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68 compelled the Russian people to accept the protection of a strong Government, and to surrender their liberties to the Grand Dukes of Muscovy. And it was only in the sixteenth century that serfdom was established, namely, in the troubled times of the Smoutnoe Vremia of Boris Godounov. It is strange that serfdom should have been established in Russia at the very moment when everywhere else in Europe it was being abolished. But it is stranger still that the Russian peasants should have been free at the time when everywhere else in Europe peasants still were slaves. In the words of a famous French writer: "C'est la liberté qui est ancienne en Russie et non le despotisme." Freedom with the Russians is an elemental instinct, a fanatical passion, the passion which creates martyrs, which sends its votaries to Siberia and to the scaffold. Political freedom in Russia has often been repressed, it has never been destroyed, as it has been destroyed in Prussia. In Prussia the people have had the benefit of universal education. They have attained to a high degree of industrial development. The German Socialists are strongly organized in a party, they command many millions of