Importance of the muzhik in the future--Ancient republican traditions--Greek church and bureaucracy non-Russian institutions--Weight of the peasant vote in the Duma--How the peasant’s belief in “God and Czar” is waning--Strokes of disillusionment--Indifference to time--Muzhik nonchalance--Strange sects--Muzhik religion--A characteristic legend--Practical ethics--The muzhik not necessarily lazy--Muzhik shrewdness--The dawning of self-consciousness. CHAPTER XV. THE PEASANT AWAKENING 311 The period of repression following the Duma dissolution--Under arrest in Moscow--The cradle of the Romanoffs--A peasant gathering--Outspoken muzhiks--A “constituent assembly”--Rational opinions of the Viborg manifesto--Nijni Novgorod--The great fair--A disturbed province--Kazan--A journey to the interior--A visit to Prince Ouktomsky--Professor Vassiliev and his family--Advanced ideas of the peasants--Simbirsk, the “Mountain of the Winds”--An illiterate government--What the peasants want--Entering the famine belt. CHAPTER XVI. THROUGH THE HUNGRY COUNTRY 341 Heart of the famine region--Terrible pictures of starvation--Peasants feeding the thatch from the roofs of their houses to cattle--Auctioning cattle and horses for a song--How the workers and breadwinners suffer first--Inability of the government to cope with situation--Peasants pledge their labor for years to come to secure food for their families for the present time--Another arrest--Expulsion from the province. CHAPTER XVII. IN THE LAND OF LOST LEADERS 360 Across the Urals--Into Siberia--The Treimen waiting-prison--First exiles--The journey to Tobolsk--Secret night meeting of politicals--Hardships of exile--Splendid personnel of prisoners--Forced into daily contact with foul disease--Starvation--Life among the Ostiaks--Lack of medical aid--Siberia, a monumental crime--The journey back. CHAPTER XVIII. MY FRIENDS, THE TERRORISTS 387 “Terrorism” almost universally misunderstood in America--Terrorism a philosophy based on logical, intelligent, dispassionate reasoning--Exceptional incidents that merely prove the rule--Relation of terrorists to whole revolutionary movement--Differentiation of the several leading revolutionary parties--Thoughtful and humane methods of recent terrorists--Capture of “The Bear”--Two girl terrorists executed at Kronstadt--The daring Maximalists--“Flying bands”--Rigid morals of terrorists--Total abstainers--Personnel of the Maximalists--A famous “expropriation”--Plot on the Duma--Bomb in the home of Prime Minister Stolypin--The most daring plot of all. CHAPTER XIX. A CLOSE CALL 410