Vol. XXXIV, No. 4 WASHINGTON October, 1918 



THE 



ATDONAL 

 GGEAPMflG 

 AGAZI 



RUSSIA'S ORPHAN RACES 



Picturesque Peoples Who Cluster on the Southeastern 

 Borderland of the Vast Slav Dominions 



By Maynard Owen Williams 



AMONG conflicting details, coming 

 f\ principally from the two great 

 I \ Russian cities where food is scarce 

 and humans and troubles are plenty, one 

 fact sticks out like a church in a Russian 

 landscape: The great empire of "one 

 hundred and eighty million" which we 

 have learned to mention so glibly is no 

 more. 



The old regime collected peoples like 

 curios — the more curious, the better — 

 and labeled them in Russian ; but it never 

 developed in these diverse and conquered 

 peoples a spirit of nationalism. Pan- 

 Slavism it could not inculcate, for a large 

 part of its border subjects were of Ural- 

 Altaic or Turanian stock. 



Russia under the Tsar was unified only 

 by force — a triumph of centralized au- 

 tocracy over the "it doesn't matter, so 

 never mind" spirit of subjects who in the 

 mass were too indifferent and too lack- 

 ing in group consciousness to resent op- 

 pression. The mass must ever be eman- 

 cipated by the intellectuals, and by putting 

 calloused hands above calloused brains 

 and indomitable wills, Bolshevism is 

 proving more reactionary than Tsardom 

 in intimidating the individual without 

 creating a State. 



Tsardom counted no cost too great and 

 no sacrifice too heroic, if the dreaded 

 steam-roller moved on or the glacier of 

 Slavic domination crept slowly toward 



the Dardanelles, the Pamirs, or Man- 

 churia. A two-mile bridge spanning the 

 distant Amur or a daring military road 

 through the heart of the Caucasus ; a 

 trans-Siberian railway or an imposing 

 ecclesiastical building in Jerusalem— 

 these were energetically supported by 

 Tsardom and carried out with Russian 

 funds, while Russians in the national 

 capital were kept in unlettered ignorance 

 and restricted to an economic condition 

 little better than serfdom. 



The many races which once formed 

 the Russian Empire include the intrepid 

 Georgians and the politically sluggish 

 Sarts ; the Cossacks, to whom battle is 

 more than food; and the great mass of 

 mujiks, supine in the midst of govern- 

 mental chaos and wrongs perpetrated 

 by a foreign signatory to a treaty of 

 peace. 



RUSSIAN VENEER OVER A TURKISH CITY 



In December last, I visited Bayazid, 

 the first Turkish city to be taken by the 

 Russian army on the Caucasian front. 

 The population was unmistakably Turk- 

 ish. The red fez was a common spot of 

 color in a dusty old city that tries to hide 

 from the radiant gaze of Mount Ararat 

 amid tawny hills, and the inhabitants 

 prayed from a kneeling position instead 

 of standing with bowed head or crossing 

 themselves (for map, see page 277). 



