The period that preceded the reform of 1861, was a time of universal enthusiasm for the liberal government on the part of the educated class. So much the greater was the disappointment when the reform was at last proclaimed. It has not been stated whether Tchernyshefsky himself was in any way connected with the “underground” agitation against the government, of which he was accused at so early a date as 1862. Tried in 1864, and exiled to Siberia, he was allowed to return to European Russia only in 1883, when the revolutionary party seemed to have been finally suppressed by the government. And yet for this whole period none but Tchernyshefsky was the spiritual leader of the social movement that sprang up from the disappointment caused by the manner in which the emancipation of the peasants had been carried out. It will be seen further that, owing to the origin and development of private ownership in land, nationalization of land became intimately connected, in the minds of the Russian peasants, with emancipation. Hence a series of riots in 1861-62, at the time when the reform was being put in force. The peasants claimed that they were duped by the “masters” and the officials, who were concealing from the people “the true will of the Czar.” The belief that the Czar desired to nationalize the land for the use of the tiller of the soil was so universal among the peasants that, in 1878, minister Makoff found himself under the necessity of issuing a special circular for the purpose of dispelling the gossip current upon the subject. The priests were ordered to read and explain this circular in all the churches; and on the 16th day of May, 1883, while receiving the elders of the peasants, who presented their congratulations on the solemn occasion of the Czar’s coronation, the latter told the delegates to disabuse the peasants’ minds of the false rumors of gratuitous distribution of land, that were being spread abroad by the enemies of the throne. Yet the influence of the said enemies of the throne was infinitesimal as compared with the extent to which these rumors became popular. On the contrary, instead of its being a case of the radicals influencing the people, it was precisely the radicals themselves who were influenced by this popular belief. The latter seemed to them a proof of the moral support their aspirations were to gain from the people; and if “the will of the people” is not to be fulfilled _through_ the government, why, this will must be complied with _against_ the government. Thus revolutionary peasantism came into being. After years of propaganda it broke out in 1873-1874 in a huge movement that was called “the pilgrimage amongst the folk.” Hundreds of boys and girls, chiefly college students, settled in villages as common laborers to make propaganda among the peasants for what they believed to be socialistic ideas. They hoped to be able, sooner or later, to foment a popular uprising that would result in the establishment of a