What need therefore, Slavophilism asks, for the degenerate
justice of the west? None! Away with Europe then!--the Europe
of competition and gruesome factories! The Europe of
destructive forces, of greedy land grabbers, of capital and
labor wars, where society is held together, not as in Russia by
the ties of affection, brotherhood and communal interest, but
only by money and greed, and where free thinkers, atheists and
materialists abound, whose lives and thoughts would unsettle
the holy, orthodox feelings of Russia, disturb her ancient
conscience and poison her humility with murmurings of
discontent and rebellion.

Away with the books of the west, too! And its agricultural
implements! Wooden ploughs instead of chilled steel! Outdoor
work and not indoor prisons called factories! Peasants working
for centuries beneath the uncanopied sun, and on the floors
without walls, will not let doors and brickwork thumbscrew
their souls in confinement thus! Indoors awhile in winter will
they labor, but spring airs shatter the moralities of the
time-clock and away to the fields they rush; in the spring to
sow and sing, in the summer to sing again and at the harvest
time too, and then to plait the bearded stalks into wreaths and
crown the maidens with sheaths of corn; the hymns for the
"death of winter" and the "birth of spring," marriage songs and
funeral dirges and chants of olden times well intermingled with
the labor of their hands.

Herein the poetry of agricultural, peaceable Russia clashes
with the prosaic efficiency of the west, the efficiency of
commercial wars, strikes and class struggles which peasant