Hertzen represented Russia as an immense plain where people were getting rid of old thatched cottages, and at the same time collecting the necessary materials for new habitations. He saw a world in which no one lived as yet, but where life as it should be was being prepared for. And this idea, which may seem exaggerated, has a good deal of sense in it. Does not every backward nation, which hastens to take her place in the circle of the more advanced peoples of Europe, resemble a vessel into which a new wine is to be poured? * * * * * If modern Russian literature has not deviated from its fundamental principles, realism, democracy, and socialism, on the other hand, a radical change has taken place in society which has necessarily had an influence on it. The populace is not the sombre, inert, and ignorant multitude that it has been heretofore. Learning is penetrating more and more; and as an advance-guard, it has the workingmen of the city and the people of the suburbs. A feeling of dignity, of human personality, and a love of liberty is awakening in the masses who have joined in the struggle which the "intellectuals" are conducting against the passive forces of autocracy. That is why the literature of this time--always excepting the period from 1905 to 1910--is preeminently a literature of fiercer and more active combat than ever before. As in times gone by, the heroes of this literature are common people. The writers choose them from among the students, schoolmasters, and school-mistresses of the village schools, who with complete disregard of self carry on the great work of popular education in the very heart of the country, without caring about the arbitrary power which menaces them, or the moral and material conditions of their lives. They also choose them from among the doctors of the districts who are worn out in despairing efforts to struggle against the terrible epidemics, and who are also trying to improve hygienic conditions among the peasants. In fine, among the heroes are included all who sacrifice their personal interests for the general good. The results of this terrible struggle against brute force are shown in the excessive nervousness of the combatants, who have become delirious with their aspirations towards liberty. Hatred of actual reality and distrust of those who have resigned themselves to it have made them accept sympathetically the most extreme and uncompromising measures, and one often thinks one sees a certain generosity among the people who are at war with society,--often, it is true, for egotistical reasons, far removed from the great ideal of reforms profitable to the masses. Such are the celebrated barefoot brigade, the eternal vagabonds, the "lumpen-proletariat" of Gorky's early works.