RUSSIA’S NEW NATIONALITIES

New Zealand Tablet, 1 July 1920, Page 9

RUSSIA’S NEW NATIONALITIES

(By A. Hilliard AtterlDGE, in America.)

Many interesting problems are being raised by the Russian Revolution and the internal chaos that has followed it. It would be exceedingly rash to prophesy what the state of things will be when the deluge of disorder subsides and the firm land appears again. But it seems fairly certain that, in our future maps of Europe, Russia will not appear as one single State extending from the Vistula into Asia. Czardom is gone, and with it the idea of monotonous unity and despotic centralistion. The tendency of modern European politics is to recognise very fully the principle of natoinalities. The Allies, who are opposed to the League of Central Europe, have recognised this principle in every statement of their war aims. And, though the new Government of Russia has formulated no very distinct policy, many of its acts point to a readiness to recognise the rights of the smaller nationalities in the Russian Empire. Perhaps the revolutionary parties are all the more ready to take this line because it is a distinct departure from the old policy of the Czars. Their ideal since the days of Peter the Great was to extend one dead level of uniformity to all their dominions, and as far as possible make all their subjects Russian in nationality and “Orthodox” in religion. Now many of the peoples of the. Russian. Empire arc not Russians, and even in the Russian race itself there are several marked varieties. To take only one instance, in

traditions, and feeling: the “Little Russians” of Kl s t It er as “ uch from the “Great Russians” of Moscow and Nov-gforod as the Lowland- Scots differ from the Englishmen of the southern shires. .When the last Russian census was taken, in January, 1914, . the census . papers > were printed in no less than seventy-two different languages. Of course, this was partly due to the fact that a great part of Asia had to be included m census; but even in European Russia there is a wonderful array of races, languages, and religions. The official mind of old days looked forward to a time when they would all have learned to speak Russian, would accept Orthodoxy as their religion, and forget their local feelings ot nationality in devotion to Panslavism and loyalty to the

_ Russian policy had long been working in this direction. Ihe treaties of 1815 had established a Polish Kingdom At Warsaw, the Czar was only King of Poland. The earlier treaty; by which Finland was annexed, in 1809 had given that country semi-independence. Once he 'passed its boundaries, the Czar was only the Grand Duke of Finland But after 1830 the .Czar Nicholas 1 swept away the local independence of Poland, and in the last years of the nineteenth century, under Nicholas 11., the policy was adopted of undermining and destroying the home rule of Finland. As the State Church was an all-important factor in producing official uniformity, the Catholic Church was now persecuted, now barely tolerated and the attack on Polish nationality was largely motived by the fact that the Poles are a Catholic people. In the last years of the Empire there were several local nationalist movements in progress in Russia. The official maps of European Russia show the country divided into a number of provinces, mostly named from their chief towns. But to understand anything of Russia, one wants another kind of map, showing the distribution of its population and their various nationalities. The 150 millions of European Russia are very unevenly distributed. The greatest density of population is found in, Poland and in .u tI • agricultural lands of south-western Russia between the Dnieper and the Pruth. Thence, northward and eastward, the country becomes less and less populous. There are few great cities, but in the south and centre there are thousands of small villages. Russia is a land of villages These are more scattered in the north, till at last one reaches the barren region of half-frozen marshes • but everywhere there are wide tracts that are almost uninhabited, marshy forests, swamps, and almost treeless steppe. .Now, the more populous regions of the west and south-west are amongst those where the people are either non-Russian or differ from the Russians of the centre and north , and these peoples have languages of their own and natlonal , traditions. The Russia which i a 1 t^ e , rest ? f - t , he country, and which the Czars as tb , e m ° del to which it was all to be reduced, is the land of the Great Russians,” the central mass of the country around the upper Volga and stretching northwards towards the White Sea. It made up most of the empire which iI w r the Great inherited,, with Moscow for 1 his capital, before he built his new city of St. Petersburg among the swamps at the head of the Gulf of Finland. I? those days Poland was a great kingdom and the Turks held the northern shores of the Black Sea. But.. Peter’s empireof^Kffif 1 the lands of tlle upper Dnieper and the city:!;

nf Before the Turkish inroads. Kief had been the capital of an earlier Russia. It had been the first Christian city in the days when SS. Cyril and Methodius began their cap ft af 1 oF lit RuSSi r people; and k k still the nationalist sfans ” of the race known in Russia as the “Little RusPo lid cal fut- 116 [ C p t of , the orld as the Ruthenians. Political and national boundaries do not always correspond in Europe, and the country of the Ruthenians stretches beyond te frontiers of Russia. "There are some Sons is i? e |as! t? U d«A ’ Gaa >- and southern Poland. Nor ifarf . easy to defi . ne racial boundaries. Political motives clato a“h S e?r r »w?, nS a l ? n ,b tl,e subject > and the RutSlnl ci im as their own all the country as far as the Blink Sea including the port of Odessa, though in thlse south!™ lands the population is certainly sery mixed southern In Galicia and Hungary, and in southern Poland the as 1 “Gre a ek S are mostly Uniats, sometimes loosely Ascribed II 0?d re sFav C at holies, ” but really using not a Greek In! an P ld Slav bturgy, and in union with the Holy See In rfn 6 ’ r ® llfflon is linked with nationality,’ and the union with Rome is strengthened by the fact that it is also I | test a^ amSt * he official Panslavist propaganda of Russia Among the prelates at Lemberg are a Latin and a Uniat archbishop. When the Russians occupied the place in 1914 SS o Ve lo £ al m pa,hilers affa&hem b^ carrying over Uniat churches to the schismatics and carrying off the Ruthenian archbishop, Mgr. Szeotvcki a f r S ?i? er -D nt u Russia. In the Russian districts inhabited by the Ruthenians the . Uniats are a small minority, as a J esult , of persecuting policy of- the Czars- but after the proclamation of religious liberty in 1905 so manv of the people returned to union with the Holy See that aVw rS tw er - the ne f policy of toleration wls abandoned Biff n e A. e I s a ntarkecl - tendency towards reunion for even he Orthodox Ruthenians have long been restless uE the domination of the Russian State Church. There has

greater restlessness in the sphere of politics.? Among the national.■? heroes of the 'Ruthenians are the leaders of unsuccessful revolts in earlier days when their Sl!n S i n ? W I as ' tbe Ukraine— that is, “the border land” between Poland and the Turkish dominions. The only natW.Jf n h Wn to . ' English-speaking people among these national heroes -is Mazeppa, the ally of Charles XII. of thi> e against Peter the Great. The Ruthenians regard of Slavs Tartars the j nth as an inferior race, . a mixture DermfJ nenrilp S, Tu, nd Finns The y themselves are a prosFands «f P Russia ' Thy possess some of the finest wheat lands of Russia, rich pastures abounding in cattle, and a growing woollen industry :in some of the towns. ’ Before ment'fn ad be ? n I well-organised home rule movement in the country in close relation with the Ruthenians finds Tls r ff V he exiles and emigrants in other lands. The Czar s Government treated it as an artificial movement promoted by Austria, but there is no doubt it was a spontaneous national movement. Kn The Russian revolution of last March led to a crisis compelled to act in secret, * the Ruthenian National Committee met openly at Kief the old capital to ‘driff°r, trT - When - the Petrograd RevolSfontes b§an t? into communism, and over the greater part of Russia the peasants began to divide up the lands the Kief d^ c * are d against the new policy, and demanded semi-independence for the country with the creation of a national army. Kerensky hurried from Petrograd to Kief the (Sv alt be th cn^T henian Committee, and found that tne only way he could prevent an open revolt was bv promising nearly all they demanded, with the result that when he returned to Petrograd several of his colleagues cesSon? OV He n JSS Sißfne a as a Protest against his con--30 non n «n De told them that l if he had not given .way, JkinJSf lf S that . ! he ° ld lands of the Ukraine now possess It Kffif aSnTr Ul6) Wlth ,he Rnthenian Committee at Kief acting as the Government and claiming Odessa as its outlet to the sea. It will be difficult to reverse the Russia*lff Si f% and U P ° ™ ts tp the probability of the Russia of the future preserving its unity by recognising home rule not only at Kief but in other centres and becoming the “United States of Russia.” 5 and r d( l official • title of the emperors used to be “the Czar of all the Russias. This itself is a good precedent for the recognition of the. various nationalities by the republicfn d alf lr the dy wi?t eSe natlo .ities are asserting themselves in all i the western provinces of old Russia. The claim of I oland to home rule has been formally recognised by slme t& V R rnn^ ent i ° i ßussa and k would seem that some of the Russian leaders are even willing to accept the a M o \ of a Polish kingdom. Their anxiety is that it German! 6 g- r l al kin dom > and not a mere tributary of Germany ‘ i Finland has demanded autonomy on so wide a scale as almost -to amount ,to independence, and the dispute between the Finns and the Russians is now not on the conceded °by’ 1 P«rograd bU ° n “ ,e CX ' eIU ° f autonom >' » b = , A fourth nationality is asserting itself in Lithuania the country extending from the north of Poland towards the r Baltic and the Gulf of Finland. Most people hlvl heard something of Poland and Finland, but less has been heard of Lithuania.-. f It .is mainly a Catholic land, with a and thfiftind2H ffenng ' for the Faith * The Lithuanian! and their kindred race, the Letts, are found in Russian Lithuania and East Prussia. Their language is the oldest form of Aryan speech in -Europe, still keeping many of the grammatical forms of Sanskrit. In the early Middle Ages kffiVht| ere / agan tribes against whom the Teutonic knights carried on a long- warfare. . Converted in the fourteenth century, Lithuania united with Poland, and then Polish l w der r ßussian rule in the eighteenth century, I plr t a all l S ° f l as ? ert - a claim to Lithuania as a Pohsh land; ‘ but ' the nationalist movement among the Lithuanians is strongly opposed to the idea. In our own : time the movement has been largely based upon the revival of the national traditions by education, the culture of the anguage, and the creation of a new patriotic and religious literature. Suppressed by the Czar’s Government these writings were printed by the exiles in foreign countries including the United States, and smuggled into Russia,’ Amongst the popular authors of this new literature are two of the Catholic bishops. In recent years the St. Petersburg Government has become more tolerant, and in 1905 the F f ar o all^ ed i a . Lithuanian National Congress to meet at • Va : F? he claim of the country fo autonomy was raised in the Duma, and the national movement has made such progress that in one form or another it is certain to receive recognition in the resettlement of Russia. Lithuania has suffered terribly during the war; and amongst the kindly acts of Benedict XV. has been the sending of more than one donation to the Catholic primate to relieve the sufferings of .. th , e People, these gifts being accompanied by letters in which the Holy ather speaks of “the faithful people of Lithuania” as having a special claim on the sympathy and charity of the Catholic world. *

. Better fail a thousand times in everything else than attempt to shape for yourself a life without God, without hope in Christ, and without an interest in heaven.