ESSAYS ON RUSSIAN NOVELISTS

By William Lyon Phelps





I

RUSSIAN NATIONAL CHARACTER AS SHOWN IN RUSSIAN FICTION




The Japanese war pricked one of the biggest bubbles in history, and
left Russia in a profoundly humiliating situation. Her navy was
practically destroyed, her armies soundly beaten, her offensive power
temporarily reduced to zero, her treasury exhausted, her pride laid in
the dust. If the greatness of a nation consisted in the number and
size of its battleships, in the capacity of its fighting men, or in
its financial prosperity, Russia would be an object of pity. But in
America it is wholesome to remember that the real greatness of a
nation consists in none of these things, but rather in its
intellectual splendour, in the number and importance of the ideas it
gives to the world, in its contributions to literature and art, and to
all things that count in humanity's intellectual advance. When we
Americans swell with pride over our industrial prosperity, we might
profitably reflect for a moment on the comparative value of America's
and Russia's contributions to literature and music.