Five years ago, in the year 1871, they were not so polite. I was living in Dresden at the time, and I remember how the Saxon troops returned after the war. The city gave them a grand entrance and a standing ovation. However, I also remember the same troops a year earlier, when they were on their way to the war, and when a large poster appeared on every corner and in every public place in Dresden: der Krieg ist erklärt! (The war has been declared!) I saw these troops then, and could not help admiring them: what a cheerfulness in their faces, what a bright, cheerful, and, at the same time, important expression in their eyes! They were all young men, and as I watched a company pass by, I could not help admiring their amazing military bearing, their well-coordinated steps, their precise, strict alignment, but at the same time, there was an extraordinary freedom in their movements that I had never seen in a soldier before, a conscious determination that was evident in every gesture and every step of these young men. It was clear that they were not being driven, but that they were walking on their own.
Nothing wooden, nothing stick-and-cap-like, and this from the Germans, the very Germans from whom we borrowed, when we set up our army with Peter, the corporal and the stick. No, these Germans marched without a stick, as one man, with perfect determination and full confidence in victory. The war was a people's war: the citizen shone in the soldier, and I confess that I was then afraid for the French, although I still firmly believed that they would beat the Germans. One can imagine how these same soldiers entered Dresden a year later, after their final victories over the Frenchman, from whom they had suffered humiliation for a century.
Add to this the usual German—and already national—boastfulness of themselves without measure, in the event of any success, a boastfulness even petty to the point of childishness, and always passing into impudence in the German, a rather unattractive national trait, and almost surprising in this people: this people has too much to boast of, even in comparison with any other nation, to show so much pettiness. It turned out that this honor was so new to them that they did not expect it. And indeed, they were so triumphant that they began to insult the Russians. There were many Russians in Dresden at the time, and many of them later recounted how every time a shopkeeper spoke to a Russian, even if they were just coming into the shop to buy something, they would immediately say, "We've finished with the French, and now we're going to take care of you." This animosity towards the Russians was a natural reaction, despite what the newspapers were saying about Russia's policies during the war, a policy without which they might not have been able to reap such laurels. True, it was the first flush of military success, so unexpected, but the fact remains.
The one who, in the heat of the moment, immediately brought up the Russians. This almost involuntary bitterness against the Russians seemed surprising even to me at the time, although I had known all my life that Germans, always and everywhere, ever since the German Quarter in Moscow, had been extremely disliked by Russians. A Russian lady, Countess K., then living in Dresden, was sitting in one of the seats reserved for the public during this solemn ovation for the troops entering the city, and behind her, several enthusiastic Germans began to curse Russia terribly. "I turned to them and cursed them in common parlance," she told me later. They remained silent: Germans are very polite to ladies, but they would not let a Russian off the hook. I myself read in our newspapers back then that our Petersburg Germans, in Petersburg, would start whole drunken gangs of quarrels and fights with our soldiers somewhere during drinking parties, and this was precisely out of "patriotism." Incidentally, most German newspapers are now filled with the most vicious attacks on Russia. Pointing to this fury in the German press, which insists that the Russians want to conquer the East and the Slavs so that, having grown stronger, they can overthrow European civilization, "Golos" recently remarked in an editorial that this entire furious chorus is all the more surprising because it arose, as if on purpose, precisely now after the friendly congresses and meetings of the three emperors, and that this is, to say the least, strange. A subtle observation.
Nothing wooden, nothing stick-and-cap-like, and this from the Germans, the very Germans from whom we borrowed, when we set up our army with Peter, the corporal and the stick. No, these Germans marched without a stick, as one man, with perfect determination and full confidence in victory. The war was a people's war: the citizen shone in the soldier, and I confess that I was then afraid for the French, although I still firmly believed that they would beat the Germans. One can imagine how these same soldiers entered Dresden a year later, after their final victories over the Frenchman, from whom they had suffered humiliation for a century.
Add to this the usual German—and already national—boastfulness of themselves without measure, in the event of any success, a boastfulness even petty to the point of childishness, and always passing into impudence in the German, a rather unattractive national trait, and almost surprising in this people: this people has too much to boast of, even in comparison with any other nation, to show so much pettiness. It turned out that this honor was so new to them that they did not expect it. And indeed, they were so triumphant that they began to insult the Russians. There were many Russians in Dresden at the time, and many of them later recounted how every time a shopkeeper spoke to a Russian, even if they were just coming into the shop to buy something, they would immediately say, "We've finished with the French, and now we're going to take care of you." This animosity towards the Russians was a natural reaction, despite what the newspapers were saying about Russia's policies during the war, a policy without which they might not have been able to reap such laurels. True, it was the first flush of military success, so unexpected, but the fact remains.
The one who, in the heat of the moment, immediately brought up the Russians. This almost involuntary bitterness against the Russians seemed surprising even to me at the time, although I had known all my life that Germans, always and everywhere, ever since the German Quarter in Moscow, had been extremely disliked by Russians. A Russian lady, Countess K., then living in Dresden, was sitting in one of the seats reserved for the public during this solemn ovation for the troops entering the city, and behind her, several enthusiastic Germans began to curse Russia terribly. "I turned to them and cursed them in common parlance," she told me later. They remained silent: Germans are very polite to ladies, but they would not let a Russian off the hook. I myself read in our newspapers back then that our Petersburg Germans, in Petersburg, would start whole drunken gangs of quarrels and fights with our soldiers somewhere during drinking parties, and this was precisely out of "patriotism." Incidentally, most German newspapers are now filled with the most vicious attacks on Russia. Pointing to this fury in the German press, which insists that the Russians want to conquer the East and the Slavs so that, having grown stronger, they can overthrow European civilization, "Golos" recently remarked in an editorial that this entire furious chorus is all the more surprising because it arose, as if on purpose, precisely now after the friendly congresses and meetings of the three emperors, and that this is, to say the least, strange. A subtle observation.
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