The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF

be the only religion which remains true to the spirit of primitive Christianity, having harmoniously wedded unity and liberty by the principle of Christian love.

Autocracy, as its second peculiar institution, is not a product of conflict and brutal force, to which the present parliamentary rule is but a natural reaction, as are the Governments of the West. Russian autocracy was created by the freewill of its citizens. The tradition of the call of Rurik,! the first dynast of Russia, may not be true historically, but it certainly is true temperamentally, reflecting the mind of the people. Thus autocracy is the “Holy Ark” of the Russian nation. The sovereign wishes but the good of the people, and this makes parliamentary rule superfluous.

The Parish Land-Commune was called the corner-stone of all Russian institutions, and was highly prized as a realisation of the Utopian dreams of Western socialists, who hoped to attain to it by way of capitalism and a proletariat. The socialist ideal of communal ownership of land and of the tools of production, it was said, needed not to be attained in Russia by force. There it is a natural product having grown from the very heart of the people. The creation of a proletariat is

1 According to tradition, the Russians in the ninth century sent a deputation to Rurik, Prince of the Varyags in Sweden, with the words: “ Our land is vast and fertile, but there is no order in it. Come and rule over us!”

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