The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

Slavs, especially the Russians, believed in a ereat and noble réle of their race. They reacted against Hegel’s conclusion, but instead of going forward they turned their eyes to the past. Their author Kireevski wrote that the progress of the State is nothing but the development of the inner principles upon which it is based. The European States, having begun by violence, must progress through revolutions. Owing to the rationalism upon which their civilisation is based, the Western countries have developed the spirit of individualism instead of the spirit of social solidarity. Consequently the Slavophils wanted to replace this principle of rationalism by a new one upon which they could establish the new type of civilisation, which was to redeem humanity, and believed that they had found it in the teaching of the Orthodox Church, Autocracy and Russian Mir—the Parish Land-Commune. They strongly criticised the reforms introduced by Peter the Great, regretted the Westernisation of Russia, and demanded the reversion to the time anterior to the Mongolian invasion of Russia. For them the Orthodox Church is a living organism of life and truth. It consists not in the number of believers, nor in the visible congregation, but in the spiritual tie which binds them together. Roman Catholicism curtails individual liberty for the sake of unity. Protestantism takes the alternative and loses its unity in its individualism. Greek Orthodoxy professes to 255