THE GREAT RUSSIANS. 381 



the subject. Some idea of a Great Russian household, that dark abode of domestic 

 despotism, may be gleaned from the national songs, such especially as occur in 

 Shein's collection, as well as from Ostroviskiy's dramas. Absolutism, though 

 perhaps of a kindly type, was the rule in the Great Russian home. " I beat 

 you," says a favourite local proverb, "as I do my fur, but I love you as my 

 soul." 



The commune, and even the State itself, were universally regarded as an 

 enlarged family. An absolute authority, a will without appeal, imposed on all by a 

 common father — such was the ideal of society as conceived by each of its members. 

 In this respect Little and Great Russia presented a most remarkable contrast. 

 Every Malo-Russian village had an independent development ; no one thought 

 of enslaving his neighbour; the motives of war between communities were 

 either the struggle for existence or a love of adventure, rather than the thirst 

 of dominion. Hence their warlike undertakings were conducted without that fixity 

 of purpose, that unflagging tenacity of will, which inspired the policy of the Great 

 Russian rulers. The right of popular election was upheld to the last in the 

 towns of Kiyovia, as well as in Novgorod and the other autonomous cities of 

 VYest Slavdom. Whatever may have been the origin of the old supremacy of 

 Kiev, it is certain that it had nothing in common with the supremacy of Muscovy. 

 Kiev was nothing more than "the first among its like," and their political 

 system was maintained by a free confederation during the early stages of 

 Russian history. Later on the Cossack communities were organized on the same 

 footing, and even their chiefs again withdrew into privacy after their temporary 

 election by their compeers. Nor were the ideas of the Zaporogs limited 

 to the enclosures of their strongholds, for the whole of Little Russia existed 

 to form a Cossack community. 



Nothing of all this in Muscovy, where the power acquired by a single family 

 was respected by the people, and continued, as a divine institution, from 

 generation to generation. " Moscow makes not laws for the prince, but the prince 

 for Moscow," says the proverb. The sacred character of the dynasty was 

 transferred to the capital itself, and Moscow, heir to the Byzantine spirit, 

 became the " third and holier Rome, whose sway shall endure for ever." The 

 Tatar rule contributed not a little to strengthen the power of the Eastern Slav 

 autocrats. In the desire to receive their tribute regularly, the Khans had an 

 interest in causing it to be collected by one prince, responsible to them alone, 

 while free of all obligation towards his own people. But even in the twelfth century 

 the autocracy of the modern Czars already existed in germ in the principality 

 of Vladimir. This absolute form of Muscovite society may be explained by the 

 history of Russian colonisation in a country originally held by Finns and Tatars. 

 The Kiev princes appeared in these lands as conquering and colonising chiefs, and 

 the race thus developed in Muscovy became at once the most tenacious and 

 submissive of all. With the progress of Great Russian centralization the political 

 forms and ideas of Muscovy steadily assumed a more intensely national character, 

 and ended by extinguishing the Novgorod and Cossack traditions. In his 



