No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
Professor Roberts’ study is an impressive methodological achievement. The more one meditates on it, the less one finds to disagree with. The task of this writer is rather a frustrating one, for how can one bring new points of view to supplement such a thorough treatment?
Professor Roberts pointed out that the future of the dilemma under study will hardly be dominated by the issue “Russia versus the West,“ for it will be overshadowed by more powerful factors which have dominated the life of both the West and Russia since the beginning of our century (Russia up to 1917!). I would be tempted as a historian to go one step further, and question our ability to see, or consciously to shape, the future. First of all, many new factors may appear. Second, we do not know the relationship and proportional weight of factors that will continue from the present into the future. So I would eschew the consideration of the future altogether.
1 Tocqueville, Alexis de, Democracy in America, trans. Reeve, Henry (London, 1947), pp. 242–43 Google Scholar. This formula concludes the chapter “Future Prospects of the United States.“ Since the book was published in 1835, when Europe stood in the shadow of Nicholas I's ostensible military power, one wonders whether de Tocqueville's forecast was not inspired by the impression of this power. One knows how fallacious this impression became in 1854!
2 These ideas are offered for discussion only, for the author realizes their relativity: factors considered as more pertinent may be adduced, and the factors offered here may be given a different weight, by specialists of American history. Different conclusions may be arrived at in this case.
3 Ranke, Leopold von, Geschichte der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1514 (Berlin, 1825), pp. 1 Google Scholar and 3 of the English translation by Ashworth (London, 1889): cited in Halecki, Oscar, The Limits and Divisions of European History (New York, 1950), pp. 90 and 21Google Scholar7.
4 Reynold, Gonzague de, La Formation de l'Europe, Vol. I: Qu'est-ce que l'Europe? (Fribourg, Switzerland, 1944), p. 54 Google Scholar.
5 Ibid., p. 55.,
6 The idea is expressed in several places in Halecki, op. cit., especially in Chapter 5, “The Geographical Limits: The Great Eastern Isthmus.“
7 Mirsky, Cf. Prince Dmitri, “The Eurasian Movement,” The Slavonic and East European Review, V (1927), 311–12Google Scholar. The basis underlying Professor Halecki's statements differs from that of the Eurasian school, whose argumentation is primarily geopolitical and anthropological. Halecki based his conclusion mostly on historical analysis, using the Tatar invasion, and the prolonged separation from the rest of Europe that resulted from it, as his main argument (pp. 92-95). In this connection it is interesting to recall a much earlier thesis which excludes Russians from the Slavic race on the grounds that they are “Turanians” who only adopted (and distorted) the Church Slavonic when they were converted to Christianity; the Ukrainians and Belorussians, being genuinely Slavic, should be included in the European community, the border of which should be traced to the east of their habitat. Such is the idea expressed by Franciszek Duchiń (1817-80) in a series of books published in Polish and French between 1858 and 1864. See Courtenay, Jan Ignacy Baudouin de, Z powodu jubileuszu profesora Duchińmskiego (Krakow, 1886)Google Scholar. Quite lately Duchinski's views have been revived in Paszkiewicz, Henryk's works The Origin of Russia (London and New York, 1954)Google Scholar and The Making of the Russian Nation (London, 1963) with much more sophistication and an impressive scholarly apparatus.
8 Massis, Cf. Henri, Défense de I'Occident (Paris, 1929 Google Scholar), where the idea has been expressed that Germany, a latecomer on the road of human culture, is only incompletely and artificially connected with “the body of the West,” for it wavers between Asian mysticism and Latinity (p. 19). Quoting Badler, Le Romantisme berlinois (1921), Massis pointed out the heterogeneous character of the German culture, the Romanized southwest of which evolved toward humanism and classicism, while its Slavicized northeast espoused individualistic mysticism and romanticism. And he emphasized that the map of Roman Catholic Germany almost exactly coincides with the limits of the Roman Germania (p. 66, n. 1). The underlying idea of this statement is that the Eastern limit of the true Western world corresponds to that of the Western Roman Empirel
9 Halecki, op. cit., p. 101. This line would leave the Left Bank Ukraine on the Russian side!
10 In his subsequent book, Borderlands of Western Civilization: A History of East Central Europe (New York, 1952), Professor Halecki considered the Ukrainians and the White Ruthenians (i.e., Belorussians) as such borderland populations, part of East Central Europe to the west of Russia proper (pp. 412-16 and, esp., p. 473).
11 A certain degree of limitation was also provided by the Ordinance on Local Self- Government (zemstvos) of 1864. See on those limitations, Szeftel, Marc, “The Form of Government of the Russian Empire prior to the Constitutional Reforms of 1905-1906,” in Essays in Russian and Soviet History, ed. Curtiss, John (New York, 1963), pp. 105–20 Google Scholar.
12 On the increasing degree of parliamentarism during this period see Szeftel, Marc, “The Representatives and Their Powers in the Russian Legislative Chambers (1906-1917),” forthcoming in Studies Presented to the International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions, Vol. XXV Google Scholar.
13 See Marc Szeftel, “La monarchic absolue dans l'État moscovite et l'Empire russe (fin XVe S.-1905)” and “La participation des assembliées populaires dans le gouvernement central de la Russie avant 1800,” forthcoming in Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin pour I'histoire comparative des institutions (Brussels), Vols. XXI and XXIV. Representative and Parliamentary Institutions, Vol. XXV.