It must be confessed, however, that the melting process has as yet scarcely begun.
National peculiarities are not obliterated so rapidly in Russia as in America or in British colonies.

Among the German colonists in Russia the process of assimilation is hardly perceptible.

Though their fathers and grandfathers may have been born in the new country, they would consider it an insult to be called Russians.

They look down upon the Russian peasantry as poor, ignorant, lazy, and dishonest, fear the officials on account of their tyranny and extortion, preserve jealously their own language and customs, rarely speak Russian well--sometimes not at all--and never intermarry with those from whom they are separated by nationality and religion.

The Russian influence acts, however, more rapidly on the Slavonic colonists--Servians, Bulgarians, Montenegrins--who profess the Greek Orthodox faith, learn more easily the Russian language, which is closely allied to their own, have no consciousness of belonging to a Culturvolk, and in general possess a nature much more pliable than the Teutonic.
The Government has recently attempted to accelerate the fusing process by retracting the privileges granted to the colonists and abolishing the peculiar administration under which they were placed.