Page:Ossendowski - The Shadow of the Gloomy East.djvu/18

2 emancipation of women, the education of the masses of the common people, and called forth the enthusiasm of even the most critical political thinkers and philosophers acquainted with Western culture.

But these superficial declamations were but a passing fashion of good breeding, scenery, masks, underneath which lay a mean reality.

Unaware of the liberating forces which gathered strength within the masses, unconscious of the importance and power of the protesting classes, the aristocracy and the higher plutocracy, and alas! the higher middle classes were thronging the Imperial Court as of old, hunting for favours, honours, positions, basking in the sunshine of the Imperial presence.

This lustre, like the radiance of the sun, blinded the vision of those who should have been the strength and stay of Russian society to the seething movement, to the threatening murmur of the human ant-heap down there, in the dark hovels of the "common brute."

And at the time when the whole of Europe knew that a very decisive and dangerous moment in the history of Russia was approaching, the aristocrats and their set were forming the "black hundreds," dragging in the university youth, throwing them together with the scum of the large towns, filling them with reactionary political views, which led to every crime. The picked regiments of the Guards were murdering the helpless populations of Warsaw, Petersburg, and Moscow; and delicately manicured hands of aristocrats: the Golit-