Education was the great source of evil, but in a world where education was now adopted as an elementary principle of civilisation it was no longer possible to return to the absolute illiteracy of the Middle Ages. A compromise was found in the easy distinction between sound and unsound education. The figures of educational progress during the reign of Alexander III are at first sight impressive. In 1877 the eight universities had had 5629 students: in 1886 the number had arisen to 14,000. In the same period the number of high schools rose from 200 to about a thousand: the number of elementary schools from 25,077 to 35,517. There were now, in all, more than two million pupils in the elementary schools of the Empire. It should be added that the population of the Empire was now 113,000,000; that most of the schools were founded, independently of St. Petersburg, by the zealous Zemstvos; and that very many of them were mere huts or sheds with ludicrously incompetent teachers. Count Tolstoi, having been for sixteen years Minister of Education, controlled this department in the interest of the Slavophiles and imperialists. Pobiedonostseff, indeed, wanted to have all the elementary schools put under the control of the Holy Synod, or under the clergy. I have said little about the Russian Church during this period for a reason which will be understood. It was a mere docile instrument of the dynasty. Its ordinary priests were rough, ignorant men, little superior to the peasants themselves. Its higher clergy murmured not one single syllable at the cruelty, just as they had murmured none at the earlier vices, of the Romanoffs. The Zemstvos, however, in most cases refused to hand over their schools, and the secular part of the government had neither the funds to devote to the work nor the wish to have serious trouble with the Zemstvos. We shall see that they found it easier to capture the Zemstvos themselves and control their action. The Holy Synod also began the policy of creating religious schools in opposition to those of the Zemstvos, and securing imperial favour for these nurseries of docility. The high schools were re-modelled, and were now forbidden by law to admit the children of the poorer types of workers. Some technical improvements were made in them, but the general effect was to reduce the stimulating influence of the education. The universities were more drastically controlled. No students’ societies were permitted, and the curriculum was carefully purged. Inspectors were attached to them, and the grant of scholarships was made to depend upon the reports of these spies of orthodoxy. There were serious riots of the students in 1882 and 1887, but the energy of the reactionary officials gradually drove professors into silence or exile and pupils into subjection.