One act bore with extreme severity upon the free peasantry. They were compelled to enroll themselves with the serfs in their Communes, or to be dealt with as vagrants. Peter has been censured for this and also for not extending his reforming broom to the Communes and overthrowing the whole patriarchal system under which they existed--a system so out of harmony with the modern state he was creating. But it seems to the writer rather that he was guided by a sure instinct when he left untouched the one thing in a Slavonic state, which was really Slavonic. He and the long line of rulers behind him had been ruling by virtue of an authority established by aliens. Russia had from the time of Rurik been governed and formed after foreign models. Peter was at least choosing better models than his predecessors. If it was an apparent mistake to build a modern, centralized state in the eighteenth century upon a social organization belonging to the eleventh century, it may be that in so doing, an inspired despot builded wiser than he knew. May it not be that the final regeneration of that land is to come some day, from the leaven of native instincts in her peasantry, which have never been invaded by foreign influences and which have survived all the vicissitudes of a thousand years in Russia? The _Raskolniks_, composed chiefly of free peasants and the smaller merchant class, had fled in large numbers from these blasphemous changes--some among the Cossacks, and many more to the forests, hiding from persecution and from this reign of Satan. The more they studied the Apocalypse the plainer became the signs of the times. Satan was being let loose for a period. They had been looking for the coming of Antichrist and now he had come! The man in whom the spirit of Satan was incarnate was Peter the Great. How else could they explain such impious demeanor in a Tsar of Russia--except that he was of Satanic origin, and was the Devil in disguise? By his newly invented census had he not "numbered the people"--a thing expressly forbidden? And his new "calendar," transferring September to January, was it not clearly a trick of Satan to steal the days of the Lord? And his new title _Imperator_ (Emperor), had it not a diabolic sound? And his order to shave, to disfigure the image of God! How would Christ recognize his own at the Last Day? Hunted like beasts, these people were living in wild communities, dying often by their own hands rather than yield the point of making the sign of the cross with two fingers instead of three--2700 at one time voluntarily perishing in the flames, in a church where they had taken refuge. Peter put an end to their persecution. They were permitted to practice their ancient rites in the cities and to wear beards without molestation, upon condition of paying a double poll-tax.