The last named discovery was destined to play a prominent part in the subsequent political history of Russia. Agrarian communism, spread throughout a vast country during an age of extreme economic individualism, when the last traces of such a form of possession were deeply buried in the past of European nations, gave rise for years to an erroneous theory both in Russia and in Western Europe, _viz_: that this was a specifically Russian or Slavic institution. In Russia it contributed greatly towards drawing the line between the two parties of the Russian educated class in “the epoch of the forties,” between the “occidentalists” (_zapadniki_) and the “slavophiles.” The latter regarded the village community as being, with autocracy and orthodoxy, an emanation of the Russian “national spirit.” These three institutions were predestined in their belief to prevent Holy Russ from entering upon the impious ways of the “rotten West,” with its class antagonism, extremes of luxury and poverty, intestinal discords and civil wars. Precisely for the same reasons, considering the village community as an integral part of the prevailing system of paternalism, the “occidentalists,” opposed to autocracy and orthodoxy, strove for the abolition of the _mir_ as well as of bond serfdom. The archaic communism of the _mir_ appeared to them to stand in acute contradiction to Western liberalism or individualism. The “epoch of emancipation,” however, that came to realize the aspirations of the occidentalists, brought about a fundamental change of public opinion in regard to the village community. The intellectual development in Russia was ever going on under the steady influence of Western ideas. The “epoch of the forties” coincided with the era during which socialistic and communistic ideas were in full blast throughout France. Thanks to the many Russian tourists and students who became imbued with these ideas during their sojourn in Paris, socialism, towards the end of “the forties,” attained no inconsiderable popularity among the educated class in Russia. Not to speak of Herzen or Bakunin--who were at that time closely affiliated with Proudhon, Karl Marx and other prominent representatives of the social movements of the day--Belinsky, who was the foremost Russian critic and publicist, equally renowned among all parties (except, of course, the bureaucratic party), became in his latter years a socialist. “Secret circles,” or, as they would be called in this country, debating clubs, swarmed in every large centre of intellectual culture. Among the young men connected with this movement, there was one who was later on to play a part of extraordinary importance in Russian history; this was _Nicholas Gavrielovitch Tchernyshefsky_.