Of all the foreign colonists the Germans are by far the most numerous.  The object of the Government in inviting them to settle in the country was that they should till the unoccupied land and thereby increase the national wealth, and that they should at the same time exercise a civilising influence on the Russian peasantry in their vicinity.  In this latter respect they have totally failed to fulfil their mission.  A Russian village, situated in the midst of German colonies, shows generally, so far as I could observe, no signs of German influence.  Each nationality lives more majorum, and holds as little communication as possible with the other.  The muzhik observes carefully—­for he is very curious—­the mode of life of his more advanced neighbours, but he never thinks of adopting it.  He looks upon Germans almost as beings of a different world—­as a wonderfully cunning and ingenious people, who have been endowed by Providence with peculiar qualities not possessed by ordinary Orthodox humanity.  To him it seems in the nature of things that Germans should live in large, clean, well-built houses, in the same way as it is in the nature of things that birds should build nests; and as it has probably never occurred to a human being to build a nest for himself and his family, so it never occurs to a Russian peasant to build a house on the German model.  Germans are Germans, and Russians are Russians—­and there is nothing more to be said on the subject.

This stubbornly conservative spirit of the peasantry who live in the neighbourhood of Germans seems to give the lie direct to the oft-repeated and universally believed assertion that Russians are an imitative people strongly disposed to adopt the manners and customs of any foreigners with whom they may come in contact.  The Russian, it is said, changes his nationality as easily as he changes his coat, and derives great satisfaction from wearing some nationality that does not belong to him; but here we have an important fact which appears to prove the contrary.

The truth is that in this matter we must distinguish between the Noblesse and the peasantry.  The nobles are singularly prone to adopt foreign manners, customs, and institutions; the peasants, on the contrary, are as a rule decidedly conservative.  It must not, however, be supposed that this proceeds from a difference of race; the difference is to be explained by the past history of the two classes.  Like all other peoples, the Russians are strongly conservative so long as they remain in what may be termed their primitive moral habitat—­that is to say, so long as external circumstances do not force them out of their accustomed traditional groove.  The Noblesse were long ago violently forced out of their old groove by the reforming Tsars, and since that time they have been so constantly driven hither and thither by foreign influences that they have never been able to form a new one.  Thus they easily enter upon any new path which seems to them profitable or attractive.  The great mass of the people, on the contrary, too heavy to be thus lifted out of the guiding influence of custom and tradition, are still animated with a strongly conservative spirit.