Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/186

 and later by Danilevsky, the critic of Darwinism, by his friend Strachov and others; some of the "Westerners " also, chiefly Solovyev and Kavelin, were inclined to accept it, but in a different sense. And thus independence of thought was reinforced, to a certain degree, by national feeling.

This independent spirit might have grown much more quickly and continuously, if it had been placed in suitable political conditions: but political circumstances were not favourable to it. I shall not speak of the times when Moscow was a fortified camp, rather than a centre of civilization; but even in later periods of Russian history, when thought was growing up, it was held under considerable restraint.

This occurred of course in times of reaction, for instance, in the last years of Catherine's reign, after the French revolution (1790–1796); under Alexander I, after havoc had been made in the Universities of Petrograd and Kazan, and, in a less degree, of Moscow (1820–1823); in the times of Nicholas I, after the execution of the Decembrists; and particularly after 1848, when philosophy was practically banished from Russian Universities for 13 years (1850–1863), when science and learning were subjected to the strictest supervision, when the Westerners and even the Slavophiles, for instance Herzen and Homyakov, were secretly watched by the police.

In fact, only under the reign of Alexander II, after the "great reforms" of the sixties, after the abolition of serfdom, the promulgation of the new code for the Universities in 1863 and the foundation of many schools for both sexes, the temporary lightening of the