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THE SPIRIT OF RUSSIA

a fleet. These ends could not be secured without more extensive knowledge. Even had it been possible for the Russians to obtain everything ready made from the Europeans, the simple upkeep of these material elements of civilisation would have been impossible without the aid of skilled workmen from Europe and without the assistance of European architects, engineers, and the like. Trained Europeans had to be transplanted to Russia.

The Russians had to keep in view the gradual acquirement of competence to maintain those necessary reforms for themselves, and they therefore visited Europe to study, whilst at home they established schools and translated books. Cannon, ships, bastions, etc., cannot be made without knowledge of mathematics, mechanics, physics, and chemistry, or in default of technical as well as scientific knowledge. As early, therefore, as the sixteenth century positive science was studied in Moscow with the encouragement of the state, the movement becoming still more vigorous in the seventeenth century.

But for all these material and intellectual reforms money was requisite. It was necessary that the primitive industries should be perfected, an essential prerequisite being a radical reform of the administration. Agriculture and the domestic handicrafts had to be remodelled and furnished with better implements, and in addition new channels for trade and new commercial associations must be secured. John the Terrible opened commercial relationships with the English. It was John who pushed out into the Baltic; the northern seas were under Russian control, but it was a long voyage to Europe from Archangel round North Cape, whilst to communicate with Europe by land the Russians had to cross the hostile territories of their westem neighbours.

Finally, the court and the nobility required articles of luxury, and a taste for art was arising. In all domains of practical and theoretical activity the third Rome had to learn from European civilisation.

Thus, long before the days of Peter, the German Sloboda of Moscow came into existence. Nevertheless, the entry of foreigners into Muscovite Russia seems to have been comparatively difficult when we remember that there had been almost no obstacle to their influx into the petty principalities of earlier days.

During the sixteenth century, thoughtful Russians gave