Religious fanaticism of the Russian people

The truth is both Russia and Bulgaria entered on the war with Turkey under a mistaken impression as to each other’s aims and objects. The Russian nation honestly believed that they were called upon by the Bulgarians to come and deliver them from an intolerable tyranny; that so long as the Bulgarians were set free from the rule of the Crescent, they were indifferent to every other consideration ; and that it was their desire and ambition to become in fact, if not in name, a province of the mighty Sclav Empire. This belief was in harmony with the religious fanaticism of the Russian people, with the theories of the Moscow school of patriots, whose ideal is the fusion of all the European Slavonic races into one vast confederation under the hegemony of Russia, and with the personal sentiments of the late Czar.

I think it probable enough that this belief was confirmed by the statements of the Bulgarian political exiles, who had taken refuge in Russia, and who naturally supported any view of the situation which was best calculated to induce the Russian Government to take up arms for the liberation of their country. It is not necessary to suppose that there was any intentional deceit on the part of the exiles, from whom the Russians received their impressions as to the state of feeling in Bulgaria previous to the war.

Domination of Islam

Anybody who has ever been personally acquainted with exiles is aware that they one and all labour under the delusion that their return is the one thing which their country desires and prays for. It is therefore intelligible that the Russians should have honestly imagined that the kindred people, they were about to deliver from the domination of Islam, were anxious, as soon as their liberation was accomplished, to merge their separate identity in that of the great Sclav brotherhood.

At the same time the Bulgarians cannot be blamed if they failed to realize beforehand the true intentions of their liberators. With the view of disarming the possible opposition of other European Powers, the Pan-Slavonic aspect of Russian intervention in Bulgaria was kept sedulously in the background. Europe was assured that the sole object of holy Russia in making war upon Turkey was to free a people of kindred race, creed, and language to her own from Moslem oppression.