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was taken from them without any proportionate
compensation. The hope that there would be a political
reform under Alexander II. was greatly weakened, just
because the social reform in this form came first. For a
long time, the enlightened classes had hoped for a
“constitution,” — as it must naturally be in the beginning, an
aristocratic constitution. Now political liberalism stood,
in the presence of this gigantic advance of the power of
the Tsar, without any hope for the future. For now,
when all the lofty peaks of society were levelled, the
position of the power of the Tsar alone was unaffected
and even expanded to a dominion over soldiers and
peasants unlimited by any kind of barrier.
The great peasant population was still very far from
being satisfied. They had for a long time cherished
Utopian expectations, and now, especially since the
socialistic agitators had strengthened their illusions,
were waiting for the immediate transfer to them, then
and there, of all the land which they had cultivated,
without any equivalent. This disappointment brought
the peasants in the departments of Kazán and the Volga to
an armed insurrection. At the same time, disturbances
broke out among the students. The abnormal limitation
of the number of students at each of the universities to
three hundred had been repealed, and the scholar had
suddenly attained a prestige almost surpassing that
which the officers of the Guard had hitherto enjoyed.
Now, with a genuine Russian lack of principle, the
execution both of legal reforms and of a new plan of
education was intrusted to the old re-actionists. So far
as the former reform was concerned, the leading men,
like Count Panin, Minister of Justice, accommodated
themselves to the demands of the times; but only three
months later, when the emancipation of the serfs had
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