That Europe was spared this, she owes to the Russian. Through those crucial centuries when the Slav, weak, torn, anguished, beset with foes around and foes within, was standing grimly at the perilous portal of civilization, Europe, within the temple, safe by his grace, was privileged to work up into light, to cement her nationalities, to effect the liberation of her masses, and to develop her intellect into the magnificent promise of a printing-press, a people’s Bible, and a Shakespeare. But to the brave warden of that portal there was not the sweetness and the light. For him were the seams and the scars, the mutinous passions of the strife. Long after the clouds of the Dark Ages had cleared from the face of western Europe, they hung over Russia. The Slav was back in his Dark Ages yet, heir only to a barbaric experience. Here he must start, where Europe had started nearly a thousand years before, where America, in the favor of Providence, was never to be called upon to start. For him were the memories of subjection and the blood of contention; but also, in relief, to him were the stolid patience and endurance which were to serve him so well. He groped along in the shadow until the coming of the great Peter. But now arose a man. He, too, had dreamed the dream of empire,--vast, masterful. He set about making his dream real. He found Russia a small inland state, torn by faction, barbarian, and Oriental. Though himself the descendant of a long line of Byzantine kings, half monk, half emperor, he saw with the insight of genius, and he knew that that way did not lie greatness. Therefore fully and fiercely he broke with the past and set himself to the future. Between him and that future stood the Strelitz. The walls of the Kremlin, and the Red Square told the doom of their barring conservatism. He warred with the Turk, he fought the Cossack, he routed the Swedes, again and again, taking whole provinces on his Baltic outlet and securing the coveted Neva. He embroiled himself with Persia, and through Baku opened a way to the Caspian. Then, with a high hand, he swept out the customs that made for Orientalism. He broke the seclusion of women, the prostrations, banished the caftan, the beard, and the flowing robes. He lifted his people bodily and violently out of their past, and set them down face-front to a new order. The Russia he had received a province, he left an empire. The Russia he had received Asiatic, he left European, and already a force in Europe. And when arose one of his own blood--a reversal--who would undo the herculean labor of this master-builder, who would give back to Sweden those priceless, wave-washed Baltic provinces, and, restoring the capital to Moscow, return to an Oriental estate, the patriot was stronger than the father, and at the price of his son’s life he bought the progress of Russia. Here in this man, who died in 1725, we can truly say that Modern Russia begins.