Best. Description. Ever.

"Foreign visitors to Russia were struck by the contrast between the grinding poverty and appaling ignorance exhibited on all sides and the overweening sense of superiority of the Russians from prince to peasant. For the national arrogance was by no means a prerogative of the official or privileged classes. Million upon million of ignorant peasants, inured to pain and death, indifferent to hardship, illiterate and untravelled and superstitiously wedded to an abuse-ridden Church, were loyal to a remote Tsar and accepted however imperfectly his vision of Russia's manifest destiny."
-David Walder, The Short Victorious War, p. 47

Gee. Wonder why they lost the war?