Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/172



USSIANS are still fond of speaking of "the sixties," and usually refer in this connection to "the forties" as well. Unquestionably as a sequel of the liberation of the peasantry and determined by that liberation, national energies were unchained, and in all domains more vigorous activities and endeavours became manifest. The changes resulting from the reform of 1861 can be seen and measured in literature and journalism. Censorship grew less severe, the bureaucracy had certain definite tasks to execute, by reform alone could the army make head after its defeats. Ideas and programs, work and achievement, were generally expected, demanded, and to some extent supplied.

The men whom Europe now counts as leading figures in the Russian branch of world literature produced their most notable writings during the reign of Alexander II and during the opening years of that of Alexander III. The masterpieces of Dostoevskii and of Turgenev were published under Alexander II; and during this epoch Saltykov, Gončarov, Pisemskii, Lěskov, Nekrasov, Ostrovskii, and L. N. Tolstoi, were also active.

The rise of the so-called ethnographic literature, and in especial of the imaginative analysis of folk life, is organically