Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume VI).djvu/18

Rh are many liberal-minded men among the officials, still, in Solomin's words, 'the official is always an outsider,' and therefore it is that the unofficial thinking part of Russia, the writers, the professors, the students, the press, and the more intelligent of the professional world, form an unorganised but permanent opposition. To this party gravitate naturally the discontented spirits from all classes─nobles, military men, those who have been hardly dealt with, and those who have an axe of their own to grind, the Markelovs, and the Paklins. Accordingly, the autocracy, by the solid, impermeable front it has presented for twenty-five years to reform and to the education of the peasants, may be said to hold the varying opposition together. The action of the Government, too, in forbidding the public to comment on such matters as the late strike of factory hands in St. Petersburg, where also the masters were 'forbidden' to yield to the men's demands, constantly creates a hostile public And it was in this manner that the Nihilist party of the seventies was formed.

It was natural enough for the last generation