In the medieval period monasteries in Russia underwent the same evolution as elsewhere, the monks passing from poverty to corporate wealth, and owning in particular multitudes of serfs. Their lands and serfs, however, were secularized in the eighteenth century; and since then, though some five hundred monasteries continue to exist, they have counted for little in the national life. Ecclesiastical discipline has in general been always rigorous under the autocracy; and in the eighteenth century it was common to flog priests cruelly for almost any breach of discipline. And though Russia has for ages abounded in dissenting sects, at no time has any movement of reform come from the clergy. No Church has been more steadily unintellectual. All progress in Russia has come from the stimulus of western culture, beginning under Peter the Great, and continuing throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and though some men of genius, as the great novelist, Dostoyevsky, who was anti-rationalist, and Count Tolstoy, who was heretically religious, have been exceptions to the rule, the higher Russian culture is predominantly rationalistic. The greatest Russian novelist, Tourguénief, was a freethinker, as is Gorky to-day. The numerous dissident sects of Russia, which represent in general unorganized developments of the spirit of Bible-worshipping Protestantism, have been broadly classed as follows: (1) Sects such as the Molokani and Stundists, which found on the Scriptures, but are not literalists, and resort at times to inward light for interpretation. (2) Sects which disregard Scripture, and follow the doctrine of special leaders. (3) Sects which believe in the re-incarnation of Christ. (4) Sects given to the religion of physical excitement; some being erotic, as the Jumpers; some flagellant, as the Khlysti; some fanatically ascetic, as the Skoptsi or Eunuchs. All alike, however near they may be to orthodoxy, are liable to official persecution equally with the members of the modern sect of Dukhobortsi, associated with Count Tolstoy, whose doctrine is non-resistance and refusal to bear arms. Thus Christianity in Russia is variously identified with the most medieval formalism and bigotry and the most exalted enthusiasm for concord; while the march of intelligence proceeds as far as it may in disregard of all supernaturalist creeds. But the vast mass of the Russian peasantry stands for the faith of the Middle Ages, and may now be said to constitute the most religious section of total Christendom.