GRAVEST PERIL TO RUSSIA'S INTEGRITY.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LII, Issue 54, 4 March 1918, Page 4

GRAVEST PERIL TO RUSSIA'S INTEGRITY.

THE gravest peril to Russia's integrity has arisen within the Central Russian nucleus. That nucleus, as already mentioned, contains three branches of the Russian. race, the first and most important being the Great Russian, of which ; Moscow is the centre. The second in importance is the Little Russian or Ruthenian, which, inhabits the long, narrow strip of Southern ißussia so famous as the "Black Earth Belt,' a rich corn country. Kiev is the centre of its culture, which was earlier than that of Muscovy or 'Great Russia.. It I was only after the emancipation from Tartar rule that Muscovy took the lead. Little Russia suffered more severely from the Tartar invasion, and escaped the Mongol domination only by becoming subject to the Polish-Lithuanian Catholic State. When the Polish kingdom fell, Ruthenia or Little Russia was divided up, part of it going to form Eastern Galicia under the Habsburgs, while the major portion was joined by Muscovy, Great and Little Russians, Mus- ; cov'ites, and Ruthenians _ might have then been permanently united in sentiment and interests but for the folly of the official Russian bureaucracy which, in its determination to make all Russia Muscovite, endeavoured to crush out the Little Russian tongue and all the national"traditions of the Little Russian people. Austria, through her Ruthenians, has ever fostered to the utmost the separate national sentiment of the Little .Russians beyond her borders. The Ukraine is the name usually given to the Ruthenian territories of Russia,—and old; jealousies between its inhabitants and t-lie Muscovites have led to the establishment of the separate Ukrainian republic which has been recognised by the Central Powers. • In conclusion, it may be mentioned that in Asiatic Russia there are large nonRussian, that is to say 'Georgian, Armenian. Turkish, arid Tartar communities, which can only be held together

by the strong arm of a stable central government, while in it, especially along the trans-Siberian railway, there are some millions of Russians who stand in somewhat the same relations to the Russians of the central mass in Europe as Australians, New Zealanders and British Canadians do to the people of the. Motherland. What will become of them -if the old 'Russia breaks up is a serious question, which affects not only themselves, but the future of civilisation in Northern and Central Asia.