The peasants foresaw exactly the future that awaited them; the dearth in land, none too much to begin with, and the consequential lessening at each redistribution as the village increased in "souls," the needed "renting" from the landlord at exorbitant rates, the inability to pay and the resultant "paying in his own labor," and the eventual reestablishment of a virtual serfdom. Insurrections took place all over the country, the peasants believing firmly that the Government had treated them more kindly but that the landlords were deceiving them. However, the Government came only too gladly to the aid of the landlords, having got used to blood-baths in its drastic quenching of the Polish insurrection of '63. The general disappointment among the youth in the Government's attitude towards both Polish liberty and peasant rights led to a stronger and more revolutionary stand on their part. Unlike the reaction that set in during the long and tyrannical reign of Nicholas I, after the outburst of the Decembrists, or the reaction that was to follow those thirty years of effort when the notes of Gorky were to sound like a clarion call to a renewed faith, the decade of the seventies rose to one of extreme and intense idealism. The generation which had gone out of Russia to gain for itself new liberties had now returned and was spread throughout the length and breadth of the vast land, making converts by the thousands where formerly there were but few. The "fathers" and "sons" though not understanding each other very fully, were nevertheless following a pretty equal tendency. Where the former had sought for new general liberties in politics and social life through education, the latter, feeling that a great deal had already been won, had decided upon propaganda of action. The movement changed from a freeing of one's self to a freeing of the people. "To the people" became the watchword of the hour. The youth of the better classes went to live among the peasants, taught them, organized them into secret revolutionary groups for "land and liberty," made several abortive attempts at peasant revolution, and finally, the Government growing more and more reactionary, ended in the wielding of a personal "terror" against the Government representatives, which culminated in the assassination of the Czar, Alexander II, in 1882.