimism, aristocratism, clericalism, and national centralism are the cause of all the failurs of Russia's western policy, including even its policy toward the "Eastern Question," which for Russia is strictly a western one. These are the real reasons for the successes of what in Moscow is referred to as Polish or German "intrigue." From these arise such errors as the Vilna agreements of 1656 and the Andrusovo treaty of 1667; the Ostsee capitulations of Peter the Great; the divisions of Poland with Prussia and Austria instead of a possible federated union of all three Russias and Lithuania with Poland; the participation of Russia in the Holy Alliance and its opposition to the uprising of the Greeks; the support of Turkey against the Egyptian uprising; the suppression of the Rumanian movement in 1848; the League of the Three Emperors with its consequences including the Berlin Treaty of 1878; the protection given to the Battenberg coup d'etat in Bulgaria, etc.

As we move toward the present we see, in addition to the unconscious errors committed by following the narrow old-Muscovite road, an ever-increasing, deliberate desire among Russian politicians to copy their western policy from Prussia's eastern policy. This desire is of course supported by the perfidious counsel of the Prussian court. Among the errors of the latter type is the system of Russification adopted in the western half of Russia after the Polish uprising of 1863-64, which was a logical consequence of the policy of preserving old-Muscovite absolutism throughout the empire, even after a clear demonstration of the general desire to throw this off. This recalcitrance led logically to the overthrow of the Bulgarian Constitution, which was a tempting example to the Russian Zemstvos, and to the Battenberg coup. The chaos which this created in the Balkan peninsula (reminiscent of the chaos which the Andrusovo treaty and the despotic rule of the voyevods created in the Ukraine of the 17th century) again turned out to be extremely advantageous to German-Austrian policy beyond the Danube. In all of these affairs, Muscovite patriots like Mr. Katkov and nationalists like Mr. Aksakov became excellent performers in an orchestra led, to a certain extent, by Prince Bismarck.

There is nothing more unnatural for Great Russia, nor anything more useful for militant Germanism, than Muscovite attempts to play in the western part of Russia, including Poland, the role which the Prussians play in their eastern, primarily Polish provinces. We leave aside the fact that the Polish provinces constitute a very small proportion of the German State in comparison to the relation of the Polish, Lithuanian, Byelorussian, Ukrainian, and other non-Great Russian provinces to the whole of European Russia. It is enough to remember the fundamental fact that the Germanization of the eastern provinces of Prussia is based on German colonization moving to the east, whereas Great Russian colonization has not, does not, and can not move to the west. Recent data on the resettlement of colonists from the central Russian provinces show that the Great Russians are in no condition to colonize even the sparsely populated southern steppes, not even the eastern parts between the Don, lower Volga, and the Caucasus. More and more, these steppes are being settled by Ukrainians, so that when the Territory of the Don Cossack Host is given civil status, undoubtedly the Great Russian element will be submerged by a wave of Ukrainian peasants, who even now surround it on almost all sides and have penetrated into the most privileged ranks of the Don Cossacks. Statistics show that even from the province of Ryazan, for example, colonists are moving, not to the lower Don, nor to the Kuban, nor to the province of Stavropol, but to Siberia. This process is determined by basic climatic, ethnographic, and other geographical factors which are more powerful than any artificial political calculations. Formerly, Great Russian dissenters emigrated into western areas to escape oppression by their government, but now no one emigrates there voluntarily except petty officials. Artificial attempts made after the last Polish uprising to settle Great Russian peasants here ended ridiculously, or even sadly; indeed, like any bureaucratic undertaking they could not have ended otherwise. Moreover, it is generally recognized that the measures adopted for the crowding of the Poles out of agriculture in the western territory resulted solely in the increase of German landowning here. . . .

If Prince Bismarck is really a far-sighted statesman, and if the power of the Hohenzollerns and the triumph of Germanism between the four seas washing the shores of Central Europe is his aim (and other, internal, aims are not evident), then the present situation in Russia and its policy toward the western borderlands will play into his hand until he chooses the moment to provoke Russia into a war, destroy its best armies, occupy Warsaw, Vilna, Riga, and then Brest and Dünaburg, and incorporate them into Germany. The percentage of Germans in these provinces is not much lower than in Posen, so that a personnel for German administration in them will be at hand, as will a German-Jewish bourgeoisie.

If the Germans remain within these limits and do not march against Moscow as Napoleon did, they will be able to rule there and the whole Pripet and upper Dnieper and Western Dvina basin will pay a levy to the masters of the Baltic Sea, while the Austrian ally will secure the Adriatic for Germanism. Then the Slavs will retain only the Black Sea for the Ukrainians and the White Sea and the Caspian for the Great Russians, which, let us hope, will never be taken from them. But Providence destined the White Sea more for polar bears than for people, and the exit from the Black Sea lies only through the Bosphorus. What will happen to this in the event of the triumph of Germanism in the Balkans and the Adriatic is a question!

Of course, from the objective-historical point of view, reinforced by social-democratic hopes, we can await the future with philosophic tranquillity: "It will come anyhow!" But until the sun of universal Socialism rises, the non-Germanic peoples between the Elbe, the Aegean Sea, and the Dnieper will be in a somewhat difficult position. Therefore it would be desirable if the present influential classes of these peoples, particularly in Russia, would form parties which would understand the situation and find remedies against the danger threatening their peoples.

Nowhere does one speak so much about a national Slav policy as in Russia, and we have the right to demand that such a policy be formulated. At present, we must testify that the policy which is presented in Moscow does not at all deserve this name; it is simply an apish Byzantine-Oriental-Muscovite imitation of Hohenzollern Germanism, completely unsuited to the western areas of Russia.

We do not feel ourselves called upon to write programs for other peoples, but we cannot help suggesting certain practical proposals which proceed from an understanding of the position of Germanism in the East and Moscovitism in the West, both in the past and at present. A grass-roots, original national Slav party in Great Russia must ba aware of the inability of the old Muscovite policy of tsarist bureaucratic autocracy, of hieratic Orthodoxy, and of the Great Russian centralism to rule Great Russia itself, and of the impotence of this policy to overcome Polish influence in Byelorussia, Lithuania, and the Right Bank Ukraine, to combat German feudalism in the the Baltic provinces, and to halt the thrust of militant Germanism toward the Vistula and Nieman and the corresponding Austro-German movement into the Balkan countries. Therefore such a party, in the interests of Russian unity and of having friendly political bodies in the west, should insist on basing Russia's whole western policy, both internal and foreign, upon the support of native democratic elements in these countries, that is of Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Byelorussian, Ukrainian, and, in ethnic Poland, of Polish elements. It should insist upon the creation, in all of Russia, of political institutions which would guarantee the unhindered development of all the peoples, non-Great Russian as well as Great Russian, with a corresponding foreign policy. It would be a moderate policy, but clearly one of democratic federal liberalism and progress, instead of traditional aristocratic-centralizing absolutism and conservatism, its patches of mandarin demagogy notwithstanding.

At the present, the following would be a minimum of such a policy:

In all of Russia:

1. The establishment of political freedom, that is, of personal inviolability, of freedom of speech, opinion, and association, of local self-government and state-wide representation, accompanied by:
2. Democratic agrarian and tax measures.

   Particularly in the western part of Russia:

3. In the Baltic provinces, agrarian reform at least equivalent to the Irish Land Act and the equalization of national rights of the Latvians and Estonians with those of the Germans.
4. In Lithuania, Byelorussia, die Ukraine, and Bessarabia -- the granting of the right to use the national languages, at least in the elementary schools and courts of the magistrates of the peace.
5. In Poland -- the granting of the right to use the national language in all courts and schools.

   In foreign policy, in so far as it depends upon Russian initiative, the first demand of such a national party should be:

6. The removal of any support to absolutism in Bulgaria or to Austria's aggressive aspirations beyond the Sava River.

Russia's adoption of this policy, the only rational one, would have an immediate effect on the countries to the southwest. The Polish movement in Prussia would receive powerful support from liberated Warsaw, just as the Ruthenian movement in Austria-Hungary would receive active assistance from the Russian Ukraine. This assistance, and the warnings of the Russian Poles, who would have achieved spiritual equilibrium, would exert a salutary and sobering influence upon Polish chauvinists in Galicia. The establishment of healthy relations between the Poles and the Ukrainians would deprive the German centralists in Austria of their present role of arbitrator of disputes between these nationalities, whereby they exploit now the Poles, now the Ruthenians, to the detriment of Slav federalism. Finally, the establishment of a normal order in Bulgaria would influence Eastern Rumelia and Macedonia favorably and would encourage the Pan-Bulgarian movement. The reconciliation of the nationalities and the triumph of federalism in Austria would strengthen the movement for the establishment of a Balkan federation, which alone can give a correct solution of the so-called Eastern Question in the true interests of the peoples of the Balkan peninsula and of general European harmony. All of this together would halt the militant movement of Germanism to the east decisively, leaving to the German colonists only the cultural role which undoubtedly belongs to them.

The near future will show whether a party with such aspirations can be formed in Great Russia. But we think that these measures are only the minimum of that which is desired by the conscious representatives of the peoples inhabiting the western half of European Russia, from the Estonians in the north to the Bessarabian Rumanians in the south. We believe that they will unite in action on a democratic-federalist basis. Russia's neighbors, especially the Slavic nations, should support this movement in their own interests. Finally, among the western European peoples, all lovers of peace and enemies of national hatreds, all who do not wish either Turkey's or Berlin's or Moscow's despotism, or Austria's hypocrisy, should support the liberal federal-democratic movement among the peoples of Russia and in the countries close to it.

This movement alone will bring both peace and progress to eastern Europe. Anything which deviates from it will be at best a series of fragmentary and contradictory experiments!

1 Ordinarily people are not aware that as early as the beginning of the 15th century wheat was exported from the harbor of Khadzhibey, the site of the present Odessa, to Constantinople. At this time Ukrainian colonization had occupied the area between the lower Dnieper and the Dniester, and lost it only after the seizure of Moldavia and the Crimea by the Turks (1475).

2 In this battle . . . the following regiments participated: the Smolensk, Polotsk, Vitebsk, Kiev, Pinsk, and others, arriving with Witold, and the Podolians and Bessarabians arriving with Jagiello. The Teutons had had the advantage, but the bravery of the Smolensk regiment, which stood off the onslaught of the Teutons, gave Witold the opportunity to remedy the situation. . . . For Polish patriotic writers, the Ruthenians were not present and the major role is played by the Poles. It is interesting to note that according to certain chroniclers, there were in the troops of Witold, beside Tatars, even "Jews" from the area around the Caspian Sea, in all likelihood the descendents of the Khazars. This motley army which halted the German Drang nach Osten in the regions of the Vistula and the Nieman provokes German historians, even such relatively moderate ones as Caro, to say that at Grünwald, "a highly advanced civilization was destroyed by Slav-Tatar barbarism." (Caro, History of Poland, III, 314). What that civilization was which the Teutons imposed on the Lithuanians can be seen from the testimonies and messages of the latter to the whole Christian world: "We have not a few prelates, priests, etc., who take from us wool and milk, but do not instruct us in Christian teaching. . . . All our fruits of the earth and beehives have been taken from us by the knights; they do not permit us to hunt, or fish, or trade with our neighbors; each year they carry away our children as hostages. . . . We ask baptism, but remember that we also are human beings created in the image and likeness of God, and not some kind of beasts." It is interesting to note that even now in the province of Posen the Prussian government collects "wool and milk" from the population, aids Germans in the purchase of land, forces the Poles out to America, but does not, for example, think of maintaining a university, so that this is the only province in the learned kingdom of the Hohenzollerns which does not have a university, not even a German one.