ABSTRACT
It may safely be postulated that no State has ever been fortunate enough to attain to a complete synthesis between the interests and ideals of the ruling class, and those of the people as a whole. In Russia, however, the gulf between these two was particularly wide, the resulting conflict particularly severe, and fraught with especial dangers. The explanation of this has to be sought in the broad facts of her history. Russian civilization first emerged round the towns of Novgorod and Kiev, where it flourished from the ninth century to the end of the thirteenth. Driven northwards by the Tartar invasion, it reappeared in the region round about Moscow, where it continued to develop until a new centre was found at Petrograd at the end of the seventeenth century. There it remained until the outbreak of the Revolution in 1917.
