RUSSIA ABROAD.
PERHAPS it is even yet not fully realized that the reign of violence which is now dying a natural death in Russia, while directly opposed to all previous conceptions of government, does not tolerate the pro- fession of any other opinions than its own. The inevitable consequence is that the leaders of nearly all the ordinary currents of Russian thought are for the most part now distributed over the various civilized countries. Opinions differ very much as to how these emigrants may in the future influence the life of their own country. All want to return as soon as conditions allow (it is a simple question of personal safety). That they will be able to do so in the not distant future seems much more than probable. The question is how far a leading role awaits them- there. As to political leadership, some will have a part to play, because there are so few real politicians in Russia. But many have been too long cut off from Russian life, which, as has been well said, "has moved upwards or downwards or sideways if you like, but anyhow away from them." Most of them do not, I think, realize enough this dis- qualification. But if one comes off the usual jargon of party politics, which was at all times particularly unreal in Russia, one gets a very different picture. Russians still wish the prosperity and independence of Russia. How far these can be secured will depend on one simple question : How far can the ,actual business of Russian reconstruction be entrusted to Russian hands ? Trained Russian hands were never sufficient in number for the most pressing and ordinary needs even of the benighted past. The influx of foreign experts, especially of organizers, will, anyhow, now be far greater than ever before, for after the wholesale desolation the needs of the country are far greater. What will be the proportion of Russian trained servants of the State ? Everyone is now alive to this question. A great Russian scholar, who is continuing his work there and is objective in questions of politics, affirms that very much is being done now in -11 essia to produce experts of her own : that is why all the higher teachers '.low are in a privileged position as to living conditions. But the sense of this need is common to all the various .1olonies of Russia abroad. The most intelligent men of the older generation see that there is no more effective work for Russia to which they can devote themselves. It far outweighs any advantage that can come from Party activities. If only because the destruction has lasted so long the work of reconstruction must go deep. The first need of Russia is character, and the next is technical efficiency. The whole future of Russia, therefore, depends primarily on education. This is quite as fully under- stood by the students themselves, whether in Russia or abroad.
I have just visited the principal centres of Russians abroad. In Berlin one finds very large numbers, several notable personalities and an important publishing organ- ization (Slovo). But the Germans are chiefly interested in studying Russia for themselves and, as President Masaryk has recently noticed, there are some eighteen centres of Slavonic study for Germans in Germany. In Poland, too, the Russians seem rather to be isolated groups or individuals. This is the least homely centre for them. Poland has suffered enough to have no liking for ideas coming from Russia ; and Bolshevism has undoubtedly created a reaction against everything Russian, a reaction which for the Pole is national and even religious in character. Very different is the Russian centre in Prague. There was no greater consolation to friends of Russia than that Czechoslovakia should have come up just when Russia went down. The two events were linked, for the principal cause of the collapse of Russia was an effort—with amazing sacrifices—which has resulted at least in the liberation of Czechoslovakia. In fact, this last may be said to have begun in the bosom of the glorious vanished army of Russia, in which the first Czechoslovak legions mere formed. The statesmen of Czechoslovakia have well understood this connexion. They have created a Russian university with Russian teachers in Prague, with the single condition that, when Russia is restored, this university shall still work there. The students receive not only free instruction but free maintenance. Some of the best and noblest of Russian minds are entrusted with their education and rejoice, after the necessary excursions which all of us have made into politics, to be back at their true work, which is at the same time the only real solution of all the political questions of their afflicted country. The excellent arrange- ments of Czech generosity have produced already a cor- porate body of Russian students—mostly engineers, doctors and chemists—happy in the consciousness that Russia can only be rightly restored by Russian students and that they are receiving the proper preparation for their great and peaceful mission. To the great School in Prague the friends of Russia in Paris, where there is now an Institut d'Etudes Slaves attached to the university, and in London, where we have our own organization to the same end, will act as auxiliary Schools bringing to this task the active sympathy and help of France and England.
The time is near when it will be more generally under- stood that this is the work which will decide the issues of the future. Those who are latest out of Russia confirm more strongly than ever the verdict which has been forming for more than a year past in all the best informed and most thinking minds. The Communist idea is dead : in private thinking they, themselves, don't profess to believe in it." " There is a dead body lying in the street, and there is no one to clear it away." The wheels of this most extravagant and monomaniac of all systems have run down, and without any actual overthrow of it the country is reverting by an irresistible natural reaction into simple decentralization. The satisfaction of urgent material needs, the return to normal economic life, are claims which by their reality overbear all political theories and deprive them of any basis in the life and thought of the people. Decentralization is not at all to be feared in Russia. This great family by its language and its every instinct will remain one. More than this, as is affirmed by one after another objective judge from the various peoples concerned, its economic attraction, once there is a real federative system with real local self- government, is likely to draw back even most of the small non-Russian border nations such as Georgia, Esthonia or Latvia. Decentralization, which is the necessary first step to local government, was the aspiration of nearly all thinking Russians from the time when the Zemstva were established in 1865 to the moment when, with the cry of peace on their lips, the Bolsheviks captured the war-worn country at the end of 1917. The Russia with which other countries will have to deal in the future will be a motley of local aspirations and local economic initiative, bound together by the instinct of family and brotherhood which has taken such a practical form in the Russian Co-operative movement. Once local economic initiative has been set free, every kind of service will be required from the young Russian hands now in training, both at home and abroad, and every kind of help from those trained foreign specialists who, in seeking service in Russia, wish to help the Russian people to be master in its own house.
BERNARD PARES.
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