The classes that came into power with Alexander III and Pobedonostseff were, from their economic interests, social outlook and political ideals, essentially medieval and may properly be termed the feudal party. Guided by its economic interests--which had been seriously threatened by the emancipation--and swayed by the Slavophilistic philosophy,[6] this party sought to nullify as far as possible the reforms of the epoch of emancipation and to carry through a many-sided program for putting the order of things backward to the medieval, pre-reform days. Autocracy, Greek Orthodoxy and Russian Nationalism--the famous Slavophilistic trinity--were glorified, the first two as peculiarly national institutions, the policy of russification and the repression of non-orthodox faiths by force were proclaimed as vital to the social health of Russia, the blind ignorance and illiteracy of the peasants were extolled as a virtue and the control over them by the nobility was strengthened in many ways. Freedom of every form was condemned as an aping of the "rotten" civilization of the West with its decaying institutions, and as false to the true Russian national, historical development. During this period of reaction, however, the liberal movement was kept alive, largely as revolutionary propaganda. The earlier movement had been directed by the educated classes, the "_Intelligenzia_" of Russia. Lately, with the growth of the middle class and a population of industrial workers in the towns and the factories, and a wealthier class of peasants, the cry for reform has become more insistent, and only recently partly successful in results. Summarizing his impressions of Russian life and institutions obtained while serving as Ambassador to Russia, Andrew D. White remarked: "During two centuries Russia has been coming slowly out of the middle ages--indeed, out of perhaps the most cruel phases of medieval life."[7] One of the phases of this process has been the bitter struggle between the feudal and the modern forces that has occupied Russia for the last third of a century. II. ROUMANIA In Roumania,[8] in spite of a liberal constitution modeled upon the Belgian, granting all rights enjoyed by citizens of a free state, the underlying economic, social and, in a measure, political conditions point to a state of things little removed from the medieval forms of life. The main social-economic classes are the large landed proprietors, composed chiefly of the old nobility or boyars, and the peasants, who were formerly serfs. In the hands of the former are concentrated the greater part of the land. Five thousand large landed proprietors together owned nearly half of the cultivable land. Nearly a million of peasants, on the other hand, comprising with their dependents a great majority of the population, together owned a little over two-fifths of the cultivable land.[9]