Essentially different from this religious sentiment, but often blended with it, is a vague feeling of racial affinity, which has long existed among the various Slav nationalities, and which was greatly developed during last century by writers of the Panslavist school. When Germans and Italians were striving after political independence and unity, it naturally occurred to the Slavs that they might do likewise. The idea became popular among the subject Slav nationalities of Austria and Turkey, and it awoke a certain amount of enthusiasm in Moscow, where it was hoped that “all the Slav streams would unite in the great Russian Sea.” It required no great political perspicacity to foresee that in any confederation of Slav nationalities the hegemony must necessarily devolve on Russia, the only Slav State which has succeeded in becoming a Great Power.
Those two currents of national feeling ran parallel to, and intermingled with, the policy of the Government. Desirous of becoming a great naval Power, Russia has always striven to reach the sea-coast and obtain good harbours. In the north and north-west she succeeded in a certain degree, but neither the White Sea nor the Baltic satisfied her requirements, and she naturally turned her eyes to the Mediterranean. With difficulty she gained possession of the northern shores of the Black Sea, but her designs were thereby only half realised, because the Turks held the only outlet to the Mediterranean, and could effectually blockade, so far as the open sea is concerned, all her Black Sea ports, without employing a single ship of war. Thus the possession of the Straits, involving necessarily the possession of Constantinople, became a cardinal point of Russia’s foreign policy. Any description of the various methods adopted by her at different times for the attainment of this end does not enter into my present programme, but I may say briefly that the action of the three factors above mentioned—the religious feeling, the Panslavist sentiment, and the political aims—has never been better exemplified than in the last struggle with Turkey, culminating in the Treaty of San Stefano and the Congress of Berlin.
For all classes in Russia the result of that struggle was a feeling of profound disappointment. The peasantry bewailed the fact that the Crescent on St. Sophia had not been replaced by the Cross; the Slavophil patriots were indignant that the “little brothers” had shown themselves unworthy of the generous efforts and sacrifices made on their behalf, and that a portion of the future Slav confederation had passed under the domination of Austria; and the Government recognised that the acquisition of the Straits must be indefinitely postponed. Then history repeated itself. After the Crimean War, in accordance with Prince Gortchakoff’s famous epigram, La Russie ne boude pas elle se recueille, the Government had for some years abandoned an active policy in Europe, and devoted itself to the work of