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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 June 2025
Russia and her people, achieving a new step toward progress in the midst of a seethe of war, cannot be understood without knowing Russia and her government and her people as they are today. Of the surprises to be found in the Empire, none is so great as that of the realization of misconceptions of Russia existing outside her borders, and especially in the United States.
When I came out of Russia, Englishmen and Americans flung at me six questions, and I found that by answering these questions which in the main concerned that which may be called news interest, I had sketched Russia as she is today, her Czar, her government, her people, and her awakening spirit. These were the six questions: Why did the Czar supplant the Grand Duke? Will Russia make a separate peace? Is the German influence strong? Will there be a revolution? Has the Russian army sufficient ammunition and sup-plies? Is Russia permeated by graft?
These were inevitable questions. They were asked of me by those who know that I have had opportunities to observe Russia in her trying moments, and that through official channels and a visit as a guest of the Russian General Staff, and as a wanderer in and out of Moscow and Petrograd, I would be able to tell something of Russia from behind the scenes. The answers to them involve much that is more significant and interesting than life in the trenches at an inactive winter front or salvos of artillery shot off to amuse and educate the rare American visitor.
Russia is an empire of contradictions. The difficulty with anything that is said about Russia is that at once it must be qualified. For instance, “The Russian people are suppressed; Russia is an autocracy.” It is true. But behold the apparent contradiction: nowhere more than in Russia is developed, in men or women, the sense of being individual; nowhere, certainly not in the United States, is there such a democracy of human feeling. Again: “Russia is a country of peasants; three-fourths of the Russians are agricultural people, who live scattered over vast areas.” But Russia is not a country of peasants in the sense that the peasants of Russia are expressed in the Russia which we know.
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