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Problems of Humanity - Chapter I - The Psychological Rehabilitation of the Nations
Russia Russia remains a great enigma for the rest of the world today. Her potentiality for human service and her ability to impose her will on a large scale upon the entire world outstrips that of any other nation. This in itself breeds distrust. Her territory covers a large part of Europe and the whole of North Asia. She has passed through a great and cruel revolution and a subsequent period of readjustment. She is preparing for world collaboration and is evidencing a wish for this to be accomplished on her own terms - the terms of a general control of other lands, beginning with the smaller nations upon her western frontier. She is lifting the peoples of her own land from a condition of ignorance and poverty into one of knowledge and sufficiency. Russia is deeply distrusted by the rest of the world, particularly by its conservative elements, and this for two reasons: first, the cruelty with which the earliest stages of her revolution started - the period which we glibly call "Bolshevism" - and, by a subsequent period of a deliberately chosen and determined isolationism behind her closed frontiers. It was, nevertheless, a creative silence. The war then forced Russia to quit her silence for world collaboration. She was forced into participation in the World War. Russia is the home of a germinating revelation of great spiritual value and group significance - a revelation for all mankind. It is the dimly sensed and somewhat inaccurate realization of this which has led to her insidious propaganda. [22] Russia has created fermentation in other countries before she herself really knows what is the revelation of which she is custodian. Her activity is therefore premature. The true secret of brotherhood (one hitherto unknown and unrealized) is hers to give the world, but as yet she knows not what it is. This fact, that Russia is the spiritual custodian of a revelation, is sensed by the other nations in the world; and the first reaction has been fear, based on certain initial mistakes and her premature activity upon the physical plane. Nevertheless, all peoples view Russia with expectation; they dimly realize that from her will come some new thing, for Russia is rapidly maturing and integrating and will demonstrate that she has much to give. The world is witnessing the uprising and the surging forward of a nation which has accomplished in a quarter of a century what other nations have taken many generations to work out. Russia is a giant, getting into his stride - a young giant, aware of great possibility, animated by a deeply religious, though unorthodox spirit, handicapped by a combination of oriental traits and occidental purposes, and distrusted by the world, owing to earlier moves falsely taken. These moves were an attempt to infiltrate into other nations, in order to upset their stability and so weaken them that they could be easily swept into the house of humanity which Russia is attempting to build. Russia is inwardly (but as yet unconsciously) motivated by a desire to bring brotherhood into being. Can you accept this diagnosis of that great unknown quantity which is Russia? Time alone can prove the accuracy of this statement, plus wise activity and sound propaganda on the part of Russia. The psychological problem of the U.S.S.R. is, in the last analysis, to mind her own business, to stabilize and integrate a vast population, and to lead her peoples still further into the light. Russia must also learn to [23] cooperate with other powers on an equal basis. Russia must not, with ambition and design, seek to sweep the small powers into her arena of activity against their wishes or through undue pressure and force. Russia has still much to do for the immense territories and their inhabitants which are already within her sphere of influence; the other nations must also work out their own destiny and must not be ruled perforce by Russia. Above everything else, the problem before Russia is to give to the other nations of the world such an example of wise rule, free expression of individual purpose, and the use of an inclusive and sound education, that other nations will pattern themselves upon what Russia has demonstrated, yet will at the same time preserve their own cultural approach, their own self-chosen form of government, and their own mode of expressing brotherhood. Russia inherently stands for a new world consciousness, and through her means, a new planetary expression will gradually be wrought out in the fire of experiment and experience. That great nation (a synthesis of East and West) must learn to rule without cruelty, without infringing the free will of the individual and because she has complete confidence in the beneficence of the ideals which she is developing but which are not yet expressed.
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