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try of native origin.* The great surge of Russian industrial productioi in the 1890s, which attained a pace unmatched either before or since, vas not so much the outgrowth of Russia's own, internal economic devebp-ment, as the result of the transplantation of western money, technobgy and above all, management.! Russian capitalists - rich landowners md merchants alike - were too ignorant of the techniques of modern investment to be able to initiate the kind of financial operations which vere required; and in any event, they preferred to place their money in the securities of the imperial government, in the safety of which they iad unbounded faitih, than to take a chance on industrial ventures. Cnly after foreigners had borne the brunt of the risk did native capital fow into heavy industry. Hence, on the eve of the Revolution a thirc of Russia's industrial investment and a half of the bank capital of her major banks were of foreign provenance.22
The political outlook of these self-made people was influenced Vy a simple economic fact, namely high tariffs. Fledgling Russian industries would not have been able to survive English or German competiion without the aid of tariff measures, which became increasingly stringent as the nineteenth century drew to a close.
Hence, the timidity and conservatism of the Russian moneyed clas in economic activities was duplicated by its political behaviour. Its iwn sympathies were certainly monarchist and nationalist, but it prefered not to expose itself. It stood aside when the great conflict betweenthe intelligentsia and government got under way in the middle of the nne-teenth century. In 1905, a group of leading businessmen attempted to form their own political party, but it never got off the ground and nost of them ended up in the ranks of the conservative Octobrists. The lirst Duma (1906) had among its deputies two industrialists and twenty-bur merchants - 5-8 per cent of the total membership; surely a pitiful slare
* The railway boom, in which Russian capital did participate in a major way, who not directed by high government officials or generals, was promoted largely by Jews or naturaized Germans. t It is noteworthy that in the historical evolution of Russian industry, native resources lave always proved inadequate to the task of making the transition to more advanced methds of production. Having learned in the seventeenth century the basic techniques of manufaiture and mining with disciplined human labour, Russians used them for two centuries. The next phase, heavy industry operated by steam and electric power, was introduced agaii by westerners in the 1880-90S. It has served as the basis of the Soviet economy which intil recently kept on developing the foundations of mechanized industry of the first generatioi but has shown no ability to make the leap into automated methods of production distinguining the post-Second World War economy of the west. Here again, in the 1960S-70S, the Rusian government has been forced to rely on foreign capital and foreign technology, paying for loth, as it had done throughout its history, with raw materials. This accounts for the ironic situition that half a century after the Revolution one of whose goals was to liberate Russia from 'colciiaT economic dependence, the Soviet government once again invites foreign capital and gants concessions to foreign enterprises.
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for the 'bourgeoisie' in an institution supposed to have embodied 'bourgeois' rule in Russia. This political impotence was due, first and foremost, to a conviction, acquired from centuries of experience that in Russia the path to wealth lay not in fighting the authorities but in collaborating with them, with the corollary conviction that when contenders for political power were locked in combat it was wisest to sit tight.
It is not surprising, therefore, that industrialists and merchants remained inactive in 1917, when their fate hung in the balance. They supported neither the tsarist regime, nor the Provisional Government, nor the anti-communist White Movement. Those who had the money, quietly folded their tents and fled abroad; those who did not, sat on the sidelines, watching the radical intelligentsia fight it out with the nationalist officers and awaiting the better times that never came.
Between ourselves, there are two things that I have always observed to be in singular accord: supercelestial thoughts and subterranean conduct. Montaigne Externally, the most striking quality of Orthodox Christianity is the beauty of its art and ritual. Even after centuries of destruction, the churches and monasteries which have survived in Russia stand out as the most attractive product of human hands in an otherwise bleak and monotonous landscape. This holds true of the majestic cathedrals in Novgorod, Vladimir and the Moscow Kremlin, but no less of the more modest stone churches built at the expense of princes, boyars and merchants, and the wooden chapels erected by the peasants themselves. Of their original decorations little remains, but the best medieval ikons preserved in museums (some, no doubt, of Greek origin) are rendered in a manner which suggests a highly refined taste. Russian liturgical music, unfortunately, was heavily penetrated in the eighteenth century by Italian influences. Still, even in its corrupt form it rarely fails to produce a strong impression, especially during Easter when Orthodox services reach the height of splendour. If these combined visual and aural effects dazzle modern man, it takes little effort to imagine the overwhelming effect they must have had on peasants. It is not without significance for the role which the Orthodox church assigns sensory impressions that according to the Russian Primary Chronicle the decisive consideration in Russia's conversion to Christianity was the effect produced on Kievan emissaries by Constantinople's Hagia Sophia.
The basic doctrinal element in Orthodoxy is the creed of resignation. Orthodoxy considers earthly existence an abomination, and prefers retirement to involvement. It has always been keenly receptive to currents emanating from the orient which preached withdrawal from life, including eremitic and hesychast doctrines striving for total dissociation from earthly reality. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
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when religious leaders in the west, passion and enthusiasm safely behind them, were worrying how to accommodate faith to science or the needs of society, Russians were experiencing personal conversions leading in the very opposite direction, towards renunciation, mysticism, hypnosis and ecstasy. Among Russian peasants in that age of rationalism there spread sectarian movements of an extreme irrational type such as western Europe had not seen since the Reformation.
An aspect of this resignation is humility and dread of hubris. Orthodox theologians claim that their church has remained truer to the teachings of Christ and the practices of early Christianity than either the Catholic or the Protestant ones on the grounds that the latter, having become contaminated by contact with classical civilization, have assigned far too great a role to analytic reason, a concession which has inexorably led them to the sin of presumption. Orthodoxy preaches patient acceptance of one's fate and silent suffering. The earliest canonized saints of the Russian church, the medieval princes Boris and Gleb, attained sainthood because they had let themselves be slaughtered without offering resistance.