RUSSIAN STATESMEN-1892-1894 27 



year after year are utterly neglected, one cannot but think 

 that the popular impression regarding the superiority 

 of Russian statesmen is badly based. As a matter of fact, 

 there has not been a statesman of the first class, of Rus 

 sian birth, since Catherine the Great, and none of the sec 

 ond class unless Nesselrode and the Emperor Nicholas are 

 to be excepted. To consider Prince Gortchakoff a great 

 chancellor on account of his elaborate despatches is ab 

 surd. The noted epigram regarding him is doubtless just : 

 &quot;C est un Narcisse qui se mire dans son encrier.&quot; 



To call him a great statesman in the time of Cavour, 

 Bismarck, Lincoln, and Seward is preposterous. What 

 ever growth in civilization Russia has made in the last 

 forty years has been mainly in spite of the men who have 

 posed as her statesmen; the atmosphere of Russian au 

 tocracy is fatal to greatness in any form. 



The emancipation of the serfs was due to a policy advo 

 cated by the first Nicholas and carried out under Alexan 

 der II; but it was made possible mainly by Miloutine, 

 Samarine, Tcherkassky, and other subordinates, who 

 never were allowed to approach the first rank as state ser 

 vants. This is my own judgment, founded on observation 

 and reading during half a century, and it is the quiet judg 

 ment of many who have had occasion to observe Russia 

 longer and more carefully. 



Next, as to the Foreign Office. Nearly a hundred years 

 ago Napoleon compared Alexander I and those about him 

 to Greeks of the Lower Empire. That saying was re 

 pelled as a slander; but, ever since it was uttered, the 

 Russian Foreign Office seems to have been laboring to de 

 serve it. There are chancelleries in the world which, when 

 they give promises, are believed and trusted. Who, in 

 the light of the last fifty years, would claim that the Rus 

 sian Foreign Office is among these! Its main reputation 

 is for astuteness finally brought to naught; it has con 

 stantly been &quot;too clever by half.&quot; 



Take the loudly trumpeted peace proposals to the world 

 made by Nicholas II. When the nations got together at 



