Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

sunflowers. In one word, the emperor is the god, the life, the passion of this unhappy people. Imagine human existence reduced to the hope that an obeisance will procure the acknowledgments of a look ! God has implanted too many passions in the human heart for the uses which are here made of it.

If I put myself in the place of the only man who has here the right to live free, I tremble for him. To have to play the part of Providence over sixty millions of souls is a dreadful office. The Divinity has only the choice of two things: either to destroy his own power by showing himself a man, or to lead his votaries to the conquest of the world, in maintaining his character as a god. It is thus that in Riissia the whole of life becomes nothing more than a school of ambition.

But by what road have the Russians reached this point of self-abnegation ? What human means could produce such a political result ? The cause of all is the tchinn: the tchinn is the galvanism, the apparent life of souls and bodies here — the passion which survives all other passions. I have shown its effects; it is therefore necessary that I should explain its nature.

The tchinn is a nation formed into a regiment; it is the military system applied to all classes of society, even to those which never go to war. In short, it is the division of the civil population into ranks, which correspond to ranks in the army. Since this institution has been established, a man who has never seen exercise may obtain the title of colonel.

Peter the Great — it is always to him that we must go back in order to understand the actual state