移民報刊及其控制（簡體書）

LOSS OF RACIAL IDENTITY
The peoples whose languages were suppressed or supplanted practi- cally ceased to exist culturally and politically.
When Finland passed from Swedish into Russian hands, in 1808, the Tsar Alexander was under the impression that he had annexed a Swedish province.The culture was Swedish; the religion was Swedish; when he visi- ted the country the language in which the Diet greeted him was Swedish.The peasants,he was told, spoke a barbarous tongue of their own; but for all Alexander knew that might well be a dialect of Swedish, as Little Rus- sian was of Russian.He was not interested in the matter.Very few persons at this time were.
The case of Lithuania fifty or sixty years ago was in some respects pe- culiar.Like the other non-Slavonic nations, she had been subjected for some half a century to the influence of Russian Pan-Slavism, and had had her full share of Russification.Few persons, fifty years ago, distinguished Lithuania from Poland.For purposes of government, Lithuania was Polish.The no- bles were Polish;and it was with the nobles that the Russian government was at this moment principally concerned.No educated man in Kovno, in Vilna, in Suvalki, spoke the Lithuanian language.The newspapers were Polish.The higher schools--till they were Russified--were Polish.The University of Vilna, while it existed--it was suppressed by the Russian governent some years after the first Polish rising of 1830--had been Pol-ish.If it had not been for the clergy, the memory of a written Lithuanian language would have been lost.