I talked to people about Russia, but it was
never Russia itself they seemed to care for--it was women or drink or
perhaps freedom and socialism, or perhaps some part of Russia, Siberia,
or the Caucasus--but my world they none of them believed in. It didn't
exist they said. It was simply my imagination that had painted it, and
they laughed at me and said it was held together by the lashes of the
knout, and when those went Russia would go too. As I grew up some of
them thought that I was revolutionary, and they tried to make me join
their clubs and societies. But those were no use to me. They couldn't
give me what I wanted. They wanted to destroy, to assassinate some one,
or to blow up a building. They had no thought beyond destruction, and
that to me seemed only the first step. And they never think of Russia,
our revolutionaries. You will have noticed that yourself, Ivan
Andreievitch. Nothing so small and trivial as Russia! It must be the
whole world or nothing at all. Democracy... Freedom... the Brotherhood
of Man! Oh, the terrible harm that words have done to Russia! Had the
Russians of the last fifty years been born without the gift of speech we
would be now the greatest people on the earth!
"But I loved Russia from end to end.
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