ABSTRACT
Relations between Russia and Germany have been close for a very long time. When the First World War broke out, German Social Democracy, almost without a dissenting voice, stood for what their spokesmen called the defence of Western (and especially German) civilization against corruption by primitive Russia. When Baron Haxthausen visited Russia in the eighteen-forties he found much anti-German feeling, but it was explained to him that the real culprits were the German Balts, who were so haughty and always pushed themselves to the fore. There is no denying that some of the leading spirits of Panslavism preached a holy war against the West. This was Victor Hehn’s De moribus Ruthenorum, the diary of a natural scientist of Baltic–German origin, and it is of the very greatest significance in this context.
