It is, however, usual to exaggerate the work done. We have already heard much about the reforms of various rulers--of Philaret, of Peter I, of Elizabeth, and of Catherine--but the fact remains that far more than ninety per cent of the Russian people were still illiterate and densely ignorant at the death of Alexander, and, although we shall hear of further reforms, at least eighty-five per cent of the Russian people were illiterate at the beginning of the twentieth century. The sum provided for education was ludicrously insufficient for the task, and the opposition was considerable. Merchants grumbled that they must pay for the teaching of something more than reading, writing, and arithmetic; the bulk of the nobles wanted only a military education for their sons. In all about 200 higher schools (with classes of Latin and Greek) and 2,000 elementary schools were founded: barely enough to educate the five per cent of the population which was attracted to new ideas. The work, like all the other reforms, languished in Alexander’s later years, and was deliberately checked, in the interest of the dynasty, by his successor. The next great problem was the emancipation of the serfs, and here the Tsar’s vacillation between his sentiments of benevolence and his vague perception that they threatened the aristocratic system is more apparent than ever. Catherine had had the same experience. She had spoken of liberty and equality; and she had bestowed upon her favourites hundreds of thousands of serfs who would, she must have known, be regarded and treated as cattle. The restriction of the freedom of the peasant, by which Godunoff had converted him into a serf, really handed over his freedom to the higher authorities or put it into the hand of the landowner. When a peasant wished to move, he might secure permission from his lord by a payment of money. When a noble obtained a grant of new lands he had to buy, or obtain by favour, a great batch of serfs to work it. In practice the wealthy landowners bought and sold the population just as cotton-planters then did in America, and the serfs were generally treated with brutality.