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18 mouth like lords, feeding on the offal that fell from the table of the Russian society and State.

Far truer is the word of another Russian writer, Rodionov, who found their origin and fatherland in the village.

Rodionov wrote a number of articles and novels, of which the most instructive is Our Crime.

It is not even a novel, but rather a police record of village crimes: drunkenness, profligacy, unpunished murder, theft, ruin of family, disregard of authority, extinction of national consciousness an inferno too loathsome to describe.

If we read Rodionov's revelations, we are reluctantly obliged to admit that the Russian village, to which Tolstoy looked for the rejuvenation and renascence of the nation, is not much better than a foul quagmire.