Russian national consciousness is a recent growth. It sprang up at the beginning of the nineteenth century under the stimulus of Napoleon’s invasion. Hatred of the foreign invader brought patriotism into being, and the exultation of victory forced it to precocious maturity. The Polish rebellions of 1830 and 1863 assisted its development, which was also accelerated by the spread of education and the growth of the press. The extreme partisans of the Nationalist idea, henceforth the ruling body in the Empire, were imbued with the conviction that the preservation of the Russian nation required the forcible assimilation or, failing that, the utter extermination of all that is not Russian. Under the fell influence of that conviction a systematic campaign was entered upon for the Russification of all the alien races which had been incorporated in the Empire during the preceding century. After the complete subjugation of the Poles--brought about by Muravieff in a manner which earned him the title of “Hangman of Warsaw”--came the turn of the inhabitants of the Baltic provinces, who, partly German by blood, had long adopted the German tongue, German culture, and German ideals, and who since their conquest by the Russians, in the eighteenth century, had furnished the Empire with some of its best statesmen, warriors, and scientists. The Panslavic zeal for assimilation was intensified by the fear of German expansion. Prussia by her brilliant war against Austria in 1866 laid the foundations of that national edifice which was completed by the war, even more brilliant, against France in 1870, thus realising the national dream of German unity. It was feared by the Russians that the absorption of the Germanised provinces of the Baltic would be the next step of Pan-germanic ambition. Impelled by those motives, Russia inaugurated the amalgamation of these regions in 1867. Alexander II., notwithstanding his personal sympathies and his public assurances to the natives of the Baltic provinces, was carried away by the Panslavic current, which gained further strength from the national conflict with Turkey in 1877. ♦1881–1894♦