ut
there never was one single German from the Baltic provinces implicated
in a conspiracy against reaction. It is easy to understand, therefore,
why a Russian autocrat should have preferred the services of the
German Baltic barons. The Russian nobleman is casual, lavish, a bad
economist, easygoing, generous, and he is corrupt because easygoing
and generous. He is also much more independent. The Junker is
punctual, precise, disciplined, generally poor, always ambitious. He
is also tolerably honest. He is the ideal bureaucrat.

XI.

German influence has been no less dominant in the Russian academies
and in scientific institutions. The Academy of Sciences of St.
Petersburg was organized on the pattern of the Academy of Berlin. It
was an official institution with high privileges, and it remained
consistently German. Until recently its proceedings were published in
the German language, and German scientists were invariably preferred
rather than Russian scientists. Mendelieff, one of the most creative
scientific minds of his generation, was a member of every European
academy except the Academy of Petersburg.

The Germans have been an even greater power in the Russian
Universities. They took full advantage of the prestige which German
science had acquired in Europe, and they largely filled the ranks of
the liberal professions. German doctors, German veterinary surgeons,
German _Feldschers_, German foresters, German engineers, were to be
found in every part of the Empire. A casual reading of the Post Office
directories of Moscow, or Petersburg, or Kiev, provides a most
instructive commentary on the extent of the German domination.

XII.

Securely entrenched in the Russian Court, in the Army, in the
bureaucracy, in the Universities, in the Diplomatic Service, the
Germans secured a no less commanding influence in trade and industry.
As we have already pointed out, Russia, until recent years, had
remained an agricultural country without a middle class. The trade
remained almost entirely in foreign hands. Already in the Middle Ages
Russian cities, like Novgorod, were affiliated to the German Hanseatic
League. In the sixteenth century adventurous English explorers and
traders, whose exploits are amongst the most thrilling of Hakluyt's
voyages, tried to oust their German competitors, but they utterly
failed. The Russians themselves are excellent traders, and the
merchant guilds of Moscow have been for centuries a powerful