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194 is most unambiguously displayed in his censorial work as editor. Publishing Turgenev’'s Fathers and Children, he treated Bazarov most maliciously by simply suppressing all the mitigating traits of that hero's character.

The year 1863 and the Polish rising gave Katkov an authoritative position among the conservatives and nationalists. Resuming the editorship of the "Moskovskija Vědomosti," he thus acquired a widely circulated journal through which to push his designs. More and more the program of Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality came to be conceived by him in the sense of the government; and after 1866, when the first attempt was made on the tsar's life, he definitely took up a position opposed to the intelligentsia. In 1867 he formulated his credo in the following terms: "Russia needs a unified state and a strong Russian nationality. Let us create such a nationality upon the foundation of a language common to all the inhabitants, upon that of a common faith, and upon that of the Slavic mir. Let us overthrow everything which imposes obstacles in the way of these designs. In this program of rigid Russification, the only exception he was willing to make related to the Poles (see § 68).

Katkov was shrewd enough to turn his attention to the schools. Effecting a rapprochement to Pobědonoscev and Count D. A. Tolstoi, he favoured classicism in the gimnazija and he attacked the reorganisation of the universities effected in 1863. In 1878 the Moscow students accompanied the start of a convoy of exiles, and for this peaceable demonstration were savagely handled by the butchers. The next day Katkov's organ strongly commended this butcher patriotism.

With increasing energy, Katkov opposed the bureaucracy, which seemed Laodicean and too liberal. His prestige grew when in 1866 his paper was suspended for two months. Once again, in 1870, he received an official admonition. He was greatly dissatisfied with Russian diplomacy, while the Turkish war and its results were as little to his liking as to that of other politicians and partisans. His conduct of a campaign upon two fronts made Katkov highly respected in court circles, and it is reported that Alexander II, who beyond question was not wholly in accord with Katkov's ideas, protected Katkov by saying that that writer would be his own censor.

It was after Alexander's death that Katkov acquired his most extensive influence over the government and the court.